The Adventure Of The Sussex Vampire--The Giant Rat Of Sumatra!!

One of the more fascinating aspects of any continuing fictional enterprise is the sheer amount of what we don't know, but want to know.

Even in a series that has had hundreds of episodes, all the background cannot be filled in--yet the reader or viewer has an insatiable demand to know. What was Picard's first command, the Stargazer, like? The Doctor left Amy and Rory behind for months--what adventures did he have then? No matter how many adventures we're given, the audience craves more.

Which brings us to The Adventure of The Sussex Vampire.

Sussex Vampire is a treasure trove of the "apocryphal stories," the untold stories that Watson or Holmes keep referring to, that sound so fascinating.

Holmes turns to the V section in his index. And what does he find?

Victor Lynch, the forger. Venomous lizard or gila. Remarkable case, that! Vittoria, the circus belle. Vanderbilt and the Yeggman. Vipers. Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder.

And that's just some of the V's!! (And if I ever start a band, it will be called Vigor The Hammersmith Wonder. And no, we will never play Hammersmith.

In fairness, Watson tell us that the Index isn't just old cases, as they are "mixed with the accumulated information of a lifetime." So sure, maybe some of those were just news stories Holmes kept clippings on. But aside from "The Voyage Of The Gloria Scott," which we know was an actual case, the "gila lizard" was a "remarkable case," as well. And we have a mix of the seemingly prosaic--"Victor Lynch, the forger"--with the interesting, macabre, or just plain baffling. Vittoria the circus belle? Vanderbilt and the Yeggman?!? Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder?!?!?! How can we not be fascinated by those "titles," and crave to know more?

Of course, the capstone is perhaps the most infamous apocryphal case of all, as the law firm references a job Holmes once did for them:

"Matilda Briggs was not the name of a young woman, Watson," said Holmes in a reminiscent voice. "It was a ship which is associated with the giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared."

Oh, come on now! No matter what you think of the Sussex Vampire, you want that story to be put on the back burner immediately, and have Holmes tell us all about Matilda Briggs and The Giant Rat Of Sumatra!! (Sounds like a great title for a YA book!!) A mysterious ship!! A giant rat?!? A story for which the world is not yet prepared?!?! Why aren't we prepared?!?! It's a hundred years later--we're damn well prepared now!! OMG, tell us now!!!!!

Do you see what a little off-hand reference can do to us? Because we love or Holmes and Watson, because we want to know everything about them, these tantalizing tidbits that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle loved to pepper his tales with are alluring, engaging, frustrating, and absolutely brilliant.

Why does this seem so unique to the Sherlock Holmes Canon? Well, first of all, Doyle did it A LOT. There  were 60 stories and novels. Depending on how you count them (is an off-hand mention actually a unique case?), there are over 100 "unreported cases" mentioned in those stories. Over 100!!!! Click here for a list of the most colorful-sounding 61 of the untold tales.

Think about that--61 (and probably dozens more) apocryphal cases!! That's double what we already have!! You could make an entire alternate Canon out of those!!!

Even when other fictive universes do something like this, the named-dropped off-screen apocrypha rarely seem substantial enough to justify a whole episode. If they have a good enough idea, the creators will actually use it, and make the story. Eventually, Hellblazer had to explain what happened at Newcastle. Not Doyle! He would take these wonderful concepts--Bert Stevens, the mild-mannered murderer--and just leave them laying around for us!! "Merridew of abominable memory"? What does that even mean?!? Other series wouldn't just drop something like that--they follow up, if for no other reason than "fan service."

But the amazing, frustrating, novel thing was, Doyle almost never followed up. The Adventure of The Second Stain was, maybe, an exception--twice Watson told of "the story of the second stain," each time sounding like a completely different case...and then he actually gave us a tale with that title, that seemed in most ways to contradict two prior references. Other than that, though? The Vatican cameos? The bogus laundry affair? The peculiar persecution of John Vincent Harden? The repulsive story of the red leech? Doyle was tossing off multiple story ideas nearly every month--and then not using them!!

And that's another thing--these seemed like ideas for actual stories, for the most part. A lot of times, when other genre series do something like this, it's just tidbits of personal information: Why was Spike called William The Bloody? Han Solo making the Kessel Run? They're character-building tidbits, valuable in and of themselves. Yet there's usually not an entire story there...but Watson and Holmes were name-dropping entire cases, and telling us how remarkable they were! Indeed, most of the apocrypha has been used as the basis for pastiches--each often several times!

We're not satisfied with the weekly, or monthly, adventures of our various heroes. We want to think that they're like us--"something is happening every day"--and better than us--"something INTERESTING is happening every day"! That's why we have literally thousands of novels (of varying canonicity) for Star Trek and Star Wars, for Doctor Who and for Buffy, for Monk and for Columbo--because fans are hungry for more, more, more of their heroes.

But perhaps Doyle realized that, as Spock said, having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting. After all, actually seeing Kirk cheat and beat the Kobayashi Maru was not nearly so entertaining as our imaginations made it, was it? Maybe Doyle was right to just tease us, because could the actual case of Wilson the notorious canary-trainer ever live up to our imaginations? How could the story of the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter ever be as wonderful as we story we created in our own minds? If Doyle had ever sat down to write The Darlington Substitution Scandal, maybe it would have turned out to be as poor a story as The Mazarin Stone!

Perhaps, then, it's for the best that Sir Arthur never wrote The Adventure Of The Giant Rat Of Sumatra. Perhaps it's in the perfect form already, in our minds and imaginations, each of us with our own personal version of what happened aboard the Matilda Briggs.

...

Naaaah. Someone get me a time machine. I'm going make to force Doyle to write the damn story!!

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**Sussex Vampire is a fine story, but it does have a glaring problem: A large story element is a virtual repeat from two stories earlier. 

In both this story and Thor Bridge, a wealthy white man travels to South America, woos and weds a woman from there, brings her to England, and only then realizes that they have nothing in common, and feels that he's falling in love with her, despite her hot "tropical" love for him:

This gentleman married some five years ago a Peruvian lady the daughter of a Peruvian merchant...The lady was very beautiful, but the fact of her foreign birth and of her alien religion always caused a separation of interests and of feelings between husband and wife, so that after a time his love may have cooled towards her and he may have come to regard their union as a mistake. He felt there were sides of her character which he could never explore or understand. This was the more painful as she was as loving a wife as a man could have -- to all appearance absolutely devoted.

Granted, there were two years between the publications of these stories, so it perhaps wasn't as noticeable contemporarily. But reading the stories consecutively, it's a blindingly obvious and annoying rerun.

Why did Sir Arthur resort to the exact same set up so soon? Why return the the "white guy marries Latin American woman and cools in his ardor but she loves him more" motif, with just one story between? Was this a pressing phenomenon in Britain of the 1920s (or maybe the 1890s, when the stories were likely set), with wealthy men taking foreign wives and then regretting it? Did Doyle know a couple like this, and was sending someone a coded "message," or even a rebuke? Was he running out of ideas?

Given the similar setups, we have to consider the ethnic/gender stereotypes being portrayed. White males are portrayed as, if not mislead, then at least temporarily bewitched by exotic foreign women. It's only after marriage and returning to normal, stable England that they realize that there love was merely based on physical passion, and they have "nothing in common." Ah, but the hot. "tropical" love of the woman will not fade, and is regarded by the rich white man as "immature" or overly passionate. 

Is Doyle perpetuating these stereotypes, or critiquing them? Is he warning against taking foreign wives, are suggesting that the men are ninnies for "falling out of love" with their brides while the women remain devoted?

I honestly don't have the answers.

**There are differences, of course. Certainly, in this story, the wife does not use her own suicide to frame a rival for murder. Indeed, she goes to ridiculous lengths to keep from accusing anyone. And she's only referred to as "tropical" once!

But did you notice...the wife is never named in this story at all? Not even once?!? She's not even referred to as "Mrs. Ferguson'!! She is always referred to as "my wife" or "your mistress" or "the woman." We do not know her name!! A pivotal character, the accused "vampire," the woman who saved her child's life...has no name.

That's extraordinarily careless of Doyle, to leave such a strong character completely nameless throughout the entire tale. Wasn't anyone editing his work at this point?

