第 47 页

The gentlemen’s dining room

at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, where Holmes and Watson dined. Women were forbidden to use this paneled, street-level dining room until 1986.

the death of his friend Robert Louis Stevenson: “I cannot forget the shock that it was to me when driving down the Strand in a hansom cab in 1896 I saw upon a yellow evening poster ‘Death of Stevenson.’ Some-thing seemed to have passed out of my world.”

Holmes is not in fact dead, but he has been violently assaulted in an attack that took place that day on Regent Street. His assailants escaped through the Café Royal— as popular a haunt with writers as Simpson’s, and, like Simpson’s, still there to this day—into the grimy alleys of Soho, which at that time was still a poor, murky, and very overcrowded area. There is another ❯❯

270 THE FINAL DEDUCTIONS

6 Glasshouse Street Strand 2

Agar Street 7

3 Berkeley Square 4 Regent Street 1 5 Strand Northumberland Street

8 St. James’s Square

Throughout the story, Holmes and Watson visit real-life locations, most of which are concentrated in central London. Baker Street, where Holmes lives, is slightly north of the area shown on the map.

1.Northumberland Street:

Holmes and Watson visit the Turkish baths.

2.

Strand: Holmes and Watson dine at Simpson’s restaurant.

3.

Berkeley Square:

Home of Violet de Merville.

4.

Regent Street: Holmes is attacked outside Café Royal.

5.

Strand: Watson learns of the attack on Holmes.

6.

Glasshouse Street:

Holmes’s attackers make their escape.

7.

Agar Street: Holmes is treated at Charing Cross Hospital, located here in the late 19th century.

8.

St. James’s Square:

Watson studies ancient Chinese pottery at the London Library.

Stevenson link here. In Stevenson’s story Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), the whole mystery turns on Dr. Jekyll’s grand residence having an incongruously “sordid” back door, leading onto a shadowy neighborhood—this is the door that

I have my plans… They’ll come to you for news. Put it on thick, Watson.

Sherlock Holmes

his evil alter ego, Mr. Hyde, uses. Stevenson is thought to have based Dr. Jekyll’s house on that of the eminent 18th-century Scottish scientist and surgeon John Hunter (1728–1793), whose own residence in Leicester Square was barely a stone’s throw from the Café Royal, and would have backed onto the same seamy alleyways.

Holmes has a nasty head wound but will survive, thanks to the care of famous surgeon Leslie Oakshott. However, he asks Watson to greatly exaggerate his condition to all the press, and tell them he is dying so that anyone reading the papers will think he is off the case. However, when reports appear that the baron is soon to be traveling to America prior to the wedding, Holmes’s hand is forced, since he knows that the baron will take the incriminating book with him. With typical indifference to Watson’s professional duties, Holmes tasks him with learning everything he can about Chinese pottery in just 24 hours. He then gives him a priceless Ming saucer (provided by the mysterious client), with the request that he try to sell it to the baron. At the time Holmes does not explain why, but it later becomes clear that he needs Watson to distract the baron so he can break into the inner study and find the book. Watson duly begins to memorize as much information on Chinese pottery as he is able.

Watson in the lion’s den

Tension increases at the baron’s luxurious residence as the highly suspicious host tests Watson, who is posing as Dr. Hill Barton, the ceramics expert, with excessively

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS CLIENT 271

tricky questions on the Emperor Shomu and the Northern Wei dynasty. Watson keeps his cool, but the baron quickly sees through his bluff, rightly guessing that Holmes has sent him, and is enraged. Just as he is about to attack Watson in fury, the baron is alerted to a noise from his inner study. Dashing inside, he finds Holmes, who escapes through a window. Baron Gruner chases him into the garden, but as he follows him Watson sees a woman’s arm fly out from a bush and, Gruner utters “a horrible cry” and falls, clutching his face. Watson rushes to his aid but finds that his face is being eaten away by acid. The hand, as it turns out, was Kitty Winter’s: Holmes had taken her with him to help locate the inner study but, acting of her own volition, she had seized a chance to take revenge on her past lover, and threw a measure of vitriol in his face (see box, p.268), making a mangled mess of the baron’s once handsome features.

The wages of sin

Back at 221B, it is clear that Holmes and Watson have moral qualms over the violence dished out to the baron. Although he is a multiple murderer, the acid attack is perhaps

It is his moral side, not his physical, which we have to destroy.

