21David H. Galerstein argues that Miss Turner must have known that her father was a likely suspect and insisted that Holmes be brought into the case, “in the hope that an outsider would be able to clear McCarthy Junior without implicating her father.”
22J. B. Mackenzie, in “Sherlock Holmes’ Plots and Strategy” (1904), points out that the validity of Holmes’s conclusion depends on Watson’s facing north, with the light striking on his right cheek, a fact “not in evidence,” as attorneys say.
23There was one local daily paper, the Hereford Mercury and Independent (established 1832). The “weekly county paper” referred to later could have been the Hereford Journal (1713), the Hereford Times (1832), or the Hereford Weekly Marvel (1869).
24Under English law, the coroner held inquests, that is, enquired into violent or unexplained deaths. The coroner supervised a jury of twelve persons, took evidence on oath, and hence directly questioned witnesses. Upon conclusion of the inquest, if a person were found guilty of murder or manslaughter, the person was jailed and held for trial.
25Holmes here announces to Watson that he is “taking a break,” intending to read a book carried in his pocket. Petrarch, or Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), was an Italian poet. Howard B. Williams notes that in the sonnets of Petrarch is to be found the portrayal of perfect love, which can never be consummated, and suggests that Holmes made Petrarch his pocket companion because the sonnets “mirrored that torture for ever burning within the core of his [own] being”—his love “for a woman who never could be possessed,” Irene Adler. Jane Sayle takes a contrary view, arguing that Holmes would have been more interested in the humanist writings of Petrarch, pondering the potential of mankind for good and evil, than in the lyricism of his poems. Debra McWilliams suggests that Holmes would have rather “noted with approval Petrarch’s admonition that there ‘are three poisons to sound judgment: love, hate, and envy.’ ”
26By contractual restriction, withdrawn in 1895, trains on the Great Western were obligated to pause ten minutes at Swindon.
27The Severn is Britain’s longest river, about 180 miles, rising near the Wye on the north-eastern slopes of the upland mass of Plynlimon, Wales, and following a semicircular course to the Bristol Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. William Wordsworth, in his 1842 poem “When Severn’s Sweeping Flood Had Overthrown,” wrote about one occasion of the phenomenon known as the “Severn Bore,” a wave rushing upstream from the estuary of the Severn on a spring tide which can be more than 8 feet high and attain speeds over 25 m.p.h.
28This is the Strand Magazine reader’s first glimpse of Inspector G. Lestrade of Scotland Yard, introduced earlier in A Study in Scarlet, who appears in fourteen of Watson’s published accounts. While Holmes upheld a friendly attitude toward Lestrade and his brethren, he disdained their methods. Holmes called Lestrade the best of the professionals (The Hound of the Baskervilles), the “pick of a bad lot” (A Study in Scarlet), lacking in imagination (“The Norwood Builder”), and normally out of his depth (The Sign of Four).
Lestrade frequently patronised Holmes’s methods yet evidently bore a secret respect for Holmes. At the conclusion of “The Six Napoleons,” Lestrade, congratulating Holmes on his successful investigation, remarks, “We’re not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn’t be glad to shake you by the hand.”
29After considering the three contemporary hotels in Ross, Philip Weller identifies the hotel as the Rosswyn, based on its proximity to the station and the presence of a communal sitting-room.
30William P. Schweickert, in “A Question of Barometric Pressure,” points out that a barometer reading of 29 is extremely low and indicates storm. “A person of Holmes’s scientific knowledge normally would never interpret a reading of 29 as indicative of fair weather. . . . Actually, at that reading, if it were not already raining it was extremely probable that precipitation would soon start.”
31Although “Victoria” was omnipresent as the name of various capitals, provinces, peaks, and bodies of water throughout the British Empire, the earlier mention of Australia must have instantly called to mind the British colony in the south-eastern part of Australia.
32The discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 created a huge rush of prospectors hoping to make their fortune. By 1854, the population of Victoria had quadrupled; the lucky claimed some portion of the £80 million worth of gold taken in that decade. See note 38.
33A novel usually bound in vividly illustrated yellow boards, intended for railway travellers. Also known as “sensation novels,” books of this genre revelled in stories of adultery, bigamy, murder, and illegitimacy. For example, in Mary Elizabeth (M. E.) Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), the heroine abandons her child, murders her husband, and considers poisoning her second husband. Other very popular works were Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860) and Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood’s East Lynne (1861). Sensation novels were in many ways precursors to thriller and even detective fiction.
