A slim but nonetheless impressive collection of new Sherlock Holmes short stories has recently come my way. Paula Hammond’s new book is entitled Eliminate the Impossible, after Holmes’s famous remark, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’
There’s a deal of improbability in these yarns, among them a case of apparently spontaneous combustion, a shooting presided over by the Angel of Mons and the apparition of Lady Hatton holding her heart in her hands in the self-same Bleeding Heart Yard where centuries before she had sold her soul to the devil. With his customary disdain for the supernatural, Holmes manages to blow away the fogs of irrationality to reveal the very physical explanations for these events.
What I particularly enjoyed, apart from the tales themselves, were the notes following each story, showing them to be grounded in historical accuracy. Real people make appearances, usually with their names changed. Thus Hiram Maxim, inventor of the Maxim machine gun, appears as Dodson Hughes; Hannah and John Courtoy, whose Egyptian style mausoleum is one of the sights of Brompton cemetery in London appear here as Hannah and John Chester (deceased).
The Courtoy mausoleum in Brompton cemetery
There’s fascinating and sometimes grisly incidental detail, too, regarding the combustibility of pigs or the fact that in certain circumstances quicklime preserves bodies rather than destroys them, the deleterious effect of prolonged ultra-low frequency sounds on the human brain, causing fear, vertigo, disorientation and even heart attacks, used to sinister effect in certain regimes to this day.
The story in the collection that particularly caught my attention, since I myself am in the process of finishing a new Mrs Hudson novel set in Constantinople, is The Case of the Impossible Assassin, in which Holmes and Watson travel via the Orient Express to the then Turkish capital. It’s an intriguing tale and one which, I am relieved to say, bears no resemblance to my own story, apart from the setting.
What is a well-established fact, however, is that Sultan Abdul Hamid II was a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes. When Sir Arthur and his new wife, Jean, honeymooned in Constantinople in 1907, the Sultan conferred on him the Order of the Medjidie (second class) and on Jean The Order of the Chefakat, which (spoiler) Mrs Hudson too may hope to receive quite soon.
All in all, a thoroughly engaging collection. I shall certainly look out for more of Paula Hammond’s books.
Sherlock Holmes: Eliminate the Impossible by Paula Hammond, edited by David Marcum (MX publishing, 2024)
I recently had the great pleasure of visiting the lively and beautiful city of Istanbul for a few days. On my return I started wondering what Turkish people make of Sherlock Holmes, if anything. It surprised and pleased me therefore to learn that not only was the last Ottoman Sultan a great fan, but had even conferred on Conan Doyle the Order of the Medjidie (2nd class, an honour only bestowed on 150 people).
This Sultan, Abdülhamid II (right), came to the throne in 1876 as a reformer, but soon established a conservative and absolutist reign as the ancient empire disintegrated about him. In his personal life, however, he was a cultured man, loving opera in particular. He was also an accomplished carpenter of high-quality furniture, examples of which still grace various palaces. Moreover, as an enthusiastic practitioner of the Turkish sport of grease wrestling – yes indeed – he was considered its unofficial patron saint. And he loved detective stories.
He is quoted in the memoirs of his daughter as saying, ‘I have problems sleeping, so I ask someone to read a book, which sounds like a lullaby to me… I avoid deep thought-provoking books with the fear that they might keep me from sleeping later on.’ Detective stories fitted the bill admirably.
Abdülhamid first met Sherlock Holmes in 1903 when his translator noticed the story ‘The Empty House’ in the Strand magazine and, knowing his master was keen on the genre, translated it for him. The Sultan was so taken with the tale that he asked the Ottoman Ambassador in London to send all works by Conan Doyle to him. Thus, he was able to read the stories some years before the published translations of Faik Sabri Duran in 1908.
When Conan Doyle subsequently visited Turkey, he received the medal bestowed on him by one of his greatest fans. According to Doyle, his wife was presented with the Order of Chevekat at the same time. ‘As this is the Order of Compassion and as my wife, ever since she set foot in Constantinople, had been endeavouring to feed the hoard of starving dogs who roamed the streets, no gift could have been more appropriate.’
