The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes Read online

  THE RIVALS OF

  SHERLOCK

  HOLMES

  THE GREATEST DETECTIVE STORIES:

  1837–1914

  EDITED BY

  GRAEME DAVIS

  PEGASUS CRIME

  NEW YORK LONDON

  Dedicated to my wife, Jamie Paige Davis,

  the best partner in crime—or detection—anyone could desire.

  I love you.

  CONTENTS

  THE ORIGINS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by Leslie S. Klinger

  INTRODUCTION by Graeme Davis

  THE SECRET CELL by William Evans Burton

  THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGÊT by Edgar Allan Poe

  THE DETECTIVE POLICE by Charles Dickens

  THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT (EXTRACT) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  THE NOTTING HILL MYSTERY (EXTRACT) by “Charles Felix”

  THE MYSTERY OF ORCIVAL (EXTRACT) by Émile Gaboriau

  MR. POLICEMAN AND THE COOK by Wilkie Collins

  THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES by Arthur Morrison

  GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS and the return match by E. W. Hornung

  THE SECRET OF THE FOX HUNTER by William le Queux

  THE SUPERFLUOUS FINGER by Jacques Futrelle

  THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM (EXTRACT) by Gaston Leroux

  THE JEWISH LAMP (EXTRACT) by Maurice Leblanc

  THE MAN WITH THE NAILED SHOES by R. Austin Freeman

  THE NINESCORE MYSTERY by Baroness Orczy

  THE SCIENTIFIC CRACKSMAN by Arthur B. Reeve

  THE COIN OF DIONYSIUS by Ernest Bramah

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE ORIGINS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES *

  by Leslie S. Klinger

  Why did the twenty-seven-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle decide to write detective stories? What were the inspirations for the stories, the literary sources that Doyle drew upon? Understanding the context in which Doyle wrote, the authors and books that he knew and was inspired by, could lead to a greater understanding of why Sherlock Holmes became the Great Detective and why the tales of Holmes’s adventures forever changed the course of literature.

  Conan Doyle himself is—as perhaps is true of all writers—a less-than-reliable guide in connection with these questions. His autobiography, Memories and Adventures, offers some insights. “During these first ten years I was a rapid reader,” he recalled. “My tastes were boylike enough, for Mayne Reid was my favourite author, and his ‘Scalp Hunters’ my favourite book.”† He sold the first story he mentions writing, “The Mystery of Sasassa Valley,” in 1879.‡ Another early story recalled by Conan Doyle was “My Friend the Murderer” written in 1882.§ He also recalled fondly “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” that he sold in 1884 to Cornhill Magazine. Some of these included supernatural or pseudo-supernatural elements; none were detective stories. In 1886, however, about a year after his marriage, Conan Doyle decided, “I was capable of something fresher and crisper and more workmanlike. Gaboriau had rather attracted me by the neat dovetailing of his plots, and Poe’s masterful detective, M. Dupin, had from boyhood been one of my heroes. But could I bring an addition of my own?”¶

  Famously, Conan Doyle credits his inspiration to write of Holmes to his “old teacher Joe Bell, of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his eerie trick of spotting details. If he were a detective he would surely reduce this fascinating but unorganized business to something nearer to an exact science. I would try if I could get this effect.”# But this can hardly be the whole picture. To understand the context of Conan Doyle’s decision, we must first understand the existing body of “mystery” or crime fiction.

  Dorothy L. Sayers, in her masterful introduction to The Omnibus of Crime, written in 1929, dates the earliest mystery writing to antiquity. The first four stories in that important anthology appeared in the Jewish Apocrypha, Herodotus, and the Æneid.** There are other early examples of detective fiction. For example, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s novella, Mademoiselle de Scudéri, a tale of detection of a serial killer, was published in 1819, and William Evans Burton’s “The Secret Cell,” featuring an unnamed police detective, was published in The Gentleman’s Magazine, a short-lived American publication, in 1837. There is no basis, however, for thinking that Conan Doyle knew these stories or paid any real attention to them.

