第 23 页

David and Bathsheba

Holmes believes that when the churchgoing Mrs. Barclay calls her husband “David,” she is invoking the Old Testament story of King David (Samuel 2, Chapter 11). The king spied Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, who was one of the king’s soldiers, bathing one day, and he made love to her. When Bathsheba became pregnant, David tried to persuade Uriah to sleep with her so he might think the baby was his. But Uriah, as a soldier on duty, refused. In desperation, David had Uriah sent to the front

THE CROOKED MAN 133

…the problem was already one of interest, but my observations soon made me realise that it was in truth much more extraordinary than would at first sight appear.

Sherlock Holmes

hurried to unlock the door and call for help, then realized how things looked, and fled, taking the key.

An autopsy exonerates Mrs. Barclay, and Holmes allows the matter rest—natural justice has been done, so why involve the police? When Watson asks why Mrs. Barclay called her husband David, Holmes refers him to “the small affair” of David and Bathsheba in the Old Testament. So “the crooked man” in the story’s title may not be the deformed Wood after all, but in fact the morally corrupted Barclay. ■

line in battle, where he was certain to be killed. With Uriah dead, David married Bathsheba. But he was racked with guilt, inspiring Psalm 51, (Miserere Mei, Deus: “Have Mercy on Me, Oh God”). Apparently Barclay had suffered the same guilt, for Holmes learns that he was often “sunk in the deepest gloom” for days at a time. The parallels with the situation between Barclay, Wood, and Nancy in India are striking, and suggest Conan Doyle may have used the Old Testament story as a basis for the plot of “The Crooked Man.”

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: August 1893 US: August 1893

COLLECTION

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894

CHARACTERS

Dr. Percy Trevelyan

Recently qualified doctor.

Mr. Blessington Percy’s “resident patient” who sets him up in a medical practice.

Russian count and his son

Percy’s new, cataleptic patient, whose son accompanies him to the practice.

I CAN READ IN A MAN’S

EYE WHEN IT IS HIS

OWN SKIN THAT HE

IS FRIGHTENED FOR

THE RESIDENT PATIENT (1893)

W

ith its violent backstory, this murky case is one of several in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes—including “The Gloria Scott” (pp.116–19) and “The Crooked Man” (pp.132–33)—that turns on revelations of a character’s criminal past. It is also notable for its inclusion (in certain editions) of a passage on mind-reading, which first appeared in “The Cardboard Box” (pp.110–11). When Conan Doyle excluded “The Cardboard Box” from the first published collection (see box, p.111) he was loath to lose this passage and included it here.

Catalepsy

Holmes remarks to Watson that catalepsy—the Russian count’s fraudulent ailment—is “a very easy complaint to imitate.” Catalepsy causes debilitating muscle spasms that turn the body stiff and unresponsive to stimuli. It is often associated with psychological conditions, such as schizophrenia. Although medical knowledge of nervous complaints was growing in the 19th century, catalepsy was often employed by writers to help suggest an atmosphere

A case of the jitters

Holmes has been approached by a doctor, Percy Trevelyan. Only recently licensed and low on funds, he had accepted a business offer from a Mr. Blessington, a man with “thousands” to invest, who set Trevelyan up in a practice, in return for lodgings, a profit share, and the supervision of his heart condition.

Trevelyan consults Holmes because his “resident patient” has recently become inexplicably jittery. After a burglary nearby, Blessington insisted they increase the house’s security, and then, a few days ago,

of intense anxiety, even insanity. Its morbidly compelling effects are employed in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) and in Dickens’s 1853 novel Bleak House.

Trevelyan himself takes notes when his patient appears to fall into catalepsy’s grip, but his treatment—the inhalation of amyl nitrite—was not a common one. This substance was in fact normally used as a remedy for heart complaints, as it increases the heart rate. Today, amyl nitrite is more often used as a recreational drug (“poppers”).

THE RESIDENT PATIENT 135

an odd incident had left him in tears. Trevelyan had received a new patient—an elderly Russian count with catalepsy. His son had brought him, and remained in the waiting room. During the examination, the patient had a fit, so Trevelyan left to get medicine—only to discover both men had vanished when he returned.

The next day the men came back to resume the consultation, apologizing for their abrupt exit. Later, when Blessington returned from a walk, he claimed an intruder had been in his room. A footprint on the carpet confirmed this, and Trevelyan realized that the count’s son must have slipped upstairs from the waiting room. The incident had left Blessington crying and almost incoherent with fear.

