Holmes and Watson (33 page)

‘The Five Orange Pips’:
Watson ascribes this case, as well as the five unrecorded cases, to the year 1887, obviously a mistake as he is married at the time of these investigations. The mistake could have easily arisen through a badly-written 9 being mistaken by the printer for a 7 and left uncorrected by Watson. However, this theory causes
problems with the internal dating of Joseph Openshaw’s death, which should have occurred four years and eight months before, not two years and eight months as stated in ‘The Five Orange Pips’. I am inclined to agree with D. Martin Dakin’s suggestion that, once the mistake over the year remained uncorrected, someone, possibly the printer or even Watson himself, altered the figures relating to Openshaw’s death to make it accord with the incorrect year, 1887. On meteorological evidence, Dr Zeisler assigns the case to 24th September, a particularly stormy day which matches Watson’s description of the weather.

‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’:
As Holmes states that ‘Monday last’ was 3rd June, most commentators date this case to June 1889, when 3rd June was on a Monday. However, in the light of the evidence, referred to in the Chapter Ten’s footnote about Anstruther, I am inclined to date this case to June 1890 and to relate it to Watson’s move to Kensington, because in June 1889 Watson was still living in Paddington, as is made clear in accounts of the Stockbroker’s Clerk and the Man with the Twisted Lip inquiries.

‘The Red-Headed League’:
The year is undoubtedly 1890 as, in his account which was published in August 1891, Watson states that he called on Holmes in ‘the autumn of last year’, i.e. 1890. It is the references to the months which are confusing, Watson referring to 27th April, the day on which the advertisement appeared in
The Morning 
Chronicle
, as being ‘two months ago’ while Jabez Wilson speaks of eight weeks having passed since he read the advertisement. Both references would suggest June which is hardly autumn. However, the Red-Headed League was disbanded on 9th October, according to the notice pinned up on the door of its premises. D. Martin Dakin has offered a brilliantly simple explanation for this tangle of dates, suggesting Watson’s hastily scrawled Aug 4th for the date of the newspaper advertisement was incorrectly read by the compositor as Ap. 27, for April 27th. Once this theory is accepted, the other dates fall into place.

Of the thirteen recorded cases for this period, 1889–91, four involved no crime, three involved theft or burglary and six involved murder or attempted murder, two of which, the Dying Detective case and the Final Problem, concerned attempts on Holmes’ life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Continental express trains:
There is some confusion over which Continental express Holmes and Watson caught that morning and what precisely was Holmes’ intended destination. According to Mr Bernard Davies, who has studied
Bradshaw’s Monthly Railway Guide
for April 1891, there were three morning boat trains: the 8.30 a.m. and the 11 a.m., both bound for Calais and neither of which stopped at Canterbury, and the 10 a.m. for Ostend which did stop at Canterbury. As Watson had to present himself at the far end of the Lowther Arcade
at precisely 8.45 a.m., this suggests that both he and Holmes caught the 10 a.m. Ostend train, a supposition confirmed by the fact that they got off at Canterbury. Why, then, was their luggage labelled for Paris? I suggest it was part of a plan by Holmes to throw Moriarty or one of his agents off the scent should one or other of them attempt to follow. Holmes may have intended either waiting at Dover for the packet which connected with the 11 a.m. Paris boat train from Victoria or, alternatively, taking the Dover-Ostend packet and travelling to Paris from Ostend to collect his and Watson’s luggage. However, once he realised that Moriarty was following them, Holmes dropped this plan and decided to abandon the luggage and travel instead by the Newhaven route to Brussels, assuming Moriarty would track their bags to Paris, where he would wait two days before returning to London. According to this assumption, Moriarty should have arrived back in London on Monday 27th April on the same day Inspector Patterson was supposed to arrest the Professor and the members of his gang.
    Some commentators have gone so far as to suggest that the whole Continental trip was an elaborate ruse on Holmes’ part to lure Moriarty abroad and so give Holmes the satisfaction of either arresting or killing him himself.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Dating of cases:
Although some of the cases from April 1894 to June 1902 can be dated without difficulty, the following present problems:

