a murderer in my company
the strand (vol v)
welcome back, dear readers, to another volume of the strand, where we are continuing our reading of the Sherlock Holmes short stories! Last month, we finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and here we read through the first half of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Enclosed you will find: six more mysteries, a cool horse, the pilot episode of the Young Sherlock spin off, trigonometry puzzles, and more.
The Mystery!
The Adventure of Silver Blaze
The country is abuzz when a prize race horse, Silver Blaze, goes missing and his trainer is found murdered. The police find a suspect that matches the description of an unknown person seen around the stables prior to the murder, and fear the horse is lost; Holmes however is able to follow the trail of clues left behind and discovers that the horse is now safely being kept by a neighbour, who intended to disguise this fact until after the big race to prevent Silver Blaze from winning, and that the person to take Silver Blaze out had not been a kidnapper, but his own trainer, who planned to secretly injure the horse in order to keep him from racing, but in the process the startled horse struck him on the head, killing him. Silver Blaze is recovered and wins the race, and the case is closed.
This story makes for such a fun read—it is intriguing, with an interesting and unique setting, the investigation process is really satisfying, and the final scene where Holmes reveals that murderer was … a horse(“The real murderer is standing immediately behind you”! he says, very dramatically) is delightful.
The Adventure of the Yellow Face
A man comes to Holmes for help understanding his wife’s strange behaviour - she disappears at odd hours of the night, acts mysteriously, but insists that she cannot tell him what is going on and begs him not to ask her. He also says that she has been visiting a small cottage near their house, and that he could not find anyone there, but had seen a creepy yellow face in its windows1. Because of the wife’s past in America, Holmes suspects that her supposedly dead first husband has returned and is hiding in the cottage, perhaps blackmailing her. But when they break in, they discover that she is hiding someone else from her first marriage - her young daughter from America, who she has secretly reunited with, but has kept secret because she is mixed race. The face in the window had been this child, hiding her face with a cartoonish yellow mask. Her mother fears that her husband will reject them, but instead he embraces them with open arms, and the story ends with him welcoming his new daughter to their family.
This is a pretty singular story that I walk away from with mixed feelings. It has a strange tone, with an unusually sentimental ending. The title is offputting, and the fact that the big devastating secret the woman is trying to hide is just an interracial relationship feels very weird to read today, but of course in the context of when the story was published it would have been a very surprising twist and in fact the conclusion is considered bold and progressive for its time. Ultimately, this is certainly not the best Holmes story, but it is very memorable and somewhat remarkable for its emotional story, social message, and the conclusion - Holmes’ failure.
The Adventure of the Stockbroker’s Clerk
A young man called Hall Pycroft is about to start a new job as a stockbroker’s clerk(whoa… like the title) but is convinced before he starts to take a better post at a newly established company in another city. However, when he starts, he becomes suspicious of his new employment, which includes a fake seeming office run by the ‘brother’ of the man who hired him. Holmes is able to uncover the truth that the brother is actually just the same guy, who is in fact a criminal trying to rob the stockbrokers. His accomplice had been posing as Pycroft in the new position as a clerk while Pycroft was distracted by the fake job, and they planned to use the opportunity to commit robbery; their hoax is uncovered and they are turned in.
I didn’t love this story, mostly because it felt like a less interesting retread of the type of elaborate robbery scheme we saw back in “The Redheaded League”. There’s a lot of nonsense about how they figure out that the two ‘brothers’ are actually one person, but otherwise the facts of the case are just not super interesting to me.
The Adventure of the Gloria Scott
Holmes tells Watson about his student days and his university bestie, Victor Trevor. Trevor invites Holmes to stay at his family estate one summer(like Saltburn but less creepy) and during dinner, Trevor tells his father about Holmes’ ability to observe things about people, and Holmes successfully deduces details about his past, shocking him. Weeks later, Trevor asks Holmes to come back to the house to help with a worsening situation. A newly hired butler had essentially taken over the estate, and then disappeared, and soon later a mysterious note arrived, causing Trevor’s father to become very ill and die soon after. Holmes realises that the butler must have been blackmailing his employer, and that the note was related to the threats. He and Trevor eventually find old documents that reveal the whole truth. The real reason Mr. Trevor had been in Australia was not for gold as he had claimed, but because he was a criminal sentenced to transportation. While aboard the Gloria Scott to Australia, he got involved in a mutiny, and when he and other prisoners escaped, they took on new identities in Australia. The butler had been one of the sole surviving witnesses of what happened on the ship, and had been using his knowledge to blackmail the former mutineers back in England.
In this story, we learn about Holmes’ college days and one of his first cases! I like the sketch we get of a younger Holmes, and this story is also notable for introducing another of his friends before his association with Dr. Watson. The mystery is not one I find particularly compelling, as it’s less of a mystery and more of an excuse for Doyle to write an adventure story about crime and boats and Australia—these are the things that I think interest him far more as a writer than Sherlock Holmes, and it often becomes clear that what he really wants to be writing are these adventure stories.