Holmes accompanies Trevelyan to the practice. He is sure that the men were after Blessington himself, rather than anything in the room, but Blessington insists he has no idea who the intruders are. Holmes leaves, disgusted, saying that he cannot help if he refuses to tell the truth.

Criminal justice

The next day, Blessington’s corpse is found hanging from a noose hitched up in his room. In spite of the police’s initial verdict of suicide, Holmes’s

It was a dreadful sight which met us as we entered the bedroom door… he was scarce human in his appearance.

Dr. Watson

deductions show that this is murder. Four cigar ends in the fireplace, as well as footmarks on the stairs, show that three people had surreptitiously made their way upstairs during the night. A screwdriver and screws left in the room suggest that the three felons had planned to build a set of gallows, before deciding to make use of a light fixture to “execute” Blessington.

Investigations reveal that the trio were in the notorious “Worthingdon bank gang”—a group of murderous robbers. Blessington (whose real name is Sutton) was a key member, but when the gang was caught, he had turned informer and escaped prison. His sordid death was a vengeance 15 years in the making: on their release, the men had hunted him down, two of them posing as the Russian count and his son. The three assailants are not caught at the time, but Watson

Cavendish Square, close to Harley Street, was—and still is—a well-known site for medical practices. Blessington’s patronage enables Percy Trevelyan to practice in the vicinity.

reports at the end of the tale that they were later aboard an “ill-fated steamer” that vanished at sea.

The proceeds of crime

Trevelyan shares some similarities with his creator. Conan Doyle had also struggled with a “want of capital” when trying to establish a medical practice. Trevelyan has the look of “an artist rather than of a surgeon,” and has written a monograph on obscure nervous lesions—the subject of Conan Doyle’s own university thesis. And both the author and his character are supported by the proceeds of crime, whether Blessington’s stolen loot or Holmes’s commercial success. ■

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: September 1893 US: September 1893

COLLECTION

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894

CHARACTERS Mycroft Holmes Sherlock Holmes’s older brother and influential government official.

Mr. Melas Mycroft’s neighbor, a linguist and interpreter.

Harold Latimer

Young Englishman.

Sophy Kratides

Harold’s Greek girlfriend.

Paul Kratides A Greek national and brother of Sophy.

Wilson Kemp

Latimer’s associate.

TO THE LOGICIAN

ALL THINGS SHOULD

BE SEEN EXACTLY

AS THEY ARE

THE GREEK INTERPRETER (1893)

A

t the outset of this story, Watson says he has long suspected that Holmes might be an orphan, given his great reluctance to talk about his past. However, as the duo are discussing the recurrence of traits within a family line, Holmes suddenly reveals that he is descended from “country squires,” and that his grandmother’s sister was a French artist (the “Vernet” he cites was a real person, with a special talent for making precise drawings from memory). And, while musing that his deductive skills may have been hereditary, he casually mentions that his brother possesses the same gift. It is a wonderfully understated

Some of my most interesting cases have come to me in this way through Mycroft. Sherlock Holmes

dramatic turn—up until this point, Watson has never heard of Mycroft Holmes. The detective goes on to describe his older brother as by far the superior thinker, but with a lethargic personality that makes him unsuited to detective work. Mycroft rarely ventures beyond his club, or Whitehall, where he puts his “extraordinary faculty for figures” to use in the civil service.

A forced interrogation

Mycroft Holmes comes up in the conversation because he has just summoned his brother to his club, in order to pass on a case brought to him by his Greek neighbor, Mr. Melas, who works as an interpreter. Two days earlier, Melas was hired by a menacing young man called Harold Latimer. He was whisked off in a blacked-out cab to a grand house outside of London, where Latimer and his associate, Wilson Kemp, forced him to relate a set of demands to their “visitor,” a gagged and emaciated Greek man, and get him to sign a legal document.

The man was stubbornly uncooperative, but Melas managed to extract information from him surreptitiously in Greek, without revealing it to the men: his name

THE GREEK INTERPRETER 137

was Paul Kratides and he was being held captive and starved. The interview broke off when a young Greek woman entered the room unexpectedly; it was apparent that she knew Paul, although she seemed astonished to see him.