Of course, the baby is also never given a name. It's always referred to "the baby" or "my child." 

What an odd household, where 1/2 of the inhabitants (not counting servants, of course) can only be called by, "Hey, you!"

**Holmes, introducing the best lawyer letter ever: "For a mixture of the modern and the mediaeval, of the practical and of the wildly fanciful, I think this is surely the limit."

It is a masterpiece of British understatement:

Re Vampires

SIR: Our client, Mr. Robert Ferguson, of Ferguson and Muirhead, tea brokers, of Mincing Lane, has made some inquiry from us in a communication of even date concerning vampires. As our firm specializes entirely upon the assessment of machinery the matter hardly comes within our purview, and we have therefore recommended Mr. Ferguson to call upon you and lay the matter before you.

Wonderful. And the echoing of it at the end, in Sherlock's reply, is most gratifying.

**We've discussed it before, but this story quite distinctly summarizes Holmes' skepticism, and disdain for any "supernatural" cases.

"But what do we know about vampires? Does it come within our purview either? Anything is better than stagnation, but really we seem to have been switched on to a Grimms' fairy tale."
 
"Rubbish, Watson, rubbish! What have we to do with walking corpses who can only be held in their grave by stakes driven through their hearts? It's pure lunacy."

Ever practical Watson, even though more open-minded, doesn't accept the supernatural. Perhaps there are more prosaic causes that are misinterpreted as the work of the undead?: "The vampire was not necessarily a dead man? A living person might have the habit. I have read, for example, of the old sucking the blood of the young in order to retain their youth."

Yet Holmes rejects it out of hand: "But are we to give serious attention to such things? This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply."

"The idea of a vampire was to me absurd. Such things do not happen in criminal practice in England."

This seems a pretty strong of principal, without any loopholes. But that doesn't stop people from writing stories where Holmes does indeed pursue vampires and things that go bump in the night. Some have gone so far as to suggest that Van Helsing was actually Holmes in disguise, and Dracula was actually Moriarty!! Sigh...

I think we know what Sherlock himself would say about these efforts. 

**For what it's worth, most chronologists set Sussex Vampire before Bram Stoker's famous novel was published, so vampire legends would not have been quite so prevalent in the consciousness of Holmes and Watson. Had the story been set later, Holmes likely wouldn't have needed to grab his index to look up obscure foreign references to vampires.

**As we've noted before, it seems as if all houses in England at the time--especially estates of the wealthy--had names: "I know that country, Holmes. It is full of old houses which are named after the men who built them centuries ago. You get Odley's and Harvey's and Carriton's -- the folk are forgotten but their names live in their houses."

**Holmes didn't always give credit for the sources of his vast knowledge: "It was one of the peculiarities of his proud, self-contained nature that though he docketed any fresh information very quietly and accurately in his brain, he seldom made any acknowledgment to the giver."

**The letter from Ferguson: "It concerns a friend for whom I am acting."

It's comforting to know that even Victorians used this dodge. "Well, doctor, my friend has this problem..."

Holmes, of course, has no patience for such stumbling shyness: 

"'Your case!'"

"We must not let him think that this agency is a home for the weak-minded. Of course it is his case...It is simpler to deal direct," said Holmes

**Holmes perhaps betraying Doyles' attitude on over-hasty marriages abroad: "I gather that you did not know your wife well at the time of your marriage?" "I had only known her a few weeks." 

Holmes seems somewhat disapproving here. Perhaps Doyle is being critical of men sweeping foreign women off their feet, uprooting them from their homes, and then "falling out of love" when the first blush of physical passion finally fades.

**So, to Ferguson at least, Catholicism is an "alien religion"?!? 

I'm presuming that, coming from Peru, she is Catholic--so perhaps I'm just as guilty of stereotyping as anyone speaking of her "tropical" passion.

But surely Catholicism is not so completely "alien" to Ferguson's (presumed) Protestantism? Was her religion a surprise to him? Who married them? 

Or did his concerns about her religion emerge only after the passion cooled (and she had borne him a child)?

**More from Ferguson and his fading ardor: "He felt there were sides of her character which he could never explore or understand. This was the more painful as she was as loving a wife as a man could have -- to all appearance absolutely devoted."

Well, you could try, oh, I don't know, actual conversation? Try talking to your wife?!? Building a relationship on communication?!? (Maybe start by finding out her name?)

Jesus, this guy pisses me off.

**Even if you don't buy the vampirism idea any more than Holmes did, there certainly is strong reason to be suspicious about Mrs. Ferguson's behavior:

Twice the wife was caught in the act of assaulting this poor lad in the most unprovoked way. Once she struck him with a stick and left a great weal on his arm...she saw her employer, the lady, leaning over the baby and apparently biting his neck. There was a small wound in the neck from which a stream of blood had escaped. The nurse was so horrified that she wished to call the husband, but the lady implored her not to do so and actually gave her five pounds as a price for her silence...he saw his wife rise from a kneeling position beside the cot and saw blood upon the child's exposed neck and upon the sheet. With a cry of horror, he turned his wife's face to the light and saw blood all round her lips. It was she -- she beyond all question -- who had drunk the poor baby's blood.

This provide ample reason for concern, surely. 

So it strains credulity that the wife cannot be bothered to make any explanation whatsoever of her behavior. The entire story is over if she just speaks up. But instead she chooses to remain silent about the fact that someone is trying to murder their baby!

"She would not even speak. She gave no answer to my reproaches, save to gaze at me with a sort of wild, despairing look in her eyes. Then she rushed to her room and locked herself in. Since then she has refused to see me."

Even when an outsider, who wouldn't be heartbroken at the news about Jack, tends to her, she can only babble in vague generalities: "No. No one can help. It is finished. All is destroyed. Do what I will, all is destroyed."

Holmes explanation: "She saw it made and saved the child's life, and yet she shrank from telling you all the truth, for she knew how you loved the boy and feared lest it break your heart."

And she confirms this: "How could I tell you, Bob? I felt the blow it would be to you. It was better that I should wait and that it should come from some other lips than mine."

I can sympathize with her dilemma. BUT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO MURDER YOUR BABY! And she was willing to tell the nurse, so her insistence on silence was hardly absolute. Why not tell Watson? Why wait until Holmes has figured out the whole story to come out and confirm it?

Silly, silly plot device.

**Sherlock on Watson: Holmes looked at me thoughtfully and shook his head. "I never get your limits, Watson," said he. "There are unexplored possibilities about you.

**Watson on the sad physical ravages of aging:

There is surely nothing in life more painful than to meet the wreck of a fine athlete whom one has known in his prime. His great frame had fallen in, his flaxen hair was scanty, and his shoulders were bowed. I fear that I roused corresponding emotions in him.

**Ferguson: "How am I to go to the police with such a story?" Well, SOMEONE WAS TRYING TO MURDER YOUR BABY!!!!  I would think that, no matter what the explanation, protecting your offspring would be big enough a priority to act.


Seriously, I rather like this story, but this whole Victorian "I can't bear to cause the one I love any upset, and I can't bear the weight of any potential scandal" emotional repression is really driving me nuts...

**Obviously, Bob Ferguson has no idea what a 15 year old boy is really like:

"Yet you say he is affectionate?"

"Never in the world could there be so devoted a son. My life is his life. He is absorbed in what I say or do."

Obviously, adolescence in Victorian England wasn't the same as in modern America (or England). But we'll see how odd a duck Jack is soon enough.

**Of course, Holmes has already solved the mystery by the end of the first meeting: "He would certainly seem to be a most interesting lad. There is one other point about these assaults. Were the strange attacks upon the baby and the assaults upon your son at the same period?"

He knows, all right. 

**However, Holmes upbraids himself for jumping the gun by rushing to conclusions: "One forms provisional theories and waits for time or fuller knowledge to explode them. A bad habit, Mr. Ferguson, but human nature is weak. I fear that your old friend here has given an exaggerated view of my scientific methods."

**Even without a real vampire, Cheeseman's seems a fine setting for a Gothic tale: "An odour of age and decay pervaded the whole crumbling building."

