The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(98)
He banished these thoughts with a resigned shake of his head and told himself it was time to go back to his old routine after six months away. He decided to start with one of the most thankless of all the tasks he had to deal with whenever he returned from a trip: answering the backlog of correspondence. He stood up and called Wood, his secretary, who seconds later came into the study bearing a bag of letters. Alfred Wood was a primary-school teacher whom Doyle had employed whilst living in Portsmouth, not so much for his discretion, efficiency, and trustworthiness as for his cricketing skills. To begin with, Doyle had employed him as a simple secretary, but as time went on, almost unawares, he had started allotting him other tasks, such as that of messenger, driver, and typist. Occasionally, after Wood had beaten him at billiards or golf, Doyle had even sent him on some patently absurd errand simply out of revenge. Since his assistant had carried these tasks out without demur, pretending not to notice the odd nature of the request—or, worse, giving to understand from his gallant acceptance that he expected nothing less from his employer—this game of preposterous requests had become for both of them a diversion that enriched their relationship, or so Doyle liked to imagine, as they had never discussed the matter.
When Wood diligently emptied the bag of letters onto the desk, Doyle gazed at the large pile despondently.
“This is almost worse than war,” he groaned. “Much more tedious, in any case. War may be bad in many ways, Woodie, but it is never boring, that’s for sure.”
“You should know, sir, having been in more than one yourself . . .”
Both men gave a loud sigh and began the laborious task of sifting through Doyle’s correspondence. Much of it was addressed to Doyle from people convinced that anyone who could invent such complicated fictional crimes must obviously possess the necessary skills to solve real ones, and they therefore asked for his help in solving all kinds of cases. But much of it was also addressed to Sherlock Holmes himself at his nonexistent address of 221B Baker Street, which the sub–post office in London, with its habitual cooperativeness, had sent on to Undershaw. Before drowning in the Reichenbach Falls, the sleuth would receive all kinds of eccentric challenges from places as far afield as San Francisco and Moscow: complicated family mysteries, elaborate puzzles, and mathematical equations. But following Holmes’s tragic disappearance, only a handful of scatterbrains insisted on testing his intelligence. Nowadays, the vast majority of letters were from women wanting to clean Holmes’s rooms, and adventurers offering to organize expeditions to search for his remains; generally speaking, rather than demonstrate their affection for his creation, Doyle’s readers seemed to betray their own lack of reason. After reading the letters, the two men divided them into piles: those that deserved a reply and those that, on account of being deranged, preposterous, or downright unanswerable, deserved only to be used to light a fire.
“It would never have occurred to me that life could contain so many mysteries,” Doyle sighed after reading a letter containing the map of a supposed treasure buried on the South African coast by the crew of a shipwrecked vessel.
“Is that why you decided to invent a few more?” Wood inquired, plucking another letter from the pile. He opened it with the swiftness and elegance of someone with years of practice. “Ah, a Mrs. Emily Payne, recently widowed, offers to clean Holmes’s rooms. Well, that’s nothing new. But there’s an interesting difference: she also proposes to alleviate Watson’s grief, should Holmes’s devoted companion be in need.”
“On the fire pile,” grunted Doyle.
Woodie obeyed, even though it was the first letter they had received expressing concern for poor Watson. A few moments’ silence followed, broken only by the sound of envelopes being torn open.
“Well, listen to this,” said Doyle after a cursory glance, “a William Sharp claims he is the real Sherlock Holmes and declares that he will soon astonish the world with his exploits.”
Wood raised his eyebrows in a gesture of dutiful surprise as he perused another missive.
“And in this letter a Polish family insists you go to their country to solve the disappearance of a valuable necklace.”
Just then Cleeve the butler, who had also returned from South Africa without any Boer bullet embedded in his body, opened the study door to inform Doyle he had a visitor.
“Forgive me for disturbing you, sir, but the author H. G. Wells is waiting for you in the library.”
“Thank you, Cleeve.” Doyle stood up from his desk without trying to conceal his relief at this timely interruption. “Sorry, Woodie, I’m sure you can manage the rest on your own. And when you’ve finished classifying them, start replying to them yourself. After all, your writing is far more beautiful and legible than mine.”
“I appreciate the compliment, sir,” Wood replied, lamenting all the hours he had spent as a child perfecting his penmanship. “But where do I put the Polish letter? They’re willing to pay all your travel expenses, and you can name your reward. You must admit it’s a very tempting offer.”
Doyle grunted. “On the fire pile, Woodie, unless you want to go in my place.”
“And risk having you drown in correspondence during my absence, sir?” Doyle heard him retort. “Why, I should never forgive myself.”
Doyle strode off toward the library, at which point Cleeve gave up trying to follow him. He had spent enough time running after his master in South Africa, and so he strayed in the direction of the kitchen on the pretext of giving orders to the cook. Doyle hadn’t clapped eyes on Wells for six months, not since Montgomery Gilmore’s automobile drove into that gorge on the moor. He had regretted abandoning him in mid-tragedy but was loath to give up the medical posting he had fought so hard to obtain, nor was he close enough to the couple even to entertain the idea. Entering the study, he found Wells sitting on one of his custom-made, hand-carved Viking chairs, with the same forlorn air as a fly caught in the jaws of a carnivorous plant. As soon as Wells saw him, he leapt to his feet, and the two friends came together in one of those masculine embraces that are a perfect balance of affection and virility.