  Crime writing, as contrasted with the writing of crime fiction, was of course already widespread by the second half of the nineteenth century. The earliest crime writing was probably “execution” sermons, accounts of the careers of heinous criminals recounted from the pulpit for the benefit of congregations hungry to learn more about the sins that they were exhorted to avoid. It appears that truthful accounts were often supplemented by sermonizers who had limited access to criminal records and historical documents, and in some cases, shocking as it may seem, well-intentioned preachers invented appropriate life stories for the benefit of their flocks. A similar dissemination of stories of crime and punishment occurred in both England and America in the form of broadsheets, penny-priced tabloids consisting of a single printed sheet of history and testimony of notorious criminals, complete with colorful illustrations, often sold to enormous audiences of public executions. The Newgate Calendar, a chapbook first published in 1773 by the officials of Newgate Prison and later by other opportunistic publishers, contained garishly illustrated accounts of historical and contemporary criminals. The New Newgate Calendar was published in 1826 in a four-volume set, and ultra-cheap editions began to appear in the 1860s. So popular was the Calendar that it was said to have been as likely to be found in English homes as the Bible.

  A significant factor in the growth of crime fiction was the advent of the idea of official police. Previously, the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals were matters left to the general populace. For example, in William Godwin’s Things as They Are; or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794), a novel of an obsessive pursuit of an innocent man, no officials take the suspect into custody, merely a “lover of justice” and his servants. Similarly, in Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818), when Justine Moritz and, later, Victor Frankenstein are incarcerated and examined for various crimes, no law enforcement officials are mentioned other than prosecutors or judicial officers.

  In the first half of the nineteenth century, organized governmentally-sponsored policing was implemented throughout most of the English-speaking world, and with the rise of the official police came the detective. Short for “detective-police,” a phrase appearing in Chambers’s Journal in 1843, the detective force was a special branch of the police. Chambers’s described them as “intelligent men,” who attired themselves in the dress of ordinary men.

  As the public began to interact with professional criminal investigators, books about these fascinating figures appeared. The first great writer of tales of criminal detection was the Frenchman Eugène Vidocq (1775–1857), whose memoirs—some of dubious historicity—and works of admitted fiction found a ready audience. Vidocq, a reformed criminal, was appointed in 1813 to be the first head of the Sûreté Nationale, the outgrowth of an informal detective force created by Vidocq and adopted by Napoleon as a supplement to the police. His memoirs, which first appeared in 1828, recounted his adventures in the detection and capture of criminals, often involving disguises and wild flights. Later books told of his criminal career, and sensational novels published under his name (probably written by others) capitalized on his reputation as a bold detective. Vidocq’s impoverished and criminal early life is likely the model for the character of Jean Valjean, the heroic victim of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (1862). The story begins in 1815, and much of its plot tells of the pursuit of Valjean by Javert, a police inspector. While there were such police in France at that date, Hug
o’s novel reflects in no small part the popular reaction to the growth of official police forces later in the century.

  While Vidocq’s stories captivated the public, they were not billed as original tales of detective fiction. Although others had written of sleuthing,†† the first great purveyor of fictional stories about a detective was Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), whose Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin set the standard for a generation to come. The cerebral Dupin first appeared in Poe’s short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). At the same time, Poe introduced another staple of detective fiction, the partner and chronicler (nameless in Poe’s tales) who is less intelligent than the detective but serves as a sounding board for the detective’s brilliant deductions. In each of the three Dupin stories—the other two are “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” (1842) and “The Purloined Letter” (1844)—the detective outwits the police and shows them to be ineffective crime-fighters and problem-solvers. Yet Poe apparently lost interest in the notion, and his detective “series” ended with the third Dupin tale.

  By his own admission, Conan Doyle was deeply influenced by Poe’s stories. Despite Holmes’s scoffing that Dupin was “inferior,”‡‡ there are clear resemblances. Dupin is a private individual who works with the official police yet is critical of their methods, a careful observer of minute traces of evidence, a meticulous examiner of logical chains of action, and a heavy smoker (smoking a meerschaum pipe, ironically identified with Holmes, though the latter likely never smoked one); he does his best reasoning in his closed-up apartment in an atmosphere of tobacco. His adventures are chronicled by a Watson-like character, though John Watson is certainly to be credited as a vastly more likeable and therefore credible narrator.

