The Mary Russell Companion (5 page)

Hodcombe Farm and Birling Farm are both reasonable candidates for the home of Sherlock Holmes and, later, Mary Russell.  Both are of the road, both near hills that might provide views of the Channel.  In neither case are their current configurations of much import, since houses change—and certainly, extensions were made to the original building, first when Holmes and Mrs Hudson became residents, then when Russell moved in.  Certainly, the house she describes later on bears little resemblance to a cottage.

References to the Villa occur throughout the Memoirs, to the extent that we can put together a tentative architectural plan of the place.

Interview I

Mary Russell interviews Laurie R. King

In 2004, before the publication of
The Game
, Laurie King’s publishers requested that she participate in an interview.  But this was no ordinary interview, because the one asking the questions was none other than Miss Mary Russell—Oxford theologian, sleuth extraordinaire, partner and wife of Sherlock Holmes. 

It should be mentioned that Russell’s revelations about how she came to send her memoirs to King did not come about until 2009—see “My Story” and “A Case in Correspondence”.  However, despite how she presents herself in the questions below, Russell knew all about King before she sent the manuscripts in 1992.  

MR: Good
morning, my dear. Care for some tea? No? Suit yourself. Now, I’m not quite certain I grasp the point of this exercise
. They wish me to put questions to you?

LRK: Right. You ask, I answer.

MR: And people find interest in this informal viva voce? Extraordinary. I should have thought my answers would prove more absorbing than yours, all things considered. My life, after all, has been a full one, whereas yours…

LRK: I’m sorry, Miss Russell, but I did not choose the format.

MR: As you wish. I hardly need ask about
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
and its sequels: I did, after all, write them: meeting Holmes in 1915 and becoming his student, partner, and finally wife, all our little adventures in England and Palestine and—

LRK:
Little
adventures? You nearly died, Holmes was abducted, international incidents were narrowly averted, lives saved. The Conan Doyle stories pale in comparison.

MR: True; as a partner, I stimulated Holmes mind rather more than Dr Watson did. It was even, at times, something of a challenge for Holmes to keep up with me. But to return to this interview: I understand you write novels as well as edit my manuscripts.

LRK: I do, yes. Mysteries, for the most part—I do a series about a San Francisco cop, as well as three stand-alone suspense novels.

MR: This ‘cop’, as you call him—

LRK: Her. The cop in A
Grave Talent
and the rest is a woman. Kate Martinelli.

MR: You don’t say? We tried women constables during the Great War, but unfortunately their numbers rather diminished once the men returned from the trenches. You find a woman constabulary serviceable, though?

LRK: It’s not a separate force, they’re in with the men. But yes, women are as good as men, whether it’s as a street patrol officer or, as with Martinelli, in investigations.

MR: One might argue that women are rather, er, taken advantage of…

LRK: If you mean by the bad guys, that’s why our cops carry guns—they’re a great equalizer. And if you mean taken advantage of in the relationship sense, well, that doesn’t enter into it as much with Martinelli, because she’s gay and her partner’s a man. Um, you understand the word ‘gay’? as in lesbian?

MR: ‘Gay’—a charming figure of speech. Yes, I can see that might be an advantage, in a man’s world such as the police. What about the other books, your ‘suspense novels’?

LRK:
A Darker Place
is about a professor of religion—again, a woman—who investigates so-called ‘cults’ for the FBI;
Folly
concerns a women who retreats to an island in the Pacific Northwest to rebuild a house—one that was originally built by a soldier returned from the First World War, in fact. And most recent was
Keeping Watch
, in which the veteran of another war, Vietnam, rescues endangered children.

MR: A ‘professor of religion’—do you have an interest in religion, yourself?

LRK: I did an MA in Old Testament theology—storytelling at its most basic—especially its feminine aspects, and was later given an honorary doctorate by my seminary.

MR: And you now write crime novels? An interesting choice.  Still, it must add a certain depth to your stories.

LRK: I think so, yes. But then, one joy of mysteries is that you can weave all kinds of interests and abilities into them—house building, child rearing, life in Papua New Guinea, Greek verbs, holy fools, trench warfare, the hills of north India….

MR: My, how…piquant. But this raises a question: How do you keep people from confusing the works that concern Holmes and me with the novels you also write?

LRK: Er, well. I can’t exactly say that I do.

MR:
(Her voice going icy.)
You ‘can’t say..’? Am I to understand that the manuscripts I sent you—
my personal memoirs
—have been published as
fiction
?

