The Musgrave Ritual--The Real Treasure is In The Framing Sequence!

Now this is more like it!!

After my kvetching last week that The Gloria Scott was a wee bit of a disappointment as a first "case" for Sherlock Holmes, along comes The Musgrave Ritual to answer all of my complaints.

A grand, Gothic mystery! One of Britain's oldest family's in one of the oldest houses (whose walls are adorned with weapons!)! A mysterious ritual!! A treasure map!! A Don Juan of a butler! A shattered romance turned deadly!! A grotesque corpse! The recovery of one of the realm's missing treasures!!! The butler did it!!!!

But, even more impressive than the flashback to Holmes' early case--which is indeed superior to Gloria Scott on almost every level--is the attention to the detail in Sherlock's present-day life.

The "framing sequence" in Gloria Scott was barely there--Holmes just went up to Watson and said. "You wanna hear about my first case?"

But in the Musgrave Ritual, not only do we get a ripping good older case, we also get a ton of information about Holmes in the present day. Obviously, it's been far too long since my trips through the Canon, because I had forgotten just how much of what we know about Holmes at Baker Street comes from the "framing sequence":

...when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs. I have always held, too, that pistol practice should be distinctly an open-air pastime; and when Holmes, in one of his queer humours, would sit in an arm-chair with his hair-trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges, and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic V. R. done in bullet-pocks, I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it. 

Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and of turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places. But his papers were my great crux. He had a horror of destroying documents, especially those which were connected with his past cases, and yet it was only once in every year or two that he would muster energy to docket and arrange them; for, as I have mentioned somewhere in these incoherent memoirs, the outbursts of passionate energy when he performed the remarkable feats with which his name is associated were followed by reactions of lethargy during which he would lie about with his violin and his books, hardly moving save from the sofa to the table. Thus month after month his papers accumulated, until every corner of the room was stacked with bundles of manuscript which were on no account to be burned, and which could not be put away save by their owner.

How many depictions of the interior of 221B have been based almost entirely on these two paragraphs? How many recreations, museums, adaptations, modern pastiches, even 24th century holodeck versions, are based nearly exclusively on these two paragraphs?

Of course, our framing sequence is also good for a glance at Dr. Watson's personality, as well. References to his own "Bohemian disputation" and "lax" standards of neatness put Sherlock's hoarding behaviors into perspective. Watson's dry, puckish wit almost borders on passive-aggressiveness towards Holmes' antics. And of course, the way in which, despite his declarations, Watson is so easily distracted from his annoyance by the offering of a glimpse at Holmes' earliest cases.

But the focus is on Sherlock, and we learn a lot in a little space, aside from his lack of tidiness. His aversion to destroying any document suggests a tendency to hoarding--someone call a reality show!! His "mischievous" and coy tempting of Watson with tales of the past, and the "Your tidiness won't bear much strain after all, Watson" show that Sherlock can give as well as he gets in the pointed needling department.

But Holmes' ego is also on display here. While Holmes may insincerely dismiss his "trifling achievements," it's clear that he wants Watson to write up and publish this case. And why not? It shows Sherlock helping the realm's elite, and surely serves as a wonderful advertisement for his services!! 

And as for his opinion of his own reputation? Holmes declares that when he met Watson, he "had already established a considerable, though not a very lucrative, connection." And by the present day? "[His] name has become known far and wide, and when I am generally recognised both by the public and by the official force as being a final court of appeal in doubtful cases." No lack of self-regard, there. "I am sure that if you mentioned my name they would be happy to show it to you"? Sherlock is coming perilously close to putting on airs here. And while I don't support this reading, one could argue that Sherlock is sending a message to Watson: "I hobnob with political and royal power--get off my back about a few unfiled papers!!"

We also get a few more tantalizing glimpses into Holmes' college days, his early cases (what were the two before Musgrave came to him?), his early lodgings at Montague Street (with its proximity to the British Museum, and all the time studying there)...but really, there is not a ton there. And we shouldn't let ourselves be distracted from the wealth of information we learned about "present day" Holmes.

I don't want to give short shrift to the wonderful mystery. But it can speak for itself. It is the "present day" interplay of Holmes and Watson here, though, that most fascinates me. Sometimes, a framing sequence is much more than a just a mere framing sequence!

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**Holmes may not have been as famous in the field as he wasted yet, but surely this case got him a lot of attention. Helping one of England's oldest aristocratic families, and a member of Parliament, while recovering a long-lost national treasure?!? Certainly this did not go unnoticed in the halls of power, and just as certainly this resulted in an awful lot of cases eventually being steered his way.

We don't know much about that date of the "present-day" framing sequence...but one can speculate that Holmes business was at a slow point, and that enticing Watson to publish this tale would remind a great many people of means that Sherlock Holmes was available...

**I'm probably the least neat person in the world, so Watson's descriptions of Holmes' eccentricities doesn't bother me very much...I can top that mess, and raise Holmes some squalor!!

And while I've never had criminal experiments turn up in the butter dish, well, I've had some things in my refrigerator that looked worse...

**Watson has been very remiss of late in giving us hints of untold cases. So Sherlock himself dumps a boatload on us: The Tarleton Murders, The Case Of Vamberry The Wine Merchant, The Adventure of The Old Russian Woman, The Singular Affair Of The Aluminium Crutch, and Ricotti of The Club-Foot and His Abominable Wife. Get writing, pastichers!

Of particular interest might be the aluminium crutch. In those days, they hadn't yet developed a cheap and efficient process of extracting aluminium from ore, and as a result, the metal was prohibitively expensive--more so than even gold or platinum, at times. So to make something like a crutch from aluminium would be unusual and extravagant beyond belief. So why do it? Perhaps to make a lightweight crutch that could conceal something within...perhaps a weapon...?

[British readers--please make sure to give me credit for writing "aluminium" each time, instead of the correct "aluminum." Why can't the English teach the English how to speak? Or spell elements...?]

**Holmes defends Reginald Musgrave--"what was set down as pride was really an attempt to cover extreme natural diffidence"--but he really does come across as something of an upper-class twit. Perhaps it's just my natural dislike of aristocracy, but a lot of the ways Holmes describes him--"something of a dandy," "something of his place of birth seems to cling to the man," the description of the large staff he "has" to keep up ("Altogether there are eight maids, the cook, the butler, two footmen, and a boy. The garden and the stables of course have a separate staff")--does indeed come across as pride and a feeling of superiority. Probably just me...

**Some have questioned whether Holmes was paid for this case--there's never any discussion of remuneration. Still, when Holmes says "I have taken to living by my wits," and Musgrave says "your advice would be exceedingly valuable to me," I think we can here a subtle negotiation going on, disguised by the upper class feeling that it is gauche to discuss money matters.

**Brain fever!!!!

**Much has been made of how the "ritual" could still work after so long. After all, the trees would have grown some in the two hundred years since the "treasure map" was written. Plus, the ritual gives no mention of time of year, which of course would make a huge difference of when (and if) the sun "comes over the oak" and the direction of any shadows.

The Granada adaption allays some of that--the "oak" in question is not the actual tree, but the representation of an oak tree that is on the huge weather vane above Hurlstone. Clever.

They also interpret the map part a bit differently, so "North by ten and by ten" is "north ten by ten," or one hundred paces (and so on)! That makes for a much more energetic treasure hunt.

Of course, that still leaves the difficulty of whether or not the elm had grown in two centuries, or the proper time of year for the shadows to line up. Shhhh...

**Trigonometry!!

**Remember, if you're an out of work teacher, a lucrative career as a butler is available to you!!

**I have to wonder, when the story was first published, did a lot of aristocratic families go and take a hard look at any silly rituals they had, trying to see if they could lead to treasure?!?

**Although the print Holmes avers that the "probability is that [Rachel] got away out of England and carried herself and the memory of her crime to some land beyond the seas," the Granada version very clearly shows that she threw herself into the mere with the bundle, and shows her body being recovered later. Brain fever, indeed.

**Of course, that's one of the delicious aspects of the mystery--was the entombing of Brunton accidental? Or did spurned Rachel, in a fit of pique, do it purposefully?

Print Holmes, talking of her "memory of her crime," seems to believe it was purposeful. Granada Holmes, where the woman is clearly not in her right mind, doesn't show us, but implies that it was an accident. But she didn't go for help, and so left him to die. Hence her immediately drowning herself, in grief and derangement and guilt.

It's one of those problems the reader will have to decide for herself.

