“You’re not saying that you think Holmes actually existed?” I said.
“Precisely, John, precisely.”
Arrowroot spoke up. “It’s not a new theory at all. As far back as 1900, readers were proposing it. Holmes was still alive at that time, remember.”
“But a man of his supposed stature?” I protested. “I should think that, even fictionalized, he’d be immediately recognizable to the public.”
“James Bond isn’t,” Kevin said.
“James Bond! Come on.”
They shrugged at one another. “It’s been established that he’s alive and working right now. Of course, though it hurts to admit it, Fleming was better at peripherals than Conan Doyle.”
“Peripherals?” I asked.
“You know, names of minor characters, addresses, that sort of thing. Fleming never used real names or addresses, at least so far as we know. And while, of course, Holmes was not named Holmes and didn’t live at 221B Baker Street—actually we think he lived in Bond Street near Selfridges—Conan Doyle couldn’t help but leave a few characters untouched. He was probably leaving us clues. He had such a fine sense of play. But Hugo, here, is really the expert.” He turned to Arrowroot. “Perhaps you’d like to take it from here.”
“All right,” he said, “but I’m sure we’d all be more comfortable sitting down.”
We went out to the hall and brought in more chairs. The novices among us, of whom there were about five including myself, joked about this preposterous theory. When we’d gotten arranged and the brandy had been passed again, Arrowroot, from a large chair near the fireplace, began:
“The characters that Conan Doyle—or should I say Watson?—left intact for us were Martha Hudson and Irene Adler. You’re all familiar with Martha Hudson; at least you should be after this evening. She worked for the man who was Holmes until he died in Sussex Downs, after which she came back to London and worked for Lord Peter Thatcher, of the Bank of London, until 1938. She never divulged Holmes’s true identity, except of course to Thatcher as a reference. In all probability, Thatcher himself knew long before. In any event, when Thatcher died in the bombings of London, the secret of Holmes’s identity was lost forever, since Mrs. Hudson died shortly after she began her retirement, and certainly Conan Doyle never told.
“There was also, as I’ve said, Irene Adler, ‘the only woman,’ according to Holmes. She was, indeed, a famous Continental singer in the late 1800s, who disappeared between the years 1892 and 1894. And mark this: those are the very years that Holmes disappeared after following Moriarty to the Reichenbach Falls.” He paused for a moment.