In fact, the award to Jean Lecky was the Shefkat Nishan, given to women for charity work.
Among the many ‘untold stories’ in the canon, I was intrigued to find the following mentioned in the late tale The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier of 1926, as narrated, unusually, by Holmes himself:
‘It happened that at that moment I was clearing up the case which my friend Watson has described as that of the Abbey school… I had also a commission from the Sultan of Turkey, which called for immediate action, as political consequences of the gravest kind might arise from its neglect.’
Having already written up a couple of untold tales myself, published in the MX books of new Sherlock Holmes stories, I have to say I am greatly tempted by this. Watch this space.
30 plus volumes of the MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, edited by the indefatiguable and ever enthusiastic David Marcum, are available to order with three new volumes on the way.
In 1883, the young Conan Doyle [right] wrote an article for the British Journal of Photography, To the Waterford Coast and Along it. Together with three friends, and armed with a camera and five dozen photographic plates, he took a series of boat trips, first from Glasgow to Waterford town, via Dublin (‘from the seaside neither picturesque nor impressive’). Then by yacht along Waterford coast.
Tellingly, at no point in the lively and lengthy article does he mention his own Irish antecedents – his Irish grandfather, his Irish mother whose family in Lismore he had visited both as a child and in adulthood – but rather expresses a typically British condescending view of the ‘aboriginals’. He is surprised at the order in the streets of Dublin and the civility of the general population, having been warned by the clerk at the Cook’s tourist office in Scotland that these were ‘dangerous times in Ireland, and there was little inducement for the Saxon tourist unless he hankered for the absorbing but brief excitement of having his head battered in by the downtrodden Clann-na-Gael’.
Reaching Waterford without any such unpleasant incident, young Arthur claims that, as well as a few ‘seditious’ notices – the Land League at the time actively urging the abolition of landlordism so that poor Irish tenants could once again own the land they farmed – he has seen for the first time a sight he had ‘always imagined to be a myth invented for music hall purposes’, namely the Irish peasant in knee-breeches, blue stockings and a high soft hat with a pipe stuck in the side of it. Of course, in reality he would have seen many such characters before on his trips to Lismore. But who wants to ruin a good story?
More patronising remarks follow. ‘We were shown the spot where some English Conqueror had landed, though whether it was Cromwell or Strongbow was a mystery to our guide’ who, he says, seemed to think they were one and the same person. The spot where the first potato was planted on Irish soil by Sir Walter Raleigh was also indicated to the sceptical visitors.
During the trip, Arthur, taking pictures all the time – though sadly I cannot find that any have survived – is bemused at the sight of the Round Tower at Ardmore, described by him as prehistoric and ‘perhaps a temple erected to the sun god’. ‘Altogether,’ he writes, ‘the building and its uses were “the sort of thing no fellah would understand”, so we contented ourselves with photographing it.’ In fact, as he might easily have ascertained, the round towers were built by monks probably as a defence again Viking and other raiders to protect themselves and their treasures.
Everywhere, from the Crown hotel in Waterford, which Arthur heartily recommends to visitors, to the impoverished fishing folk of Ardmore, the young men meet with courtesy and kindness. It is a pity, then, that only three years later, he reveals a virulent anti-Irish prejudice regarding the question of Home Rule, then being proposed by Gladstone’s Liberal government: ‘Ireland is a huge suppuration which will go on suppurating until it bursts.’ This opinion was tempered slightly in later life, though he remained convinced that the best place for the land of his ancestors was within the British Empire.
‘Mrs Hudson goes to Ireland’can be ordered from book depository (free mailing worldwide)
Mrs Hudson sits back in her favourite chair. ‘Of course,’ she says ‘I always thought the Doctor was Scottish… Not Dr Watson, I know all about him. No, I mean Dr Doyle. I never thought of him as Irish, do you see. And another thing I got wrong. He being in the medical profession, I took him for a colleague of Dr Watson, when he is in fact a closer associate of Mr H.