Sherlock Holmes

disproportionately vicious. “The wages of sin, Watson—the wages of sin!” intones the clearly shaken Holmes, in an echo of the Book of Romans in the New Testament.

Thanks to Watson’s keeping the baron talking for just long enough, Holmes is now in possession of the baron’s “lust diary,” which he stole from the inner study. This, Holmes believes, will finally open Violet’s eyes and put a stop to the marriage. He is of the clear opinion that the baron’s disfigurement alone would likely have the opposite effect as “she would love him the more as a disfigured martyr.”

In Holmes’s view, the state of being “madly in love” is equivalent to madness pure and simple, and indeed this story is peppered with references to women’s irrationality. Early on, Kitty Winter declared her willingness to risk death in order to take revenge, saying it with an “intensity of hatred,” Watson notes, “such as woman seldom and man never can attain.” And Kitty’s final, fateful deed plays out that reckless impulsiveness magnificently.

The day of judgment

Three days later, the marriage between Violet and Baron Gruner has been called off. Meanwhile, a newspaper reports that Kitty will be brought before the courts for her crime. There is also a nod toward a degree of benign corruption here: although Holmes risks prosecution for burglary, Watson feels sure that the eminence of their client will make the law “elastic.”

Even at the end of the story, the reader never learns the identity of the client. When Watson realizes who it is, after seeing the “armorial bearings” on his carriage, Holmes silences him: “It is a loyal friend and a chivalrous gentleman. Let that now and forever be enough for us.” ■

The identity of the client

Conan Doyle’s trick at the end of the tale is masterful: Holmes cuts Watson off immediately before he can blurt out the name of the “illustrious client” on whose behalf Sir James Damery has been acting. It may be that the “armorial bearings” (such as those pictured, above) on Damery’s brougham coach, which Damery hastily tries to obscure with his overcoat, are in fact the royal coat of arms belonging to King Edward VII. Certainly, the fact that his driver is “cockaded,” that is to say, carries a rosette or similarly vaunted badge on his uniform, suggests an extremely lofty eminence. The bait used for Baron Gruner in the form of the Chinese porcelain saucer provides yet more evidence for this argument—Holmes says a full set of such saucers would be “worth a king’s ransom.” Of course, the client might have been some other eminent and sympathetic friend of General de Merville—but for all of the debate of Holmesian scholars on the subject, the truth remains unknown.

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

US: September 1926 UK: October 1926

COLLECTION

The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, 1927

CHARACTERS Steve Dixie A prize fighter hired to threaten Holmes.

Mrs. Mary Maberley

Elderly widow.

Douglas Maberley

Mrs. Maberley’s late son.

Susan

Servant of Mrs. Maberley.

Mr. Sutro

Lawyer to Mrs. Maberley.

Isadora Klein

South American widow, and former lover of Douglas.

Langdale Pike

London gossip-monger.

I AM NOT THE LAW

BUT I REPRESENT

JUSTICE SO FAR AS MY

FEEBLE POWERS GO

THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GABLES (1926)

T

his story sees Holmes lock horns with one of the few truly formidable female characters in the canon. Unlike with Irene Adler in “A Scandal in Bohemia” (pp.56–61), Holmes stops short of expressing admiration for the “masterful” Isadora Klein, yet it is clear by the end of the tale that this “belle dame sans merci” has at least partially elicited Holmes’s sympathies. Certainly he sees fit to resolve the matter himself, rather than turn to the law.

An unwelcome visitor

Holmes and Watson are at 221B Baker Street when they are accosted by a man described as a “huge negro,” Steve Dixie—an aggressive member of a criminal gang, who warns Holmes not to interfere in any business in Harrow. As it turns out, Holmes has indeed been engaged on a case in this very area. Dixie is described by Watson with a casual racism common to the time, and Holmes, although under severe provocation, is uncharacteristically offensive to him. Dixie (a historical nickname for America’s southern states) calls Holmes “Masser,” a term that was often used by slaves in the US to address their masters.

He informs Holmes that he has been sent by Barney Stockdale, a senior member of the Spencer John gang. But Holmes believes that the entire gang has been hired by another, more formidable person.

A mystery buyer

Holmes and Watson travel directly to visit a new client—Mrs. Mary Maberley, a widow living at The Three Gables, a house in Harrow Weald—who needs Holmes’s advice. Her son Douglas, formerly an attaché at the embassy in Rome, died recently, and she received a strange offer soon afterward. An agent, on behalf of a client, has asked to buy her house, its entire contents, and all of her personal effects. Holmes is instantly suspicious, surmising that the person must want something that is hidden inside the house.

