The arguments about Arthur Conan Doyle’s early life continue to rage but two things are certain. Doyle’s model for Sherlock Holmes, Joseph Bell, did investigate criminal cases. And Doyle suppressed so many facts and incidents of his personal history that his true relationship with the Doctor remains shrouded in mystery. Indeed, with Doyle’s papers and letters still locked away from the world, the creator of Holmes remains, for all his great fame, among the most mysterious of Victorians.

More facts, however, are emerging every day, some of them startling. This story draws on them as well, of course, as Doyle’s own writing. And in one respect at least the ‘Murder Rooms’ cycle can indeed claim to be inspired by a mysterious manuscript. If it ever saw the light of day ‘Joseph Bell’s Criminal Cases’ by Arthur Doyle, a book rumoured to have been seen early in this century, would certainly mark the uncovering of one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

For we would finally have laid our hands on something once thought to be utterly impossible: The True Stories of Sherlock Holmes . . .

They were always my secrets, sixteen in all, though I had knowledge of two others. And I can be sure only of one thing. If you are reading these words, I am dead.

Occasionally, of course, there were hints of them in my fiction. Some detail which had imprinted itself upon my memory – a weapon, an article of clothing, the furnishings of a room, a particularly strange object – would find its way into a story. ‘The Copper Beeches’ in particular flirted with events that had actually happened. Fortunately for me, the Doctor did not see it until many years later. Naturally he did not care for it at all or any of these other hints. He would reproach me with one of the looks I knew so well: that withering straight-arrow glance that felt as if it could pierce a man’s soul. You knew the terms, it seemed to say. Absolute confidentiality.

Not that there was any real need for his concern. How could there be when the cases themselves contained so much that was acutely painful to me? Matters of such darkness and depravity could never be considered material for fiction, let alone a history. Especially when any such history would inevitably take me back through the years to that awful afternoon on a beach near Dunbar where we found Elsbeth. Here was, I suppose, the true beginning of our story when the Doctor stood by the waves and declared his fight against the future. The words may sound foolish unless you know all that prompted them. For me then, as we both recognised how profoundly we had failed and all that must lie ahead in our own branch of interest, it was the very least he could have said.

I was a young man then, only nineteen and in the second year of my medical degree at Edinburgh, where I had met the Doctor about six months previously. It is true there were problems in my family but even so I had everything to live for, before that moment on the beach all those years ago seemed for a time to bring my life to an end.

Until now, that was the worst moment. So unbearable that I have usually tried to avoid thinking of it. But in general nobody could have such experiences as I had with the Doctor in my younger years and not return to them. They would come to me while I was sailing on the Arctic whaler Hope, the first expedition I ever took. Or when I stood alone in the evening air outside the Tennison Road house in South Norwood, which I bought years later after I abandoned medicine for good. I would reflect on each extraordinary episode with Bell, considering what it told me about my fellow humanity, and about the darkness within my own sex.

No full accounts were ever compiled of our cases. But the truth was I had not been entirely true to my pledge. For each of them I still held boxes containing records of a kind: a map worked and reworked, diagrams, objects, odd hieroglyphs and puzzles and clues, which reflected for me and no one else the intimate details of each adventure. I came to think of these materials as my Murder Rooms. Although one box, containing all that led up to that beach and followed on from it, has remained at the back unopened.

Naturally I never attempted to explain these relics from years ago to anyone, not even Louise, my wife, when she was still in good health, though she often saw me studying some of the boxes and adding small details. The assumption, of course, was that I was planning a story, an assumption that now, in a way I never dreamed, almost comes true.

But before I write I must be clear about what has happened this autumn and why I am taking this step now. I will not pretend it has been a happy year, for despite my success there has been much inner turbulence in my life. But when two weeks ago I took Louise for a drive in the landau up on the heathland north of Hindhead, I had no idea of what was coming. Both of us share a love of this lonely and somewhat uncharacteristic stretch of wild country running above the home we built in the hope the air would improve her health. Since first setting eyes on it, the countryside here has reminded me of my native Scotland with its glens and valleys. But that day we did not travel far for, as we came on to the spur that is known locally as White Hill owing to its frosts, Louise began coughing.

