Гэвин Брэнд Мой дорогой Холмс Этюд о Шерлоке глава четвертая мой дорогой Уотсон

One thing at least is certain. The building that to-day bears the number 221 never housed Sherlock Holmes. For in those days it was not in Baker Street at all, but in Upper Baker Street. In 1930 Upper Baker Street was merged in Baker Street and both were renumbered. In the account that follows we refer to the numbers as they are to-day and not as they were in Holmes’s time, and we have adopted the same course where there has been a change in the name of a street.

A further objection to this building and also to No. 111 which is the selection of Dr. Gray C. Briggs of St. Louis, is that both are much too close to Baker Street Underground Station. In neither case would a passenger from the Underground take a cab to visit Holmes. He would no sooner have got into the cab than he would have to get out again. Both buildings, in fact, are much too far north to be reconciled with the evidence of either The Empty House or The Beryl Coronet.

We must admit at once that it is not possible to identify any particular house with certainty. Yet we can eliminate all but a very few. This process of elimination is in three distinct stages:

Stage 1. All available evidence points to a house on the west side of Baker Street in the block that lies between Blandford Street and Dorset Street. Any solution that ends outside this block should be rejected out of hand.

Stage 2. In this block there is a fair case for excluding all except Nos. 59, 61 and 63.

Stage 3. As between these three there is really very little to choose, and we are not justified in eliminating any of them, but if anything, the advantage is slightly in favour of No. 61.

The evidence is as follows:

(1) It was South of Dorset Street.

The source of information here is The Beryl Coronet. On a winter’s morning in which the snow lay piled up high in the middle of the road but had been swept clear from the pavements, the unfortunate banker, Alexander Holder, hurried down Baker Street to visit Holmes. He tells us that ‘I came to Baker Street by the Under­ground, and hurried from there on foot, for the cabs go slowly through this snow’.

It was therefore a journey for which he would normally have taken a cab, and as Dorset Street is only about 300 yards from the Underground, any shorter journey seems unlikely, even allowing for the fact that he describes himself as a man who takes very little exercise.

Further evidence to fix the northern boundary at Dorset Street is forthcoming in The Empty House which is considered later.
(2) It was north of Blandford Street.

Here our authority is The Hound of the Baskervilles. After Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer had left his rooms, Holmes, realizing that Sir Henry’s enemy would probably be shadowing them, decided that he and Watson would adopt a similar course. But a certain amount of time was lost, as the famous dressing-gown had to be exchanged for a frock-coat and boots had to be put on, so that by the time they reached the front door ‘Dr. Mortimer and Baskerville were still visible about two hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of Oxford Street’. Declining Watson’s offer to run on and stop them, Holmes ‘quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided us by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street’.

The second pair had therefore gained a hundred yards on the first pair before the first pair had reached Oxford Street. They had done this without running or without walking at such an excessive speed as to attract the attention of anyone in the street who might, in fact, be Sir Henry Baskerville’s unknown enemy. The distance from Blandford Street to Oxford Street is about 500 yards and this can be taken as the minimum distance in which the requisite 100 yards gain could be established in those circumstances.

Here again, there is further evidence in The Empty House to fix our southern boundary at Blandford Street.

This is clear beyond all possible doubt from the account given in The Empty House where Holmes took Watson to an empty house which was on the opposite side of Baker Street to their own home. They ap­proached it from the east via Cavendish Square, Manchester Street and Blandford Street. From Blandford Street they turned into an unnamed ‘narrow passage’ which gave access to the back entrance of the empty house. It was not until he was inside the empty house and looking out of its front window that Watson realized to his astonishment that they had reached Baker Street and that ‘our own old quarters’ were on the opposite side of the street. Accordingly the empty house must have been on the east side and the ‘old quarters’ on the west.

Next, as to the identity of the ‘narrow passage’. Just before Blandford Street runs into Baker Street we get two such passages, Blandford Mews on the north side, and Kendall Mews on the south. It is unlikely that they turned into the latter, for they had started from Cavendish Square which is to the south. Corning from Cavendish Square therefore they would have made an unnecessary detour when they turned into Man­chester Street instead of continuing straight on into George Street. Holmes knew his London far too well to lose time and distance in that way. A man who could travel in a hansom on a foggy night from the Lyceum Theatre, via Vauxhall Bridge, to Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, and could give his companion the name of every single street through which they passed¹ would
¹ The Sign of Four.
surely know the shortest route in a district which was within a stone’s throw of his own front door.

So Blandford Mews must be ‘the narrow passage’ and, if so, both buildings would be in the section of Baker Street that lies between Blandford Street and Dorset Street, the empty house being on the east side and Holmes’s rooms on the west. We can now pass on to the second stage in our process of elimination.