I understand his reasons now, of course, but was somewhat taken aback when, during that dark period we believed Mr H had perished at the Reichenbach Falls, Dr Doyle was so very solicitous towards me, and so ready with words of comfort. He was, do you see, perhaps the only one to know that Mr H had miraculously survived. In fact, he it was insisted on me keeping the Baker Street apartment unlet to anyone else, knowing that one day Mr H would need it again. However, he had been sworn by Mr H to secrecy, and, no more than Dr Watson, I never guessed at the truth of the matter.
But what I wanted to tell you now was that when Dr Doyle heard I was planning a trip to Ireland, he urged me to visit that part of the country where his mother was born and of which he himself had such fond memories.
‘It is not so very far from Wexford,’ he told me, ‘being in the adjacent county of Waterford.’
In my account of my adventures in Ireland, I did not include the visit I subsequently paid to the pretty town of Lismore, for it was not relevant to the horrific story of Lily and Francie. However, I should like you to know something of it, and of Dr Doyle’s own history. The Irish love to claim the great and good for themselves – I have even heard it said that Mr H has some Irish in him – but in the case of Dr Doyle, it is nothing but the truth. His paternal grandfather was born in Dublin, but moved to England, his son, Dr Doyle’s father, thereafter taking up a post in Scotland where he reared his family (rather badly, I fear, the man succumbing to the demon drink).
Dr Doyle’s beloved mother was born Mary Foley, descendant of the redoubtable ‘Black Tom’ Foley who was agent to the Duke of Devonshire, while her cousin, the late head of the clan, rejoiced in the name Nelson Trafalgar Foley (being born, as I understand it on the very day news of the Admiral’s great victory reached Lismore). Even after Mary moved with her widowed mother to Edinburgh, and got married, she kept in touch with her Irish family, and often took young Arthur – that being Dr Doyle’s Christian name – over on visits to her wealthy relations. There, from their seat at Ballygally, he would hunt, shoot and fish in the river Blackwater, said to contain the best salmon in Ireland.
When I myself visited Lismore, I was treated most kindly by the Foleys, who, I am afraid have come down somewhat in the world. They recalled how Dr Doyle continued to visit there in adulthood (though sadly not in recent years) and told me how he even played cricket for the local club against the 25th Regiment, his performance being somewhat undistinguished, however. Apparently, he only managed to score a miserable three runs, though he did take two wickets.
But now,’ she says, gathering up her skirts, ‘it is time to take the gentlemen their tea. I shall resume the account next time.’
‘Mrs Hudson goes to Ireland’can be ordered from book depository (free mailing worldwide)
What a wickedly subversive book this is. Author Molly Carr knows her Sherlock Holmes’ Canon inside out and then proceeds to do just that – turn it inside out. Sherlock, we discover, is the real author of all those stories, which accounts for the many put-downs of poor Watson, who in turn isn’t a real doctor and has never served in Afghanistan but was a ward orderly before taking up with the detective. And actually there never has been much detecting, Sherlock preferring to laze about smoking his pipe, making up his adventures.
Moreover, not only did Sherlock not die at Reichenbach but neither did Moriarty, who pops up here to try and thwart the best efforts of the narrator of (punning alert!) TheSign of Fear. So who is the narrator then? None other than Watson’s wife, the erstwhile Mary Morstan, who isn’t quite the demure young lady we remember from The Sign of the Four, but who hints at a secret and scandalous past. At one point Watson apologetically says he will have to kill her. But only in the stories, since she is too much of a distraction.
Bored with domesticity, Mary starts hopping in dizzying fashion from one investigation to the next and from continent to continent, having teamed up with Emily Fanshaw, cross-dressing wife of Neville St Clair (The Man with the Twisted Lip). In fact the book is peppered with characters from the Canon and beyond. You will meet Raffles and Bunny, and even Hercule Poirot’s father and Jane Marple’s mother, both shockingly inclined to villainous criminality, while the young Maigret has a tiny cameo as a raw-boned baker’s boy.
The Sign of Fear, originally published by MX publishing in 2010 and available on Amazon, is the first in a series of books by Molly Carr, distinguished member of the John Watson Society. It’s a great romp. I’ll certainly be looking out for Mary’s further adventures.