Melas was then deposited back in London, with a strongly worded warning that he should tell no one of his visit. However, despite his timidity, he was anxious to help his countryman, so he went to the police, and also to Mycroft, who placed a newspaper advertisement offering a reward for information about the whereabouts of two Greek nationals: Paul Kratides and a woman called Sophy.

Murder and vengeance

Later that day, a man responds to the advertisement. He provides the address of a house in Kent where Sophy (and Paul) are located, and the brothers and Watson set off to investigate. En route, they go to pick up Melas, but he has been abducted by Kemp. When they arrive in Kent, the house is dark and apparently deserted. Holmes observes two sets of wheel tracks

Victorian gentlemen’s clubs

Mycroft’s members-only club, the Diogenes, is fictitious, but its location in the aristocratic St. James’s area of the West End, and its strict rules and emphasis on privacy and exclusivity, are an accurate representation of the gentlemen’s clubs that flourished during the Victorian era, some of which are still going strong today. Watson says that the Diogenes is a few doors down from the Carlton Club, a genuine institution that had been a meeting place for Conservative politicians since

Holmes (Jeremy Brett) worked with his larger-than-life yet shadowy sibling Mycroft (Charles Gray) to uncover the motives of a brutal duo, in an episode from the 1985 British television series.

in its driveway—the outbound ones are much deeper, which confirms the villains’ recent departure, along with Sophy, in a luggage-laden carriage.

They find Melas and Kratides tied up in an upstairs room, where they are slowly being poisoned by carbon monoxide fumes from a charcoal brazier. It is too late to save Kratides, but Melas recovers. Mycroft’s correspondent then fills in the gaps: during a visit to England, wealthy Sophy Kratides had been seduced by Latimer. When Paul, her brother, arrived to halt their affair, Latimer and Kemp held him prisoner, but the language barrier thwarted their plans for him to sign over the family’s money.

The story ends ambiguously: months later, Holmes learns that two Englishmen have been found dead in Budapest; the police think the pair stabbed one another, but Holmes hopes Sophy has somehow managed to avenge Paul’s death. ■

its 1834 founding. Mycroft’s club was possibly based on the real-life Athenaeum, founded in 1824 for those who enjoyed “the life of the mind,” since it too had a “Strangers’ Room,” the only place where conversation was permitted. When Conan Doyle had Holmes remark that the Diogenes “contains the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town,” he may have been making a tongue-in-cheek joke about the Athenaeum, of which he was a long-standing member.

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: October 1893 US: October 1893

COLLECTION

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894

CHARACTERS Percy Phelps Clerk in the Foreign Office.

Lord Holdhurst Foreign Minister and Phelps’s uncle.

Annie Harrison

Phelps’s fiancée and nurse.

Joseph Harrison

Brother of Annie.

Mr. and Mrs. Tangey

Foreign Office commissionaire and his wife.

Charles Gorot Phelps’s colleague at the Foreign Office.

Mr. Forbes Scotland Yard detective.

THE MOST DIFFICULT

CRIME TO TRACK IS

THE ONE WHICH

IS PURPOSELESS

THE NAVAL TREATY (1893)

A

t the start of this story, Watson receives a letter from his former schoolmate Percy Phelps, who is bedridden at his family home, Briarbrae, in Woking. Phelps is suffering from “brain fever” caused by a distressing event: he believes his career is possibly ruined, and he is requesting the help of Holmes. Conan Doyle is particularly fond of using the now-archaic term “brain fever” to refer to nervous illness, and appears in several Holmes stories, including “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” (pp.98–101),

Brain fever

Of the five short stories in which “brain fever” appears, three are in the Memoirs. It’s unclear why Conan Doyle returned to the condition so frequently during the composition of this collection of stories. However, in each case apart from “The Naval Treaty” its victims are women; if Conan Doyle is implying that “weaker” women are more susceptible, perhaps it is Phelps’s apparent feebleness that helps him to fit into that category. Either way, caused by acute anxiety and

“The Crooked Man” (pp.132–33), and “The Musgrave Ritual” (pp.120–25).

At Briarbrae. Watson and Holmes meet Joseph Harrison, the brother of Phelps’s fiancée, Annie. In a ground-floor room, where in fact Joseph has been staying until recently, the delicate patient, Phelps, outlines his predicament from the sofa. As with “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb” (pp.90–3), this scene is reminiscent of Sigmund Freud’s “couch” consultations that would soon become a fashionable treatment for nervous complaints.