Our chief source of information is once again The Hound of the Baskervilles. The following points may be noted:

(1) The distance from Blandford Street to Dorset Street is about 150 yards.

(2) When Sir Henry Baskerville and his companion visited Holmes they were shadowed by Sir Henry’s sinister, black-bearded opponent. Both were in cabs and they came from the direction of Oxford Street.

(3) The first cab pulled up outside Holmes’s front door. The second cab stopped ‘halfway down the street’, i.e. half-way between Holmes’s apartments and Blandford Street.

(4) It can be assumed that there was a space of at least fifty yards between the two cabs. If the second were to get any closer to the first it ran the risk of attracting the attention of the occupants of the first cab which would be the very last thing that the black-bearded gentleman in the second cab would desire.

(5) The first cab did not stop exactly opposite to the corner of Baker Street and Dorset Street, or even at the second house from the corner. If it had done so the driver of the second cab would have been able to pinpoint it exactly; when, at a later stage, he was questioned by Holmes. This he was unable to do. He could only say that it was ‘somewhere near here’.

A glance at the accompanying plan (Stage 2) will show that to fit all the above facts it is necessary to have a location at roughly three-quarters of the way from Blandford Street to Dorset Street, and that the issue is thus narrowed down to Nos. 59, 61 and 63.

As between these three buildings there is so little to choose that we are not really justified in carrying the process of elimination any further. It might perhaps be argued however that No. 61 as the middle one of the three has the best claim¹. A more ruthless slaughter in Stage 2 might have removed No. 59 under the third and fourth paragraphs and No. 63 under the fifth.

There we must leave it. All three are possible but we have a slight preference for 61. There were three famous occupants of this elusive building, Holmes, Watson and the faithful landlady, Mrs. Hudson. Why not, then, give one building to each? In the unlikely event of the government of London passing into our hands we propose to put up three plaques. That on No. 61 will commemorate Holmes, whilst those on No. 59 and 63 will be allocated respectively to Watson and Mrs. Hudson.
¹ By a curious coincidence No. 61 is at the present time tenanted by Messrs. Walkers and Holtzapffel Ltd., who bear the first two letters of ‘Watson’ and the first three of ‘Holmes’. Does this mean that the ghosts of the original occupants of Baker Street have returned in a new line of business?

CHAPTER SIX

The Early Eighties
Watson had been wounded in the battle of Maiwand which took place in July 1880. Thereafter he came to London as we have already seen, and met Holmes on a winter’s afternoon. Presumably, therefore, this was in 1881 though we are not in fact told so. All that we know is that Gregson’s letter which led to the events recorded in A Study in Scarlet arrived on March 4th. Before he mentions this letter he tells us that during ‘the first week or so nobody called’, and there is also a passage which runs ‘as the weeks went by’. This suggests that they first took up their residence in Baker Street about the end of January 1881.

Apart from the fact that it was Watson’s first case the chief interest in A Study in Scarlet lies in the enthusiasm with which Scotland Yard plunged into this affair. Perhaps they wished to impress their Transatlantic brethren by demonstrating that they were quite capable of discovering the murderer of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio. But whether or not Anglo-American rivalry entered into the matter, they adopted the extreme course of detailing both their leading men, Lestrade and Gregson, to take on the case. Thanks to Holmes the murderer was discovered, but apparently the authorities were not satisfied, for the experiment was never repeated. Henceforward Lestrade and Gregson went their separate ways and we never again find them both appearing in the same case.

Perhaps at this stage a word may be said about Scotland Yard and its representatives. Of these, G. Lestrade is easily the most important. We meet him in no less than twelve different cases. He was still going strong in 1902 at the time of The Three Garridebs, though if we can believe his own account he had already put in twenty years service prior to A Study in Scarlet in 1881! By the time that we say good-bye to this rat-faced little man we feel that we know him almost as well as Watson himself, and with the years our affection for him grows. Invariably he required Holmes to put him on the right track, but thereafter he could hang on with the tenacity of a bulldog, and as Holmes found on more than one occasion he was an invaluable man to have by one’s side in a tight corner.

Next to Lestrade, but toiling far behind him, come the burly Tobias Gregson and young Stanley Hopkins, the rising star of the nineties, who each make four separate appearances. Of the rest, Bradstreet and the aggressive Peter Athelney Jones are encountered twice, and about a dozen others each appear once.