**Inside Cheeseman's: "There was hung a fine collection of South American utensils and weapons, which had been brought, no doubt, by the Peruvian lady upstairs."

Wait--so Peruvian brides bring weapons collections as their dowry?!? Weapons still coated with poison?!?! And display them on the walls?!? 

Not to disagree with Watson, but it seems at least as likely that the collection is Robert Ferguson's, picked up in his business travels to Peru. That would increase the irony of his providing what he no doubt thought of as mere trophies being used to kill his infant son...

**The paralyzed dog provides the final confirmation that Holmes needs.

But it's also the take-off point for a lot of criticism of the story, as countless people insist that curare would not leave a lingering paralysis in the dog.

But these people need to read the story more carefully. Holmes did not say it was curare. His exact quote was "curare or some other devilish drug."

"Some other drug." Ahem.

**Watson as medical man: "On the bed a woman was lying who was clearly in a high fever. She was only half conscious, but as I entered she raised a pair of frightened but beautiful eyes and glared at me in apprehension."

So was she actually physically ill? Or was it an emotional breakdown? It has been awhile since we've seen "brain fever," where extreme emotional duress provoking dangerous sickness.

Watson seems to go with the brain fever possibility: "I took her pulse and temperature. Both were high, and yet my impression was that the condition was rather that of mental and nervous excitement than of any actual seizure."

Of course, we could also speculate that her health problems may have been caused by accidentally ingesting the poison sucked out of the baby's neck...

**Watson, appealing Ferguson's case to the wife: "He is full of grief, but he cannot understand." 

Her reply: "No, he cannot understand. But he should trust."

Hold on, Ma'am..YOU don't trust him! You refuse to tell him one syllable of the truth. Sheesh...

**The father is always the last to know...

To modern eyes, at least, the descriptions of Jack are fairly unsettling, and even back in 1924 the reader must have gotten the sense that there was something not quite right about the lad:

He was a remarkable lad, pale-faced and fair-haired, with excitable light blue eyes which blazed into a sudden flame of emotion and joy as they rested upon his father. He rushed forward and threw his arms round his neck with the abandon of a loving girl. "Oh, daddy," he cried, "I did not know that you were due yet. I should have been here to meet you. Oh, I am so glad to see you!" Ferguson gently disengaged himself from the embrace with some little show of embarrassment...

"Jacky has very strong likes and dislikes," said Ferguson, putting his arm round the boy. "Luckily I am one of his likes." The boy cooed and nestled his his head upon his father's breast. Ferguson gently disengaged him.

Again, this is a 15 year old boy...

**Unlike earlier stories, where the very physical appearance of someone of mixed ethnicity was a justifiable cause for horror, Watson approves of the unnamed baby: "a very beautiful child, dark-eyed, golden-haired, a wonderful mixture of the Saxon and the Latin."

Quite a contrast from early pictures of horrifying race mixing, as in Wisteria Lodge...

**Holmes admits that he solved the case before even getting out of his chair at Baker Street:

"It has been a case for intellectual deduction, but when this original intellectual deduction is confirmed point by point by quite a number of independent incidents, then the subjective becomes objective and we can say confidently that we have reached our goal. I had, in fact, reached it before we left Baker Street, and the rest has merely been observation and confirmation."

**"Did it not occur to you that a bleeding wound may be sucked for some other purpose than to draw the blood from it? Was there not a queen in English history who sucked such a wound to draw poison from it?"

This is a reference, although likely apocryphal, to Eleanor of Castille, who allegedly saved Edward I's life during a Crusade by sucking a wound he received from a poisoned knife.

**Again, the father may have been to close to see what was fairly obvious to an outside observer:

It is the more painful because it is a distorted love, a maniacal exaggerated love for you, and possibly for his dead mother, which has prompted his action. His very soul is consumed with hatred for this splendid child, whose health and beauty are a contrast to his own weakness.

**The worst prescription in the history of crime-fighting: "I think a year at sea would be my prescription for Master Jacky," said Holmes, rising from his chair.

WHAT?!?!?!

Look, this youngster has been poisoning pets and trying to murder infants. Jacky is a serial-killer waiting to happen, right? Can anybody seriously believe that "a year at sea" would cure him of his pathology? That a little salt air would heal his "distorted, maniacal, exaggerated love" and "soul-consuming hatred"? When Jacky comes home in a year, would you going let him anywhere near the child? Near the wife? Around any pets? 

I'm sorry, Sherlock, but two counts of attempted murder calls for something a little stronger than a vacation/exile. I fear Jacky went on to become quite the killer, and you're responsible.

**Finally, we get a bit of closure in a Holmes story--if only a bit:

Ferguson was standing by the bed, choking, his hands outstretched and quivering. "This, I fancy, is the time for our exit, Watson," said Holmes in a whisper. "If you will take one elbow of the too faithful Dolores, I will take the other. There, now," he added as he closed the door behind him, "I think we may leave them to settle the rest among themselves."

 **The Granada adaptation of this story is quite possibly the worst thing that I have ever seen. It is terrible in every way possible. I will say no more.

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GARRIDEBS!

The Adventure Of The Creeping Man--"Risible Science Fiction"?

I've discussed before why I feel that horror and supernatural stories aren't appropriate for Sherlock Holmes. Doyle himself has Holmes declare why, in The Hound Of The Baskervilles and Devil's Foot: "if...we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation.", and "I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world. In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task."

But what happens if the Holmes story seems to cross over into science fiction, instead of horror?

Which brings us to The Adventure of The Creeping Man.

Author David Stuart Davies, in an afterword to a 2004 edition of Case-Book, dismissed Creeping Man as "risible science fiction." He's written a number of Holmes pastiches, so he has some qualifications to discuss what may or may not be appropriate for The Great Detective.

This quote gives me two things to discuss regarding Creeping Man. First, in general, are science fiction-type stories an appropriate milieu for Holmes? Secondly, is Creeping Man science fiction? And if it is, is it "risible?"

As to the first question, let me plead that I'm having to speak in overly broad generalities here--there are as many sub-genres of horror and science fiction as there are of mystery, if not more. So, as I gather my thoughts here, I'll gladly concede that of course there are exceptions to any of my pronouncements, and not all genre stories conform to the limitations I suggest.

I won't belabor the horror idea--I've covered that before, and we'll look at that again next story. But there are is one thing in particular that I feel works against horror being a fair genre for Sherlock Holmes.

Horror by its very nature is outside of Holmes wheelhouse. Sherlock is an investigator who relies on absolute physical laws of nature. He's spent his life building up, through observation and experimentation, a system for analyzing and studying crime. But without firm physical laws, that system is useless. If footprints always work like X, and tobacco ash always works like Y, then Holmes, and the police, and ultimately the courts, can rely on his deductions. But if there are beings that are super-natural, able to violate and ignore those physical laws, than Sherlock's observation and deductions become useless. "There are no footprints here, so the killer could not have gone this way--well, unless he was a vampire and turned into a bat and flew away" would make for a pretty unconvincing pronouncement from Holmes, wouldn't it? It also makes it much more difficult to solve cases, and especially to prosecute criminal in court: "Your honor, Sherlock Holmes himself concedes that a vampire could have committed the crime--that's reasonable doubt!"

And I will admit once again that this is largely based on my personal preferences. There are any number of pastiches out there where Sherlock Holmes does indeed interact with the supernatural--so obviously plenty of people don't see it the way I do. And there are plenty of works out there about police and detectives who operate in a supernatural world...and a lot of them are pretty good. Which is fine--different strokes, there's room enough for everyone's interpretations, etc. But for me, Sherlock Holmes is a character who interacts with the real world, a proto-CSI who shows how crime and the like can be investigated and solved by the human mind. Take away that real world, or rather allow the unreal to creep in, and you completely change the dynamic.

Does that same problem apply to science fiction, however?

Well, that depends.

With much science fiction, we're still dealing with the real world, with real physical laws. The creators are just extrapolating and building upon those natural rules. With sufficient education, there's no reason why Holmes couldn't opine on how the mud of my trouser cuff could only have come from the colony on Jupiter's moon, and it would be consistent with how we accept Holmes now. After all, I don't think that any current readers of The Canon can honestly say that they know for certain how mud splashes into which seat of a dog cart, or what particular callouses on on certain finger mean. We just accept Sherlock's word for it. It might as well be science fiction for those who have never been to Victorian England.

