“It may not come to that,” said Holmes.
“What?”
“I am no official agent. I understand that it was your daughter who required my presence here, and I am acting in her interests. Young McCarthy must be got off, however.”
“I am a dying man,” said old Turner. “I have had diabetes41 for years. My doctor says it is a question whether I shall live a month. Yet I would rather die under my own roof than in a gaol.”42
Holmes rose and sat down at the table with his pen in his hand and a bundle of paper before him. “Just tell us the truth,” he said. “I shall jot down the facts. You will sign it, and Watson here can witness it. Then I could produce your confession at the last extremity to save young McCarthy. I promise you that I shall not use it unless it is absolutely needed.”
“It’s as well,” said the old man; “it’s a question whether I shall live to the Assizes, so it matters little to me, but I should wish to spare Alice the shock. And now I will make the thing clear to you; it has been a long time in the acting, but will not take me long to tell.
“You didn’t know this dead man, McCarthy. He was a devil incarnate. I tell you that. God keep you out of the clutches of such a man as he. His grip has been upon me these twenty years, and he has blasted my life. I’d tell you first how I came to be in his power.
“It was in the early ’60’s at the diggings. I was a young chap then, hot-blooded and reckless, ready to turn my hand at anything; I got among bad companions, took to drink, had no luck with my claim, took to the bush, and in a word became what you would call over here a highway robber. There were six of us, and we had a wild, free life of it, sticking up a station43 from time to time, or stopping the wagons on the road to the diggings. Black Jack of Ballarat was the name I went under, and our party is still remembered in the colony as the Ballarat Gang.
“One day a gold convoy came down from Ballarat to Melbourne,44 and we lay in wait for it and attacked it. There were six troopers45 and six of us, so it was a close thing, but we emptied four of their saddles at the first volley. Three of our boys were killed, however, before we got the swag. I put my pistol to the head of the wagon-driver, who was this very man McCarthy. I wish to the Lord that I had shot him then, but I spared him, though I saw his wicked little eyes fixed on my face, as though to remember every feature. We got away with the gold, became wealthy men, and made our way over to England46 without being suspected. There I parted from my old pals, and determined to settle down to a quiet and respectable life. I bought this estate, which chanced to be in the market, and I set myself to do a little good with my money, to make up for the way in which I had earned it. I married, too, and though my wife died young, she left me my dear little Alice. Even when she was just a baby her wee hand seemed to lead me down the right path as nothing else had ever done. In a word, I turned over a new leaf and did my best to make up for the past. All was going well when McCarthy laid his grip upon me.
“I had gone up to town about an investment, and I met him in Regent Street with hardly a coat to his back or a boot to his foot.
“ ‘Here we are, Jack,’ says he, touching me on the arm; ‘we’ll be as good as a family to you. There’s two of us, me and my son, and you can have the keeping of us. If you don’t—it’s a fine, law-abiding country is England, and there’s always a policeman within hail.’
“Well, down47 they came to the West country, there was no shaking them off, and there they have lived rent free on my best land ever since. There was no rest for me, no peace, no forgetfulness; turn where I would, there was his cunning, grinning face at my elbow. It grew worse as Alice grew up, for he soon saw I was more afraid of her knowing my past than of the police. Whatever he wanted he must have, and whatever it was I gave him without question, land, money, houses, until at last he asked a thing which I could not give. He asked for Alice.
“His son, you see, had grown up, and so had my girl, and as I was known to be in weak health, it seemed a fine stroke to him that his lad should step into the whole property. But there I was firm, I would not have his cursed stock mixed with mine; not that I had any dislike to the lad, but his blood was in him, and that was enough. I stood firm. McCarthy threatened. I braved him to do his worst. We were to meet at the Pool midway between our houses to talk it over.