The secret in the trunk

During the interview, Holmes unmasks Mrs. Maberley’s servant, Susan, as another gang member. From this he concludes that the notorious gang is being employed to threaten the widow, and that the instigator must be someone who is familiar enough with the London underworld to employ Spencer John

THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE GABLES 273

She was, of course, the celebrated beauty. There was never a woman to touch her.

Sherlock Holmes

and his henchmen to intimidate Mrs. Maberley. After questioning Susan, Holmes suspects that the instigator may well be a wealthy woman, rather than a man. He then notices Douglas’s trunk in the hall, recently arrived from Rome, and concludes it may contain the desired items, as the intimidation began just after his death, when the trunk arrived.

Surprisingly, Holmes suggests that Mrs. Maberley search the trunk rather than investigating it himself. For safety, he recommends that she invite her lawyer, Mr. Sutro, to stay the night. But the house is burgled that evening, the thieves

Women in gangs

Women played their part in the underworld of Victorian London, and Isadora Klein and Susan’s involvement with a gang was not unprecedented. A notorious all-female gang, known as the Forty Elephants, is thought to have operated in London from as early as the 18th century. This gang, headed by a “queen,” was organized into cells and, from the 1870s to 1950s, ran an ambitious and highly successful shoplifting operation across London. The women would

targeting Douglas’s trunk and stealing a manuscript. Just one page of 245 remains, and it is clearly the end of a lurid story of love and rejection; strangely, as Holmes notes, the tale shifts from the third person narrator to the first person toward its end. He is edging closer to solving the mystery, but has yet to discover who is behind it.

The final revelation

Holmes consults scurrilous gossip columnist Langdale Pike, who has an unrivaled knowledge of London society, for information. This leads him to the home of Isadora Klein—a beautiful, extremely wealthy South American widow and sexual adventuress. He learns that the stolen manuscript—now a charred pile of ash in her fireplace—was in fact Douglas’s account of his doomed love affair with her. He had become “intolerable” when Isadora declined to marry him, and in a heartbroken rage he had decided to write and publish his manuscript in order to ruin her. She is now due to marry a young English lord and knows that the story would jeopardize her reputation and her quest for a British title. And so she enlisted

be equipped with specially designed clothing with hidden pockets, and in a prudish era they were often able to escape close physical scrutiny. They eventually became so well known in London that they were forced to branch out into other towns. In addition to shoplifting, they worked as housemaids in order to rob and blackmail their employers. The gang protected its territory, and trespassers were dispatched (sometimes violently); they also enjoyed the proceeds of their crimes, throwing glamorous parties.

Isadora Klein, played here by Claudine Auger in the Granada TV series, is an exotic and uninhibited femme fatale, yet one whose wiles are wasted on Holmes.

the help of the Spencer John gang to obtain the compromising manuscript for herself.

Lesson learned

Unlike so many of the women Holmes encounters, Isadora is neither vulnerable, in thrall to a man, nor in any way dependent. In their final showdown, finding him “immune” to her seductive skills, she is honest about her reasons for soliciting the manuscript, claiming she had resorted to theft only when “everything else had failed.” And while Holmes remains steadfastly disapproving, he clearly feels some sympathy for her predicament— perhaps Douglas’s vengeful plan seemed too harsh a punishment for ending their love affair. Holmes extracts a promise from her to pay for Mrs. Maberley to travel around the world (a lifelong dream), warning Isadora of the dangers of her behavior: “You can’t play with edged tools forever without cutting those dainty hands.” ■

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

US: October 1926 UK: November 1926

COLLECTION

The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, 1927

CHARACTERS James M Dodd Ex-soldier.

Godfrey Emsworth

Ex-soldier and close friend of James M Dodd.

Colonel Emsworth

Retired army officer and Godfrey’s father.

Mrs. Emsworth

Godfrey’s mother.

Ralph and wife Emsworth family’s long-serving butler and housekeeper, respectively.

Mr. Kent Godfrey’s physician.

Sir James Saunders

Eminent dermatologist.

I SEE NO MORE THAN

YOU

BUT I HAVE

TRAINED MYSELF TO

NOTICE WHAT I SEE