A CATALOGUE OF ERRORS IN SHERLOCKIAN PASTICHE
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How many monks make seven? Septimus Calthorpe states quite clearly to Holmes & Watson that The Secret Seven is an order of non-religious monks: "Seven being a mysterious number, and I decided that it should be made up of just seven monks at any one time. I would choose the other six persons myself in the first instance and then, should any one of them die or leave for some reason, the rest of us would between us choose a member to replace him and bring the number back to the required number." (P.8), and to confirm it, on their arrival at the Priory, in the guise of two new members to replace the two recently deceased monks, they are introduced to Brother Pisces, who becomes quite emotional because "We are back to seven again!" (P.23). Obviously what is particularly mysterious about the number seven in this case is that it appears to have no connection whatsoever to the quantity that the rest of us generally assume to be seven. As well as Calthorpe (Brother Prior) and Brother Pisces, we are introduced to Brother Shepherd, Brother Reaper (also known as Brother Orchard), Brother Carp & Brother Abacus on P.30, and by the time we reach P.40 a Brother Chef has appeared. With Holmes & Watson that makes a total of nine members of the Secret Seven.
Strange events indeed - the Governor of the Bank of England who calls on Holmes to investigate the theft of the special Centenary bonds (the centenary of the Bank's new building is in June, 1900) is Samuel Gladstone (P.1), who served in the post from 1899-1901. Is Watson so out of touch with British politics that he doesn't know who is Prime Minister? When that worthy comes calling at Baker Street, Watson says that he was "instantly recognisable for his position and nobility" as The Earl of Rosebery (P.33) who had served in the post from 1894-1895. The Prime Minister during Gladstone's time at the Bank was the Marquess of Salisbury.
Possibly the first pastiche founded in its totality on a blooper. The newly discovered Watsonian manuscript is found together with a letter from Mary Shelley ( P.iv). "I am sending you a copy of the completed story that I have just penned. I have left all references to you and Mr Holmes out of my story", she writes to Watson. Oh why didn't Mr Baranowski Google Mary Shelley to find out that she died in 1851, a good thirty years prior to Holmes and Watson's first meeting, and that Frankenstein was published in 1818, thirty-five or so years before Holmes was born?
P.102: Holmes learns about the security arrangements at the temple from which the chalice has been stolen, and is told, "There is only one entrance and it is guarded night and day by heavily armed monks highly trained in the Order's marital arts..." And I always thought they were sworn to celibacy - I wonder what they do when they catch someone?
P.77: Jones expresses his desire to visit the grave of "A man named Robert Newton [who] was hanged for sheep stealing in 1821. He swore that he was innocent and predicted that grass would not grow upon his grave." Actually, the name of the man buried in Montgomery in 1821 was John Davies.
P.133: What was Holmes lighting when "he lit a vesper" for the old lady in the marshes? (Conan Doyle uses a related brand, the "Swan vespa" in Walter Satterthwaite's Escapade (P.104).)
Golden Dawn members "Mr and Mrs Arnold Underhill" (P.188) have magically transfomed into "Mr and Mrs Victor Underhill" by the time Holmes meets them (P.203).
P.22: Meeting her father in New York on April 14th, 1907, Holmes's daughter, 'Boomer', tells him "I...adore Kipling, Stevenson, H.G. Wells, Conrad, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew." Unfortunately, her enjoyment of the latter two works was, of necessity, somewhat limited as the first Hardy Boys story The Tower Treasure was not published until 1927, and Nancy Drew did not make her first appearance in The Secret of the Old Clock until 1930.
P.24: At the beginning of the story, Holmes is worried that his mind isn't as sharp as it once was, clearly he is right to be worried, as he tells his daughter that in 1894 he met her mother, and that after she walked out on him, he stayed in Paris and was absent from London for a year: "it was there that I took up cocaine," and yet according to Watson, Holmes was using cocaine at least as early as 1888 (SCAN), if not before. It is odd that Watson doesn't mention in the canon that immediately after the three years of the hiatus, Holmes disappeared for a further year. Holmes also states, of Moriarty, that he "finally caught and destroyed him in '97", and yet everyone knows that the encounter at Reichenbach took place in May, 1891.
P.48: Perhaps the greatest mystery is how Watson came to hear "the clatter of the single-cylinder Jensen engine" installed on a ship in 1894, seven years before its inventor, Tom Jensen, was born in 1901.
Although the ghosts aren't real in this story, students of cryptozoology, or abduction theorists may find the strange case of the misplaced fauna worth investigating. A whippoorwill appears on P.84. While there are nightjars in the UK, the whippoorwill is a species native to North America (There is mention of a whippoorwill in the canon, but it occurs in the American section of STUD). Likewise neither mourning doves (P.147, 242 ), nor katydids (P.150), nor gophers (P.213) are native to England. Goldenrod (P.195) & Scrub Oak (P.208) are not native flora.
P.205: The hounds in the hunting section of the story have apparently developed a new strategy for confusing the fox - they pretend to be donkeys: "The braying of dogs announced the arrival of the Huntsman, the hounds swarming around the feet of his bay gelding, their moist noses to the ground, occasionally lifting their heads to bray with the peculiar hoarse voices of foxhounds." Perhaps that should read "peculiar horse voices".
P.v: "A descendant of Doctor John H. Watson and his wife, Mary, nee Marsden." The second Mrs. Watson, maybe? Surely not chosen simply because her name was so similar to Watson's first wife, Mary Morstan?
