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220 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

presents him with a true challenge, and vice versa. They are perfectly matched opponents, and it is almost as if the one cannot exist without the other. Yet, in the end one of them must, inevitably, lose. When Barker asks Holmes if “this king-devil” can ever be defeated, Holmes replies without his customary confidence: “I don’t say that he can be beat. But you must give me time.”

Holmes and Moriarty are the first crime-fighter and villain who can be seen as alter egos of one another. It was to become a popular double act whose descendants include James Bond and Blofeld, and Batman and the Joker. Like Holmes, Gotham’s Dark Knight has also been called “The World’s Greatest Detective.”

Bad timing

The attention that modern crime writers apply to the chronologies of their stories might have alarmed the rather slack Conan Doyle; there is a prize error in The Valley of Fear. It is set before Moriarty’s famous appearance in “The Final Problem,” (pp.142–47) yet in that story Watson has apparently never heard of him.

The Molly Maguires

Moriarty rules with a rod of iron over his people. His discipline is tremendous. There is only one punishment in his code. It is death.

Sherlock Holmes

Writer Anthony Horowitz (1955– ) simply ignored this problem when he included Professor Moriarty in his Holmes pastiche The House of Silk (2011). And the glitch hardly matters, for “The Final Problem” represents the professor’s only other appearance in the entire canon. That he is a solely unseen presence in The Valley of Fear makes him the perfect eminence noir, subtly manipulating events behind the scenes. Indeed, it could be argued that being off-stage is crucial in making him believable as Holmes’s ultimate enemy.

Conan Doyle based the Scowrers on a real group of labor agitators, the Molly Maguires. The Mollies, as they were known colloquially, were a 19th-century secret society that originated in Ireland but later also had dedicated memberships in Liverpool and Pennsylvania. There, the group instigated (sometimes violent) activism among coal miners of Irish-American descent in reaction to the inhuman working and living conditions, and the low wages imposed by the ruthless mining operators. Agrarian rebellion in Ireland was usually directed

The view from abroad

Throughout the Holmes stories, foreign lands are frequently portrayed as a source of evil and danger, sometimes in animal form, as in “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (pp.84–9), or via a human agent. The “fear of the foreign” was a typical 19th century upper-middle-class English attitude, which (the Scottish) Conan Doyle was happy to exploit. The author’s use of dangerous animals and blowpipe-wielding natives in the stories also shows him to be a product of his time and social class. Contemporary readers enjoyed these types of storylines and devices for their exoticism. The “exotic” may carry derogatory connotations today, but in Conan Doyle’s time, it implied a rather more innocent curiosity in strange and unfamiliar things. However, if the reader has any doubts about Conan Doyle’s morality, there is the vivid, overriding sense of his enduring humanity, expressed in the tolerance and empathy of Watson’s character.

As for Americans, Conan Doyle clearly admired their vigor, yet he was also fascinated by their

against property (destroying fences, plowing up converted croplands) and land agents, but in the US, violent beatings and even murders became commonplace occurrences.

In Pennsylvania, the secret organization is now regarded by historians as a violent group struggling against a corrupt institution. Some even argue that the Mollies did not really exist, but were created by the mine operators as a focus for destroying dissent. If that was the case, the authorities were largely successful.

THE VALLEY OF FEAR 221

The clever forecast of coming events, the triumphant vindication of bold theories—are these not the pride and the justification of our life’s work.

Sherlock Holmes

excesses. The America he portrays in The Valley of Fear and elsewhere is a land of boundless opportunity, yet, at the same time, a hotbed of gangsters and corruption, the evil tentacles of which extend right across the Atlantic as far as London and even into quiet English country houses. McMurdo/Edwards finds the Vermissa Valley a grim place where “The terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn,” but once his work there is done, he is able to assume a new identity and make his fortune in the California gold fields. Later, living as Douglas in Sussex, he becomes noted for his bravery, cheerfulness, generosity, and, most significantly, “democratic manners.” Like Henry Baskerville in The Hound of the Baskervilles, his time in the New World has taught him not to be a snob. But even while Edwards’ good qualities make him a popular figure in the village of Birfleet, the cutthroat gangsters he has left behind in the US are hunting him down in league with Moriarty.

