Prologue 

Despite my being a woman, I have always been drawn to events representing the worst in human behavior, and the miscreants and madmen who commit them.

            I met Doctors Conan Doyle and Joseph Bell at the University of Edinburgh Medical School in 1883 when I began to attend Dr. Bell’s lectures. Bell was legendary in his ability to pick up on small cues, those little details that through someone else’s senses might go unnoticed. He was able to deduce a man’s occupation by examining the pattern of calluses on his hands. A sailor’s tattoos might reveal a life’s itinerary.

            Doyle was Bell’s laboratory assistant. They had a strong affinity for each other, and, as I was soon to discover, Doyle had a strong affinity for me.

            Not long thereafter, I found myself assistant to the assistant, if you will, spending time in Bell’s laboratories and sitting in on medical discussions. I was an apt pupil. I became very good at detecting fine details, rather like focusing on the intricate pieces of a jigsaw puzzle instead of trying to imagine the whole picture at once. Given a sufficient number of interlocking pieces, I found that eventually the picture emerges. “Take your time,” Bell would say. “Be thorough. Remember, the dead will be dead for a very long time.”

            My affair with Conan Doyle did not last long. He was born married. His only task was to locate his wife, and I was not she. He met and fell in love with Toulie Hawkins, and soon forgot about me.

            After spending a year in Bell’s laboratory, I left with letters of recommendation and an eagerness to try out my new set of skills. Edinburgh was a lovely town, but the true armpit of the realm was London, and it was there I took temporary lodgings with Dr. Bell’s sister, Lady Arabella Waller, who had graciously offered me a place of residence until I was able to join society on my own. For a young woman of my station, being on my own meant being suitably married.

Lady Arabella, whether to assist me in making a proper union for altruistic reasons or to insure that I would not become a permanent houseguest, introduced me to her circle of friends. Complicit in the plan her husband Sir Rupert sized me up as a marketable commodity and soon notified my father in Edinburgh that he would, with my father’s permission, introduce me to a young cavalry officer, Lieutenant Robert Cornell Fletcher.

Falling in love with this charming young man was easy and natural. His courtship of me began immediately but was necessarily abbreviated because of his pending departure to join the staff of General Gordon in Khartoum. We squeezed into a few short weeks all the outings and events that, had we had more time, we might have leisurely spaced out over a year. We visited the Crystal Palace, removed in its faded glory to Sydenham and given over more to dog shows and political rallies than to music. We packed into that brief period entertainments at Drury Lane, Oscar Wilde at the St. James’s, opera at Covent Garden, the symphony at The Royal Albert Hall, and the best classical music at Queen’s Hall. It was the definition a whirlwind romance, but it all seemed so right that neither we nor our families once stepped back to consider the possibility that our haste might ever yield anything but a favorable outcome.

Lieutenant Fletcher begged me to marry him before he left for duty, and I said yes. We agreed that he would send for me as soon as the operation in Khartoum was completed when he would be permanently established in Cairo.

The few letters I received from my new husband came quickly and described scenes of fierce rebellion against British occupation.

Daily dispatches from the front published in the newspaper painted a picture of a deteriorating situation. I feared I would never see my husband again. On January 26, 1885, General Gordon, having been betrayed by his Egyptian lieutenant, set out for the Austrian consulate in Khartoum. He was recognized in the street and shot dead. Mahdi’s followers cut off his head, mounted it on a pike, and paraded it through the streets to cheering crowds celebrating their defeat of the British. On the same day, I received a telegram that informed me my husband had been with Gordon during his final attempt at escape and had shared his fate.

Father had given me away on December 21, 1885. Now, six weeks later I was a pregnant young widow, bereft and emotionally adrift.

I gave birth to Robert Knox Fletcher on September 21, 1886.

My late husband left me with a small amount of money in equities worth ₤1500. Also, my own father sent me a regular stipend, and so my son and I were not in want. Young Robert’s needs left little time for grieving, and soon he had filled the void in me left by the death of his father whom I barely knew, and whom he would never know at all.

            Independent means gave me choices. With the hope of being able to apply some of what I had learned from Dr. Bell, I became a detective auxiliary, a position with no pay at Scotland Yard under the authority of Sir Neville Macready.

            For the sum of ₤18 per year, I was able to hire a nanny for Robert, which freed me from having to remain confined to our flat around the clock. On most days I spent, first an hour or two, and later four or more hours each day at the Yard. My auxiliary work consisted of helping old people across the street, questioning loiterers in the park, and looking for lost children and girls.

When he was seven, Robert entered the Fleet Road board school, an institution with a high reputation for turning out scholarship students. He remained at Fleet Road until he was eleven, at which time he was old enough to enroll in the Abingdon School.

One day in 1893, after a few years of  embryonic police work had grown quite tedious, I opened the front door and there stood my old friend Sergeant Thomas Dundas, an Edinburgh policeman whom I had met while studying scientific detection in Dr. Bell’s laboratory.

            “Miss Delacroix?”

            “Sergeant Dundas,” I exclaimed. “What brings you so far out of your jurisdiction today?”

“It’s now Detective Inspector Dundas of the Metropolitan Police,” he said. “I saw your name on a roster of the Criminal Investigation Department. We are colleagues of a sort, Miss Delacroix.”

            “I’m a widow, Inspector, and it’s Mrs. Amy Elizabeth Fletcher now. My position is a rather lowly one, I’m afraid. What is it I can do for you today?”

“I’m investigating a puzzling crime. During a visit to Edinburgh to discuss it, I had the privilege of meeting an old mentor of yours, Dr. Conan Doyle.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said. “Not the impecunious young surgeon anymore, is he?”

“I was there to discuss this perplexing case with Dr. Joseph Bell. I met Doyle at his office. They both mentioned your name and said you were living in London. It seems you were a brilliant student of their work in criminal detection. They both suggested I look you up when I got back. So, here I am. I do hope I am not intruding.”