P.vii: "Initially [Holmes] sought refuge on the Continent but, following an attempt against his life in India that was very nearly successful and from which he considered himself lucky to have escaped intact, he thought it prudent to abandon Europe altogether." I know India was part of the British Empire, but hadn't realised it had been so thoroughly subsumed as to become part of Europe as well.
P.4: "Leave it to the Americans to twist the King's English in such a manner." In 1893 Queen Victoria would have been fimly in possession of the English language. (Peter Crowther makes the same mistake on P.280 of "The Adventure of the Touch of God")
P.76: Colonel Moran is downgraded to "Captain Moran".
P.84: Watson's memory lets him down when he says that "on April 24th, 1891...Holmes and I were in our flat on Baker Street discussing air-guns and the possible dangers to him from Moriarty and his criminal empire...(as detailed in my writing, "The Adventure of the Final Problem")". Actually as detailed in The Final Problem, this conversation occurred at Watson's home, backing on to Mortimer Street.
P.114: "Sir Henry's coach is awaiting us below" says Bram Stoker to Holmes in the summer of 1889 (p.109), eager to take him into the Surrey countryside to investigate an incident of vampirism. Stoker must hold his employer, Henry Irving, in great esteem to give him such a title, for Irving did not receive his knighthood until 1895.
P.56: Scraggs has trouble remembering just who his friends are: here he hopes "that Jennings the chestnut seller" can sneak him into the Regal Theatre to see Lola del Fuego's flame dance, although earlier he was talking about "Simkins, the boy who does chestnuts outside" the same theatre (P.11).
P.48: Submarine engineer "Harry Brotherton" is the next potential victim of the murderer, but by the time Watson, Mycroft and Lestrade see him being attacked by a gigantic hound on a Yorkshire moor he is called "James Brotherton" (P.99), reverting to "Harry" again in time for the newspaper article announcing his death (P.125).
P.99: "An age in her embraces passed / Would seem a winter's day," quotes Mycroft, adding, "Our friend, Pope had a word for every occasion, however lugubrious." He may well have, but that wasn't one of them - Mycroft is in fact quoting from The Mistress by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester.
P.121: "I was able - by employing what I believe is called the Heimlich Manouevre - to, shall we say, ease the situation." While Holmes may have been able to apply the Heimlich Manouevre in 1895, he is remarkably prophetic in his beliefs, as Henry Jay Heimlich, after whom it is named, was not born until 1920.
P.141: "So it was with cheerful tread that I climbed the fourteen steps to our rooms in Baker Street later that evening. Watson, the man who sees and observes, listens and learns, sifting the facts and missing nothing." ...apart from the extra three steps that make up the seventeen Holmes pointed out last time he lectured him on seeing and observing in "A Scandal In Bohemia":
"You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is
clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead
up from the hall to this room."
"Frequently."
"How often?"
"Well, some hundreds of times."
"Then how many are there?"
"How many? I don't know."
"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is
just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps,
because I have both seen and observed.
Dilisio's book Sherlock Holmes: Mysteries of the Victorian Era is so riddled with grammatical errors, anachronisms, and factual errors that I can only include a very small selection here.
P.27: The arguments about Holmes and Watson's sexual proclivities may be reaching an end: Watson clearly states that "A knock at the door soon followed. I answered and just as predicted, entered Sir Judson Charlemane."
P.34: Perhaps this is a case from the end of Holmes's career, he is clearly not at his sharpest, and having trouble understanding what is going on, for he tells Gregson, "I am now in the mist of this investigation."
P.74: The Prime Minister's telegram states that the diamond "was last seen on the outskirts of Yorkshire", yet Gregson tells Holmes (P.76) that "the plan was to stop in York and place the diamond into a safe in the train station". York is not, by a long stretch, on the outskirts of Yorkshire. It is also curious that a railway station in the city of York would be surrounded by fields, forests and hillsides.
P.87: The diamond is stolen from the railway station, right? And Holmes takes a train up to Yorkshire to finish the case off, right? Now, when he "instructed the driver to wait inside the station" I might almost have convinced myself that this meant the train driver, but then, overleaf (P.88) we are told that "another cab arrived with Inspectors Gregson and Robinson". Now either they have made a hansom cab journey from Baker Street to Yorkshire, a trip which makes the "Project" cab ride to Oxford look like a doddle, or they have taken a cab from the train to the station buildings. I know the Victorians were fond of building their railway stations on a grand scale, but, come on...cabbing it smacks of Mycroftian lethargy.
P.12: In the laboratory of the murdered professor there are five vials of liquid, one of which is "still slightly steaming". We are told (P.23) that this was three days after the murder, which makes Holmes's analysis of the liquid (P.20), "none other than liquid nitrogen" rather strange - liquid nitrogen would have evaporated, at best, within minutes of being exposed to room temperature.
P.14: We are asked to believe that the experiments into increasing "the speed" of an electric current are taking place at Oxford University, however, the fact that Holmes is able to make two hansom cab trips to the University in the space of a single day suggests that this is not The Oxford University, merely An Oxford University, located somewhere close to Baker Street.
P.18: Watson seems to have developed a passion for the word "divulged" but hasn't made much effort to check up on its correct usage. As Holmes prepares to restage the fatal experiment, he writes "The four divulged into the experiment after a short description of its equipment, components and intention were given". Later (P.23), when Holmes is explaining the murder he states that "Professor Crabtree informed me that he did not divulge into any alcohol that night during his visit".