**I love the fact that they had already recovered the treasure, but didn't recognize it in its filthy, tarnished state. (BTW, great job hiding and preserving the priceless treasure, unnamed ancient Musgrave--damp and worms and dust and fungi!!)

**Given the state of the treasure, one has to wonder how Brunton planned to dispose of it.

You could polish up the stones and clean up the coins, I suppose. But given it's condition, it seems unlikely that any fence would recognize it as a valuable relic, as opposed to a dirty hunk of gold. Brunton would be lucky to get pennies on the dollar.

And Brunton could hardly try to sell it to a collector or a museum (or to the royal family) without revealing its provenance, which of course would reveal that he had stolen the booty. At best, that would likely mean he wouldn't get any money; at worst it would mean jail time.

Perhaps he planned to hide it, and then reveal to Musgrave what the ritual meant, and sell it back to him...I'm starting to think that maybe Brunton wasn't so smart, after all (Of course, if he were smart, he wouldn't have been caught going through family documents in the library like that...)

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE REIGATE SQUIRE...OR THE REIGATE SQUIRES...OR THE REIGATE PUZZLE...OR...

The Gloria Scott--Sherlock Holmes And The Phantom Menace?

Prequels...there's always got to be prequels...

It's inevitable, of course. Create characters compelling enough, and the audience will want to know about them, and especially their earlier history. How did they get to be the way they were? What events shaped them, who influenced them? "Tell us more, tell us more!"

Of course, the catch is, we've already begun to fill in this information ourselves, in our imaginations (if not our fanfics). So, all too often, when we finally do get "official" prequels, they seem all too dissatisfying to us. Which is, in part, our own damn fault for demanding them, I guess.

There are, in my opinion, three main reasons that prequels disappoint:

A) Lack of suspense. Obviously, we know our hero survives, so on a gut level we know that any danger is just manufactured rigamarole. Of course, that's true for our heroes set in the present day--we know that James Bond isn't going to die this movie--but surprises can still happen (M can die!! Shh, spoiler alert!) So an air of inevitability, of treading water, can set in.

B) To much demythologizing. As long as we can speculate about our hero's origin's we can be vague and grandiose. When it's actually put on paper or film, it becomes, "meh," because it can never live up to what we imagined. Of course Darth Vader was a whiny kid when he was a whiny kid. What did we really expect? And we already knew that the Jedi and the Republic fell to the Sith--so how can we be upset that our erstwhile heroes come off like a bunch of senile idiots who are manipulated for decades? How else could have a two-man operation pull off such a coup? But by showing our villains used to be less villainous and our heroes less able, prequels can end up disappointing us.

C) The same old same old. Sometime a prequel doesn't really do anything except change the geography and the cast of characters. Superboy was billed as "the adventures of Superman as a boy," and it turned out the there really wasn't a hack of a lot of difference between that and his adventures as a man. Sure, he was in Smallville, and in high school, but he still had the love interest constantly trying to expose his secret identity, he still battled Luthor and aliens and crooks, he still had a secret hideout and robots to cover for him and...Nothing against Superboy, but perhaps the proper approach for the concept would have been "the adventures of Superman before he was competent." Hey, he was a teenager with the power to juggle planets--surely he could disastrously screw up (as we all did at that age). And in fairness, some--albeit relatively few--did that. Bit all too often, it was just the adventures of the same guy we knew when he wore a smaller sized super suit.

Which brings us to The Gloria Scott.

Because I think that most readers would agree with me that, well, it's a little bit disappointing.

It's Sherlock Holmes' "first case!" OMG!! That has to be fascinating, important, exciting, right?

Well...meh.

The Gloria Scott avoids the first problem of prequels, the lack of suspense. We've been given very little of Holmes' pre-Watson life, so there's not much continuity to have us know what's going to happen already (There's also not much continuity to callously violate--yet somehow Young Sherlock Holmes happened!).

But on the other hand, we do hit upon the other problems. We imagined something bolder for the instigating event that pushed Sherlock towards being a detective. Instead, he does the standard "well, I can't really tell much about you" followed by a lengthy chain of deductions that we've seen Holmes do dozens of times, followed by, "Hey, you really ought to be a detective!"

Now, it's difficult to imagine that no one had told this to Sherlock before, or that he hadn't realized this himself.

But more importantly, we wanted something more myth-making, more life-changing: Sherlock lays out some deductions that save someone from dying! Sherlock experiences for the first time the authorities being unwilling/unable to help someone, and realizes that there's a role for his skills in this world! It's what modern storytelling has trained us for: an instigating event that changes everything, and sets him on his course, forever changed!! Something makes him the way he is!! Some destiny-making epiphany! We want drama, dammit!!!

Yes, that's mainly our own damn fault, for setting expectations so high. But really, we did want something with the teensiest more heft than "Hey, you could be a detective." "Oh, I guess."

And of course, there's the problem of the same old same old. The mystery we have here is really just a remix of The Boscombe Valley Mystery: criminal acts lead to a man getting rich in Australia, coming to England to establish a new life for himself, someone from his past shows up to blackmail him. (Seriously, Australia is nothing but trouble, according to Sherlock Holmes)

And really, Sherlock doesn't do a damn thing to "solve" the "mystery." Victor's left him the full account of his past, and told the doctor to tell Victor where to find it. Beddoes and Hudson were never found--we don't know if one or both are alive, or where they've gone to, or anything. Really, all Sherlock does is decrypt the cypher...which the elder Trevor had done already, scrawled at the bottom of his confession. Everything would have turned out exactly the same had Sherlock never come into Victor's life!!

So maybe that's why he chose to become a consulting detective--his "first case" made the gig look pretty easy!

We shouldn't blame Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for not having our century-plus of hindsight about what we want as an origin story. He's not responsible for our out of whack expectations. But still, The Gloria Scott is a bit disappointing.

FURTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**People tend to forget about the obviously brief  "present day" sections of the story. But we shouldn't forget the fairly remarkable fact that Sherlock, without prompting, volunteers this tale to Watson, and essentially encourages him to publish the tale!!

It does seem a bit unlike the Holmes we know. I usually don't play the "dating" game, but I could  speculate that perhaps this took place right before The Final Problem, and Holmes was trying to give all of his stories to Watson before he faced what he thought might be his death.

Or perhaps Holmes hadn't given up on finding Beddoes and Hudson, and thought that if the tale was published, it might flush them out?

**Of course, this is one of the tales where we get a (very) brief glimpse of Holmes' college days. And everyone tries to use the (very) little information we have to vigorously debate whether Holmes attended Oxford or Cambridge (or both, or neither, or...).

As an American with essentially zero knowledge of these institutions, I really have nothing of value to add to this debate. It's fun to watch people argue themselves silly, however.

**Your bull terrier biting onto Holmes ankle is a pretty good meet-cute for two friends (although Holmes was laid up for ten days, so OUCH).

But, could Holmes have made other friends? Sure, he was "never a very sociable fellow." But just the meager interaction of going to visit the injured Holmes made them "close friends," even though he was "the very opposite to [Sherlock] in most respects." And obviously, the same happened with Watson--aloof at first, but living together lead to the being fast companions.

So Sherlock certainly was capable of forming friendships, once he got past the initial barrier of letting them into his life. Perhaps he should have had more "happy accidents" like this, so he could expand his social circle just a bit. So long as they didn't involve dogs maiming him...

**Holmes was on his way to chapel when Trevor's dog attacked him. Services were likely required of students then, and perhaps he had other business there. This may, however, be the one instance in the Canon of Holmes attending a house of worship outside of an investigation...

**Holmes initially describes how the mysterious note "knocked clean down" a "fine, robust old man." Really? Because very soon we see him passing out from fright at one of Holmes' innocent deductions, and learn that he has a bad heart, and "it does not take much to knock me over." After always accusing Watson of playing up the melodrama, Holmes himself sure is putting the hard sell on the power of the letter...

**Obviously Hudson kept up with life as a sailor. But why did it take him thirty years to come seek "payment" for his knowledge? If it was because he didn't know Trevor & Beddoes' new identities, how did he find them out?

**Hudson sinisterly says that he knows where "all his old friends are." Are there more survivors than just Trevor & Beddoes out there?

**For what it's worth, Hudson's "blackmail" is pretty weak sauce. He wants a job?  As a butler? If insulted, he'll just go to the next victim?

Of course, he was one of the sailors who took money to mutiny and murder, so he's facing just as dire a consequence if the truth comes out as are Trevor & Bleddoes, right? So he probably knew that if he pushed too hard, he'd be rebuffed, or face the gallows himself.