The modern age beckons

The Valley of Fear is notable, in the Holmes canon, for looking nervously forward to the modern age and a different, edgier kind of crime fiction. It moves swiftly from the comfortable domestic setting of 221B Baker Street to a particularly gruesome and bloody murder and— most significantly—a depiction of a violent America riven with corruption and summary justice. In this it anticipates such hardboiled American crime fiction as Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest (1929). In the passages set in the US, and the novel’s bleak ending, which is a marked contrast to the

The California Gold Rush of 1848 brought some 300,000 gold-seekers to the state. They collected the gold mostly by panning in the rivers. Some, like Douglas, made their fortunes.

humor of the opening, there is a sense of dark nihilism not found elsewhere in Conan Doyle’s work. This seems very modern among the usual Victoriana, and can be seen to prefigure the 20th-century angst born of the mass slaughter witnessed in World War I. ■

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION US: August 1908 (as “The Singular Experience of Mr. J. Scott Eccles”)

UK: September 1908

COLLECTION

His Last Bow, 1917

CHARACTERS

John Scott Eccles

Respectable English bachelor.

Aloysius Garcia Young Spaniard living in Surrey.

Garcia’s cook Chef at Wisteria Lodge.

Inspector Gregson

Scotland Yard policeman.

Inspector Baynes

Provincial policeman.

Don Murillo

Neighbor of Garcia.

Miss Burnet Governess at Henderson’s house.

Lucas Henderson’s secretary.

THE WHOLE INEXPLICABLE

TANGLE SEEMED TO

STRAIGHTEN OUT

BEFORE ME

THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE (1908)

T

his story was originally published in The Strand Magazine under the title “A Reminiscence of Sherlock Holmes,” and split into two halves: “The Singular Experience of Mr. John Eccles” and “The Tiger of San Pedro.” Later editions compiled the full text under the title “The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge.”

According to Watson, the case begins on a bleak day in March 1892, but this date is squarely within the so-called “Great Hiatus” (see pp.164–65), which fell between 1891 and 1894, and so either the doctor, or Conan Doyle, must have been mistaken.

Grotesquery and intrigue

The tale opens with Holmes receiving a telegram: “Have just had most incredible and grotesque experience. May I consult you?” He asks Watson how he would best

Released in 1928, this silent Jean Epstein film of “The Fall of the House of Usher” hints at the Gothic atmosphere also present in Wisteria Lodge.

THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE 223

define the word “grotesque,” and to Watson’s suggestions of “strange” and “remarkable,” Holmes adds, “some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible.” He then retrospectively characterizes two of his past cases, “The Red-Headed League” (pp.62–67) and “The Five Orange Pips” (pp.74–79), as being more than a little grotesque. In this exchange, Conan Doyle is alluding to Edgar Allan Poe, a past master of the compulsively atmospheric short story, and author of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Poe’s fictional French detective, the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, was an acknowledged inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. This case, however, draws more parallels with Poe’s earlier story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), with its dark and sinister house, which is exactly what Conan Doyle’s Wisteria Lodge turns out to be.

When the sender of the telegram, the highly respectable John Scott Eccles, reaches 221B Baker Street, he professes an antipathy to the business of private detection, but says he does not know where else to turn. This begins a coolness

My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to pieces because it is not connected up with the work for which it was built.

Sherlock Holmes

between Holmes and his client, which is contrasted with the sleuth’s high opinion of Inspector Baynes, who arrives shortly after with the familiar Gregson of Scotland Yard. Against all convention, Baynes, from the local Surrey Constabulary, proves to be a worthy rival for Holmes, and his methods elicit respect and a proud twinkle in the eye of the great detective.

A bewildering dinner date

Eccles has come directly from Wisteria Lodge in Surrey, where he was an overnight guest of Aloysius Garcia—a young Spaniard with whom he had recently struck up a friendship. Eccles had not enjoyed the visit: he found Garcia’s home rather disquieting, and the chain-smoking, nervous agitation displayed by his normally upbeat host had not helped. Garcia’s mood had worsened on reading a note that his servant delivered to him during dinner, and Eccles was relieved to turn in for the night. But his reprieve was short-lived, for he was surprised to be woken at 1am by his host asking him if he had

The 1988 television adaption of “Wisteria Lodge,” starring Jeremy Brett, differs from the original tale and sees the Tiger of San Pedro killed on a train while escaping Holmes.

rung the bell. Eccles said that he had not, and Garcia apologized for disturbing him.