P.21: A rather slipshod murderer, this one: Holmes tells us that on the night of the murder he must have stayed around to "[close] the power on the table after the large current took effect....If electricity was the cause, why then was there no existing current on the table? The Professor could not have possibly turned off the power." So why, having stuck around until after the Professor was dead, didn't the murderer think of removing that give away vial of steaming liquid nitrogen?
P.53: No, Rock, maple trees don't grow in England.
P.57: Not strictly a blooper, I suppose, but certainly the lamest revelation of an imposter in the entire field of Sherlockian pastiche, if not the whole genre of detective fiction.....perhaps the entire history of literature: the "swindler" posing as the parish priest is revealed when he fails to recognise Holmes's mention of the New Testament:
"The New Testament must be used in its infinite
wisdom."
"What did you just mention, Mr. Holmes?" asked the confused
Reverend Wallis.
"New Testament. The Bible. I am sure that you've heard of it."
Holmes answered.
Godfrey Norton was, perhaps, more seriously injured
during his abduction than he believes. It certainly seems to have
affected his short term memory: P.212: " 'You must tell
me more of this 'Pink' person that Irene took under her wing in
Paris'
'I do not think that I must, Godfrey, but I will. Her real name is
Elizabeth...' " And Nell goes on to tell all she knows about
the reporter Nellie Bly, alias 'Pink', how she was encountered in a
brothel where two women had been murdered, and Irene had taken her
back to their hotel room. However, by the time we reach P.
279, Godfrey has forgotten entirely that he has ever heard of
her and Nell has to repeat the whole story all over again.
P.72: Perhaps it's not surprising when you consider that she had 14 brothers and sisters, but Pink does seem to have trouble remembering her brother's name, which changes within a few lines from Albert: "My brother Albert and I jumped between them..." to Alfred: "I testified and so did Alfred"
P.74: " The handle was stiff. But I pushed, and I was in like Blackstone the magician." In May, 1889, the reporter Nellie Bly, alias 'Pink', describes for Irene Adler how she discovered the grisly murder of two women in a Parisian bordello. Harry Blackstone is widely credited as being one of the greatest magicians of all time. I would suggest that to have such a reputation in 1889, when he would have been four years old, possibly makes him THE greatest.
P.9: He may be a damn fine personal secretary and biographer, but Paterson Guthrie sucks as a mathematician. "It was in June of 1887 that I came to the employ of...Mycroft Holmes" he tells us, and then goes on to begin his account of their first encounter with the Brotherhood (P.11) on "a warm Tuesday in the middle of October" and goes on to work out (P.14) that it had been "eight months I had worked for Mr Holmes".
P.177: Narrator Harris passes through St James's Square in Edinburgh where "Sir Walter had composed his celebrated letters to Clarinda". As a professor of literature at an elite American college, he should have been aware that it was Robert Burns, not Walter Scott, who was in romantic correspondence with Clarinda (Agnes McLehose).
Someone's not paying attention, Spencer Holmes reads in the newspapers that "Harold Fleischakel had built the winery in 1937 after migrating to the valley from Eastern Europe" (P.81). When Holmes reviews his notes on the case, however (P.139), he has Fleischakel's place of birth listed as "San Francisco". The same set of notes date Stephen Douglas Hunter's death to 1979 (P.139), despite Sarah Bernstein having stated that he died in 1981 (P.72).
P.195: Watson encounters the head gardener of Corby Manor, Sam Pearce, whom he describes as "...my medical orderly, and when General Burrows's force had been routed at Maiwand and I had been severely wounded, he had put me across a horse and led me through the night to Kandahar". This gibes somewhat with his account in A Study in Scarlet of "Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines."
P.20: We all know that the Diogenes Club is opposite Mycroft's rooms in Pall Mall, so why does the Gazette give its address as: "Diogenes Club, 421 East Crown" ?
P.25: Not only did he have his life taken from him at Reichenbach, but also his title, for in 1895 he has been demoted from Professor to "Dr. James Moriarty".
P.29: Mycroft questions how an outsider would have known about the trophy stolen from the Diogenes Club, and proudly asserts, "Valuables of this sort are not noised about by the Diogenes", a rather odd statement when he has just read aloud from the morning's newspaper (P.21) that "...the building is a repository for many priceless artifacts [sic]."
P.39-40: The Baker Street rooms are ransacked, but not content with simply overturning the chemical bench and burning some papers, the marauders seem to have carried out major structural alterations, for although it was shot into the wall in the "Musgrave Ritual", here we are told that Holmes "directed his gaze to the ceiling where his patriotic 'V.R.' bore witness of his occasional indoor pistol practice'.
P.9:...are strange indeed, for in Holmes's retelling of the Blue Carbuncle case, Commissionaire Peterson has changed professions and become "a constable of my acquaintance" (see also Inspector Ginkgo Tips His Hat To Sherlock Holmes by Alex Jack, pages 108-109).
P.67: I've heard of gingerbread houses, but have never come across a dwelling like Mrs. Ryder's which was apparently built of "yellow brick and stone lentils" (maybe it was a "dhal-house"). The house also suffers from the pasticheurs' curse of the misplaced flora, although the "dogwood in bloom" in the garden could, I suppose, have been imported.
P.88: There has been much tiresome debate on the nature of Holmes & Watson's relationship, but what exactly does Watson mean when he refers to himself as Holmes's "closet friend"?
P.91-92: Wolfgang Kern's memory for detail is just as bad as Holmes's for throughout his theorising on the truth behind the Lauriston Gardens murder he refers to Enoch Drebber as "John Drebber the Utah Mormon".
