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“But it’s a mammoth collection and it’s by no means certain that Portsmouth libraries can house it properly. Richard’s will stipulated that if this proves to be the case the collection should go to Edinburgh.”

Even without the collection, the National Library should establish a Conan Doyle room, Edwards believes, but any hopes of buying other Holmes memorabilia may be thwarted by a buoyant market, with prices inflated by American money.

“All we could afford at the Christie’s auction was a set of Sherlock cigarette cards,” says Elaine Greig of the Edinburgh Writer’s Museum. “Added to all this, several Sherlockians believe that, historically, Conan Doyle’s background did him few favours in being taken to Edinburgh’s collective bosom, on account of his Irish ancestry and the fact that his father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was committed to an asylum for chronic alcoholism.”

The singular nature of the Conan Doyle clan continues to affect the relationship even into the present day, to whit the Strange Affair of the Missing Manuscript. When Conan Doyle’s last surviving offspring, his daughter Dame Jean Bromet, died in 1997 she bequeathed manuscripts to various bodies: the British Library, Portsmouth libraries and an institution in Edinburgh, which was widely assumed to be the National Library.

Conan Doyle’s daughter-in-law Anna had died in 1990 and owned the remainder of the author’s papers. These made up the infamous Christie’s sale in May. It was the belief of Lancelyn Green, however, that Dame Jean’s papers had somehow become incorporated illegitimately into Anna’s papers, rendering the Christie’s sale fraudulent. “We certainly tried for some while to get an idea from the Conan Doyle estate whether we would benefit,” says Dr Murray Simpson of the National Library, “but got no response.”

In the final weeks of his life, Lancelyn Green became so distraught by the prospect of the auction that close friends grew concerned for his mental stability.

On March 27, Lancelyn Green was found dead in his bed, surrounded by cuddly toys. He had been strangled with a shoelace, tied round a wooden spoon to pull it tighter. The coroner, himself a Sherlock buff who had heard a mock inquiry for the Sherlock Holmes Society in 1994, noted that self-garrotting was an unusual and agonising way to kill oneself but delivered an open verdict. This was considered by some Sherlockians an implicit acknowledgement that Lancelyn Green had been murdered, or certainly that the idea he had killed himself with a shoelace was deeply questionable.

“Nonsense,” says Scirard Lancelyn Green, Richard’s brother. “An open verdict is delivered when there is no suicide note, as in this case. The family think of him now as a David Kelly figure, the foremost expert in a field, one who would rather die than have his reputation besmirched.”

The figure at the heart of most Conan Doyle controversies in recent years is Foley, vendor of the controversial Christie’s material. A 49-year-old sound engineer based in Brighton, Foley is heartily sick of “being painted as the villain of the piece” by those in the Lancelyn Green camp and says he is finally ready to put the record straight.

Regarding the legitimacy of the sale, Foley claims he has heard from “a very reliable source” that Lancelyn Green privately withdrew his objections to the auction in the days before his death and was happy to let it go ahead. As for its necessity, he reveals he has been suffering an as-yet undiagnosed medical complaint for a number of years which has impeded his working.

“The money coming in from the sale of the papers has proven to be a lifeline at this time,” he says. “I couldn’t have got by without it. It’s a shame to sell the papers but plenty have gone into public collections too. The nation hasn’t lost out in the slightest. The British Library knew months ahead of the auction what was going up for sale and had it made a private offer we would have given it every consideration.”

The experience of being Conan Doyle’s executor has been “nightmarish”, he says, comprising ceaseless attempts to defend their copyright on material already published. This work has been completed, he adds, while revealing that the manuscript of a Sherlock Holmes story will be gifted to an unnamed Edinburgh institution in the autumn: “It’s been quite a job choosing the best home for it,” he says. “Contrary to what the Doyleans think, I take my duties seriously, hellish though they sometimes are.”

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