*The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual*
Following the previous story, Holmes recounts another early case in his career in London. An old college associate comes to him for help at his estate, where two servants have suddenly gone missing after he noticed one of them studying an old family document. Holmes realises that the document, which the family has long regarded as an obscure and antiquated tradition actually serves as instructions2, and by following the riddle, they discover a hidden chamber on the grounds of the house, and the body of one of the missing servants. The two of them had tried to solve the puzzle together, but one of them left with the treasure while the other was trapped by the heavy stone protecting the hidden entrance and died. Not realising the value of the recovered treasure, the remaining servant threw it into the lake and fled, but Holmes reveals that the treasure is actually the crown of an ancient English king, and that the instructions intended for his heir to recover the crown had been nearly lost to time in the family’s tradition.
This story makes for a fun puzzle and a nice episode in Holmes’ early career that shows us how he came to become the famous detective we know. The riddle-like ritual that he has to follow in order to solve the mysteries of the story make this a really great one to try to follow along with, as we see how each element of the riddle is methodically solved in a way that comes very easily to the clever Holmes, but which we as readers could also piece together.
*The Adventure of the Reigate Squire(s)/Puzzle*
Having completed a major case, Holmes is exhausted and unwell, so Dr. Watson suggests a visit to the countryside for him to rest and recover. They stay at the home of Watson’s old army colleague, but his hope for a quiet holiday for Holmes is squashed by rumours of robberies in the area, and not long later a servant is murdered during an attempted robbery, drawing Holmes into a new mystery. It soon turns out, however, that the father and son who live in the house that was robbed are in fact the robbers, and that their servant had found out about their robbery of a neighbouring house and begun to blackmail them, leading the son to kill him and then to invent a robbery as a cover story. As Holmes gets closer to the truth, the duo attempt to kill him as well to stop the story from getting out, but he is rescued by Watson and reveals everything. His victory seems to have restored him to good health, and he and Watson return to Baker Street.
I really enjoyed this story - it was one of Doyle’s favourites as well - and think that the mystery is clever and intriguing, but my favourite part of the story is all of the good character moments we get out of it, as it shows an aspect of Holmes we don’t usually see while he is unwell, we learn a bit more about Watson’s army history, and in putting Holmes in peril throughout the story with Watson frequently coming to his aid, we come to better understand their relationship and how they work together.
The Science of Deduction!
“Like all Holmes’ reasoning the thing seemed simplicity itself when it was once explained.”
Some good moments where we see Holmes’ love of the game:
After a client shares his account of a mystery, “Holmes cocked his eye at me, leaning back on the cushions with a pleased and yet critical face, like a connoisseur who has just taken his first sip of a comet vintage.”
We see Holmes get lost in thought while focussing on an investigation, (“I was day-dreaming.” he says), and Watson describes the “gleam in his eyes and a suppressed excitement in his manner… his hand was upon a clue”.
As per usual, his investigative methods involve a lot of crawling around and hands on experimentation: “He took the boots from the bag, and compared the impressions of each of them with marks upon the ground. Then he clambered up to the rim of the hollow, and crawled about among the ferns and bushes.”
“It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital.”
Another interesting element of Holmes’ method is the practical way that he tries to follow possible explanations to their conclusion, which often leads him to see things that are otherwise hidden.
“‘See the value of imagination,’ said Holmes… “We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the supposition, and find ourselves justified.”
“I make a point of never having any prejudices, and of following docilely wherever facts may lead me,”
There are some really great investigative methods demonstrated in “the Musgrave Ritual”, such as when Holmes uses maths to try to find the path of the shadow of a tree that has been cut down.
In “Reigate Squire”, we see a new investigative method from Holmes3: he plays up his illness so that the culprits underestimate him and feigns making mistakes so that they will unintentionally reveal information to him, a performance which allows him to catch the killers while putting him in some danger, as well as giving Dr. Watson lots of concern and second hand embarrasment over his behaviour.
The funniest moment in all of this is when Holmes knocks over a big bowl of oranges and a carafe of water as a distraction, causing a huge mess and declaring “You’ve done it now, Watson.”
The Great Detective!
In these stories we get the first glimpse of young Sherlock Holmes. It’s actually hilarious how early into the canon Doyle is resorting to such quintessential “I’m running out of ideas for this franchise” moves as “what was Sherlock Holmes like in college”.
Holmes only made one friend, and describes himself as being “rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought,”. The more things change…
We learn in “Gloria Scott” that Holmes’ experience at the home of the Trevors’ was his first realisation that he might turn his system of observation into something more and considered the possibility of becoming a professional detective.
Holmes is deeply humbled by the resolution of “The Yellow Face”, and the story ends with him asking of Watson: “if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers… kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you.”