P.69: The wax bust is no longer in its place in the Baker Street sitting room in 1945 because "Mme. Tussaud had...asked Holmes if she might have the replica for her famous waxworks just down the street". Quite a remarkable request from a woman who had died ninety-five years earlier.
Holmes refers to (P.305) "Her Majesty's censors" and "Her Majesty's Metropolitan Police" (P.310) at a time (1918) when King George is on the throne.
P.165: Hardly the life and soul of the party, one of the guests at Edward VII's 1906 birthday celebrations at Sandringham House is identified as "the furniture millionaire, Sir Blundell Maple" who, at that time, had already been dead for three years.
P.165: He may be bright, but Mr. Mycroft is no biblical scholar. He refers to "Jacob's praise of his son, 'The smell of my son is even as the smell of the fruitful field.' " Unfortunately the quoted passage is Jacob, disguised as Esau, being praised by his father, Isaac.
P.43: Albert Skinner's home town "Chicopee Falls, Mass." has moved over several states and become "Chicopee Falls, Iowa" by the time the bounty hunter, O'Shea, arrives there (P.197).
P.159: Like his grandfather Sherlock, Creighton Holmes lives in Baker Street. Unlike his grandfather, however, he seems to have little grasp of the geography of London: "You [have] come from the direction of Waterloo Station, which is not too many blocks away," he tells new client, Ann Winter. Actually Waterloo Station is well over a mile from Baker Street, perhaps closer to two miles from 221B, and on the other side of the Thames.
P.216: Beatrix Dodd tells Creighton Holmes that her "maid's name is Josie Tuttle - or was - her married name is Ricket", except that by P.231 it has become "Rickert" and on P.232 her given name has changed to "Lizzie".
P.18: Creighton Holmes is obviously overestimating village policeman Dodson when he describes him as "a bit slow-witted". He tells Holmes about the assistant gardener, "a young fellow by the name of Joe Hendy" only to refer to him a few sentences later as "Joe Hardy".
P.42: Things seem to go strangely awry on this page, first government agent Loring says "I can tell you...about the exploits of Jeeves, the man-servant in S.J. Perlman's delightful stories" which does no justice to either P.G. Wodehouse or to S.J. Perelman, then Milton reads Holmes' comments on his Tibetan activities during the hiatus, which he says are from "The Empty Room" . Maybe they need to start using a different bookstore.
P.111: Another wonky moment here: Holmes refers to "The recent ascension to the throne of Edward VI" which would place his discussion with James Ryder, Jr., in 1547 or thereabouts.
P.71: Travelling back to the first century on the Time Machine, Watson observes "Summer giving way to autumn, to winter, and then spring". If they are travelling backwards in time, shouldn't the seasons go in reverse - summer giving way to spring, then winter, then autumn?
P.118: Clearly Watson has used the Time Machine before, and not told us, for having travelled from 1908 back to AD29, he claims to remember the phrase "Mad dogs and Englishmen" which was penned by Noel Coward in 1932. (The same error occurs in Larry Millett's Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders, P.81)
P.120-121: In first century France, Holmes & the Arch Druid, Drumb, have an argument, which Holmes tells Watson was because "Believe it or not, the Arch Druid had his eye on the remaining potatoes and he was excessively upset that I took the last of them." I would tend to go for the "not believe" option, taking into consideration that these events happened fifteen hundred years or so before Europe was introduced to the potato.
Jeffers's Forgotten Adventures of Sherlock Holmes might better be subtitled the Forgetful Adventures of Dr Watson. He really does seem to have a terrible time remembering names throughout all the stories. In this one Cardinal Tosca (BLAC) has turned into "Cardinal Cosca" (PP. 51-52).
Oh, dear, Watson's memory is really going in this one: "In contrast to Holmes's interest in maritime matters, my experience with seas and the hardy men who plied them was reading Clark Russell's fine sea stories, Robert Louis Stevenson, and the American writer Herman Melville" (PP. 167-168), and yet this is only one sentence after he has included the troop ship Orontes on which he travelled back from India (STUD) in a list of ships that have featured in Holmes's cases - it seems that he is relying on Jack Tracy's Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana over his own memory!
Who do you believe - the press or the neighbour? Holmes learns in the newspapers that the murdered woman, Amanda Post, "was stone deaf from birth" (P.136) and repeats this fact in his summing up of the case (P.144): "a wealthy woman,who despite the handicap of being deaf is charming and attractive". Doris Roberts, who lives next to the Posts, however says that she keeps an eye on the Post house for the comings and goings of salesmen who might try to take advantage of "that poor blind woman" (P.138).
Watson's memories on the blink again. Here "Prince Alexei" (P.109) has become "Prince Sergei" by P.112, and the Conk-Singleton Forgery (SIXN) has transformed into the "Cook-Singleton Forgery" (P.108).
Perhaps it's not Watson's memory for names - perhaps she's Adelina Patti's less famous sister, maybe she was a bad speller or had indecipherable Watsonian handwriting, or perhaps Maitland Morris just got the wrong woman when he asked "Angelina Patti" (P.21) to sign his autograph book.
Throughout the novel "Tor" is referred to as if it is a single geographical place (like "Mount Everest" or "The Gobi Desert") on Dartmoor, rather than a general geological term for the granite outcroppings of the area.
The attempts on his life by Moriarty are evidently weighing heavy on Holmes's mind: although Dr Paradene's assistant is introduced to Watson as "Albert" (P.41) Holmes twice refers to him as "James" (PP. 44 & 48).