**Why send the message to Trevor in a cypher, anyway? Did he fear his mail was being read? If it really was so urgent, why go to the trouble of encoding it? Who's going to know? Why waste the time, instead of just writing "flee for your life," stuffing it in an envelope, and going?

I suppose if you were caught, you wouldn't want to leave a open confession like that for the police to find, and seal your fate.

And maybe they sent lots of messages back and forth: "Hey, remember how we murdered all those soldiers and sailors and made ourselves rich? Great times!"

Obviously, the "real" reason cypher is there to give the case it's macabre twist, and to give Holmes something to actually do.

**This story makes the same mistake as Study In Scarlet--a looooooong lump of exposition at the end. It's an interesting tale, no doubt, but it's still a flashback inside of another flashback, and sucks the energy out of the narrative.

**Hey, look--financiers guilty of financial shenanigans arrested, convicted, and harshly punished!! How novel!

Of course, all these sultans of high finance turned out to be murderous thugs, so...

**Trevor's tale is quite graphic and bloody: "Bloody he lay with his brains smeared over the chart of the Atlantic which was pinned upon the table, while the chaplain stood with a smoking pistol in his hand at his elbow." "Wilson and eight others were wriggling on the top of each other on the floor, and the blood and the brown sherry on that table turn me sick now when I think of it." Rough stuff, Sir Arthur.

**The "well, we only murdered a few, we didn't slaughter everybody" defense is hardly ennobling. And as in Boscombe Valley, the "woe is me because I murdered people, struck it rich, and now have to live this terrible upper class lifestyle, and oh, I fear being found out" whining of our "victims" is not at all sympathetic. If Trevor (or Turner) had expressed even the slightest remorse for their victims, maybe we could feel for their anguish. But they have no problems justifying their multiple murders to themselves, and trying to shift the listeners'/readers' ire to their blackmailers. Sorry, guys, but I can despise both groups.

**Starting a new life on an Indian tea plantation is as good an exile as any, I guess. Did Victor ever finish school? Is he still in contact with Holmes? Perhaps Holmes went to visit him during his post-"death" wanderings...

**I know I complained about it above, but I just wanted to emphasize the story's annoying lack of resolution. We know that Hudson didn't actually "tell all," because no complaint had ever been lodged with the police (and Hudson himself faced the gallows if he did!). But Beddoes and Hudson we never seen again.

So why did Beddoes think that Hudson had squealed? And what happened? Did Hudson kill Beddoes? Why? If so, where is he? Or did Beddoes kill Hudson, as Holmes thought? Why? Where's the body? Where did he go?

All in all, not really an auspicious debut for Holmes' detective career.

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE MUSGRAVE RITUAL

The Stock-Broker's Clerk--The Sincerest Form Of Self-Flattery!

Most people regard The Stock-Broker's Clerk as fairly minor Holmes. It hasn't been adapted to the screen in modern times (there was a 1922 silent film version), it's rarely talked about, and when it is, it's usually dismissed as a pale imitation of The Red-Headed League.

And I can't say that appraisal is wrong.

The basic premise--man conned away from his place of business by false set-up so that crooks can take advantage of his absence--is one Sir Arthur Conan Doyle already used, in one of the more famous Holmes stories. And in almost every point of comparison, the earlier-published version is more interesting and exciting and adaptation worthy.

Let's do a point-by-point comparison.

THE VICTIMS--Jabez Wilson vs. Hall Pycroft. The middle-aged, somewhat comical pawnbroker with his fiery red hair, to me, is somewhat more interesting than the "smart young City man" in his dapper suit. Certainly Wilson is a better role for an actor, and a better written character. Jabez, if nothing else, makes a more sympathetic victim, as a pathetic figure whose fading business leaves him vulnerable to the scheme. Pycroft, on the other hand, just isn't written with all that much personality, aside from his quickly-vanishing Cockney slang.

THE VILLAIN--John Clay vs. Beddington (we never learn the full true name of "Arthur Pinner"...let's just agree to call him Arthur from here on). Clay is the "fourth smartest man in London," a "murderer, thief, smasher, and forger." He's willing to play a very long con, taking a job as a pawnbroker's assistant for months in order to achieve his goal. Pinner and his brother are forgers and "cracksmen."

Certainly Clay comes across as somewhat smarter. Arthur's decision to play both himself and his "brother" led to the mark seeing through the con job, something that John Clay never allowed to happen (although, in part, that might be due to Pycroft being a bit more intelligent than Jabez Wilson...). And the way Arthur falls apart upon news of his real brother's capture makes me suspect he wasn't the bold villain of the family.

Then again, we spend much more time with Arthur than we do with John Clay, and the fact that he was able to pull off the double act for as long as he did suggests he's a pretty good actor.

It's probably a draw, or maybe a slight edge to Arthur Pinner...he may not be as good a villain as Clay, but he just might be a more interesting character.

THE SCAM--The odd will of a nutty American millionaire vs. a fake business to export crockery to France??

It's an unfair comparison, obviously. For sheer audaciousness, the idea of a bequest that will pay red haired gentleman £4 per week as long as they copy out the Encyclopedia Britannica by hand just can't be beat. It's so crazy an idea that it just could be true. And Clay goes big to assure the verisimilitude of the con: the newspaper ad, the audition with hundreds of redheads attending...if only Nigerian prince email scams could be so convincing!

Sadly, Arthur Pinner's plan is much more prosaic, and therefore much less interesting. And on it's face, it is therefore a touch less credible. An eccentric rich man with an odd will is one thing; a successful businessman with a company no one has heard of, with dingy offices, with a very unprofessional manner of poaching employees (and wagering on them with competitors), who hires people with no apparent qualifications for the job? By making the cover story less outlandish, you actually make it's real world flaws more visible. Not to mention, you also make it less interesting dramatically.

And while it's a virtually identical time-killer, copying the encyclopedia is a much more attention-getting detail than copying names out of a Paris directory. It's almost a paradox, but the unbelievability of the former actually makes it more believable than the latter.

Still I will say the Pinner plan was better in one respect. As I pointed out in my post on Red-Headed League, Clay completely blew the game by ending the con early. If they had merely continued the scam, and paid Wilson for one more week, Jabez wouldn't have gone to Holmes for help, and the thieves would have gotten away with the gold. That impatience lead to Clay's capture. Pinner, however, showed the proper stick-to-it-iveness, arranging to meet Pycroft even after his brother was supposed to have robbed the brokerage.

THE SCHEME--Perhaps it is not more realistic, but tunneling into a bank vault is a lot more interesting dramatically (and visually, if you're thinking of adaptations) than working at a bank for a week and then cracking a safe.

Granted, the Beddingtons' plan does result of the murder of a guard, and the body "doubled up and thrust into" the safe. Better suited for American television, then?

But seriously, the tunneling appeals more to our romantic imaginings of Victorian crime than the more prosaic "hanging around until almost everyone is gone and opening a safe."

THE BOOTY--You'd think Stock-Broker's Clerk might win on this count. The Beddingtons are after "securities which amount in the aggregate to a sum of considerably over a million sterling," and actually (almost) get away with "[n]early a hundred thousand pounds' worth of American railway bonds, with a large amount of scrip in mines and other companies." On it's face, that surely trumps Clay's scheme to get away with some portion of of a mere £30,000.

Ah, but it's 30,000 "gold napoleons!" It's treasure (and the tunneling plan plays up this aspect)! It's gold!! Even if it is a far, far smaller amount than the Beddington haul, it's also far more romantic! Boxes full of bullion engage the imagination in a way that a satchel full of paperwork just doesn't, and make the booty far more memorable to us. "Look, I have a bunch of stock certificates!" just doesn't fire imagination the way crates full gold do.

Add to that the fact that we never see the loot in Stock-Broker's Clerk, whereas in Red-Headed our heroes are actually sitting on the gold (and in some adaptations of the story, you actually see the napoleons)!

So while it makes no sense financially, Red-Headed wins for the more interesting goal.

THE RESOLUTION--Obviously, no contest here.

In Red-Headed League, Holmes' deductions lead directly to the capture of the criminals. He (and we) are there for the apprehension. They never get the gold, and are captured and no one is hurt, thanks to Sherlock's work.

In Stock-Broker's Clerk, Holmes does nothing to thwart the robbery. He correctly deduces the plot, but doesn't bother to tell anyone until after the robbery has taken place. Beddington is captured by a police sergeant and constable who became suspicious--not even a Scotland Yard inspector, just beat cops! No deductions necessary! Of course, Beddington has already killed someone. And Holmes isn't even in the same city when he's captured--he's halfway across the country, and reads about the capture in the newspaper!! And yes, they do capture the brother/accomplice--but he would have committed suicide, so its not as if he would have gotten away.

