An elementary doctrine

I am a lucky man; I clearly know what is the most fun book that I own. It?s William Baring-Gould?s monumental two-volume The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. All 56 stories and the four novels, with original illustrations from Strand magazine, and every story with more footnotes than an entire issue of The Journal of the American Quantum Physics Association.

Let me explain. The men who have worked on this book are no ordinary fans. The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge mentions that ?it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of March in 1892?. So Baring-Gould?s bloodhounds checked meteorological records, and concluded that the day in question was March 25: bleak because minimum temperature was 36.1 degrees, against a 50-year average of 42, and windy because of a south wind, with a pressure of 2.5 pounds to the inch.

You get the drift. All Sherlockian research assumes that Holmes and Watson were real people. So the stories form the Canon, Holmes is the Master, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is merely the Literary Agent. And these guys mean business. Since Holmes mentions that he once authored a monograph classifying different types of cigar ash, Sherlockian chemists have verified his findings in the laboratory. A musicologist has minutely analysed the complete piano works of Chopin in order to identify ?the little thing? that Holmes sings as: ?Tra-la-la-lira-lira-lay? (could be the Fourth Polonnaise in C Minor, it seems). If you felt your mind boggle just now, that?s perfectly normal. Mine did too.

But do not for a moment think these are some socially handicapped nerds who have nothing better to do in life than weave elaborate fantasies. Ardent Sherlockians have included President Franklin Roosevelt (who propounded the theory that Holmes was a foundling), legendary General Motors chairman Alfred P Sloan and sci-fi author Isaac Asimov. There is something in the Holmes stories, something extremely special and lovable, that has made thousands of logical, intelligent and successful people across the world participate in this cheerful and sophisticated make-believe.

Also, the fact is no other bunch of stories has perhaps left so much to be researched and debated. For instance, In A Study in Sacrlet, Watson reveals that he was hit by a Jezail bullet in the shoulder during the Afghan war. But elsewhere in the Canon, he says he was shot in the leg. Some Sherlockians tried to take the easy way out by conjecturing that he was shot twice. But this was an unsatisfactory explanation to most others. There has been much theorising about how the bullet may have passed through both places at the same time. And one sly expert commented that perhaps the doctor was shot neither in the shoulder nor the leg, but somewhere in between; after all, nothing in the Canon indicates that Watson ever fathered any children, despite marrying thrice.

Yes, that?s right. Watson?s three marriages are one fact all Sherlockians are agreed upon. The evidence is irrefutable. In The Sign of Four, set in 1888, Watson meets Mary Morstan, whom he marries. In The Empty House (1894), Watson speaks of his ?bereavement?: so, clearly, Mary had passed away. In The Blanched Soldier (1903), Holmes writes that ?Watson had at that time deserted me for a wife?. Obviously Watson had married again. But in The Blue Carbuncle, set in 1887, before The Sign of Four, Watson is a married man! There has been much speculation about the identities of Watson?s first and third wives; theories abound.

The big dispute, though, never to be settled, is over what Holmes did in the three years between his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls, and his return to London. The Fundamentalist School believes that Holmes did indeed travel to Tibet and Mecca, as he claimed; the Interpretative School insists that Holmes went nowhere, and hid out in Watson?s house, waiting for the Moriarty gang to make a false move. And the Sensationalist School propagates the radical doctrine that the man who came back to London was not Holmes at all. Reasons: after his return, he never plays his beloved violin, never takes cocaine, seems to have no knowledge of areas he was an expert in, like horseracing. So who was this man masquerading as the Master? The only possible-and chilling-answer: archfiend Moriarty. It was Holmes who died at the Reichenbach, and Moriarty survived. The argument rages; it?s too delightful to ever abate.

And I can while away hours reading the outpourings of this secret world, and only marvel at how much fun intelligent and knowledgeable people can have while pursuing interests that are alarming in their utter pointlessness. In this happy little world, the game will always be afoot, and the dog will never bark the night before.