Baker Street Confidential: Trollheart's Most Singular Sherlock Holmes Journal

[Trollheart]

There can't be anyone over the age of let's say ten years in the world who does not know the name Sherlock Holmes. The world's first consulting detective, created in the nineteenth century by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, has become the archetypal figure of the analytical investigator, who has influenced not only future fictional detectives but also those in the real world. At a time when the likes of fingerprint evidence, crime scene investigation and body language were all but unknown to the police, Doyle's canny detective used these methods to form his own way of gathering clues and solving mysteries, usually crimes. There's no question that many of the techniques employed by Sherlock Holmes are now used by police forces and private investigators all over the world. He has, almost literally, changed the face of detective work.

Over the course of nearly 150 years, Doyle's stories have been reprinted, republished and collected in various volumes, with some writers even trying to compose their own stories featuring the famous detective. Holmes and his faithful sidekick Dr. Watson have made the transition from the printed page to the stage, then on to the silver screen and finally to the small screen. Doyle's stories are timeless, though of course dated by the period in which they were written and set; some writers have tried to update Holmes for the twentieth or even twenty-first century, with varying degrees of success, and his character has entered the normal parlance of human culture, which such phrases as "Elementary" and "No shit, Sherlock" commonplace, as well as one of the highest accolades for any inquiring person being to compare them to Holmes. Proof of his enduring popularity can be seen in the fact that not one, but two TV series run in the twenty-first century almost concurrently, and new movies about him are coming out all the time. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may have at one time wished to - tried to - kill off his greatest creation, but in that strange quirk that often afflicts writers, he found that his character was stronger and more powerful than he, and that public opinion would not allow him to die. And so, in the greatest traditions of the greatest fictional characters, and like many of those of his contemporary Dickens, Doyle's literary nemesis, Sherlock Holmes, has become immortal.

For a long time, I had never read a single Holmes story. Oh, I knew the basic idea behind "The Hound of the Baskervilles", and I'd seen (but not watched) movies based on other of his adventures such as "The Sign of the Four" and "A Study in Scarlet", but I had never picked up any of Doyle's books until about fifteen years ago. Having run out of things to read for Karen, I happened to see a large hardback copy of The Collected Sherlock Holmes and suggested that. We began to read it and both found it fascinating, going through the whole thing in a relatively short time. At this stage I would say we have read all the Holmes stories and novels about three times, and at the time of writing this are embarking on a fourth read, which is why this seems like the time to begin this journal.

I've been thinking about doing this for some while now, but there's not a lot of point in my just writing about the stories and leaving it at that. Hell, you know me better by now: I don't do things by halves. So here's what I intend to do. I'll be looking at each of the stories - including he novels - giving a short synopsis (no I promise! It will be short) and laying out the specifics of each case, who the main players are, how the crime/mystery unfolded and how it was solved. I'll then be writing my comments, observations and insights on each.

For those who have never read any of the stories, but have often wished to, while I would not be so arrogant as to present this as a definitive guide to Sherlock Holmes (I'm sure there are far greater ones, by writers whose inkwell I am not fit to refill, or something) it should, when complete, give anyone who has not read the stories enough information about them to be able to confidently discuss them, and hopefully pique their interest enough to perhaps seek the actual stories out. For those who have read them, I welcome your comments and am happy to have a discussion with anyone on any subject pertaining to Holmes. I'm also, as ever, ready to learn new things about him.

So come on: there's a hansom drawing up out in the street, and the weather is foul, so wrap up warm. Slip your service revolver into your pocket, as I fear there may be dirty work before the night is done. But London needs us, and Sherlock Holmes was never a man to shirk his responsibility when it came to bringing the guilty to justice and saving the innocent from the rope.

Quickly now. The game's afoot!

[Trollheart]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: A quick profile

Before we get going, a few facts about the man who created the world's most famous detective. I'm not going into all the details of his life - there are plenty of biographies around you can pick up, and they're well worth reading. But there are a few small points I didn't realise about Doyle which I just want to note here.

First, I was always under the impression that he was knighted for his literary work. Not so. It appears the "Sir" in his name is for military service. I suppose when even so legendary a writer as Charles Dickens was not knighted for his literature - and if anyone deserved the honour surely it was he - perhaps it's naive to think that Doyle would be afforded the distinction.

Second, again I always assumed that Doyle came from a police background, or some sort of scientific analytical one, and again, wrong. He pursued a career in medicine (hence, presumably, the character of Watson, who might be assumed to be a self-portrait) and did travel widely, being engaged as a ship's surgeon. But his model for Holmes seems to have been one of his university teachers, a Joseph Bell, whose keen mind and logical methods Doyle imbued his most famous character with.

Third, I did not know that he played amateur sleuth himself in two cold cases, in 1907 and 1908, proving the innocence of and overturning the convictions of both parties, and indirectly helping to have the Court of Criminal Appeal set up.

What I did know, and you probably do also, but it's worth mentioning, is that in 1891, five years after Sherlock Holmes had become a literary celebrity and assured him of a lucrative career, Doyle considered knocking him off, wishing to concentrate on his historical novels. His mother, incensed at the idea, begged him not to. But he did anyway, writing what was to be the detective's last case in 1893, appropriately titled "The Final Problem." He literally killed the sleuth, and intended him to stay dead. But his public - or perhaps it might be more accurate, if crazy, to say, Holmes's public - would not stand for it, and a campaign to have the world's favourite detective resurrected was acquiesced to when he wrote, in 1901, what was to become his most famous and enduring Holmes story, "The Hound of the Baskervilles." This novel though, did not explain how Holmes had escaped death in "The Final Problem", and so it was necessary to write "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", which came out in 1905 and in fact ended up being literally the detective's triumphant return as it led to another twelve stories featuring him and Watson.

I did find out, through reading his biography, that Doyle was into spiritualism, or what was at the time called mesmerism, which is odd really when you consider how coldly logical and grounded Sherlock Holmes is, never trusting to any sort of supernatural intervention in his cases, even when it seems some devilish agency must be at work in "The Hound of the Baskervilles." I suppose that might have been Doyle's "I am not Spock!" declaration, an attempt to separate the writer from the character, to show he was different to Holmes. The famous resident of 221B Baker Street may have placed no faith in the spirit world, but his creator did.

Let's, before we get going though, explode a few popular myths.

The phrase so often used as Holmes' catchphrase, "Elementary, my dear Watson" is never used in any of Doyle's writings. Rather like "Play it again Sam" and "Beam me up Scotty" it has attained a life of its own, and was somewhat surprising to me to discover that it does not appear, but it does not. The word elementary is used, though not that often, but never in that sentence with the same words.

In the books and stories, Holmes is never mentioned as wearing the headgear which has become synonymous with him, the deerstalker, and his cape. This was an affectation practised by the first man to play him on stage, William Gilette, as was the pipe which is now associated with him. Though Doyle has Holmes smoke a pipe, he never refers to it as the type known as calabash, but through Gilette's portrayal of him, this is now the image we have of the detective's pipe.

Although Professor Moriarty is known to be Holmes' diabolical nemesis, he only appears in one story, the one supposed to have been the last, and so titled "The Final Question." His appearance in, and control of London's underground is back-referenced by Holmes in order to really you'd have to say shoe-horn him in as a valiant adversary for Holmes, one Doyle obviously believed worthy of defeating the great detective.

[Guybrush]

Cool I've read a bit of Sherlock, but it's years and years ago. I'm looking forward to having my memory jogged and I enjoyed reading your Arthur Conan Doyle trivia.

Very good, old chap.

[Janszoon]

A couple years ago I listened to the complete Sherlock read by Stephen Fry, which was fantastic. For anyone interesting in following along via audiobook I can't recommend that set highly enough.

[Trollheart]

Title: "A Study in Scarlet"
Year first published: 1887
Type: Novel
Chronology: First Sherlock Holmes story; one of four full-length novels and 56 short stories
Location(s): (Very briefly) Maiwand, Afghanistan; Peshiwar; University of London; Portsmouth; The Strand Hotel; The Criterion Bar; The Holborn; Baker Street; Audley Court; Duncan Street, Houndsditch; Charpentiers Boarding House, Torquay Terrace; The Sierra Blanco (USA); Salt Lake City, Utah; St. Petersburg; Paris; Copenhagen; Camberwell; Waterloo Bridge; York University
Date: March 4 1881 (?)
The crime or the mystery: Murder
Particulars of the crime or mystery: Method of murder unknown until the arrival of Sherlock Holmes, then found to be poison administered. No forced entry, no evidence of robbery, no marks on body, no blood. (Drebber) Found stabbed to death in his hotel room (Stangerson)
Scene(s) of the crime or mystery: 3 Lauriston Gardens, off the Brixton Road, a deserted empty house (Drebber); Halliday's Private Hotel (Stangerson)
Date(s) of the crime(s) or mystery: March 4, March 5
The time (if given): 2 AM (discovery); 6 AM


The Players
The Client: None
The victim(s): Enoch J. Drebber, an American and later Joseph Stangerson, also American
The accused or suspected: Athur Charpentier
The arrested: Arthur Charpentier
The investigating officer(s): Inspector Tobias Gregson, Inspector Lestrade (Peripherally) PC John Rance, who unfortunately had the culprit that night but had let him go, believing him to be a mere drunkard.
The advocate(s):None
The real culprit(s): Jefferson Hope, Lucy Ferrier's sweetheart
Others: Mrs. Sawyer, an old woman (really a man in disguise) who answers Holmes' advertisement about the lost ring and collects it from Watson; Wiggins, leader of the "Baker Street Irregulars"; Madame Charpentier, owner of the boarding house where Drebber stayed; Alice Charpentier, her daughter, Arthur's sister; John Ferrier, an American survivor of a pioneer wagon; Lucy Ferrier, the only other survivor, his adopted daughter, forced into marriage with Drebber after John's death; Brigham Young, leader of the Mormons

The clues: Hansom cab wheel tracks outside the house, a woman's wedding ring, a box of pills, a telegram saying "J.H. is in Europe" (unsigned)
The red herring(s)*: The word RACHE scrawled in blood on the wall. Lestrade thinks it's part of a name - Rachel - at which Holmes grins and tells him it is the German word for revenge. But it's all a blind anyway and has nothing to do with the murder.

The argument between Drebber and Arthur Charpentier, and the pursuit of the former by the latter, cudgel in hand.


The breakthrough: Holmes lays his hand on the murderer when he realises he is a cabman and sends for him
The result: The murderer confesses but dies of a heart condition before he can be brought to trial. See the synopsis below for the full story behind his crimes.

* Unlike in other journals, the term "red herrings" does not refer to the text/story, as in, elements that seem to have no bearing on the plot. Rather, they are things upon which the police fasten as being important, as being clues, when they either have nothing to do with the crime/mystery or are missteps which set them on the wrong path and line of thinking. This may lead to false arrests, accusations or just leads that go nowhere.

How the case is solved

Having determined that two men were in the empty house, that one is now absent and that Drebber was poisoned, and that both arrived in a cab, and further, having telegraphed to Cleveland and found that Drebber had taken out a protective order against Jefferson Hope, Holmes has all the pieces, and has only to fit them together. When he comes into possession of the tablets left in Stangerson's room, he has the final link in his chain. He realises Hope must have driven Drebber to the murder scene, and therefore must be working as a cab driver.

Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:
That Watson has recently been in Afghanistan; That the caller who brings the news from Gregson about the crime is a retired marine sergeant.

Before the case

A short note as to what Holmes and Watson were doing before the case was brought to them, or before Holmes brought the case to Watson. What were they talking about? Where were they (almost always Baker Street of course)? What were they doing? Did what they were doing or talking about have any bearing on the case?

This being the first meeting of the two, there is no "before the case" as such, but before the telegram from Lestrade arrives Watson has been reading Holmes' article on the science of deduction through observation (unaware that he is the author) and arguing with him over it. This leads of course to the first examples of Holmes' incisive deductions, which take his friend by surprise and have him grudgingly admit that he may have been wrong in his assessment of the man.

Synopsis:

Having spent time in Afghanistan as an army doctor during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, John Watson returns to England, carrying an injured left arm. With most of his comrades dead or still in Afghanistan, he has nobody to come back to and having been away for some years has no house, so he goes looking for lodgings. A friend of his puts him in touch with a Sherlock Holmes, who is in the same situation as him and is looking for someone to share apartments he has found but cannot afford on his own. And so a legendary partnership is born. Intrigued by Holmes' (he will never, despite what will become as deep a friendship as any between two people, call him by his first name, nor will anyone except one person) assertion that he can divine details of people from pure observation of their dress, their walk, their face, he puts this claim to the test and is astounded as Holmes proceeds to show how it is done. It all seems very simple, but then so is anything once you've been shown  how.

After some time in their new apartments in 221B Baker Street, it becomes apparent that Holmes is using the place as an office of sorts; seeing people who appear to need his help, including a police inspector known as Lestrade. For these consultations, iniitally, Holmes requests the room so that he and his clients can have privacy, but when a letter arrives for him and he reads it in Watson's presence, he takes the doctor into his confidence, as he will do from now on. The letter is from another police inspector, by the name of Gregson, who requests his assistance in an unexplained murder.

Asking Watson to accompany him, Holmes sets off for the place, which turns out to be a deserted, empty house. A man lies dead inside, no mark on him, no blood except the word RACHE written on the wall. Although Lestrade - who uncovers the word - gleefully pins all his hopes on this, believing it to be the uncompleted name Rachel, Holmes dismisses it, remarking that it is in fact the German word for revenge, but is unimportant, an attempt by the murderer to throw them off the scent. Murderer? Yes, Holmes confirms grimly, this man was indeed murdered. When the two  police officers ask how, he says it was poison.

The man has been identified as Enoch J. Drebber, an American from Cleveland, Ohio, and a wedding ring is discovered at the scene. Both inspectors believe this points to the involvement of a woman (Lestrade probably privately still thinks this may be this Rachel) but Holmes is silent on the matter. He does what Watson will come to recognise as his usual thorough job of examining everything, inside the house and out, but says little. Holmes asks to speak to the constable (uniformed police officer) who discovered the body, and when they go to see PC John Rance Holmes is frustrated to hear that the constable had the murderer, or someone highly connected with it, in his hands, but let him go as he thought he was just a drunk. The canny detective though realises the man was just feigning being the worse for drink, and is angry that he is now in the wind.

He puts an advertisement in the local papers, advising of the finding of the wedding ring and asking if someone lost it to please call to Baker Street, then returns home with Watson. The next day they have a visit from an old woman, who agrees the ring is hers, and it is duly handed over. Holmes follows her, but she vanishes, having taken a cab, and he realises in annoyance that the old woman was in fact a young man in disguise, no doubt a confederate of the killer.  He send his small army of "street arabs", as they called them in the nineteenth century - basically urchins, small lads similar perhaps to Fagin's army of children in Oliver Twist, you know the kind of thing - on some errand. Annoyed when he is given the slip, Holmes is somewhat more amused when Inspector Gregson turns up, claiming to have solved the crime. He has someone in custody, and is convinced he is their man. Having obtained the address of the dead man's hatter from his hat, which was beside his body, he went there and got from the man Drebber's address. He then visited the boarding house where Drebber was staying, found out that the landlady there had a dispute with him over his unwanted attentions towards her daughter, and that her brother had gone after him. He has jumped to the conclusion that Arthur Charpentier therefore is the murderer. Holmes privately tuts and shakes his head: he knows that often the simplest and most obvious solution is rarely the right one, but it gives him some satisfaction to see the police blunder about on the wrong trail.

