The Problem of Threadneedle Street (The Assassination of Sherlock Holmes Book 2)
Page 16
A small black and white ivory box with a sliding lid: Confiscated from Mr. Culverton Smith by Inspector L. Morton.[125]
A folded piece of old parchment written by M. Simon Renard: Submitted by Inspector A. MacDonald.[126]
A corner of woolen carpet, stained with the blood of Mr. Eduardo Lucas: Confiscated from his home by Inspector G. Lestrade.[127]
A pair of pince-nez mounted in solid gold with broken black silk cord: Submitted by Inspector S. Hopkins.[128]
A soft wax seal of a thumb-print: Confiscated from Mr. Jonas Oldacre by Inspector G. Lestrade.[129]
A vial of Fowler’s solution: Confiscated from Dr. Benjamin Lowe by Inspector G. Lestrade.[130]
A mummified monkey strung with a double band of white shells: Submitted by Inspector T. Gregson (with assistance from Inspector Baynes of the Surry Constabulary).[131]
The steel harpoon used to murder Peter Carey: Confiscated from the scene by Inspector S. Hopkins.[132]
The advertisements of Pierrot in The Daily Telegraph: Submitted by Inspector G. Lestrade.[133]
The axe of Mr. George Blunt: Confiscated by Inspectors G. Lestrade and T. Gregson.[134]
The sideboard silver of Sir Eustace Brackenstall: Recovered from the Abbey Grange pond by Inspector S. Hopkins.[135]
The plaster footmarks of a middle-sized, strongly built man implicated in the murder of Mr. Charles Augustus Milverton: Prepared by Inspector G. Lestrade.[136]
A purple indelible pencil: Recovered from the body of Dr. Ray Ernest by Inspector T. MacKinnon.[137]
A fragment of a plaster bust of Napoleon Bonaparte: Submitted by Inspector G. Lestrade.[138]
A formidable horn-handled, two-edged dagger owned by Black Giorgiano of the Red Circle: Confiscated from his murder scene by Inspector T. Gregson.[139]
The counterfeit hundred-pound plates of Rodger Prescott: Turned in by Mr. S. Holmes.[140]
The air-gun of the blind German mechanic Von Herder used to assassinate the Honorable Ronald Adair: Confiscated from Colonel Sebastian Moran by Inspector G. Lestrade.[141]
The papers from Pigeonhole M used to convict the gang of Moriarty: Submitted by Mr. S. Holmes.[142]
Standing amidst these relics of the past, I was moved to witness the profound change in attitude assumed by the inspectors of Scotland Yard. Where once they regarded him with skeptical contempt and insolence, they had over the years, perhaps due to the fact that Holmes refused to take credit for the great deal of invaluable assistance that he provided them, clearly grown to regard him with a measure of respect, admiration, and even awe.’
As we mere mortals have never been granted access to this wondrous collection, we can only hope that Scotland Yard has perhaps since seen fit to add the sculpted head of a faux-Sphinx and the torn gold-beater’s skin of an aeronautical balloon?
§
* * *
[1] The only other examples are The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialized in The Strand between August 1901 and April 1902), The Valley of Fear (serialized in The Strand between September 1914 and May 1915), and The Problem of Thor Bridge, which was published in two parts a month apart in 1922.
[2] A paraphrase of several lines from ‘Invictus’ by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903): ‘Beyond this place of wrath and tears / Looms but the Horror of the shade, / And yet the menace of the years / Finds and shall find me unafraid. / It matters not how strait the gate, / How charged with punishments the scroll, / I am the master of my fate, / I am the captain of my soul.’
[3] London was the largest city in the world until approximately 1925, when it was overtaken by New York City. It was the ‘Center of five millions of people’ (The Adventure of the Cardboard Box).
[4] As Mr. Blessington (aka Sutton) discovered to his woe in The Adventure of the Resident Patient.
[5] The first recorded citation of ‘the Devil and the deep sea’ is from Robert Monro's ‘His expedition with the worthy Scots regiment called Mac-keyes’ (1637).
[6] Sadly there was no actual locale of 221B Baker Street in 1881, when Holmes & Watson first moved into their flat, it is clear that Watson employed a bit of deliberate obfuscation in his writings about their abode. This has led to no end of speculation as to the exact location of the famous residence, and this small clue may provide further leads.