34Victorian law authorised marriage under four circumstances: (1) Publication of “banns” from the pulpit of a Church of England for three consecutive weeks (the least expensive but most public method); (2) an “ordinary” licence, obtainable for a few pounds from Doctors’ Commons in London or the local clergyman; (3) a “special” licence, obtained from the Archbishop of Canterbury at great expense, permitting marriage anyplace at any time; and (4) an inexpensive “civil” licence, issued by the superintendent registrar of a district. The last permitted marriage in a church or in the registrar’s office with no religious service. Young McCarthy undoubtedly chose this alternative for its low cost and the lack of publicity.
35Intellectual English novelist and poet, 1828–1909, whose writings focus on psychological effects, the relationship between the individual and social events, and the idea of life as an evolutionary process. His works of poetry include Modern Love (1862) and Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883); among his many novels are The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), banned by libraries as prurient, and The Egoist (1879) and Diana of the Crossways (1885). It should be noted that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a long-lasting friendship with Meredith and often went to see him.
36French: “We shall see.”
37According to The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the word was a call originally used as a long-distance signal by Australian aborigines. Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English states that this was the Australian native’s signal cry, which was eventually adopted by the colonists and has (since 1840) been the general hailing or signalling cry. That Watson did not know this suggests that in fact, he did not visit Australia, as he states in The Sign of Four. See note 38.
38In September 1851, a rich gold field was discovered by John Dunlop at Ballarat, seventy-five miles west of Melbourne. Robert Hughes writes in The Fatal Shore: “The word ran back to Melbourne that gold was everywhere. It lay scattered on the rocks and between the wiry tussocks, glistening as it had done for unregarded thousands of years; now the deepest obsessions of a frontier society would clamp themselves to it, and it would transform that society beyond recognition.” Hughes records that as early as November 1851 “a cataract of gold was pouring from Ballarat” and by mid-1852, near 50,000 people were on the site.
In conversation with Mary Morstan (The Sign of Four) Watson stated he had seen excavations at Ballarat similar to those in the earth at Pondicherry Lodge. Did Watson actually visit Australia? His behaviour in this case leaves some room for doubt. John Hall suggests, in “And Now?—Ballarat,” that Watson added the reference to Ballarat in The Sign of Four after Holmes’s exposition here (which may have taken place while Watson was writing up his notes of The Sign of Four), and that Watson may have seen not the mines themselves but a sketch or photograph in a book. Christopher Redmond, in “Art in the Blood: Two Canonical Relatives. II. ‘The History of My Unhapp
y Brother,’ ” speculates that Watson did in fact go to Australia between the events of A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, to look after his older brother, whose history is obscure and whose death of alcohol abuse is reported in the latter work. Both of these views are thoughtfully rejected by William Hyder, in “Watson’s Education and Medical Career,” who adopts the orthodox view that Watson spent at least part of his boyhood in Australia.
39William S. Baring-Gould points out that there are many other towns in Australia—Ararat, for example—to which “ARAT” would equally apply.
40Holmes first mentioned his monograph, without disclosing the actual title, in A Study in Scarlet. He refers to it again in The Sign of Four, giving the full title of his monograph as “Upon the Distinction between the Ashes of the Various Tobaccos: An Enumeration of 140 Forms of Cigar, Cigarette, and Pipe Tobacco, with Coloured Plates Illustrating the Difference in the Ash,” and remarks that François le Villard of the French detective service was translating the work into his native language.
41Diabetes mellitus was, before the discovery of insulin in 1921, an extremely malignant disease. Foot ulcerations, which may become infected, are still frequent among diabetics (compare John Turner’s limp), as is coronary artery disease and gangrene of the lower extremities. Turner’s symptoms could well have fit other diseases, such as emphysema, with the limp disassociated from the principal illness, but his symptoms certainly do not rule out a correct diagnosis of diabetes mellitus.
42British spelling of “jail,” pronounced in the same manner as the American word.
43A stock farm or ranch, especially of Australia or New Zealand. Australia’s stations were often hundreds of miles apart and had to be self-sustaining sheep or cattle-producing industries.
44Robert Hughes writes, “By the middle of 1852 . . . the average weekly shipment on the gold-escorts from Ballarat and Bendigo was more than 20,000 ounces—half a ton a week.”
45Richard Lancelyn Green identifies these as the mounted infantry, established in 1824, who originally dealt with escaped convicts. They were typically armed with sabres, carbines, and horse-pistols. The government frequently used the troopers to maintain order in Ballarat and other populous areas and included aboriginal troopers to supplement its regular forces.