And if you wanted to lay sufficient groundwork, sure, Sherlock Holmes could recognize Dalek tracks or recognize that those bullet holes are too precise for Sand People. I'm not sure that you'd want to, but it wouldn't complete violate the precis of how the character works.

Of course, much science fiction goes far beyond that. When we have "star-children" from 2001, or god-like beings who can transport people across the galaxy instantly, we've gone well beyond what we actually know about the physical universe, and well beyond what our earth-bound detective can reasonably intuit. We've entered the realm of Clarke's Third Law: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And that indistinguisability from magic takes us back to the problems I have with Holmes and horror--if something isn't physically possible in Holmes' world, than there's no way his powers and faculties can be of use in solving them.

Such "magical" science fiction requires a massive suspension of disbelief, which is the opposite of what a detective story needs. Again, that produces results that I don't care for in my Sherlock Holmes stories. A "locked room" mystery shouldn't have "Well, perhaps a Metron teleported him to a planet light-years away" as a possibility.

So, science fiction could work in a Holmes story in some cases, but in many other cases would result in the same problems as horror. Where does that leave the Creeping Man, then?

At its most basic, this story is: old man injects himself with monkey serum so that he may be more virile for his younger love, but the stuff causes him to act more like a monkey.

Is this science fiction? Was it at the time?

Alvin Rodin and Jack Key, in their Medical Casebook Of Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, relate to us the work of French physiologist Brown-Sequard, who was known for trying to invent elixirs of youth. In 1889, he announced in medical journals

that he had injected himself with testicular secretions pf guinea pigs and dog, and felt "rejuvenated" as a result. He reported that he was now able to engage in sexual relations with his new, younger wife, whereas previously he had found his capabilities limited.

That summary is by Leslie Klinger in The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

Well, that certainly sounds pretty on point to the case of Professor Presbury, doesn't it? Of course, it was mostly quackery. But quackery was not uncommon in medicine, even into the 1920s, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Creeping Man. Hell, there were even doctors advocating transplanting actual whole glands from monkeys into humans at the time. Obviously, "science" wasn't what it is now, but this was (unsupported, unproven) scientific thought of the era, not "science fiction."

And much in the way that Devil's Foot seemed prescient of future developments in pharmacology, is Creeping Man in any way out of step with 2015? We still have people slaughtering endangered species because their body parts supposedly increase "virility" and "vigor." And check the spam folder in your email--"boner pills" are a billion dollar business, and even the existence of real medications that actually do improve sexual performance doesn't stop the hunt for newer, cheap, non-presricption-required pills or supplements that will "make her scream in pleasure." An entire industry is based on making men feel inadequate and ashamed of their sexual performance. In that light, the decision of Professor Presbury to seek a little something to put some extra steam in his stride wholly modern, and not "risible science fiction."

And we also know now, with actual medical certainty, that hormones and endocrines and other chemicals that you put into your body can have a tremendous effect on you mentally, as well as physically. Just look at some of the side effects attributed to steroid use, for example, and compare them with the way people describe Presbury's transformation:

"He became furtive and sly. Those around him had always the feeling that he was not the man that they had known, but that he was under some shadow which had darkened his higher qualities....His naturally violent nature is intensified by it..."Apart from his queer fits, he has actually more energy and vitality than I can ever remember, nor was his brain ever clearer."

Becoming stronger, more energy and vitality--but accompanied by mood swings, mania, disproportionate anger, a tendency towards violence? Much of that could come straight out of any reporting from the last 15 years over the dangers of steroids or other performance enhancing drugs. This sounds like many of the descriptions of "'roid rage." Creeping Man is decades ahead of its time in forecasting the dangers of trying to improve oneself, sexually or athletically, through putting gosh knows what into your body.

So, the part where injecting yourself with monkey serum makes you physically act like a monkey? Yeah, that's probably bullshit. But it's not as if the professor had physically transformed into a monkey. And such a serum probably could cause unexpected physiological and behavioral changes. Do we question whether a  dog could detect the "monkey juice" in Presbury, and react violently? Well, modern science has given some credence to the theory that dogs can detect cancer in humans because of the different chemicals that malignancies emit--so is a canine detecting similar changes is his master so completely out-of-bounds?

Of course, Doyle meant a lot of this on an allegorical level, as did Stevenson in Doctor Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, of Mary Shelley in Frankenstein. He didn't intend it merely as a condemnation of dangerous and untested medicine, but also as a moral parable about knowing and being content with ourselves:

"The real source," said Holmes, "lies, of course, in that untimely love affair which gave our impetuous professor the idea that he could only gain his wish by turning himself into a younger man. When one tries to rise above Nature one is liable to fall below it. The highest type of man may revert to the animal if he leaves the straight road of destiny."

And Doyle amplifies that by opining how such "crazy" medicine endangers our world and our souls:

There is danger there -- a very real danger to humanity. Consider, Watson, that the material, the sensual, the worldly would all prolong their worthless lives. The spiritual would not avoid the call to something higher. It would be the survival of the least fit. What sort of cesspool may not our poor world become?"

So, sort of like Left Behind, with the remaining population consisting only of those "base" enough to put a priority on extending their lives past their natural limits. Pretty deep for a mystery story.

Was Creeping Man science fiction, then? A bit, perhaps, but it was based on a lot of medical thinking at the time, and modern medicine has shown that much of the story is not as far-fetched as older criticisms have tried to make it seem. Doyle took one half-step into the future, as part of an allegory. It seems churlish and short-sighted to dismiss the story as "risible science fiction."

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**On the other hand, it is perfectly acceptable to dismiss the story as a poor mystery.

Indeed, there's not much "mystery" here. A respected man is behaving oddly. And...well, that's about it. The only question we have is why. No crimes have been committed, no one seems to be in any danger. There are no consequences--Sherlock promises to write a threatening letter to Lowenstein, but otherwise there is no follow-up whatsoever. We don't know if Presbury recovers; we don't know no if he resumes taking the monkey serum; we don't no the fate of his romancing of Alice; we learn nothing about the "other client" Lowenstein has in England; does Bennett end up marrying Edith? The entire story is "Oh, it's monkey hormones," a shrug, and a rush to lunch without actually resolving anything. 

And since Watson is telling us this story some twenty years after it happened, there's really no excuse for his not giving us any resolution to some of these questions.

**Granada also apparently didn't think it was much of a mystery, so they seriously restructured things to try and keep the audience in the dark. Edith couldn't tell that it was her father in the window, only a vague someone or something. The fact that the dog had attacked its master wasn't revealed until much later in the story. Bennett hadn't wanted to consult Holmes, but Edith forced him. And no one suspected that anything was wrong with the professor, while the adaptation kept sowing red herrings about stolen or escaped apes.

**Watson has decided to tell us this story "if only to dispel once for all the ugly rumours which some twenty years ago agitated the university and were echoed in the learned societies of London."

What rumors?!? If Bennett and Presbury and Holmes didn't go to the authorities, what rumors would there be? "The professor had to take some time off after his dog went mad and attacked him" seems like it would have been a perfectly fine excuse to spread around. Who was telling tales out of school, then, and what were the "ugly" rumours?

By the way, Watson, telling everyone that the professor was shooting up monkey testicle juice so he could be a better lover for his young wife isn't terribly non-ugly...Surely that's as bad as any of the rumours themselves?

**"Now we have at last obtained permission to ventilate the facts..."

From whom? The professor would be 81ish at the time of the story's publication--was he still alive? Perhaps the serum was effective at extending life!

It would be odd to think that his daughter Edith had relented, if she had opposed the affair becoming public all this time. What changed? Who else could have had the right to give permission?

**Great "laconic message" from Sherlock: "Come at once if convenient -- if inconvenient come all the same. S. H."

**How Watson sees his later relationship with Sherlock:

As an institution I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe, the index books, and others perhaps less excusable. When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious. But apart from this I had uses. I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence. His remarks could hardly be said to be made to me -- many of them would have been as appropriately addressed to his bedstead -- but none the less, having formed the habit, it had become in some way helpful that I should register and interject.

