This,” said Mrs Twizleton crossly, “is a cheek! Listen: ‘…when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ That is the word-for-word advice that I gave young Arthur Doyle in a letter. And now he’s gone and given that line to some fictional detective called Sherlock Holmes.”
Mrs Twizleton and Frederick were accompanying Felicity home on the bus after she had been fired from the bank. Felicity was telling them about the events that led to her being fired.
“Mr Duchenny from the Historical Buildings Association told us you applied to have the building listed to stop the Russians from buying it,” Felicity’s boss Tricia had said in a shocked voice. “But Mr Duchenny said he wasn’t in favour of standing in the way of progress, so Mr Ripov is taking him out to dinner to straighten things out…”
“Bribe him, you mean!” huffed Felicity.
“How dare you…”
It had been a very unpleasant scene.
Mrs Twizleton was having great difficulty concentrating on Felicity. She had begun paging through a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories that were in her bag.
“Mrs Twizleton,” said Frederick a little impatiently, “we should be thinking of Felicity and what to do next rather than reading detective stories.”
“But I knew Arthur Doyle,” complained Mrs Twizleton. “I knew he was a writer, but I didn’t realize he was stealing my stories and turning them into the adventures of a male detective. And with no credit to me! That’s very unfair.”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Felicity. “You knew Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Author of the Sherlock Holmes detective stories?”
“We told you that before — weren’t you listening? He was my doctor for a short time when he lived in London. Afterwards, he was always writing to ask me about my detective investigations. Now, I know why.”
“And these investigations of yours, they’re the same as the ones in the book?”
“Well, I don’t know about all of them, but…,” she looked through the pages. “Here, this one: ‘The Blue Carbuncle’. It’s the one about the diamond hidden in the goose — 100 per cent my case. Except it was a sapphire, not a diamond.”
“Hm,” said Felicity slowly. “So, we could honestly say the building has a connection to a famous historical figure.”
“But Sherlock Holmes is fiction, not history,” said Frederick.
“I’m not talking about Holmes. I’m talking about Mrs Twizleton! The real-life female model for English literature’s greatest detective!”
***
It was difficult for Felicity to remember the exact sequence of events that followed. Everything happened so fast. But she would never forget that it was Julie and Paula who managed to put her idea into action. As they were both working for a social media company at the time, their advice and help was gold.
“First of all, we create some controversy,” said Paula. “You’ve got to write an Instagram post claiming that Sir Arthur based his character Sherlock Holmes on a woman. You only need a few solid facts and figures from Mrs Twizleton.”
“Then we’ll do the rest,” added Julie.
It was just a short post, but once Julie and Paula started posting and cross-posting the true story behind Sherlock Holmes on social media, the fireworks began. Within a day, a local TV crew had interviewed Felicity. That interview was picked up by the BBC, and by the evening, Sherlock Holmes experts around the world had sprung into action — some to say it was nonsense; some to say that they had always suspected that Holmes was based on a woman.
A senior Conservative politician said Mrs Twizleton had been invented by radical feminists. This motivated feminist historians to start digging up police reports from the 1870s, thus proving the link to Mrs Twizleton’s cases.
Once Julie released the news that the building was being sold to mysterious Russian investors and would be torn down, the internet went ballistic. Very quickly, somebody (it may have been Paula) sent a tweet to the Historical Buildings Association, demanding to know why they weren’t doing something to protect this national treasure. As a result of that tweet, Aiden found himself without a job.
As for Tricia, Felicity heard that she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
But the biggest surprise happened two weeks after the story went viral. Felicity was looking out the window of the flat when she saw two expensive cars with darkened windows park outside. Several large men escorted a very well-dressed woman to the door of her building. The bell rang.
“Ms Appleby? My name is Xenia Krysanova of Krysanova Krystals. May I come in?”
Felicity invited the woman in, and the two of them sat at the kitchen table drinking tea.
“Ms Appleby, I have much to thank you for. Yesterday, I bought the building from the bank.”
“You did? Are you still going to try to knock it down?”
“No, but that’s not a problem. In fact, I’m pleased: I paid 25 per cent less for the building because I’ll never be allowed to tear it down.
But that’s not why I’m thanking you. You see…,” she leaned forward and looked Felicity in the eyes.
“I am a businesswoman. But I am also the chairwoman of Russia’s Sherlock Holmes Society. I am a big fan, and now I have bought the location where all the stories truly took place. I shall make the ground floor a Mrs Twizleton Museum, the first floor a showroom for Krysanova Krystals and the second floor upwards offices!”
“That’s terrific!” Felicity was relieved that Frederick and the others would be safe now.
“Yes, but there’s more. Something strange happened last night. After we signed the papers, I told the directors to leave me alone for a time in the boardroom. They went, and everything was quiet.”
“Yes?”
“I looked down for a moment, and when I looked up again, I found a young man in the room with me.”
“Oh!”
“He told me what you had done to save the building, Ms Appleby. And he suggested that, if I need a curator for the museum I plan, you might be the right person. What do you think? Would you like the job?”
“Oh, yes! Definitely, yes!”
“Good.” They stood up and shook hands. “And by the way, Mr Tumble was quite right about you. You do make a good impression. A very good impression.”