Arthur Conan Doyle's original 'illustrious client' manuscript to be featured in London exhibition

The original manuscript of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's the late Holmes story "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client" will be displayed at a major new exhibition opening next month at the Museum of London.

Fans will finally be able to find out the true identity of the "illustrious client" of the title, the man who comes to ask Dr Watson and Holmes for discreet help, which was famously never revealed, the Guardian reported.

The manuscript was bequeathed to the Scottish nation in the will of Conan Doyle's daughter, yet was held in a vault at Coutts bank in London, out of public view, for many years while Scottish museums vied for the honour of displaying it.

After the author's death in 1930, the manuscript was inherited by his daughter, Dame Jean Conan Doyle (Lady Bromet), who died at the age of 84 in 1997. One of the terms of her will was that a Holmes manuscript from her collection should be chosen by her executor and given to, in her lawyer's words, "a museum in Edinburgh".

Written in 1924, and published in 1927, the story tells how the sleuth saved a young Englishwoman from a potentially deadly marriage. It appeared in the last Holmes compilation, containing 12 short stories, entitled The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

The curator of the new Sherlock Holmes exhibition, Alex Werner, said that "The Illustrious Client" story is important as it plays to one of the central themes of the exhibition - that Sherlock Holmes is immortal and all attempts to kill him fail and the manuscript reveals a violent attempt to kill Sherlock Holmes, while Dr Watson learns of the 'murderous attack' from a newspaper placard near Charing Cross station.