Nice cocaine reference, John.

Some people see bitterness it Watson's litany here. And John does seem a bit snippy this story. But really, it is more bittersweet, as Watson is acknowledging that their lives have drifted apart. With Watson's practice thriving, and probably married, there's not just as much time in John's life for adventuring.

But it's also a bit of a humble brag, I think. Given the high regard Watson has for the intellect of his friend, to suggest that he was Holmes' muse, even if in a passive way, is no small thing. "I was a whetstone for his mind" doesn't sound like a rebuke to me.

**Holmes:

"I was able, by watching the mind of the child, to form a deduction as to the criminal habits of the very smug and respectable father...A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones. And their passing moods may reflect the passing moods of others."

Watson is probably right to find it "far-fetched." It is interesting, though, as a reversal of Holmes' prior position on nature vs. nurture. Earlier in his career, Holmes was quick to blame "bad blood" and evil ancestry for a criminal's corruption. But this statement seems much more like suggesting that nurture is as important, if not more so...

**Just as Holmes and Watson have suggested that a woman in "middle age" should no longer be lusty ("Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman of forty or thereabouts...I may add that Miss Burnet's age and character make it certain that my first idea that there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question"), society seems to disapprove of older men being too "active" in romance.

"Then the current of his life was broken. He is sixty-one years of age, but he became engaged to the daughter of Professor Morphy, his colleague in the chair of comparative anatomy. It was not, as I understand, the reasoned courting of an elderly man but rather the more passionate frenzy of youth, for no one could have shown himself a more devoted lover..."

And his family disapproves "We thought it rather excessive."

No passionate frenzy for you, older men!! And women, if your over 40, forget it!! Leave that mushy stuff for the youngsters!!

**Holmes could sometimes appear not to be listening...

...but I fear I weary you." Mr. Bennett spoke in a tone of reproach, for it was very clear that Holmes was not listening. His face was rigid and his eyes gazed abstractedly at the ceiling. With an effort he recovered himself.

Dude, let the man think!

**Bennett's fear-filled description of his beloved mentor acting oddly:

I could see that something was coming along the passage, something dark and crouching. Then suddenly it emerged into the light, and I saw that it was he. He was crawling, Mr. Holmes -- crawling! He was not quite on his hands and knees. I should rather say on his hands and feet, with his face sunk between his hands. Yet he seemed to move with ease. I was so paralyzed by the sight that it was not until he had reached my door that I was able to step forward and ask if I could assist him. His answer was extraordinary. He sprang up, spat out some atrocious word at me, and hurried on past me, and down the staircase.

**Watson, as always, practical:

"Lumbago, possibly. I have known a severe attack make a man walk in just such a way, and nothing would be more trying to the temper."

"Good, Watson! You always keep us flat-footed on the ground.

**Watson continues to be the only practical one, suggesting that Presbury's problems just might be psychological:

"Speaking as a medical man," said I, "it appears to be a case for an alienist. The old gentleman's cerebral processes were disturbed by the love affair. He made a journey abroad in the hope of breaking himself of the passion."

Good old Watson. In a sane world, you would be right...

**Of course, Holmes is also willing to prick the balloon of Watson's practicality:

"His letters and the box may be connected with some other private transaction -- a loan, perhaps, or share certificates, which are in the box." 

"And the wolfhound no doubt disapproved of the financial bargain."

**Holmes again being wry:

The door opened and a young lady was shown into the room. As she appeared Mr. Bennett sprang up with a cry and ran forward with his hands out to meet those which she had herself outstretched.

"Edith, dear! Nothing the matter, I hope?"

"I felt I must follow you. Oh, Jack, I have been so dreadfully frightened! It is awful to be there alone."

"Mr. Holmes, this is the young lady I spoke of. This is my fiancee."

"We were gradually coming to that conclusion, were we not, Watson?" Holmes answered with a smile.

**Once again we play the Oxford/Cambridge guessing game. But this time, Doyle is clearly aware of the controversy, and in on the joke. Instead of simply not naming the university, he calls it Camford.

I don't have a horse in this race, so I honestly don't care. It is fun, though, to watch everyone tie themselves into knots trying to make their arguments.

**Watson again seeming a bit exasperated with Holmes, as dropping everything to go off on a case is "an easy effort on the part of Holmes, who had no roots to pull up, but one which involved frantic planning and hurrying on my part, as my practice was by this time not inconsiderable."

Yes, John, we sympathize. Would you rather go back to the days where Holmes bought your practice, paid your rent, and kept your checkbook for you?

**Holmes questions whether Watson can bluff their way through a meeting with Presbury: "Have you the effrontery necessary to put it through?" But Holmes himself seems to lack the nerve, completely changing  the planned story in the heat of the moment. Instead of claiming that the professor made the appointment himelf during one of his "spells," Holmes tries to soft pedal it as someone esle might have invited him: "I heard through a second person that Professor Presbury of Camford had need of my services."

**Presbury's overreaction to Holmes' visit is pretty epic:

"Hardly enough, Mr. Holmes!" the old man cried in a high screaming voice, with extraordinary malignancy upon his face. He got between us and the door as he spoke, and he shook his two hands at us with furious passion. "You can hardly get out of it so easily as that." His face was convulsed, and he grinned and gibbered at us in his senseless rage. I am convinced that we should have had to fight our way out of the room if Mr. Bennett had not intervened.

He's ready to beat the crap out of our duo just because of what could be explained as a misunderstanding!

Holmes tries to excuse him, a bit: "Explosive, no doubt, but then from his point of view he has something to explode about if detectives are put on his track and he suspects his own household of doing it." Really, if that's sufficient justification, than life amongst the luxury class in those days must have been much more violent than we thought!

**Another reason is that this mystery is a bit lacking is that Holmes doesn't do all that much detecting. How does he find out about Dorak? Someone else does and hands the information to him: "I have the address of the man in London to whom the professor writes. He seems to have written this morning, and I got it from his blotting-paper. It is an ignoble position for a trusted secretary, but what else can I do?"

He has one of his agents track down Dorak. He waits until Presbury has been nearly killed to take his key and open the mysterious wooden box.

Honestly, most of this story would have played out exactly the same had Holmes not gotten involved!

**As Holmes got older he adopted some agents to carry out menial tasks for him: "Mercer is since your time," said Holmes. "He is my general utility man who looks up routine business."

There could have been some interesting stories about these agents. Who are they? How did they come to work for Holmes?

**"It's surely time that I disappeared into that little farm of my dreams." Soon enough, Sherlock.

**A crazy scene:

In all our adventures I do not know that I have ever seen a more strange sight than this impassive and still dignified figure crouching frog-like upon the ground and goading to a wilder exhibition of passion the maddened hound, which ramped and raged in front of him, by all manner of ingenious and calculated cruelty.

I don't know that monkeys are that interested in tormenting angry dogs. But what do I know? The Granada adaptation adds a line that in Hindu mythology, the dog and the monkey are mortal enemies to try and justify it.

**Macphail the coachman apparently knew a lot of what was going on well ahead of everyone else:

The uproar had brought the sleepy and astonished coachman from his room above the stables. "I'm not surprised," said he, shaking his head. "I've seen him at it before. I knew the dog would get him sooner or later."

Wait a minute!! You're "not surprised"?!??! You knew this all along, and didn't bother to tell anyone?!? Macphail knew that his employer was acting in a crazy fashion, and was tormenting the dog so much that he was jeopardizing his own life...and he keeps this information to himself?!?!?! If he speaks up earlier, perhaps Holmes cracks the case earlier, before anyone is maimed!

Maybe Macphail was the one spreading ugly rumors...

**Mad Czech scientists:

Lowenstein! The name brought back to me the memory of some snippet from a newspaper which spoke of an obscure scientist who was striving in some unknown way for the secret of rejuvenescence and the elixir of life. Lowenstein of Prague! Lowenstein with the wondrous strength-giving serum, tabooed by the profession because he refused to reveal its source.

In modern times, Lowenstein would have an hour-long informercial on late night TV...