[7] The Langham Hotel was, and remains, one of the most luxurious hotels in London. Its notable guests included Captain Morstan (Chapter II, The Sign of Four), The King of Bohemia (A Scandal in Bohemia), and the Honorable Philip Green (The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax).
[8] The location of the domicile of Mycroft Holmes was first described in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.
[9] It is a walk of less than ten minutes from the Northumberland to Pall Mall, but given that they had travelling bags with them it is perhaps understandable that they would wish to go via hansom.
[10] This must be a reference to the United Service Club, a gentleman’s club founded for the use of senior army and navy officers. It sat at 116 Pall Mall until it was disbanded in 1978.
[11] Holmes paid a visit to this office when seeking the identity of Captain Jack Crocker in The Adventure of the Abbey Grange.
[12] Holmes is clearly referring to the events detailed in The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, when he was most critical of Watson’s investigative strategies.
[13] Given that the terrible events which almost took the life of Mr. Melas, as recounted in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter, occurred over twenty years earlier, it is unlikely that the man still resided in Pall Mall.
[14] The Worthington Gang was the name given to the five men who robbed the Worthington Bank (The Adventure of the Resident Patient).
[15] Runs on Central Banks were greatly feared events. It is not hyperbole to suggest that the runs on the central banks of Austria and Germany in 1931, and their subsequent failures, precipitated the climate that led to the rise of National Socialism.
[16] This was established by the Bank Charter Act of 1844, which made the Bank of England the nation’s central bank. The UK was on the gold standard until the outbreak of World War I. It was resumed in 1925, but finally abandoned permanently in 1931 during the Great Depression.
[17] By comparison, the Agra Treasure dumped in the Thames by Jonathan Small was estimated at half a million, which would have made Mary Morstan ‘one of the richest women in England’ (Chapter XI, The Sign of Four). Similarly, when the West County Bankers failed for a million, it ruined half the county families of Cornwall (The Adventure of Black Peter). The will of Sir Henry Baskerville settled upon his heir 740,000 pounds, which is approximately 85 million in today’s money (Chapter V, The Hound of the Baskervilles).
[18] This was an enormous amount of money for a detective’s fee. Compare this to the £1000 offered in 1886 by Alexander Holder to recover the missing fragment of the Beryl Coronet, the £5000 paid in 1902 to Mrs. Maberly by Isadora Klein to finance her trip around the world (The Adventure of the Three Gables), or the £6000 offered in 1901 by the Duke of Holdernesse to recover his son Arthur and name the man who had taken him (The Adventure of the Priory School).
[19] The origin of this strange phrase is unknown. The earliest known citation is from the 17th-century English theologian John Owen who used the words in 1657 when he told a governing body at Oxford University that: ‘our critical situation and our common interests were discussed out of journals and newspapers by every Tom, Dick and Harry.’
[20] Who played cards against Colonel Moran and Ronald Adair (The Adventure of the Empty House).
[21] The wealthiest subject of the Crown (The Adventure of the Priory School).
[22] Father of Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope (The Adventure of the Second Stain).
[23] The uncle of Percy Phelps (The Adventure of the Naval Treaty).
[24] Twice Premier of Britain (The Adventure of the Second Stain).
[25] His horse, Desborough, ran in the Wessex Cup (Silver Blaze).
[26] His horse, Iris, a
lso ran in the Wessex Cup (Silver Blaze).
[27] His estate bordered that of Jephro Rucastle (The Adventure of the Copper Beeches).
[28] The Gold King of California (The Problem of Thor Bridge).
[29] In 1909, a 400 troy-ounce bar was worth approximately £1557 pounds. Each bar weighed 12.4 kg. Therefore, half-a-million pounds of gold would roughly equal 321 bars, which would be about 3980 kg or 8756 pounds, almost 4.5 tons! In the early 1900’s there was a great debate regarding whether to switch the United Kingdom to the metric system advocated by Lord Kelvin. By calculating the weight of the gold in pounds, Holmes is clearly betraying his bias towards the so-called ‘imperial system.’ There were many of a similar mind, and the UK did not completely switch over to the metric system until approximately 1978.
