I fell into writing as Mrs Hudson almost by chance. As a lifelong fan of both Victorian and crime fiction, I simply thought it was about time to give voice to the female in detection, and with Sherlock Holmes’s landlady I had leeway to create a character virtually from scratch.
We know very little about her from the original stories. She brings in the meals, she shows visitors up to Holmes and Watson’s rooms, she cleans up Holmes’s messes, she complains about the Baker Street Irregulars. There’s not much more than that. Only in one story, The Adventure of the Empty House, does she play a more pro-active role, surreptitiously moving a plaster bust of Holmes that is silhouetted in an upstairs window, to fool a would-be assassin. It’s been claimed she’s Scottish, but that’s doubtful. In short, I reckoned I could do almost what I liked with her, and, since that first collection of stories, have published four further novels, taking her to Ireland, Paris, even Constantinople, as well as the Garden of England.
What she brings to detection is something that Holmes, for all his brilliance, conspicuously lacks, and that is empathy. My Mrs Hudson, a widow of about fifty, is enterprising and brave, still attractive, though she remains faithful to the memory of her dear husband, Henry. She has two daughters, Judith and Eleanor, as well as several grandchildren. She thus has life experiences denied her eminent bachelor lodger. In addition, without being strident, she is something of a feminist, with decided views on the rights of women. She has a penchant for contemporaneous light fiction, such as the works of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. In sum, my aim has been to create, from Conan Doyle’s light sketches, a fully rounded personality
Mrs Hudson and Me
Of course, I’ve needed to attune myself to the late Victorian world, in style as well as in substance. Luckily, having read a lot of nineteenth-century fiction, I find it comes naturally to me to have Mrs Hudson, since the books are written in the first person, express herself appropriately. Anachronisms inevitably creep in, but I have readers whose speciality is hunting them down, so I trust most of them get caught before publication.
Inevitably, a degree of research goes into recreating the world she moves in, from the hop harvests of Kent to the paranoid court of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II (who, incidentally, was a great fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories, to the extent of conferring the Order of the Medjidie on their author).
And incidentally, I am not the only recreator of Mrs Hudson. In Barry Brown’s series of novels, for instance, she’s a Cockney and the actual brains behind the detective agency. The Sherlockian world truly encompasses multitudes.
This, of course, applies to the Holmes’s stories as well. The original canon comprises just sixty works. Even in Conan Doyle’s own time, pastiches were written, and now it has become a huge industry to feed what seems an insatiable hunger among enthusiasts. The eight stories in my own new collection, Sherlock Holmes the Hunter and other Mysteries, were originally published in the MX books of New Sherlock Holmes stories, mighty anthologies, edited by deerstalker-sporting David Marcum, which appeared bi-annually between 2015-2025. The only prescription was that they should be written in the style of the original canon.
Dr Watson
Of necessity, I have been more constrained recreating the voice of Dr Watson, since much more of him is known. In the originals, Watson is clearly a practical and intelligent man, a far cry from the Nigel Bruce portrayal of him, in those early films with Basil Rathbone, as a bumbling idiot, amusing though that can be. David Burke or Edward Hardwicke, in the wonderful Granada series, are more authentic, Watson more deputy than stooge to Jeremy Brett’s Holmes.
What we know for sure is that Watson served in Afghanistan as a surgeon, where he was wounded in the shoulder or leg (Conan Doyle isn’t always fastidious about details). He still practices medicine sporadically, though never seems overburdened by his duties and can jump to Holmes’s assistance when required. He marries Mary Morstan, heroine of The Sign of Four, but Conan Doyle kills her off quite quickly, perhaps, a cynic might wonder, so that Watson can move back into Baker Street and be nearer the action. Some of my fellow pastiche writers have had him remarry, but I have preferred to leave him in mourning for his wife, which doesn’t stop him from being susceptible to the charms of ladies. He also enjoys his food, in contrast to Holmes who only eats, and that seldom, to live. But what I have tried, in particular, to show is how Holmes’s character is deepened through the observations – sometimes humorous, often exasperated but always affectionate – of his friend. Indeed, a reviewer of the recent collection has remarked that my own affection for Holmes and Watson shines through on every page. And it is true that I love recreating the voices of both Mrs Hudson and Dr Watson, challenging though it can sometimes be.
Sherlock Holmes the Hunter and Other Mysteries is the second collection culled from my contributions to the MX anthologies. The first, The Strange Case of the Pale Boy and Other Mysteries included my very first attempt, The Case of the Short-Sighted Clown, which involved a trip by our intrepid pair to Ramsgate to attend Sangers’s circus (more fun research on that). The new collection has seven stories from the anthologies, plus one written specially, The Case of the Fatal Flowers, which involved an internet search for poisonous plants and their symptoms and effects, as well as a trip back in memory to a beloved childhood haunt, Kelsey park in Beckenham, which I am afraid becomes, in my story, the scene of a ghastly fatality. Ah, well, it’s all grist to the crime-writer’s mill.
(c) Susan Knight
About Sherlock Holmes the Hunter and Other Mysteries:
A terrible scream rent the air.
“Too late!” Holmes exclaimed, and started running towards the sound.
I followed after, my pistol cocked at the ready.
Had my dream mysteriously and horribly foreshadowed what was to happen? For here was Holmes again, rushing back towards me this time, while behind him, a great beast charged, body of a big cat, and the head… the head… Oh God, no!
From a country estate in Sussex to the murky docklands of Limehouse, from the Royal Albert Hall to a music hall in Shoreditch, from the respectably net-curtained suburbs of Beckenham and Hampstead to a brothel in Bow, Holmes and Watson go plumbing the depths of human depravity to unmask likely and unlikely villains. The cast of colourful characters include a world famous Russian violinist, an intrepid female detective, Miss Dimples and her performing poodles, a diminutive maid named Fancy, a dead policeman on a platform at St Pancras station, as well as Wiggins, Jimsy and Bobs of the Baker Street Irregulars, and a pet leopard names Lola. Meet these and many more in eight new enthralling stories.
Order your copy online here.
Read more from Susan Knight on Writing.ie here.
The launch of Sherlock Holmes the Hunter and Other Mysteries will take place in the splendid surroundings of the Teachers’ Club at 36 Parnell Square on Tuesday, November 18 from 6.30 pm.