It went on a few minutes only and, though she insisted we go on, I could see how glad she was when we turned for home. There I sat beside her bed for half an hour and was relieved at last to watch her sleep. I waited a little before coming down to my study, a room with broad windows offering a view of the woods behind the house. I sat down at my desk. And then I noticed the small brown-paper package.

It had been placed at the corner of my desk, as late deliveries often are. I receive a great deal of post, but there was something different about this parcel, perhaps because it was done up very elaborately with yards of knotted string. It bore my typewritten address and the postmark was Bristol, a city I barely know. After observing these details I ignored it for an hour while I worked. But I think even then it gave me a tiny sense of unease. There was something so painstaking and excessive about those intricate lengths of string winding around it. As I worked I found myself reflecting that it was too thin to be a book, yet too broad and wide to be a personal item like my watch, which was soon due back from its annual clean.

Eventually, while I was drinking my late-morning tea, I took up the package. Cutting the string, I pulled the layers of brown paper back; all I could see were several pages torn from a periodical. I picked them up and stared at a familiar illustration of a woman removing her veil. This was an early story of mine, published in the Strand Magazine in the winter of 1892.

Naturally, I supposed it had been sent for my autograph, though it was the first time I had ever been asked to sign loose pages. I leafed through them and soon reached the last illustration, which shows the detective holding a candle aloft in front of the stricken villain. I could find no accompanying letter at all. There was nothing else here, absolutely no indication of who had sent this or why.

My first assumption was that there must be something in the pages themselves, which might explain the parcel: a typographic flaw, perhaps, or some other oddity that a reader had thought I would be interested to see myself. And so it was that I put my work aside and scanned the Sherlock Holmes adventure ‘The Speckled Band’ for the first time in years.

What struck me most, reading it after so long, was its, sheer wish-fulfilment. This may seem a strange expression to use of a story in which a sadistic stepfather attempts to murder his stepdaughter in the night by sending a poisonous swampadder down a bell rope into her room. But in my heart I know well enough that wish-fulfilment is indeed what gives it life. And anyone aware of the events I witnessed at Abbey Mill in Hampshire in 1882 after I had left Edinburgh and started out as a doctor, events which began with the eye condition of my patient Heather Grace, would see at once why I use the word.

Not that the connection is obvious in any banal way. I went to some trouble to change, soften and simplify those terrible events, and also to rework them into what I would have wished. The model for the stepfather, Dr Grimesby Roylott, for example, was a landowner and natural historian called Charles Blythe, who was uncle and guardian to my patient, and who did indeed keep snakes and other poisonous creatures. But how often I have had occasion to wish that the truth about the whole affair had more closely resembled the fiction.

Having no desire to return to reflections of this kind, I turned the pages in front of me more rapidly. But they appeared to be from a perfectly ordinary edition of the magazine. There was nothing remarkable about them at all that I could see and I could think of absolutely no reason why they had been sent.

I was on the point of throwing them away when I saw the writing. I had missed it partly because I had not looked closely at the last page and partly because the tiny ink letters had been placed with such meticulous care. They were on the minuscule white line, marking the top of the stepfather’s table in the very last illustration, where the man is found dead and seated bolt upright, the fearful snake clamped like a yellow band round his head. I took my magnifying glass to be sure but, once seen, I could read them anyway.

That evening Louise did not feel well enough to get up for dinner and I read some of Wells’s story The Invisible Man to her in her room. Later, downstairs, as I drank a glass of port, I cast my eye over the pages again, debating what to do with them. My curiosity was certainly aroused but I was also aware that the thing could easily have come from a half-crazed admirer of my work. If I visited the address and was greeted by some crackpot who saw himself as a detective or, worse, a master criminal and hoped to employ me in his self-publicising schemes, I would have only myself to blame. Yet something in the choice of story, and the care that had gone into that writing, made me doubt this explanation.