The wrong trail indeed. A short while later Lestrade rushes in, to bring them the news that Drebber's secretary, Joseph Stangerson, has also been murdered. So it could not have been Charpentier after all, at least, the second murder could not have been carried out by him. Gregson is crestfallen as his neatly-tied-up case bursts apart, but Holmes brightens when he hears what Lestrade considers unimportant information about the other murder, that there was in the dead man's room a box of pills. When he hears of an unsigned telegram found in Stangerson's pocket which reads "J. H. is in Europe", he snaps his fingers, says he has solved the case. Both men look at him as if he is mad. Watson, at this point, is not prepared to disagree; how can such a complicated murder - two now - with so few clues and no suspect, given that Charpentier must now be discounted - be solved so easily?

Holmes takes the tablets from Lestrade and feeds them to the landlady's dog, which is near death and which she had wished put down. The first tablet has no effect on the animal, and Holmes is annoyed, baffled, and a little embarrassed as the two detectives look at each other, possibly making circular motions at their temples with their fingers. Then he has it. He feeds the dog another tablet from the box and it quietly expires. He has been vindicated: the box has two types of tablet, one poison, one not. A short moment later WIggins, the head of his street Arabs comes up to say they have him. Holmes asks the boy to show him up, and when a man appears and Holmes directs him to pick up his luggage, it's only the work of seconds for him to clap handcuffs on the man. A furious struggle ensues, but between Lestrade, Holmes and Gregson they overpower the man, and when he sees fighting is useless he subsides.

"Gentlemen," says Holmes grandly, "let me introduce you to Mr. Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Enoch J. Drebber, and of Joseph Stangerson!"

Hope admits his guilt, but requests a chance to tell his story, which takes us back to his youth in the USA, where he met the beautiful Lucy Ferrier, who, with her adopted father John, were the only survivors of a wagon train and who were saved from death in the desert by a travelling band of Mormons, heading for Salt Lake City. Under the terms of the Mormon religion, Lucy was to be married to one of the sons of the two leaders, but her father knew them both to be horrible men, and that Lucy was already in love with a young rancher called Jefferson Hope, so he played for time until Hope could be contacted, then they all stole away together.

But the Mormons were not about to be cheated, and rode in pursuit. As Hope went off to hunt for some game so that they would not starve, John was shot and killed and Lucy taken back and forced to marry Enoch Drebber, the worst of the two. It later emerged that the pair played cards for her, and Drebber won her. She did not last long, pining away and dying soon afterwards, to the no great concern of her brutal new husband. Unable to take his revenge, Hope rode into the camp where Lucy's funeral was taking place and removed the wedding ring from her finger and rode off. He watched for his chance, following the two of them when they left America, across Europe, until finally he tracked them down in London, where he killed Drebber by forcing him to take a poison pill, or at least to choose between the safe one and the deadly one, and then knifed Stangerson to death.

There will however be no trial, as Hope is close to death: he has a heart condition, and will not last long. In fact he dies in his cell a few days later.

After the case

The epilogue here is quite short, and speaks of the by now inevitable death of Jefferson Hope, who passes away before he can stand trial for the double murder. Holmes explains his train of reasoning to a marvelling Watson.

Comments

To state the obvious, for a first novel this is nothing short of stunning. And brave. It wasn't his first writing of course - he had had some short stories published in magazines in the years prior, like any aspiring author of the time - but it was his first full-length novel. To take on a powerful religion like Mormonism was incredibly brave of him, though I read that later he made some apologies and detractions, claiming that he had been misled by various books he had read on the subject. Still, much of what he wrote was the truth: Mormons practised (still do) polygamy and they guard their secrets closely. Whether they are or were the murderous vengeful cult of which he writes here or not is something I don't know, but even suggesting they were, in a work of fiction, must have earned him some hatred across the water.

I didn't realise that Brigham Young, the leader of the Mormons in the book, who decrees Lucy's marriage to one or other of the elders' sons, was a real figure, the second president in fact of the Mormons. That might have been a step too far: if he had used a fictional name, maybe he would not have insulted the Mormons so deeply. At any rate, the novel is well-spaced, taking place across two continents and over a period of maybe forty or fifty years, given Hope Jefferson's narrative. It's the first I've seen where the mystery is conclusively solved, but then there's still about two-thirds of the book to go. When I read it recently I assumed when Holmes laid hands on Jefferson that we were near the end, but it was in fact just beginning.

It also has very few characters, for a novel: really there are only seven (excluding Holmes and Watson), eight if you include Arthur Charpentier. There are others, of course, but they're very minor and ancillary, and the only ones really involved deeply in the story are Lestrade and Gregson, Jefferson, Drebber, Stangerson, Lucy and John Ferrier. Everyone else is more or less incidental. It of course establishes quickly the character of Sherlock Holmes and some of that of Dr. Watson, though we learn more about him as the stories unfold over the next ten years or so. It's possibly one of the few - though not the only - in which the murderer is  treated with a good degree of sympathy, and the victims with none. We feel both earned their fate, and deserved to die. Even so, Hope is not allowed to get away with his crime but is not punished by any agency on this Earth.

It's also a novel peopled largely by ghosts. John Ferrier, Lucy, Drebber and Stangerson are all dead by the time the story begins, but the spirit of the first two hangs heavy over the plot, driving Jefferson Hope on to revenge. In one way, I suppose, it teaches a poor lesson, that revenge is a thing worth pursuing, but then at the same time it could be said that Hope's lust for revenge does for him, as perhaps he pushes himself too hard in pursuit of his quarry, and puts too much strain on his heart. In the end, perhaps, the old adage rings true: if you seek revenge, dig two graves. One for your victim, and one for yourself. The surname is surely well chosen, as the man's hope that he would live happily with Lucy is gone, and now his  only remaining hope is to avenge himself on her killers.

It can be said too that technically speaking neither Stangerson nor Drebber killed Lucy: she died of natural causes. But it was a death of the heart, a death of the soul, a death of hope that finished her. When she was forced to marry the brutish Drebber, she knew there was nothing left for her in life. One of them surely did kill her father though - it must have been Stangerson, as Drebber blubbed it was not him, though then again he would say that, wouldn't he? So at least one is guilty of murder. Nevertheless, the murder being avenged by hope is really that of Lucy, for Drebber driving her to the despair he did. There's not an ounce of sympathy afforded by Doyle to either of the men, nor I believe should there be: even when Lucy dies Drebber just shrugs; he has many other wives. There was no love there, just lust.

A Study in Scarlet was not the instant success it should have been, with hindsight. Doyle received many rejections before being paid the paltry sum of £25 (about £3,000 today) for the story and all rights to it, and it was published first in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887 to universal disinterest before being published as an actual novel the next year. The novel also begins the practice of the recounting of Holmes' adventures by Watson, who becomes his chronicler or his biographer, so that all the stories are told in the first person, narrated by the doctor with Holmes spoken of in the third person, I think a relatively unique situation in fiction, not only crime fiction.

[Trollheart]

Better Than You

Holmes from the first has a healthy disdain for police practices and the competence of the force. Given that the Metropolitan Police had only been formed in 1829, a mere fifty years before the publication of A Study in Scarlet, that's perhaps unfair but also understandable. Standard practices of which we're aware today - identity parades, fingerprinting, crime scene analysis - were largely unknown and not in use at the time, so Holmes' methods would have seemed unorthodox to Scotland Yard. Nevertheless, almost always, his way of investigating the crimes, the paths he takes and the clues he follows, turn out to be the right ones. Here I'll be recording where he shows up Scotland Yard, though be to totally fair to him, he never publicly humiliates or badmouths them, and always gives the investigating officer the credit, wanting none himself.

He has the measure of both inspectors here. Lestrade thinks he has uncovered an important clue when he discovers the word RACHE on the wall at Lauriston Gardens whereas Holmes knows it's an attempt by the murderer to try to wrong-foot the police.

He determines the method of Enoch Drebber's murder, when the police have no clue, given that there are no marks on the body and no blood to be found.

When Gregson announces proudly that he has broken the case by arresting Arthur Charpentier, he knows that the man is not guilty. This is confirmed shortly afterwards when, with their main suspect in custody, another murder takes place.

He sees the value and significance of the pills and the telegram, both of which mean nothing to either Gregson or Lestrade, and is able to use them to bring the case to a close.

Character Study

Here I'll be looking into each of the main (only) characters, with the exception of Holmes and Watson, and give my assessment of them.

Inspector Tobias Gregson: A man who intends to go places; ready to impress his superiors but perhaps too quick to come to conclusions without all the facts, and take the first and most obvious solution he sees. Sort of a precursor to today's idea of "get the case closed, I don't care how." Gregson here enjoys a rivalry with his opposite number, Inspector Lestrade, however it is the latter who triumphs and returns in future Holmes stories, whereas Gregson is never heard from again.

Inspector Lestrade: Fated to be Holmes' sounding board, and whose career will benefit highly from the assistance - unofficial of course, and never reported - that Holmes gives him, Lestrade learns quickly that the consulting detective is the man to turn to when he is baffled by a case. Even so, there are times when his arrogance will lead him to discount Holmes' theories, which are almost always correct. Oddly, Lestrade does not rate a first name, though we have an initial - G - but that could stand for anything: George? Graham? Gregory? Gavin?

John Ferrier: One of only two survivors from a pioneer wagon train, and the only adult, Ferrier believes death is the only reward waiting for he and the child, but fate steps in and has the Mormons rescue them just as their food and water has run out. In retrospect, he might have thought it better had they perished on the high cliff face on which they were found. Ferrier agrees to abide by the Mormons' rules - though he refuses to marry, taking not even one wife when most of the Mormons have several, a resistance that rankles with the leader, Brigham Young - but when it comes time to sacrifice his daughter to either of the brutish sons of the Elders, he decides they can all go fuck themselves and with the help of Jefferson Hope escapes with her. He doesn't get far though, being shot by the pursuing Mormons and buried where he falls.

Lucy Ferrier: The child John Ferrier carries with him as the Mormons discover and rescue them. Lucy is not his child, but her parents are dead and so he adopts her, she taking his name. She grows up into a beautiful young lady and falls in love with rancher Jefferson Hope when she goes into the city. Their romance blossoms, but is threatened by the Elders' insistence that she marry within the cult. After John Ferrier is shot she is brought forcibly back and wed to Enoch Drebber, but with a broken heart she only lasts a month before she dies.

Jefferson Hope: Having fallen in love with Lucy and secured her father's permission to marry, he is determined to save them both from the Mormons, but while away hunting he comes back to find John dead and already buried. Hiding out in the hills, unable to take on all the Mormons, he hears of her death and goes down into the settlement, taking her wedding ring and vowing vengeance on the men who caused her death. He spends his life fulfilling this promise, and finally makes good just before he dies himself, from a heart condition. He admits to his crimes, proving Sherlock Holmes correct in his assumptions.

Enoch Drebber: Son of one of the powerful Holy Four of the Mormons, the Elders and leaders of the cult, he desires Lucy Ferrier for his wife. Well, truth to tell, she could have gone to his friend, Joseph Stangerson, but they played cards and he won her. Once he has her though, having witnessed the death of her father, he loses interest and when she dies he is not at all bothered. Later he breaks with the Mormons for unspecified reasons (perhaps he was interfering with the wives of others? He's that sort of prick) and flees America with Stangerson acting as his secretary. Jefferson Hope follows him, tracking the two across Europe until he finally runs them down in London. Picking him up as he emerges drunk out of Mrs. Charpentier's boarding house, he takes him to Lauriston Gardens, where he reveals his identity and forces Drebber to take one of two pills, the other of which he takes himself. He says Providence guides his hand, or maybe he's just lucky, but in either case Drebber takes the poison pill and dies. Hope leaves him there, where he is discovered by PC Rance, leading to the beginning of the mystery, while he goes off to kill Stangerson.

Joseph Stangerson: Another son of the Elders, he is Drebber's confederate, and indeed subordinate, working for him as his secretary. It seems likely he is the one who shot John Ferrier, though this is never confirmed. After he hears of the death of Drebber, and with a telegram in his pocket advising him that his pursuer is in Europe, he remains in his hotel, terrified to come out. But Hope gets in, and offers him the same choice he gave Drebber. Stangerson, however, takes matters into his own hands and goes for Hope, who then stable him through the heart.

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

After both Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson are found dead, the one poisoned, the other stabbed, Sherlock Holmes links the crimes to a cabby with the initials J.H., who turns out to be Jefferson Hope, tracking the two men from America after they were both responsible for the death of his sweetheart and her father. Before he can be brought to trial however, Hope dies of a heart condition.

Holmes' Hit List

This is where I will recount all the "collars" Holmes has racked up during his career, at least in the stories. The criminals he has caught or that the police have caught with his help. Only ones directly involved in the stories will be entered here; for instance, when he refers back to some case not recorded by Watson - "I remember the case of..." which involved a criminal he caught, this will not be noted.

Jefferson Hope

Total: 1
Running total: 1



The Holmes Body Count

Broken down into those in whose death Holmes or Watson have an active, accidental or deliberate hand in, those who die incidentally (victims, witnesses, police etc) and those who are mentioned as having died as a result of the case, even if that is before Holmes gets involved. I'm not blaming him for all these deaths, nor making any judgement; merely listing the number of people who die as the stories progress.

Direct refers to deaths Holmes either had a direct hand in, or that he caused by his presence.

Indirect refers to deaths which occur as a result of Holmes' investigation, but usually outside of his presence or control, for instance, someone Holmes is pursuing kills an accomplice to cover his tracks etc.

Incidental takes into account deaths NOT CONNECTED DIRECTLY TO THE CASE but which would most likely not have occurred had Holmes not been investigating. Bystanders, servants, girlfriends, that sort of thing.

Historical refer to deaths which occur as a result of the case but before it, for instance people killed in the events leading up to the case.

Direct: None yet
Indirect: 3 (Jefferson Hope, Stangerson and Drebber)
Incidental:
Historical: 2 (John and Lucy Ferrier)
Total: 5

Famous firsts

Obviously, this being the first time we meet the pair, there are quite a few.
First meeting of Holmes and Watson
First mention of Baker Street
First examples of Holmes' deductive methods
First connections of Holmes with Scotland Yard

Satisfied Customer(s)?

No customer as such so this would be a N/A.

Legal outcome (if any):

Arrest made but culprit dies before coming to trial.

