The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(72)

What had he done wrong? Doyle didn’t know, but since it seemed he would never make a living from literature, he moved to London and opened an ophthalmologist’s consulting room in Devonshire Place, round the corner from 221B Baker Street, where in the parallel world of fiction his amateur detective Sherlock Holmes resided. And there, too, he sat waiting from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, until once again he took up his pen. But what should he write this time? Not another serialized historical novel, he reflected, eyeing the heap of weekly magazines he had brought to his consulting room to occupy patients while they waited. They already published too many of them in England, and their disadvantages outweighed their advantages: a reader who missed one issue, for example, would lose the thread of the story and, consequently, all interest in the tale. Why did no one write short fiction? Doyle sat bolt upright in his chair. Why didn’t he? What if, instead of proposing yet another serialized novel, he offered those magazines stories featuring the same character? He searched through his repertory for a character who would lend himself easily to a series of short stories, and—as if he could hear through the cracks between dimensions the strains of a violin playing in 221B Baker Street—Doyle resurrected Sherlock Holmes.

Doyle’s first detective story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” was published in The Strand Magazine, and within months Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle had become household names. Even Doyle’s mother wrote to her son to tell him how much she admired his amateur detective. At last the miracle seemed to be happening, and Doyle decided to shut down his failed ophthalmology practice, betting all his money on his fictional character. And while Doyle was pleased that Sherlock Holmes seemed to grow more popular with each issue, even catching on in America, he soon realized the idea he had initially thought would change his life was fast becoming a bane. He had fallen into a trap of his own making, because the challenge of Sherlock Holmes was that each short story required a plot as well outlined and original as that of any longer work. And one thing Doyle refused to do was contrive plots he as a reader would find dissatisfying.

After finishing the twelve stories he had been commissioned to write for The Strand, Doyle was exhausted. The magazine, whose circulation had risen considerably thanks to him, asked for a second series, but Doyle suspected that his winning streak with the detective was reaching an end. But, more important, he was afraid that if he continued writing Sherlock Holmes adventures, his readers would identify him with what he considered not his best writing. He thought that demanding a thousand pounds for a half-dozen stories would be a polite way of ending the matter, but the magazine accepted without demur, and Doyle was obliged to write six more stories, which made him the most highly paid author in England. However, he soon realized that no amount of money was enough to compensate the prodigious exertions Holmes demanded of him. “I think of slaying Holmes in the sixth and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things,” he wrote to his mother, who promised to dig up fresh intrigues for him to solve to prevent him from ending the life of that guardian angel from London, the only man capable of fighting the crime and injustice menacing the city. She would scour the newspapers, consult her neighbors, and send him any cases she thought could inspire him. Doyle accepted grudgingly, and Holmes was given a stay of execution. When The Strand commissioned another series, Doyle again demanded an exorbitant sum, and again, to his astonishment, the magazine agreed. He realized then that the only way to rid himself of Holmes was to kill him off. And, regardless of his mother’s protestations, he would do exactly that at the end of the new series. During a brief holiday in Switzerland, at the formidable Reichenbach Falls, the author found a perfect resting place for poor Holmes. He would pitch him into the unfathomable depths of that daunting abyss where the waters plummeted with a terrifying, thunderous roar. “It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Sherlock Homes was distinguished,” Watson began, while Doyle smiled sardonically on the other side of the page as though in a two-way mirror. And in “The Final Problem,” the last adventure in the series, published in 1893, that character who had attained unimaginable heights, that inveterate collector of clippings from the crime sections of newspapers who made no secret of his admiration for a well-conceived, ingeniously executed crime, who was well versed in anatomy and chemistry yet unaware that the Earth turned around the sun, who could distinguish between 140 different types of cigarette ash and guess a man’s profession from the calluses on his hands or from the condition of his fingernails, fell into the Reichenbach Falls clutching Professor Moriarty, Holmes’s archenemy and intellectual equal. And at the bottom of that churning cauldron of water and seething foam was where the detective had been languishing for the past seven years, without Doyle’s having the slightest intention of bringing him back to life, despite constant offers from publishers and the endless exhortations of his many readers. Doyle was happy to have the time to write other things, or simply to accept the invitations of his friends, like the get-together Wells had arranged so that he could meet the millionaire Montgomery Gilmore, who by now had regained his composure.

“I have always wanted to meet you, Mr. Gilmore,” Doyle told him. “Your extravagant declarations of love are famous all over England. It is thanks to you that every young lady in the kingdom expects something more from her suitor than a simple ring.”