  It is harder to see the influence on Conan Doyle of the work of Émile Gaboriau, the French writer who drew heavily on Vidocq as his model for the detective known as Monsieur Lecoq. First appearing in L’Affaire Lerouge (1866), Lecoq was a minor police detective who rose to fame in six cases published between 1866 and 1880. Lecoq does follow evidence logically, such as deducing whether a bed has been slept in or observing when a clock was wound, but these are not central elements of his methods. Although Holmes describes Lecoq as a “miserable bungler,” Gaboriau’s works were immensely popular, and it may well be that the most important influence that Gaboriau had on Conan Doyle was the realization that he could make a good living from his writing. Fergus Hume, the English author of the best-selling detective novel of The Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886),§§ explained that Gaboriau’s financial success inspired his own work.

  In England, criminals and detectives appeared from time to time in Charles Dickens’s tales as well. While not widely regarded as an author of detective fiction, Dickens created Inspector Bucket, the first significant detective in English literature. When Bucket appeared in Bleak House (1852–1853), he became the prototype of the official representative of the police department: honest, diligent, stolid, and confident, albeit not very colorful, dramatic, or exciting. Wilkie Collins, author of two of the greatest nineteenth-century novels of suspense—The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868)—created a similar character, Sergeant Cuff, in The Moonstone. Cuff is known as the finest police detective in England, who solves his cases with perseverance and energy, rather than genius. Sadly, after The Moonstone, he is not heard from again. In each case, however, the detective is too late to help any of the affected persons, and while Bucket and Cuff may have been known to Conan Doyle and reshaped into the policemen of the Canon, there are no real resemblances between anyone in the works of Dickens or Collins and Sherlock Holmes.

  Another important but often-overlooked part of the stream of detective fiction is the dime novel, or penny dreadful as it was known in England. These serials started in the 1830s in England, originally as a cheaper alternative to mainstream fictional part-works, such as those by Charles Dickens (which cost a shilling a part) for working class adults. By the 1850s, the serial stories were aimed exclusively at teenagers.¶¶ Although many of the stories were reprints or rewrites of Gothic thrillers, some stories were possibly historical urban legends such as Sweeney Todd and Spring-Heeled Jack or had lurid titles like The Boy Detective; or, The Crimes of London (1866) and The Dance of Death; or, The Hangman’s Plot. A Thrilling Romance of Two Cities (1866, by “Detective Brownlow and Monsieur Tuevoleur, Sergeant of the French Police”) or a series like Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads and Murderers (1836–1837). Highwaymen were popular protagonists. Black Bess or the Knight of the Road, outlining the largely imaginary exploits of real-life highwayman Dick Turpin, continued for 254 episodes. Did Conan Doyle partake of these readily available entertainments as a young man? He never said.

  The 1860s, when Conan Doyle was a child, was a decade that witnessed the birth of the detective novel. There is much debate about which title deserves the crown as the first, but worthy candidates include The Trail of the Serpent (1860) by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Notting Hill Mystery (1862) by Charles Felix,## and The Dead Letter (1864) by Metta Victoria Fuller Victor (as “Seeley Regester”), the first American crime novel.***

  Although well known later in her career as a prolific author of “sensation” fiction, Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835–1915) also wrote an important crime novel, The Trail of the Serpent. Originally titled Three Times Dead; or, The Secret of the Heath,††† it focuses on Jabez North (Ephraim East in the original verison), a criminal who changes his identity three times, and Mr. Peters (Waters in the original), an unrelenting, mute police-detective. Peters bears little resemblance to Sherlock Holmes. For example, although he makes astute observations about the “clean soles” of a man’s body found in a field, he fails to observe either the identifying tattoo on the arm of the corpse or the absence of a telltale scar on his forehead and accepts the corpse as evidence that the criminal he sought was dead. Only years later when he rediscovers the criminal (the body was that of his unknown twin brother) does he mention the clean soles and the absence of the scar. The story, like so many sensational novels before it, is filled with coincidences that ultimately bring about the clever villain’s capture. If Conan Doyle knew the book—the popularity of Braddon’s later work might have brought it to his attention—it surely represented the very kind of “detective” writing he had in mind to avoid.

