Dan Andriacco: Sherlock Holmes in the Peculiar Persecution of John Vincent Harden

Title Page

Sherlock Holmes in

THE PECULIAR PERSECUTION OF JOHN VINCENT HARDEN

by

Dan Andriacco

Dedication

In Memorium

Bill Russell, Norma Holt, Evelyn Weber

Introduction: In the Foosteps of a Giant

The only bad thing about the canonical Sherlock Holmes stories is that there aren’t enough of them. The original four novels and fifty-six short stories (leaving out Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s two plays and several other small writings about Holmes) comfortably fill a single large volume.

Since just this isn’t enough and nature abhors a vacuum, it’s no wonder that the remarkable Philip K. Jones has compiled a database of some 8,000 pastiches and parodies of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Seemingly any Sherlockian with writing genes eventually takes up the challenges to write a new Holmes story.

And having an incentive doesn’t hurt.

In 1988, Mysteries from the Yard Bookstore in Yellow Springs, Ohio, held a contest for the best original Sherlockian pastiche. The prize was a $100 gift certificate at the bookstore. I found that irresistible.

To write a Sherlock Holmes pastiche is to walk in the footsteps of a giant, which is daunting. But from having read the real thing many times, and a host of both good and bad pastiches, I had some strongly held notions about how to go about the task. You can find them in an essay on “Writing the Holmes Pastiche” in my book Baker Street Beat.

Suffice it to say that I wanted the story to feel as much like one from the pen of John H. Watson, M.D. as possible, both in terms of language and in shape of the story. An immense help in that regard was Ronald A. Knox’s seminal essay, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes.” Monsignor Knox lists eleven elements of a canonical Sherlock Holmes story. A Study in Scarlet has all eleven elements, and most stories in the Canon have at least five. Those elements are:

1. A homely Baker Street scene to start, with invaluable personal touches and sometimes a demonstration by the detective or reference by either Holmes or Watson to an untold tale of Sherlock Holmes;

2. The client’s statement of the case;

3. Energetic personal investigation by Holmes and Watson, often including the famous floor-walk on hands and knees;

4. Refutation by Holmes of the Scotland Yard theory;

5. A few stray hints to the police, which they never adopt;

6. Holmes tells the true course of the case to Dr. Watson as he sees it, but is sometimes wrong;

7. Questioning of the victim’s relatives, dependents, and others, along with visits to the Records Office, and various investigations in disguise;

8. The criminal is caught or exposed;

9. The criminal confesses;

10. Holmes describes the clues and how he followed them;

11. The conclusion, often involving a quotation from some standard author.

This is the skeleton of a classic Sherlock Holmes story. I only needed a plot to give it flesh and blood.

Like many pastiche writers, I drew my inspiration from one of the many unwritten adventures of Sherlock Holmes referred to in the Canon. I deliberately chose one of the more obscure such references. (Who needs yet another “Giant Rat of Sumatra”?) In “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist,” we read of Holmes “immersed in a very abstruse and complicated problem concerning the peculiar persecution to which John Vincent Harden, the well known tobacco millionaire, had been subjected.”

That meager mention left me a lot of room to maneuver. I started by naming almost every character, except for the Canonical ones, after fellow members of the Tankerville Club, our Cincinnati scion of the Baker Street Irregulars. Three of those individuals are no longer with us – gone beyond the Reichenbach, as Sherlockians like to say – and it is to them that this story is dedicated.

For the title itself I couldn’t resist using the term “peculiar persecution.” Since I couldn’t fit that in with “Adventure,” I decided to leave adventure out of the title. All of the novels and many of the short stories (“A Scandal in Bohemia,” “His Last Bow,” “The Problem of Thor Bridge,” etc.) have adventure-less titles, so I thought I was on solid ground. As for the plot itself, I have no idea where it came from but I tried to write a good mystery that seemed Holmes-like.

I won the $100 gift certificate and used it to buy Sherlock Holmes books. “The Peculiar Persecution of John Vincent Harden” story was first printed, with the permission of the Conan Doyle estate, in The Sherlock Holmes Review in 1990, Volume 2, Numbers 3 and 4. Around the same time I also adapted it into a radio play, which has been performed by Sherlockian groups as readers’ theater.

When I met Steven Doyle for the first time, at the Gillette to Brett III conference in October 2011, he said, “You may not remember, but I published your pastiche.” How could I ever forget? It was my first published fiction!

When “The Peculiar Persecution of John Vincent Harden” was reprinted in Baker Street Beat , many reviewers singled it out as one of the highlights of the book. Ross K. Foad, in his “No Place Like Holmes” video review, called it “one of the best short Sherlock Holmes pastiches I’ve read.” It is in response to such comments that MX Publishing and I have decided to make this tale available as a stand-alone e-book.

The Peculiar Persecution of John Vincent Harden

In reviewing my notes of the many singular adventures shared with my friend Sherlock Holmes, I have often been struck by the remarkable number that concerned themselves with the doings of Americans.

Many such cases I have already presented to a long-suffering public. The Lauriston Gardens mystery and the tragedy of Birlstone, to name but two, were present-day crimes whose seeds were sown long ago in the fertile soil of the American continent.

Other incidents are doubtless too familiar to my readers to require further chronicling here. No one acquainted with the curious case of the bareback rider or with the horrifying immolation of the straw doll, which defeated the official police of three continents, could soon forget the chilling details.

There remain, however, some few examples of what might be called my friend’s “American connexions” which deserve a wider audience. (Let those responsible for the distasteful episode of the cajun cook be forewarned.) Surely any one of these hitherto uncelebrated problems would be of sufficient interest to engage the reader, else they would not have engaged Mr. Sherlock Holmes. None, however, was more fantastic than the peculiar persecution of John Vincent Harden.

It was mid-April of 1895. The fresh breezes of early spring blew through Baker Street, seeming to sweep away the crime and disease of the great city and make everything new again. After a frenzied round of professional calls in the morning and early afternoon, brought on by so sudden a change in the weather, I sat exhausted beside the unlit fireplace nodding over a medical journal. Sherlock Holmes, newly returned to our quarters in the guise of a simple fisherman, was absorbed in a microscopic examination of a peculiar red clay tracked in on his boots. We spoke but seldom, and such were the relations between us in those days that little talk was necessary.

Accustomed as we were to callers at all hours, the intrusion of our landlady into this comfortable scene was not entirely surprising.

“A gentleman to see you,” Mrs. Hudson told Holmes.