Eventually, I decided the best course was to enlist help. Three years ago, while I was writing ‘The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard,’ my editor at the Strand, Herbert Greenhough Smith, put me in touch with a useful member of his staff called Henry Walker, who was mainly concerned with proofing but was always happy to undertake bits of practical research. That night I wrote to Walker, telling him only that I had been passed some information and wished him to discover anything he could about the occupants at the Herne House address I had been given. Just to be safe, I added as an afterthought that the address might be fictitious.

Walker replied with admirable speed in little more than a day. But his answer puzzled me even more.

I had never heard of Alice Macmillan and knew nothing of the matter at all. Nor could I see what this sad but entirely unremarkable story (for all Greenhough Smith’s humbug about its ‘potential’) might possibly have to do with me. Of course, it occurred to me to wonder if my correspondent could have some involvement in her death. But pushing someone off an ocean liner is not the easiest or subtlest of murders and any lingering doubts were dispelled by a study of the dates. The boat had docked two days before, on 30 September. My package was postmarked 29 September from Bristol. The sender could not possibly have been on board the ship but must have read the news story about the disappearance.

It was, I supposed, just possible to conjure up a criminal conspiracy and someone on board communicating with the sender by telegram. Yet, even supposing such an improbability, surely they would have contrived a less risky method of murder, far less advertise their whole scheme to me? And on top of everything else, an aged aunt was the sole beneficiary, hardly the most likely accomplice of such people. No, this appeared to be an accident, of a kind that was not so unusual in bad weather, but what it had to do with me I was at a loss to understand.

The time had come for me to dismiss the package as the work of an imaginative joker. I wrote back a highly appreciative letter to Walker, for he deserved it, telling him his help had been invaluable to me and he was among the reasons why I felt so much loyalty to the Strand. I hoped Greenhough Smith would read that, and added for his benefit I was not for the moment planning a detective story around the incident, especially since my detective was not in the land of the living.

While writing this, I had quite made up my mind to tear up the pages and be done with the whole business. But that night, as on every other night since I had received the thing, I found myself staring at the drawing of Dr Grimesby Roylott and the tiny writing inscribed on his desk in the final illustration of the story. Why was it there and nowhere else? Was it possible that someone had made a link through Roylott and his snakes, which was in effect the only real clue, to the actual events of 1882, events which began with my patient Heather Grace? It could hardly be anyone involved, that much seemed sure. Indeed, there seemed to be only one other option and I refused to think of it. But something had been at the back of my mind ever since I had seen the string on the package. Something that took me back to the beach and worse. I would not go down that road.

I did not wish to involve Walker further but I had to set my mind at rest and, after a series of telegrams, it proved surprisingly easy to arrange a meeting with the police in Gravesend. The body was still in a mortuary, awaiting an inquest, though nobody seemed to doubt the death was accidental.

It was three days ago that I travelled there and met the policeman responsible for the case, a straightforward ex-army man with lank hair and a sweating brow called Hector Murray. In his cramped office filled with smoke from a spluttering fire, I capitalised on my credentials as a doctor and scientist, explaining I was making a study of the properties of bodies that had been exposed at length to salt water. Fortunately there was no reason for him to doubt me, in fact, he did not even indulge in humorous speculation that I might be returning to detective fiction. But he was kind enough to offer me a rough draft of some details of the case he had compiled for the coroner.

And so, finally, I was escorted to the mortuary and there an old attendant, who smelt of tobacco and peppermint, led me to the slab to see the body of Alice Macmillan. I remember that I felt little expectation or excitement. I was sure I would satisfy my curiosity, prove finally and for ever this was all a false trail and throw that foolish parcel away for good.

The sheet came away rather slowly. I saw a pale shoulder, a ravaged face. And then I saw the eyes.

I staggered back, my hand went to my mouth. My heart was racing and I felt I was about to be sick. The attendant had moved away to deposit the sheet, but the noise made him turn to look at me. I forced myself to bend forward as if studying some detail of the corpse’s arm. In fact, though he could not see it from where he stood, my eyes were closed.

