Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fateful Arrow

By Daniel D. Victor

One moment the lovely young woman was walking through the Battle of Hastings exhibition at the British Museum; the next, she lay dead on the checkered museum floor, a Norman arrow protruding from her breast. Inspector Lestrade believed he had solved the mystery, but almost immediately recognized that Scotland Yard needed the help of Sherlock Holmes. From London to the Lake District, the master detective, along with his colleague Dr. Watson and recently-met American mystery writer, Anna Katharine Green, follows a string of clues that ultimately exposes the intricacies of a tragic love story-a woeful tale whose twists and turns reveal what Watson accurately called “the unhappiest of Holmes's adventures.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: MX Publishing
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781804240410

Book preview

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Fateful Arrow

[Being another manuscript found in the dispatch box of Dr. John H. Watson, in the vault of Cox and Co., Charing Cross, London]

As Edited By Daniel D. Victor, Ph.D.

(Book Eight in the Series, Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati)

A Note on the Text

In addition to the title of the book, all chapter titles, headnotes, and footnotes were supplied by the editor.

The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight

Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,

It fell to earth, I knew not where;

For who has sight so keen and strong,

That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;

And the song, from beginning to end,

I found again in the heart of a friend.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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American Mystery Writer - Anna Katharine Green (1846-1935)

Prologue: A Letter to Sherlock Holmes

Woeful as they were, I had no intention of ever recounting the particulars of the tragedy. But once the singular letter arrived, I knew that I would have to set the record straight. The letter was dated 12 November 1917, a period of great chaos and darkness in the world. The deadly guns of the Great War continued to thunder, the horrific casualties at Passchendaele still tormented, the Spanish Flu began its insidious crawl into the lungs of the unsuspecting.

Too old to work at the front lines, I did my part by aiding the wounded who found their way to us Old Boys at Bart’s. Yet in spite of the terrifying conditions in the fall of ’17, the curious epistle caused me to smile. How ironic that I begin the account of this unhappiest of Holmes’s adventures in so sanguine a fashion.

The letter in question was handed to me by my literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, between tankards of ale at the Northumberland Arms, his favourite public house.[1]Sir Arthur’s appearance in London that autumn was two-fold. Not only was he there to deliver one of his lectures about the current military conflict, but also to engage with his publisher, Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., concerning the latest volume of his account of the war, The British Campaign in France and Flanders. It was in the midst of his negotiations for the third instalment of the history that from seemingly out of the blue he received the letter posted by the American publisher, Dodd, Mead, and Company.

Not that the correspondence was intended for him. In actuality, Watson, he said in his thick Scottish brogue as he slid the wrinkled envelope across the wooden table, the letter is for Holmes.

I could read the name on the envelope myself, of course. To Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the oft-handled cover stipulated in precise penmanship, care of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Turning the envelope over, I observed that its flap, though closed, was unsealed.

The military censors, Sir Arthur explained. Since it was already open, he went on to say with a self-conscious pat of his robust moustache, I confess to having read it myself. Given its nature, Watson, I thought you too might have a look-see before passing it along. I am certain Holmes won’t mind, and I am equally certain you’ll find it most interesting indeed. This last sentence he uttered with a poorly suppressed chortle.

Accepting the invitation, I placed my tankard on the table and withdrew the epistle from the envelope. To determine its authorship, I immediately glanced at the bottom of the neatly-handwritten page. There I saw the signature of one Ebenezer Gryce, a name not only well-known to Holmes and me, but especially to readers on the other side of the Atlantic. For many years, Gryce had served as a celebrated detective for the New York Metropolitan Police Force.

It was easy to recognise why Sir Arthur called my attention to the matter. Gryce had begun the letter with an implicit reference to my most recent collection of Holmes’s adventures, His Last Bow, in whose preface I commented upon my friend’s health:

My Dear Sherlock Holmes [Gryce wrote], it is with regret that I learn from a recent notice that you have become afflicted with rheumatism. I trust, however, that it may not seriously interfere with the continuance of your illustrious career.

By then an octogenarian, Gryce went on to explain that he too suffered from the affliction—a lame knee in particular, he had reported elsewhere. It was a malady, he confessed, that had served to hinder many of his investigations, including his most noteworthy, The Leavenworth Case. Indeed, only with the help of assistants like Mr. Caleb Sweetwater and Mrs. Amelia Butterworth, aides he termed clever and astute, had he been able to solve so many of his most challenging cases.

Proffering sympathy and keen appreciation, the American detective hoped that the rheumatism would not necessitate a last bow for Sherlock Holmes. Given Gryce’s familiarity with my own contributions to Holmes’s work, however, one must assume that his tongue was planted firmly in cheek when he dared recommend how Holmes could cope with his own bouts of rheumatism. To aid in his sleuthing, Gryce recommended that Holmes might, as Gryce had done, secure some clever fellow as an assistant, a notable figure (not unlike Sir Arthur himself, one suspects).

