An A.M. Murder Suicide
For all the contributions Arthur Conan Doyle made to crime writing, he rarely ventured into true crime.
But after 36 years of writing Sherlock Holmes, Doyle struggled to create new mysteries for his famous detective. His editor at The Strand magazine, H. Greenhough Smith, suggested pulling inspiration from the real world.
This was nothing new for crime writers, Doyle included. Some elements of pastoral English myths and crimes found their way into The Hounds of Baskerville.
“My dear Robinson,” he wrote to Fletcher Bertram Robinson, a friend and journalist/folklorist, “It was your account of a west country legend which first suggested the idea of this little tale to my mind. For this, and for the help which you gave me in its evolution, all thanks.”
Fortunately, Smith had a specific suggestion in mind from the work of a now forgotten legend, Austrian criminologist Hans Gross.
Though the exact date and location are not mentioned in Gross’s Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter, Polizeibeamte, Gendarmen or Criminal Investigation, A Practical Handbook for Magistrates, Police Officers and Lawyers, sometime before 1893, a man only known as A.M. was found dead in the middle of a bridge. He was last seen drinking “moderately” at a bar, leaving around 10:30 p.m. A well-to-do grain merchant, A.M. was missing his pocketbook and jewelry. The interior pocket of his jacket had been torn to shreds “as if something had been violently removed from it.”
The same night that A.M. died, “an unknown, wretched-looking man” was seen at the same bar. After a search, he was found but claimed to have spent the night sleeping in a barn he couldn’t remember. Authorities didn’t believe him and he was arrested. The inquest was quickly wrapping up when the chief inspector decided to revisit the scene, noticing a strange mark on the bridge’s wooden parapet. Since the mark look recent and was very close to where the body was found, the investigator asked his constables to drag the stream under the bridge.
If I weren’t referencing a 95-year old piece of crime literature, by this point, I’d have long warned about spoilers. In this case, the details became Doyle’s The Problem of Thor Bridge. As a pioneer of crime fiction during the early days of forensics, Doyle often had to create details from his own imagination. Originally published in two parts in The Strand (God, does anyone remember a time when writers could double dip for work), The Problem of Thor Bridge is the only Sherlock Holmes story that was entirely derived from an actual crime. Sherlockian scholars (yes, that’s apparently a thing) have noted the story’s acute diversion from norm.
“The Problem of Thor Bridge [is]… a prime example of Holmes looking at a few clues and deducing the solution. Admittedly those of us familiar with the story or versed in modern forensic science may think obvious either the solution or at least the vindication of the suspect in the story. Even Holmes admits he should have tumbled to the solution earlier,” wrote My Particular Friend in a review of the story.
It’s a fair assessment that induces an eye roll when used in crime fiction but piques interest in true crime. The rare case where someone almost got away with suicide.
The notch in the parapet lead to a revolver tied to a 14 foot length of rope with the “murder” weapon on one end and a large rock on the other. In real life and Doyle’s story, the victim killed themselves with a shot to the head, just behind the ear, allowing the weighted gun to disappear under the water.
A.M. only appeared well-to-do. Witnesses remember seeing his stuffed billfold but couldn’t recall seeing actual money. After some proper investigation, police discovered A.M. had run into various business troubles and had recently purchased a sizable life insurance policy, the kind that would not pay out in the event of a suicide. To be fair, Doyle went with a motive that was a little more salacious, and ultimately more interesting.
The Problem of Thor Bridge uses the same execution of the original crime but casts aside the mundane financial motivations in favor of a salacious love triangle between a former politician, his wife, and the family nanny. Considering Doyle’s financial motivations for continuing the Holmes stories, it might also be that he wanted to avoid a connection between himself and the original victim.
For his additions, Doyle stayed largely true to the facts of the case, even allowing the solution to be presented organically rather than let Holmes solve it with an astonishing deduction.
Most of the Holmes stories written during Doyle’s later “I don’t give a fuck” years are pretty weak, but The Problem of Thor Bridge is an exception. It’s also a rare chance to see one of the greatest weave real events into a compelling fictional narrative.
Andrew Egan is writer and editor of Crimes In Progress. His work has appeared in Forbes Magazine, ABC News, Atlas Obscura, Tedium, and more. You can read his article, “Any Which Way but Down or A Fair Amount of Male Nudity in the American West” in the December 2016 issue of Blue Skies Magazine. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. His novel, Nothing Too Original, is available now for Kindle and paperback.
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