Somehow I kept my head down and managed to stay still. When he had at last decided that I was after all closely absorbed in study, I heard him move away to another slab, which needed his attention. This gave me more time to steady my heart and take a breath. At last I was able to look again.

Her eyes still stared at me. Their beauty had survived intact even while the ravages of water and death had contorted and defiled her other features. The dark hair hung in long tendrils, and on her face and shoulders were the abrasions that occur where tide and current has battered a body against rocks and other flotsam. The skin was stretched and emaciated. The mouth seemed shrunken, possibly because the lips were so pale as to be invisible. But the eyes still held you. And in 1882 I had stared at them for so many hours, while treating the condition, which led me inexorably into the whole Abbey Mill affair. The body on the slab was my former patient Heather Grace.

Now my immediate physical shock had subsided and I was intensely aware of her form so near and yet further away than she had ever been. Tears sprang into my eyes, but I knew I could not possibly let them be seen. If there was the slightest suspicion I had come here for personal rather than scientific reasons, there would be serious questions and who knew where they would lead? I forced my tears back, and turned away to bend over the corpse’s side, for I felt I was strongest when I could not see her eyes. After a long time I compelled myself to look at the face again and I whispered a prayer, though to my shame, I suspect it was less for her than for me.

I do not know how long I stayed in that mortuary. I was certainly not prolonging my visit out of choice for I had done all I needed to do, noting almost incidentally that there was nothing unusual about the body itself, given it had been in the sea so long. But at all costs I had to present the appearance of scientific investigation and try to regain some composure.

Eventually the attendant shuffled out of the room. He was only away a few minutes but by his return I was seated at a bench on the other side from him, writing some words in my notebook. I have no idea what they were. Medical gibberish, I would think, combined with some half-remembered chemistry and bits of Latin. I was merely trying to present a decent appearance and gain time.

At last I summoned up all my courage, got heavily to my feet and thanked him. He looked at me slightly curiously but I was sure he merely thought me eccentric. On the way out I met Murray and shook hands with him rather peremptorily. He probably saw me as stiff and ungracious. Like many others, it is a manner I have sometimes used to disguise emotion and I think it was a small price to pay in the circumstances.

On the train home I tried not to think about the events of the day or what they signified. I did not even glance at the papers Murray had given me. Instead, I stared out at the fields and telegraph poles, recognising how insecure a grip we hold on the certainties of our lives.

That evening I put aside all my work. Since then, I have spent much of my time trying to make sense of what has happened. The police notes on the case turned out to be a testament to my researcher’s skill for they contained little more than I knew already except for the question of her changed name. But with the help of an otherwise meagre obituary that Walker has sent, acknowledging that one error in his earlier letter, I have arrived at a fuller picture.

The Christian name Alice was merely a middle name she had taken to using, though I had never known it. As to the other, it appeared that Heather Alice Grace had in the past few years undertaken occasional charitable work as a hospital visitor in and around London. This was not so unusual in a wealthy woman of means and, according to the obituary, her contribution was thoughtful and valued. During the course of these visits she had become friendly with an ailing hospital patient called Andrew Macmillan, a poor but evidently sweet-natured man who was bedridden and dying of a tumour at St Mark’s Hospital on City Road. With only a few months to live, this man had conceived a fixed notion that he must be married before he died. And he had a huge affection for his visitor, Miss Grace. Eventually he had found the courage to ask her if she would do him this honour and although there was no question of the marriage being consummated, or indeed her even staying beside him, she had agreed. Macmillan died a few months later, a happier man.

But there have been other matters to consider, matters even more immediate in their implications for me. Perhaps, as I explore again the matter of Abbey Mill, I may find someone involved who could have sent this. That is hardly a pleasant thought but God knows I prefer it to the alternative. For there is another possibility. It has been haunting me and I have refused to go down that road, but I know the pattern well enough, I have known it ever since the beach in Scotland.

I never dreamed that there could be another Room. This new one, wherever it leads, can only be the last. But the Doctor is older now and such news will weigh very heavily on him. So I have reached the decision on my own. I can no longer be sure of what will happen but because it may be very bad, I am bound to put aside my promise and leave some word of all that has led up to this.