Poor Scotland Yard! Invariably they took the wrong turning. The only thing they seem to have learnt throughout the years was that Holmes could usually be relied on to see them through. The derisory attitude of the professional for an eccentric but somewhat lucky amateur gradually gives place to a reluctant respect and admiration. The Gregson of The Red Circle is a much more respectful colleague than the Gregson of A Study in Scarlet. Even the truculent Athelney Jones of The Sign of Four has mellowed considerably when we meet him again three years later in The Red-Headed League. But perhaps the best example is Lestrade’s spontaneous tribute after the triumphant conclusion of The Six Napoleons.

‘I’ve seen you handle a good many cases, Mr. Holmes, but I don’t know that I ever knew a more workmanlike one than that. We’re not jealous of you at Scotland Yard. No, Sir, we are very proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow there’s not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who would not be glad to shake you by the hand’.

But if they learnt to appreciate Holmes at his true value, they learnt nothing else. In 1903 when Holmes retired they had no more ideas on the detection of criminals than they had when he first came to their notice in 1878. In spite of his good advice they completely failed to study his methods, and the depressing conclusion must be drawn that after 1903 the number of undetected criminals at large in London and elsewhere must have increased very considerably.

To return once more to Watson, A Study in Scarlet opened his eyes to a brave new world. Whilst waiting for his health to improve and for a lucrative practice to appear on the horizon, he decided that he would write an account of the case in which he had recently taken part. This he proceeded to do in a leisurely manner throughout the year 1881, and during that year he took very little part, if any, in Holmes's activities.

Since he himself does not anywhere record that 1881 was passed in this manner, it is incumbent on us to produce the evidence. This we submit is the clear implication of the opening paragraph of The Five Orange Pips.

‘When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ‘82 and ‘90, I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features’.

Why is ‘81 omitted? Clearly because A Study in Scarlet was the only case in that year of which he had any record. After this case it was no longer necessary for him to make a discreet withdrawal to his bedroom when a client arrived to see Holmes, as had been his custom during the first few weeks. From The Yellow Face, which took place in the following year, we learn that by that time he had been present at many such interviews. But he probably took no further part in the proceedings and, above all, he kept no notes. The idea of a permanent partnership had not yet occurred to either man.

By the end of the year he had finished his narrative entitled A Study in Scarlet and had shown it to Holmes. In spite of later criticisms¹ Holmes was sufficiently impressed to suggest (or to agree to the suggestion) that henceforward Watson should keep a record of his more interesting and important cases. From that time on­ward he was Holmes’s authorized chronicler, though it was not till 1887 that A Study in Scarlet, the first-born, was published.

In March 1882 the episode of The Yellow Face occurred. As with so many of the early cases, Watson gives the season, but leaves it to us to supply the year. The indications are that this is a very early case. We are told that Holmes seldom took exercise just for its own sake, but one day in the early spring he had so far relaxed as to go for a walk with Watson in the Park, where the first faint shoots of green were breaking out upon the elms. It was nearly five by the time they got
¹ The Sign of Four.
back to find that they had missed a new client. Tired of waiting, he had departed, leaving only a pipe j behind him. The pipe of course was quite sufficient for Holmes to make a fairly adequate reconstruction. But a reconstructed client was still an absent one, and as Holmes remarked reproachfully to Watson; ‘So much for afternoon walks!’

Apparently this was the first occasion on which they had ever played truant. All through the year 1881 Holmes had stayed at home when not actually engaged on a case, lest he should miss a prospective client. It would be asking too much to expect him to go through a second year confined to his quarters, to hold out for two whole years from January 1881 to March 1883. We can safely assume that he succumbed on the first tempting spring afternoon of 1882. Further evidence that this is a very early case is contained in Holmes’s exclamation: ‘I was badly in need of a case’. There had been a slump. He was not yet fully established. Soon his reputation would be such that idle periods when clients were scarce would be a thing of the past.

He had known cases go wrong before he came to Baker Street, but probably this was the first instance of a failure since his association with Watson had started. Hence his concluding remark to him: ‘If it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you’.

In the summer of the same year followed the case of The Greek Interpreter. Here again we are told the season but have to deduce the year. It is here, for the first time, that we meet Sherlock’s elder brother, Mycroft, a sort of nationalized version of Sherlock, his equal in observation and deduction, but without energy or ambition. He could not be bothered to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than go to the trouble of proving himself right. He could solve a problem, but was quite incapable of working out the practical points which were necessary before it could be submitted to a judge and jury.

Clearly therefore there was only one thing that could be done with such a person. He must be put in complete control of the British Government. In fact, as Sherlock put it, ‘you might in one sense say he is the British Government’. At the very centre of the Whitehall labyrinth was Mycroft, controlling and directing every­thing. ‘The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearing house which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We will suppose that a Minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say off-hand how each factor would affect the other. …Again and again his word has decided the national policy’¹.

