Hello everyone!
As promised, this week I'm bringing this collection of short stories to a close, and starting something new and exciting come next Thursday.
Given that this weekend is the first Sunday of Advent already, I would say we're just about on time, wouldn't you?
Sherlock has had his run, and a fantastic run at that.
His time in the hansoms and chasing villains through the fog of London is basically at an end as he gives way to that inevitable Christmas cheer that's right around the corner.
As every year, I'll be covering some hopefully lovely seasonal books, but before we can get on to that, it's time to say a proper farewell to our super sleuth.
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, ladies and gentlemen, one last time.
The links to the corresponding blog posts can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual.
After seven other short stories in our previous installments over the course of three weeks, we've covered a wide and vast array of topic, including but not limited to disappearing impertinent butlers and race horses going missing, but this week we probably have some of the more mysterious ones on our hands.
Dr. Watson never lets us down, faithfully reciting that which he had seen - even to the detriment of himself, and with his own pain.
In the first story, then, The Resident Patient, Holmes is visited by a weird looking doctor chap, who's some sort of specialist, and explains that because he didn't have the capital to immediately start an independent practice, he was cutting his teeth the usual way when this random guy suddenly showed up, saying he'll invest in him.
All was well and good and the practice ran like clockwork, when one day there came a father-son duo which thoroughly terrified the investor (who happened to also be living in the same house as the doctor ran his practice from), because it was more than apparent that one of them had been in his rooms.
When the investor is found hung to the death, Holmes deduces that his reasoning - the man hadn't told them the truth - is absolutely correct, and the dude was none other than a master thief living under an assumed name. He'd given up his comrades to go free, and once they got out of prison, well, they came to have their revenge on him.
In The Greek Interpreter, we actually get a nice surprise. We're introduced to Sherlock's brother, Mycroft!
In the BBC television show, he's played by Mark Gatiss, so it's exciting to get to see him in the books as well, where he's described as a big, sluggish individual, who occasionally deals with similar issues as Holmes, but more often than not lets his brother take care of them, as is this particular case.
Watson and the detective are introduced to a Greek interpreter who was rudely woken up from sleep and dragged in a closed-off carriage with someone threatening him to a location where he had to ask some seriously messed up questions of a man they were clearly keeping prisoner. Given that there was also a woman involved, who obviously knew the man in question, the interpreter decided to seek out Holmes.
But because Mycroft put an advertisement in the paper, the villains figure out their interpreter did something, and kidnap him a second time, so it's a good thing Holmes can move very quickly when he wants to, because that way at least they can still save the interpreter from carbon monoxide poisoning. There's no help for the other Greek, sadly.
It turns out he was the brother of the woman in question, who had been kinda swept off by an English suitor when she was visiting friends, but then kept against her will so her brother would sign an immense wealth onto her. She and the two captors are never found, but a little later, Holmes shows Watson a newspaper clipping that tells of the death of two Englishmen by stabbing.
The Greek woman is never seen again. Vengeance, however, is certainly best served cold!
The Naval Treaty marks the penultimate installment in the Memoirs, during which Watson receives a letter from an old school friend (or well, someone who eventually became a friend considering Watson also bullied him for a bit!), imploring him to come down to his estate with Holmes on a matter of utmost importance.
Given that the guy's uncle is the current Foreign Minster, Holmes is alike aight, time to go, and once there they hear the entire story:
the school chum was instructed by his uncle to copy a treaty that would be immensely important in the area of European politics, but would equally be published soon enough. No one was to see it, so while the chum was working and getting sleepy, he didn't think about locking it up again when he went to find coffee. That was when disaster struck, because not only did someone ring the bell in his office - purportedly empty - but equally, they took the treaty and disappeared.
No matter the feverish search by the police, nothing could be done, and the chum fell into a brain-fever for two months before he could send for Watson, occupying the room which had originally been given to his future brother-in-law for convenience sake. Then he nearly gets assassinated, as someone tries to get into the room at night when the nurse is gone for the first time, and Holmes takes action.
He bundles the chum away to London and delivers the treaty to him the next morning, explaining that it was the future brother-in-law who had come to visit him at the office, seen the treaty, and nabbed it because he'd fallen into some gambling debts. He'd hidden it in the room the sick man had occupied and couldn't get to it until he was gone, at which point Holmes caught him in his vigilance.
And all's well that ends well, of course!
Or perhaps not. The Final Problem illustrates just how much love Holmes inspired among its readers; it's the story dealing with Professor Moriarty, his arch nemesis, interestingly enough only warranting a short story rather than a full length novel.
But Holmes sets himself against Moriarty, under pain of death for himself as more and more attacks become frequent. Moriarty even visits him at one point! Thus he and Watson find themselves traipsing about continental Europe until they reach the Reichenbach Falls one fateful evening.
Watson receives a missive from the hotel that turns out to be a fake; in the interim, by the time he gets back, Holmes disappears, and there's signs of a scuffle at the edge of the path overlooking the falls. No other clue is given, and we say farewell to one of the greatest sleuths that ever lived.
The outcry, let me tell you, when Conan Doyle published this in The Strand, was immense. Tens of thousands of people cancelled their subscription immediately, and young men and women showed up in the streets wearing black armbands and veils in open mourning.
Needless to say, if you've followed Sherlock's story thus far, you'll know he was greatly admired and loved. Even decades later, his adventures still bring a thrill to any reader who picks them up.
The author certainly landed on a gold mine with this man, especially in combination with his faithful Watson, who brings out a slightly more humane side of an otherwise rather cold and calculating individual.
But I'm maudlin. In farewell, I give you the words from under the pen of the one and only, Watson, in what was to be the finished memento to his friend.
I'll let you decide on the emotions behind it.
There, deep down in that dreadful cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation. As to the gang, it will be within the memory of the public how completely the evidence which Holmes had accumulated exposed their organisation, and how heavily the hand of the dead man weighed upon them. Of their terrible chief few details came out during the proceedings, and if I have now been compelled to make a clear statement of his career it is due to those injudicious champions who have endeavoured to clear his memory by attacks upon him whom I shall ever regard as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known.
A.C.D., MoSH, p. 202
xx
*image not mine
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