The Reichenbach Problem Read online

  Text copyright © 2013 Martin Allison Booth

  This edition copyright © 2013 Lion Hudson

  The right of Martin Allison Booth to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Lion Fiction

  an imprint of

  Lion Hudson plc

  Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road,

  Oxford OX2 8DR, England

  www.lionhudson.com/fiction

  ISBN 978 1 78264 016 5

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 017 2

  First edition 2013

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Cover illustration by Sarah Coleman

  To Maggie, Emma and James with love

  Author note: This is a work of fiction. While it uses certain facts about Conan Doyle’s background, it does not purport to be an accurate historical record of all the events occurring in his life at the time this story is set.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am very grateful to:

  The estimable Ali Hull for her help, support, enthusiasm and expertise. I am so glad we have finally found a project we can work together on. Sorry for the split infinitive. Sheila Jacobs and Jessica Tinker for their encouragement and invaluable editing skills. Ken Baldry, for guiding me, A. C. D. and Father Vernon safely over the Eigerjoch. Surrey County Cricket Club, for their indispensable assistance and excellent archive.

  And finally, I am most particularly grateful to Arthur Conan Doyle, for the years of delight he has given me and countless others. Although this book is a work of fiction, I have attempted to include as many aspects of his life and work as possible. In doing so, I hope I have been faithful to the spirit and genius of the man, even if I have been forced to take liberties with the facts once in a while. Making the facts fit the case? I can hear Sherlock harrumph over my shoulder even now!

  “Off abroad again, are we, doctor?”

  “Yes, I’m visiting some friends in Vienna, then on Saturday I shall be travelling overnight to Zürich and on to a village near Interlaken.”

  “Oh, very nice. Switzerland. I’ve heard it’s most invigorating.”

  “So I understand. I have never been there before.”

  “Nice little holiday for you, then, doctor. I’ll just pop the valise and the trunks on the four-wheeler and we’ll be off. Waterloo, is it, sir?”

  “Waterloo, please, yes.”

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ONE

  I was still not quite sure when, exactly, my disinclination towards people began. I know, though, that it had a great deal to do with the bane of my life – the great Mr Sherlock Holmes.

  I suppose, at mid-morning on a Sunday, if I had wanted to get away from people, Zürich Station was not the ideal place. It was teeming with humanity. The only good thing about it was that it was summer, so everybody was bustling about with less luggage and lighter clothing. A small benefit, but nevertheless evident, as it made my journey through this human torrent marginally less difficult.

  I had spent the first three days in Vienna with the friends Touie and I had met when I was studying ophthalmology there. My family was unable to accompany me. Mary, our daughter, was still very young; it was Touie, though, who insisted I go. We were expecting our second child, and Touie herself was not in the best of health. Gentle, sweet, kind Touie, who endured my restlessness, coped with my bouts of depression, and watched me struggle with my preoccupations. Now I was on the way to reconnoitre Switzerland. It was our hope that we may come here for the summer next year. I had heard good things about the country, not least from our friends, yet was determined to ensure everything was satisfactory before I risked my very young family’s health and well-being on a sojourn abroad.

  I had other motives as well, however.

  I waded the stream of humankind and followed the porter with his barrow, wheeling my trunks, onto the platform where the train for Interlaken stood steaming quietly to itself.

  It was an indulgence, I know, but I had decided to travel First Class; after all, I had begun to harvest a semblance of an income from my stories. My need to avoid as much of humanity as possible on this occasion necessitated it. Rarely would the carriages I would travel in be full. In addition, even if there were other occupants, we, as a class, would keep ourselves to ourselves. In the frame of mind I had, this was very much a mercy, and one I would jealously guard.

  I was well aware that Sherlock Holmes had already brought me a degree of fame and fiscal comfort. It would be churlish of me to begrudge him the beneficial effect he’d had on my, and my family’s, life. However, with that fame or, I would prefer, notoriety, I had lost any privacy I had ever had. I was no longer able to walk along the street in Norwood without one wag or other nudging his or her companion and crying out, “Ho – Conan Doyle! Elementary, my dear Watson!” or some such witticism. Of course, not everybody in the world recognized me. However, Norwood was a small suburban community and, even thus removed from London, people had seen my picture in the press, or on a fly-poster, or in a bookshop window.

  It had been suggested to me that my splendid moustache was the primary identifying feature and that perhaps, if I were that concerned, I might shave it off. However, I resented the notion that public pressure of any sort might force me to change any aspect of my personality or appearance.

  It would be rare, therefore, for me not to be accosted by someone or other at least twice a day, every day of the week – on the street, in a restaurant, on the train. This had gone on for a number of months. It was starting to affect Touie, too. After nearly a year of being pointed at, leered over and laughed behind, the novelty of celebrity had begun to pall in the Conan Doyle household.