Watson is also somewhat distracted - his battered tin dispatch box in the vaults of Cox & Co. has here become an "ammunition box" (P.40), and he has decided to try a different spelling when he refers to Holmes's investigations into the Trepoff murder in Odessa (SCAN), now deciding to see how "Trepov" (P.42) looks on the page, instead.
Dr Ponsonby is a name change victim in this one, despite Lord Landers' assertion that Ponsonby Hall was established by "Dr Morgan Ponsonby" (P.149), when he and the school matron, Mrs Arkwright, are threatened by Holmes, she cries out "For God's sake, Arthur" (P.161).
Holmes's contact at the British Museum, the expert on the fauna of the American West, "Jonas Appleton" (P.153) has become "Jonas Appleby" by the end of the case (P.163).
The Sophy Anderson (FIVE) is now spelled "Sophie Anderson" (P.148).
P.131: Shirley Holmes tells Joan Watson that the Medici Pearl belonging to "Sir Henry Masterson" has been stolen, yet when the fake lord turns up in Sussex later he announces himself as "Sir Joseph Masterson" (P.179) and both he and the real lord are referred to as such for the rest of the story.
P.85: Carnacki checks the amnesiac Holmes into the Prefargier Sanatorium under the name "Harold Thomas", but when he pays a rescue call on Holmes later (P.98), the name on Holmes's bed is "James Thomas", the name Carnacki had previously given himself.
P.107: "Those Russian emigrés with their strange political beliefs. My imperial cousin Nicholas has created quite a problem for himself with his vacillating between concessions and repressions" says the Crown Prince of Rumelia. Perhaps having a bomb chucked at him the previous day has shaken him up a little, Nicholas I ruled Russia from 1825 to 1855, and Nicholas II from 1894 until his overthrow in 1917. In 1891, when the Crown Prince is speaking, his imperial cousin Alexander III was on the throne and overturning his father's liberalist reforms in Russia. Perhaps this is why, after hearing the Prince's ideas, Benjamin Barnett "leaned back...and spent a minute in thought, trying to remember his European history."
P.122: On the origin of the Highland Games, Hamish Graham tells Watson, "It seems that in the 1200s, King Malcolm II was in search of a royal messenger". In legend, it is Malcolm III who is responsible for the race to choose a royal messenger. He reigned from 1058 to 1093, not in the 1200s.
P.69: "The inspector was...less wiry than when we first met during the unforgettable case of the Baskerville Hound" says Watson of Lestrade in 1894. Obviously not so unforgettable was the Study in Scarlet case in which he met Lestrade in Lauriston Gardens only a few weeks after meeting Holmes and on his first case alongside him.
P.311: Holmes tells Watson that while searching for him on his return to London "I tried to locate you at the usual haunt's, at St Bart's Hospital, your office on St Anne's Street". Perhaps he'd have had more success if he'd tried Queen Anne Street where Watson had his quarters in ILLU.
P.192: Watson tells his wife about a murder outside "St Benet Greenchurch", the following day he is referring to it, more correctly (P.195) as "St Benet Gracechurch".
P.207: Within a few breaths Mycroft has referred to the possessor of Queen Victoria's letters as "Alexander Brown" and "Andrew Brown" and as a "nephew of John Brown". When Amelia Watson visits him (P.209) she discovers that he is indeed called "Alexander", but she goes on to also refer to him as (P.211) "Andrew" and learns that he is now (P.210) "cousin to the late servant o' the queen".
Although in the title the name of the villain and his wife is spelled "McGregor", throughout the story it is spelled "MacGregor".
P.125: Amelia Watson arrives back at her hotel in Bath where "Mrs Grimes and Missy, no doubt alarmed by the din of the motorcar, both peered through the front window." Something spooky is going on here, because, as she tells her husband as they are climbing the stairs a few minutes later, (P.127) Missy is currently "At the house of an old friend."
P.150: A case of premature burial casts doubt on Holmes's deductions, as he and his friend Ponelle break into the tomb of Paris Opera architect, Charles Garnier, prise the lid of his coffin and gaze upon "the remains of a tall male in a state of horrific decomposition" which Ponelle is quick to identify as Garnier. One wonders how well Ponelle actually knew Garnier, as the case takes place at the beginning of the hiatus in 1891, eight years before Garnier's death in 1898.
Holmes and Watson are living, temporarily, in Dorset Street, while the Baker Street rooms are being decorated. Their landlady is Mrs. Hudson's sister-in-law, Mrs. Ackroyd. During the course of their investigations they travel to the village of High Cogges in Oxfordshire, where they interview the local postmistress, Mrs. Beck. Now we are not made privy to the effect that ladies' man Watson had on her, but it must have been considerable, because at the conclusion of the case (P.219), when Holmes, back in London, has been stabbed by Jean-Pierre Fromental, the door bursts open and in come "John Mackelsworth, closely followed by our old friend Inspector Lestrade, Mrs. Beck and one or two other tenants of 2, Dorset Street".
Their client, like the Chief Inspector of Bath in Frank Thomas's "The Pilfered Paintings", seems remarkably liberal in the spelling of his surname, veering wildly between "Macklesworth" and "Mackelsworth" throughout the story.
P.86: The inventor of Colonel Moran's air gun is credited as one "Müller" in this story, rather than Von Herder.
P.22: "Last week Mr. John Fulham...took me to see Sir Henry Irving's new play at the Lyceum Theatre," Amy Stoddard tells Holmes on December 21st, 1887. She must have been really impressed with his performance to award him with the knighthood that even he was not informed about until May, 1895.