[Trollheart]

Title: The Sign of the Four
Year first published: 1890
Type: Novel
Chronology: Second novel, second Holmes story
Location(s): Baker Street; The Lyceum Theatre, the Strand (in passing) Rochester Row, Vincent Square, Vauxhall Bridge Road, Wordsworth Road, Priory Road, Larkhall Lane, Stockwell Place, Robert Street, Cold Harbour Lane; Norwood; Pondicherry Lodge; Lower Camberwell; Lambeth; Millbank Penitentiary; India* - Muttra*, Agra*, Madras*; Andaman Islands*
Date: September 1888
The crime or the mystery: The disappearance of Captain Arthur Morstan and the appearance, over six years, of a pearl sent in a box every year to Miss Morstan anonymously. Also a note received the above date, asking her to meet someone who will give her information on her father's fate. The focus quickly shifts to that of a murder, but not of the father.
The time (if given): 11 PM (for the murder, or at least, the discovery of same)

(*in flashback; Small's story)


The Players
The client(s): Miss Mary Morstan
The victim(s): Bartholomew Sholto
The accused or suspected: Thaddeus Sholto, his brother
The arrested: Thaddeus Sholto. McMurdo, Lal Rao
The investigating officer(s): Inspector Athelney Jones
The advocate(s): Holmes and Watson. Mary Morstan
The real culprit(s): Jonathan Small and Tonga, an islander from the Andamans (a pygmy)
Others: Mrs. Bernstone, housekeeper at Pondicherry Lodge; McMurdo, the gatekeeper at the Lodge; Lal Rao, Indian servant at the Lodge; Sherman the taxidermist; Mrs. Cecil Forrester, with whom Miss Morstan lodges; Toby the dog; Mordecai Smith, boat owner; Mrs. Smith, his wife; Wiggins, leader of the Baker Street Irregulars

The clues: A poison dart, small footprints in Sholto's room, the note bearing the Sign of the Four
The red herring(s): None
The breakthrough: Holmes figures out where the Aurora has been hidden, and is lucky enough to be there when Smith comes calling for it.
The result: The treasure is lost, but Small is taken. Tonga is killed and Watson is engaged to Mary Morstan.
[b[]How the case is solved:[/b] Realising there have been two people in the room when Bartholomew Sholto was murdered, and seeing the name  Jonathan Small on the paper with the Sign of the Four on it, Holmes searches for the launch which he has determined is to take Small to a ship which will enable him to get out of the country. Having located it, he and the police chase it till they run the criminal down and take him in.

Famous Firsts

First mention of Holmes' use of cocaine
First mention of the monographs he has written
First "review" by Holmes of Watson's chronicling of his cases
First mention of Mrs. Hudson by name (in A Study in Scarlet she is just referred to as "the landlady")
First meeting of Watson with his soon-to-be wife
First time Holmes plays the violin
First participation in a case by Holmes of Inspector Athelney Jones


Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:

That Watson has been out to post a telegram

That the watch Watson hands him belonged to his brother, who had a bad life and  squandered his inheritance, fell into debt, out of which he occasionally rose. He was clumsy and careless, took to drink and has passed on.

Before the case

Watson is arguing with Holmes about the damage he is doing to his body and brain by taking cocaine. Holmes argues that he gets bored when there is no case, and this is his alternative. He lets Watson know about the monographs he has written, then he examines Watson's watch, whereupon Mary Morstan is shown in.

Synopsis:

Mary Morstan arrives to request Holmes' help. She has been receiving, for six years now, a pearl sent in a box, from an anonymous source. She has lost her father, whom she went to meet in London after he had returned from service in India, but he never turned up and she has not seen him from that day to this. She now has received a letter to ask her to meet a mysterious person who he says will tell her what happened to her father. She is allowed bring two friends, but no police, so Holmes and Watson accompany her to her meeting. In the cab she shows them a piece of paper she has found in her father's desk, marked with four crosses and the legend "The Sign of the Four - Jonathan Small, Mohammed Singh, Dost Akbar and Abdullah Khan." This means nothing to Holmes, though he notes it is written on Indian paper and was once pinned to a board, but has since been carried in a pocketbook.

On meeting the writer of the letter, they find it to be a small, nervous man called Thaddeus Sholto, who tells them that he and his brother Bartholemew are the sons of Major Sholto, who was in the same regiment as Miss Morstan's father. He further enlightens them that his own father had a terrible fear of men with wooden legs, and that he received a letter from India which shocked and frightened him so that he sickened and never recovered. The night he died he told his sons how Captain Morstan had died, of a heart attack after the two men had quarrelled about his share of what he called the Agra treasure. Fearful that he would be blamed for the man's death, he had his body buried and said nothing. The decision weighed heavily upon him for the rest of his life, and he now told his sons that he had wronged Mary Morstan and that half the Agra treasure was hers. He was about to reveal its location, when he spotted someone looking in the window and died of fright. The next morning the room had been turned over, and a piece of paper was found pinned to the dead man's chest with "The Sign of the Four" scrawled on it.

He says they must go to see his brother, Bartholomew, but when they get there they find to his distress and their worry that the man is dead, seemingly having been killed without anyone entering the room he is in. It's locked and the windows are closed. There is a poison dart in Bartholomew Sholto, and his brother additionally bemoans the theft of the Agra treasure. Holmes sends him to alert the police, while he figures out how the assassin got in. Fairly quickly he deduces it was through a hole in the roof, with no doubt a companion to lower him down and pull him back up with the aid of a rope. The footprints left by the companion are very small though, which sets the detective thinking.

Seeing that the footprint leads into some creosote, Holmes sets a dog on the companion's trail, but unfortunately all it does is lead them to a timber yard, where the creosote probably came from. Thaddeus, meanwhile, is, as he worried he might be, arrested, along with the rest of his household, by the investigating officer, Inspector Athelney Jones. Holmes continues his own investigation and concludes that the real killer, whom he now knows to be a man called Jonathan Small and a tiny savage from the Andaman Islands, have booked passage on a launch called Aurora, but there is no sign of her. He sets the Baker Street Irregulars to track it down.

When Thaddeus Sholto is proven to have an alibi Jones has to let him go, and turns to Holmes for help. Holmes has him commandeer a police launch and they set off after Small and his companion, having located the launch in a shipyard and been lucky enough to be there when Mordecai Smith came back shouting for it to be ready for eight o'clock. There ensues a high-speed chase down the Thames, during which the pygmy is shot by Watson as he readies a poison dart to blow at them, and Jonathan Small tips out the treasure into the river before being caught.

In custody, he tells his story, of how he lost his leg to a crocodile and therefore had, as Holmes had deduced, a wooden one, how he had served in the army during the Indian Mutiny, and how  he had fallen in with three others (Dost Akbar, Mahomet Singh and Abduallah Kahn, you'll now doubt be unsurprised to hear) who had set about a envoy of a rajah, who was carrying his master's treasure, killed him and hid the chest away, until the mutiny had been put down. But the murder of the envoy had been witnessed and all four of them were arrested and convicted. Moved eventually to the Andaman Islands, Small confided in Major Sholto, who was posted there in command and due to go home on leave, and broke from his gambling debts, about the treasure. He and Morstan then agreed to Small's terms, to help all four escape - for they had sworn an oath to always act together, and this agreement marked with the Sign of the four of them - and they should both have a fifth share of the loot. Sholto however betrayed them all, and left without helping them, but did help himself to the treasure, which he brought back to England.

Small eventually managed to secure his escape by befriending Tonga, a pygmy who had fallen ill and whom he nursed back to health, and who was then fanatically loyal to him. Back in England, he then shadowed Major Sholto until finally he heard he was dying, got into his room and stole the treasure. He says he had not intended to kill him, but Tonga did that himself. This does not of course save him from prison. There is good news for Watson though, when Mary Morstan accepts his offer of marriage.

After the case

Not a lot. Watson announces his intention to marry Mary Morstan, and Holmes groans that he is about to lose his friend so soon.
 

Comments:

I don't know if he did it on purpose, but damn if that chasing the launch down the Thames scene wasn't made for TV adaptation! You'd have to say this novel has more overall excitement, or at least a more powerful denouement than the previous; whether Doyle learned from it or not I don't know but it's a real crowd-pleaser. So much happens here, and it's odd in a way that having gone to the trouble of getting Holmes and Watson together he pulls them apart in the next novel, leaving the latter having to visit or be called in by Holmes whenever there's a case. I mean, if this was his plan, why have them living together in the first place? Or if he was going to split them up, why not wait till later, when they'd had a bunch of adventures? Anyway the special relationship between them will continue, but there's an element of it being dampened now, as a) they're no longer living in the same rooms and b) one of them is no longer a bachelor.

This novel does much to solidify the idea of Holmes as an unemotional calculating crime-solving machine. This comes through strongest when, at the beginning of the novel, he's asked by Watson what he can glean from the watch he's handed, and goes into some detail about the owner, his late brother's troubles, upsetting Watson. He remarks that he saw it as a problem to be solved and had not taken into account the personal side of things. He does apologise, but it's illustrative of how little Holmes considers people's feelings, even those of his friend. When Mary Morstan has left Watson remarks on her beauty and Holmes grunts that he didn't notice. Not only that, but when his friend tells him of his engagement he groans that it will be the ruin of him; this is quite selfish of the man. He's thinking now Watson will move out and I will have nobody to bounce ideas off and go for walks with. A bit childish really, a bit petulant.

We're introduced here too to a second inspector, whom again I think we don't hear from after this; as I say, and as everyone knows, Lestrade ends up being the main police contact for Holmes. I suppose it makes sense just to have one. I think this is the first real instance we hear too of Holmes' use of cocaine, quite a controversial subject I would have thought in the nineteenth century. Here we're told he uses it only when he's bored and has no cases, as it relieves the everyday humdrum, which is I suppose how most people look on cocaine use: an escape, a way to ignore or to not to have to deal with the world they can't face or don't like.

The treasure is handled in a different way too. It's supposed to belong to Mary Morstan, but Watson sees it as an obstacle to his love for her. If she were to marry him he would feel that she might think he was doing it for money, and even if she didn't, society would. Apart from that, as a woman of means and wealth she would surely suddenly have many suitors, and he doesn't consider himself as having much to offer. When the chest is found empty, Athelny Jones is angry, Holmes really doesn't care as long as he has solved the mystery, and both Watson and Mary are happy, as there is now no barrier to their love, which is reciprocal. So it's almost a macguffin I suppose: something that moves the plot along but in the end is actually not important to it. Well, apart from poor old Bartholomew Sholto being killed for it, I guess.

Character Study

Thaddeus Sholto: Although much is made of his description, and after Mary has engaged Holmes he is the agency by which Holmes and Watson are brought into the mystery, he doesn't actually figure that much in the story. He sort of fades out of it once the body is discovered and he is arrested on suspicion of murdering his own brother. We hear later that he has been released as he has an alibi, but we hear no more of him after that.

Mary Morstan: In similar fashion, though she acts as the conduit for Holmes to get involved in the mystery, she's a sort of peripheral figure, being brought news of the progress of the case by Watson, but not involved in it. Of course, she does play an important part at the end when she agrees to marry Watson.

Inspector Athelney Jones: And a third time, pretty much peripheral. Jones is, like much of the police input to Holmes stories, used really as a way to show how the official force bollocks things up, and how Holmes has to show them where they go wrong. Although he engages the police launch and does take part in the chase down the Thames, he's mostly a sort of spectator and then a listener as Small pours out his story. He gets it wrong, has to turn to Holmes and is relegated to watching more or less while the consulting detective solves the mystery.

Jonathan Small: I suppose you'd have to say that of all the characters here other than Holmes and Watson, Small has the largest (sorry) part to play, but even so it's only at the end that we even know his story, and it is told rather quickly, just a sort of tying up of loose ends and explanations. Unlike Jefferson Hope, who takes up the entire second part of A Study in Scarlet, Small does not have the lion's share of the narrative, despite being the unintentional murderer and intentional thief.

Better than you

Holmes as always smiles when he sees Athelney Jones arrest Thaddeus Sholto, along with most of the rest of the household. He knows the inspector is on the wrong track, but then things do not go entirely his way either. Witness his comedic bumbling effort to track down Tonga via the creosote and Toby the dog, or his frustration when he can't find the launch. He even admits at the end that he believed the islander out of darts, and when he is told that Tonga retained one in his pipe, shrugs that he had not thought of that. So he's not infallible, but in fairness never claimed to be. You'd have to say that in one way though his break in the case comes about purely by luck. Yes, he methodically searches the shipyards along the docks until he finds the one that took in the Aurora, but he would have had no idea either that it was leaving that night or what time, had Smith not chanced to stumble along with the information rather helpfully. So there is an element of chance in his solving the mystery.

I guess that's good, as it shows us that the mighty detective, with all his powers of reasoning and deduction, can be as susceptible to the vagaries of fate and chance as any of us, and like all cases, it's often pure dumb luck, being in the right place at the right time that gives you the answer and allows you to solve it.

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

After a lady comes to Holmes to ask him to accompany her in finding out what happened to her father, a murder results. This turns out to be due to the theft of a great box of treasure by the man who originally stole it, and who was betrayed by the father of the dead man. Holmes catches him but the treasure is lost overboard in the case. Watson marries the client.

Holmes' Hit List

Jonathan Small, Tonga

Total: 2
Running total: 3

The Holmes Body Count

Direct: 1 (Tonga)
Indirect: 1 (Bartholomew Sholto)
Incidental: 0
Historical: 4 (Major Sholto, envoy, soldier killed by Small in his escape bid, Captain Morstan)
Note: it would be ridiculous to add in all the soldiers and civilians killed in the Indian Mutiny, so it should be understood that the Body Count only covers specific characters in the story whom we are told died or were killed, and either were named or described - in the latter case, the soldier Small kills as he escapes from the Andaman Islands.
Total: 6
Running total: 11

Satisfied Customers?

In this section I will ask the question, did Holmes give value for money/time, and did he solve the case in a way that satisfied the client? Did he do all he could on behalf of them, or did he leave them hanging? Were they, in the end, glad to have sought out his services, or did they perhaps wonder they they had bothered?

Some of these will be nowhere near as straight-forward as asking was the case solved? In many stories, the answer is in the affirmative but this does not always necessarily mean that the client's best interests have been served, or that the outcome is a satisfactory one. I will be explaining my reasoning and why I make the determination I do.

Hard to call this one really. Essentially, you would say no, as the object the client had in mind was to find her father, and he is dead, but then, she finds perhaps something more important, love with John Watson, so on balance I would say YES, though in fairness not through any agency, and indeed against the personal preference of Holmes.

Legal outcome (if any): Jonathan Smalls is taken into custody.

[Trollheart]

Title: "A Scandal in Bohemia"
Year first published: 1891
Type: Short story
Chronology: First short story, 1st story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; third Holmes story overall
Location(s): Baker Street; Briony Lodge, Serpentine Ave, St. John's Wood; Gross & Hankey's, Regent Street; Church of St. Monica,  Edgware Road
Date: March 20 1888
The crime: Blackmail
The mystery: Where the photograph has been hidden
The time (if given): 7:45 PM



The Players
The victim(s): His Majesty Wilhelm Gottreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein, heir to the throne of Bohemia (let's just call him the King of Bohemia, huh?)
The accused or suspected: Irene Adler, a former lover
The arrested: None; not a criminal case
The investigating officer(s): None; too delicate an issue for the police to be involved
The advocate(s): None; the correct suspect is known and does not disguise the fact
The real culprit(s): Irene Adler
Others: Godfrey Norton, Irene Adler's fiance and then husband

The clues: None; Holmes has to trick Irene Adler into revealing the location of the photograph
The red herring(s): None
Disguise(s) affected by Holmes: Groom, Priest
The breakthrough: When Holmes causes a false fire alarm to be raised
How the case is solved: Holmes finds out where the photograph is by the above means, but before he can retrieve it Irene Adler and her new husband depart for foreign shores.
The result: Inconclusive; Adler susses Holmes out and leaves the next day, leaving the king a letter promising not to reveal the photograph, as she has fallen in love and no longer wants her revenge.

Famous Firsts

First time Holmes' case involves a royal or aristocratic client

Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:

That Watson has gone back into practice.