  Switzerland, at least, offered me respite. I didn’t know it and, more importantly, it didn’t know me. I pushed my valise up onto the leather webbing luggage rack above my head, and settled back onto the seat cushions. I turned off the lamp beside my left ear and, with a long, lingering sigh, closed my eyes. Less than five minutes later, I sensed that activity had increased outside. There was a sound of people bustling, one or two were running, and others were calling to one another. I opened my eyes. A porter hurried past, followed by a large lady in a large hat in which appeared to nestle a complete pheasant. Then came the sound I was waiting to hear, the guard’s whistle. Looking out of my compartment window across the corridor on the platform side, I was startled a moment later to discover a pair of grey eyes looking straight back in at me. These were lodged beneath a bowler hat and set in a lean, lightly tanned face that had a few days’ stubble on the chin. It was a young man who, apparently, had been jogging along the platform and had hesitated for a moment outside my window. Just as quickly as our eyes had met, they separa
ted; he had averted his, and had recommenced his pressing trot along the platform.

  The guard blew his whistle again, this time with a degree more urgency, and the action of slamming doors and calling out became general. This was immediately followed by a familiar sequence. A long loud blast on the train’s whistle, a great huff of pent-up energy being expressed by the locomotive, and a series of judders and clanks. About thirty yards ahead of me, great pistons were bearing down on huge wheels, forcing them to obtain purchase on the iron rails and overcome the inertia created by ton upon ton of, up until that moment, lifeless metal and wood; hopefully thereby dragging me and this whole miracle of man’s ingenuity on towards Interlaken.

  Good, I remember thinking, I have the carriage to myself. I looked again out onto the platform, only to discover my view interrupted by a charcoal grey woollen waistcoat. A man was standing in the corridor, blocking my view, lurching as the train lurched and gathered speed. Then he leaned back, clasped the handle of the compartment door and drew it open. I barely managed to conceal my irritation that, at the last moment, my splendid isolation was going to be ruined by a companion for at least part of the journey.

  The man, who was the same as the one who had looked in at me, flung his travelling bag onto the luggage rack. He then flung himself onto the seat diagonally across from mine. He let out a long whistle, followed by a whoosh of air, suggesting that he was pleased with himself and that he wanted me, for some reason, to know this. I had closed my eyes the moment I had realized the intruder was intent on settling in my compartment. The noises he made, which practically echoed the locomotive’s on coming to life, caused me to open one eye and look across at him.

  He was looking at me.

  “Full,” he said, and jerked his grizzled chin in the general direction of the rest of the train.

  “First Class,” I replied, and jerked my head at the golden numeral 1, painted on the window beside me.

  “I know.” He grinned and shrugged. “I’ll have to pay extra, I imagine. Oh well, I suppose it will be worth it.” There was a pause, and then, “English?”

  “Irish,” I growled, just to be difficult. It seemed to hold him. I could have said Scots if I’d preferred. I had spent most of my life in England, but was of Irish stock, and had been born in Edinburgh.

  We sat in silence for a while, watching central Zürich pirouette away from us through our respective windows while drawing into view row upon row of the terraced cottages which comprised the city’s immediate suburbs. I can think of no better experience than sitting on a comfortable train watching a grimy city loosen its grip on me, and allow its huddled suburbs usher me into the lush countryside.

  I swam up and out of my thoughts and, once again, noticed those keen grey eyes contemplating me. I knew what was coming next.

  “You’re Doyle, aren’t you? Sherlock Holmes and all that.”

  I tried to bluff it out.

  “That’s what a lot of people think,” I replied.

  He laughed. It was a nervous laugh. “Oh, very good. Yes. I wouldn’t imagine you’re very fond of people accosting you all the time. That’s a very clever answer you have worked out there. To people who aren’t sure, it can mean ‘no – I’m not’ and they back away; to those who are sure, and persist, well – you haven’t lied to them, have you?” He paused and gave me a grin, which I supposed he intended to suggest complicity; to sympathize with what we celebrities had to put up with; to let me know that he wasn’t any common-or-garden member of the public. To reassure me that I could, even, rely on him to be a species of intimate. A friend, perhaps.

  They were the worst type.

  “I don’t blame you for being coy,” he continued. “It must be an awful bore to have people recognizing you wherever you go and making a fuss…”

  “Yes, it is,” I responded.

  He didn’t take the hint. He looked out across the row upon row of low roofs curling past the window and continued, “… no – I don’t blame you. Utter wretches they must be.” He considered my plight a moment longer and then spat out his conclusion: “Why don’t they just leave you alone?”

  There was, I felt, no answer to that.

