An Interview with Irene Adler Norton

Based on "A Scandal in Bohemia" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A One-Act Play by Thomas Campbell
The Baker Street Interviews, Volume 1
​www.SherlockHolmesSociety.com

NARRATOR

Ladies and gentlemen, what you are about to witness is a most singular event. You will know, if you are at all familiar with the remarkable chronicles of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that there is one person whom the great detective has always referred to as simply "the woman" — as though no other woman existed in all the wide world. That person is Irene Adler, formerly of the State of New Jersey in America, formerly of the great opera houses of Milan and Warsaw, and until very recently the occupant of Briony Lodge in Serpentine Avenue, St. John's Wood, London. She has returned briefly from the Continent, where she now resides with her husband, the lawyer Mr. Godfrey Norton of the Inner Temple. She has graciously consented to speak today with Mr. Herbert Greenhough Smith, editor of The Strand Magazine, who has taken a particular interest in the curious affair which Dr. John H. Watson has set down for the reading public under the title of "A Scandal in Bohemia." I ask only that you listen carefully — for the woman who bested Sherlock Holmes is not a person one encounters every day. What follows is their conversation, offered here for your edification and, perhaps, your amusement.

SMITH

Mrs. Norton — I confess I was not entirely certain you would agree to see me. I am most grateful that you did.

IRENE ADLER NORTON

​Mrs. Norton, yes — though I find that London persists in calling me Miss Adler, as though the name had followed me home from the Continent like a stray cat. Please sit down, Mr. Smith. I did not come all this way to stand on ceremony.

SMITH

​Then let us begin, if I may, at the beginning. Dr. Watson's published account tells us that a certain gentleman — referred to in the narrative as the King of Bohemia — came to Mr. Holmes seeking the recovery of a photograph. A rather compromising photograph.