As if one plague at the present time wasn’t enough to be dealing with, we who live on the east coast of Ireland have now been afflicted by a new menace in the undulating shape of the Lion’s Mane jellyfish. This vicious creature sports long reddish gold tentacles that can inflict powerful stings, and we have been warned not to go into the sea.
Recently on the beach in Skerries, north of Dublin, I was called over by my grandson Jacob, to be informed with great excitement, ‘There’s a jellyfish in the water!’ I peered at what I thought at first was a mass of weed. But then a rolling wave turned the thing over and I saw the sinister globe of its back. It was big, though thankfully nothing like the two metres that have been reported elsewhere. We stood watching it, fascinated, for a while and warned a young woman paddling straight towards it, carrying her baby, to get out of the water immediately, which she did.
Of course, aficionados of the Sherlock Holmes’ canon will already be acquainted with the Lion’s Mane jellyfish as the villain of the piece in a late story from The Casebook. The tale is unusual in that it is related not by Dr Watson but by the detective himself now in retirement in Sussex, breeding his bees.
Walking by the sea with a friend one day, Holmes encounters a young man in in his death throes, his body covered in angry weals, as if he had been savagely beaten by a cat o’ nine tails. Before he dies, the man manages to gasp, ‘The Lion’s Mane,’ which means nothing to his listeners. Suspicion instead lights on a rival in love until this man too almost succumbs to the deadly poison of the jellyfish.
I have to say, it takes Sherlock a while to figure it all out but once he does, he hastens to the beach, accompanied by PC Plod who has been on the point of arresting the wrong man, to reveal the culprit in vividly disgusting language:
“‘Cyanea!’ I cried. ‘Cyanea!’ (Sherlock of course knows the Latin name). ‘Behold the Lion’s Mane.’ The strange object at which I pointed did indeed look like a tangled mass torn from the mane of a lion. It lay upon a rocky shelf some three feet under the water, a curious waving, vibrating, hairy creature with streaks of silver among its yellow tresses. It pulsated with a slow heavy dilation and contraction.”
The fact that the stings in reality are rarely fatal must not detract from a rattling good yarn, but may console those of us thinking of taking a dip.
Following the much publicised success of his interventions in criminal cases such as the wrongful convictions of George Edalji and Oscar Slater, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was sometimes called on to solve other mysteries. Presumably it was assumed that he shared the deductive powers of his literary creation.
However, when the Chief Constable of Surrey approached him in December 1926 regarding the unexplained disappearance of thirty-six year-old author, Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle resorted instead to a psychic. Over the years, he had become ever more obsessed with spiritualism, even becoming something of laughing-stock over his credulity, for instance regarding the fairies at the bottom of the Cottingley gardens.
Depressed following a row with her husband, who wanted a divorce, Agatha Christie had apparently driven off into the night of December 3. Her car was later found abandoned – headlights blazing, fur coat and driver’s licence inside – in Surrey, quite a distance from her Berkshire home. An intensive search over a week revealed nothing and it was assumed that she was dead, whether by accident, suicide or even murder, her husband Colonel Archibald Christie, becoming the chief suspect.
Conan Doyle took one of her gloves to a famous psychic named Horace Leaf, whose speciality was psychometry, the ability to divine psychic information from a subject’s possessions. Leaf was not told who owned the glove but immediately exclaimed ‘Agatha’. This was perhaps not as astounding as it might seem since the news of the author’s disappearance was all over the newspapers. Leaf indicated there was ‘trouble’ connected with the glove. ‘The person who owns it,’ he claimed, ‘is half-dazed and half purposeful. She is not dead as many people think. She is alive. You will hear of her, I think, next Wednesday.’
And, lo and behold, the following Wednesday December 15, Christie was indeed tracked down to the Hydropathic Hotel in Harrowgate, Yorkshire, where she was staying under the name of Theresa Neele (Nancy Neele being the young woman with whom Archie was in love). Apparently Christie went dancing each evening there to the music of the Happy Hydro Boys, and a member of that band, one Bob Tappin, a banjo player, recognised her.