That he has been wet recently and that he has a clumsy, careless maid.


Before the case

Living apart from him now, Watson drops in on Holmes and finds him awaiting the arrival of the king.

Synopsis:

No longer living with Holmes since his marriage, which took place, or was alluded to, at the end of the second novel, The Sign of the Four, Watson calls in on him and finds him awaiting a visitor. This turns out to be the King of Bohemia himself (though disguised, a ruse Holmes quickly sees through) who wants him to help him recover a photograph which a certain Irene Adler has. The king used to walk out with Irene, and now he is getting married, but Irene is upset and is threatening to release the photograph, which is of the two of them together, and would ruin his upcoming marriage.

Holmes begins by disguising himself as a groom (no, not that kind: the sort who look after horse) and checking out all the gossip he can. He finds out that Irene Adler has a man, a guy called Godfrey Norton, and in the course of his investigations he gets swept up into their marriage ceremony, standing as best man, to his great surprise and considerable amusement. His humour changes though when it becomes clear the now-married couple are about to leave the country, and he has to put his own plan into action without delay. He sets it up so that there is a paid crowd outside Irene's house, and asks Watson to throw in a smoke rocket at his signal. He is disguised again, this time as a priest, and when Irene gets out of her carriage he feigns being assaulted. She then has him brought into the house. Watson, at Holmes' signal, throws in the rocket and raises the cry of "fire!" Irene rushes to where the photograph is being kept, and Holmes, having noted its location, makes himself scarce.

As they return to Baker Street though, someone greets them, and it is only later Holmes realises that for once he has been outsmarted; the greeter is Irene, and she has seen through his plan. However all is well; married now and with no need or wish to harm the king, she  leaves  him a letter promising that he is safe; the photograph will never be used. The king leaves happily, and Holmes reflects on having met all but his match.

After the case

Not much. Realising he has been beaten, and by a woman, no less, Holmes asks the king for the photograph of Irene Adler, which he keeps on his desk to remind him of her.

Comments:

For the first short story about Holmes this is an interesting one, though on face value not so much. It's a poor mystery - not a mystery at all, rather a sort of puzzle: how to find the photograph and get it out of Irene's hands?  But as an illustration of how fallible Holmes may be at times, it works well. Given that Doyle has spent the last two novels building his character up to almost mythological, godlike proportions, it's telling that he has him taken down a peg here. And by a woman. Although Holmes thinks he has outsmarted Irene, he has not: he has overplayed his hand and she has seen him. It's mere lucky chance that she gets married, otherwise the likelihood is that, seeing the king had engaged Holmes, she might be angry and make good on her threat.

So in a way here again, fortune plays a very prominent part in Holmes' case. As he was lucky to break the case in The Sign of the Four, here his mission could have failed entirely but for the circumstances changing. And really, when you think about it, it's sort of a poor plot device, isn't it? I mean, if Irene is in love, why is she threatening the king? Surely this is not a whirlwind romance (though it does seem in the nineteenth century that people got married almost after saying hello for the first time!) so if she's had this going for a while, why the vitriol against the king? In fact, Holmes remarks that the photograph she possesses could become a double-edged sword, for if her new husband were to see it, he might break off the engagement.

I therefore find it a bit of a flailing in the dark in terms of solving the dilemma. I won't presume to say how I would have written it, but I can think of better ways to have ended the story. It's one of few characters, too, unlike many of the later ones; he was probably tired of dealing with a cast of people in his novels (though in fairness they were quite thin on the ground too), and I would have thought a poor choice to kick off the series. I mean, when it gets right down to it, what is it? A lost/stolen property case really. No murder, no shify individuals, and nobody gets in a sticky situation over a five pound note.

I do admit I find Watson's readiness to break the law, when Holmes asks him, a little hard to understand. The doctor is known as a law-abiding man, and up to this has not been involved in anything that could be said to be in any way illegal. Of course he trusts his friend, but he doesn't even raise an objection, or ask what it is he has to do. When Holmes says "You don't mind breaking the law?" He replies "Not in the least." That really doesn't seem like him, and I think it's put over a little too glibly to ring true. And then Holmes asks if he would risk being arrested? Well, I suppose in for a penny, and if you've attested to your willingness to walk on the wrong side of the law, you must expect that it might end in a jail cell. But Watson is a married man now, with his own responsibilities and his own practice, therefore his reputation - to say nothing of that of his wife - would be at stake if it goes wrong, so I think he should at least have hesitated a little.

The choice to bring in Irene Adler, who could have been as powerful an adversary - or helpful an ally - for Holmes as Moriarty (of which I'll speak later) and then to cut her right out of the stories is to me an odd one. Why introduce such a powerful female figure and then write her out in the same story? Was Doyle afraid his readers would not take to the idea of a woman being smarter than his sleuth? Did he worry that Holmes' effectiveness might suffer if he had to keep matching wits with "the woman", or was he concerned that the emotionless being he had created might suddenly turn soft?

All things taken into account, I have to say I find this a poor story and though Doyle is reputed to have claimed it as one of his favourites, it's not one of mine. It has its moments, but the ending is a very damp squib and I felt like I was left with a feeling of "so what?"

Character Study

King of Bohemia: Meh. You don't learn much about him, other than that he sowed his wild oats when young (what else is new?) and is now worried his chickens are going to come home to roost. He's a plot device really, not a character, and there's little to say about him.

Irene Adler: Despite the admiration Holmes has for her, I don't really see it. She has hidden the photograph away cleverly, yes, but was it really possible no experienced burglar would have thought of looking where it ends up being? And what special powers does she exhibit, other than being able to see through Holmes' disguise and turn the tables on him? We learn she's a fiery, tempestuous woman who has moved in royal circles and has a nasty side that allows her to contemplate the ruin of someone she once loved. Not a very endearing trait. If she had been allowed stick around, come back later in other stories maybe she might have been made more of, but here she's woefully underused I feel.


The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

The King of Bohemia contracts Holmes to get back an embarrassing photograph held by Irene Adler, who he once loved, a photograph that could threaten his upcoming marriage. Holmes uses trickery to cause the woman to reveal the location of the photograph. She gets married and no longer cares, and leaves the country. The king is safe and his marriage can proceed.

The Holmes Hit List
0
Running total: 3

The Holmes Body Count

Direct: 0
Indirect: 0
Incidental: 0
Historical: 0
Total: 0
Running total: 11

Satisfied Customer(s)?

Very much so. The king does not get his photograph back, but believes Irene Adler when she says she no longer wishes him any harm. If there's a disappointed person here, it's Holmes, when he realises he has been duped. But his client is happy so this is a YES.

Legal outcome (if any): None

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Red-Headed League"
Year first published: 1891
Type: Short story
Chronology: 2nd short story, 2nd story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; 4th Holmes story overall
Location(s): Baker Street; Fleet Street; Coburg Square; King Edward Street; St. James' Hall
Date: October 8 1890
The crime or the mystery: The sudden disappearance of a place of work, which in turn leads to an attempted bank robbery
The time (if given): 10 am or just after


The Players
The client: Jabez Wilson, a pawnbroker
The victim(s): Same; technically speaking though, Mr. Merryweather, the banker, though he is more a potential than actual victim
The accused or suspected: None
The arrested: John Clay and William Morris (see below)
The investigating officer(s): Inspector Athelney Jones
The advocate(s): None
The real culprit(s): Vincent Spaulding aka John Clay, criminal extraordinaire ; Duncan Ross aka William Morris, ostensible secretary of the Red-Headed League
Others: Mr. Merryweather, director of the Suburban Bank

The clues: "Spaulding" being willing to work for half wages, always taking photographs, spending a lot of time in the cellar; he being the one who brings the advertisement to Mr. Wilson's notice; he having a white splash of acid on his face; his trouser knees being dirty, the bank being on the road behind and in a direct line with the pawnbroker's; the pavement at the front door hollow from a tunnel having been dug beneath it
The red herring(s): The fact that Ross is concerned that Wilson is not married and has no children
The breakthrough: When Holmes recognises John Clay
The result: Holmes and his party are just in time to prevent a major bank robbery, resulting in the apprehension of one of the most dangerous and hunted criminals  in London.

Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:

That Wilson has at one time performed manual labour; that he is a Freemason; that he writes a lot, that he has been in China.

Synopsis:

Holmes and Watson are approached by a pawnbroker, Jabez Wilson, who has a strange tale to tell. He relates how he answered an advertisement for red-headed men to join something called the Red-Headed League, and was subsequently chosen out of hundreds to come to an office every morning and copy out the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He was well paid, the only conditions of his employment being that he must turn up every day and the appointed hour, and not leave before closing time, 2 pm. In addition, he was not allowed to leave the office for any reason. After a few days, his mysterious employer, who had initially come to the office to check up on him, left him to his own devices.

Eight weeks went by and then that very morning he arrived at the office to find it locked, with a notice on the door advising that the Red-Headed League had been dissolved. In despair and anger, he then checked around and found that the man he had known as Duncan Ross was using the name William Morris to rent the room, and had now moved out. Having been given an address for the man, Mr. Wilson had tried to trace him, but the address had turned out to be false.

Holmes begins his investigation by visiting the pawnbrokers, ascertaining certain things he wishes to clear up or confirm. He then contacts Inspector Athelney Jones and the manager of the bank, a Mr. Merryweather, as all four proceed to the vault of the Suburban Bank that night. After some hours in the dark, the thieves come through their tunnel into the vault, where they are apprehended and the gold in the bank saved. Holmes notes that the whole idea of the Red-Headed League - a complete fiction, made up by Spaulding/Clay and Ross/Morris for Mr. Wilson's benefit - was to get the pawnbroker out of the shop so that the two robbers could work on their tunnel undisturbed. Once they had dug far enough and no longer needed the subterfuge, the scheme was shut down, as it no longer mattered whether or not Wilson was in the shop.


Comments:

It seems rather fantastical to me. So Clay and his accomplice set up this Red-Headed League and then hundreds of men turned up for a position they were never going to be chosen for? How did Duncan Ross turn away so many before Wilson arrived, and still allay suspicion that this was just a scam? Would it not have been better to have arranged a private interview with Ross? Other than that, the story holds together well, though it might be wondered what excuse Ross used to enable him to call upon Clay every day for eight months and not arouse the curiosity of the maid. Maybe Clay answered the door himself, but if he was digging the tunnel, how could he always be on hand?

I find here again that Doyle's dates don't match up. Wilson shows Holmes the advertisement, which is marked April, and Watson notes that it is two months ago, which would then make the date somewhere in June. Yet the notice pinned to the office door that same morning reads October. So which is it? Watson also describes the season as autumn in the opening narrative, which fits in more with October than June, but that would then mean that the advertisement must have been in the paper in August.

Another story with Athelny Jones as the police presence, though in fairness Doyle doesn't embarrass him at all: he's merely there as a device to allow Clay and his associate to be officially arrested; the criminal is said to be very bright and intelligent - as well as ruthless - and might realise that Holmes and Watson would have no authority to take them into custody.

Perhaps unique in being the first (only?) story in which the client does not figure to the end. Wilson, in fact, though he brings  his, at the time trivial, problem to Holmes, goes home more or less unsatisfied, and is not called upon again. It is Holmes, Watson, Jones and Mr. Merryweather who catch Clay. It's possible that Wilson later learns that his shop has been used as the base for criminals, but that's not mentioned, so in effect, at least until the robbery attempt is revealed, Jabez Wilson stands, so far, as the first unsatisfied client Sherlock Holmes has had.

The tone of the story changes radically, from a more or less humorous, whimsical one in the opening stages to a far darker, more serious one as Holmes investigates further. It will not be the only story which goes through such a change in mood.

How the case is solved

After realising that the work Wilson is doing is pointless, and must only be a ruse to get him out of the pawnbroker's shop, Holmes' suspicions are confirmed when Wilson describes his assistant, and the detective recognises him as John Clay, master criminal. He knows Clay would have no reason to seek honest employment, especially at half wages, and as it was he who brought the advertisement about the Red-Headed League to his employer's attention, the scheme must be his. Having paid a visit to the pawnbroker's, and seeing the bank abuts onto the street behind it, he works out that there is an attempt at bank robbery in progress.

Character Study

Jabez Wilson: A small, inconsequential little man really, who does little and leads a very boring and almost hermit-like life. He is somewhat self-important, believing he has been done out of money he was promised (but then, he is a pawnbroker, so what would you expect?) when he goes to see Holmes, but it's just as well he does, as otherwise the attempted robbery would not have been discovered. He's described by Holmes as "not over-bright", and this is true: he doesn't suspect any ulterior motive when a man who should be able to secure a decent job takes his position for half pay. The splash of acid on his face should set alarm bells ringing, as who would have such a disfigurement but someone who had walked on the wrong side of the law?

John Clay aka Vincent Spaulding: The brains of the operation, he is said to have royal blood, being related to a duke, and expects to be treated as such. This doesn't stop him literally getting down and dirty as he digs the tunnel, and given the list of crimes he is accused of by Jones - thief, murderer, forger and smasher - you would expect him to get a pretty long sentence, probably transportation, maybe even the rope. On the other hand, if he has royal connections it's possible he may be able to arrange a lighter sentence for himself.

Better than you N/A

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

Pawnbroker Mr. Jabez Wilson is tricked into leaving his shop for several hours a day, supposedly working for the Red-Headed League, doing meaningless clerk work. This is all so that his new assistant, who is in fact the criminal mastermind, John Clay, can dig a tunnel through to the bank adjacent and rob it of its gold. Holmes discovers the plan and brings the police, catching the thieves in the act.

Holmes' Hit List

John Clay
Total: 1
Running total:4

The Holmes Body Count

Direct: 0
Indirect: 0
Incidental: 0
Historical: 0
Total: 0
Running total: 11

Satisfied Customer(s)?

In terms of the actual client, no. Wilson is sent on his way with a sharp rebuke from Holmes that he has lost nothing, and has in fact gained financially, just not as much as he had expected. So a disappointed and frustrated client who sought Holmes out, presumably on the basis of his reputation, and must now be wondering if that regard in which he is held is justified?

In terms though of the non-client, as it were, the director of the City and Suburban Bank, a resounding YES, as Holmes foils the attempt by John Clay to rob his bank. Mind you, as he was unaware of such an attempt being made, can that be customer satisfaction? He did not engage Holmes (though he will certainly be happy to pay for his services now, after the fact) so can he be considered to be a client? I believe not, and this has to go down, in client terms, as a failure.

Legal outcome, if any: John Clay and Morris are arrested, and the bank robbery is foiled.

[Trollheart]

Title: "A Case of Identity"
Year first published: 1891
Type: Short story
Chronology: 3rd short story, 3rd story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 5th Holmes story overall
Location(s): Baker Street; King's Cross; Leadenhall Street
Date: None given
The crime or the mystery: The disappearance of Mr. Hosmer Angel
The time (if given): None given


The Players
The client: Miss Mary Sutherland
The victim(s): (ostensibly) Mr. Hosmer Angel
The accused or suspected: None
The arrested: None
The investigating officer(s): None
The advocate(s): Holmes
The real culprit(s): Mr. James Windbank, Mary's stepfather
Others: Mary's mother (unnamed); Mary's dead father (unnamed)

The clues: "Hosmer Angel" only meeting Mary at night, and only when her father is away; speaking in a low whisper and typing all his letters, wearing tinted glasses and making Mary swear to be true to him even if he disappeared.
The red herring(s): None
The breakthrough: None as such; Holmes puts the clues together, compares them with similar incidents which have taken place in Europe, and has his solution.
The result: "Hosmer Angel" is exposed as Mr. Windibank himself


Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:
That Mary has come out in a hurry, that she is a typist and is short-sighted.