“When I went down there I found him talking with his son, so I smoked a cigar, and waited behind a tree until he should be alone. But as I listened to his talk all that was black and bitter in me seemed to come uppermost. He was urging his son to marry my daughter with as little regard for what she might think as if she were a slut from off the streets. It drove me mad to think that I and all that I held most dear should be in the power of such a man as this. Could I not snap the bond? I was already a dying and a desperate man. Though clear of mind and fairly strong of limb, I knew that my own fate was sealed. But my memory and my girl! Both could be saved, if I could but silence that foul tongue. I did it, Mr. Holmes. I would do it again. Deeply as I have sinned, I have led a life of Martyrdom to atone for it. But that my girl should be entangled in the same meshes which held me was more than I could suffer. I struck him down with no more compunction than if he had been some foul and venomous beast. His cry brought back his son; but I had gained the cover of the wood, though I was forced to go back to fetch the cloak which I had dropped in my flight. That is the true story, gentlemen, of all that occurred.”
“Well, it is not for me to judge you,” said Holmes as the old man signed the statement which had been drawn out. “I pray that we may never be exposed to such a temptation.”
“I pray not, sir. And what do you intend to do?”
“In view of your health, nothing.48 You are yourself aware that you will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes.49 I will keep your confession, and if McCarthy is condemned I shall be forced to use it. If not, it shall never be seen by mortal eye; and your secret, whether you be alive or dead, shall be safe with us.”
“Farewell! then,” said the old man solemnly. “Your own death-beds, when they come, will be the easier for the thought of the peace which you have given to mine.” Tottering and shaking in all his giant frame, he stumbled slowly from the room.
“God help us!” said Holmes after a long silence. “Why does fate play such tricks with poor, helpless worms? I never hear of such a case as this that I do not think of Baxter’s words, and say, “There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.50
James McCarthy was acquitted at the Assizes on the strength of a number of objections which had been drawn out by Holmes and submitted to the defending counsel. Old Turner lived for seven months after our interview, but he is now dead; and there is every prospect that the son and daughter may come to live happily together, in ignorance of the black cloud which rests upon their past.51
“ ‘Farewell, then,’ said the old man.”
Sidney Paget, Strand Magazine, 1891
1“The Boscombe Valley Mystery” was published in the Strand Magazine in October 1891.
2While almost all chronologists agree that this wife was Mary Morstan, the proposed dates of the wedding range from the spring of 1887 to 1902. See Chronological Table for further issues of dating “The Boscombe Valley Mystery.”
3Watson said of Holmes: “[H]e was never known to write where a telegram would serve” (“The Devil’s Foot”). By the end of the nineteenth century—despite the invention of the telephone in 1876—sending telegrams was still an immensely popular way to communicate personal messages quickly. England’s first electromagnetic telegraph, which used a battery, copper wires, and a magnetic needle to tap out messages, had been patented in 1837 by physicists Sir William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone. That year, the first practical telegraph was constructed in London with the purpose of enabling railway stations to relay simple emergency signals to each other. Meanwhile, in America, Samuel Morse had invented his own telegraph and alphabetic code (his first message, sent in 1844 on a wire between Washin
gton and Baltimore, was “What hath God wrought!”). The Morse telegraph would eventually become the most commonly used telegraph in the world.
An important factor in the public’s acceptance of the telegram as a powerful means of communication was the sensational 1845 Tawell murder case. Tawell was hunted for the murder of a woman near Windsor. When he was spotted at the Slough railway station boarding a train to London’s Paddington Station, a telegram was dispatched to London officials with his description, and he was apprehended on his arrival. After his conviction and execution, the telegraph was dubbed “the wires that hanged Tawell” (described in Robert N. Brodie’s “ ‘Take a Wire, Like a Good Fellow’: The Telegraph in the Canon”). By 1869, 80,000 miles of telegraph wire had been erected throughout the United Kingdom. Designed along the low-cost lines of the postal system, an ordinary telegram from 1885 to 1915 cost 6d. for twelve words or less, plus ½d. for every excess word. As late as 1903, Holmes was sending his customary terse telegraphic messages to Watson: “Come at once if convenient—if inconvenient come all the same.” (“The Creeping Man”)
4“Boscombe Valley” is a disguised name. See note 12 for a discussion of possible identification of locations.