I shall outline what has been long suppressed, namely the full story of how the Doctor and I met. And then move to the boxes I can see from my desk now, placed so discreetly on a low shelf towards the back of the room: an evidently insignificant collection of disparate material with that one unopened box pushed behind. Already the Abbey Mill box, describing the events surrounding Heather Grace, sits at my elbow. And as I open it I see first a telegram and a music box.

I know some of what follows will seem shocking to many. There can be no time for refinement and I am breaking the Doctor’s trust, exposing material that could perhaps disturb and corrupt. We live in an age where such things are not often discussed. But in view of what I believe is coming, I can no longer let them rest.

And so I take up my pen and return to a dark Edinburgh evening long ago and a walk along a corridor. The way into the past and all of these adventures certainly leads down that corridor . . .

The year was 1878 and, as I have said, I was in the second year of my medical studies. It was, I remember, a damp, foul night with gusts of that typically squally Edinburgh wind which sometimes blows before it patches of rain and sometimes just cold air and mist. But it was not the wind that summoned me. I was brought up to that corridor by a scream.

I stood at the far end, staring along it at the door. I do not think I am a coward, but I can tell you it took every ounce of courage I possessed to walk on. Even now, the sound that came from that room, a great howl of pent-up rage and terror, echoes down the years after me. Could there ever, I wonder, be anything so utterly destructive of a home and of the familial relationships within it than such a sound? No matter how often I heard it, I never grew used to it. But on this night in particular the scream was so horrible that it prompted a crucial decision.

Looking back, I feel as if I stood there for hours, watching and fearful. There was no other sound. But in the end I walked slowly down the corridor. I intended to face the occupant of that room. Before I had reached the door with its scratched woodwork around the handle, my mother appeared. Whether she too had heard the scream and was intending to enter I do not know. But, once she saw me, her small figure interposed itself between me and the door. I was determined to go on, but she would not let me.

Later we talked in hushed voices downstairs, for my sisters were already asleep and we did our best to keep them and Innes, then hardly more than a baby, clear of this. I have said my mother was small, but when you looked into her face you forgot that at once. It was a strong, fine-boned face, as formidable in its way as the Doctor’s, though its strength depended on a deep emotion. And it was awful to see how distracted that face was now. I barely remember what was said that night. I know we went and prayed down by the fireplace, and that we both knew what we were praying for, only with no idea what form our deliverance could take. I composed myself as best I could to the prayers, but I was impatient with all of it and she knew that.

‘Arthur, you must keep finding strength,’ she said quietly at last as she returned to the jacket she was carefully mending. I barely replied. Rage and despair were so close to the surface, I knew they could erupt. But in my mind I had decided something. My studies were proving quite barren and it seemed suddenly mad for me to stay at the university. In view of all we faced at home, I must at all costs give up my degree and find some kind of employment. My mother would fight against it, but she could not force me to continue.

Later I went out, sensing that the streets were a better place to work off these feelings. I turned out of George Square down the wynd and soon I was in one of the coarsest thoroughfares of the old town, a place that often worked on my spirit as a relief at that time.

I passed two brightly dressed women in a doorway; one of them came out and did a curious little mock-curtsey that made me smile. I knew, of course, how she earned her money but she was not remotely destitute. Her face was impishly pretty and she wore a bright-green scarf. She asked where I was going and, when I said I was out for a walk, she roared with laughter. ‘You liar, sir, you are for Madame Rose’s.’

She pointed along the street but I had never heard of the place and said so. She stared at me. Then, seeing I was telling the truth, her smile became deliciously mischievous. She put her face close to me, and I could feel her soft breath on my cheek.

‘Why, then you had better come up with me. Here is a reward for being so sweet.’ And she kissed me. After a moment I pulled away awkwardly, feeling a confusion of flushed embarrassment and desire.

