Douglas Preston - White Fire

78A. Arthur Conan Doyle — The Adventure of (?) — 1928 (?)

79. Percival Wilde — Rogues in Clover — 1929

“Do you see that?” Kleefisch said with something like triumph in his voice. “ Queen’s Quorum number seventy-eight A. Title uncertain. Date of composition uncertain. Even the existence uncertain: hence the A . And no entry in the main text — just a mention in the contents. But clearly, Queen had — most likely due to his preeminence in the field — heard enough about its rarity, secondhand, to believe it worth inclusion in his book. Or then again, maybe not. Because when the book was later revised in 1967, bringing the list up to one hundred twenty-five books, seventy-eight A was left out .”

“And you think this is our missing Holmes story.”

Kleefisch nodded.

Their tea arrived. “Uniquely, Conan Doyle has a prior entry in the book,” Kleefisch said, taking a bite of a smoked salmon and wasabi cream sandwich. “ The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Queen’s Quorum number sixteen.”

“Then it would seem that the obvious next step should be to determine just what Ellery Queen knew about this Holmes story, and where he — they — learned it from.”

“Unfortunately, no. Believe me, the Irregulars have been down that path countless times. As you might imagine, Queen’s Quorum seventy-eight A is one of the seminal bugbears of our organization. A special title has been created and is waiting to be conferred on the member who tracks down that story. The two cousins have been dead for decades and left behind no shred of evidence regarding either why seventy-eight A was in the first edition of Queen’s Quorum or why it was later removed.”

Pendergast took a sip of champagne. “This is encouraging.”

“Indeed.” Kleefisch put the book aside. “Long ago, the Irregulars amassed a large number of letters from Conan Doyle’s later life. To date, we have not allowed outside scholars to examine the letters — we wish to mine them for our own scholarly publications in the Journal and elsewhere. However, the late-in-life letters have for the most part been ignored, since they deal with that time in Conan Doyle’s life when he was heavily involved in spiritualism, writing such nonfiction works as The Coming of the Fairies and The Edge of the Unknown while Holmes was set aside.”

Kleefisch picked up another finger sandwich, this one of teriyaki chicken and grilled aubergine. He took a bite, then another, closing his eyes as he chewed. He wiped his fingers daintily on a linen napkin, and then — with a mischievous twinkle in his eye — he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out two worn, faded letters.

“I am hereby swearing you to secrecy,” he told Pendergast. “I have, ah, temporarily borrowed these. You wouldn’t want to see me blackballed.”

“You have my assurance of silence.”

“Very good. In that case, I don’t mind telling you that both of these letters were written by Conan Doyle in 1929—the year before his death. Each is addressed to a Mr. Robert Creighton, a novelist and fellow spiritualist that Conan Doyle befriended in his last years.” Kleefisch unfolded one. “This first letter mentions, in passing: ‘I expect any day to receive news of the Aspern Hall business, which has been pressing on my mind rather severely of late.’” He refolded the letter, returned it to his pocket, and turned to the other. “The second letter mentions, also in passing: ‘Have learned bad news about Aspern Hall. I am now in a quandary about how to proceed — or whether I should proceed at all. And yet I cannot rest easy until I’ve seen the matter through.’”

Kleefisch put the letter away. “Now, all the Irregulars who’ve read these letters — and there have not been many — assumed that Conan Doyle was involved in some sort of real estate speculation. But I spent all of yesterday morning going over the rolls of both England and Scotland…and there is no record of any Aspern Hall on the register. It does not exist .”

“So you’re suggesting that Aspern Hall is not a place — but a story title?”

Kleefisch smiled. “Maybe — just maybe — it’s the title of Conan Doyle’s rejected tale: ‘The Adventure of Aspern Hall.’”

“Where could the story be?”

“We know where it isn’t. It’s not in his house. After being bedridden for months with angina pectoris, Conan Doyle died in July 1930 at Windlesham, his home in Crowborough. In the years since, countless Irregulars and other Holmes scholars have traveled down to East Sussex and explored every inch of that house. Partial manuscripts, letters, other documents were found — but no missing Holmes story. That’s why I can’t help but fear that…” Kleefisch hesitated. “That the story’s been destroyed.”

Pendergast shook his head. “Recall what Conan Doyle said in that second letter: that he was in a quandary about how to proceed; that he couldn’t rest until he’d seen the matter through . That doesn’t sound like a man who would later destroy the story.”

Kleefisch listened, nodding slowly.

“The same cathartic urge that prompted Conan Doyle to write the story in the first place would have prompted him to preserve it. If I had any doubts before, that entry in Queen’s Quorum has silenced them. That story is out there — somewhere. And it may just contain the information I seek.”

“Which is?” Kleefisch asked keenly.

“I can’t speak of it yet. But I promise you that if we find the story — you’ll be the one to publish.”

“Excellent!” He brought his hands together.

“And so the game — to coin a phrase — is afoot.” With that, Pendergast drained his glass of champagne and signaled the waiter for another.

Stacy was proving to be a big-time sleeper, often not rising until ten or eleven, Corrie thought as she dragged herself out of bed in the dark and eyed with envy the form through the open door, sleeping in the other bedroom. She remembered being like that before figuring out what she wanted to do with her life.

Instead of making coffee in her tiny kitchen, Corrie decided to drive into town and splurge on a Starbucks. She hated the freezing house, and even with Stacy Bowdree in residence she spent as little time there as she could.

She glanced at the outdoor thermometer: two degrees below zero. The temperature just kept dropping. She bundled up in a hat, gloves, and down coat, and made her way out to the driveway where her car was parked. As she dusted it off — a very light snow had fallen the night before — she once again regretted her outburst at Wynn Marple. It had been stupid to burn that bridge. But it was vintage Corrie, with her temper and her long-standing inability to suffer jerks. That behavior might have worked in Medicine Creek, when she was still a rebellious high-school student. But there was no excusing it anymore — not here, and not now. She simply had to stop lashing out at people — especially when she knew all too well that it was counterproductive to her own best interests.

She started the car and eased down the steep driveway to Ravens Ravine Road. The sky was gray, and the snow had started falling yet again. The weather report said a lot more was on the way — which in a ski resort like Roaring Fork was greeted as a farmer greets rain, with celebration and chatter. Corrie for her part was sick to death of it. Maybe it really was time to cash in her chips and get out of town.

She drove slowly, as there were often patches of ice on the hairpin road going down the canyon and her rental car, with its crappy tires, had lousy traction.