5Contrast this with Watson’s description of his medical practice in “The Red-Headed League,” as “never very absorbing.” Most chronologists place this tale in 1889, a year before “The Red-Headed League” (see Chronological Table). 1889 was so filled with cases for Holmes and Watson that evidently Watson grew bored with his medical practice.
6In “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk,” Watson says to Holmes: “I do my neighbour’s [practice] when he goes. He is always ready to work off the debt.” In “The Final Problem,” Watson refers to his “accommodating neighbour,” and in “The Crooked Man,” the neighbour is named “Jackson.” Presumably Anstruther moved or sold his practice and was replaced by Jackson. Both “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” and “The Crooked Man” likely took place in 1889, with the former occurring in June and the latter in August. See Chronological Table.
7Watson is referring to his introduction to and courtship of Mary Morstan, which occurred in The Sign of Four.
8D. Martin Dakin accuses Watson of slight exaggeration here, for his military service could not have been more than a year and ended in July 1880. In 1878 Watson received his medical degree and took the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. He was attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, a regiment that was stationed in India at the time, as assistant surgeon. However, before he could join his company, the Second Afghan War had broken out, and his corps was posted to Candahar. Travelling there, he was removed from his brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom he served at the “fatal” battle of Maiwand. Wounded by a Jezail bullet but saved by his orderly, Murray, Watson was sent to the base hospital at Peshawar. Enteric fever compounded Watson’s ailments, and only after months of convalescence was he sent back to England, returning in late 1880.
9Rail travel was invented in England in the early nineteenth century. The first passenger train, the Rocket, was inaugurated in 1830, marred by the world’s first railway fatality, when William Huskisson, a member of Parliament, was struck and killed. By 1848, about 5,000 miles of rail track spanned England; by 1900, the tracks had expanded to more than 15,000 miles.
The social and economic impact of the railways was immense. As travel times shrunk, railroads helped to increase the pace and possibilities of Victorian life, as workers and holiday-goers found it easy to travel long distances. The railroads consumed large amounts of natural resources and employed vast numbers of people.
London’s growth was affected by the railroads as well, with the marked expansion of its suburbs. The “Commissioners on Railway Termini within or in the immediate vicinity of the Metropolis” (1846), however, saw no need for a single central terminus, and under their guidance, termini sprung up around the city, financed by seemingly limitless private capital.
The first Paddington Station was built in 1838, by engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, as the London terminus of the Great Western Railway, serving the rural heartlands, the West Country, industrial Bristol, and the South Wales coalfields. It was at this station that Queen Victoria arrived on completing her first railway journey in 1842, on the Phlegethon, which travelled at 44 mph. Reportedly, the Prince Consort asked afterward that future trains carrying the queen travel more slowly. In 1853, Brunel began construction on the permanent terminus, working with eminent architect Matthew Digby Wyatt. Completed in 1855, its ironwork and Art Nouveau-like cement work created a light, elegant, and graceful structure. In 1854, the Great Western Hotel was opened adjacent to the station. Since its original construction, the station has been expanded and rebuilt numerous times.
10This, and a reference in “Silver Blaze” to an “ear-flapped travelling-cap,” are the only references to the “deerstalker” hat in which Sidney Paget depicted Holmes and which became his trademark.
11A municipal and parliamentary borough and market and post town, in Berkshire, situated on the river Kennet, thirty-eight miles west from London. Reading houses the ruins of the Benedictine Abbey, founded by Henry I in 1121 and containing his grave.
12Despite the fictional name “Boscombe Valley,” Ross is a real town in Herefordshire, on the Wye (which also flows past Tintern Abbey, memorialised by Wordsworth), about eleven miles southeast from Hereford.
13In the quest to identify the locations of Hatherley Farm and the other “Boscombe Valley” sites, both Philip Weller (in “Boscombe Byways”) and David L. Hammer (in For the Sake of the Game) have identified Goodrich Court as the Turner house. Hammer suggests Homme Farm as the story’s “Hatherley Farm,” while Weller favours the Flannesford Priory as the real site.