  A further silence held us, for which I was grateful. Eventually, assuming the conversation – if one could call it that – had ended, I reached down my newspaper from my valise, shook it into a readable shape, and began to scan the inside pages. It was a five-day-old London Times. I had bought it at Newhaven just before boarding the steamer to Dieppe, and had dipped into it ever since; savouring every paragraph as if it were my last. It would be some time before my Swiss hotel may supply me with an English newspaper – if they were able to – and, even then, it would most probably be a week out of date at the very least.

  I found I was unable to concentrate on the words, however. Generally, I am a traveller who likes best of all just to sit and stare out of the window. Many hours can pass by satisfactorily in this way, I have found. I have even come to the conclusion that time itself takes on a different form when travelling. It is as though the faster one travels, the quicker it seems to pass. The main reason, though, for my sitting and staring at the scenery is that it allows me space to think. In the hurly-burly of my London and literary existence, I rarely get the opportunity to think. I imagine it is the reason I try to get away so often.

  The newspaper, on this occasion, therefore, was simply a screen. I found, though, that it wasn’t working. My companion’s presence was distracting, and it was very galling. After a few minutes of trying to read and failing miserably, I lowered the broadsheet and laid it on the seat cushion beside me. Inadvertently, by doing so, I found myself glancing across at the young man again. He was observing me. How long he had been doing so, I could not estimate. There was one occasion, among many such incidents, in one of the dining rooms at the Langham, when a young woman at another table found that she could not take her eyes off me. I am not that fascinating. It was most disturbing to be scrutinized while eating, as though I were an exhibit. She at least had the courtesy to apologize on her way out at the end of her meal. I put it down, therefore, to the fascination of celebrity, which it was, of course. I wondered then, as I did now, whether I would not have been the same, as a younger man, should I have chanced across Stevenson or James or Poe in a restaurant. The thought of that young woman, and her flustered apology, to an extent gave me pause. I had hardened my heart towards someone I didn’t even know. In truth, I had hardened it towards the general public as a whole of late. Yet it was not their fault. It was not his fault. It was Sherlock Holmes’s fault.

  “Beautiful day,” I ventured, but not with any real warmth.

  “Beautiful.” He continued to look out of the window. I could see, even from the angle at which I was sitting, that he had allowed himself a smile. As if he were bucked that I had spoken to him of my own volition.

  “Have you visited Switzerland before?”

  “No, never.” He turned to face me.

  “Neither have I. Although I am led to understand it is all beautiful – once you get out of the cities.”

  He looked again out of the window. We were starting to break out and into a stretch of scenery that featured rising land, meadows and the occasional meandering burn. “Charming,” he breathed.

  This little exchange had enabled me to observe my travelling companion more closely. He was about ten years younger than me, in his early twenties, and reasonably presentable. His tan was new, like mine, and he was unshaven. He had an underlying nervous energy about him that reminded me of when I was his age; that fidgety, driving will to get on in the world, frustrated by lack of experience and opportunities for preferment. Most interesting, to my mind, were his clothes. The bowler hat, now perched on the cushion beside him, the waistcoat, the city boots and the grey worsted suit all spoke to me of a bank clerk or an office worker rather than a gentleman tourist. Young men of limited means rarely have sufficient funds for a truly comprehensive travelling wardrobe, but there was tha
t in his whole aspect which told me that he was not in Switzerland for his health. Grudgingly, for I wished it were otherwise, I allowed my curiosity to get the better of me.

  “Are you travelling far?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” he replied. His conversation had descended into the familiar rather too precipitously for my liking.

  “Don’t know?” I echoed, despite myself. I had not intended to interrogate the fellow.

  “Haven’t decided yet,” he explained. “Sort of spur of the moment thing, really.”

  “Ah,” I responded.

  Not married, then, perhaps. Certainly his outer clothes and his shirt were crumpled; his collar unstarched. What wife would allow a husband to journey in such a state? Not that that was any proof, either way, but it did not, at least, disprove my view.

  “Where are you going?” he enquired.

  I told him.

  “Where’s that?”

  “High in the mountains. In the middle of nowhere, really. The air is cleaner, the sun is brighter and the world is quieter. Fresh, green meadows all around, yet just a short march away, the snow line and then the Eiger, the Mönch and the Jungfrau – among the highest peaks in Europe.”

  He was impressed, possibly by the fact that I had been so expansive after having been so taciturn; some may say brusque. For my part, I was perturbed at my own talkativeness. It was not my habit to wax lyrical in the company of strangers. Yet there was an aspect about the man that had drawn it out of me.

  I think it was loneliness.

  Either his or mine, I couldn’t be sure.

  After a few moments he nodded, slapped his hands firmly down on his knees, as if he had just won an argument, and declared, “That’s decided, then. That’s where I’m going, too.”