Story Title: “The Adventure of the Walk-Out Wardrobe”
Book Title: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not
Author: Julie Ditrich
Editors: Christopher Sequeira
Book Genre: Crime / Detective
Story Genre: Crime / Occult Mystery
Book Description: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not is an imaginative anthology that asks one intriguing question: what if Sherlock Holmes partnered not with Dr Watson, but with another famous doctor from history or fiction? Bringing together Australian and international authors, the collection explores unexpected collaborations, fresh mysteries, and inventive twists on the world’s greatest consulting detective.

Story Synopsis: Sherlock Holmes is summoned to investigate a baffling death at a country estate where an unconscious young woman, a mysterious corpse, and a locked wardrobe conceal far more than an ordinary crime. Working alongside the little-known physician Dr Theodore William Moriarty—a doctor whose understanding of the world extends beyond Holmes’s uncompromising logic—the great detective finds his powers of deduction challenged in unexpected ways. As reason and intuition collide, Holmes must decide whether every mystery can be explained by observation alone… or whether some truths lie just beyond the limits of rational thought.

The Story Behind the Story: When editor Christopher Sequeira invited me to contribute to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Was Not, the premise was irresistible: if Sherlock Holmes were to investigate a mystery alongside another famous doctor from history or fiction—someone other than Dr Watson—who would it be?

My answer was an unexpected one. Rather than choosing another fictional detective or celebrated physician, I introduced readers to the little-known Irish doctor Theodore Moriarty, whose ideas would later influence the British occultist Dion Fortune. Pairing the world’s greatest champion of logic with a man whose thinking embraced medicine, mysticism and the unseen created exactly the creative conversation I wanted to explore.

To bring the story to life, I chose to set it during Sherlock Holmes’ retirement, using Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s own home, Undershaw, as the backdrop. Research once again became an essential companion, leading me through Victorian pharmacology, Masonic history, costume, social customs and Conan Doyle’s life, all while ensuring Holmes’ voice remained authentic to his creator.

What fascinated me most was not simply solving the murder, but allowing two very different ways of understanding the world to work together. Holmes trusted observation, evidence and deduction. Dr Moriarty remained open to medicine, symbolism and possibilities that lay beyond conventional explanation. Rather than placing those perspectives in opposition, I wanted to explore how they might complement one another. To me, that is one of speculative fiction’s greatest strengths. It allows seemingly incompatible ideas to share the same page and invites us to imagine what might happen if both contained part of the truth.

Looking back, “The Adventure of the Walk-Out Wardrobe” reminds me that curiosity takes many forms. Sometimes the most compelling mysteries are not solved by choosing between reason and imagination, but by recognising that each can illuminate what the other cannot see.