Is Adelbert Gruner really a murderer as Sherlock Holmes suspects? Fans of the great detective will be able to find out by reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original version of the Holmes story The Adventure of the Illustrious Client. His manuscript will be displayed for the first time, in a major new exhibition opening next month at the Museum of London.
The manuscript was left to the Scottish nation in the will of Conan Doyle’s daughter, yet was held in a vault at Coutts bank in London, out of public view, for many years while Scottish museums competed for the honor of displaying it.
After the author’s death in 1930, the manuscript was inherited by his daughter, Dame Jean Conan Doyle (Lady Bromet), who died at the age of 84 in 1997. One of the terms of her will was that a Holmes manuscript from her collection should be chosen and given to, in her lawyer’s words, “a museum in Edinburgh”. Conan Doyle studied medicine in Edinburgh and is thought to have based his detective in part on the lecturer Dr Joseph Bell, whom he met in 1877.
Written in 1924, and published in 1927, the story The Adventure of the Illustrious Client tells how the detective saved a young Englishwoman from a potentially deadly marriage. It appeared in the last Holmes collection, containing 12 short stories, entitled The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
Alex Werner, who is in charge of the new Sherlock Holmes exhibition, said: “One of the central themes of the exhibition is that Sherlock Holmes is immortal and all attempts to kill him fail. The manuscript shows a violent attempt to kill Sherlock Holmes. Dr Watson learns of the 'murderous attack' from a newspaper poster near Charing Cross station.”
The worldwide popularity of BBC1’s Sherlock drama, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, is expected to create the greatest interest in the exhibition when it opens its doors on 17 October.
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