So we can see why Stock-Broker's Clerk was ignored for adaptations. Since almost everyone adapted Red-Headed, going on to adapt Clerk would have seemed redundant. And in virtually every way, Red-Headed is just a better story--more interesting characters, more fascinating plot, and much better detective work from our hero.

So why the pale imitation? Well, most (but not all) chronologists of the Canon would say that this story--which Watson explicitly places very soon after The Sign Of Four--occurs before Red-Headed League. So maybe, if we are to be charitable to Doyle, we can say that he did this intentionally, to show how a younger and less experienced Holmes dealt with a similar case. Indeed, some argue that it was Holmes' experience in Stock-Broker's that enabled him to deal so successfully with the scheme in Red-Headed League.

That's balderdash, of course, as everything we know says that Doyle paid little attention to the accuracy/consistency of his dates. And such bootstrapping doesn't make any dramatic sense, at least without Watson somehow telling us how this case showed how Holmes would grow later, or some such puffery.

No, I think we simply have to accept that in this case, Doyle recycled an earlier plot device, disguising it with a different looking exterior. Yet it wasn't terribly well disguised. And while Stock-Broker's Clerk certainly isn't a bad story, in almost every respect it pales compared to Red-Headed League.

They can't all be winners, I guess.

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**The question must be asked--is Holmes responsible for the death of the watchman?

Pycroft meets with Pinner Friday evening. He catches the night train to London to tell his story to  Holmes Saturday morning. Holmes gathers Watson, and they all take the train back to Birmingham. In the meantime, after noon on Saturday, Beddington kills the guard, loots the safes, and is captured about 1:20pm.

Well, if Holmes had already heard Pycroft's story, and already figured out the general outline of the scheme, why didn't he notify the police, or at least Mawson & Williams? Granted, they weren't his clients, but if Holmes had already deduced what was going on, didn't he have some moral duty to at least alert the authorities that a robbery was going to happen? And if he had done so Saturday morning, mightn't the robbery--and thus the murder--have been prevented?

Well, as a tepid defense, we should note that Holmes had no way of knowing that Saturday was going to be the day of the crime. He might have thought there was time.

Secondly, and more persuasively, he may not had it deduced yet. He has Pycroft repeat his story during the train ride, but is it just for Watson's (and our) benefit? Holmes asks Pycroft to retell his tale "with more detail if possible," and he notes that "[i]t will be of use to me to hear the succession of events again." It seems, from the way he asks, that Holmes hadn't put everything together yet upon first hearing, and hadn't yet deduced that there was an imposter at the firm. Perhaps he doesn't have his epiphanies until after the retelling of this tale...and thus he couldn't have prevented the crime.

**Another niggling detail--was there another culprit, an inside man at Mawson & Williams?

Arthur Pinner approached Pycroft "the very evening" that Pycroft had received his employment offer from M &W.

How did the Beddigntons know that Pycroft had been hired? How did they know that he knew no one else at the firm (or else the scam would be a non-starter)?

That they were able to find out about Pycroft and put their plans into motion within a few hours suggests that they had to have some inside source of information at the firm, right? Maybe someone who didn't know they were planning a robbery, but someone who was slipping them information in exchange for a few pound notes?

Or perhaps this hypothetical but necessary accomplice was more involved--maybe someone who went through the firms applications, looking for a suitable candidate to spoof, and who was able to put that application on top of the pile for the managers? And perhaps this insider was in on the scheme, and was expecting a cut of the proceeds...and was never caught...

**This is a pretty naive question, but exactly how negotiable is a bag full American railway bonds and the like?

It's not like I can take those down to the local Target in exchange for goods and services, right?

And I know that we're talking about the 1880s, but isn't there a master list somewhere of the true owners of such bonds and scrip? It's not like I could just show up at the next board of the Reading Railroad board of directors and say, "Look, I have all this stock, I own your company now!" Again, my knowledge of the financial world is truly lacking, but it seems as if there would have to be some form of verification in order to use or cash in these papers, right?

And once word got out, wouldn't the authorities be on the lookout for anyone trying to trade/sell these things? Yes, the Beddingtons had counted on not being detected until Monday; but by the same token, the markets where they could sell such things would also not be open until Monday. And it's not like gold or jewels, where you can disguise the origins of the loot and which have huge secondary markets.

So where could they get rid of them? Find some millionaire on the weekend looking to buy a bunch of bonds without paying stockbroker commissions? Some black market for securities?

Or...perhaps this was a deliberate plan aimed at certain particular companies--to destabilize them, to manipulate markets? Maybe there was a secret mastermind behind this scheme...Moriarty, perhaps?

Still, if I were a crook, I'd stick with the gold napoleons...

**Good lord, why not an hire an extra confederate? As Holmes says, "But for the happy chance of the gold stuffing, your suspicions would probably never have been aroused." When you're stealing millions, surely you could hire one person, perhaps to take Arthur's role for the relatively brief initial meeting with Hall Pycroft? Surely they must have had some criminal acquaintance who could fill that easy role for a few quid?

For the want of a nail...

**Since the crux of this story involves impersonations, you have to wonder--how hard was it to impersonate someone back in the late nineteenth century?

It's not as if most people would have photo IDs, right? Especially civilians. And fingerprints weren't widely known of.

So really, what was to stop me from showing up one day and saying, "Oi! I'm Hall Pycroft, and I'm here for a bloody job!"? (Sorry about that). Of course, that's a good reason for not hiring folks without meeting them first. But that begs the question, because if I showed up for a job interview claiming to be Pycroft, we're right back where we started--how do I prove who I say I am?

So the handwriting sample, which seems odd by modern standards, might have been one of the few means of identification for firms like Mawson & Williams, beyond bringing so type of (easily forged, no doubt) documents such as birth certificates.

Of course, if the thieves had sent in an application in Pycroft's name to begin with they wouldn't have had to worry about matching hand-writing...

**What about Hall Pylon's future?

Sure, he'll be proven to be innocent. But it certainly isn't going to look good on his resume, is it? He was completely duped by a con man, he was willing to rudely blow off  a great opportunity from the richest firm in London, and his name is going to receive a lot of (bad) notoriety.  Not to mention, there will no doubt be lingering suspicions among many in the industry that maybe he was indeed involved in the scheme, no matter what Holmes says.

It just seems difficult to imagine a reputable financial firm giving him a job with this stain on his perceived character. I suspect there's a career change in the offing for Hall.

I hear he can make a fair living begging...

**It doesn't say much for the reforming capabilities of the English penal system that, within months of serving a 5-year stretch, the Beddingtons are immediately planning huge crimes...

**We get a lot of interesting information aboutWatson's practice, and his neighbors. But Holmes deductions that Watson's had originally been the busier is curious. If the steps on Watson side are "worn three inches deeper," what the heck are the steps made of? How much traffic would it take to wear down steps that much?

And perhaps his neighbor's had been worn so much more deeply that he had had to install new ones...

**Holmes: "I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain," said he. "Results without causes are much more impressive." But less satisfying, so fortunately for the readers, Holmes' ego would never let him stop giving explanations.

**Many are impressed by Watson's (and Doyle's) "ear for Cockney," given the many instances of slang Pycroft uses in telling his story.

But if look carefully, after an initial barrage of "crib" and "Soft johnny" and "screw" and "diggings," etc., the cockneyisms largely disappear from his speech after he reaches the point in his tale where Arthur Pinner shows up.

Did Doyle/Watson forget? Did he decide that, after establishing the dialectic bona fides, there was no need to keep it up? Had he exhausted his repertoire of slang?

Or, for an in-story explanation: Was Pycroft overly excited as he began narrating his tale to Watson,  and slipped into his native patois; but as he continued his tale, he relaxed enough to talk more formally, as he must have had to at work?

**I think an ability to quote the day's stock prices might be a poor test of qualifications for the business manager of a huge hardware company.

And for that matter, having a business manager whom you're paying £500 per year spend his first weeks copying names and addresses by hand out of a directory should have seemed a criminal waste of resources. Yet Pycroft doesn't question it.

It certainly calls into question the lad's business acumen, and throws further question on his future job prospects.

**There are so many hardware sellers in Paris that it took almost a full week to copy them down?

**Beddington was captured sometime after 1:20 PM Saturday. It certainly took some time to sort some things out, get the firm's managers in to assess the losses, find the body, determine Beddington's true identity...but by 7 PM the same day, Birmingham has a copy of the early edition of a London evening paper, and they have the full story!!

