SHERLOCK HOLMES: The Adventure of the Deadly Illusion
Updated: 5 days ago
Sherlock Holmes was born in an eye clinic in 1891.
No patients ever showed up, so, while he sat in the empty clinic, the ophthalmologist—Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle—started writing stories to pay the rent. And the world met and heartedly embraced its first consulting detective.
In The Adventure of the Deadly Illusion, Holmes is still a student at Christ Church, Oxford. He has not yet met Dr. John Watson. Instead, he is teamed up with the Rev. Charles Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, author of The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, who taught mathematics at Christ Church from 1855 to 1881.
A brief scene:
The heavy night air soaked through all that it touched. Holmes had visited the West End warrens before and walked their odious alleys many times since, but he could never get past the horror of them, of the contrast between the squalid lodging-houses cringing beneath the gaze of the Palace.
Westminster’s ancient towers gaze down at its poor parish. And Parliament’s laws hold no sway in the dark, writhing jungle that surrounds its halls.
Holmes’s thoughts continued thus throughout the twisting streets and alleyways. And though the night was far spent, the rookery was neither quiet nor idle.
Used women staggered home. Starving children played in the dark with sticks for toys and hissing rats for playmates.
Just ahead was the lodging house he sought.
The air inside was sour. Men and women lay, often thirty and forty to a room, beneath vermin-infested blankets. Some, head to toe, some naked atop the bedding, seeking relief from the lice. All, except those too sodden with hot gin and beer, slept fitfully.
The kitchen was a filthy affair boasting only a fireplace, a greasy wooden table and several worn benches. From a cord stretched across a corner of the room hung two damp shirts and a threadbare pair of breeches.
Holmes went in and held his hands to the coals.
Several men sat at the table. The one they called Rasch was thick and heavy down to his boots. Fierce dark eyes glared out beneath his black brow. His knuckles wore great, hard calluses. A robber rather than a burglar, he favored a cosh over a jimmy.
Rasch overshadowed Skewes, a skittery hackney driver whose night-time clientele consisted of burglars, coach thieves and grave robbers who paid well for speed and anonymity.
Skewes’s eyes caught every movement in the room. He watched as Holmes moved to a corner, sat down and retrieved an apple from his pocket. When Holmes pulled out the snoozer’s tool and skewered the fruit, Skewes’s eyes darted back and forth from the tool to Rasch like a hound trying to draw its master to a stranger at the gate.
While his eyes twitched thus, his sharp elbow jabbed at the ribs of the third man—a screever, a lawyer’s clerk so addicted to gin, self-pity and idleness that he could do nothing to earn his living except forge documents. A mottled opera hat sat at Pruitt’s feet as though begging for crumbs. Tied loosely about his throat was a faded yellow belcher.
“Now there’s a barmy lookin’ chiv,” said Skewes, nodding at the tool. “An wot does y’make of it?
“A proper blade for eatin,’ says you? Not ‘alf, says I. I reckon to ‘ave seen sumfin near like it onst before, I think. In the hands of a swell cracksman, I think, who would’n ever be parted from it, lest somebody done him for it.”
“Where’d you come by it?” asked Pruitt.
“Found it in the street,” said Holmes. “Fancied it.”
“Fancies it m’self, I does,” said Skewes. “You doesn’t know wot it’s good for, I’m certain, do y’lad, or y’wouldn’t be corin’ no apples wi it. But I might have a use for it, if y’druther turn it inta a bit of useful coin, eh?”
“What’ll you give for it?”
“Not as much as y’d like, I’m thinkin,’ but mor’n yer gettin’ out o’it in that there apple.
A groat.”
“A shilling.”
“Fah! The bloody chiv ain’t worth mor’n half a grunter.”
“A shilling, or I’ll pick my teeth with it.”
His eyes screwed down tight and, through a yellow grin, he spat, “Done!” pounding his fist roughly on the table.
Suddenly, he jumped to his feet and jerked the tool out of Holmes’ hand.
“My shilling!” said Holmes.
“Your groat!” said he, tossing him a copper and stepping back between his two mates.
Making a show of having been cheated, Holmes heeled it out of the lodging house and into the early morning mist.
While most of my books are nonfiction, The Adventure of the Deadly Illusion was mostly fiction. I say "mostly" because the book took 10 months to research-- including a trip to London and the library at Christ Church, Oxford--and 2 months to write.
Finally, it was all fleshed out in murderers and magicians, royalty and rogues.
I never had so much fun!
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