Between the Thames and the Tiber

Начало книги

THE READER OF MY CHRONICLES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES will have noticed inevitably that I have employed only the greatest reticence when writing of myself. This is, of course, as I deem it should be, for the public, which spends so much of its time perusing these adventures, is ever greedy for what it can learn of the great detective, and while it sometimes speculates about the life and origin of his friend, the good doctor remains, most appropriately in my sincere judgement, in the background, a useful second to the great master of detection.

An unexpected event in the not so distant past, however, leads me now to break somewhat with the rules that I imposed upon my editorship, for, though personal to me, it impinges on Holmes’s work and the way in which it was carried out in the volume that follows.

In the fall of 1900, I received notice from Combs and Herriot, barristers-at-law in Cornwall, that I had fallen heir to the estate of an uncle who had just passed on. I was most surprised by this news. As the reader may recall, I had considered myself alone in this world as far as family was concerned and had little inkling that I had a surviving uncle. My elder brother and I were the only children of older parents who passed on just before I left for Afghanistan in 1878, and they rarely spoke of any of their relations. My brother died in sad circumstances in Manchester. Regrettably, I had not seen him in many years.

Читать дальше →