Sherlock Holmes - Tangled Skeins

David Marcum

Description

Sherlock Holmes's investigations were not always the neat and self-contained stories that were presented for publication. As Watson writes in his "Foreword": Holmes's cases overlapped one another considerably, often with the next beginning while the current was still in motion. Some moved linearly from start to finish without interruption, while others stretched, a piece here and a piece there, across weeks, months, or even years and decades. There are cases from the past that resonated into the present, or times when Holmes's path was detoured from the middle of one case into a completely different matter without warning. A few never reached any conclusion at all. Sometimes ... Holmes would find himself surrounded by the returning ripples of a matter that he had believed to be concluded years earlier, with the guilty miscreant supposedly far behind him.Watson chose the stories in this collection to represent this tangled skein. Join us as we ascend the seventeen steps to the sitting room at 221b Baker Street, discovering cases that range from Holmes's earliest days in practice to his activities during his supposed retirement on the South Downs of Sussex. The game is afoot!

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 20 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780927534
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title page
Sherlock Holmes - Tangled Skeins
Stories from the Notebooks of Dr. John H. Watson
by David Marcum



Publisher information
2015 digital version by Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
First Edition published in 2015
© Original Content Copyright 2015 David Marcum
The right of David Marcum to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious or used fictitiously. Except for certain historical personages, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.
Originally published in the UK by MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive,
London, N 11 3 GX
www.mxpublishing.co.uk
Cover design by www.staunch.com