Regulars & Irregulars!
Lestrade is back as usual. We also get an appearance from an “Inspector Gregory” and I have to wonder if this is supposed to be a new character or if Doyle forgot Gregson’s name(it just seems like something he would do.)
Watson, as always, appears in all of these stories, although interestingly he is only the frame narrator for two(“Musgrave Ritual” and “Gloria Scott”) but does not participate in either story, most of which is actually recounted by Holmes.
We learn that Watson bought his own medical practice some time after his marriage, and focuses on his work as a doctor, spending less time with Holmes.
The framing of “The Reigate Puzzle” is interesting, as Watson refers extensively to a big case which has exhausted Holmes, but does not really describe it because he says that it was famous and widely reported enough that it would be “too recent in the minds of the public”, giving us a real sense of Holmes as public figure and of the involvement of our characters in the broader world.
Watson becomes very concerned about and protective of Holmes during his illness: “You are here for a rest, my dear fellow. For Heaven’s sake don’t get started on a new problem when your nerves are all in shreds.”
Special Edition: Holmesian Ephemera
Throughout these stories, we see the brief appearances of a number of items in Holmes’ possession that have come to be iconic to the character, and tend to be reproduced in nearly all adaptations of these stories, so I wanted to take a moment to mention a few of them.
The infamous Hat makes an appearance in Silver Blaze: “Sherlock Holmes, with his sharp, eager face framed in his ear-flapped travelling-cap”
notably, it is never described as a deer stalker in the text, but illustrations for this scene introduced the iconic cap as we know it today. I wish we had gotten to see the hat as its described in the text though, which suggests that he wears it with the flaps DOWN and tied around his face, which is kind of adorable.
Items in the rooms at 221b Baker Street:
a slipper where Holmes stores a pouch of tobacco
a stack of letters stuck to the mantel with a knife (“his unanswered corrspondence transfixed by a jackknife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece”)
Holmes keeps a gun in the house and “in one of his queer humors” sits in his arm chair and fires into the wall, which he uses to form the shape of the letters “V.R.”4. From Watson: “I felt strongly that neither the atmosphere nor the appearance of our room was improved by it.
“Our chambers were always full of chemicals and of criminal relics”
A Case of Adaptation:
“Yellow Face” provides some important detail for the BBC Sherlock episode “The Six Thatchers”, most notably the name of the episode’s antagonist, Norwood, which is taken from the town name in the original story, and allows for the use of Holmes’ request at the end of the story to be reminded should he ever be too self-assured of the failed conclusion he came to in the case.
I also read on wikipedia while I was fact checking these that apparently the spray painted yellow smiley face in the BBC show’s version of the flat at Baker Street is a reference to the title of this story, and I got so angry I had to close all my tabs and walk away from the computer.5
The mystery novel and later play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time takes its title from a clue discovered by Holmes in “Silver Blaze”.
The Miss Sherlock episode "Lily of the Valley" takes inspiration from the robbery scheme in “Stockbroker’s Clerk”.
A mystery in the game Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One might be an adaptation of “Silver Blaze”.6 The mystery, entitled “A Gilded Cage” is about a wealthy eccentric killed(accidentally? or intentionally?) by the bull elephant he kept on his land. In the aftermath of the attack, the elephant goes missing and Holmes must track it down, as well as investigate people who might have benefitted from the victim’s death, and many elements of this investigation and clues he discovers along the way mirror the clues and information found in the search for Silver Blaze.
in the next update, we’ll be finishing The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, reading all the way up through “The Final Problem”. Will this be the end of our great detective(and also this newsletter)??? We’ll find out next month in volume six of the strand!
until then, thank you as always for reading. Cloudtopia is a weekly(ish) newsletter, where I write about art and culture and Sherlock Holmes. I’d love it if you would subscribe, tell a friend, or leave a complicated riddle for your descendants to solve about it!
your murderous racehorse,
isobel
thus the title of the story! nothing to do with contemporary understandings of yellowface
The text of the Musgrave ritual:
'Whose was it?'
'His who is gone.'
'Who shall have it?'
'He who will come.'
('What was the month?'
'The sixth from the first.')
'Where was the sun?'
'Over the oak.'
'Where was the shadow?'
'Under the elm.'
'How was it stepped?'
'North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one, and so under.'
'What shall we give for it?'
'All that is ours.'
'Why should we give it?'
'For the sake of the trust.'
This is a technique in detective stories that I call Columbo-ing(Lieutenant Columbo from the television programme of the same name is the master of this). Basically, the detective intentionally makes mistakes or plays up their lack of knowledge/status/ability in order to trick a criminal into false confidence, which leads them to make mistakes or inadvertently reveal things to the detective.
Victoria Regina — Queen Victoria.
idk why
this is entirely speculation on my part. I usually fact check these but I haven’t found any evidence of this being discussed