Mycroft Holmes would seem to have been born too soon. Had he lived about fifty years later he would have found a more suitable world for his particular talents.

Now Mycroft’s peculiar role in British politics was not disclosed to Watson at the time of The Greek Interpreter. On that occasion he was merely introduced as one who audited the books of some of the Govern-
¹ The Bruce-Parlington Plans.
ment departments. Sherlock waited until the case of The Bruce-Partington Plans which took place in the third week of November 1895, before letting Watson into the secret. By 1895 Watson had only a vague recollection of The Greek Interpreter which at once suggests that there must be a very long interval between the two incidents.

As to the reason for this secrecy Sherlock’s explanation is: ‘I did not know you quite so well in those days. One has to be discreet when one talks about high matters of state’. This we think justifies us in placing this case as early as 1882. By that time they had lived together for about eighteen months. If by the end of the first two years Holmes had still felt doubts about his companion, he would probably have made arrangements to terminate their association and would have left Baker Street. By the time the case of Charles Augustus Milverton occurred Holmes had acquired such complete confidence in Watson’s discretion that he was able to show him a photograph in a shop window of a woman who had been seen by both of them to commit a murder, and the name on the photograph was that of the wife of a great nobleman and statesman. This, as we shall presently demonstrate, was in the month of January 1883.

A third reason why this case can hardly be later than the summer of 1882 is to be found in the opening sentence: ‘During my long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Sherlock Holmes I had never heard him refer to his relations, and hardly ever to his own early life’. Eighteen months is indeed a long time to live with a man in ignorance of the fact that he has a brother. To extend this period by another year is out of the question, unless Holmes had some reason for concealing his brother, and in that event he would never have produced him at all.

Against these three reasons for putting the case as early as the summer of 1882 must be set Mycroft’s remark to Watson. ‘I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler’. Since the first publication, A Study in Scarlet, was in December 1887, it follows that this remark can not have been made before 1888 at the very earliest. But by that time Watson was married and living away from Baker Street, which is clearly not the case in The Greek Interpreter.

The most probable explanation is that it was not Mycroft at all who paid Watson this compliment, but a client of Holmes at a much earlier date. Watson was flattered and wished to have some permanent record of this tribute to the part which he had played in building up Holmes’s reputation. Unfortunately however, this client had consulted Holmes about a particularly dull, uninteresting case which Watson had no possible excuse for narrating. Accordingly he trans­ferred the incident to the case which he was at that time writing up from his notes, which happened to be The Greek Interpreter. We cannot find it in our hearts to blame him.

The next two cases with which we are concerned have not previously been bracketed, but can be dealt with simultaneously as they have several points in common. They are Charles Augustus Milverton and The Speckled Band. In each we have a lady in distress, terrorized by a sinister scoundrel; in each there is a more-or-less unlawful entry by Holmes and Watson into the villain’s home and in each an exciting night comes to a climax in the violent and unexpected death of the villain.

Milverion presents us with much the same sort of problem as The Yellow Face and The Greek Interpreter. Watson is apparently unmarried and living in Baker Street. But the choice here is even wider than in those two cases. For they were both published in 1893 and must therefore relate to the period before the first marriage, but Milverton was not published until 1904 and therefore could have taken place after the marriage had ended. The only information available is, as usual, the season. This time it is winter.

The Speckled Band by contrast is straightforward. The affair occurred in April 1883, one of the very few undisputed dates of the early period.

Now let us consider in each case the scene that occurred when it was decided to invade the enemy’s camp. In The Speckled Band Holmes is almost non­chalant when he suggests that they should spend the night in Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s house at Stoke Moran, Surrey.

‘Do you know, Watson, I have really some scruples as to taking you to-night. There is a distinct element of danger’.

‘Can I be of assistance?’

‘Your presence might be invaluable’.

‘Then I shall certainly come’.

‘It is very kind of you’.

There, without any further fuss, the matter ends. Compare this with the palaver that occurs when a similar decision is made to burgle Charles Milverton’s home, Appledore Towers, Hampstead. It takes over two pages to describe. Watson is appalled at the idea and begs Holmes to think what he is doing. A long argument follows. Holmes is still determined to go. Then Watson announces that he is coming too. It is now Holmes’s turn to protest, but Watson sticks to his guns and threatens to give Holmes away to the police unless he is allowed to accompany him. ‘You cannot help me’, says Holmes. (Compare this with ‘Your pres­ence might be invaluable’). Finally it is decided that both will go, and with the excitement and enthusiasm of two men about to carry out their first burglary they plunge into an animated conversation on the techni­calities of nickel-plated jemmies, diamond-tipped glass cutters, adaptable keys, rubber-soled shoes and black silk masks.