Introduction
In Praise of the Deerstalker, and A Truly Great Hiatus, and How This Book Came To Be
Part I: In Praise of the Deerstalker
As I’ve related elsewhere, I started reading about Holmes and Watson when I was ten years old. Not long after, my parents gave me a copy of William S. Baring-Gould’s Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street , and it greatly influenced my future enjoyment of the World of Holmes, so much so that I have been collecting and reading stories about him ever since. I was amazed at all of the sources that Baring-Gould referred to in the back of the book, and I wanted to be one of those people who actually knew about Holmes, rather than just a casual visitor to Baker Street.
One cannot think about Holmes without seeing the iconic, universally recognized, and archetypal figure of The Man in the Deerstalker . It can be argued that Holmes never actually wore such a hat in the original Canon (although his “ear-flapped traveling-cap” was mentioned in “Silver Blaze”) and that the use of that type of hat was simply a touch added by that incredible illustrator, Sidney Paget.
But when one becomes acquainted with Holmes at an early age, and when he is wearing a deerstalker during that initial introduction, as he was on the cover of the first Holmes book that I acquired, one comes to associate it with him, whether it is strictly accurate or not. And from an early age, I wanted a deerstalker of my own.
I can still see it clearly, the very first deerstalker that I constructed from a plain blue cap of my father’s. It had no logos, insignias, or advertisements. It was simply blue. I didn’t permanently damage it, although I did destroy a different cap with a red bill, in order to sew the red bill onto the back side of the blue cap. Thus, one deerstalker, rather odd looking, and without ear flaps. I don’t know why I thought that the red attachment on the back was acceptable, but I did. And I wore it proudly in connection with the detective agency that I opened in the basement of our house. (We actually made a little money, performing chores for a neighbor that took pity on us, but those cases are not resting in a tin dispatch box somewhere, and they will never be written or read about.)
At some point I lost track of that first deerstalker, and my father snipped the threads holding it together, removing and discarding the red bill and reclaiming his blue cap. But even as I grew up, I wanted a real deerstalker.
When I was nineteen and a sophomore in college, I went home on my birthday, where my parents proudly presented me with the real thing, a true and authentic deerstalker. It was a hounds tooth pattern, heavy tweed, and the earflaps were tied up with thin leather thongs. It had actually been made in England, and my parents had ordered it from somewhere quite expensive in New York. I was thrilled and amazed.
So I was back at college the next day with my deerstalker, and it was time to make a decision. Did I keep this thing as a treasured souvenir to sit in dust on a shelf, or did I wear my Sherlockian Pride on my head, proclaiming my beliefs and walking the walk? I decided to live up to my convictions and put on the hat! And then I walked to the dining hall for lunch. No looking back.
The hat caused some initial comment around campus and amongst my friends, but amazingly not as much as I’d feared. It became my hat and look for the remainder of my time there until graduation. I wore it to and from class, and for walks in the college woods, and to the mall or out to eat or to the movies, and wherever else that I went. I wore it in yearbook photos. I’m sure it attracted some stares, since one did not and does not see that type of hat where I live. I’ve had a few comments from passers-by over the years, but they are rare. One person pronounced that I must be a Robert Downey, Jr. fan. (No.) One wag cleverly called me Inspector Clouseau. Even when I’ve worn my hat during trips to New York or Washington, D.C. and walked the streets, no one has really said anything. And in the last thirty years, since I received and started wearing that very first hat, I’ve never yet encountered anyone else who was simply wearing a deerstalker in his or her everyday life as an everyday hat.
A few years ago, some of my family got together and bought for me the ultimate Christmas gift, a real Inverness and matching Deerstalker, custom made for me in Scotland. While I’m used to wearing a deerstalker everywhere, I must admit that it is more difficult to find excuses to go out in full Inverness and Fore-and-Aft, but I have occasionally done so, and even then I did not attract the excessive attention that one would expect. Possibly I carry it off with such swagger that it elicits no curiosity. Or perhaps I look eccentric or even dangerous, and people are giving me a wide berth. In deference to my wife, and the point when I would definitely cross her mortification line, I don’t go out often in full regalia, but I still wear a deerstalker on a daily basis for most of the year.
So I’ve always worn a deerstalker as my only hat, from the time that the weather cools off in the fall until it becomes too warm to wear it in the spring. And it goes without saying that I wore a deerstalker when I was finally able to make my trip-of-a-lifetime Holmes Pilgrimage to England.
Part II: A Truly Great Hiatus or The Holmes Pilgrimage
I had wanted to go to England for most of my life. It called to me. I couldn’t watch any movie or television program about the place without wanting to put my feet there. In most directions back, my family tree is English or Scottish. (My mother was a Rathbone, and my great-grandmother was a Watson.) And most of all, I wanted to visit all of those places that I had only imagined when reading the Holmes Canon. Finally, after making exhaustive lists, giving my employer plenty of notice, and consulting my collection of over a dozen Holmes travel books, I was ready. This trip was just me and the places that I wanted to go. And my sole companion on the journey was my deerstalker.
I wore that hat everywhere while I was over there. For a few weeks in September 2013, a man in a deerstalker roamed Baker Street once again. Of course, I went to the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street multiple times, and tried to visit the sites of all the other possible theorized locations for 221 b up and down Baker Street as well. I stayed in the Sherlock Holmes Hotel on Baker Street on every night that I was in London, and it was there that MX Publishing held a book-signing for me. (To be honest, I didn’t actually wear the deerstalker during that event, but I had it with me, and it sat on my lap while I did a reading from a previous book.)
I went to as many Holmes-related sites as I could while I was there. If it wasn’t connected to The Master one way or another, I pretty much didn’t do it. I didn’t go up on the London Eye, for example, because it wasn’t something that was there in the good old days. (The few exceptions to my Holmes-only rule included visits to Poirot’s lodgings, James Bond’s house in Chelsea, and most of all, 7 b Praed Street, the residence of Solar Pons and Dr. Parker. It certainly doesn’t look the same now as it did in the old pictures - what a loss!)
My deerstalker and I ate well at Simpson’s. I went to the Sherlock Holmes Pub with it - and through the courtesy of a kind Sherlockian friend, was actually able to go into the exhibit room/museum and touch many of the Sacred Objects, and then this same noted Sherlockian gave me a personal “Empty House” walking tour through various streets and mews to the back of Camden House. I went to Montague Street and visited the exact building that Michael Harrison identified (in The London of Sherlock Holmes -1973) as the one where Holmes lived in the 1870s, when he first came up to London. I roamed Pall Mall, identifying The Diogenes Club and Mycroft Holmes’s residence across the street to my own satisfaction. I went to both of the old Scotland Yards. I went to the front door of each of Watson’s identified residences - Paddington, Kensington, Queen Anne Street - based on information culled from the Holmes travel books in my collection. I journeyed up to Hampstead to visit Milverton’s house. I explored up and down the river and around “Upper Swandam Lane,” The Tower (the location of many pastiches), and sites in the City. I went to Paddington and King’s Cross and Charing Cross and Victori