Hello everyone!
Or, in other words, for another round of Sherlock Holmes stories.
It really looks to be the time for these, especially if you look out the window and, for most of the view if you're living in the Northern hemisphere, you get foggy outskirts.
I was just watching it crawl in yesterday, and man did it remind me of London!
I grew up watching Jeremy Brett playing Holmes, you see, and that was a proper, Victorian era one.
So this is legitimately right up my alley, which is why I keep going back to the books and reading them again and again.
Let's not keep our master sleuth waiting for too long then, shall we?
Because we haven't finished The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes yet, and the detective has this thing about unfinished business.
You'll find the link to the previous blog post at the bottom of this page, as per usual.
So last week, we covered the first four stories in the Memoirs, Silver Blaze, The Yellow Face, The Stock-Broker's Clerk, and The Gloria Scott. This week, we have three more.
We begin the tale with one of Holmes' first official cases, The Musgrave Ritual.
After deciding to make a living off his wits, this Ritual is the first sort of thing we may see him in that brings him success, and he tells Watson the story after the good doctor asks him to clean up some of his papers (we see you deflecting there, Holmes; we see you).
The story goes like this, another old acquaintance from university comes to Holmes after a mystery envelops his old estate, which had been in the family since the end of Charles I. Apparently, there's this weird set of questions, some sort of ritual, which every man who reaches adulthood must go through, but to Holmes it immediately gives a slightly better overview of everything.
See, what happened is that the lord found his butler mucking about with family papers and gave him notice; then the butler disappeared, and the girl he'd been supposedly stepping out with completely lost it before she, too, was nowhere to be found. The only thing they ever did find was some twisted metal and glass baubles fished out of the lake nearby.
Holmes, after taking a look at the ritual, deduces it's some sort of map and that the butler was following it, too, bringing them to the ancient cellar from the 1600s, where they indeed find the butler, suffocated. Looks like, after toying with her affections, the woman somehow contrived to lock him in there, tossed the "treasure" the Musgraves had been hiding, and then disappeared.
And the treasure? No more and no less but the crown of the Stuarts!
Continuing with The Reigate Puzzle, Watson receives word that Holmes is ill and hurries down to Lyon to grab his buddy (who basically worked himself ragged and just needs to sleep for the next hundred years or so). They head out to the country to one of Watson's old friends and are recovering there when they hear about a robbery in the neighbourhood where the robbers took some really random things.
Holmes might have stayed out of it, if not for the fact they have murder on their hands in ANOTHER neighbouring house (conveniently, the two mentioned are feuding), and the detective comes looking for help.
So Holmes, Watson and their colonel host head on out to explore. The family's man was shot as the robbers were making their way inside, after a struggle, and the only thing they can retrieve is a small piece of paper from his clenched hand. Holmes does his usual investigating methods, falls ill in between, and pretends to knock a table over, blaming Watson, while sneaking something from a dressing gown.
Turns out, things aren't quite what they seem when he's nearly strangled to death by the master of the house and his son.
See, the family man didn't have any powder marks on him, which he would have, had he been shot point blank. This indicates there was no actual robber but someone from the house shot him; the son, to be precise. The robbery was also their doing as they were searching for the papers the other man has which explain his ownership of half their land.
They just gave themselves away with trying to cover up by too many lies! But at least Holmes feels refreshed and hale again.
Just in time for The Crooked Man, too, in which he pops up at Watson's home in the middle of the night to explain his latest case and to ask the good doctor if he would accompany him along.
See there was a death of an esteemed soldier which can't really be explained properly: having risen through the ranks and married the daughter of his superior, they returned to England and were living a comfortable life, obviously content together. But then just the night before, the woman goes out to some sort of meeting or something, comes back, quarrels with her husband (which she's never done before) and he's found dead in the room.
Most curiously, the door is locked and the key can't be found, so while the mistress is insensible, Holmes is sent for to try and figure it out.
Watson immediately jumps onto the conclusion that there had to have been someone else in the room, entering, like the rescuing servants, through the open French windows, and Holmes concludes; he also knows the answers lie with the other woman who was with the soldier's wife that evening.
She explains that they met a horribly deformed man on the way home which the lady apparently recognized, so naturally it's off to this man they go, and they figure out he has a mongoose which left the marks they couldn't read in the room, but also that it all comes back to a love story, as usual.
See, the crooked man? He used to love the soldier's wife, and she him, but the soldier who died loved her, too, and her father preferred him. Things could have gone either way if not for the Mutiny at the time, during which the crooked one was supposed to reach reinforcements through enemy lines, but the other soldier led him into a trap sprung by the rebels. He was then a slave, tortured, escaped, spent his years down on the other continent, etc.
His buddies all thought him dead. But when the woman saw him, who loved him even then, well, she went at it with her husband, and the husband seeing this other guy had a fit which killed him before he hit his head.
In the end, no one's charged, and Holmes and Watson can return to London.
But man, can you see the imagination that Conan Doyle displays here? Not one of these stories is alike to the other, and Holmes keeps astonishing everyone with his powers of deduction, which is as it should be. That's kind of the point.
Plus we get a bit more insight into him as a character the more we read these, so stay tuned for next week's conclusion, when we wrap up the Memoirs and move on to the next stage of book reviews!
xx
*image not mine
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