P.10: "Lord Kensington was a man close to 70, well fed and rounded and his fat face carried red glowing checks [sic]. His hair and full beard were gray and well manicured. He reminded me of an aging Prince Albert." I think Watson is really thinking of Prince Edward (later Edward VII) here. Presumably the tartan cheeks were in honour of Her Majesty's visits to Balmoral.
P.151: "The Holy See can boast of several astrologer-popes, including John XX..." Because of what appears to be a Medieval Pope-numbering cock-up there was no Pope John XX.
P.171: "My pint of bitters was at hand and Holmes had a lager with lemonade" A rather odd choice of drink for Watson. A pint of bitter (ale) might have been more palatable. "Bitters" are essences, most commonly angostura, added very sparingly to drinks. If Watson was drinking them by the pint it was no wonder his military pension wasn't going very far.
Watson proves to be another victim of the short-term memory loss suffered by Godfrey Norton in Carole Nelson Douglas's Castle Rouge. On P.222 Holmes tells Watson, "The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (353BC) was a monumental marble tomb, decorated by the leading sculptors of the age, for King Mausolos [sic] of Caria in Asia Minor. Only fragments remain, but I will tell you more about that later". Which he proceeds to do on P.223: "Bodrum was formally [sic] known as Halicarnassus which King Mausolus of Caria ruled from..." and goes on at some length about the history of the Mausoleum. Watson, however, has much weightier issues on his mind: "Holmes...I have thought a great deal about the Seven Wonders of the World and I am troubled...why not six or eight?" Which perhaps explains why on P.228 when Holmes announces, "I believe we have found the treasure of Mausolus and Artemisia of Caria," Watson's response is a confident and undeniable, "Mausolus and Artemisia? Never heard of them. Who were they Holmes?"
Perhaps he was taking a tip from the Master - "You know my methods..." - who on P.175 asks the murdered man's wife, "Are you acquainted with the Royal Family of Persia?" Only moments earlier she had told him "We journeyed back to Persia for the [Shah's] funeral and visited with his son, Shah Muzaffar al-Din." (P.173)
P.35: It appears that the "Wagner Night" Holmes & Watson attended at the end of His Last Bow is more likely to have been Hart To Hart than Tannhäuser. As Watson is introducing the reader to the German town of Leipzig he states "Robert Wagner was born there."
P.63: We've all heard about surgeons performing emergency tracheotomies with butter knives and ballpoint pens, but the prize for ingenuity goes to the murderer who uses his own shoulder-blade as the murder weapon: "The incision made into the victim's chest was made with a surgeon's scapula or something very similar," announces the coroner. On P.68 the missing "scapulas" (the finest Watson has ever seen) are discovered in a locked cabinet - lucky for the murderer they didn't have DNA testing back then.
P.106: Always a man of action, where you or I or Mycroft might sit and peruse our paperwork, Holmes states, "The files had been placed in my office and I hung up my coat and hat and began to pursue the files."
P.26: Holmes loves to watch birds..."cardinals, finches, robin redbreasts, magpies, anything". Sadly he won't be able to watch those cardinals in London, as they are not native to the UK.
P.19 / 41: The song By Jingo! sung by George Leybourne (P.54-56) is attributed to "George Stratton" (P.19 & 41). In fact it was written by G.W. Hunt.
P.188: At church, Mycroft sings matins "in a setting by Thomas Tertius Noble". Internal evidence places this story in the second half of the 1870s; Noble was born in 1867, making him, at most, twelve years old at the time.
P.19: At a cabinet meeting in Downing Street in 1891 both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary are present. In 1891, however, both roles were filled by one man, Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury.
P.22-25: Throughout the meeting references are made to Malaysia, a name that did not come into use until the 1950s, and which was not adopted by the country until 1963. In the 1890s the country would still have been referred to as Malaya.
P.200-201: Perhaps a precursor of Doyle's John / James confusion over Watson's forename. He reports the psychiatrist, Cornelius, as being "a follower of the precepts of the late Dr James Connolly", while on the next page Cornelius recommends "John Connolly's" book on lunatic asylums.
P. 215: While walking to the murdered Colin Harding's house with Inspector Langton, Doyle writes that the dead man "Harding went on ahead".
P.131: San Francisco detective John Quincannon is keeping watch outside the home of "Elmer Truesdale, senior vice president of the San Francisco Maritime Bank" but expresses no surprise when a few hours later the man himself is introduced to him as "Samuel Truesdale" (P.137). His wife refers to him as "Elmer" (P.139), but Quincannon, now they've been introduced, continues stubbornly to think of him as "Samuel Truesdale" (P.160).
P.141: When Caleb Axminster introduces Quincannon to Holmes in 1894 he lists some of Holmes's cases which have been chronicled by Watson, expecting Quincannon to have read them: "'A Study in Scarlet,' 'The Red-Headed League,' 'The Sign of the Four,' the horror at Baskerville Hall, the adventure of the six orange pips...", Holmes corrects him on the number of the latter, but does not comment on the fact that The Hound of the Baskervilles would not be published until 1901.
P.194: Holmes appears to have discovered the precursor of e-books - the clockwork book: for although he was reading it on the train in BOSC, he sits in the insurance company offices in San Francisco with "his hands busy winding a pocket Petrarch".
P.45: Watson's father clearly had a hard time knowing which son he had named after himself as he is referred to as "Henry Moray Watson" becoming "John Watson Senior" further down the page before becoming "Henry Watson Senior" again on P.46.