That's some pretty fast reporting, and very fast delivery of a paper 120 miles away...

**Reflecting on Pinner's attempted suicide, Holmes observes,"Human nature is a strange mixture, Watson. You see that even a villain and murderer can inspire such affection that his brother turns to suicide when he learns that his neck is forfeited."

Well, let's be honest--Pinner's grief may be just as much for himself. I'm no expert on Victorian law, but at the very least Pinner himself faces another lengthy prison stretch. And, in many jurisdictions (including England until 1957), he would be guilty of felony murder, which could have him in the gallows along with his brother. His brother's recklessness and violence had doomed him, as well. And perhaps he just wanted to take that last step himself, rather than waiting on at trial and death row.

So Holmes and Watson may have saved him, just so the crown can kill him...

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE GLORIA SCOTT

The Yellow Face--A Better Story Than You Have Given It Credit For!

There are a lot of reasons to dismiss The Yellow Face as minor, forgettable Holmes.

The story shares properties with many of what I consider to be lesser Holmes stories. Like Orange Pips, it is a story where Holmes fails. Like Copper Beeches, it is a story where the outcome would have been exactly the same had Sherlock never been involved, robbing our hero of any agency in the story. He makes no noteworthy deductions in the case, aside from the characteristics of the pipe's owner. It's a very short story, and really, not much happens.

And then there is the very delicate subject of the story's position on race relations.

Small wonder, then, that Yellow Face has been adapted to the screen only once--in a 1921 silent film.

And yet...and yet...while Yellow Face certainly isn't a particularly good Sherlock Holmes, story, it is a very good story nonetheless. And it is a story I very much like.

Yellow Face is a surprisingly sensitive look at the need for honesty and communication in a marriage, and a surprisingly touching call for racial tolerance. And ultimately, it is about forgiveness and redemption.

The crux of the story--the reason we have any "mystery" at all--is Effie's absolute terror at the possibility of anyone discovering that she had a child with a black man. If she could simply tell her husband about her past, the story would be over before it began.

But she can't bring herself to trust her husband's reaction. "Nothing but misery can come of it if you enter that cottage." "Our whole lives are at stake in this...If you force your way into that cottage, all is over between us." "For God's sake, don't Jack!" Her absolute certainty of rejection rises to the level of sheer terror.

Of course, it's hard to blame her. Few of us will ever know the hardships and ostracization she experienced by marrying a black man in post-Civil War Georgia, and having a child with him. "Cut[ing] myself off from my own race" is surely typical English stiff-upper-lip understatement of what she endured.

She was so traumatized that she chose to return to Britain rather than remain with her sick child!! And when Lucy was brought over--"only for a few weeks"--Effie insisted on Lucy's wearing a ridiculous mask and gloves, lest even the slightest glance of her skin set the neighbors to gossiping.

These are hardly ennobling acts--and Effie certainly won't win any Mother Of The Year awards--but are understandable in the context of her life. The awful prejudice she experienced in America, followed by a return to 3 years of "normalcy," and the sudden fear that she could have to live through all that again--even if she did expose herself to that threat by bringing Lucy to England--makes her somewhat irrational, unable to trust even the man she loves. The poor woman was suffering from racism PTSD, and was unable to perceive anything but fear.

But despite Effie's fears, Grant Munro proves the power of love and tolerance (eventually). Throughout much of the story, he comes off as a bit of a jackass. "A man can tell easily enough when a woman loves him"?!?! Sure, you and every other dude, Grant. Breaking into others' houses, leaving his wife and home at the drop of a hat? Munro certainly does not come across as a man capable of rational thought and calm decision-making in the face of a crisis. And certainly his reaction to Effie's having some secret isn't a model of trust and forbearance.

Yet when the truth is revealed, and push comes to shove, Grant Munro stands tall, in a scene that makes me tear up every time I read it:

It was a long two minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence, and when his answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door. 

"We can talk it over more comfortably at home," said he. "I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being."

And there it is. Gently upbraiding her for not trusting him, while at the same time forgiving her and implicitly pledging to make this family whole, Munro proves himself to be one hell of a husband, and a pretty good man indeed.

There are many commentators who want to pick holes in this story: "Watson's description of Lucy's skin color means Effie's story cannot be true!" "They can't have been legally married in Georgia!" Her whole story must be a lie!

Well, more power to those who think that way, I suppose; but I would suggest that they're missing the forest for the trees. This is a piece of fiction, not a documentary, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a writer who often made mistakes. This is a wonderful tale with a point to make, and to focus on whether some fairly trivial aspects match up with real life is akin to criticizing To Kill A Mockingbird for not being 100% accurate in its portrayal of contemporary courtroom procedure. Even if you're right, it sort of misses the point, and doesn't invalidate the moral of the story.

So kudos to Doyle for writing this, and embracing what was very likely not a very popular position in his day. And special kudos for using a story starring his wildly popular character to make that statement, ensuring that it would be widely read.

This isn't necessarily a very good Sherlock Holmes story; but I think that it is a better story than many have given it credit for being.

OTHERS TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**Once again, there are some fairly remarkable differences between the original British editions of this story and the American versions.

Most are trivial. When Holmes is discussing the amber stem of the pipe, and whether the presence of an insect proves that it is real amber, he says, "Why, it is quite a branch of trade, the putting of sham flies into the sham amber." That line is omitted from most American editions, for reasons unknown.

When Watson is discussing cases where Holmes has failed, the original mentions "the affair of the second stain"--not capitalized. Was it referring to the story The Adventure Of The Second Stain, not to be written for a decade yet? Again, for reasons unknown, American editions change that to "the adventure of the Musgrave Ritual." Well, that is a story included in Memoirs, but it's also not an example where Holmes failed! Curious.

However, some of the changes go far beyond trivial, to actually altering the meaning of the story. Grant Munro describes his first glimpse of the face in the window as "a livid dead yellow." American publications changed that to "chalky white." I have no idea why (some have suggested that it was to avoid offending a growing Asian population?)--but it does seem silly as the story entitled The Yellow Face now has no yellow face in it.

Most egregiously, American versions changed "It was a long two minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence" to "It was a long ten minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence." Why? Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Illustrated Collection from Mobile Reference tells us, "It is hypothesized by some readers that interracial marriage was even more taboo in the U.S. than in England and so it was felt that Mr. Munro would take longer to overcome his mixed feelings about the child." Seriously.

Man, that really makes me want to smack someone. Hey, 19th century American editors--just print the damn story as is!!

**Watson provides a good literary/dramatic reason for not generally providing us with cases that Sherlock failed to solve: "[B]ecause where he failed it happened too often that no one else succeeded, and that the tale was left forever without a conclusion."

Fair enough. To bad you didn't figure that out before presenting us with The Five Orange Pips, though.

**The Sherlock Holmes diet and fitness plan, according to Watson:

Sherlock Holmes was a man who seldom took exercise for exercise's sake. Few men were capable of greater muscular effort, and he was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I have ever seen; but he looked upon aimless bodily exertion as a waste of energy, and he seldom bestirred himself save when there was some professional object to be served. Then he was absolutely untiring and indefatigable. That he should have kept himself in training under such circumstances is remarkable, but his diet was usually of the sparest, and his habits were simple to the verge of austerity.

So: don't eat a lot, and exercise only when you have to. Perhaps Dr. Oz can push The Sherlock Holmes Diet next week...

**Even though the client's name is Grant Munro--it's even written on his hat--every time Effie speaks she calls him "Jack." Every single time. She never once calls him Grant.

Is Jack his middle name, and he only uses Grant for official business? Or vice versa--he is a Jack, but uses his middle name for business because it sounds more formal? Is it some personal pet name she has for him, perhaps a private joke between them?

Some have suggested that this makes the time John Watson's wife called him "James" more understandable. Apparently, Victorian women called their husbands whatever damn thing they wanted to!

**Munro tells us that Effie sign over all her income and property to him when they married.

If so, what did the faithful Scotch servant and a recovering Lucy live on for 3 years, if they didn't have access to Effie's money?!?

Perhaps John Hebron had left a separate trust for Lucy? Or maybe they stayed with some of Hebron's relatives? Or perhaps Effie just lied to Munro about how much her income was.

Still, she did have to "borrow" £100 from her husband to rent the cottage and bring Effie and the servant over, so it's unlikely she was hiding some large sum of money from him.