It was an affecting little meeting and it stays with me for good reason. Less than a year later I saw the same woman lying in a hideously over-furnished room. There was a fire that had spilled out of the grate, burning an old newspaper, there was a bed and some splashed wine and shadows. She was bleeding from shallow cuts that had only just missed her vein and there was a figure crouched over her . . .

But no, I will not come to that yet. I want to be sure the reader understands my world, before its darkest and most miserable corners are revealed. It will be hard enough to expose all of them even then.

On the night I describe I returned home, knowing it was fruitless to tell my mother of my decision to quit the university. First I must make it official and so the following morning, with the frost still thick on Meadow Walk, I made my way to the university to say my farewell to the students, who had become friends. There were not more than two or three of those and, as for the staff, they cared little who came or went. But I knew my mother’s determination and, before telling her, I must make it official. Then there could be no going back.

I came through the arch into the small square of irregular ramshackle buildings known as Surgeon’s Square, where a crowd of medical men were gathered outside one of the lecture halls. A few of the women stood to one side, looking a little apprehensive but for once nobody was troubling them. Colin Stark, a cheerful student from Dundee, waved at me. They were waiting to enter a clinical surgery class.

It was then, and only then, that I remembered. I had stumped up an advance of two guineas to attend that class just the previous week. I had not formally enrolled, for a friend handed over my money, but it made no difference. The rules on such matters were typically mean: once fees had been paid, they were never in any circumstances returned. I knew it was hopeless but in view of our straitened circumstances at home I felt I must at least try to get the money back. And so it was that I walked over to the rear of the hall in search of the enrolment office of clinical surgery.

With its dark stone corridors and vault-like rooms, much of the building was quite a labyrinth, and I was totally unfamiliar with the warren of doors and passageways behind this lecture hall. I wandered somewhat aimlessly, my footsteps echoing on the grey flagstones. There was nobody to ask and at last I came to a large room with an open door, which I assumed was the office of clinical surgery.

The mistake was obvious as soon as I entered. Indeed, as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, it was like no other room I had seen in the university. The door opened on to a kind of tunnel between huge shelves of various compounds and chemicals. The tunnel ended at an enormous tank, which ran halfway to the ceiling. In its watery depths a very grisly exhibit was on display. A blood-splattered shirt and vest covered a human torso that appeared to have been severed from the rest of the body. Much later I learned some bloodstained clothes had been draped around a wax impression to give the bulk of a body. But to me then it looked fearful.

Staring around, all I saw were chemical and anatomical and surgical instruments, many of a highly unfamiliar kind. A huge shelf of books towered to my left and, though the room extended well beyond that, the volumes blocked my view. Ahead of me was a door and I walked to it quickly, not wishing to be accused of loitering in this place. Here I assumed was the office at last and I turned the handle eagerly. It did not open.

‘That door is always locked.’

The voice seemed to come from nowhere. It was distinctive, firm but also a little languid.

To find its owner I peered round the bookcase obscuring my view. A tall, wiry man with silver hair, in a filthy lab coat, stood in a shadowy corner of the room. He had a raised stick in his hand and was consulting a watch.

This was obviously one of the many lab assistants, who prowled around the medical buildings. Quite often, they were of an eccentric nature and a few had given up better jobs to follow their whims.

‘I’m sorry. I was looking for Dr Bell’s office to enrol . . .’ But my words tailed away as he brought the stick down hard on something before him with a great crack.

He hit it again. And again. Though advanced in years, his movement was lithe and the force he used was considerable. You would almost have thought the man was fighting some deadly creature. I moved closer to see what exactly it was he was hitting so violently. And started in shock and disgust. For below him was the grey and pathetic cadaver of a middle-aged man.

‘In heaven’s name, what are you doing?’ I said and he did not even turn.

Was I dealing with a madman? But as he moved eagerly to inspect the corpse, I realised there must be some method in this madness.

‘He is dead?’

The man looked up quite jovially. His face was sharp-featured and intelligent. ‘Oh, yes, he died about fourteen hours ago. Of a burst blood vessel. He was a soldier, I believe. But see how little trace is made. Not a bruise, not the slightest mark.’