Before the case

Holmes and Watson are debating how smaller, less ordinary crimes are more interesting than big, sensational ones, and how life is often stranger than the strangest fiction.

Synopsis:

A Miss Mary Sutherland implores Holmes to find her missing lover, Hosmer Angel, who, on the day he was to have married her, vanished on the way to the church. Her father, a Mr. Windibank, does not seem concerned and will not call in the police. He is a controlling man, and does not want his step-daughter seeing anyone. When Hosmer Angel disappears he insists she forget about him, but her mother reminds her to remain true to her promise. Holmes notices that the letters Hosmer Angel sends Mary are all typewritten, and that though he says he works in Leadenhall Street, he has provided no address, no proof of this. He is also intrigued that Mary is allowing her parents to dip into her legacy while she is at home, but that this source of income will cease once she marries and leaves the house.

Having thought it over, Holmes invites Windibank to Baker Street, where he exposes his scam, telling him he knows all about his masquerading as Hosmer Angel in order to secure the promise from his step-daughter that she will never marry another, keeping his access to her money safe. He chases him out of the apartment, unable to go to the police.

After the case

Nothing much. Holmes remarks that Windibank will come to a bad end, with such a nasty and deceitful side to him.

How the case is solved:

Holmes realises there is no Hosmer Angel. Windibank merely wishes to keep spending his step-daughter's inheritance, and so disguises himself and woos her, in order to ensure she promises to marry no other man. Then, on the morning of the wedding, he steps into the cab and then out the door before it can move off, leaving it to arrive empty at the church. Having extracted the promise from Mary, he now knows that he is safe: she will never leave home and he can keep using her money.

Comments:

Although there's a sense of almost comedy about this, it's a dark little story that tells of how far a man will go in the name of greed, even sacrificing his step-daughter's happiness and sanity to achieve his ends. It's based of course on certain true-life events, but handled well. The role of the mother is not dealt with; she was obviously in on it, and while we might expect a stepfather to be less than paternal towards the offspring of his new wife, we should imagine that she would at least have some sort of motherly affection for her, and want to protect her, but this does not seem to be the case. Greed is all. Reminds me of a harrowing and terrifying account I read in one of those books about Victorian London, where a husband and wife discuss blinding their daughter in order that the sympathy of people be better aroused when she begs. That's not made up: that was real. And if people could do that, well then, selling your kid out for her money doesn't seem too much of a stretch, does it?

Another story in which the client is not satisfied, nor, as far as we're told anyway, even informed of the outcome of the case. Hard to decide whether Holmes has taken the right approach here, assuming he does not later advise Mary of what has happened. Better to let her live in ignorance, pining away from the fictitious Hosmer Angel, or tell her the truth and let her get on with her life? And what's to stop the stepfather doing something equally as horrible and selfish? No charges have been made, and Holmes, despite his threat to whip the man before he runs out, has no authority to bring him to justice; there is no crime here, other than one of a moral nature. Not exactly a happy ending.

A somewhat more caustic view of Holmes' approach is taken by feminist author Wanda C. Dexter in her article "The True Face of Some Admired Male Figures of Popular Culture", published in Quarterly Gender Review, Sep 2002: It's hard not to agree with her, and I already more or less have, above. Here's what she has to say:

"There is a worldwide community of Sherlock Holmes admirers who engage in perpetual adulation of their 19th Century hero. A casual look through the so-admired Holmes stories should be enough to uncover the nasty person just under the surface. Take how he treats his female client in the story "A Case of Identity". (...) What a patronizing arrogance, to decide for his client whether or not she could stand hearing the truth! Holmes was manifestly unethical to his client. She engaged him to find Hosmer Angel. He found Hosmer Angel. He should have given his client the information she wanted and let her decide what to do with it. And presumably he did not work for free. So he had no shame, taking her money and failing to give value for it! (...). Anyway, what is this nonsense about the villain being beyond reach of the law? In British law of that time, a man could be sued for breach of promise. Even a bachelor who proposed to a woman with complete sincerity and then changed his mind could be sued. All the more so a married man who went through an elaborate charade and fallaciously courted his own daughter in law! Any half-decent lawyer could have broken him in court, as he so richly deserved. Instead, Holmes lets her live on, unsuspecting, pining for her lost love, under the tutelage of her criminal father-in-law, who might hatch a dozen new nefarious schemes! In effect, she is the victim of a de-facto alliance between two men - the father in law who victimized her, and the detective who utterly failed to warn her against him"

It's also a point to note that this is the first, perhaps only , story in which Holmes deals with the case entirely from Baker Street, never once leaving his rooms. He had told Watson at the beginning of A Study in Scarlet that he had cases like that - in fact, he intimated they were in the majority - but as the stories go on, hearing Holmes blab on about how he deduced this and worked that out would ultimately be boring and not make for a good story, so Doyle kicks him out of the house to go work for a living, giving him a lot more scope for actual adventure. And a good thing too.

Character Study

Mary Sutherland: Perhaps interesting that Doyle decides to name Holmes' second female client the same as the first. Mary was and is of course a popular and common name, but still. A woman completely controlled by her family, and especially her stepfather, Mary longs for a smidgeon of independence in her life, and grabs the chance with both hands when the mysterious Hosmer Angel appears. She is also a woman of determination, not willing to just forget about the man she loves who has vanished, and of virtue too, as she intends to remain true to him.

James Windibank/Hosmer Angel: In his alter ego as his stepdaughter's fiance (now there's a complicated menage-a-trois worthy of Jerry Springer!) he is quiet, retiring, secretive. He hides his eyes behind tinted glasses and speaks in a whisper, lest his daughter might recognise him. He types his letters, so that she can't see that his writing is that of her step-father. As Windibank, he is a selfish, arrogant and controlling man who has no intention of allowing his step-daughter's money to slip through his fingers, and with the support of his wife, sets out to make sure he can achieve his goal, no matter the heartbreak it brings to Mary. In the end, he is a coward, fleeing from Holmes' riding crop, unwilling to own up to and take responsibility for his actions.

Better than youN/A

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

Mary Sutherland asks Holmes to find her fiance, who has vanished on the morning of their wedding. But it turns out to have been her step-father in disguise, trying to retain her money  by keeping her living in the house.

Holmes' Hit List

Total: 0
Running total: 4

The Holmes Body Count

Direct: 0
Indirect: 0
Incidental: 0
Historical: 0
Total: 0
Running total: 11

Famous Firsts

Although he mentioned the word before, this is the first time he says anything close to "Elementary my dear Watson" (which he never says of course) when Holmes declares "All this is amusing, though rather elementary."

First case Holmes solves entirely from his living room in Baker Street

Satisfied Customer(s)?

Without question, a resounding NO. Mary Sutherland is left to wonder where her "Hosmer Angel" is, with no (so far as we are told) enlightenment from Holmes as to the true story, and in reality the stepfather gets away with his cruel plan. Nobody is satisfied, other perhaps than Holmes, and that's really more a self-gratification that he has solved the case. His disgust and anger towards Windibank, leading him to attempt to thrash him, really amounts to nothing. In terms of customer satisfaction, this case has to be registered as a failure.

Legal outcome, if any: None

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"
Year first published: 1891
Type: Short story
Chronology: 4th short story, 4th story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 6th Holmes story overall
Location(s): Baker Street; Paddington; Boscombe Valley
Date: June 3 1890 (?)
The crime or the mystery: A man has been murdered down by the Boscombe Pool
The time (if given): 3pm


The Players
The client: None really; nobody engages Holmes - he is invited down by Lestrade
The victim(s): Charles McCarthy, tenant, formerly of Australia
The accused or suspected: James McCarthy, his son
The arrested: Same
The investigating officer(s): Inspector Lestrade
The advocate(s): Alice Turner, daughter of John and to be engaged to James
The real culprit(s): John Turner aka Black Jack of Ballarat, a wealthy landowner and former highway robber
Others: William Crowder, gamekeeper; Patience Moran, daughter of the lodge-keeper, a witness (but only to the argument, not the murder); John Cobb, Turner's groom

The clues: The call of "Cooee!", made by McCarthy's father before he even knew his son had returned from Bristol, the reference to a rat in the man's dying words, a grey coat or cloak which James McCarthy says he saw but which then vanished.
The red herring(s): The argument between father and son at the pool.
The breakthrough: hard to say but I think it might be when Holmes got the  map of Victoria and saw Ballarat.
The result: John Turner confesses to Holmes, but he is able to keep from having to inform the police, as he gets James off.


Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:

That Watson's window is on the right-hand side.

Before the case

Nothing really. Watson is at home when he receives a telegram from Holmes asking him if he would accompany him to Boscombe Valley to investigate the mystery. Next thing they are both in a train heading for Herefordshire.

Synopsis:

Holmes and Watson travel to Herefordshire, where a man has been found murdered down by the Boscombe Pool. His name is Charles McCarthy, and by all accounts he was not liked, a man with a bad temper and a nasty attitude. His son, James, was seen arguing with him, and had a gun with him. He has been arrested as the prime suspect, although he protests his innocence. Holmes, reviewing the evidence, is inclined to believe him, but must prove it. His intended, Miss Turner, asks him to spare no effort, though Lestrade thinks it's wasted effort and that the case is as "plain as a pikestaff." Holmes is further encouraged in his attempts when he hears that McCarthy had been allowed to live on the farm rent-free, having been an associate of John Turner, who owns the land.

He also believes the call, "Cooee!", usually used by Australians (so Doyle says anyway) was not meant for McCarthy's son, who, as far as the father knew, was still away, in Bristol. So who was he calling? He wires to Bristol for a map of Victoria, and sees on it an area where there are mines, called Ballarat, and knows now that when the dying words of McCarthy were said to have been "a rat", he was trying to say, "Ballarat", to identify where his killer came from. Having pulled all his threads together, he calls John Turner to his room, and the man confesses. He tells Holmes how he had once been a highway robber in Australia, in Ballarat, and how he had come into contact with Charles McCarthy, who joined his gang.

When he had made his money and returned to England a landed gentleman, he tried to put his criminal past behind him, but sadly McCarthy caught up with him. He had fallen on hard times, and blackmailed Turner into giving him land, a house, all he wanted. But when he asked - demanded - that his boy marry Alice Turner, her father would have none of it. He did not know James, but if he was from the black root of his father then he didn't want him to have anything to do with his daughter. He met Charles at the pool to discuss it, saw him argue with his son, speak in lewd and dismissive terms of the woman it seemed James actually loved - Charles didn't care whether his son loved her or not, she was but a means to an end. He knew John was in poor health and due to die soon, so all he wanted was to inherit everything that was his, and through marriage of his son to Turner's daughter, he would have it.

When James had left, that was when Turner struck, coming up behind McCarthy before he knew he was there. He killed him, and was glad to have done it, to have saved his daughter. But now he was remorseful, when he saw that James was genuinely in love with Alice, and  more, that he was suspected of his father's murder. Holmes agrees to keep his secret, if James can be acquitted, for the sake of his daughter, whom he wishes to know nothing of his black past. In the end, through some skilful legal argument Holmes secures James' release, and though the old man dies seven months later, there is no case to answer and the murder is left as an open verdict.

After the case

Again, almost nothing. It's a very abrupt ending, which just catalogues vaguely that James McCarthy was acquitted, married Alice Turner and that her father died a few months later.

How the case is solved: Holmes wonders why McCarthy would call for his son, when he believes him to be away, and surmises that the man was waiting for someone else. When he gets the map of Victoria and sees Ballarat, he formulates his theory, using his usual method of checking footprints and so forth. His final clue comes when he hears how well McCarthy has been treated by Turner, and how arrogant the former is about it, as if it is his due. Then he knows McCarthy had something over Turner.

Comments:

A very good example, as Holmes mentions himself at the beginning, of an open and shut case being blown wide open. Everyone assumes James McCarthy to be the killer, and all evidence points to that, but once Holmes gets on the case it's clear that there is someone else involved. An example, too, of the police, then as now, not being too bothered about facts that don't fit their theory, as long as they get their man. The second story featuring a love element, though in "A Case of Identity" it was false love; here it is real. Another case, too, of the victim deserving his fate, as in A Study in Scarlet, where were are left in no doubt as to the despicable nature of the two men who have been killed, and can feel no sympathy for them. The third case involving murder, and the first of the short stories to do so.

However I have to take issue with the blackmail idea. Here we have a wealthy English gentleman who made his money in Australia something like thirty years ago, and he's worried that his ex-compatriot is going to sell him out? Let's just examine this for a moment. Turner does not say McCarthy joined his robber band, merely that he let him go. So how does he know he is Black Jack Ballarat? He's seen him once, and that decades ago. Surely Turner was not using his real name as a bandit, and even if he was - Jack or John Turner, it's hardly an unusual name is it? Surely there are plenty of  John, Jonathan, Jack and other Turners in England? How does he know this is the same man who robbed him in Australia? Come to that, how does he even know it was Black Jack who attacked the cart he was with? I'm sure the man never announced himself.

Anyway, all that aside, consider this. You have a man who is, by his own admission, next to a beggar, threatening to tell the police about events that occurred thirty or more years ago, outside of England, and for which he has no proof! Who is going to listen to him, never mind believe him? It's surely the word of one man against that of another, and in fact more than that: the word of a penniless nobody against a wealthy landowner. Who do you think the police are likely to believe, even if they give McCarthy's story the least credibility? Yes, they might be able to dig up evidence on Turner if they bother, but they're going to have to go back a long way and contact the authorities in Australia, and even then that's unlikely to yield positive results. Are they really going to squander police resources on a huge investigation of a member of the gentry on the unsubstantiated accusation of a pauper? As if.

So Turner should have had nothing to fear. Unless McCarthy had proof - which he may have had, but it's not mentioned - there's nothing he could have done. Approaching the police would probably have landed him in jail, with a swift kicking for impugning the good name of a landowner and wasting police time. There is no earthly way that I can see that a man like him would consider any sort of threat from McCarthy to be worth taking seriously. He should have told him to fuck off; the past was the past and he couldn't prove a thing, and let him go on his way. Then none of this would have happened. Of course, then there wouldn't have been a story. But Doyle could have tried harder; give McCarthy some solid proof, give some reason why the police would be interested in crimes that were not committed in England, and so long ago? On closer examination then, the whole premise of this story is frankly idiotic and not worthy of the writer we know Doyle to have been.

Character Study

James McCarthy: Perhaps rather oddly, given that the case revolves around him, we never meet the accused murderer. Holmes reports to Watson that he visits him in jail, but there is no narrative of this - always a little difficult when you're writing from a narrator's point of view; he or she can only report what they saw themselves, or what they are told of events they do not witness - and the only other real appearance by McCarthy the younger is in the newspaper report of the court proceedings. From what we can gather though, he is not at all like his father, and does indeed love Alice and wants to marry her (well, anyone who's in love has to be married almost immediately; witness Mary Sutherland, who, after ONE WALK with Hosmer Angel, is engaged!) but not for the reasons his father wants him to. He's also a practical man; having quarrelled with his father he is quite expecting to be accused of his murder. And he is.

