Sherlock Holmes was a Fixer

With all the innumerable recent scandals that have erupted over the last decade or so, I find myself wondering when, exactly, did the term “fixer” enter the national lexicon?

Recently, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was referred to as a “fixer” by the national press. Similarly, the popular TV show Ray Donovan is about a “fixer”. As far as I can tell, the term “fixer” denotes any ostensibly legitimate person—usually a lawyer but sometimes a private investigator—who can be called upon to act a kind of bridge between the underworld and the legitimate world. His mission is (usually) to stifle some impending scandal or P.R. disaster. (In Cohen’s case, it was arranging the payment of hush-money to women who had had affairs with Donald Trump.)

Of course, there is nothing new about this concept of a “fixer”; only the name is new. In fact, any student of classic literature will recognize that on at least one occasion the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes played exactly the same role as Michael Cohen (albeit with a just a bit more intelligence and wit).

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1892 short story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes is approached by a mysterious masked man who has a bit of…well…woman trouble. The mystery man is clearly a royal person of some kind, desperate to preserve both his identity and his reputation. His trouble involves a singularly formidable woman named Irene Adler. Adler is herself a classic Doyle character—worthy of her own Wikipedia page—whose  impact on the Sherlock Holmes mythos has endured to the point that she is currently played by the luminous Rachel McAdams in the recent Robert Downey Jr. films).

Watson, the story’s narrator, begins the tale by describing Adler in almost hagiographic prose: “To Sherlock Holmes she is always THE woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.”

Indeed, Holmes has vastly more regard for Adler than the mystery man himself, who, we learn, had once been in love with her (or, at least, in lust) but now sees her mainly as a threat to his political future. (He’s engaged to a chick from a super-conservative royal family that would, presumably, take a dim view of his wild youth.) Even so, despite the man’s obvious narcissism and sense of entitlement (sound familiar???), Holmes eagerly takes on the job of “fixer”. In one brilliant passage, he even explains the numerous trivial ways the man can simply lie his way out of the scandal…

“…Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote her some compromising letters, and is now desirous of getting those letters back.”

“Precisely so. But how—”

“Was there a secret marriage?”

“None.”

“No legal papers or certificates?”

“None.”

“Then I fail to follow your Majesty. If this young person should produce her letters for blackmailing or other purposes, how is she to prove their authenticity?”

“There is the writing.”

“Pooh, pooh! Forgery.”

“My private note-paper.”

“Stolen.”

“My own seal.”

“Imitated.”

“My photograph.”

“Bought.”

“We were both in the photograph.”

“Oh, dear! That is very bad! Your Majesty has indeed committed an indiscretion.”

(Any aspiring writer would do well to note the speed and tautness of the dialogue in this exchange.)

It’s only when Holmes realizes that the usual, run-of-the-mill evasions (i.e., lying one’s ass off) won’t do in this case that he shifts to more nefarious methods. He concocts an elaborate plan to break into Adler’s house and locate the comprising photographs. (I like to think that they pictures are of herself and he mystery man in the nude, but that’s probably just my perverted modern sensibility.) One of the delicious ironies of the story is that Adler, herself an actress, is to be deceived by a complicated con-job. That is, by men acting out detailed roles (including Holmes and Watson themselves).

The fact that Holmes’ plan works—almost—is a testament to his own abilities, rather than to any weakness on Adler’s part. At the last moment, she sees through Holmes’s ruse and manages to keep the photos. In this way, her legacy as a great Holmesian character is preserved.

And that’s not the only thing that is preserved. In an even stranger way, the precocious progressivism of the story is also preserved. For, as it turns out, Holmes is not only a fixer. He’s a feminist.

This is a vexed kind of feminism, surely. Adler’s right to tell the truth about her sexual history is, after all, utterly dismissed by all three male characters—Holmes, the mystery man, and Watson. Indeed, it is never even considered. Nonetheless, Doyle demonstrates a kind of proto-feminism in the admiration that the male characters share for Adler’s determination and intelligence.  (“I wish she had been of my own station!” the masked man declares. “What a queen she would have made!”)

This admiration is confirmed by the end of the story, when Adler, having outwitted Holmes, promises to keep the photographs secret. She isn’t looking for revenge anymore because she’s just gotten married to a man she loves and trusts. And so, the conflict of the story is resolved in a way that is both flattering to Adler’s character and yet still acceptable to the chauvinism of late 19^th Century England. The scarlet woman (Adler) wins the battle of wits, but only after she has been legitimized (“tamed”) by the sacrament of marriage to an honest Edwardian male.

But then comes another twist—not in plot, but in emotion. When the masked man finally reveals himself as the King of Bohemia, Holmes is unimpressed. A social outsider himself (like Adler), Holmes is indifferent to the norms and biases of the patriarchy. And, when the King again expresses regret that Adler had not been of a marriageable class, Holmes sardonically agrees: “From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty.”