‘But why in the world would it matter to a soul? This man is past curing anyway.’

The lab man gave me a quick look as he moved past me. ‘In one sense,’ he replied. ‘Now, I would ask you to step to one side.’ And he pointed something at the corpse.

There was a sharp report, which made me jump as, to my astonishment, a bullet from a revolver slammed into the sternum. I sprang back, bewildered. ‘My God, you take a risk! The bullet could easily ricochet.’ I was starting to wonder if I would have to report this man before there was a serious injury.

‘Oh, I am a great believer in risk,’ he said calmly, his eyes gleaming with anticipation as he moved forward to study the result of his shot. ‘Especially if care is taken over the angle of entry.’

I had been aghast. Now, as I marked the loving care with which he observed the result of his actions, I became slightly amused. There was no real danger. He was merely the most eccentric lab man I had yet encountered. But he might prove useful.

‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘do you work for Dr Bell?’

The man shook his head, as he put his finger over the bullet wound and produced an instrument of some kind to measure its diameter.

‘Then I can speak freely. Should I bother to take his class? I am aware he has a reputation, but to my cost I have begun to find that means little here.’

The lab man studied the wound. ‘Little to show,’ he mused. ‘But I want to try another angle . . .’ Then he seemed to register my question. ‘The standard is rather low, I agree. So you are not impressed?’

I was quite glad of a chance to unburden myself. ‘I hoped I would be enlightened,’ I said. ‘And I am being bored to death. To tell you the truth, sir, I am on the point of giving up. I have nothing else to follow and it will cause a lot of grief to my people, but if I am truly honest, why I never dreamed there could be such . . . imbeciles.’

I normally reserved such harsh comments about our teachers for my friends, but I had a feeling they would not trouble my new acquaintance and I was right.

‘Medicine attracts them, I find,’ he replied, as he shook out some bullets to prepare his revolver for another round. ‘It is one of the problems of the profession.’

‘Yes,’ I said, warming to him now. ‘And this Dr Bell seems quite as ridiculous as the rest. I am only here because I paid my fees and cannot get them back. Have you read his twaddle? I saw one article where the man claims to be able to distinguish personality and occupation by someone’s fingernails and boots! What a charlatan! I’d like to set him down in a third-class carriage and make him try to list the trades of his fellow travellers.’

‘Perhaps you should suggest it,’ he said with just the hint of a twinkle. ‘He’s probably arrogant enough to accept.’

I laughed. I was beginning to enjoy this strange new acquaintance, but before I could continue berating my teachers, something that I did frequently enough, he seemed to lose interest and cut me short. ‘Well, let me show you where to go to enrol. If you paid, it would be folly not to see at least one of his lectures now you are here, even if it is only for the fun of it.’

And he marched off with a long stride that left me running to catch up. Once out of the place, he pointed down the corridor to a door at the end and then disappeared back into the room with the merest nod of goodbye.

A few minutes later I was conversing with a lugubrious clerk, who confirmed my fees were strictly non-returnable but he was quite happy to enrol me. As usual, his tone made it perfectly clear that neither he nor anyone else cared a jot whether I actually attended.

And so, after a few minutes, I walked gloomily back to Surgeon’s Square, reflecting that the lab man was the first person in the whole university, other than a few fellow students, who had shown the slightest interest in what I felt.

Twenty minutes later I sat high up in the Cairns lecture hall, amidst a growing throng of chattering students, feeling slightly cheated. I had intended to make a grand gesture and now, here I was, awaiting yet another dull lecture.

My friends Colin Stark and James Cullingworth were on either side of me, both equally oblivious of the fact that I had come to say goodbye to them. Stark was a solid, twinkling character from Dundee who managed to enjoy himself despite everything and was always generous-spirited. Cullingworth, the tall and wiry son of a Borders doctor, possessed a very high intelligence and an even higher opinion of himself. While we were talking Neill, a dark good-looking man from the colonies, sat down behind us. He was in some ways my closest companion for we shared a love of stories, especially Poe.