Alice Turner: Again, not much is told of her, other than that she loves James McCarthy and will not believe that he has killed his father. It's strange how the two main characters feature so little in the story. There's a quick introduction to her when Holmes and Watson arrive at the farm, then nothing until she's offhandedly mentioned in a footnote at the end. Oh, there's her father's reference to her. But that's about it.

John Turner: Only comes in at the end, in a sort of Agatha Christie-like introduction as the murderer, and tells his story fairly quickly. Another link back to A Study in Scarlet, as the murderer dies before he can be brought to trial. Well, here he's never going to be brought to trial, but he dies anyway. A man who has made his living robbing and possibly killing people in Australia is able to reinvent himself back home, but finds his past follows him there, and he is trapped by it. He's a man with nothing to lose, due to die soon, and prepared to do anything to save his daughter. He does agree though that if James is found guilty he will own up. After all, how long will he last in prison?

Charles McCarthy: And this is the man we hear the least about. He is dead by the time we meet him, but we find out that he is a thoroughly horrible man, ready to throw his lot in with Black Jack of Ballarat and then blackmail him when he gets back to England. For some reason, unlike his partner, he does not make a success of himself back home, and, fallen far, uses John Turner/Black Jack to drag himself back up in the world. But that is not enough. Knowing of the old man's frailty and imminent passing, he intends to use his son's marriage to Alice to get the estate for himself. He doesn't care about his son, or the woman he loves, and he pays the price in the end. He does leave what mystery writers in the twentieth century would become fond of using, a dying clue, but nobody except Holmes considers it important.

Better than you

Having given Lestrade all the details about the murderer which he needs, Holmes is not at all surprised and quite amused when the inspector refuses to follow it up, saying he has not the time and anyway, he has the right man in a cell. Holmes shrugs and notes that he gave the detective the chance, but now he will unmask the killer himself. It no doubt gives him a certain frisson of pleasure to be able, not to take credit for the solution of the mystery, but to know that, had he taken his advice, Lestrade would have been able to do so himself. He makes a withering comment on the inspector's competence. When Lestrade says "I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies!" Holmes remarks "You are right. You do find it very hard to tackle the facts." Proving his ignorance, Lestrade fails to catch the aspersion being cast on his ability.

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

In Boscombe Valley in Herefordshire, James McCarthy is accused of killing his father. Holmes goes there to investigate, and discovers the real killer is the father of the woman he is in love with, who was being blackmailed by the dead man, and killed him to save his daughter from what he saw as a forced marriage which would have delivered his lands into the hands of his blackmailer.

Holmes' Hit List

Total: 0
Running total: 5

The Holmes Body Count

Direct:
Indirect: 1 (Charles McCarthy)
Incidental:
Historical:
Total: 1
Running total: 12

Famous Firsts

Satisfied customer(s)?

Very much so, yes. Alice, who, while not the client - there really is none - is delighted to have her fiance cleared of the charge, and indeed John Turner, who again did not hire Holmes, is also relieved not to be turned in. So it works out for all concerned.

Legal outcome, if any: James is released and all charges dropped

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Five Orange Pips"
Year first published: 1891
Type: Short story
Chronology: 5th short story, 5th in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 7th Holmes story overall
Location(s): Baker Street
Date: late September 1887
The crime or the mystery: The unexplained death of Colonel Openshaw
The time (if given): Late evening


The Players
The client: John Openshaw
The victim(s): Colonel Elias Openshaw, Joseph Openshaw, his brother; John Openshaw, Joseph's son
The accused or suspected: None; later it becomes clear it is the members of the Ku Klux Klan
The arrested: None
The investigating officer(s): None; no crime is seen to have been permitted, all deaths ruled accidental
The advocate(s): None, unless you count Holmes as an advocate for John Openshaw
The real culprit(s): Captain James Calhoun and others of the KKK
Others: Mr. Fordham, the Colonel's lawyer, who witnesses his will; Major Freebody, a friend of Joseph Openshaw, the last man to see him alive;

The clues: Five died orange pips sent in an envelope marked KKK; Colonel Openshaw's involvement with the KKK, his aversion to blacks, his time spent in Florida, his dislike of the Emancipation Proclamation; his fighting in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy.
The red herring(s): None
The breakthrough: Kind of not really any. Holmes almost immediately recognises what's going on, but is unable to prevent events taking their course.
The result: Holmes fails for the first time.


Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:

That John Openshaw has come up from the southwest.

Before the case

It is, if you will excuse the cliche, a wild and stormy night, and Holmes is amusing himself by sorting and cataloguing his old case files, while Watson reads a novel. Watson is staying temporarily in Baker Street while his wife visits her mother. It is against this backdrop that they then receive a visit from John Openshaw, and the case begins.

Synopsis:

On a bitter and cold, rainy night, as storms lash London and both Holmes and Watson are happy to be indoors, a John Openshaw arrives to ask Holmes' advice and help. He tells him of his uncle, Colonel Elias Openshaw, who spent much time in America and fought during the Civil War for the South. When he returned to England, disgusted at the Emancipation Proclamation adn the defeat of the Confederacy, he took his nephew, John, who now tells the tale, into his house and basically treated him like his own son. One day he received a letter from India, an envelope which contained only five dried orange pips and the letters KKK. Seeing this, Colonel Openshaw turned pale, and for the next eight weeks kept even more to himself than he had done - never a gregarious man - drank more and regularly made forays out into the garden with his gun, as if expecting an attack.

Then he was found dead, face down in a pool in his garden. His death was ruled as suicide, but John could not believe it. The estate passed to John's father, who received a similar note, demanding the return of papers which his brother had already burned. When the instructions were not followed, Joseph Openshaw found himself lying in a chalk pit with a broken skull. His death, too, was ruled as a suicide. Now John himself has received a letter, and though he went to the police they treated it as a practical joke. Holmes is furious, seeing it as no such thing, in fact as something deadly serious and life-threatening. John shows him a piece of paper he found in the grate in the room where his uncle had burned the papers that seem to be wanted back so badly. It reads

4th. Hudson came. Same old platform. 7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Paramore, and John Swain, of St. Augustine. 9th. McCauley cleared. 10th. John Swain cleared. 12th. Visited Paramore. All well.

Holmes assumes this to be a list of some sort, a record of people who have been sent the letter and the results of these. He sends Openshaw home, with strict instructions to put this piece of paper on the sundial with a note to say all other papers were burned by his uncle. He is however too late, as the next day news comes that Openshaw too has been killed, and his death believed a suicide. Holmes swears revenge. He has deduced that the messages come from a ship, that it is a sailing ship and is in London at the moment. Angered by the death of the young man, his pride stung that he has been bested (which he admits is a petty thing, but true nevertheless), and feeling that he essentially sent John away to his death, Holmes spends that day tracking the culprits down. Using Lloyds List, he searches for any large sailing ships which might have come from America. As one is called Lone Star, and has also been in Dundee, where the letter was sent to John's father, this, he is sure, is the ship. Now he has the name of the leader, a Captain James Calhoun, and he sends him an envelope with five orange pips and the words "S.H for J.O".

In the event, this never reaches Calhoun as the ship he is on founders in bad weather, and so Holmes must cede his vengeance to that of a higher judge.

After the case

Nothing. Nothing at all. A very abrupt, downbeat ending in which Holmes is deprived of bringing the members of the Klan to justice, as their ship is lost at sea.

How the case is solved: Since the words KKK are on the flap of the envelope, and orange pips used as a warning, Holmes knows the Ku Klux Klan is involved. As Colonel Openshaw is know to have left America in a hurry, he deduces that the colonel left as someone was after him. The extract from the register John shows him confirms that other warnings have been sent, and as described above, he locates the ship and attempts to bring the men to justice, but is thwarted when the vessel sinks at sea in bad weather with all hands.

Comments:

Whether it's wise, whether or not he has learned his lesson with the Mormons, again we have Doyle sticking his nose into American politics. While there is no question that the KKK are an evil bunch of bigoted racist bastards, you do have to wonder, given how little it's been proven he knew about the Mormons in reality, how much he knows about the Ku Klux Klan, and I wonder too if there was any blowback from them? If Doyle was trying to make a name for himself as an author in America, particularly in the south, would this have gone down well? It's possible it would have, as he doesn't make any specific accusations against the KKK or take sides. I'm not saying by any means he condones their actions, and Holmes certainly is out for revenge, but is it because of the KKK itself? No. It's because they murdered his client.

So, do we know if Doyle, or Holmes, is or was racist? Well, being an Englishman in the 19th century who saw action in the Second Boer War, if only as a doctor, you might think so. Holmes certainly presents an image of the classic superior, sexist, bigoted upper-class Englishman, though he's never accused of racism, but you would wonder what his actual views on the KKK are, prior to this incident?

The story represents a double failure for Holmes, perhaps his first. He fails to serve his client, fails indeed to save him, and fails utterly in his attempt to bring the perpetrators to book. Of course, the latter is not his fault, and events are taken out of his hands; had the ship not gone down in the storm then the letter would have been received on the Lone Star's return to Georgia, and the police might have apprehended them.  But then, they might not. This is a mere twenty years after the end of the Civil War, and we're talking about the southern states here, and indeed one of the most fiercely southern, a real slave state. So perhaps - likely, in fact - they would protect the captain and his men, tacitly endorse their actions and refuse or find a way to block any sort of extradition. It's my belief that they would never have been brought to justice, these men, and it's possible Doyle realised this, which could be why he allowed the hand of God to deal with them. He might also have been concerned about a poor reaction if the men had been extradited to England and imprisoned or even hanged.

Of the stories so far, this is by far the most downbeat. There's not a hint of humour or comic relief, and the scene, tone and mood is set right from the beginning with the description of the weather, and a dark sense of foreboding all through it. It's the second story in which Holmes hardly ventures outside of the flat to investigate and solve the case; the only time he goes out is to look at the Lloyds List and to quiz people down at the docks. Again, on a very basic level, you'd have to say this comes across as a very anti-American story, though it is of course more against the Ku Klux Klan than America itself.

Character Study

Colonel Elias Openshaw: Emigrated in his youth to Florida, got involved in the Civil War fighting for the South. Unlike many English gentlemen who bear a military rank, his is not from the British Army but the American Confederate one. It's clear he fell in with the KKK and their ilk, as John relates his "aversion to the negro", which would have made him ideal recruitment material for those sick bastards. But then he appears to have fallen out with them, stolen something they valued highly - their memoranda and notes about those they have oppressed, it would seem - and had to flee the USA. Arriving home, he became - if he was not already - an irascible, isolated, unfriendly man who wanted nothing to do with anyone else. He took a shine to John though and made him all but his own son, and when the letter arrives he meets it with a mixture of terror and dumb bravado, the latter illustrated by his rushing out into the garden with his gun to face unseen assailants.

He must be a man of strong convictions though, or else he realises that either what is in the papers they demand back would damage him personally, or would at at rate be dangerous to return, and he refuses to do as he is bid. He in fact ensures that even if he is killed (as he is) nobody will ever be able to restore the papers to the society, as he burns them. This, then, creates serious problems for his brother when it comes to his turn, as he has no idea what these papers are, and as a consequence is killed also. As is his own son, John. You can't help but think that the colonel could have avoided the deaths of what amounts now to all of his family (as John is not said to have been married, and there is no mention of Joseph's wife or any other children) had he just done as he was bid. But it seems either he realised the value of the papers and the danger of them being restored to the KKK, or, which is more likely, he was not about to let anyone push him around.

Joseph Openshaw: Brother to Elias, we don't hear too much about him. He is merely the vehicle by which the KKK's vendetta is carried on. They don't know him, but they assume he has the papers, since his brother, it can be safely imagined, passed them on to him, and so when he gets the message he laughs at it, unaware of its dire importance and danger, and refuses to go to the police, also forbidding his son to take any action. He pays the price too.

John Openshaw: The final member, it would seem, of the Openshaw family, he has been dreading the receipt of the letter too, but it has been some time now, and when he gets it he does not know where to turn. Although it seems everyone does, not everyone is aware of Sherlock Holmes, and he has never heard of him until he is recommended to his service by a friend. By now it is already too late: although John has a small fragment of the papers which was not burned - unlikely to satisfy the KKK anyway - he is killed before he can do as Holmes instructs him to, advising the society that their papers are burned. Perhaps, had they stayed their hand, and seen this message, they might have believed that in the absence of any chance of getting back the papers, their destruction might accomplish the same end.

Better than you

Holmes demonstrates his contempt - outright, naked contempt - for the police here (though this time, it's just the force in general; no official is named) when John tells him that they will not believe his story, and consider it to be a practical joke. He lambasts them again when John reveals that though they  - no doubt reluctantly and with many twirlings of the finger at the temple when he is gone - provide him a constable for his protection, the man was instructed to remain at the house, thus leaving John in mortal danger when he leaves it, danger he succumbs to when he heads for home. Had the police taken him at his word, Holmes knows, and had they worked with him, together they might have saved the young man's life and identified a conspiracy of terror which, even now, they are ignorant of, and likely to remain so.

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

After his uncle and father receive a strange letter with the words KKK and five dried orange pips, both men dying in mysterious circumstances, John Openshaw seeks Holmes' help. Holmes realises KKK stands for Ku Klux Klan, and that John's life is in mortal danger, But before he can help him, John too is killed, and Holmes, though he tracks down the culprits, is unable to exact revenge before their ship is lost at sea. Holmes is crushed by his failure.

Holmes' Hit List

Total: 1 (Captain James Calhoun*)
Running total: 6

The Holmes Body Count

Direct: 1 (John Openshaw)
Indirect: 1 (Captain James Calhoun) **
Incidental:
Historical: 2 (Colonel Elias and Joseph Openshaw)
Total: 4
Running total: 15

Famous Firsts

I think it's fair to mark this as Holmes' first real failure. Although he solves the crime he does not manage to save John Openshaw and in effect all but sends him to his death.This makes it also the first - and only one of two - stories in which Holmes is unable to prevent the death of his client.  If he had at least insisted he spend the night at Baker Street then maybe things might have turned out differently. You can't necessarily say he was beaten by the KKK, but he certainly did not beat them. So it's a dark chapter in his career, and not the last.

I do like this though. It makes Holmes more human, less of a machine, no Superman. Like anyone, he can get it wrong, he can miscalculate, he can fail and his plans can come to nothing. It's good to know he's not a super-sleuth machine that is always right, as if he were, it would quickly become boring, patronising and predictable. The fact that he can fail sets us up to wonder each time whether or not he will triumph, and it's in that slight uncertainty, like wondering if a character in 24 or Spooks will actually be killed, that we gain our biggest enjoyment from the stories. Nobody wants a crime-solving godlike being who never fails. There's got to be something to connect him to the rest of us, to make us feel he's one of us. And when he fails, rather than think the smug bastard got what he deserved at last, Doyle's genius and talent is that he makes us feel sorry for the man. We really want him to win, but we're aware he may not always do.

Satisfied customer(s)?

Not in any way, shape or form. The client who comes looking for his help is killed, the police are not involved, and the guilty parties are dealt with in a much more Biblical way. Holmes identifies, but does not get, his men, and there is nothing to celebrate about this case at all, for anyone.

Legal outcome, if any: None (unless you believe in divine justice)



* Although Holmes fails to bring Calhoun to justice, he does identify him and set him up for capture. It's only that fate intervenes by having him die at sea, so technically I include this man on his list.