She never explained her disappearance. Various theories were put forward. Had she been suffering from loss of memory? Was it a publicity stunt? Or was it revenge, a deliberate ploy to make the police suspect her husband of doing away with her?
As for Conan Doyle, he was utterly jubilant, writing in the Morning Post that ‘The Christie case afforded an excellent example of the use of psychometry as an aid to the detective… occasionally remarkable in its efficiency’, adding that it was often used by the French and German police, ‘but if it is ever employed by our own it must be sub rosa for it is difficult for them to call upon the very powers which the law compels them to persecute.’
Horace Leaf, much respected in spiritualist circles, lived into his eighties. One of his books bears the intriguing title, ‘Death Cannot Kill’. He passed over in 1971…
A few years after Conan Doyle had successfully intervened to overturn the guilty verdict in the case of George Edalji, he was approached to set right another injustice. This time, however, the accused was a far less innocent victim and would never have been invited to Sir Arthur’s wedding as Edalji was.
Oscar Slater was a low-life gambler found guilty of the brutal murder of a rich and elderly Glasgow spinster named Marion Gilchrist. She had been hammered to death in December 1908 but the only object removed from the scene was a brooch. Evidence seemed to point to Slater after he pawned a brooch, changed his name and embarked by ship with his girlfriend to New York. There he was arrested. He agreed to return to England, imagining he could clear the matter up, but was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death, later commuted to penal servitude for life.
The evidence against him was slight – the brooch he pawned turned out to be not the one taken from Miss Gilchrist’s apartment, but had belonged to his girlfriend. However, the clinching factor was his identification in a line-up by the victim’s maid.
After reading about Slater in a series entitled ‘Notable Scottish Trials’, Conan Doyle became convinced that the man was innocent, and wrote a sixpenny pamphlet on the subject, ‘The Case of Oscar Slater’. Despite widespread agreement that a miscarriage of justice had taken place, nothing happened for many years, presumably because the First World War provided something of a distraction.
It was not until 1919 that Conan Doyle added his name to a petition to revisit the case, headed by a dogged Glasgow journalist named William Park. Again the pleas were ignored, and more years passed. Eventually in 1925 Slater smuggled a message begging for help out of Parkhead prison, hidden under the dentures of a fellow prisoner, William Gordon. Conan Doyle had no joy petitioning the Secretary of State for Scotland for a reprieve but this time he was not willing to give up. When Park wrote a book describing the lack of hard evidence and the injustice of the case, Conan Doyle not only provided an introduction but arranged for the book to be published by his own Psychic Press in 1927.
As a result, the issue was raised in the House of Commons and taken up by the newspapers. The maid who had identified Slater as the man she had seen in Miss Gilchrist’s apartment, now expressed doubt. In addition, police notebooks revealed that evidence against Slater was ‘very much less strong’ than against other suspects. Opposition leader, Ramsay McDonald angrily wrote to the Scottish Secretary stating that evidence had been twisted by the police in order to incriminate Slater ‘by influencing witnesses and with-holding evidence.’
Slater was finally released in November 1927 and wrote to Conan Doyle, saying ‘You breaker of my shackles. You love of truth of justice sake, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
However, fine words, as they say, butter no parsnips. Slater was awarded a somewhat measly compensation of £6,000, but when Conan Doyle suggested the man might reimburse him for the £300 he himself had spent on the case, he had to take ‘the ungrateful dog and liar’ to court in order to get the money.
Slater settled in Ayr, marrying a much younger woman of German descent. He and his wife were briefly interned as enemy aliens during the Second War World, even though he himself was of German Jewish extraction. Most of his family died in the Holocaust. He himself passed away in 1948 at the age of 76.
Not only did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle create the most famous private detective of all time, he, perhaps inevitably, involved himself in several real-life crimes, mostly those in which a miscarriage of justice had taken place.
The most infamous of these was the case of George Edalji, the son of a Parsi father and Scottish mother. His father had converted to Christianity to the extent of becoming the vicar of Great Wyrley, a village in Staffordshire. Later, Conan Doyle was to reveal his own prejudices when writing of the case, stating that ‘the appearance of a coloured clergyman with a half-caste son in a rude, unrefined parish was bound to cause some regrettable situations.’