PP.16, 18 etc.: While Holmes is in India during the Hiatus he is informed of an impending visit from the King-Emperor, Edward VII. I guess someone looked at the publication date of EMPT, not the story date.
P.120: Perhaps Holmes had been ordered by Mrs. Hudson to stop sticking the jack-knife in the mantelpiece, for when Watson looks for it he refers to "The knife on the wall".
P. 168: Moorcroft's diary states that when Dorjiloff interrupted his meeting with Holmes, whom he then fought and almost killed,"I fired directly into Dorjiloff's chest, killing him instantly". In Holmes's earlier account of the events to Watson (P.155-156), there is no fight, Dorjiloff is brought into the meeting bound and gagged, then taken away by two guards and banished from the country, "Holmes...later learned that in attempting to reenter Tibet he was killed on the spot by border guards."
P.239: Holmes is commissioned to deliver a valuable pearl to General Gordon in Egypt in 1893. Rather unfortunately, Gordon died in 1885.
P.2: Holmes's lack of interest in women may be explained by his admiration of Laura Coffin's carriage when she arrives at Baker Street: "You heard what I heard Watson - the handsome cab stopped immediately outside."
John Fitzgerald calls his refers to his wife as "Elizabeth" (P.77), but is calling her "Margaret" a short time later (P.80).
P.341: "He who is too shy to ask questions will never learn" quotes Holmes, attributing his words to "Rabbi Theodor Klein". In fact the quote comes from Rabbi Hillel.
PP.146-147: According to Dr Frederick, "Slightly over two months ago [the Titanic] left port from Southampton", which would date the start of this adventure to June, 1912. It must have been a very cold June, however, as Holmes has to light "a robust fire to take the chill off the room".
PP.122-125: Holmes comments "There seems to be a magical...influence on this planet that doesn't exist on Earth. I am inclined to think that the natural laws of the two planets are different". It seems that time works differently there, as well. On P.122 while Holmes & his colleagues are held prisoner, the first Martian cylinder lands. On P.123 we are told that it is "an hour or so later" when they are trying to cut a hole through their prison door, and Holmes states that it will be "twelve hours and thirty-seven minutes precisely" before the cylinder is cool enough to open after its landing. There follows a page of continuous dialogue, and on P.125 it is "an hour later" and yet Churchwarden states "It's been a little over ten hours since the first capsule landed".
P.61: Dr Hugo Enclave is a Holmesian scholar who goes so far as to emulate Holmes in dress, and in crime-solving activities, curious then that he believes that "A man named Moriarity was Sherlock Holmes' archrival".
The Case of the Bizarre Bouquets
P.4: One wonders whether the asylum matron means Sir Francis Drake or Sir Walter Raleigh when she says that one of the inmates believes he is "Sir Walter Drake".
PP.153-154: The Haffenden family's butler introduces himself as "Arthur Horncastle" when he arrives at Baker Street, which is odd, as throughout the rest of the story everyone refers to him and his wife as "Horniman".
The Crimes of Dr Watson
P22: The item on page 2 of the newspaper insert originally appeared in the New York Times on January 1st, 1865, and referred to the memorial service for William L. Dayton, US ambassador to France. Throughout the article the name of the ambassador has been changed to "William L. Rendall"; however, the headline still reads "Dayton Mourned in New York Memorial Service".
P.56: Can Watson count to two? Describing the prisoner Pearce he says, "His eyes scream the word murder" , yet only a paragraph later he describes, "his one good eye (the other socket is empty".
P.151: The "Babcock & Wilson" boiler is more likely to have been made by Babcock & Wilcox.
P.260: The spiritualist Professor Chamberlain is said by both Edmund Gurney and Sherlock Holmes to be a fake, yet how would they explain the fact that in his 1887 letter to Gurney he names the magician "Jasper Maskelyne", a man who would not be born until 1902? Thomas refers to the correct Maskelyne, John Nevil, in his endnotes (P.350). Sadly the endnote refers to the wrong page (P.231).
P.268: Holmes is using "Barr & Stroud precision field-glasses" in 1887, a year before Archibald Barr and William Stroud began designing their range-finding equipment in 1888.
P.54: Bennett states that the feud between the three families began "in the days of Monks Holes and the religious wars and this was not the peaceful countryside it is now. Martin Trewlawney was childless and adopted Charles who was a foundling". Now the last "religious war" to take place in England was the English Civil War (1640-1660). Even if we assume that this case took place at the start of Holmes's partnership with Watson, this would still mean that Martin Trewlawney (and do we really believe that that isn't a mis-spelling?) was some 250 years old when he was murdered. (See also Sherlock Holmes and the Treasure Train P.19)
P.60: "I am given to understand that at London's Globe Theatre and similar places where melodrama is a staple part of the diet, the investigator is forever re-creating the crime." Perhaps a reference to Hamlet, but the second Globe Theatre was torn down by the Puritans in the 1640s, and not rebuilt until the 1990s
It is well documented that no two examples of Shakespeare's signature spell his name in the same way. The same leeway seems to have been given to the Chief Constable of Bath in this story, who appears as "Truscott" (pages 125, 126), "Trescott" (pages 125, 126, 127, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136) and "Truscot" (page 132). His given name varies between "Fenwick" (pages 125, 132) & "Fenwich" (page 136).
A paper that, in part, details some problems within Mr. Thomas's work can be found at: www.diogenes-club.com/buffoon.htm
Constable Shaw joins Holmes and Watson in a "yard of stout" (P.15). This is a rather unusual way to greet such esteemed guests, the yard of ale being approximately three pints, drunk from a yard long glass vessel, traditionall downed-in-one by rugby players. It seems rather two-faced of Shaw to then complain about "local cutups [who] drain the bottle too deep" a few pages later (P.19).