** Although Holmes mentioned that he believed there were more people in the gang, we don't know how many, who they were, or if they were all on the ship, and as Calhoun is the only one he positively identifies, he is the only one we can include.[/b]

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Man with the Twisted Lip"
Year first published: 1891
Type: Short story
Chronology: 6th short story, 6th in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 8th Holmes story overall
Location(s): Watson's home (address unknown); The Bar of Gold, Upper Swandam Lane; The Cedars, Lee, Kent;  Bow Street Police Station; Baker Street
Date: June 19 1889
The crime or the mystery: The disappearance of one Neville St. Clair, last seen in an opium den
The time (if given): Some time late in the night

The Players
The client: Mrs. St. Clair
The victim(s): Neville St. Clair
The accused or suspected: Hugh Boone, a cripple and beggar
The arrested: Same
The investigating officer(s): Inspector Bradstreet
The advocate(s): Holmes
The real culprit(s): None
Others: Isa Whitney, opium addict; Kate Whitney, his wife;

The clues: A box of toy bricks, which Mr. St. Clair had been bringing home for his son; blood on the windowsill; St. Clair's clothes - other than his coat - found in the room
The red herring(s): None, other than there being the belief that a murder has been committed,when no such thing has in fact occurred.
Disguise(s) affected by Holmes: An old opium addict
The breakthrough: Seems to have come to  Holmes in a night of smoking and not sleeping
The result: St. Clair and Hugh Boone are unmasked as being one and the same, and with no crime therefore committed, he is let go, after having given an undertaking that his begging days are over.


Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case: None

Before the case

As Holmes himself would say, a most singular beginning! For the first time ever, other than obviously the very first story, i.e. the novel A Study in Scarlet, the action does not begin either at Baker Street nor with Holmes. The opening scene concerns a visit to Watson by a lady of his wife's acquaintance, in desperation to rescue her opium-addicted husband from the opium den, and it's only when Watson goes there, brings the man out and recognises Holmes there, that the real mystery kicks off.

Synopsis:

In the course of retrieving his friend from an opium den, Watson runs into Holmes, who is there in disguise. He is following up a case in which a man was seen at the window of the den by his wife, then vanished suddenly. When she managed to force entry to the den, in company with the police, no sign of her husband could be found. There was only an old crippled beggar by the name of Hugh Boone there, but the box of toy bricks her husband had promised to bring home to her son was there. The police - and Holmes - fear that Mr. St. Clair was robbed and his body thrown out the window into the river below. His coat is found when the tide recedes, weighted down with hundreds of coins, but no sign of the body.

Watson joins Holmes at his invitation, having sent his opium-addled friend home, and together they travel to Lee in Kent, where St. Clair's wife, who has engaged his services and given him rooms in her house while he conducts the investigation, awaits. When she asks him to be frank with her and answer whether he thinks her husband is alive and he says no, he does not, she triumphantly produces a letter he wrote and which she has only received today. Holmes is thunderstruck, and his theories go out the window. But now, a new one is forming.

He takes Watson to the jail, where Hugh Boone is being held. He cleans up his face and there beneath all the dirt and the scar which twisted the man's lip is - Mr. Neville St. Clair! A disguise! The beggar and St. Clair are one and the same. His ruse uncovered, St. Clair explains that he had been making a living as a beggar, a living at which he says he could make more than at his own job, but in order to keep this from his wife, he had had to disguise himself. This also helped elicit sympathy from passers-by, which often translated into coins. He used to change from his city clothes into his beggar's outfit at the opium den, and it just so happened that his wife was on business in that part of the city and saw him. He immediately moved away from the window, and quickly hid all his clothes, changed into his beggar outfit so as not to be discovered, and found himself arrested for the suspected murder of himself.

After the case

Nothing at all.

How the case is solved:

With all the clues to hand, it suddenly comes to Holmes and he realises that Hugh Boone is Neville St. Clair. He does not, which is unlike him, go on at length afterwards to Watson, explaining how he came to his conclusion.

Comments:

On the face of it, a clever little story concerning a secret identity, but I find it hard to believe. While Doyle does ensure he goes out of his way to stress that he is not in any manner suggesting that all beggars make as much as Boone/St. Clair does, it's still a little unlikely at best. If you count the amount of people who give to beggars, then as now, you might have one in ten, maybe one in twenty who will drop an offering into a hat, and usually the smallest they have. To claim St. Clair could make twenty-six shillings (over £100 today) in a day purely by appealing to people's charity is really stretching it I feel. No matter how generous people are, that seems a huge sum to make.

Even though he says that he elicited sympathy by making up his face well, having once been an actor, I'm not convinced, And not only that: don't beggars stake out spots and then protect them? For a "newbie" to come in and suddenly start taking all the business would surely arouse the ire of the real, longtime beggars, who might set about him. Not to mention, why the elaborate subterfuge when his wife discovered him? Would it not have been easier to have descended - since he was already dressed in his "civvies" - and make up some story about, I don't know, calling in to see a friend or collecting a debt or looking for directions or, hell, anything? Anything to explain his presence in the den? Instead, he chooses to weave the most complicated web of lies and intrigue, inviting the investigation not only of the police but of Holmes too. How did he think this was going to end? And why did he throw out his coat? Well, I suppose so that it wouldn't be recognised and connected to him.

Overall, though clever, a hard story to swallow and there are many, many holes to be picked in it. I wonder if Doyle properly researched what a beggar makes on the street? No matter his skill, I can't see how it would buy him a new house and a fine new lifestyle, and in ways - though I'm sure not intentional - he kind of trivialises the desperate plight of beggars in London by suggesting that such an occupation could be profitable to one who wished to exploit it. I don't imagine many beggars got to read his story, but any who heard it must have been fuming at the treatment of their "profession". Still, I guess it's easier to laugh at a social injustice, an evil of society, a problem prevalent on the streets of London, than attempt to do anything about it. I hope he made a large contribution to all the local beggars after this was published.

Character Study

Hugh Boone/Neville St. Clair: A man who began as an actor, where he learned the secrets of applying make-up, and then turned this to his advantage when he had to go undercover as a beggar for his newspaper when he became a reporter. St. Clair made, apparently, so much in his beggar guise that he decided to take it up full time, and built a secret career on it. I'm not sure how he thought he would maintain such a secret forever. At heart though he does not seem to be a bad man, and is well-liked, but he could do with a little more common sense.

Better than you

Again Holmes shows the local police how much cleverer than them he is, as he reveals the disguise St. Clair is wearing, and shows them that they have in their cells the very man who is accused of his own murder. To be fair, Bradstreet reacts with good humour to this revelation, but then, who could have known?

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

A woman engages Holmes to find her missing husband, last seen in an opium den. It turns out that he was using the den to change into a beggar's costume, which he had been using for years to earn a living as a beggar.

Holmes' Hit List

Total: 0
Running total: 6

The Holmes Body Count

Direct: 0
Indirect: 0
Incidental: 0
Historical: 0
Total: 0
Running total: 15

Famous Firsts

The first Holmes story which does not begin with Holmes, or indeed in Baker Street (the famous residence is in fact only mentioned at the end, in the final sentence, as a destination).

The first (and only, I assume) time Watson is called James by his wife, when his name is John. Guess even the greats get it wrong once in a while.

The first time Holmes gets it totally wrong, though he makes amends by solving the case with his customary flair. But at first, he's convinced that Mr. St. Clair is dead, and the production by the man's wife of a letter proving he is very much alive knocks Holmes, as the English are fond of saying, for six.

Satisfied Customer(s)?

Very much so. St. Clair's wife gets her husband back and St. Clair himself is able to preserve his secret.

Legal outcome (if any): None, as there has been no crime committed.

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"
Year first published: 1892
Type: Short story
Chronology: 7th short story, seventh in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 9th Holmes story overall
Location(s): Baker Street; Tottenham Court Road; Goodge Street; Alpha Inn, Bloomsbury; Covent Garden; Brixton Road; Kilburn
Date: December 27 1889
The crime or the mystery: Initially simply the tracing of the owner of a hat, leading to the discovery of the whereabouts of a hugely expensive jewel that has been robbed
The time (if given): Morning

The Players
The client: None
The victim(s): The Countess of Morcar
The accused or suspected: John Horner (seriously? Jack Horner?), a plumber
The arrested: Same
The investigating officer(s): inspector Bradstreet
The advocate(s): None
The real culprit(s): James Ryder, attendant at the hotel
Others: Peterson, commissionaire; Catherine Cusack, maid to the Countess; Henry Baker, owner of the hat and goose but otherwise completely incidental to the story; Breckinridge, seller of geese; Maggie Oakshott, goose farmer, sister to Ryder

The clues: None as such; the gem being inside the goose is the only real clue that Holmes has, and the knowledge that it was stolen from the Countess. All his other information he gleans from the account of the arrest of John Horner.
The red herring(s): None
Disguise(s) affected by Holmes: None
The breakthrough: Sort of luck in a way, though they already had the name of Mrs. Oakshott and were going to go there the next day. That might not have yielded anything though, as she knew nothing of the theft, and may or may not have mentioned that James Ryder was her brother. So it's mostly chance that Ryder happens to turn up looking for the goose when Holmes and Watson are there.
The result: The jewel is returned - presumably - to the Countess, and the innocent man is freed, and possibly, one who might have gone bad is saved from a life of crime.

Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:

(I'm stretching this a little, as the hat does impinge upon the case, but as the case, as such, has not yet begun and the hat is merely a device for Holmes to reunite it with its owner, and thus allow the case to begin, I'm going to allow it.)

That the owner is an intellectual man, that he has cut his hair recently, that his wife no longer loves him; that he does not have gas in his house, uses lime in his hair and has fallen on hard times; that he is a sedentary man and does not go out much and that he had foresight but has lost it.

Before the case

Watson calls on Holmes to wish him a Happy Christmas, and finds him studying an old and battered hat, which has been handed in to him by Peterson the commissionaire. He in turn picked it up when it fell off a man carrying a goose, who had got into a row and then run off, dropping the goose. Holmes is trying to ascertain all he can about its owner, in order to, if possible, not only return the hat but also make good on the loss of the goose to the man.

Synopsis:

As Holmes goes through his deductions, he and Watson are interrupted by the frantic and sudden arrival of Peterson, who shows him what his wife found while preparing the goose for dinner. A blue carbuncle, in fact, the blue carbuncle, known to have been stolen from the hotel room of the Countess of  Morcar only five days ago!

Suddenly, things are much more serious. Holmes remembers that a plumber who was doing work in Her Ladyship's room at the time was accused of stealing the gem, and arrested. Having placed an advertisement in the paper for the owner of the hat and goose to contact him, Holmes meets Mr. Henry Baker, who he is quite convinced is an innocent party. Reunited with his hat, and with a new goose which Holmes has bought to replace the one they ate, he turns his attention to where the goose has come from. Baker directs them to the Alpha Inn, where a Mr. Windigate (what is it with Doyle and the word Windi in names?) runs a goose club for Christmas. Holmes goes to the pub and finds out who sold the geese to Windibank, but the salesman in Covent Garden is not ready to tell. Holmes tricks him by making a wager with him, which he loses, but gains the information he seeks. He also learns he is not the only one enquiring about the geese, which is certainly interesting.

While he is still a short distance off from the stall another man comes asking about the geese, and the two of them shadow him but he sees them and demands to know who they are and what they want. Turns out he's James Ryder, the hotel attendant who put the police onto Jack, sorry John Horner. Holmes assures him he can help him and they all go back to Baker Street, where Holmes shows him the jewel and advises him the game is up, perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, given the, ah, method of hiding the carbuncle. He throws himself on Holmes' mercy, and the detective demands he tell him the full story of how the carbuncle came to be in the goose.

He relates how, after he had stolen the gem and framed Horner for the theft, he ran to his sister's farm, where he had an idea. He had been told by her that he could have a goose for Christmas as a present, and grabbed one, shoving the jewel down its throat while she was inside. The goose though, spooked, broke away from him and rejoined the flock. When he had it killed he took it with him to his friend in Kilburn, who cut it open and to the amazement of both, no gem! Wrong goose! Back he went to his sister's to rectify the error, but she had already sent the rest of the geese off to Breckinridge, who sold them to Windigate, who then sold the one Ryder wanted, by chance, to Henry Baker, who lost it in the struggle in which he also lost his hat, and by which means it came into the possession of Sherlock Holmes.

Seeing that the man is remorseful, and that the case against Horner will collapse if, as he promises, he will not stand as a witness, and seeing as it is the season of goodwill, Holmes throws Ryder out without reporting him to the police.

After the case

Nothing, again. Holmes and Watson sit down to eat their Christmas goose, and Holmes reflects that he may have saved a man from turning to crime.

How the case is solved: Mostly through a stroke of luck. Holmes has managed to trace the seller of the goose to the Brixton Road, but the appearance of James Ryder at the stall gives him the chance to get the full story out of the man. So the case is not solved through trickery or guile or intrigue; he's basically told how it was done by the man what done it, so to speak.

Comments:

A clever and cute little Christmas story, which, given it was first published in January, was probably written in December, and has a nice little cheerful Christmas ending to it. On the face of it, it's the story of a theft and the attempt to throw suspicion on an innocent man, but it's handled more light-heartedly by Doyle; even the thief is allowed go free, something Holmes has done before, and will do again, but usually because either there is no recourse to the law he can take or the culprit arouses his sympathies. Seldom, if ever, does he let his man go on purely altruistic grounds when he does not agree with what he has done, as here.

This story shows how devious Holmes can be, as when his usual method of gaining information, particularly from someone who seems not to know who he is - you would imagine that by now his fame has spread all across England, never mind London - fail him, he resorts to trickery, by making the stall owner think he has bested him in a bet. As he says, a man will advance far more information if he thinks he has the upper hand on you than if you seem to really want the information. This he has said before, in a slightly different context: the less you seem to want the information, the less interested you make yourself appear, the easier it is to get that information.

I don't remember if this is the only Christmas Holmes story, but I think it is, and it's one in which there is not a single mention of Mrs. Hudson, although she's not featured in every story by any means. It's also, since he has now recovered the blue carbuncle belonging to the Countess of Morcar, the second time he has helped the nobility in one of his adventures.

I do however have a question: had Doyle researched the feeding habits of geese? Because I personally feel that a) shoving a gem down a goose's throat is not only dangerous to he who forces it down - geese are well known for their ferocity when roused to action - but surely dangerous to the goose, who might choke? Not to mention that b) given the above, isn't it likely the bird would spit or at best crap it out before it could be killed? Ryder force-fed the goose a day previous; by the time he returns it should have passed it. Or died. I find this at best a doubtful premise, but hey, it was Christmas and I guess the story is not meant to be taken too seriously. Everyone's entitled to their bit of fun at the festive season.

Character Study

There's not, to be fair, much to study here. It's a story almost without characters, a purely detection one, so there are really only the very vaguest sketches. The only one I can really look at is
James Ryder: Hotel attendant at the Cosmopolitan Hotel, he sees the Countess's jewel and on impulse decides to take it. Interestingly, no motive is given for the theft. He is not said to be in debt, he does not take it for someone else, he is not a thief by trade. Why he should risk both his position and his freedom in one moment of madness is, to be blunt, odd, and it's never explained. Without any previous criminal record - in fact, John Horner, who is innocent of the crime, is recorded as having a conviction for robbery, which does not help his case - he decides to become a thief, and to take something belonging to a noblewoman, surely an action likely to bring down the very severest retribution upon him if he is discovered?