46In “Some Diggings Down Under,” Jennifer Chorley notes that Turner’s account bears marked similarities to “two famous bushranging exploits,” the McIvor Gold Robbery of 1853 and the Eugowra Escort Robbery of 1862, both involving battles between six troopers and six bushrangers. In one incident, the driver sustained wounds; in the other, the driver was killed. In both exploits, the criminals escaped, and though some were later caught and executed, others were never captured. In neither case was any gold recovered. Chorley observes, “The raids . . . seem to bear the mark of the same gang and a few weeks after Eugowra ‘a man named Turner was arrested at Yass.’ No doubt he later escaped as his name is not among those executed later. All the bushrangers used a multitude of aliases.”
47Philip Weller suggests, in “Ramble Round Ross: Some Geographical Considerations,” that although Ross is actually well to the north of London, this reference is likely “a reflection of the popular usage of railway terminology, whereby all lines leading away from London are ‘down’ lines and all those leading towards London are ‘up’ lines.”
48John Ball, Jr., author of the popular In the Heat of the Night and other mysteries, in his essay “Early Days in Baker Street,” marks this case as another confirmation of Holmes’s “high official position” in the British government. Even though Holmes gave Lestrade a unique description of the murderer, Lestrade made no arrest. “It is inconceivable that a Scotland Yard inspector would let a known murderer off scot free unless he was under direct orders to do so.”
49Indeed, it would seem that Turner would be called upon to stand trial for numerous crimes. By his own admission, Turner was a multiple murderer and thief, and Holmes’s sympathy seems sadly misplaced.
50William S. Baring-Gould calls this “[a] paraphrase of the words uttered by John Bradford, 1510–1555, whenever he saw a criminal go by; wrongly credited by Holmes to the great English divine Richard Baxter, 1615–1691.”
51After publication of Turner’s confession in Watson’s 1891 account of “The Boscombe Valley Mystery,” it is inconceivable how James and Alice could “live happily together in ignorance of the black cloud which rests upon their past.”
THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS1
In “The Five Orange Pips,” which takes place in 1887, Sherlock Holmes tells his client that he has been beaten only four times in his career. When Holmes fails to take immediate steps to protect his client, however, we must conclude that Holmes has been beaten again. Yet the case is a favourite among readers, not least for its tantalising mention of cases that Watson never records, including those of the Paradol Chamber, the Grice Patersons “in the island of Uffa,” the Camberwell poisoning, the loss of the barque “Sophy Anderson,” and the Amateur Mendicant Society. Repeating his formula from A Study in Scarlet, Watson shrewdly selects an adventure with an American setting featuring vengeance by a secret society. In the former case, Holmes tracks down a killer who took revenge on the avengers. Here, Holmes himself seeks revenge on the wrongdoers. We are left to wonder whether Holmes truly seeks justice or is merely trying to soothe his bruised ego.
WHEN I GLANCE over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ’82 and ’90,2 I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features, that it is no easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his analytical skill, and would be, as narratives, beginnings without an ending, while others have been but partially cleared up, and have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture and surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable in its details and so startling in its results that I am tempted to give some account of it in spite of the fact that there are points in connection with it which never have been, and probably never will be, entirely cleared up.
“The Five Orange Pips.”
Staff artists “Cargs” and E. S. Morris,
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 5, 1911
The year ’87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under this one twelve months, I find an account of the adventure of the Paradol Chamber,3 of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British barque Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case.4 In the latter, as may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able, by winding up the dead man’s watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours ago,5 and that therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time—a deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them present such singular features as the strange train of circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.
It was in the latter days of September, and the equinoctial gales6 had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows, so that even here in the heart of great, hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life, and to recognize the presence of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like untamed beasts in a cage. As evening drew in the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, whilst
I at the other was deep in one of Clark Russell’s fine sea-stories,7 until the howl of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and the splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the sea waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother’s,8 and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street.
“Why,” said I, glancing up at my companion, “that was surely the bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours, perhaps?”
“Except yourself I have none,” he answered.9 “I do not encourage visitors.”
“A client, then?”
“If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out on such a day and at such an hour. But I take it that it is more likely to be some crony of the landlady’s.”
Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there came a step in the passage, and a tapping at the door. He stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and towards the vacant chair upon which a new-comer must sit. “Come in!” said he.
The man who entered was young, some two-and-twenty at the outside, well-groomed and trimly clad, with something of refinement and delicacy in his bearing. The streaming umbrella which he held in his hand, and his long shining waterproof told of the fierce weather through which he had come. He looked about him anxiously in the glare of the lamp, and I could see that his face was pale and his eyes heavy, like those of a man who is weighed down with some great anxiety.
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 23
