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The 1890s

After “The Adventure of the Fallen Star”, Watson seems to have assiduously recorded a number of cases that followed on quite quickly: “The Stockbroker’s Clerk”, “The Man With the Twisted Lip” – a case which was considerably more than a three-pipe problem, “Colonel Warburton’s Madness” – one of the lost cases, and “The Engineer’s Thumb”. These and others during this busy period are listed in the appendix. Amongst them are the well-known cases of “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” and “The Red-Headed League” plus a few cases which are probably apocryphal though they have the ring of authenticity about them, including “The Adventure of the Megatherium Thefts” and “The Adventure of the First-Class Carriage”.

By the start of 1891, however, Holmes had placed himself firmly on the trail of James Moriarty, the most dangerous man in London, whom he planned to confront once and for all. This led to the case of “The Final Problem” ending with the presumed death of Sherlock Holmes as he and Moriarty plunged into the Reichenbach Falls.

There follows the period known as the Great Hiatus, when Holmes travelled in disguise throughout Europe and Asia. He refers to some of these travels in “The Empty House”, but it is difficult to know which of the many curious cases recorded on the continent during this period really marked the involvement of Sherlock Holmes. It is a period worthy of a separate book, and one that I hope to produce at some future date. But here we concern ourselves primarily with Holmes’s investigations with Watson. Watson, believing Holmes to be dead, had spent the time finalizing and preparing for publication several of his records of Holmes’s cases, and these appeared in The Strand Magazine between 1891 and 1893. They made the name of Sherlock Holmes a household word. Unfortunately, Watson’s wife died towards the end of 1893, so it was a rather sad Watson who was shocked and dazed at the sudden reappearance of Sherlock Holmes at the end of March 1894. (Subsequent investigations reveal that this event happened in February and, once again, Watson disguised the date.)

After “The Empty House”, and the entrapment of Sebastian Moran, Holmes felt sufficiently confident to resume his investigations. Watson, now alone, was delighted to resume his old rôle with Holmes, and from 1894 till Holmes’s retirement ten years later, the two seemed inseparable. This was the high period of Holmes’s career with a catalogue of remarkable cases. Immediately following “The Empty House” came “The Second Stain”, “Wisteria Lodge” and “The Norwood Builder”, plus the unrecorded case of the steamship Friesland, which nearly cost them both their lives. That autumn Holmes had to move out from 221b Baker Street to allow for some refurbishment and redecoration and he and Watson briefly took lodgings at Dorset Street. There they became involved in a strange little case which was unearthed by the indefatigable Michael Moorcock who found them amongst the papers of a distant relative who had evidently been an acquaintance of Dr Watson.

The Adventure of the Dorset Street Lodger

Michael Moorcock

It was one of those singularly hot Septembers, when the whole of London seemed to wilt from over-exposure to the sun, like some vast Arctic sea-beast foundering upon a tropical beach and doomed to die of unnatural exposure. Where Rome or even Paris might have shimmered and lazed, London merely gasped.

Our windows wide open to the noisy staleness of the air and our blinds drawn against the glaring light, we lay in a kind of torpor, Holmes stretched upon the sofa while I dozed in my easy chair and recalled my years in India, when such heat had been normal and our accommodation rather better equipped to cope with it. I had been looking forward to some fly fishing in the Yorkshire Dales but meanwhile, a patient of mine began to experience a difficult and potentially dangerous confinement so I could not in conscience go far from London. However, we had both planned to be elsewhere at this time and had confused the estimable Mrs Hudson, who had expected