‘Wisteria Lodge’: Watson assigns it to the end of March 1892, clearly a mistake as in 1892 Holmes was still abroad during the Great Hiatus. D. Martin Dakin, who has disputed the date of Holmes’ return, preferring to place it in early February 1894, not April, has opted for March 1894 as the date of the Wisteria Lodge case. As evidence, he has used the reference in the Norwood Builder inquiry, dated to the summer of 1894, to the case involving the papers of ex-President Murillo, one of the unrecorded investigations which occurred soon after Holmes’ return. I see no problem with this. As Miss Burnett, a.k.a. Signora Victor Durando, makes clear at the end of the Wisteria Lodge inquiry, usually dated to March 1895, she and others had banded together into a secret society several years before to hunt down Murillo after the murder of her husband. They may well have stolen some of Murillo’s papers in 1894 in an attempt to prove his guilt, a case which Holmes was asked to investigate at the time, although I agree it is curious that Holmes makes no reference to this earlier inquiry during the Wisteria Lodge investigation. I have therefore assigned the Wisteria Lodge inquiry to March 1985, a date which other commentators have suggested.

‘The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire’:
Watson dates this case to 19th–20th November but omits to state the year. D. Martin Dakin, together with other Sherlockian scholars, has assigned it to 1896, as Holmes was fully occupied with other cases in the Novembers of other likely years.

‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’: Watson has deliberately withheld the date of this case apart from a reference to autumn. Most commentators, among them D. Martin Dakin, have assigned this inquiry to a year before November 1895, the date of the Bruce-Partington case, because in the account of the Second Stain inquiry Holmes refers to Oberstein as one of only three spies capable of stealing the missing document. Oberstein is therefore clearly still at liberty whereas, at the end of the Bruce-Partington affair, Hugo Oberstein is arrested and sent to prison for fifteen years.
    However, despite this evidence, I have dated the Second Stain case to January 1896 on the grounds that the international situation described by Watson in his account relates better to this year than to the period before November 1895. The reference to Oberstein as being still at liberty is therefore either a mistake on Watson’s part, who misheard Holmes’ remark or muddled up his notes, or, more probably, a deliberate attempt on his part to mislead his readers over the dating of the case. His reference to ‘autumn’ could also be intended to mislead.
    The contents of the stolen document, which had been written by a ‘foreign potentate’, without the knowledge of his ministers, criticised Britain’s colonial policy in such provocative terms that, had they become generally known, would have aroused such hostility in Great Britain that it might have led to war, especially if the document was sent to any of ‘the great chancelleries of Europe’. This is a clear reference to Germany, partners with Austria-Hungary and Italy in the Triple Alliance.
    There was only one area of British colonial policy which aroused such severe criticism during this period and this was in regard to South Africa, where events in late 1895 and early 1896 did indeed cause strong anti-British feeling in Europe, especially in Germany.
    Briefly, the situation was this. In 1886, gold was discovered in the Transvaal, one of two states in South Africa founded and governed by the Boers, the original Dutch settlers of the area. The other Boer republic was the Orange Free State. With the discovery of gold, miners and developers poured in to the Transvaal, mostly British settlers from the Cape Colony, a British possession. These ‘Uitlanders’, or outsiders, soon outnumbered the Boers, who resented their presence. As a consequence, Paul Kruger, President of the Transvaal, refused to allow them certain civil rights, including the right to vote, and taxed them heavily, a policy deeply resented by the Uitlanders. Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of the Cape and founder of Rhodesia after his conquest of the native territory, Matubeleland, decided to take up the Uitlanders’ cause and use the situation as an excuse to seize the Transvaal. With the assistance of a close colleague, L. S. Jameson, whom Rhodes had appointed administrator of former Matubeleland, Rhodes planned to stage an uprising in the Transvaal among the Uitlanders to which Jameson would respond by sending in an armed force to attack the Boers under the pretext of protecting British interests. The plot, however, misfired. The uprising failed to take place but Jameson, unaware of this, sent in his force which was
defeated by the Boers in December 1895. When the plot was uncovered, it caused a great outcry not only abroad but also among Liberal MPs in the British Parliament, which led to Rhodes’ resignation as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony. Anti-British feeling was particularly strong in Germany. In January 1896 Kaiser William II sent a personal telegram to Kruger, congratulating him on his success over the Jameson raid and promising the Boers friendship, a gesture which the British regarded as decidedly hostile. The situation eventually persuaded Great Britain to look for European allies and to sign an Entente with France in 1904 and an Anglo-Russian agreement in 1907, thus forming the Triple Entente which counterbalanced the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy.
    The situation in the Transvaal also led to the Boer War of 1899–1902, in which James Dodd and Godfrey Emsworth took part (‘The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier’). In 1909, after the end of the Boer War, the Union of South Africa was formed, uniting the separate states.
    In dating ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ to January 1886, I am therefore linking the case with the events which took place between December 1895 and January 1896, including the Jameson raid and the despatch of the Kruger telegram by the Kaiser. In addition, I suggest that the document criticising British colonial policy was also written by the Kaiser, without his ministers’ knowledge. Had it found its way to the German Chancellery, it might have been made public and further exacerbated the hostility already aroused by the Kruger telegram.
    This theory would positively identify Lord Bellinger with Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister at the time. Watson’s description of Lord Bellinger as ‘dominant’ and ‘eagle-eyed’ would fit Salisbury, a large, bearded man with an imposing presence. As Salisbury also served as Foreign Minister, I suggest Trelawney Hope, the Secretary for European Affairs, was, in fact, Joseph Chamberlain, Salisbury’s Secretary of State for the Colonies, who was indeed a ‘rising statesman in the country’, as Watson describes him. Chamberlain was also ‘elegant’, invariably sporting a monocle and an orchid in his buttonhole.

