Secret Archives of Sherlock Holmes, The, The (24 page)

1
In
Macbeth
Act IV, Scene 1, the second witch makes this comment just before Macbeth enters. Dr John F. Watson.

2
In the adventure of ‘The Musgrave Ritual’, Dr Watson refers to Sherlock Holmes’ ‘horror of destroying documents’ and how they tended to turn up in unlikely places, even in the butter dish. Dr John F. Watson.

3
There are several references to Sherlock Holmes’ bedroom, which was apparently the back room that opened directly off the sitting-room. It was where he kept his papers in ‘a large tin box’. Dr John F. Watson.

4
In ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’, Sherlock Holmes deduces that Dr Watson might have bought shares in South African property if he had not locked his cheque book in his desk as a precaution against him spending too much money. Dr John F. Watson.

5
Marcini’s was a restaurant in London that, judging by its name, served Italian food. Holmes and Watson dined there after the conclusion of the Hound of the Baskervilles inquiry. Dr John F. Watson.

6
Peter Steiler was the landlord of the Englischer Hof at Meiringen, near to the Reichenbach Falls. Holmes and Watson had stayed there overnight before continuing on their journey through the Swiss Alps. Steiler had worked as a waiter at the Grosvenor Hotel in London and consequently spoke excellent English. It was a note ostensibly from him which lured Dr Watson back to the hotel to treat a dying English lady, leaving Sherlock Holmes alone and at the mercy of his arch-enemy, Moriarty. Dr John F. Watson.

7
Garrotters were thieves who attacked their victims by throttling them from behind with a cord or a piece of wire before rifling their pockets. Dr John F. Watson.

8
Colonel Sebastian Moran was a former Indian Army officer, a
big-game
hunter and an excellent shot. He had been Moriarty’s chief of staff and, after Moriarty’s death, took on the task of eliminating Sherlock Holmes. He was an accomplished killer, having murdered the Hon. Ronald Adair and attempted to murder Holmes. He was found not guilty of Adair’s murder, largely because there were no witnesses and the bullet he used was soft-nosed and flattened out on impact and therefore could not be identified. He was apparently still alive in 1914 because, although Dr Watson in ‘His Last Bow’ refers to the ‘late lamented Professor Moriarty’, when he speaks of Colonel Moran he uses no qualifying adjective to suggest he too is dead. Had he still been alive, he would have been in his late seventies or early eighties. He was certainly still alive in September 1902 because in ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’, Sherlock Holmes speaks of him as ‘the living Colonel Sebastian Moran’. Dr John F. Watson.

9
Colonel Moran’s special airgun was made by von Herder, the blind German mechanic. Dr John F. Watson.

10
Moran shot Adair through the open window of his
drawing-room
, almost certainly from Hyde Park, which was across the road from his house in Park Lane. Dr John F. Watson.

11
Shikari
is the Hindi word for ‘hunter’. Dr John F. Watson.

12
Sherlock Holmes kept his cigars in the coal scuttle and his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper. A tantalus is a container for holding decanters of whisky, brandy and other spirits. It could be locked to prevent servants from having access to it. A gasogene was an apparatus for making soda water. It consisted of two glass globes, one of which contained an acid and also an alkali carbonate. When water was passed through it, the chemical reaction aerated the water. Dr John F. Watson.

13
In ‘The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier’, Sherlock Holmes refers to Dr Watson as ‘my old friend and biographer’. Dr John F. Watson.

14
Sherlock Holmes had trained in
baritsu
, a Japanese form of self-defence. Dr John F. Watson.

15
Stanley Hopkins was a young Scotland Yard detective who accompanied Sherlock Holmes on several of his investigations and whom he thought ‘promising’. Sherlock Holmes advised him on some inquiries including the murder of Willoughby Smith (‘The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez’) and the case involving Sir Eustace Brackenstall in the Abbey Grange inquiry. Dr John F. Watson.

16
A nightstick was a weapon carried by a constable on night patrol. It was similar to a truncheon, only longer, and would be suspended from his belt together with his whistle, his rattle and a lantern. Dr John F. Watson.

17
I have not been able to trace Baron von Staffen or Ernst Hiedler and I suggest that they were either unknown to Erik Werner or, like Colonel Moran, they were using false names and identities. Dr John F. Watson.

18
Eduardo Lucas was an international spy who had blackmailed Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope, wife of the Secretary for European Affairs in Lord Bellinger’s government, into stealing a letter from her husband’s despatch box which, should it be published, could lead to ‘European complications of the utmost moment’. Sherlock Holmes, who was asked to investigate the case, deduced that the thief was Lady Hilda and persuaded her to return the letter to the despatch box. Eduardo Lucas, who was living a double life as Henri Fornaye in Paris with his mentally unbalanced wife, was murdered by her. She had followed him to his address in London and, seeing Lady Hilda enter the house, assumed her husband was being unfaithful and fatally stabbed him. Dr John F. Watson.

19
Hugo Oberstein, also an international spy, arranged the theft of the plans of the Bruce-Partington submarine, ‘the most jealously guarded of all Government secrets’, from the offices of the Woolwich Arsenal, where Arthur Cadogan West worked as a clerk. Because Cadogan West had witnessed the theft, Oberstein murdered him and left his body on the railway lines outside Aldgate underground station, making his death appear as an accident. Sherlock Holmes was asked to investigate the case by Mycroft Holmes, his elder brother. Mycroft, who was apparently an auditor for the Government, was in fact a governmental adviser and was the
éminence grise
behind all its decisions. Dr John F. Watson.

20
In ‘The Adventure of the Norwood Builder’. Dr John F. Watson.

21
The Reichenbach Falls is a series of waterfalls near Meiringen in Switzerland. It was where Sherlock Holmes met his arch-enemy, Professor Moriarty, for a final confrontation in May 1891. Dr John F. Watson.