**Munro thinks that "trees are always a neighbourly kind of thing." Uh, OK.

**As I've said, this isn't a great tale for Sherlock. His deductions about the pipe aside, he is fairly much worthless during the entire case. He advises Munro to do what he would have done anyway. He makes no statement whatsoever regarding the issues of race and family, leaving all that to Watson. He is essentially a bystander to the entire drama.

And as for his "provisional" theory of the case, which he would be surprised if does not turn out to be correct? Well, given the prominence of the practice in recent cases, perhaps it's not too shocking that Holmes first guess went straight to bigamy (and blackmail). Still, the theory requires quite a number of wild assumptions for which there is no factual basis, something Holmes would chide any Scotland Yard inspector for. He asserts that Effie's first husband "contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile" without a shred of factual basis. He explains that Effie knew "in some way" that the new residents of the cottage are her blackmailers. Really, Sherlock? "In some way"?!? Telepathy? Woman's intuition? He assumes the blackmailers demanded a photo of her--why?!? And he says he can think of no other possible explanation for Effie's "frenzied anxiety" that Munro should not enter the cottage.

It's a theory filled with loopholes and shoddy reasoning. Even Watson sounds shocked: "It is all surmise."

Small wonder that Sherlock wanted Watson to remind him of this case whenever he became too arrogant. It is surely his worst performance as a detective.

**When Sherlock opines, "Any truth is better than indefinite doubt," he is making a pretty fair rebuke of the way Effie has handled her secret. And it's a good prescription for any relationship--it's often the doubt, as opposed to the actual facts, that does the damage.

**Holmes knows that by breaking onto the cottage, they are "hopelessly in the wrong," legally, but "it is worth it." A safe bet to make, given Effie's terror at anyone discovering the secret there.

But it is also a fair statement of Sherlock's ethos, and his understanding of justice. Sometimes you have to risk violating the letter of the law to protect people. Remember, Sherlock assumed that the residents of the cottage were blackmailing the Munros, and doing their marriage harm. So in Holmes' mind, stopping that was more important than trespass laws. This is part of his "advantage of being unofficial."

On the other hand, Sherlock was 100% wrong in his interpretation of events. And even though everything worked out well in the end, perhaps there is something to be said for being a little less cavalier with legal niceties and not allowing "unofficial agents" to run amok in their personal quests for their version of justice. Had the situation been different, Holmes and company could have been in jail, or even legally shot as intruders. And honestly, would you want a private detective operating under a false set of assumptions breaking down your door in the middle of the night?

Those "legal niceties" are there for a reason, and perhaps in our privacy-challenged era, we might want to more careful about whole-heartedly endorsing private parties violating them without any constraints or consequences.

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE STOCK-BROKER'S CLERK!!

The Adventure Of The Cardboard Box--Too Scandalous To Reprint?!?

All right, so now we move on to The Adventure of The Cardboard Box.

Wait...what? You think that The Yellow Face is supposed to be next?

Well, there's a reason this is so confusing, even though we ultimately don't know what that reason is.

I'm tackling the stories in publication order, which in most cases is the same order the stories appear in the various collections.

But not in this case. Although Cardboard Box was published in The Strand after Silver Blaze and before Yellow Face, the story was completely omitted in the first British publication of The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes.

Odder still, the story was included in the first American edition of Memoirs. But that edition was almost immediately replaced with a "new' and "revised" edition that removed Cardboard Box.

The Cardboard Box was eventually published again in America, reprinted in the His Last Bow collection, two decades later.

Eventually sense prevailed, and British publishers eventually restored Cardboard Box to future editions of Memoirs. But to this day, most American-published version keep Cardboard Box with His Last Bow.

What's the deal? Amazingly enough, no one seems to know for sure. Various theories abound, without any actual proof or documentation. Some suggest that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself had the story removed because it involved adultery, and thus was not appropriate for younger readers. The story goes that the American publisher missed that memo, and quickly issued a new edition in line with Doyle's wishes so they wouldn't miss out on publishing his future works.

Others have suggested it was the somewhat graphic, violent subject matter--a brutal double murder, body parts severed--that Doyle and/or publishers thought rendered it too controversial and scandalous for readers.

Doyle, who was rarely shy about discussing the stories and their shortcomings, never mentioned the issue in his memoirs or letters. As far as I'm aware, we've never had the actual explanation from any party that might actually know--just speculation at the odd publishing behavior.

So, is Cardboard Box "too scandalous"? Does the adultery, or the violence, make it unsuitable for young readers, or American audiences of the era?

Obviously I'm not a Victorian, but it's difficult to see how. So far into the Canon, we've had several stories dealing with bigamy--just the prior story, Silver Blaze, in fact--and bigamy is just adultery that someone tried to illegally cover with an extra marriage. Straker/Derbyshire obviously did commit adultery...is his having two wives somehow less salacious than a married person having an affair without the "cover" of a second wedlock? Yet that story was reprinted in Memoirs with no problem.

Of course, Cardboard Box does show a married woman having an affair, and single woman trying to start an affair with a married man. Not to put too fine a point on it, but perhaps it was the portrayal of female lust and adultery, as discreet and restrained as these depictions may seem by modern standards, that made Cardboard Box too unsavory for Doyle and/or publishers. Victorian double standards and all that.

As to the violence? We've seen plenty of murders in the Canon up to now, including people dying horribly by poisoned blow dart and writhing in agony from snake venom. And we've seen people have body parts severed in attempted murders. Perhaps it was the postmortem removal of the ears, the desecration of corpses, that made Cardboard Box so controversial to someone. And perhaps it was the mode of these killings--a red-hot crime of passion, with a drunken, jealous man bashing two peoples heads in with a club--that made the murders too "real" for Doyle's tastes. Rather than fantastical locked room killing with exotic tools, Jim Browner's actions were just nasty and brutish and all too real-world.

Yes, it's a tawdry, sad story...but is it really any worse than many other in the Canon?

I'm not aware of any protests or poor reaction to Cardboard Box's initial publication in The Strand--nothing that would justify burying the story. But in the months between then and the collection of the stories for Memoirs, Doyle (or his publishers?) had second thoughts for some reason. Did they receive complaints? Was their pressure from somewhere? Or did they somehow decide that the story just went too far (even though, by our lights, it certainly doesn't seem as though it did). We'll probably never know exactly why.

[Completely wild-ass-guess theory: Sherlock would surely chide me for theorizing with facts. But it strikes me as possible that Doyle perhaps based this story on a real life tragedy--it wouldn't be the only time he had done so. And perhaps some of the parties involved were less than pleased, and legal action was threatened. And perhaps not reprinting the story for 20+ years was part of the settlement. Just a thought.]

Thankfully, someone finally thought better of the self-censorship, or else one of Sherlock Holmes' best mysteries might have become lost to time. Now the biggest problem Cardboard Box presents is figuring out which collection the story is in--which depends on which side of the ocean your edition was published.

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVANCES:

**Another substantial piece of confusion caused by this story? The opening bit, where Sherlock performs like Poe's Dupin and predicts Watson's thoughts after a long silence? Well, Doyle or the editors must have decided that the bit was too good to lose when they decided not to reprint Cardboard Box. So they basically cut and paste the entire sequence onto the beginning of The Resident Patient! And even more confusingly, when Cardboard Box was restored to His Last Bow, they left the opening sequence there, without returning Resident Patient to its original status!! To this day, many collections have not restored Resident Patient to its original form!

So, depending upon your edition of the collected works, you very well might have the exact opening sequence in two different Holmes stories!!

**This is also an era when there is some confusion over the exact titles of stories. Most sources have no "prefix" appended to most of the story titles: The Resident Patient, The Cardboard Box, etc. Other editions append "The Adventure Of" to the beginning of every title except Silver Blaze. And some can't even be consistent about it, with the title listed in the table of contents not matching the title version they use in the actual story.

Quite annoying, really.

**Possibly more than any story, Cardboard Box makes Lestrade look like a pathetic little worm.It's bad enough to be a poor thinker, but to try and steal Holmes' reasoning as his own?

It starts with his not asking Holmes to come out to Croyden: "We have every hope of clearing the matter up, but we find a little difficulty in getting anything to work upon." So, a particularly unhumble way of saying, "the case is easy, but we have no idea where to start." Lestrade is too arrogant to actually admit he needs help.

He goes on to brush aside every suggestion Holmes gives him: about the knot, the string, the paper, the state of the ears, etc. He rejects Holmes' ideas out of hand.

Yet when Holmes hands him the solution, his face lights up--and if you read it the way I do, part of that delight is that Holmes has asked not to get any credit in the press for the case! More glory for Lestrade!

