“Oh, I suppose not, now that you mention it. They weren’t from Stoker personally, you know, so they’re kept elsewhere. I forget which university they’ve run off to, but they’re in some lesser Stoker collection somewhere. Maybe Austin, actually. The messages are all from Stoker’s secretary to Conan Doyle’s secretary, so they’re really not of much interest. Mostly about Conan Doyle’s unpaid cut of profits from his plays, about making sure various seats of good quality are available for various of Conan Doyle’s friends. But if memory serves, all that fall and winter there’s some harping about scheduling a meeting between the two men.”
“A meeting?”
“Yes.”
In that moment Harold become intensely aware of all the bourbon in his system. He found himself, for the first time in days, fighting against it. The liquor had done its job of subverting and nullifying all rational thought for the past forty-eight hours, but now Harold desired very much to think. And to think clearly.
“Where?” he asked, his lips moving slowly. He was afraid of the answer she might give.
“Where did Stoker want to meet?”
“Yes. In the letters I read, Stoker made a reference each time to wanting to come to Conan Doyle’s house, his study. It didn’t occur to me as noteworthy at the time, but… Oh, Jesus… Did I seriously just…? Okay, try to remember: In the letters between Stoker’s secretary and Conan Doyle’s, did Stoker’s secretary suggest any particular spot he wanted the two to meet in? Like, say, Conan Doyle’s study?”
Dr. Garber made an odd face. She seemed startled by Harold’s sudden bout of intensity.
“I’m not sure,” she said, taking a sip of her clear cocktail and trying to brush Harold’s seriousness off with a smile. “Does it matter?”
“From the letters we have, we know that Conan Doyle was missing his diary. He always wrote in his study, and we know, from the found volumes, that that’s where they were kept. We know that Stoker was involved in the diary’s disappearance, or else why was Conan Doyle so sure that Stoker had taken it? But Conan Doyle wasn’t aware of its being destroyed, of its being burned, before Stoker told him in the letter. So Conan Doyle hadn’t walked in on a fire in the study, for instance. Stoker must have been left alone in the study, where he stole it. But what if he didn’t actually burn it?”
“Why wouldn’t he burn it,” asked Dr. Garber, “if he was trying to get rid of it?”
“I don’t know,” said Harold. “Maybe he didn’t have time. Maybe Conan Doyle was on his way back into the room. Something might have stopped him.”
“What would he have done with it, if he hadn’t burnt it?”
“Hidden it,” said Harold. “Hidden it in Conan Doyle’s own study.”
“The letters!” Dr. Garber exclaimed, her face brightening. She took up her role much faster than Sarah had, for sure. “That’s why you think Stoker wanted so terribly to meet Conan Doyle in person! So that he could get back into the study.”
“Yes,” said Harold, impressed with Dr. Garber’s reasoning. “Did the secretary-to-secretary correspondence talk about meeting at Conan Doyle’s house as well?”
“I don’t know,” she said after some thought. “They very well could have. I just don’t remember.”
Excitement percolated through Harold’s body, tingling every inch of his skin. Was he deluding himself? Was he tricking himself into thinking that the mystery wasn’t over, that there was more to do? He realized it didn’t matter. Whether the clue was real, or whether it was simply a half-remembered fragment of an utterly uneventful business note from a hundred years past that had been divulged in idle conversation, it was a reason to keep going.
He swallowed the rest of his bourbon easily in one gulp. “Sounds like enough to go on,” he said.
“But where will you go? Even if Stoker did hide the diary in Conan Doyle’s study in 1900, how does that help you find it now? Where would you find it?”
Harold stood and collected his coat.
“I think first I’ll try Conan Doyle’s study,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
CHAPTER 39 The Printer
“I don’t think you need have any fears about Sherlock.
I am not conscious of any failing powers, and my work is not
less conscientious than of old… You will find that Holmes
was never dead, and that he is now very much alive.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
in a letter to his mother, Mary Doyle, April 1903
December 3,1900
The chain of reasoning which led Arthur from Bram’s house on Saturday to the storefront of Stegler & Sons Printing House, along the Strand, on Monday was quite simple. Indeed, by the time Arthur stepped up onto the small front stoop of the printing house, he was genuinely surprised that it had taken him this long to arrive.
To be sure, there had been detours in his investigations. When Arthur decided, after leaving Bram’s study, to reopen the case, there was an initial period of uncertainty and of concern over his powers of deduction. Now that he had resolved to find Emily Davison’s murderer… well, how did he intend actually to go about it?
He laid the facts at hand out before him. They were as follows: A gentleman, described only as being tall, in the possession of a long black cloak, and speaking in a high-pitched voice, proposed marriage to, and then married, and then murdered, two members of the Morrigan, Sally Needling and the mysterious Anna. He committed these crimes months apart, and both marriages were conducted in secret. One had to assume, and Arthur certainly did, that these marriages must at first have been secrets even between the young women in question. Some months later this man had snuck into Emily Davison’s home and savagely beaten her to death. Odd, Arthur thought, that this crime did not fit the pattern of the others. Did he first woo Emily Davison as well? Arthur could not imagine the girl he’d met having fallen under the spell of this man, whoever he might be, as her compatriots had. So who was he?
Arthur spent a morning entertaining Janet Fry’s suspicions about Millicent Fawcett, but the more he thought about it, the less convincing he found that argument. First, there was the issue of the bridegroom who’d accompanied the girls to their death. Yes, she could have employed an accomplice, but even if Arthur were to grant that Millicent Fawcett had a murderous bone in her body-and he certainly did not feel comfortable doing so after her performance at the suffragist lecture-would she have chosen bloody violence?
A man had composed these murders, Arthur was sure of it. He knew something that Janet did not. He had looked upon the bloodied, beaten corpse of Emily Davison, and he had seen the anger that had been inflicted on her body. Only a man who hated women with a passion that Arthur could just barely fathom could wreak such violence.
Arthur possessed few clues as to the man’s identity, if any. But, he reasoned, perhaps more than clues, more than evidence, reason itself could see him through.
The murderer would have had to know all three girls, which meant that he would most likely have known about their secret organization. Two could have been coincidence, but not three. He could not have known the group well, however, or else they could hardly have kept their respective engagements to him a secret. He could not have been their friend, exactly, but he was someone who had some contact with them.
It took only a few brief hours of concentration upon the subject before the answer revealed itself to Arthur, when he glanced down at his one memento from his investigations-the pamphlet, printed on cheap paper, of the three-headed crow.
The paper was still in his pocket when he marched down the Strand and ascended the front steps of Stegler & Sons Printing House. To be fair, this was the sixth printing press Arthur had visited that day. But from the moment he opened the door and entered the noisy shop, he had a feeling that he’d found what he was looking for. The large presses clanged metallically, grinding out books and pamphlets and posters on sheet after sheet. Arthur regarded the massive machines and thought of Blake’s “dark Satanic mills.” Funny, to think of them serving the distribution of information, of sending out the written word. There was something menacing about each slap of the press upon the flat papers. The unyielding smacks called to mind the image of Emily’s body, beaten blow by blow into the floor.