**You know, given the revelation that his employer and mentor was injecting himself with monkey testorone (or whatever), Bennett is pretty damn calm: "Well, thanks to you, Mr. Holmes, it is very clear that we have traced the evil to its source."

Really, that's all you have to say? No reaction of shock, or disgust, or outrage? Nothing?!?

**Holmes plan to impede Lowenstein's research:

When I have written to this man and told him that I hold him criminally responsible for the poisons which he circulates, we will have no more trouble.

Well, first of all, it's not at all clear that Lowenstein has violated any laws at all. And just because Holmes will hold him responsible doesn't mean that the law will. And there's no indication whatsoever that Lowenstein would stop his research no matter what Holmes says. Heck, there's not even any indication that Presbury will stop buying the damn stuff and using it!!

I'm just saying, writing a stern letter is not the most satisfying way to resolve a mystery...

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE!!

The Problem Of Thor Bridge-A Tale Of Two Women

One of the reasons I gave for starting this little blog was that I felt the Sherlock Holmes Canon gave us insight to an entire different time and culture, a look at a different country and class structure and moral framework.

Which brings us to The Problem Of Thor Bridge.

Thor Bridge is a great story, well-written and fascinating, with a cracking good mystery (based on a real crime!). Holmes is at the top of his game, the dialogue sparkles, and Watson is back in charge narratively. By itself, Thor Bridge is a firm rebuttal to those who want to disparage the Case-Book based on a few below-average stories.

But Thor Bridge also serves as--perhaps unintentionally--an examination of the place of women in Victorian society, and how sexism and class rules trapped females into fairly terrifying existences.

Let us start with our victim--and our killer!--hmmm, what's her name again?

That's only half a joke. Imagine my surprise when I searched through the story several times before I realized that Maria Gibson is referred to by name only 3 times in this story. Once her widow refers to her, but by her maiden name, Maria Pinto. Once a police sergeant refers to her as Mrs. Gibson. And her alleged murderer, Grace Dunbar, also calls her Mrs. Gibson once. Every other time--literally every time she's mentioned--it's not by name, but as "Mr. Gibson's wife," or "my wife" or "she" or "that poor woman." Her identity is, essentially, erased in this story--never once is she referred to as Maria Gibson. Even Holmes can only identify her as "a wife, the victim of this tragedy, of whom I know nothing save that she was past her prime..." Though she is the victim in a high-profile murder case, Maria Gibson is reduced to a mere prop, a placeholder, until we're told the true nature of her involvement at the end.

In place of her name, though, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has everyone in the tale reduce her to an ethnic stereotype. In Thor Bridge, Maria is referred to as "tropical" more often than she is referred to by name. Think about that.

Marlow Bates refers to Maria as "a creature of the tropics, a Brazilian by birth..." He follows by calling her, "Tropical by birth and tropical by nature. A child of the sun and of passion." Her husband said she had a "deep rich nature, too, passionate, whole-hearted, tropical, ill-balanced..." Of course he felt the crime was due to her Latin American origins: "She was crazy with hatred and the heat of the Amazon was always in her blood." And Grace Dunbar felt that Maria "hated me with all the fervour of her tropical nature."

OK, we get it. "Tropical" = hot-headed, emotional, out of control. Those damn Latin Americans get so excitable, they just can't help it.

Of course, all of these staid middle and upper class white folks of the era would think in such terms, as the era was full of ethnic (and other) stereotyping. What's less clear, is whether this is Doyle accurately presenting what the attitudes of the day were, or his projecting his own prejudices into the story.

On one level, we should reject this, if for no other reason than basing a characters behavior on a biased view of "hot-blooded" Latinos is lazy, and robs that character of much of their own agency. Certainly, there are woman of many times and cultures who become obsessive and manic in their love. Why rely on stereotype to explain it?

Then again, having everyone else in the story talk about Maria this way does serve to reinforce the sense of loneliness and isolation she must have felt. Imagine her plight--a bold, attractive American marries her, moves her around three continents, has children with her...and then suddenly decides that he doesn't love her anymore, and he decides he must be "harsh to her, even brutal" in order to "kill her love," because that "would be easier for both of us." And so now Maria is trapped--trapped in a loveless marriage with a total jackass, trapped in a country not her own, and trapped in a society where every single person in her life treats her as a cartoon character, "tropical" and "fiery". And her husband is trying to get the governess to be his new lover! Is it any wonder she went a little bit bonkers?

Even worse, those around her subtly blamed Maria for her marriage's failure. Bates said, "She had loved him as such women can love, but when her own physical charms had faded -- I am told that they once were great -- there was nothing to hold him." See, she got old and less beautiful--it's her fault! Miss Dunbar suggests that Maria was too emotionally immature to hold the love of a great white person: "I would not wish to wrong her, but she loved so vividly in a physical sense that she could hardly understand the mental, and even spiritual, tie which held her husband to me..." See, those damn Brazilians don't understand true love! And the Senator? "It was only when the romance had passed -- and it lingered for years -- that I realized that we had nothing -- absolutely nothing -- in common. My love faded." Hers didn't. Why couldn't she just get over it? And her jealousy? Well, those foreigners couldn't understand a pure, spiritual connection like I have with the hired help:

"There is a soul-jealousy that can be as frantic as any body-jealousy, and though my wife had no cause -- and I think she understood this -- for the latter, she was aware that this English girl exerted an influence upon my mind and my acts that she herself never had."

There were possible solutions, other than tormenting the poor wife, and trying to make her hate you so she'll happier spending the rest of her life with you (WHAT?!?). Yes, England's divorce laws were fairly draconian, but Gibson was "the world's greatest economic force"--surely he could have managed to work some pressure for a favorable interpretation of those laws. Or, since they weren't married in England and weren't British citizens, he could have had them take a trip to wherever the Victorian version of Reno was. From what we're told, Maria probably wouldn't have wanted a divorce. Still, Gibson could have had his wife and children reside at another of the many estates he owned world-wide. Instead, he chose to keep her in his household, abusing her, and forcing her to watch him bond with another woman.

And then we come to our second woman in this tale, Miss Grace Dunbar, the lovely young governess.

We have seen a lot of governesses in the Canon, because in the day, there weren't a lot of other career options available for unmarried middle class women. Typist, teacher, governess...that was about it, if you weren't independently wealthy. And Miss Dunbar didn't seem to have one of those convenient bequests that would allow her independence.

The problem with being an attractive governess, especially if you're a lovely young lady, is that you might be in a bad position if your employer is a predator. You depend on him for your income, you live under his roof...there's no escape.

And let's be clear--the ex-senator was a bit of a cad:

I guess all my life I've been a man that reached out his hand for what he wanted, and I never wanted anything more than the love and possession of that woman. I told her so."  "I said to her that if I could marry her I would, but that it was out of my power. I said that money was no object and that all I could do to make her happy and comfortable would be done."

Remember, he told us the Latin Americans were the ones unable to control their passions. Ha!! Also, a proposal that can be broken down to "I will pay you to be my concubine who lives with me and my wife" isn't the type of proposal that most women want to hear, I think.

So what does a young woman do when her incredibly wealthy (and potentially abusive) boss comes on to her? Grace couldn't leave his employment, because "others were dependent upon her, and it was no light matter for her to let them all down by sacrificing her living." Not to mention, if he were vindictive, he could make it very difficult for her to get any other jobs of any valuable.

Holmes quite sensibly remonstrates Gibson: "I do not blame you for feeling (passion for her). I should blame you if you expressed it, since this young lady was in a sense under your protection." That's a fairly enlightened position to take in Victorian times--that men shouldn't abuse their positions of power to undertake romantic relations with their employees.

Perhaps Sherlock does a little bit creepily paternalistic when he chides Gibson, "you have tried to ruin a defenceless girl who was under your roof," and asserts that such harassment might be worse than murder. Heavens, we can't have a girl "ruined," can we? Then again, given the multiple instances Holmes had witnessed of women terrified that their husbands/fiancees would find out that they had had prior dalliances, our detective is justified in worrying about Grace's future might be once Gibson's love "faded" after he had had his way with her. Still, that's another other trap Miss Dunbar faced--if she returned her employer's affections, she would be viewed as tarnished and ruined. Yeesh.