  The Notting Hill Mystery is a remarkable work, an assemblage of crime scene reports, maps, depositions, and commentary by the detective, an insurance investigator. Julian Symons hailed it as an important forerunner of twentieth-century “police procedurals,” with a style very different from its sensational forerunners.‡‡‡ However, the only deduction based on observation is made by a police officer, not the investigator, and the deduction is a minor one, relating to the side of the bed on which a piece of paper was dropped. (The observation suggests that the paper was planted rather than dropped by the victim.) The means of murder—sympathetic commands via mesmerism—is so outlandish and dependent on near-mystical ideas as to make clear that no source of Conan Doyle’s inspirations can be found here.

  Similarly, The Dead Letter is devoid of Holmesian traces. Although Mr. Burton, the chief professional detective (the protagonist also does his own detecting), claims to be deeply versed in investigative techniques, the reader sees none. Indeed, the principal discoveries, of the whereabouts of key witnesses and the killer himself, are provided through the psychic talents of Burton’s daughter. Although the murder is much less outré than that of The Notting Hill Mystery, the solution to the crime is provided by the confession of the hired killer, not deductive reasoning or a chain of evidence. Especially in light of its relative obscurity, it is not likely that Conan Doyle would have read it when he began his reading in the new genre.

  Of course, there were also plentiful short-story writers plowing the fields of crime fiction. Dozens of books appeared between the time of Vidocq’s memoirs and the 1890s that purported to be memoirs or reminiscences of police detectives. One of the earliest in Engli
sh was Richmond; or, Scenes in the Life of a Bow Street Officer, Drawn up from His Private Memoranda, published anonymously in 1827, purported to be true tales of criminal detection (though now thought to be largely fictional). Another was Recollections of a Police-Officer by “Waters,” first published in New York in 1852 under the title Recollections of a Policeman as by Thomas Waters, and in London in 1856.§§§ Others of this period include Warren Warner’s Experiences of a Barrister (1852), Gustavas Sharp’s The Confessions of an Attorney (1852),¶¶¶ James Holbrook’s Ten Years among the Mail Bags: or, Notes from the Diary of a Special Agent of the Post-Office Department (1855), Charles Martel’s Detective’s Notebook and Diary of an Ex-Detective (both 1860), Henry R. Addison’s Diary of a Judge: Being Trials of Life Drawn from the Note-book of a Recently Deceased Judge (1860), Andrew Forrester’s Revelations of a Private Detective (1863), William Russell’s Autobiography of a London Detective (1864), and James M’Govan’s Brought to Bay or Experiences of a City Detective (1878).### It is certain that the great bulk of the material contained in these books was fictional. Others were more straightforwardly writing fiction. Robert Louis Stevenson, whom Conan Doyle greatly admired and who later praised the Holmes stories as “the class of literature that I like when I have the toothache,”**** published New Arabian Nights in 1882, a collection of his stories which includes “The Suicide Club,” three connected mysteries. In 1886, Dick Donovan (the pen name of Joyce Emerson Preston Muddock) began his tremendous output of more than 300 detective and mystery stories, purporting to be accounts of his own adventures.††††

  Of course, there were also many writers producing crime fiction outside of England, including the Australian author Mary Fortune, who wrote over 500 police procedural short stories between 1865 and 1908, and Anna Katharine Green, whose The Leavenworth Case (1878) is hailed as the first full-fledged American detective novel. While Fortune worked in virtual anonymity, Green was a great success. Green’s output included thirteen stories about New York police detective Ebenezer Gryce (including The Leavenworth Case, though Gryce’s work is not instrumental in catching the killer there), the last appearing in 1917. Green created several other memorable detectives as well: Amelia Butterworth, a spinster and probable model for Christie’s Miss Marple, and Violet Strange, a debutante who becomes a professional detective to pay for her sister’s debut.