And when the "obtuse but resolute" Lestrade sends Holmes a letter outlining the results of the investigation, well...

In accordance with the scheme which we had formed in order to test our theories ["the 'we' is rather fine, Watson, is it not?"]...The affair proves, as I always thought it would, to be an extremely simple one...

What a weasel. He rejects Holmes' advice at every turn, but then claims the credit--even to Holmes himself!!

**The Granada adaptation is noteworthy because it is Jeremy Brett's last performance as Holmes. We miss you, Jeremy.

Unfortunately, the TV version is also notable because, for reasons unknown, they decided to completely take the mystery out of it. In the Cardboard Box story, Holmes notes that it is another case where they were "compelled to reason backwards from effects to causes." None of that for Granada, as they start off with the wedding of Jim Browner and Mary Cushing, and immediately follow that with a scene of Browner stalking Mary and Alec Fairbairn. We also see Susan Cushing finding out that Mary is missing, and trying to hire Holmes to find her! In other words, all of the mystery is taken out for the viewers; Holmes is just trying to find out what we've already been shown, and there's really no mystery left about who's ears are in the box! In the meantime, the production focuses on the melodrama. Boo!

Also, the story has been changed from August to December, so Susan Cushing opens the box of ears at a Christmas party!! Yay!

**We haven't had many untold tales teased to us lately, but finally we have one--not from Watson, but Lestrade, as he mentions "Aldrige, who helped us in the bogus laundry affair."

**Watson, seeming to respond to prior criticism from Holmes on his choice of story and manner of presentation: "It is, however, unfortunately impossible entirely to separate the sensational from the criminal." It would be difficult, for example, to present the facts of this case without sensationalism.

**Watson was so broke that he had to postpone a holiday. Patients not paying their bills, or is the practice not yet fully established? Or, perhaps, too much gambling on the ponies...

 **Watson describes Holmes' preference for the city:

He loved to lie in the very center of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumour or suspicion of unsolved crime.

 Careful, Doctor--that sounds very like how Holmes will describe Moriarty in just a few months. Are they really just two sides of the same coin?

**One flaw in Doyle's plot is this: if Browner believed that both Susan and Sarah still resided at the same address, why didn't he specifically address the package to Sarah, as opposed to just "Miss S. Cushing"? Did Browner not realize that both Susan and Sarah start with an S?!? We still might very well have had the wrong party open the package, even if Sarah did still live there!

**One flaw in Doyle's melodrama, at least to me, is that we never actually meet Sarah Cushing, and see her reaction to these events, as she is the instigator of much of what happens. Her falling into "brain fever" is a bit of a dramatic cop-out; it's shorthand for "she feels guilty and awful" without actually having to show any such thing. It ends up letting her character off the hook much too easily.

Additionally, while we do the the whole story from Browner, a murderous, drunken animal might not be the most reliable narrator of events.

**Speaking of "brain fever," this is the second time we've encountered it in the Canon, and it won't be the last. Debate continues amongst commentators whether it was a real malady, or some creation of Victorian literature. As a physician, one would think that Doyle would be describing an actual medical condition--albeit one not properly diagnosed by the medicine of the day (perhaps even a psychosomatic/mental reaction to great stress--no one ever seems to come down with brain fever unless they're experiencing some type of crisis in their life...?)

**Susan Cushing is...well, she's a pretty brittle, mean-spirited spinster.

Granted, nobody would be thrilled with finding two severed ears in the post, especially if they were completely in the dark about their origin.

But every single word she speaks is a complaint about how inconvenient and annoying the whole experience has been for her, and why can't everyone just go away and leave her alone!! "Oh, I am weary of questions!"? Lady, it's a double homicide!!

We sadly never see her informed that one of the ears belongs to murdered sister...somehow I expect Susan would be grousing about how Mary had gotten herself killed just to annoy her and cause her inconvenience.

**Holmes is quite excited that "he had purchased his own Stradivarius, which was worth at least five hundred guineas...for fifty-five shillings." Assuming it was indeed a real Stradivarius, and not one of many authorized copies that were around at the time, it's a pretty great deal--akin to finding a copy of Action Comics #1 at a garage sale. "Strad" violins have sold for as much as $16 million at auctions in the past few years...

**Holmes' speech at end is a great bit of existential despair:

What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.

Good question, Sherlock. Good question.

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE YELLOW FACE!!

Silver Blaze--A Man Of Degenerate Principles?!?

It had to happen, of course.

We (as a culture) often end up tearing down and demystifying our heroes, after decades spent building them up. It's as if we can't stand to have role models purer than ourselves, so we have to interpret and deconstruct and twist until our humans have feet of clay, and then go further still to make them actual villains.

Hey, I'm as guilty as anyone; I once wrote an essay declaring that the true villain of The Wizard of Oz (movie version) was Glinda The Good Witch, who manipulated people and events until everyone that stood between her and ultimate power in Oz was removed.

Hey, we were all young once, and we all liked to flout authority figures by proving that our parents' heroes were really corrupt.

Which brings us to Silver Blaze.

It is one of the greatest of the Holmes mysteries, clever and fun, with all the clues laid out for the reader, so he can follow along and nod as Sherlock solves it..

Yet, for some unfathomable reason, a large contingent of commentators have decided that Holmes wagered on Silver Blaze in the race, an act which, depending on the writer, ranged from unethical to illegal.

Somehow, when Holmes says, "as I stand to win a little on this next race, I shall defer a lengthy explanation until a more fitting time," that supposedly indicates that he must have also wagered on the previous race, as well, having manipulated events so that the odds were high against Silver Blaze.

Where does this amazing inference come from? There is nothing in the text to support it.

Yet others have gone on to accuse Holmes of not only unfairly profiting from his knowledge that Silver Blaze would race, but also that he somehow was responsible for fixing the race, acting in collusion with the owner and trainer of Silver Blaze's biggest rival, Desborough to throw the race to the favorite.

Famous American sports columnist Red Smith even wrote an essay for the New York Herald Tribune, declaring that Sherlock "exhibited an ethical blind spot of shocking dimensions" regarding sports, and that it was "common knowledge that he was the architect of an extraordinary piece of skullduggery in connection with a horse race," and that "it has been established that Mr. Sherlock Holmes was a horse player of degenerate principles who thought nothing of fixing a race." He even accuses the detective of using his cocaine needle to inject horses to hinder their performance!!

All of this because Sherlock said that he had a bet on the following race!!

Of course, Doyle's story does show the thoroughness of corruption that sports betting can bring upon people. Everywhere in this story there is money, and lots of it. Start with Silver Blaze's owner: it cost Colonel Ross £50 to enter Silver Blaze in the race (half of which would be forfeited if Silver Blaze was scratched form the Wessex Cup), and he stood to win £1,000 if his horse won, in addition to any additional wagers he would have made.This was, as he have seen in the stories, ridiculously high finance for the era, when a single woman could live quite nicely on £60 per year. People--even parents--have been willing to imprison and even kill their children for much smaller amounts!

The corrosive effect of this much money floating around touches almost everyone in the story. Young Fitzroy Simpson, who had "squandered a fortune on the turf," and as a bookie had bet £5,000 against the favorite. Facing huge potential losses, he made lengthy road trip--and was willing to bribe servants--just to get some more information on the horses. The trainer of Desborough, Silas Brown, was "known to have large bets on the event," which is doubtless what caused him to conceal Silver Blaze after his initial reaction to simply return him. And of course, there is John Straker, whose massive debts led him to the conclusion that the only way to right his finances was by fixing the horse race.

So, perhaps it was inevitable that some might suspect that, as everyone else is corrupted, than Sherlock Holmes himself must become tainted by the temptation of large sums of money. Sure, nothing else in the Canon might suggest that, and the story itself provides zero evidence. But some can't let that stop them from baselessly asserting that the great detective would suddenly abandon his anti-crime stance for a chance at some small amount of lucre.

Part of the problem is the way in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle presents the story. Doyle admitted in his autobiography that his knowledge of "the laws of training and racing" was lacking, and that his "ignorance" hurt the realism of the story; had events occurred as he described, "Half (the characters) would have been in jail, and the other half warned off the turf forever."

Yes, Holmes kept Silver Blaze's identity concealed (at least from Colonel Ross, as a bit of puckish revenge for Ross' disdain towards Holmes)--but surely the racing stewards would never have allowed some other horse to race in Silver Blaze's slot, and they would have pulled his name from the race. They would have required absolute proof that this was the same horse, and thus everyone would know prior to the running that this was indeed the correct horse. This is likely the part of the story where Doyle was bemoaning his ignorance.