In the end, he proves a weak, scared little man who deeply regrets what he has done, and would surely last no time in jail were Holmes to turn him in. The detective remarks that if he were to be imprisoned Ryder would likely become a habitual criminal, a problem still prevalent today, but I disagree. I think he would wither in the prison environment and either hang himself or be done in by some other inmate. Either way, it's certain it would not end well for him. Since he has been let go by Holmes, we can assume he will be a changed man, however he was ruthless enough to frame another man for his crime, and to let him, if necessary, go to prison in his place, so we can't feel too well disposed towards him, despite his remorse.

Better than youN/A

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

Holmes is brought a goose which has been dropped by a man in the midst of a fight, Inside the goose is the stolen gem belonging to the Countess of Morcar. After following up the path of sale, he chances upon the thief, finds out how he had hidden the jewel inside the goose, and with the gem safely under lock and key, decides to give the guy a break and lets him go.

Holmes' Hit List

Total: 0
Running total: 6

The Holmes Body Count

Direct: 0
Indirect: 0
Incidental:0
Historical:0
Total: 0
Running total: 15

Famous Firsts First almost comic, certainly humorous Holmes story, and one on which weighty matters do not really depend.

First Holmes story set at Christmas.

Satisfied Customer(s)? Doesn't really apply, as there is no client involved.

Self-referentials "A Scandal in Bohemia", "A Case of Identity", "The Man with the Twisted Lip"

Legal outcome (if any):  None

[Trollheart]

Title: "The Speckled Band"
Year first published: 1892
Type: Short Story
Chronology: 8th short story, 8th in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 10th Holmes story overall
Location(s): Baker Street; Doctors Commons; Waterloo; Leatherhead, Surrey; Stoke Moran, Surrey
Date: Early April 1883
The crime or the mystery: The mysterious death of Julia Stoner
The time (if given): 7:15 am


The Players
The client: Helen Stoner
The victim(s): Julia Stoner and, later, Dr. Roylott
The accused or suspected: Dr. Roylott
The arrested: None
The investigating officer(s): None
The advocate(s): Holmes
The real culprit(s): Dr. Grimesby Roylott
Others: Miss Honoria Westphail, the girls' aunt; Percy Armitage, Helen's fiance;

The clues: A whistling sound heard in the bedroom, a metal clanging noise; a bell-pull that does not work but appears to be newly-installed; the bed bolted to the floor; a ventilator that does not admit outside air; a saucer of milk on top of a safe  in Dr. Roylott's study; the lack of any real building works
The red herring(s): The gypsies
Disguise(s) affected by Holmes:
The breakthrough:
The result: Holmes beats back the snake, it returns to Roylott through the ventilator and bites him, killing him outright.


Deductions made by Holmes which have nothing to do with the case:

That Miss Stoner has come up in a train and came to Baker Street in a dog cart along muddy roads.

Before the case

It begins with Holmes waking Watson up to call him down to take part in the case, early in the morning.

Synopsis:

Miss Helen Stoner arrives in a fluster to advise Holmes that she is at her wit's end. Her stepfather, Dr. Roylott, a man known to be violent, has already seen the untimely and mysterious death of her sister, Julia, two years ago, and now she, Helen, has been instructed to sleep in the same room as her late sister, due to some repairs being made to the house. Julia had mentioned, just prior to her death, hearing what sounded like a whistling noise, and on being found staggering out of her room, dying, had gasped "The speckled band!" though Helen does not have any idea what she meant. The previous night, having slept or at least lain in her sister's room, she too heard the sound, and bolted, leaving the house and coming by train directly up to Holmes for assistance.

Holmes listens as she outlines the character of her father. A brutal, uncompromising man, he has spent time in India, where he was tried for beating a servant to death, and narrowly avoided the gallows. Returning to England he brought exotic animals with him - a cheetah and a baboon - which he allows roam freely on the grounds of his estate. He picks fights with everyone, has little regard for his daughters - apart from local gypsies, whom he allows to camp on his land and with whom he appears to have some affiliation as he spends a lot of time with them. Each of the girls had an inheritance from their late mother, but due to their stepfather's brutish behaviour no servant would stay with them, so they were forced to do all the work in the house themselves. When Julia met a man and was to be married, her death occurred only two weeks afterwards.

The door to her room had been locked, as had been their habit due to the wandering wild pets their stepfather kept, and the windows were barred with thick shutters. Julia had told Helen she had heard the whistling noise, and a sort of metallic clang, every night for three nights before she died, and in her death-throes had pointed at their stepfather's room, but had expired before she could say anything else. No marks were found on her body, no evidence of poison, and her death remains a mystery. Now Helen too is engaged, and having  been forced to sleep in the same room, she fears for her life, having heard the same sounds, and so she is now sitting in Baker Street, hoping for some salvation at the hands of the master sleuth.

Holmes asks if they could come down to her house in Surrey to have a look around, and she says that by chance Dr. Roylott is away today, so they should be fine. Holmes says that he and Watson will see her there in the afternoon. She has only left when the Doctor himself bursts in, uninvited, raving, threatening Holmes about what happens to people who stick their noses into other people's business. Holmes laughs at him, and he storms out. The detective has now had a first-hand look at the man who will form the basis of his investigation into the death of Julia Stoner, and the possible threat to the life of her sister. He does not like what he sees, but is in no way cowed by the man.

Holmes goes to get a copy of Helen's mother's will, and determines from it that the loss of their inheritance in the event of marriage would have crippled Roylott, so he had good reason to prevent any such event. They arrive at Stoke Moran, Helen's home, and go over the house. Holmes notices that there seem to be no need for repairs to the outside walls, and Helen agrees, confirming that it was just an excuse to get her to move into Julia's room. In that room, Holmes notes many curious things. A ventilator that seems to go nowhere but the connecting room - her stepfather's - a new bell pull which, when he pulls it, does nothing, the bed bolted to the floor. He tests the shutters, confirming they are sturdy and cannot be broken through. He notes the bell pull is attached by a wire to the ventilator. In Roylott's room he sees a safe on top of which is a saucer of milk. Asking Helen if they have a cat, she answers in the negative, although there is the cheetah. He also notes a leash of some sort with a loop tied in it, and that there are marks upon the chair which bear witness to someone having stood on it.

He and Watson take rooms in the local inn to wait out the night, instructing Helen to wait until her stepfather is in his room and then sleep in her own room, and leave the shutters open in Julia's room so that they may enter when the coast is clear. Helen will signal that it is so by placing a lamp in the window. Once this is done, Holmes and Watson enter the room in the night and settle down to wait. Suddenly there is a clanging noise, and Holmes sees something coming through the vent and slithering down the bell pull towards the bed. Jumping up, he strikes at it with his cane, and the snake turns around and slides back into the vent, chased back from whence it came. There is a scream of pain, and when they check Roylott's room they find him dead, bitten by the snake, the "speckled band" still around his throat. Holmes deftly captures the serpent and returns it gingerly to the safe, slamming the door on it.

It's clear now that Roylott had murdered his first step-daughter by means of introducing the snake into her room via the ventilator. The snake had then used the dummy bell rope as a ladder to get down to the bed, where it eventually bit Julia. The serpent had visited her three times, as the murderous doctor could not be certain it would strike the first time, and would call it back by whistling for it, the reptile obviously trained by him to respond. Chased back towards him it had bitten the first thing it encountered, which happened to be Roylott, waiting to call it back.

Holmes notes that the deaths of the two girls would have ensured Roylott continued to have access to their inheritance, and that he had little or no love or regard for his step-daughters, thinking only of his own comfort and enrichment. He has now met the fate he so richly deserved, and Helen is saved.

After the case

Little other than an explanation, as below, by Holmes to Watson of his reasoning. Helen is conveyed to her aunt in Harrow, while the doctor's death is ruled as misadventure, due to his playing with a deadly snake. Holmes realises he has a death on his conscience, but admits he is not troubled: the bastard got all he deserved.

How the case is solved: Holmes had proceeded from an erroneous supposition, that the gypsies encamped in the grounds had something to do with Julia's death, but on confirming there was no way into the room at night he had modified his hypothesis. Seeing the bed bolted to the ground, he reasoned it was held that way so that it could not be moved, and that therefore it was important that it be in that particular place. The dummy bell rope gave him the clue that it might be used more as a rope down which something would or could descend, and the ventilator leading only to the doctor's room made it likely that whatever was to be introduced into the girl's room would come from there, via the ventilator. He already suspected a snake, and the idea that there was no poison found in Julia's body would tie in with Roylott's travels in India and his medical knowledge.

The whistling sound he had identified as the signal from the doctor to recall the snake before the morning light revealed it, and the milk would be the agency by which it would obey. The chair in his room, which showed signs of having been stood on, would be his aid in reaching the ventilator in order to drop the snake in. The metallic clang Julia had heard was the sound of the safe being closed after Roylott had returned the snake to it.

Comments:

I love this story. It's one of my favourites of the Holmes adventures, but I do see some flaws in it. For one thing, I'm not that au fait with the habits of snakes, but surely they need to breathe like any other creature? Would one survive in a safe, which is by definition sealed to protect its contents? The story does not mention any holes bored in it to let in air. Also, it does not say how the snake is fed. Milk is all very well, but that won't keep a snake healthy and full. I suppose Roylott could have fed it mice, though none are mentioned. The idea, too, of a cheetah running wild around the grounds of his estate seems to me to be at best unlikely, at worst impossible. Would the local constabulary not have an issue with a man-eating cat being loose in the village, even if confined to the grounds of the manor? And would such a creature not by now have killed someone or something? Can a cheetah and a baboon co-exist? Is it not likely the baboon would have ended up on the cheetah's menu? Were there any trees for the baboon to live in, this being its natural habitat?

Who fed the two animals, and with what? There were no servants, so did the doctor himself find raw meat to satisfy the hunger of the cheetah, and what, bananas? Nuts? Fruit? Something for the baboon? Why would gypsies dare to camp, even with Roylott's blessing, on grounds which were stalked by a big cat and a scary baboon? Superstitious people at the best of times, but apart from that, not completely without brains, would they have put themselves in peril for no other reason than to chat to the doctor? And what of Holmes and Watson? How come the cheetah did not detect humans running across the grounds and attack them, or at least chase them, raise the alarm? I suppose you can assume the animals have got used to Roylott, and maybe his step-daughters, though that does not stop the girls from making sure their doors are locked at night! Even so, casual visitors to the manor, official police presence (we know, as Helen tells Holmes, that the police have been called once or twice) would surely give the beasts prey to hunt?

The whole idea is so ludicrous that it almost spoils the story, which is a pity, as, like I say, this is one of my favourites. But the lack of attention to detail borders on the lazy and even the arrogant. And what of the gypsies? Why are they even there? We never meet even one, and they play no part at all in the story. Are they just there to provide a red herring for Holmes, when Watson conjectures that "speckled band" might refer to the bandanna their kind wear, or that even band might mean band of gypsies? If so, it's a poor red herring, as it adds nothing to the story and is quickly dismissed by Holmes.

The villain of the piece is, however, one worthy of Dickens, as we'll see when we get to the "Character Study" section below, and I would note that this is the fourth (third, if you lump Stangerson and Drebber from A Study in Scarlet together) murder victim - or at least death - which has been richly deserved and garners no sympathy at all. It is, I believe, the first time Holmes has received an actual bodily threat (the salesman in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" was nasty to him but did not threaten actual violence against him) and the first time Holmes has shown that apart from having a razor-sharp mind, he has muscles too, as he bends the poker Roylott has disfigured back into place. Whether or not this is a surprise to Watson is not recorded.

Although this was written in 1892, and therefore comes chronologically after the other stories in the volume, I find it odd that Watson is staying with Holmes, and there is no mention of his wife. Is this meant to take place before the events of The Sign of the Four? Checking the date of that adventure, I see it is, five years in fact before Watson meets Mary. Interesting. So Doyle was not averse to writing the stories out of historical chronology if it suited his purposes. This is also one of the few stories so far in which there is no police investigation; the official force are only notified - and then, only the county police, not Scotland Yard - by Holmes after he has concluded his own investigation, and he does not give them the full details. Why, I'm not sure: would it not be better to have Roylott seen for the murderer he was? But then, I suppose Holmes might, at a stretch, be open to a charge of manslaughter; after all, he did force the poisonous snake back into the room it had come from, knowing the doctor was in there. I doubt such a charge would have stuck, though.

This is the first in what will become a small series of what are known, or became known as "locked room mysteries". I don't know if Doyle invented this form - other mystery writers may use it all the time; I'm not necessarily a fan of mystery fiction - but they do seem to be mostly associated with Holmes. The idea, of course, is that a crime is committed within a locked room or space, allowing no possibility that the murderer could have entered from without, and so deepening the mystery.

Character Study

Helen Stoner: Considering she is one of the major characters, we don't get too much information about her. She is brave and has a head on her shoulders, realising once she hears the whistling sound that she can't stay in the room, and goes to seek Holmes' help. She is abused by her step-father, but has the filial loyalty not to want Holmes to know. She is fairly industrious, as was presumably her sister, as they both had to do everything for themselves. She has, or had, a strong mental link with Julia, who was her twin; when Julia was afraid in the room Helen felt it too.

Dr. Grimesby Roylott: A nasty and violent man, we're told his wife died in a train accident, but I would personally wonder if he had anything to do with it? At any rate, he lived in India where his temper got him into trouble, and nearly the rope, which would have saved everyone a great deal of pain and prevented the death of one of his daughters. He's a man who is willing to selfishly sacrifice everything, including his step-daughters' lives, just so as to keep his hands on their money. He's a brute and though he comes from upper-class stock is feared and loathed around the village. His friendship with the gypsies is an anomaly; I have no idea why he associates with them, or why he tolerates them when he hates everyone else. He's clearly one of those entitled Englishmen who think it's okay to bring their own little piece of India home with them, which he does in the shape of the animals he imports and lets run loose. He is a powerful and well-built man, as evidenced when he bends Holmes' poker in an effort to intimidate him, but not well informed, as Holmes remarks when he has left, as he thinks Holmes works for Scotland Yard.

Better than you N/A

The story in 100 words or less.
(The Tealdeer version)

Helen Stoner fears the same fate as befell her sister two years earlier, and comes to Holmes for help. Though warned off by her step-father, Holmes and Watson go to the house and through a series of deductions work out that the doctor has a snake in his room, which he used to causing the sister's death, and which he now intends to put into Helen's room to get rid of her, as she plans to marry, which would upset his finances. Holmes knocks the snake back into the step-father's room, where it bites him, killing him instantly.

Holmes' Hit List

Total: 0
Running total: 6

The Holmes Body Count

Direct: 1 (Dr. Grimseby Roylott)
Indirect:
Incidental:
Historical: 1 (Julia Stoner)
Total: 2
Running total: 17

Famous Firsts

First time Holmes directly causes a death.

First "locked-room mystery" story.

First time Holmes is mistakenly linked with Scotland Yard.

Satisfied Customer(s)?

Yes, indeed. Helen Stoner's life is saved and she is released from the cruel attentions of her murderous step-father. What better ending could there be?

Self-referentials

Legal outcome (if any): None