Mr Holmes, I presume

Inside the museum, Holmes fans can even touch and feel his world

Prasenjit Mund

I was 10, and completely heartbroken. My father had just told me that Sherlock Holmes had never existed. I refused to believe it then.

I refuse to believe it now. I have just been to 221B Baker Street… They lied about that too, didn’t they?

Since the day I laid my hands on a Holmes volume, I had always wanted to walk up to the house, bang the knocker and climb to the great detective’s chamber, reeking of tobacco, strange chemicals and the scent of mystery. So I did. Twenty years later.

My quest took me through a mahogany door, up 17 stairs to Sherlock’s chamber and back to my childhood. There he was in a corner, head slightly bowed, as if in thought, the piercing eyes looking straight at me, the aquiline nose twitched upward in a questioning frown – it was flesh and blood, carved in bronze. 

No matter that this house in Baker Street has been purchased by a fan and remodelled as a Sherlock Holmes museum, acquiring the proper address along the way - 221B.

If I had moved the bust to the right, it would have stood exactly where Holmes had kept a life-size puppet to trap Prof Moriarty’s assassin. Everything was where it should be – the fireplace, the armchair within leg-stretch distance, the acid-charred bench of chemicals, the violin, Holmes’ pipe, deerstalker cap, and even letters from clients, some beginning, “I know you are dead and I feel silly writing it…”

Upstairs, the detective’s bedroom had been converted into a tableau of sorts, with carefully sculpted wax statues depicting famous scenes from Sherlock’s exploits.
In a corner stood Irene Adler, always ‘the woman” to Sherlock. The man with the twisted lip sat cross-legged, holding out his hat for alms. I dropped a penny there.
And there was Grimesby Roylott, frozen in the moment of death, the speckled band coiled around his head.

In showcases, as if preserved by Sherlock himself, lay trophies from his adventures. There were the five orange pips, the engineer’s chopped off thumb, a voodoo puppet from the Sign of Four, a block of wood with the dancing men, poison darts from the Andamans, an ivory handled knife used by the “worst cutthroat in London” …

Then I saw Prof Moriarty, the “Napoleon of Crime” and Sherlock’s arch-enemy. He stood against a window, the fading light leaving dark brooding shadows on his face and making him look every bit as reptilian as described by the detective. Here was my moment.

Finally, I could do what I had wanted to all these years. I punched Moriarty in the face.I hurried out before Mrs Hudson could see me. Down the stairs, a quick glance into the consulting chambers where Sherlock still stood thinking, down the final flight of 17, knocked over Holmes’ deerstalker from its peg, replaced it, turned the door knob and was out on Baker Street.

It had suddenly gone cold. The sky had darkened. There was a steady drizzle. I buried my face in my muffler, closed my eyes and could almost imagine the clip-clop of horse hooves on cobblestones and two men bounding down the stairs. ‘Hurry, Watson, hurry. The game is afoot…”