That's not to say that these characters are merely studies in victimology. Neither of these women are exactly candidates for sainthood in how they deal with their problems. While Maria did suffer greatly, I think most of us will agree that nothing can justify killing yourself and framing someone else for the murder so they will suffer. That goes beyond justifiably upset to straight-up crazy.

Meanwhile, Grace was not above using her charms to manipulate things to her advantage. The other reason she didn't quit immediately?

She knew the influence she had over me, and that it was stronger than any other influence in the world. She wanted to use it for good...She believed and said that a fortune for one man that was more than he needed should not be built on ten thousand ruined men who were left without the means of life. That was how she saw it, and I guess she could see past the dollars to something that was more lasting. She found that I listened to what she said, and she believed she was serving the world by influencing my actions. So she stayed.

And Dunbar admits this much to Holmes--"it was only my desire to influence his power to good ends which kept me under his roof." I don't wish to be harsh to Grace here, but "I won't let my rich married boss have sex with me, but I will stay and use his feelings for me to influence his multi-million dollar empire" might not be the most ennobling response she could have had. Then again, it's not as she had a lot of other options...so if she's forced to stay, some good could come from Gibson's besottment.

It should also be noted that Grace was a little bit of a self-justifier: "Nothing could justify me in remaining where I was a cause of unhappiness, and yet it is certain that the unhappiness would have remained even if I had left the house." So, since Maria is going to be miserable anyway, you might as well stay on let Gibson dote on you? Please. That's hardly standing up for the sisterhood.

So, that is our tale of two women. One was a wife, who was trapped in a marriage of unrequited love when her husband suddenly discovered he didn't love her anymore. He was terribly abusive to her, because "make her hate me" seemed like a more practical solution than "divorce" or "separate homes." She was forced, in a foreign country and foreign language, to helpless watch while her husband rejected her but wouldn't release her, and while he preyed on the hired help. The other woman is that hired help, a woman trapped in a society that provided no means of support for her and her family outside of marriage or working for her sexual harasser. Maria and Grace were stuck in situations with no good options, and forced to essentially be in conflict with each other over the affections of a rich man.

I can't say that Doyle intended this story to function as a critique of how women were treated in Victorian England, but it doesn't take a lot of digging to tease out this interpretation. So the next time someone wants to write an article on how superior Victorian times are to modern day, perhaps we can recommend that she read this story, and remind her that back in those "good old days" she might not have had the option of publishing articles under her own name, or of having legal protections against abusive husbands or sexual predator employers.

OTHER TRIFLES AND OBSERVATIONS:

**For the first time, we have a story titled "Problem." Huzzah!!

I never understood why Doyle so overused  "Adventure" in the titles of his story, especially since so many of them were not terribly, well, adventurous. And most of the stories that didn't use the adventure naming convention have titles that work perfectly fine.

After this brief and welcome respite, though, all of our remaining tales are "adventures."

**As a young Marvel Comics fan, I was quite distressed when I read this story and found out that not only did it NOT feature a hammer-wielding Norse god, but there was also not a trace of a magical Asgardian rainbow bridge. What a rip-off!!

**Thor Bridge is a wonderful mystery--and the best part is, it's apparently based on a real case!

Dr. Hans Gross, an Austrian professor of criminology, wrote the Handbook For Criminal Investigators in 1893, and it was translated into English in 1898.

In the book, Gross describes the case of  "A.M.," a supposedly wealthy grain merchant who was found apparently murdered by gunshot in the middle of a bridge. His wallet and watch were missing, and it was assume that he had been robbed murdered by a local vagrant, who was arrested. But the "Investigating Officer" noticed "a small, fresh injury" on the wooden parapet of the bridge. He assumed the murderer had thrown something into the water and nicked the bridge; upon dragging the riverbed, they immediately found a large rock tied with 14 feet of rope to a gun with one chamber discharged! Experiments easily recreated the fake/suicide scenario, with nearly identical marks made in the parapet each time. It turned out that A.M. was really in deep financial trouble. He had taken out a large life insurance policy, and staged his suicide to look like a murder so his family would get the benefits. (You can read the full version of the case reprinted in Volume II of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes.)

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, eh? Clearly Doyle had read this account, or at least had it described to him in some detail. It is interesting that he changed it from an insurance fraud to a more melodramatic love triangle and attempt to frame someone else for the "murder."

**The sentences that launched a million pastiches:

Somewhere in the vaults of the bank of Cox and Co., at Charing Cross, there is a travel-worn and battered tin dispatch box with my name, John H. Watson, M. D., Late Indian Army, painted upon the lid. It is crammed with papers, nearly all of which are records of cases to illustrate the curious problems which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had at various times to examine.

That particular bank was destroyed during the Blitz. Thus, it became de rigueur for pastiches to preface themselves with tales of somehow finding tin boxes in the attic, or storeroom, or antique shoppe, or handed down by deceased relatives, to justify them as "actually" based on the writings of John Watson.

**Watson describes some of these "lost tales":

Some, and not the least interesting, were complete failures, and as such will hardly bear narrating, since no final explanation is forthcoming. A problem without a solution may interest the student, but can hardly fail to annoy the casual reader.

Uh, this is one reader who disagrees, doctor. We want all the cases, not just the successes!!

**A panoply of apocryphal--albeit failed--cases:

Mr. James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.

No less remarkable is that of the cutter Alicia, which sailed one spring morning into a small patch of mist from where she never again emerged, nor was anything further ever heard of herself and her crew.

A third case worthy of note is that of Isadora Persano, the well-known journalist and duellist, who was found stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science.

Tell me that you don't read that last one and immediately think of Khan's mind-control worms from Star Trek II. KHAAAAAAAAANNNN!!!

**One of John's reasons for suppressing some stories seems to be, well, we must protect the rich:

...the secrets of private families to an extent which would mean consternation in many exalted quarters if it were thought possible that they might find their way into print. I need not say that such a breach of confidence is unthinkable, and that these records will be separated and destroyed now that my friend has time to turn his energies to the matter.

But what if they are "non-exalted" quarters? Is it OK to spoil the secrets of the poor?

Given this standard, it seems most likely means that Senator Gibson has passed on, or at the very least left England...certainly his family would feel "consternation" at the publication of this tale, unless he were no longer around to know of it...

**The reason Watson didn't publish more stories? "I feared to give the public a surfeit which might react upon the reputation of the man whom above all others I revere."

No, no, we wanted more, not less!! More stories could not hurt the reputation of Sherlock Holmes!! More stories, dammit!!

**A lot of the controversy over the last two stories being narrated in the third-person was totally unnecessary, according to Watson: "In some I was myself concerned and can speak as an eye-witness, while in others I was either not present or played so small a part that they could only be told as by a third person."

Funny how so few commentators seem willing to take John at his word there, and come up with increasingly unlikely theories as to who "really" wrote those tales.

**Watson continues to improve with "the method," according to Holmes: "The faculty of deduction is certainly contagious, Watson," he answered. "It has enabled you to probe my secret."

**Our client: "You have heard of Neil Gibson, the Gold King?" he said. "You mean the American Senator?" "Well, he was once Senator for some Western state, but is better known as the greatest gold-mining magnate in the world."

Wait, don't famous ex-senators all run for president, and take high-paying jobs on cable news networks while waiting for their return to power? Different times, I guess.

**Holmes: "The interesting personality of the accused does not obscure the clearness of the evidence."

Wait--interesting how? At this point Holmes knows nothing about Grace Dunbar except that she is the young governess. He certainly doesn't know anything about her personality, other than the fawning letter Gibson sent. How is her personality "interesting," then?

**Really, does this sound like a letter from a man whose wife has just been slain?

I can't see the best woman God ever made go to her death without doing all that is possible to save her...It has been the gossip of the country. And never a voice raised for her! It's the damned injustice of it all that makes me crazy.

It's pretty incredible that a man doesn't once mention his murdered wife in a plea for the detective to help clear the woman accused of murdering her. There's falling out of love with your wife, and then there's not giving a tinker's damned that the mother of your children was murdered in cold blood. What a bastard.