[30] The £500 and £1000 notes were first issued c.1725 and continued until 1943, when they were removed from circulation in an attempt to combat forgery, such as was carried out by the press of Rodger Prescott (The Adventure of the Three Garridebs). The highest denomination note used today is the £50.
[31] Holmes is clearly referring to the events that transpired at the financial house of Mawson & Williams (The Adventure of the Stock-Broker’s Clerk).
[32] Hugh Boone being the fictitious personae of Mr. Neville St. Clair (The Man with the Twisted Lip).
[33] From this we may deduce that Arthur Holder settled down from his wild ways and joined his father’s firm after the events detailed in The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet.
[34] In 1909 this was Sir Edward Henry. Surprisingly, Watson fails to disguise his name, as he usually did when referring to persons in positions of power.
[35] As recounted in The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge.
[36] The Strand Magazine published fifty-eight Holmes stories between 1891 and 1927, with illustrations of the Great Detective by Sidney Paget.
[37] In 1888, during the construction of the new building, workers discovered the dismembered torso of a female. The case, known as the 'Whitehall Mystery', was never officially solved, though Watson here alludes to the fact that Holmes did so, but Watson was forbidden to set down the facts.
[38] Jonathon Wild (c.1682-1725) was a great criminal mastermind during the Georgian era. Holmes once recommended to Inspector MacDonald that he study Wild’s case (Chapter II, The Valley of Fear).
[39] Private telephones had become commonplace by 1909. Even Holmes had one installed at Baker Street by 1899 (The Adventure of the Retired Colourman).
[40] This is an allusion to the fact that Eduardo Lucas was dead, while Hugo Oberstein was in jail for the murder of Arthur Cadogan West (The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans).
[41] This list must include Louis La Rothèire, Adolph Meyer, Luigi Lucarelli, and Gabriel Dukas (the first two mentioned in The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, the latter two mentioned in the non-Canonical The Adventure of the Spanish Sovereign).
[42] Obviously a reference to John Clay in The Red Headed League.
[43] The Great Stink, or the Big Stink, was a time in the summer of 1858 during which the smell of untreated human waste and effluent from other activities was very strong in central London. The stench was also (wrongly) associated with cholera outbreaks and prompted London authorities to accept a sewerage scheme proposed by engineer Joseph Bazalgette, implemented during the 1860s.
[44] The first quick-drying cement was developed by James Parker in the 1780s. The success of his so-called "Roman cement’ led other manufacturers to develop rival products by burning artificial hydraulic lime cements of clay and chalk and it was largely replaced by Portland cement in the 1850s.
[45] Edward Wilson Very (1847–1910), was an American naval officer who developed and popularized a single-shot breech-loading snub-nosed pistol that fired flares.
[46] Mercer was a man Holmes used to run simple errands towards the end of his consulting career (The Adventure of the Creeping Man).
[47] In 1909, the dean was Robert Gregory, and there is no evidence of a Dean Percival in the rolls at St. Paul’, suggesting that Watson disguised the name.
[48] December 22, 1810 saw the cathedral’s only robbery where thieves broke open nine doors to get to the plate repository, valued at above £2,000. The items were never recovered, obviously because Holmes had yet to be born!
[49] The home of Mr. Sherman was first described in Chapter VII of The Sign of Four.
[50] Clearly Mr. Sherman was a fan of Shakespeare, having named all of his remarkable hounds after various knights found in the Bard’s plays (Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek both from Twelfth Night; Sir John Falstaff from Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor).
[51] This is quite true to this day, though it is now channeled through a relatively non-descript pipe.
[52] The expression was coined in the British Isles, probably not long before 1833, when Cardinal Newman wrote in a letter: ‘Froude writes up to me we have made a hash of it.’
[53] A reference to the time that Watson unsuccessfully attempted to fool Baron Gruner into thinking he was Dr. Hill Barton, a collector of Chinese pottery (The Adventure of the Illustrious Client).
[54] Holmes is paraphrasing Malvolio here from Shakespeare’ Twelfth Night: ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them’ (Act 2, Scene 5).
[55] An allusion to the events detailed in The Adventure of The Second Stain.
[56] The Water Police also make an appearance in Chapter X of The Sign of Four, The Five Orange Pips, and The Adventure of the Cardboard Box.