14At that time, Australia was still a British territory; the Australian Colonies Government Act (known formally as the Act for the Better Government of Her Majesty’s Australian Colonies), adopted in August 1850, had designated New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, West Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania as self-governing colonies.
Ever since the establishment of the first British settlement—a penal colony at Port Jackson, founded in 1788—the transportation of criminals to Australia had been a common practice. But the occasional depiction of Australia as a land of lawless ruffians was markedly exaggerated. According to popular historian Robert Hughes’s monumental book The Fatal Shore, most of the men and women sent to Australia spent only a few years doing government labour or working for settlers and upon liberation chose to stay and integrate themselves into colonial society. After extended efforts by various anti-transportation efforts to persuade the British government, early in 1865, Lord Palmerston’s cabinet announced that transportation would cease within three years. The last convict ship to Australia unloaded its human cargo on January 10, 1868.
By the late nineteenth century, fear of foreign influences and a desire to restrict Asian immigration helped unify Australia, and in 1901, the disparate colonies became the Commonwealth of Australia. Nonetheless, Australia retained the popular image of the wild “frontier.”
15That is, horse racing.
16She does not appear again in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery.” But S. Tupper Bigelow, in “Two Canonical Problems Solved,” fancifully suggests that when she had gained a few years, she went into “service,” working first for her mother’s brother, Jabez Wilson, and doing “a bit of simple cooking and keep[ing] the place clean” (“The Red-Headed League”). Bigelow also suggests that her father’s brother was none other than Colonel Sebastian Moran, the lieutenant of the Moriarty gang (“The Empty House”).
17Robert C. Burr points out that no one seems to have examined the gun for blood, which would certainly be present if it had been used for “repeated” blows. Furthermore, there is no sign of blood on the stone identified by Holmes as the murder weapon. Burr hypothesises that the murder weapon was instead the cane shown as carried by John Turner in Sidney Paget’s illustrations for th
e Strand Magazine, which were “no doubt drawn based on information provided by Watson.”
18The assize courts were the superior courts in each county, which held sessions to determine civil and criminal cases twice a year. Established by Herny II in the 1100s to restore order to a country long embroiled in civil war, the first assize courts were meant to reinstate property that had been wrongfully seized. In the thirteenth century, the Statute of Westminster dictated that justices travel on a circuit to rule on these and other matters of law. The assize courts were abolished in 1972, and their jurisdiction was transferred to the Royal Court.
19By contrast, in “The Noble Bachelor,” Holmes calls circumstantial evidence “occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk, to quote Thoreau’s example.” More in line with his general wariness of circumstantial evidence is his comment in “Thor Bridge”: “When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.” In fact, Holmes’s general method seems to be to form a provisional theory based on the preliminary evidence and then to wait for time or further evidence to support or discredit his theory.
Seeking to use these teachings of the Master Detective in support of his client, Michael Tigar, defense attorney for Oklahoma City bomber Terry L. Nichols, attempted to reference Holmes on the subject of evidence. Tigar is quoted in the New York Times of May 19, 1995, as saying: “I kind of believe what Sherlock Holmes said to Watson. It’s like a stick on the ground. It does point in one direction till you turn it around and look at it from the other side and it points just as equally in the other direction.” Tigar wrongly attributes to Holmes a statement actually made by Father Brown in G. K. Chesterton’s “The Mistake of the Machine” (Wisdom of Father Brown, 1914).
20It was not uncommon for Scotland Yarders to aid the provincial police, and Holmes’s use of the word “retained” was probably purely conversational. Although the Police Act of 1840 allowed for applications to be made to the chief constable of a county for extra constables to be appointed at an individual’s expense, it is more probable that, as Herefordshire at that time had no Criminal Investigation Department, the neighbours approached the chief constable to ask for the assistance of the Metropolitan Police.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 1) (The Annotated Books) Page 22
