“Yes. Conan Doyle wrote it. But then it was destroyed.”
“Why would he have destroyed it?”
“He didn’t.”
“Then who did?”
Harold smiled and gestured to the letters at their feet. “Bram Stoker.”
Sarah made a sour face. This news was not making her happy. But Harold was exhilarated. The thrill of inspiration overtook him, the pleasure of a problem solved. As Harold’s face brightened, Sarah’s darkened in equal measure.
“How did Cale know that?” she said.
“It must be in the letters. But not these letters. Later ones. Do you get it? Conan Doyle wrote the diary. Bram Stoker stole it, or threw it out, or something like that. And then he and Conan Doyle must have exchanged letters about it. That’s how Cale knew. ‘Mere modernity’ didn’t destroy Conan Doyle’s old diary. Bram Stoker did.”
Harold was up in a flash, ringing the bell for the library attendant to come back. He hurriedly asked her for the volume of letters chronologically after the ones they were currently looking at. She made him fill out a new request form, which he did impatiently. His own handwriting became quickly more smudged and illegible than even Stoker’s.
It was an agonizing fifteen minutes for Harold while the attendant was off to fetch the letters, and he and Sarah were forced to wait in the rare-manuscript room. He paced back and forth maniacally, hands behind him. When he looked over at Sarah, he found her lost in her own thoughts. Yet something on her face-some shadow of concern and disappointment-gave him the impression that her thoughts were very different from his own. He couldn’t imagine what she was feeling, and he didn’t know how to ask.
Finally the attendant returned with another box, tied with the same white string.
It was less than five minutes before Harold found what he was looking for, though it felt a lot longer to him. His sweaty fingers slipped across the smooth plastic as he shuffled through the pages. “Dear Arthur,” began the letter he held. “Your anger is understandable, but unfounded. Anything I have done-no, everything that I have done- has been done in the spirit of friendship and goodwill that exists between men such as you and I. If you will not thank me now, then I trust that one day you will thank me from the gates of heaven, when St. Peter alone whispers the truth from his lips. Let us discuss this in person, shall we? I can call on you anytime you like. B.S.”
The next letter in the stack continued the argument.
“Dear Arthur,” it read. “These bitter insults do not become you. But there is no reason for us to exclaim our opposite views in these missives. Let us sit in your study with a bottle of brandy, as we have so many times before, and hash out this affair. B.S.”
The third letter conveyed even more anger and ill will between the men than the first two.
“Dear Arthur,” read the third letter. “Please stop this childish behavior. I’m afraid that what you want from me I cannot give. It’s been burnt in your own fireplace, from the first ‘elementary’ to the bitter end. And your rude and unseemly letters have been burnt up in mine. Please, I beg of you, let me come to your house and discuss this matter with you. Allow me the chance to explain myself, and I will allow you the same chance as well. B.S.”
And that was it.
Harold flipped through further letters but found no more written to Conan Doyle in the box. Sarah flipped through the same piles, achieving the same result. Neither spoke until they’d both satisfied themselves that this was it, that this was the end of the trail.
“I was right,” said Harold when his mind had settled enough to speak. “Stoker stole the diary and burned it in Arthur’s fireplace. That’s the secret that’s been hidden for a hundred years. There never was a diary to find.”
“But,” Sarah replied, “but that’s so… What was in the diary? Why did Stoker burn it?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever know,” said Harold. “And that’s why Alex Cale killed himself. Because at the end of the mystery, at the conclusion of the story he’d been living for his entire adult life, there was no solution. So he built a new mystery above his grave. Something that someone else could investigate. He wrote the word ‘elementary’ at the scene because he read these letters and wanted us to know when we’d found them. ‘Elementary’ wasn’t the beginning of the mystery, it was the end. It’s ironic, I suppose, but it seems so obvious when you think about it now. The most upsetting truth that Alex Cale could have figured out wouldn’t be whatever ugly, dark secret is hidden in the diary-it’s that there was no diary. That the secret that had been inside it would be hidden forever.”
“That’s sick.”
She was right, Harold knew. But he also understood Cale’s reasoning completely.
“There’s a quote from Conan Doyle,” Harold began. “ ‘A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader.’ ” Harold gave a small laugh. “But I think Conan Doyle was wrong. In this case the problem without a solution upset the student, too.”
“He killed himself to preserve a mystery? Then why leave all these clues?”
“He killed himself because his life was a failure. His great work was never going to be completed. It couldn’t be. He would never be able to be the success that his father wanted, he’d never be able to toss his thick, award-winning Conan Doyle biography on his father’s grave. His life was over. So he figured if he was going to kill himself anyway, why not plant a seed? He couldn’t just tell everyone that the mystery was over… So he left behind a gift. For us. For me.”
Harold could not place the look that Sarah gave him then. It was not disgust, exactly, and it was not despair, but it was a kind of sadness.
“Are you mad at me?” he asked finally. He didn’t know what else to say. He was still exhilarated, but it was starting to wear off.
“No,” she said. “Of course I’m not.” She stood up from her chair and gave a long stretch. She arched her arms over her head and then folded them across her chest, curling herself inward. “So that’s it, then? You’re sure? The diary is gone? Burned up by Bram Stoker in Conan Doyle’s own house. We’ll never be able to find it, or what it says?”
Harold took a few seconds and ran through the chain of events in his mind that had led him to this conclusion. They were so orderly, so logical, and so flawless.
“Yes,” he said. “This is it.” An awful thought occurred to him.
“You’re not going to tell anyone?” he asked. “Your article. I don’t think Cale wanted anyone to… Well, look, he wanted to leave a mystery. He wanted someone to follow the clues, but only one person. Only the best. That was me. He didn’t want everyone to know. You can’t write about this. I know how much this article means to you. But you can’t write about what Alex did. Please.”
Sarah squeezed herself tighter. “Sure,” she said. “I understand. I won’t tell anyone.” She put on her coat. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Harold stood as well. It had felt so good to share his victory with someone. With Sarah. There was a puzzle, a test, and he’d solved it. But now his elation was somehow giving way to a hollow sensation. Why wasn’t she enjoying this with him? Why had he been left to experience this alone?
“Are you leaving?” he asked.
“Yes. I think… Well, it’s over now. There’s no diary. There’s nothing to write about. It was a pleasure to meet you.” She reached out her hand, and before he could process what he was doing, Harold gave it a polite shake.
“What’s going on?”
“Good-bye,” she said. “You’re really, really smart.” Sarah picked up her purse and knocked on the door. The attendant answered quickly and asked Harold if he was coming along as well. He had nothing to say besides no. The attendant led Sarah out, and Harold was left alone with a jumble of thoughts more confusing than the scribbled letters of Bram Stoker before him.