During George’s childhood, a spate of crudely written poison pen letters had been directed at the vicar and his family. The Edalji’s maid, Florence Foster admitted writing them but then retracted her confession. Some years later, more obscene letters followed, and now it was thought that George was responsible, even though many of them were directed against himself, ‘the blackman’. The furore over the letters eventually died down and all went quiet for years.
Then, in 1903, when George was twenty-seven, a series of animal mutilations took place around the village. Although he had trained as a solicitor and had set up independently in Birmingham, he was still living at home, even sleeping, strangely enough, in the same room as his father. Suspicion for the maimings soon fell upon George. He was, after all, different, with his brown skin, bulging eyes (he suffered from acute astigmatism) and solitary personality – being given to taking long evening walks. The local police were so convinced of his guilt, indeed, that they happily twisted the evidence to incriminate him. He was found guilty – of the letter writing as well as the mutilations – and was sentenced to seven years hard labour.
There was an immediate outcry among certain eminent members of the legal profession and other well-known figures, and they set up a Support Committee. The evidence, they argued, was dubious, the sentence far too harsh for the crime. Edalji served three years and then, inexplicably, was released but not pardoned. The case then came to the attention of Conan Doyle – in Julian Barnes’s engrossing novel on the subject, Arthur and George, it provided a welcome distraction from the agonies of his secret love affair with Jean Leckie, later his second wife. He met up with George, and having covertly watched him trying to read a newspaper, concluded, as a trained ophthalmologist, that the man’s poor eyesight would have rendered him physically incapable of clambering through fields at night to maim livestock. ‘I do not think you are innocent,’ as he tells him in the novel. ‘I do not believe you are innocent. I know you are innocent.’
Eventually, in 1907, thanks in part to Conan Doyle’s efforts publicising evidence against the conviction in the press, George Edalji was found innocent of the maimings and exonerated. However, no compensation was paid because he was still reckoned to be guilty of writing the letters, thereby bringing suspicion upon himself for the other crimes. Innocent but guilty: it was a bitter victory, but at least George was able to resume practicing as a solicitor, which he did for the rest of his quiet life.
That wasn’t the end of it, however. Conan Doyle and the other worthies, incensed at the inadequacies of the appeals system – the requirement that all appeals be made to the Home Secretary – had long been agitating for the setting up of a Court of Criminal Appeal. This was finally achieved in August 1907, thanks in part to the perceived injustice meted out to George Edalji.
Another riveting and highly entertaining read from Barry S Brown. In this, the sixth of his Mrs Hudson novels, the eponymous cockney landlady remains the mastermind behind the Sherlock Holmes detective agency. Once again, real people and events are most effectively mixed into the fiction.
This time the action centres on an actual 1901 run at London’s Lyceum theatre of the play Sherlock Holmes, which featured, in the role of the detective, the American actor William Gillette.
There is even a walk-on part by a youthful Charlie Chaplin in the very early days of his career. This isn’t artistic licence, at least not too much of it. As the Epilogue informs us, the fourteen-year-old Chaplin did indeed play the role of the Pageboy in the play [left]. A reviewer at the time wrote that ‘Master Charles Chaplin… shows considerable ability and bids fair to develop into a capable and clever actor.’
Other real people appearing in the novel include the anarchist Peter Kropotkin and Arthur Conan Doyle himself. It is all very ingenious and more than a bit cheeky, especially when Dr Doyle recognises Watson, said to be a fan of Doyle’s Egyptian adventure yarn, Tragedy of the Korosko, as ‘something of a writer himself’.
The murder, for of course there has to be one, is of a young American woman who is working in the theatre as wardrobe mistress, a job subsequently taken over by Mrs Hudson in the course of her investigations. She has to find out was the young woman’s murder a threat to Gillette himself or are there even more sinister forces at work?
Weaving international politics into a carefully engineered plot that culminates with an escape featuring a thrilling balloon ride, Barry S Brown has written a mystery that will delight and divert. I look forward to his next book.
Susan Knight 