‘The Adventure of Abbey Grange’:
Watson assigns this case to ‘the winter of ’97’. Dr Zeisler suggests late January 1897, as this accords with the meteorological records of that date.

‘The Adventure of the Red Circle’:
A difficult case to date as Watson only mentions the season, which was winter, while his reference to a Wagner night at Covent Garden confuses rather than clarifies the situation. As H. W. Bell has pointed out, there was a Wagner season in January 1897 but it was at the Garrick Theatre, while a Wagner season at Covent Garden was held in October 1897. On the assumption that Watson has confused the theatres, D. Martin Dakin has opted for February 1897.

‘The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter’:
Watson gives the month as February but university rugby matches were
played in December. He also states that the events occurred ‘seven or eight years ago’, i.e. before publication of the account, which was in August 1904. This would therefore place it either in December 1896 or December 1897. However, Watson states that Oxford won by a goal and two tries but in December 1896, Oxford won two goals to one, while in December 1897, Oxford won by two tries. D. Martin Dakin has opted for December 1897, a date with which I concur.

‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’:
This case is undated by Watson apart from a reference by Hilton Cubitt to his visit to London ‘last year’ for the Jubilee. This could mean either the Jubilee of 1887 or the Diamond Jubilee of 1897. Cubitt also refers to a letter he received ‘about a month ago, at the end of June’. Most commentators assign the case to July 1897.

‘The Adventure of the Retired Colourman’:
Watson has given no date for this case but internal evidence suggests August 1898. Amberley retired in 1896 and married early in 1897 but his wife left him ‘within two years’. There is also a reference to the ‘hot summer’.

‘The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton’:
This case is deliberately undated by Watson apart from a reference to a ‘cold, frosty winter’s evening’. Some commentators assign it to the late 1880s, before Watson’s marriage. However, the references to the electric lights in Milverton’s
Hampstead house suggest a later date, as electricity was not brought to that part of London until 1894. Although some commentators have argued that Milverton could have had a private lighting system installed, as must have happened at Baskerville Hall, Mr William E. Plimentel has pointed out that these early installations were equipped with press-buttons to turn lights on and off whereas Watson refers to a switch which makes a ‘sharp snick’, a later system. Mr William S. Baring-Gould has therefore suggested January 1899 as the date for the Milverton case, a theory with which D. Martin Dakin agrees. The meteorological records support this date.

‘The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax’:
Watson has failed to date this case. It must have occurred after 1889, as Holy Peters had his ear bitten off in a fight in that year. As Watson is clearly living in Baker Street at the time, it must also have taken place after Holmes’ return in 1894. It is assigned to various dates between 1894 and 1903. The fact that Holy Peters spent some time sitting on the verandah suggests it was summer. D. Martin Dakin has suggested the summer of 1899 as a possible date.