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He said that she “not only
gave Green a glimpse of the treasured archive; she also asked for his help
in transferring various papers to her solicitor’s office. ‘Richard told me
that he had physically moved them,’ Edwards said. ‘so his knowledge was
really quite dangerous.’” He called Green
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“the biggest figure standing in the way” of the
Christie’s auction, since he had seen some of the papers and could
testify that Dame Jean had intended to donate them to the British
Library. Soon after the sale was announced, Edwards said, he and Green
had learned that Charles Foley, Sir Arthur’s great-nephew, and two of
Foley’s cousins were behind the sale. But neither he nor Green could
understand how these distant heirs had legally obtained control of the
archive. “All we were clear about was that there was a scam and that,
clearly, someone was robbing stuff that should go to the British
Library,” Edwards said. He added, “This was not a hypothesis–it
was quite certain in our own minds.”
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Edwards told
Grann that he was sure that Green had been murdered. He said that
autoerotic asphyxiation, as suggested by the coroner, was unlikely, as
there was no evidence that Green was engaged in any sort of sexual activity
at the time of his death. “He added that garroting is typically a brutal
method of execution– ‘a method of murder which a skilled professional would
use.’” Also, Edwards said that “Green had no known history of depression”;
the day before he died he made plans to take a vacation in Italy with a
friend the following week; he was garroted with a shoelace but only wore
slip-on shoes; a compulsive note-taker such as Green would surely have left
a suicide note; and, finally, the partly empty bottle of gin was evidence
that someone else had been in the room, since Green had drunk wine at
dinner and would never have followed it with gin.
Edwards warned
Grann: “Please be careful. I don’t want to see you garroted, like poor
Richard.” He then named the mysterious American, describing him as “one of
Donald Rumsfeld’s pals.”
Grann
flew to Washington, D.C., and tracked the American down. They met at
Timberlake’s Pub near DuPont Circle. The American said that he was a
long-time member of the Baker Street Irregulars and had represented Doyle’s
literary estate in America. Grann says, “It is his main job, though, that
has given him a slightly menacing air–at least in the minds of Green’s
friends. He works for the Pentagon in a high-ranking post that deals with
clandestine operations.” He asked that Grann not reveal his name in the article,
because “I don’t think a lot of people at the Pentagon would understand my
fascination with a literary character.” Grann respects the American’s
desire for anonymity in the article, but he gives a detailed description of
him and completely blows his cover by revealing that his Baker Street
Irregulars name is “Rodger Prescott of evil memory,” after the American
counterfeiter in “The Adventure of the Three Garridebs.” One has only to
visit the Baker Street Irregulars web site to discover “Rodger Prescott’s”
real name. At the request of our Program Director, Bob Robinson, who is
also a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, I will not reveal it here;
Bob says that this person is well-liked and respected by the BSI members.
Anyway, the American told Grann that he and Green had been collaborators on
several Sherlockian projects, but that they had had a falling-out in the
early1990s when Jean Conan Doyle saw something in print by Green that
caused her to believe that Green was not as great an admirer of her father
as he had claimed to be and broke off her friendship with Green. The
American claimed to Grann that “Because I was Jean’s representative, I got
caught in the middle of it.” A friend of Green’s, however, had told Grann
that “the American played on Dame Jean’s sensitivities about her father’s
reputation and seized upon some of Green’s candid words, which had never
upset her before, then ‘twisted’ them like ‘a screw.’” The American told
Grann that he had not seen or spoken to Green for more than a year; he
admitted that he was in London the night Green died, but he had an alibi:
he and his wife were on a Jack the Ripper walking tour. The American turned
out to be an admirer of Green’s; he told Grann that a multimedia lecture
Green gave on The Hound of the Baskervilles at the University of
Minnesota three years
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