LRK: Well, they’re exciting and exotic and tell of little-known events in history—

MR: And this next one, which you have entitled
The Game.
I suppose readers will imagine you invented it, too? That Holmes and I did not actually race across Europe for the ship to India and join the hunt for the missing spy? That we never became itinerant magicians or encountered the Maharaja of Khanpur or joined forces with a Bolshevik or met Kipling’s Kim or went pig-sticking? That we never—oh, this is simply too outrageous. Young woman, if you wish to claim sole authorship of the books, then you may conduct this so-called interview without me as well. Good day.

LRK: Oh, Miss Russell, watch the—oh, please—don’t! Oh dear.
(Sighs.)
She’s gone.

Two:

The Russell Memoirs

The child even looked vaguely intelligent—though that last was probably an effect of the spectacles. (“
Beekeeping for Beginners”)

*

“Holmes,” I said, startled into speech, “are you going all sentimental on me?”

“No, you’re right, that would never do.” (
Letter of Mary
)

*

How jolly: another warrant for our arrest. (
Pirate King
)

A Russell Chronology

The Russell Memoirs—known to her community of readers as the Kanon (the “Canon” being the Conan Doyle stories)—include at the time of this writing twelve novels, one novella, and five short stories.  In order of publication, and showing the acronyms used by many of Russell’s fans, they are:

              The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (1994) (BEEK)

              A Monstrous Regiment of Women (1995) (MREG)

              A Letter of Mary (1997) (LETT)

              The Moor (1998) (MOOR)

              O Jerusalem (1999) (OJER)

              Justice Hall (2002) (JUST)

              The Game (2004)  (GAME)

              Locked Rooms (2005)  (LOCK)

              The Language of Bees (2009)  (LANG)

              The God of the Hive (2010) (GOTH)

              Pirate King (2011)  (PIRA)

              Garment of Shadows (2012)  (GARM)

              **

              Beekeeping for Beginners, an e-novella (2011)  (B4B)

              * *

              “
Mrs Hudson’s Case
” (1997)  (HUD)

              “
A Venomous Death
” (2009)  (VEN)

              “
My Story
”  (2009)  (MYS)

              “
Birth of a Green Man
” (2010)  (BIR)

              “
A Case in Correspondence
”  (2010)  (CAS)

(The last four stories listed are included in this Companion.  “Mrs Hudson’s Case”, “Beekeeping for Beginners,” and the supplemental “Laurie R. King’s Sherlock Holmes” can be found as
ebooks through the website
.)

A Chronology of the Russell Memoirs

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
opens in April 1915 and covers the four years of Russell’s apprenticeship, ending in August, 1919.

Beekeeping for Beginners
begins at that same April, 1915 meeting, telling the story largely from Sherlock Holmes’ point of view.  It ends shortly after the first Zeppelin bombardment of London, May 31, 1915.

Mrs Hudson’s Case
is set in October, 1918.

O Jerusalem
covers a segment of the time spanned by BEEK, although it was published out of sequence so as to tie in with JUST.  Its dates are December 1918 to early February, 1919.

A Monstrous Regiment of Women
starts on Boxing Day, December 26, 1920, when Russell is about to turn 21, and ends in early February, 1921 (with after-notes that reach forward some months).

(The long gap in the Memoirs, the thirty months from February, 1921 to August, 1923, is a time that clearly contains much of private concern to Miss Russell.  She has, as yet, not chosen to share this time with her reading public—apart from, possibly, the case described in “Venomous Death”.)

A Letter of Mary
begins the more compact pace of the Memoirs, with its action taking place in weeks rather than months or years: from mid-August to early September, 1923.

The Moor
starts towards the end of September, 1923, and ends in early November.

Justice Hall
covers from Guy Fawkes Day (November 5) until December 21, 1923, with an epilogue five days later.  

The Game
begins January 1, 1924 and ends in early March 1924.

[Russell and Holmes are then in Japan for three weeks, although those events are not described until
Dreaming Spies
]

Locked Rooms
is set from May to early June, 1924.

[
The Art of Detection
, a novel not generally included in the Russell Memoirs, includes a June, 1924 case Holmes had in San Francisco, while Russell was seeing to family business in Southern California.  Her own experiences during this time may see future publication.]

The Language of Bees
covers a scant three weeks, from August 10 to August 30, 1924.

God of the Hive,
being a continuation of LANG, picks up in August 30 and finishes the case on September 9, 1924 (with an epilogue dated Oct. 31, 1924).

Pirate King
takes place in November 1924, roughly the 6
^th
through the 30
^th
.

Garment of Shadows
covers the closing weeks of 1924, and sees January dawn in 1925.

Birth of a Green Man
and
Venomous Death
are undated, although the first would appear to be some time in the early 1920s, and the second may take place during the summer of 1923.

* *

The actual events of
My Story
and
A Case in Correspondence
are from the spring of 1992, although they rest upon the 1924 episode called
God of the Hive
.

Russell’s Fellow Actors:

The characters of the Russell Memoirs