I'd appreciate anyone who can explain the logic of the opening to Frank Thomas's "The Three Hats": P.11: "It was early September and the sky was a dark slate color with low-hanging clouds that provided an intermittent drizzle. One could well have said that it was a nice day for ducks. While this hardly ranked as an original statement, it did prove prophetic for in the early evening those first tendrils of fog crept down the streets of London to be followed by that moist, white blanket that so often enveloped the great metropolis" Surely this only makes any sense at all if we alter that last sentence to: "...it did prove prophetic for in the early evening a troop of ducks waddled past our Baker Street windows."
P.86: Describing his tour of the Tower of London, Thomas Llewelyn says, "Sir Walter Raleigh, Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth the First all were imprisoned here at one time or another". That may well be so, but in 1884, when he took the tour, the latter was still just plain old "Queen Elizabeth" - she didn't become Elizabeth the first until we got a second Elizabeth in 1952.
P.71: Edward Maitland gives his great-uncle's local vicar's address as "The Vicarage, Meadow Lane, Holbrook, Kent", which causes us some confusion when the same vicar meets Holmes and Watson off the train at the local station and they "Set off on the three mile drive down to Holbrook, down pleasant Sussex lanes" (P.73).
P.33: I've heard about the birds and the bees, but don't really see the attraction of the flies for the moths. Nevertheless, Holmes knows better, for he says of the Duke of Cloncury & Straffan that "He was well dressed and the waiters constantly hovered at his elbow to attend to his bidding like moths to a fly." Presumably, those are clothes moths.....
P.114: A man is murdered in the Bioscope cinema, it takes a while, but he is finally identified:"Arnold Truscott, the corpse in the cinema". Lestrade is distracted by other events, notably the Sidney Street Siege, which is perhaps why, the next time he refers to the man, he has become "Arnold Tasker" (P.148 & 151).
P.2: Holmes's deduction that Watson's thoughts have turned to goose comes in part from his recollection of his "somewhat lukewarm reaction to that scrawny turkey which was served up to us on Christmas Day last year" which stretches the credibility of his thinking process somewhat as we have just been told by Watson (P.1) that this is "Christmas during the great freeze of 1894...some months now since Holmes's sensational return to London". As that return was in April 1894 (EMPT), and Watson had not seen Holmes for the three years prior to that, it is unlikely that they shared Christmas dinner the previous year.
OK, I was trying to ignore the anachronistic, laboured English slang crow-barred into the dialogue, and the torturous attempts at regional dialects which would make Dick Van Dyke wince, but I can't overlook:
P.163: The fact that Richard Watson has been visiting Rodin dates this case to before 1917, when the artist died, which makes Emma Watson's choice of toy for Hildy, "an adorable Paddington bear completely outfitted with a bright yellow macintosh, wellies, and matching rain hat" truly remarkable, in that Paddington Bear was not created by Michael Bond until 1958.
P.172: Perhaps Dr Mull, the Scotland Yard forensics man, needs a quick refresher course in legal and medical terminology, for, when asked if he is sure about the cause of Dr Thornton's death, he states that he has "thoroughly reexamined the corpus delicti for puncture wounds" (if you're away from your legal dictionary at the moment: "corpus delicti - the aggregation of facts which constitute a breach of the law").
P.187: We're told in the back-cover blurb that this is an Edwardian mystery, and indeed Mycroft suggests that the plot afoot threatens "the King" (P.161), so isn't it rather snide of Richard Watson to tell Charles Steele, "I should think you'll soon be taking the silk for a Queen's Counsel"?
P.9: He may be able to do remarkable things with trains and telegraph poles, but the man's not so hot when it comes to judging his location from the sun. "Do you have any idea where we are?" asks Watson after their overnight journey in a curtained-off railway carriage. "Perhaps a hundred and fifty miles due north of London, judging from the time of sunrise." Replies Holmes confidently. He makes no comment on his deduction when they later learn that they are in fact in Scotland, about four hundred miles north of London.
P.15-16: When Watson & Mrs. Frevert are met by Holmes at his Sussex villa, he is wearing his old mouse-coloured dressing-gown (faded from its original purple), but before lunch he exchanges "his dressing gown for a Norfolk jacket". Presumably he kept the dressing-gown close at hand, because after lunch, while listening to his client's story, "he extracted from his dressing-gown pocket a silver match container" (P.20).
P.320: "Mycroft...still wields enormous influence, especially since the accession of King George IV to the throne of England" writes Holmes, which means that in 1917 either Mycroft had been in government service since at least 1820, or Holmes had forgotten that his current King was George V.
Watson may have three continents worth of experience with womemn, but he is still not too good at guessing their ages. When he first meets the medium, Mabel, he tells us that she is "a woman of late middle-age" (P.81), a couple of minutes later he is describing her as "perhaps early to mid-thirties" (P.83) - now that makes me feel old.
P.37: It seems that Robert Wagner isn't the only actor to have crept into the pastiche world (see Paxton's "The Macabre Affair" above), for here we learn that Holmes was summoned to Shoscombe Old Place by "a letter from one James Mason". Funny - he doesn't look old enough....
P.125: A cryptozoological alert, or perhaps just Mrs Masterson's lack of ornithological expertise, but it's highly unlikely that mockingbirds and mourning doves would have crossed the Atlantic to brighten up her mornings in Baker Street as she claims.
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