A Study in Sherlock

properly. I also liked his Watson: Freeman, Martin Freeman; very believable and very down to earth, and a Hobbit now, so they tell me. Anyway, add it all up and there’ve been hundreds and hundreds of films. And dozens and dozens who’ve played Holmes on celluloid and TV, on radio and on the stage. And all over the world, too, even Russia and Japan. It fair boggles the mind, it does.”

“Who would’ve ever thought there’d been so many?” I agreed.

“All roads lead to Rome and all Sherlocks to London,” he said.

If you only knew the half of it, I thought, but I said: “You’re so right, the BBC’s Sherlock series is excellent and produced with real affection, I thought.”

“Yes, very clever, although, as you can well imagine, I didn’t much fancy all that business in the first episode about the barking-mad taxi driver as played by Phil Davis, an otherwise excellent actor. I ask you, why on earth tar the noble fraternal order of London taxicab drivers with such a nasty brush? London cabbies as murderous villains, I should cocoa. Where would visitors to London be, or Londoners themselves for that matter, without the honest, upstanding, supremely knowledgeable London cabby at their constant beck and call? Nowhere, that’s where. They’d have to lump it on the buses and Tube or put up with all the nonsense and malarkey of dealing with all those unlicensed mini-cab drivers, none of whom are required to have an exact knowledge of anything, let alone London. No, that whole rotten business spoiled it for me. I blame the writers, myself: character assassination of a respected hardworking guild, for easy plot gain, showed real lack of imagination on their part.”

Of course, I had to speak to that. “I didn’t at all take it as an ad hominem attack on all London taxi drivers; merely the portrayal of a single, terminally ill individual with a sick and twisted mind who just happened to drive a black cab. I’m sure the writers didn’t intend that it reflect on the entire profession.”

“Nevertheless, the damage is already done, isn’t it? Our reputation’s been scarred. Simply putting the thought in people’s minds is bad enough. And I tell you, it’s not easy being a cab driver; it’s hard work having to recall all twenty-five thousand streets within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross Station. And it’s not just about having an exact knowledge of London, and a green badge to show for it; with me it’s about having an exact knowledge of the Canon, as well.”

“The Canon? You mean, all fifty-six short stories and all four novels of the adventures and exploits of Sherlock Holmes as recorded by Dr. John Watson?”

“Of course, what else could I mean? I’m certainly not referring to all that fake Holmes nonsense that gets cobbled together on a depressingly regular basis by all them would-be authors. No, there’s nothing compares to Conan Doyle’s original stories. ’Ere, I’ll show you. You cop hold of this list of points of interest you want to visit.” He opened the tiny window in the plexiglass partition and pushed my notebook through to me. “Now you just shout out places on your list, in any old order, any which way around.”

“Very well,” I said, sitting back in my seat, “if it’s the complete Canon that you claim to have knowledge of, where does Cannon Street station figure?”

“Very funny,” he said, “but I can assure you Cannon Street railway station looms large in ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip.’ ”

“What about Euston Station?” I asked.

“ ‘The Priory School.’ Am I right, sir?”

“Very probably,” I said. “Very well, then, where do Liverpool Street, Charing Cross, Victoria, and Waterloo stations all figure?”

“ ‘The Dancing Men,’ ‘The Abbey Grange,’ ‘Silver Blaze,’ and ‘The Crooked Man.’ And while you appear to be blowing smoke, sir, Paddington Station, where I picked you up earlier this morning, figures in ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery,’ as well as in The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

“Alright, then, where we just were: Aldgate Underground station?”

“Again, easy-peasy, ‘The Bruce-Partington Plans.’ Blimey, I’m really racking up the points here; you’re going to have to try harder than that, sir.”

“Bentinck Street, Bow Street, and Brook Street?”

“That’d take us to ‘The Final Problem,’ ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip,’ and ‘The Resident Patient.’ ”

“And Conduit Street, Covent Garden Market, and Church Street—Stepney, not Paddington?”