[57] The Children’s Charter of 1908 was a liberal reform legislation that established juvenile courts to prevent children from serving time in adult prisons. It regulated baby-farming and wet-nursing, and tried to stamp out infanticide. Local authorities were granted powers to keep poor children out of the workhouse, and children were prevented from working in dangerous trades, purchasing cigarettes, and entering pubs.
[58] This appears to be a shortening of the proverb, ‘Give a man a fish, he easts for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ The origin of this phrase is obscure, but it certainly originated before 1900.
[59] Clearly a reference to the ‘Trojan’ Sphinx found in The Adventure of the Pharaoh’s Curse.
[60] Holmes is referring to the opium den that served as the base for Hugh Boone (The Man with the Twisted Lip).
[61] Properly, the Larghetto, or slow second movement of the Sonatina in G major for violin and piano, Op. 100. The composer reputedly wrote down the notes on his shirt sleeve while on a visit to Minnehaha Falls, near St. Paul, Minnesota in 1893. His publisher then separately sold this movement under a romantic title not originally intended by Dvorak.
[62] Where Lady Francis Carfax banked before her disappearance in the eponymous tale. There was no bank of this name, though from the description later provided by Watson, he can only be referring to the King William House on Pudding Lane. We are unable to confirm from the historical records that this building actually held a bank in 1909.
[63] The registers of the famous insurance company Lloyd’s, founded in 1688, are mentioned in The Five Orange Pips.
[64] Located opposite the Bank of England, the head offices of the London, the City and Midland Bank headquarters is a now the five-star Threadneedles Hotel.
[65] Hall Pycroft hired Holmes in 1889 to assist him in The Adventure of the Stock-Broker’s Clerk.
[66] The diamond core drill was invented and put to practical use during tunneling in 1863 by Rodolphe Leschot, a French engineer. Their use rapidly expanded into drilling oil wells, as well as more nefarious schemes.
[67] Oriel windows are a form of corbel-supported bay window which projects from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground. They are commonly found in Arab architecture, where they are called mashrabiyas.
[68] As happened to Ned Hunter, the groom on guard at the stables (Silver Blaze).
[69] Holmes also boasted of this
in Chapter XIII of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
[70] Runnymede is a is a water-meadow alongside the River Thames in the English county of Surrey, approximately twenty miles west of central London. It is famous for being the location of the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215. Only four of the original charters still exist, none of them kept at Runnymede (two are in the British Library, one in Lincoln Cathedral, and one in Salisbury Cathedral).
[71] Barker was Holmes’ hated rival upon the Surrey shore (The Adventure of the Retired Colourman).
[72] The Ankerwyke Yew is a huge and ancient tree close to the ruins of St Mary's Priory, the site of a Benedictine nunnery built in the 12th century. The tree is at least 1,400 years old and is located on the opposite bank of the River Thames from the meadows of Runnymede. It is said to be the location where Henry VIII met Anne Boleyn in the 1530s.
[73] Presumably a reference to the events detailed in The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet.
[74] Morphia was an old-fashioned name for morphine, from Morpheus, the Roman god of dreams. How exactly Watson knew the man’s habit tended towards opioids, as opposed to a solution of cocaine, is not clear.
[75] A trebuchet is a type of catapult commonly used as a siege engine in the Middle Ages.
[76] Examples of such adventure tales would necessarily include The White Company (1891) and Sir Nigel (1906), both penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Watson’s first literary agent.
[77] This use was invented by Dr. Joseph Thomas Clover (1825-1882), one of the pioneers of anesthesia, in 1862.
[78] According to the Meteorological Office, the wind around London is most often out of the south west (20% of the time), the west (20% of the time), and occasionally the south (16%of the time) or the north (11% of the time). Despite Holmes’ allusion to the contrary, an east wind is rare (His Last Bow).
[79] Large quantities of goldbeater's skin were used to make the gas bags of early balloons created by the Royal Engineers at Chatham, Kent starting in 1881–82. The method of preparing and making gas-tight joins in the skins was known only to a family from Alsatia called Weinling, who were thus employed by the Royal Engineers for many years. The British had a monopoly on the technique until around 1912.