The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(74)
“You don’t blame me . . . ?” Doyle shook his head in disbelief. “Holmes was mine! I created him from nothing, and therefore I had the right to do whatever I wanted with him, whether slaying him or turning him into a Carthusian monk.”
Murray laughed aloud as Wells glanced in alarm at Jane, who in turn looked toward Emma.
“That would have been an even worse fate than death,” remarked Murray. “But I fear you are mistaken, Mr. Doyle: the moment you published Holmes’s first adventure, he no longer belonged exclusively to you, but also to his readers.”
“I see. So I should consult them before killing off my own character. And what do you propose to do about it, Mr. Gilmore? Are you going to offer me money if I bring him back to life? Is that why you arranged this meeting, George?” he said, turning to Wells, who was about to deny it when Doyle hushed him up with an abrupt gesture. “Very well, go ahead and make me an offer, Mr. Gilmore, but I warn you, you’ll have difficulty surpassing that of my publishers.”
Murray looked at him in amusement for a few moments.
“Believe me, I could multiply their offer by a hundred, but I won’t. It would be an insult to you as an author and to me as a reader, although I doubt whether somebody who shows no respect for his own characters could understand that.”
Wells made as if to intervene, but again Doyle prevented him with a wave of his hand.
“Wait a moment, George. This conversation is becoming more and more interesting,” he said, taking what could only be described as an intimidating step toward Murray. “So you think I’m disrespectful toward my character, Mr. Gilmore?”
“Yes,” said Murray undeterred. “In my opinion, you pay far more attention to detail in your chivalresque novels than in your detective stories.”
Doyle contemplated him for a moment in silence, then he glanced at the two women, and at Wells, wondering whether he should unleash the anger boiling inside him or try to control the ferocious temper he had inherited from his Irish ancestors.
“You’re quite right, Mr. Gilmore,” he acknowledged at last, having decided on a conciliatory tone, much to Wells’s relief. “But it doesn’t follow that I disrespect Holmes.”
“Oh, but it does,” insisted Murray.
Doyle gave a forced laugh, as though wanting them all to believe he found the whole thing terribly amusing.
“Can you back up your claims?” he asked almost indifferently.
“Of course,” replied Murray. “I have read every single one of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures a hundred times over. And have jotted every error and imprecise piece of information I came across in a notebook, on the off chance I might one day discuss them with you.”
“What a shame you didn’t bring your notebook with you, Monty,” Wells interposed. “Never mind, you can send it to Doyle tomorrow; that way he can read it in his own time. Now let’s . . .”
“I certainly will, George, don’t worry,” Murray assured him. “But luckily I can remember a few. For example, the place where they discover Drebber’s poisoned corpse in A Study in Scarlet doesn’t exist. There is no number three Lauriston Gardens, is there, Emma?”
Everyone looked at Emma, in particular Doyle, who was no longer making any effort to smile.
“It’s true. One night he took me out looking for it and we traipsed up and down the street without finding any house resembling the one in your novel,” Emma said, rather ashamedly, in a tone that seemed at once to be apologetic toward Doyle and to recall the tedium of an evening spent pursuing her fiancé’s obsession after he was suddenly transformed into Sherlock Holmes himself.
“And in that very same novel,” Murray went on, oblivious to Doyle’s increasing irritation, “Watson comments on a bullet wound he received in his shoulder during the Afghan war, whereas in The Sign of the Four he mentions a wounded leg. Where do they make these fiendish bullets that can cause two separate wounds, Mr. Doyle? I’d like to buy some.”
“The bullet simply bounced off his shoulder bone, grazed the subclavian artery, left his body following a curved trajectory, then reentered his leg,” explained Doyle gruffly.
“I see.” Murray grinned. “Or perhaps poor Watson was shot while relieving himself behind a bush, and the bullet simply passed through his shoulder and into his leg.”
Murray’s loud guffaw shook the air, even though he was laughing alone. When he finally stopped, a strained silence descended slowly on the group. No one seemed to know what to say. Luckily, Jane took the situation in hand and invited them to sit at the table, as if the quarrel they had just witnessed had been no more than an unpleasant hallucination.
Five minutes later, Jane was serving tea, assisted by Emma, who passed the biscuits round and tried to fend off the looming silence by remarking on how delicious they tasted. Jane took the opportunity of admitting that because of their perfect blend of butter and aniseed, Kemp’s biscuits were her favorites. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more to say on the subject of biscuits, and so the silence soon settled on them again like a film of dust.
Wells absentmindedly munched on what his spouse considered a miracle of baking, increasingly regretting he had ever arranged the meeting. He was well aware of the loathing Doyle professed for his character, a loathing Wells understood perfectly, for he didn’t much care for the detective who had brought his friend so much fame either. For him the Sherlock Holmes stories were ingenious sleights of hand in which Doyle was less a writer than a performer, and any magician, however great, stopped impressing his audience once he revealed his tricks. Wells preferred the other Doyle, the one who admired Walter Scott and had written splendid historical novels like Micah Clarke, or the ambitious White Company, a somewhat idealized depiction of English knights. That giant of a man appeared to Wells as nothing other than one of those athletic, brave knights of old, someone too honorable and selfless for the times he lived in and who went through life as though in a suit of armor, adhering to an outmoded code of chivalry. Doyle had been born with one of those daunting physiques that seemed destined for gritty, heroic adventures, and that together with his lively, intrepid spirit had enabled him to emerge unscathed from many a scrape in life, but he had also been blessed with a passionate temperament he had difficulty controlling. He sighed as he watched Doyle now, sitting stiffly in his chair, trying not to let his face betray how insulted he felt. Wells realized it was only Doyle’s good manners that prevented him from getting up and leaving, and he racked his brains for a topic that might initiate a more relaxed and—why not say it?—profound conversation than that about biscuits. Just then, a loud crash upstairs made everyone jump.