“ABCs, is it? Very well, then, in order: ‘The Empty House,’ ‘The Blue Carbuncle,’ and ‘The Six Napoleons.’ What next, D for Downing Street and ‘The Naval Treaty’? I’m telling you, I know every single point on your list to a T, so even if you were to throw the Temple, the Tower of London, and Trafalgar Square at me, you still wouldn’t catch me out.”

“Very well,” I said, trying not to show how truly impressed I was, for it was now all too clear he really knew the Canon and was a veritable Leslie S. Klinger, Esq., in the guise of a licensed London cabby, “do pray tell.”

“The Temple, the Tower of London, and Trafalgar Square will take you, respectively, to ‘A Scandal in Bohemia,’ The Sign of the Four, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, again. Had enough? Have I made my case?”

“Most excellent, I must say,” I said, but I wasn’t going to give up so easily. “Let me try another track, take me to that ‘vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge.’ ”

He simply chuckled. “Very well remembered on your part; you’re of course referring to Upper Swandam Lane and ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip’? I should cocoa. It doesn’t even exist and never did. I’d give him a twisted lip as soon as look at him, if I only had half the chance. He should’ve known better, a man of his intellect; I mean to say, he could just as easily have written Lower Thames Street and it would’ve been spot on, so to speak.”

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you mean?”

“No, Dr. J. H. Watson, who do you think? And as for him writing about Paul’s Wharf, again in TMWTTL, well it exists, of course, only not at all where he says it is … I mean was.”

“On purpose, do you think? To throw people off the trail?” I said.

“Wouldn’t put it past any of them, Holmes in the deducing, Dr. Watson in the writing, or Conan Doyle, himself, as agent, nom de plume, or whatever his preferred style of address. It’s always wheels within wheels with them three, mysteries and enigmas and riddles, always and forever in plain sight to catch you unawares. ‘The Politician, the Lighthouse, and the Trained Cormorant’? Do me a favour; it was never published. So who’s to say there ever was such a case? And what about his so-called monographs: ‘The Typewriter and Its Relation to Crime,’ ‘Upon the Tracing of Footsteps,’ or ‘Upon Secret Writing’? They’re all of them just titles as tittle-tattle, nothing but springes to catch woodcocks.”

“I must say your knowledge of the Canon is truly astonishing,” I said. “I’m sure it must be the perfect complement to The Knowledge—the official examination you had to undergo to become a licensed London taxi driver.”

“Yes, three years’ hard slog that was, but a Knowledge of Holmes is the work of a lifetime; several of them, truth be told. And it’s funny you should put the two together like that, as there are many cabbies reckon the term originated with Sherlock Holmes and not, as some would have it, some nameless Victorian-era Commissioner of Police. Stands to reason, really; Holmes said it was a hobby of his to have an exact knowledge of London and an exact knowledge of London is the sine qua non, so to speak, of the London Hackney Carriage Act, which, I think, proves my point all the more. After all, who better to give it name than one who employed so many hansom cabs in the prosecution of so many of his famous cases? That’s why so many of us always have a well-thumbed copy of the Canon in the cab, along with a London A to Z and the latest edition of Time Out.”

“All the necessary tools of the trade,” I said, handing back my empty cup. “Thanks for the coffee and food for thought.” And with that we resumed our clockwise traverse of London, visiting all the remaining Holmesian points of interest as itemized in my little Moleskine notebook. As I’d done throughout the morning, I sent a short text message to confirm each point visited. And within two and a half hours we’d completed the tour and arrived at my final destination.

“Right, then, here we are, 221B Baker Street, not that any of the so-called experts even agree to this day exactly where it is or was.”

“Just here, at the corner of George Street, will do fine,” I said, quickly looking around me to ensure I wasn’t inadvertently about to leave anything of mine behind. I gathered my overcoat, tweed cap, woolen scarf, and canvas bag and even double-checked to see that I had my mobile phone with me. “Thank you for a most illuminating ride,” I called out. “I learned a great deal.”