Events had taken an even stranger turn the following morning. Eccles found the house deserted— there was no trace of Garcia, nor the surly servant who had served dinner, nor the gigantic cook who had prepared it. What he does not know is that Garcia was murdered in the early hours on the common near his home. A note found by Baynes on the dead man’s body confirmed Eccles’s presence at the lodge and explains the police’s interest in him. Yet, satisfied by the Englishman’s clear respectability, they soon eliminate him as a suspect.

Baynes then produces another note, the one delivered to Garcia during dinner—although he had thrown it on the fire, it got caught in the grating, where the inspector had spotted it. Holmes is impressed by ❯❯

224 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

The cryptic note found in the hearth at Wisteria Lodge at first confused Holmes, who thought that it referred to racing colors, and that it was written by a jealous husband. He later deduces that it details the layout of what must be a large house nearby, with each part of the note revealing an important aspect of the property.

The directions to Don Murillo’s bedroom were needed as he frequently changed the room where he slept.

Our own colours, green and white.

Green open,

white shut.

Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize.

Godspeed. D.

Green and white

refers to the colors of the flag of San Pedro.

A green light in the window meant the door was unlocked for Garcia. White meant to stay away.

the policeman’s sharp eye and his canny, Holmesian diagnosis that the handwriting in the note, a woman’s, does not match the address on the reverse side. The note itself is cryptic, and at first Holmes is baffled. He later deduces that the first part must be a signal, and the second an appointment (see above); he also concludes that Garcia must have been heading for a large house near his own when he was killed, and decides to list such properties.

Alibi material

Holmes ponders the unnaturally sudden friendship between Eccles and Garcia, and wonders why the Spaniard’s servants had fled. He concludes that while Eccles is “not a man likely to be congenial to a quick-witted Latin,” he is nevertheless “the very type of conventional British respectability.” That is, someone who might be counted on to provide an alibi.

That evening Holmes, Watson, and Baynes head to Wisteria Lodge, an old, tumbledown place looming “pitch-black against a slate-coloured sky.” There, the constable on guard reports being spooked earlier by a huge, devilish figure at the window. Baynes also has some peculiar and grotesque things to show Holmes—a small shriveled humanoid figure on the kitchen sideboard; the limbs and body of a large white bird in the sink; a zinc pail full of blood; and a platter covered in pieces of charred bone.

Unexpected teamwork

From here on in, Holmes and Baynes indulge in some friendly competition, each man following his own leads, and the resolution of the case becomes an instance of perfect, if inadvertent, cooperation. When the “devil” who had startled the constable returns to Wisteria Lodge, he is found to be Garcia’s cook, and Baynes charges him with murder. Holmes is certain the inspector has the wrong man, but it transpires that Baynes’s move was straight out of the detective’s own box of tricks: his false arrest of the cook later flushes out the real culprit, a wealthy local man called “Henderson”—in fact a fugitive former Central American dictator named Don Murillo, who had been in hiding in Britain with his family.

Murillo, the notorious “Tiger of San Pedro,” had led a brutal regime for over a decade, his name striking fear into the hearts of people across Central America, until he was deposed by a popular uprising and escaped to Europe, his ill-gotten fortune intact. Garcia, part of an organization set on bringing justice to this “lewd and

This fellow is a perfect savage, as strong as a cart-horse and as fierce as the devil.

Inspector Baynes

THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE 225

Described as looking like a hungry beast, the devilish appearance of the cook, illustrated by Arthur Twidle in The Strand Magazine, was a ploy by Conan Doyle to give the story a sense of horror.

bloodthirsty” tyrant, had indeed invited Eccles to his house to provide an alibi for the night he intended to kill Murillo.

The mysterious note found in the hearth at Wisteria Lodge had been written by “Miss Burnet,” the governess in Murillo’s household. Acting undercover, and secretly working with Garcia, she was in fact Signora Victor Durando, whose husband had been killed by Murillo in San Pedro. Her cryptic note was to explain that the coast was clear for Garcia to attack, and where in the house he could find the former tyrant. Unfortunately for them, however, Murillo’s secretary, Lucas, had caught her writing the note, locked her away in a room, and addressed and sent the note himself—hence the different handwriting. He then intercepted Garcia on the common, killing him before he could fulfill his mission.