The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures - Mike Ashley [188]
“Will you be joining me, Holmes?”
My companion gave me an enigmatic smile.
“I think not, Watson. Marriage is a very uncertain and risky business. But you may give the bride and groom my best wishes and a suitable gift from Garrard’s if you will.”
And he reached out for his violin.
Eighteen ninety-five also saw the recorded cases of “The Solitary Cyclist”, “Black Peter” and “The Bruce-Partington Plans”, as well as several unrecorded cases, amongst them that of Wilson, the notorious canary trainer and the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca. There have been many attempts at recounting the episode of the notorious canary trainer and I am suspicious of all of them. And since there was no Cardinal Tosca, I have as yet not been able to identify what case Watson was referring to.
1896 is something of a mystery year. There are very few recorded cases until the autumn, and there is some dispute as to whether “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” belongs in 1895, 1896 or 1897, but it is certainly one of these three. I favour 1896 if only because I suspect Watson was giving us a clue as to Holmes’s whereabouts that year. Holmes could not, originally, investigate the Carfax mystery because he was involved in the case of old Abrahams, who was in mortal fear of his life. In fact Holmes believes, perhaps with a degree of wry delight, that he should not leave the country because Scotland Yard needed him. No matter how puckish a comment this may have been, it is likely that Holmes was involved in a major investigation for Scotland Yard, and that possibly it had taken him abroad at some time. The Yard’s files are blank on this, and the year remains a mystery. There is doubtless a further clue at the start of “The Veiled Lodger”, one of the cases which took place at the end of 1896, where Watson refers to attempts that had been made in senior circles to gain access to Watson’s files and papers. He drops a hint that if any more of this happens then the case of “the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant” would be revealed. Despite playful attempts by some to reveal this story, its facts have remained a mystery.
Nevertheless by the close of 1896 Holmes was clearly back in circulation. Watson records the case of “The Sussex Vampire” in addition to “The Veiled Lodger”, and my researches have unearthed three other cases.
“The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler” perhaps indicates that Holmes’s recent pursuits had put a significant strain upon his deductive skills. H.R.F. Keating, that renowned author of crime stories had, I believe, a certain pleasure in bringing this story back from the dead.
In “The Repulsive Story of the Red Leech” we have what is evidently a second episode that relates to this title, as Watson’s earlier reference to it suggested it happened in 1894, and the incident in “The Inertial Adjustor” seems to support that statement. David Langford’s computer skills tracked down clues via the Internet which first alerted us to the facts in this case which he has now brought together for the first time. Roger Johnson, another formidable Sherlockian, spent much time investigating the case of Henry Staunton, and has now completed it in “The Adventure of the Grace Chalice”.
The Adventure of the Suffering Ruler
H. R. F. Keating
It was in the early autumn of 1896 that, returning one day from visiting by train a patient in Hertfordshire and being thus in the vicinity of Baker Street, I decided to call on Sherlock Holmes, whom I had not seen for several weeks. I found him, to my dismay, in a sad state. Although it was by now late afternoon he was still in his dressing-gown lounging upon the sofa in our old sitting room, his violin lying on the floor beside him and the air musty with cold tobacco smoke from the neglected pipe left carelessly upon the sofa arm. I glanced at once to the mantelpiece where there lay always that neat morocco