**Fine set-up for a mystery:

The wife was found in the grounds nearly half a mile from the house, late at night, clad in her dinner dress, with a shawl over her shoulders and a revolver bullet through her brain. No weapon was found near her and there was no local clue as to the murder...A revolver with one discharged chamber and a calibre which corresponded with the bullet was found on the floor of her wardrobe...Then the dead woman had a note upon her making an appointment at that very place and signed by the governess.

**Of course, that just points out that there was little ballistics or other forensic science yet. "Same calibre" by itself would get a verdict of not guilty on most episodes of Law & Order. And if you could run ballistics, do fingerprints, check for gunpowder residue, etc., the frame-up would completely fall apart even without Holmes' help.

**Marlow Bates: "a thin, nervous wisp of a man with frightened eyes and a twitching, hesitating manner -- a man whom my own professional eye would judge to be on the brink of an absolute nervous breakdown."

Love those Watson descriptions. And given that Sherlock has twice been forced to rest due to "nervous exhaustion," we can take it that he knows what he's talking about here.

**Bates: "But his wife was his chief victim. He was brutal to her -- yes, sir, brutal! How she came by her death I do not know, but I am sure that he had made her life a misery to her."

Of course, he doesn't specify exactly what that brutality was.

In a later conversation with Gates: "Did you ever witness physical violence towards her?" "No, I cannot say that. But I have heard words which were nearly as bad -- words of cold, cutting contempt, even before the servants."

I don't want to belittle the agony of constantly being verbally and emotionally abused. But even Gibson's biggest critic can't claim that he physically abused her.

Apparently some thought that physical abuse was necessary to justify her murderous scheme--the Granada adaptation has Gates say that Gibson actually struck her more than once.The better for the audience to hate him, and sympathize with her, I suppose.

 **More delicous Watson descriptions:

If I were a sculptor and desired to idealize the successful man of affairs, iron of nerve and leathery of conscience, I should choose Mr. Neil Gibson as my model. His tall, gaunt, craggy figure had a suggestion of hunger and rapacity. An Abraham Lincoln keyed to base uses instead of high ones would give some idea of the man. His face might have been chiselled in granite, hard-set, craggy, remorseless, with deep lines upon it, the scars of many a crisis. Cold gray eyes, looking shrewdly out from under bristling brows, surveyed us each in turn.

"An Abraham Lincoln keyed to base uses instead of high ones." My god, that's great stuff, even if you don't agree with Doyle's theories that physical appearance echoes moral character...

**This statement by Holmes has caused some controversy: "My professional charges are upon a fixed scale," said Holmes coldly. "I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether."

That may or may not be consistent with what we've seen in other stories. Perhaps this is a newer policy, once Holmes' successes have made him financially secure. Or perhaps the "fixed scale" is not per hour or per case, but the clients' wealth..."if you're this rich, I charge this much"?

** Holmes sarcasm to Gibson is breath-taking:  "I suppose you are within your rights -- and maybe doing your duty -- in asking such a question, Mr. Holmes." "We will agree to suppose so," said Holmes.

and

This case is quite sufficiently complicated to start with without the further difficulty of false information." "Meaning that I lie." "Well, I was trying to express it as delicately as I could, but if you insist upon the word I will not contradict you."

and

You've done yourself no good this morning, Mr. Holmes, for I have broken stronger men than you. No man ever crossed me and was the better for it." "So many have said so, and yet here I am," said Holmes, smiling.

and

"Very generous, I am sure," said Holmes with a sneer.

Ypu have to love the stories where Holmes take the piss out of the upper class, and this story is problem the detective at his most snide and vicious.

**Holmes admits that, for once, he doesn't actually know everything for certain right away:

Bluff, Watson, bluff! When I considered the passionate, unconventional, unbusinesslike tone of his letter and contrasted it with his self-contained manner and appearance, it was pretty clear that there was some deep emotion which centred upon the accused woman rather than upon the victim.

**More Holmes upbraiding a rich man pretty severely:

"I don't know that anything she is accused of is really worse than what you have yourself admitted, that you have tried to ruin a defenceless girl who was under your roof. Some of you rich men have to be taught that all the world cannot be bribed into condoning your offences."

Nice sentiment, except for the implication that adultery or deflowering a young woman is worse than murder.

**Trouble getting in to see Miss Dunbar in jail:  "There was some delay in the official pass,...We were compelled to spend the night at Winchester, as the formalities had not yet been completed..."

Was it really so difficult for someone--especially Sherlock Holmes--to get in to visit an accused person in jail prior to trial? Or was this red tape just a plot device to delay his meeting with Grace, and thus make the story last a little longer?

**Sergeant Coventry:

He was a tall, thin, cadaverous man, with a secretive and mysterious manner which conveyed the idea that he knew or suspected a very great deal more than he dared say. He had a trick, too, of suddenly sinking his voice to a whisper as if he had come upon something of vital importance, though the information was usually commonplace enough.

Seriously, Doyle/Watson was pretty much on fire in this story with the descriptive prose.

Coventry is also a fairly reasonable copper, not afraid at all of having Sherlock make him look bad:

 "Anyhow, I'd rather have you than Scotland Yard, Mr. Holmes," said he. "If the Yard gets called into a case, then the local loses all credit for success and may be blamed for failure. Now, you play straight, so I've heard."

Maybe it was just Scotland Yard inspectors who resented Holmes' "interference."

**"And these Americans are readier with pistols than our folk are."

Unfortunately, still true in the 21st century.

**Holmes on why the nature of the crime speaks against the killer making panicky mistakes:

You have planned it. A note has been written. The victim has come. You have your weapon. The crime is done. It has been workmanlike and complete. Do you tell me that after carrying out so crafty a crime you would now ruin your reputation as a criminal by forgetting to fling your weapon into those adjacent reed-beds which would forever cover it, but you must needs carry it carefully home and put it in your own wardrobe, the very first place that would be searched?...Where a crime is cooly premeditated, then the means of covering it are coolly premeditated also.

Of course, just because a killing is coldly planned doesn't mean that, once the blood start flowing, that a first-time criminal might not freak out a little bit and do something stupid. Still, the point is well-taken: the fact that everything else was so well planned makes the suggested "panicked mistake" less likely.

**Grace describing her meeting at the bridge with Maria:

Never did I realize till that moment how this poor creature hated me. She was like a mad woman -- indeed, I think she was a mad woman, subtly mad with the deep power of deception which insane people may have. How else could she have met me with unconcern every day and yet had so raging a hatred of me in her heart?

This is a good example of Dunbar's lack of self-awareness. By her own admission, Dunbar was having a "mental and spiritual" relationship with Maria's husband--can she really be surprised that the woman is upset with her? Does she really believe that most wives would be fine being put on the sidelines emotionally while their husbands bonded "spiritually" with their "work wives"?

Granted, Maria was indeed insane--but Grace shows a stunning lack of empathy and some serious self-deception to claim befuddlement at Maria's anger.

**According to the Granada subtitle, Brazilian women yell and curse...in Spanish:

**Holmes shows the perils of having too good an imagination while spinning theories: "but one drawback of an active mind is that one can always conceive alternative explanations which would make our scent a false one." 

Of course, this also applies to various commentators spinning out alternate theories as to what really happened in the various Holmes stories (myself included).

**Holmes defends the police investigation (and his own) against anticipated press attacks, once the truth is known:

The papers may ask why the mere was not dragged in the first instance, but it is easy to be wise after the event, and in any case the expanse of a reed-filled lake is no easy matter to drag unless you have a clear perception of what you are looking for and where.

Of course, believing that they had found the gun right away would have made dragging the mere pointless, so there's really not much for the press to attack--especially since they themselves were enthusiastic supporters of "the gorgeous governess did it" theory!

**"Well, Watson, we have helped a remarkable woman, and also a formidable man. Should they in the future join their forces, as seems not unlikely, the financial world may find that Mr. Neil Gibson has learned something in that schoolroom of sorrow where our earthly lessons are taught."

Given that Watson wrote this story up decades after it happened, he already knows what happened in the future with Gibson and Dunbar. He really should have told us, instead of signing off on a "I wonder what will happen" note. Boo!

SHERLOCK HOLMES WILL RETURN IN--THE ADVENTURE OF THE CREEPING MAN!!