I should like to believe that many of my faithful readers would take issue with a cheeky New York policeman who calls for an anonymous substitute to fill my role. With due respect to the ongoing war and the emerging Spanish Flu, rather than smiling at such a letter, should I not have joined my defenders in being incensed by so obvious a personal slight?

Yet even the most loyal of my supporters will find me cautioning them to stand down, to breathe deeply, for herein is the rub: As Holmes and I both knew at the time, New York Detective Ebenezer Gryce is a mere fiction, a literary persona concocted by the best-selling American crime writer—a woman, no less—called Anna Katharine Green.

In point of fact, it was the confluence of the differing realities presented in Gryce’s letter that elicited my smile. Although one would have had to bury his head in the sand to be unaware of Holmes’s numerous victories in fighting crime, such is the nature of his celebrated success that a staggering number of ill-informed readers continue to question the very reality of Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, given the large number of Holmes’s triumphs, many such Doubting Thomases have gone so far as to conclude that a hero like Sherlock Holmes could exist only as the figment of someone’s imagination.

Why, no less a crime writer than Maurice Leblanc, the originator of the fictional French sleuth, Arsène Lupin, suggested in his story, The Blonde Woman, that so accomplished a detective as Holmes must doubtlessly be a kind of legendary figure, a hero who has emerged alive from the mind of a great novelist such as Conan Doyle, for example. With the fictional Ebenezer Gryce making suggestions to the very real Sherlock Holmes, is it any wonder that I was amused?

At the same time, Gryce’s letter raises a more serious issue that must also be addressed. The New York detective identified the investigation he titled The Hasty Arrow as an extremely involved matter… [that] gave me no end of concern before it was… settled to the satisfaction of the authorities and Miss Green.

One expects nothing less than satisfaction on the part of Miss Green, of course, since it was her own novel, The Mystery of The Hasty Arrow, that dramatized the story in the first place. Who else but a book’s author can be responsible for its satisfactory conclusion?

What has not been revealed until now, however, is just how much of the romanticised Hasty Arrow was based on actual happenings, real events in which Anna Katharine Green had participated whilst helping Sherlock Holmes and me complete a most distressing investigation.

Now I have not made a study of Miss Green’s literary techniques, but one cannot deny the charming lady’s reputation as an expert in her field. Why, The Leavenworth Case alone has sold more than 750,000 copies! Yet it is this very success that made me fearful of revisiting through the lens of a professional novelist the heart-breaking moments upon which her book is based.

Nor was I mistaken. To gain commercial success, Miss Green did indeed embellish, twist, and ultimately distort the haunting details of the original case. In point of fact, it was the distress I experienced in reading the melodramatic Mystery of the Hasty Arrow that caused me to take up my own pen in defence of what had actually occurred all those years ago. In deference to the historical record, let this, my own account, serve as an objective report of the painful events that took place in the late spring of 1890. The real-life participants earned the right to that respect.

But I anticipate myself. Better to start at the beginning.

John H. Watson, M.D.

London

October 1921

1 The letter was published in the Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1917, p. BR3.

Part I: The British Museum

2 June 1890—3 June 1890

Chapter One: I Shot an Arrow…

People Love Mystery.

-- Anna Katharine Green

Why Human Beings are Interested in Crime

American Magazine February 1919

I—I saw a young woman shot dead right in front of me, stammered the wide-eyed lady standing at our door. With a gloved hand, she pointed to her chest. Heart—pierced by an arrow, she gasped, not three hours ago.

It was early Monday evening, the second day of June, 1890. One does not soon forget the date of so dramatic an encounter.

Mrs. Hudson, who had brought the unnerved woman up the stairs, was shaking her head in sympathy. This is Dr. Watson, our landlady told her. He can help you if you’re ailing.

Oh, Dr. Watson, the woman surprised me by taking both of my hands, you’re one of the gentlemen I’ve come to see.

I’m afraid— I began.

It is I, Doctor, the woman said, pointing to herself once more, Mrs. Charles Rohlfs. We had agreed to meet one another earlier today.

I am afraid my expression still remained blank.

The author from New York, she explained, "Ah, you probably know me by my nom de plume—Anna Katharine Green."

Of course, I now realised, the celebrated crime writer—her American accent should have informed me. Sherlock Holmes and I had been expecting a visit from this very person many hours earlier—so many hours earlier, in fact, that we had long since given up counting upon her arrival.

Do come in, Mrs. Rohlfs, said Holmes, who by this time had donned his coat and come to the door. "Pray, tell us what has