And it wasn't a terribly well-kept secret: in the 24 hours before the race, the odds against Silver Blaze dropped from 15-1 to 3-1--the same as they originally were--and at race time the odds were 5-4, strongly suggesting that word had gotten out, and large amounts of money were being bet on the allegedly missing horse. It's unlikely that any one person's bets could move the odds that much--especially the man Red Smith described as "practically always broke," allegedly because of his drug habits.

It seems clear that the situation with Silver Blaze was fairly widely known--except by Colonel Ross. Surely Fitzroy Simpson wasn't the only tout lurking about Dartmoor; and Silas Brown, who now stood to lose a substantial amount of money on the race, would likely look to cut his losses by discreetly selling information.

Furthermore, word had surely gotten about that Sherlock Holmes himself had guaranteed that the horse would appear, and would be attending the race in person. Holmes had certainly attained enough notoriety by this point that the press would have picked up on his involvement in the case, and someone would have reported on his pronouncement. It would seem that only Colonel Ross was still pessimistic about the horse showing up. With all this information out there, and the odds dropping outrageously, it seems unfair in the extreme to accuse Holmes of fixing the race, let alone profiting unfairly from his knowledge.

Also, Holmes doubtless claimed the "large reward" that Ross had posted for the return of the horse--certainly he would have no need to jigger the race to make money.

And even if Sherlock had wagered, would it have even been unethical? Simmons was trying to buy access to knowledge that others didn't have about the horses. That's neither illegal or unethical--that's why touts exist. In what way would Sherlock's wagering based upon knowledge he had obtained be any different? Trainers and groomsman and touts and bookies and high society were all wagering on the race, and all hoping they had special knowledge and insight to give them on edge on other bettors--and given the precipitous drop in the odds, many of these gamblers had (or at least suspected) precisely the same information that Sherlock had--that Silver Blaze would race. If you accept the legitimacy of wagering on horse races, I can see no reason to proclaim a (hypothetical) bet by the detective as any less ethical than any other.

But parsing the ethics is unnecessary, anyway. If you believe that Holmes had a duty not to bet on Silver Blaze, well, there's not a scintilla of indication in the story that he actually did. Why, in heaven's name, would we assume otherwise?

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**The Granada adaptation of Silver Blaze takes away both the doubt and the ethical questions over Sherlock's betting. They correct Doyle's mistake by having Holmes reveal that the mystery horse is Silver Blaze well before the race--publicly, so everyone can see--eliminating any chance or serious charges of race-fixing. They also show Holmes placing a (small) wager on the race, but after the odds had already dropped to a meager 5-4...and while he wins the bet, it is merely for a small amount of cash, certainly not some life-changing amount of wealth.

**A picky meta-point: this collection is entitled The Memoirs Of Sherlock Holmes? Holmes wrote or narrated none of these stories! If anything, it should be titled The Memoirs Of John Watson, M.D. Or, perhaps something along the lime of My Memoirs Of My Cases With Sherlock Holmes by John Watson. Yeah, I know I'm being unreasonably pedantic...

**The forgotten victim in all this: poor Mrs. Straker. She's clearly quite distraught over the death of her husband, and anxious for the capture and punishment of the killer. We don't don't stick around to see, but in short order she discovers that a) her husband wasn't the victim who heroically died protecting the horse, he was the crook, and b) he had a second wife who had driven him into bankruptcy and crime. That's a rough day of revelations, especially when she finds that her "comfortably off" husband left her nothing but debts.

**The question of William Derbyshire is an interesting one. As with any case of bigamy, you wonder how Straker found enough time to maintain two lives. Was Mrs. Derbyshire content to have her husband away most of the time? After all, being a horse trainer is a full time position, and one imagines he couldn't sneak away from Dartmoor to London too often.

Of course, given the kind of deception that bigamy involves, we also have to wonder how honest a jockey and trainer Straker had been over the past dozen years. Someone so fundamentally dishonest as to pull off the two wives business surely was willing to take other liberties over the years. perhaps subtly throwing a race or two over the years? As Holmes notes, it is not an uncommon practice.

I am a bit skeptical and unbelieving, though, when Sherlock declares that the expensive dress-loving Mrs Derbyshire "had plunged him over head and ears in debt, and so led him into this miserable plot." It seems unfair to blame her, especially since she is as likely just as much a victim of Straker's duplicity as his "real" wife. No, let's leave the culpability with the culprit, please--let's not blame the wife for the husband's sins.

**Another question--was Straker planning to bet against Silver Blaze himself, or was he acting on someone else's behest? Given his dire financial situation, he might not have had a lot of money available to wager. Plus, if he were caught wagering against his own horse, the plot would be pretty immediately revealed.

No, for a man in Straker's position, the safer and surer payday would be to take a large payment from someone else to fix the race. And honestly, this would be one of the few times in the early cases where I think it might be appropriate to invoke Moriarty as the secret crime-master. That kind of low-risk, high-payoff enterprise would be right up his bailiwick, and if we were to get cheeky we could suggest he was using his mathematical prowess to figure the best way to massage the gambling odds.

Unfortunately, Straker's death means we'll likely never know...

**This is the third case involving bigamy (Boscombe Valley, Noble Bachelor). Was bigamy really that common a problem in Victorian England?

**This is the second case in which the "murderer" is revealed to be an animal. It won't be the last...

**This picture is for my friend Dawn:

She hates Sherlock Holmes, but loves dogs.

**One of the greatest exchanges in the history of detection:

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" 

"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." 

"The dog did nothing in the night-time." 

"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Wonderful use of negative inference. And a great bit of dialogue, wisdom delivered as what sounds like wise-ass repartee.

But is it necessarily true? Sure, the dog didn't bark. But he could have been drugged even more easily than Hunter was...just toss him an opium-laced piece of meat or cheese. Trust me, dogs are not so picky as to need to disguise the taste with curry. So conceivably, it still could have been someone unknown to the dog (and the household) who took the horse.

**If you like, I can show you dozens and dozens of articles arguing whether or not Holmes could have accuratey judged the trains speed by counting telegraph posts. Really, there are no nerds like Holmes nerds.

**Doyle has Holmes unknowingly make a commentary on what trying to ferret out actual news in the age of instant social media:

The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete and of such personal importance to so many people, that we are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact--of absolute undeniable fact--from the embellishments of theorists and reporters.

Yeah, that's about right, as anyone who has followed Twitter too closely during a "news event" can testify.

** There are some surprisingly large differences in the texts between the British and Americans texts in this story. The original British publication says that Silver Blaze is "from the Isomony stock;" the American says that he was from "Somony stock." As Isomony was an actual thoroughbred, that's a pretty big difference.

Similarly, Lord Blackwater's stables are called "Capleton" in the British, and "Mapleton" in the American.

There are many such differences between the editions in this story--and indeed all the stories in Memoirs. Sometimes whole sentences are added or dropped, sometimes seemingly changing the meaning completely.

Whether this was a symptom of the rush to get new Holmes stories into print across the pond, or just sloppy editing somewhere along the line, I can't say. But next week, we'll see the biggest example of the differences across the ocean.

**Once again, Doyle uses gypsies as a red herring, and once again we never meet them. We are being deprived of the joy of seeing Sherlock Holmes vs Gypsies!!

**Inspector Gregory is presented in the most favorable light of any police officer Holmes ever encounters. He is "excellently competent," and seems to anticipate every one of Holmes questions and needs, even if he himself isn't (yet) capable of making the deductional leaps that Sherlock is. It's a shame that we never get to see him again, to see how he has advanced...

**Gregory and Holmes have a very nice discussion of circumstantial evidence, and how likely it might be to stand up in a courtroom. Gregory insists, "I really think we have enough to go before a jury," while Holmes demurs: "A clever counsel would tear it all to rags."

The back and forth is rather like watching the district attorneys on Law & Order argue over whether they're ready for trial. And the discussion is an enlightening examination of why having enough evidence to arrest someone isn't the same as having enough to convict them.

**When Holmes first confronts Silas Brown with what he knows: "Holmes leaned forward and whispered something in the trainer's ear. He started violently and flushed to the temples."

I think we know damn well what Holmes whispered to him, right?

Hail Hydra!

Sorry.

**He may be a few decades early, but Holmes pretty much nails the creed of the noir private eye: "I follow my own methods, and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial." You and Jim Rockford, Sherlock.

Of course, such a code will get you accused of fixing horse races and being unethical, so watch yourself!

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE ADVENTURE OF THE CARDBOARD BOX!