After all, what were the relative risks of the two enterprises? Let us investigate the two home teams. At Appledore Towers there was Charles Augustus Milverton who looked like Mr. Pickwick, but (unlike Mr. Winkle) knew how to handle a gun. There was a rather fearsome dog, but Holmes, with memories perhaps of the dog in his college days, had had the foresight to disguise as a workman and to become engaged to Milverton’s housemaid, Agatha, with the result that this young lady, for obvious reasons, took care that the animal was locked up at an early hour. In addition, Milverton’s establishment was liberally stocked with faithful secretaries, housemaids and under-gardeners.

The Stoke Moran contingent is headed by Dr. Grimesby Roylott, complete with black top-hat, frock-coat, high gaiters and a hunting-crop. His hat brushed the crossbar of the doorway, so he can hardly have been under six-foot-six. His large face was seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow by the sun and marked with every evil passion, whilst his deep-set bile-shot eyes and high, thin, fleshless nose made him look like a bird of prey. He possessed a cheetah which had a disconcerting habit of whining in the garden at night. Next on the list was a baboon resembling a hideous and distorted child, also a nocturnal habitue of the garden. Last but not least there was the deadly ‘speckled band’ itself.

Would any reasonable burglar hesitate between the two? Give him every time the known horrors of Hampstead rather than the Stoke Moran Zoo!

Why then did Holmes and Watson make so much more heavy weather of Hampstead than of Stoke Moran? Obviously because Hampstead was their first exploit of this sort and having got through it safely they subsequently went into Stoke Moran with the confidence of the experienced.

This means that the Milverton episode took place before April 1883. But it can hardly be earlier than the winter which had just come to an end, for Holmes says: ‘We have shared the same room for some years’. At that time they had in fact shared it for approximately two years, a period which would scarcely qualify for the description ‘some years’ in ordinary parlance. Still Watson’s ideas of time were always rather vague and the probability is that he misquoted Holmes who in fact used the phrase ‘for some time’.

At this stage it may be convenient to consider the argument of Mr. Bell who maintains that the correct date of the Milverton case is February 1884. First, he holds that it happened in the early years when they were still young enough to scramble over a six foot wall and run two miles across Hampstead Heath without stopping, though they were wearing dress-clothes and overcoats. Whilst we agree that they were in fact young men at the time, we very much doubt whether the two miles non-stop run ever took place.

For apparently they were not pursued out of the garden and although a man might run for a quarter of a mile before he realized that he was not being followed, a two-mile run in these circumstances would be fantastic. Writing the case up many years later, Watson’s memory probably played him tricks which led to this exaggeration.

Because of the expression ‘for some years’ he considers that 1883 is too early and by a process of elimination he arrives at February 1884. We can only repeat that we cannot believe that two people who had handled The Speckled Band so successfully in April 1883 could make such a fuss before trying conclusions with Milverton ten months later.

Mr. Bell’s method of ascertaining the month, which must be either December, January or February, can now be considered. He begins by excluding the month of December in every year on the grounds that few marriages take place in Advent. It will be recalled that the Earl of Dovercourt and Lady Eva Brackwell were to have been married on the 18th of the month, and the 18th of December falls in Advent. Here again we must join issue. An investigation of the marriage notices in The Times during this period discloses that many marriages did take place during Advent. They may possibly be slightly fewer than in the months of January and February, but the decrease is certainly not apparent. There is no justification whatsoever for assuming that either the Earl or his fiancee were particularly orthodox in religious observance. The month of December cannot be excluded on these or any other grounds.

With the rest of Mr. Bell's argument we are in complete agreement. He points out that the month must be one in which the 13th, 14th and 18th are all weekdays. This is deduced as follows:

The 13th. Milverton told Holmes that if the money were not paid on the 14th there would be no wedding on the 18th. On the day they decided to burgle Milverton, Holmes said that the next day was the last day of grace. The burglary therefore was carried out on the night of the 13th which must have been a weekday, for Holmes and Watson put on their dress-clothes so that they might appear to be theatre-goers homeward bound.

The 14th. On the morning following the burglary Holmes took Watson to a shop in Oxford Street and showed him a photograph of the lady they had seen on the previous night. This could not have happened on a Sunday, for in Victorian times the blinds would have been drawn.

The 18th. This was the day of the wedding.

We have already given our reasons for maintaining that the case happened in the winter 1882-83. All that now remains is to apply the above test to the three months concerned. When we do so January and February are both eliminated. It was in December 1882 therefore, that the event occurred which will be for ever memorable in the history of Hampstead.