A CATALOGUE OF ERRORS IN SHERLOCKIAN PASTICHE
Click on these links for publication details of editions used for indexing:
P.41: In Dover, Irene describes the scene on the dock "where the albatrosses flew low". Obviously very-wandering albatrosses far from their usual habitats in the Southern hemisphere or the Pacific Ocean.
P.125: As Holmes, Irene Adler and Arsene Lupin sit in the Shackleton Coffee House, Holmes draws their attention to noise outside. Irene is eventually "able to hear...the voice of a paperboy on Fleet Street, the street where all the papers were sold."Little wonder she had to strain to hear, as Fleet Street is slightly over a mile away from Carnaby Street where the coffee house is located.
P.126: The same paperboy is evidently not expecting locals to buy his papers as he announces that his papers cost "fifteen cents" - only holders of foreign currency need apply.
How many monks make seven? Septimus Calthorpe
states quite clearly to Holmes and 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 and 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.
P.49: One has to doubt the efficiency of a police
inspector who doesn't know what country he's in. On P.42
Holmes and Watson arrive at the "Algiers waterfront"
and head straight to their hotel. On P.49 Inspector
Phillipe tells them that De Vere, the hotel chef, and the head
chambermaid "plan to marry and open a restaurant here in
Tangier".
P.51: Investigating the theft of a pearl necklace at
the Hotel Splendide in Algiers, Holmes intervies the
necklace's owner, whom, he tells Watson, is "Countess
Valeska...A Russian noblewoman", despite having been
told by Inspector Phillipe that the necklace had been stolen
from "a certain titled French lady" (P.46).
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 hate to think what they do when they catch an intruder.
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).)
P.136: What are we to make of the following dialogue:
"I am Katherine Collins."
"Miss Collier," said Holmes,"This is my friend and
associate, Dr. Watson."
She then alternates between being called "Collier"
and "Collins" on the following page, while her father, who is
usually known as "Collier", becomes "Mr. Colliers"
on P.140.
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.267: Holmes exhibits a terrible memory for names when he refers to the murdered man Ronald Fletcher (P.260) as "Robert Fletcher".
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.
P.135: Holmes and Watson visit the offices
of the Evening Standard during the course of their
investigation (P.127), but when Holmes presents his
account of the Case to Mycroft, he says "we had occasion
to visit the offices of the Evening Observer".
There is a rather anachronistic painting hanging in the drawing room at Parkerton Manor which apparently depicts "Drake at Trafalgar" (P.48).
P.115: According to Holmes, there is a story in the papers headlined "Prince Albert joins Queen at Balmoral". Since Albert died in 1861, well before Holmes's first meeting with Watson, this is highly unlikely.
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) and 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.331: The Evening Sun gives the name of the New Britannic Hotel's doorman as "Daniel Gerrigan" although earlier Gerrigan had been told by Sergeant Dunne that "You're Fred Gerrigan, two to five for assault in Attica..." (P.157).
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, when this adventure occurs, 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.63-64: He's lying to one of you! When his new client arrives, Holmes tells Watson, " He has an interesting story to tell. I would like my students to hear it, for what he has to say will be most instructive." When the client appears a few seconds later, however, he says to him, "I know nothing of your misadventure, so you have a fresh pair of ears for your story." It could be suggested that the client has only referred in general to the nature of his case in his earlier letter, but Holmes subsequent questions and reactions to his answers suggest that this was not the case.
P.172: "I peered through our porthole and into the porthole of the craft trapped by the stricken bullion carrier, Fitzwilliam". Watson was worried about suffering from nitrogen narcosis on his descent in the diving bell, and may not have escaped entirely as the sunken ship he is looking at is actually the SS Runswick (P.161). The Fitzwilliam is the salvage vessel he has just descended from.
P.8: What's the difference between a cognac and a table? We may doubt Doc "Sherlock" Doyle's claim to be a brandy connoisseur when, after pointing out a "collection of cognacs and brandies atop a Louis Fourteen giltwood center table" and identifying one of them, from its aroma on the breath of a dead man, as "Jenssen Arcana...aged ninety-eight years in French oak" (P.7), he then goes on to state that "you savor Louis Fourteen. It's for very special occasion...Quantities of the fourteen are extremely limited. You must have wealth to afford a bottle".
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 (about 200 miles), 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 (a round trip of over a hundred miles) 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.196: When he first arrives in Watson's prison cell
disguised as a guard, Holmes tells him (P.194) "News
of your youg friend's death reached me at Baker Street late
yesterday." A few moments later, he says "I have not
been to Baker Street for several days".
P.385: The vegetation is very quick-growing in Cornwall. When Watson first views Lellantrock House, he describes it as "a grim square building constructed from local grey stone. There were no vines to soften its starkness." (P.385). A short time later, when he makes his escape from the upper floors (P.390), "The ivy covering the wall was as neglected as the rest of the garden and thick enough to take my weight".
P.392: "I will be waiting for you at Baker Street. Go there and await my further word," writes Mycroft in his note to Watson. So, Watson has to go to Baker Street where Mycroft is waiting, but then has to stand around until Mycroft actually deigns to speak to him?
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.184: The crooked bookmaker travelling on the Flying Scotsman introduces himself to Mycroft Holmes as "Kerwin Heath" (P.124), but by the time his body turns up dead in the bathroom, Guthrie is referring to him as "Mister Kermit Heath".
P.230: Mycroft seems to have been paying little attention to the journey from London to Scotland as he describes the dangers lying ahead of them to Guthrie: "I anticipate the locations where we stop may be hazardous, Leeds and Sheffield the more so as we will be taking on water, sand, and coal, which will lengthen our halt...there are a series of curves after Leicester...that will force a reduction in speed..." He appears to have forgotten that at this point they have already passed, and indeed stopped at with no mishaps, Sheffield and Leicester.
P.72: Guthrie recalls "the Japanese aides - Messers [sic] Banadaichi and Minato - who had been involved with the death of Lord Blackenheath". In Embassy Row , in which these events are recounted, it is the death of "Lord Brackenheath" that he and Mycroft investigate.
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.76: Pastiches are filled with characters who fall
asleep "in the arms of Morpheus", here, on the other hand, Dr
Watson slips into "the arms of Orpheus".
P.361: Holmes reassures Miss Aldebourne that Watson "likes
to keep notes of these perusals of mine". Unfortunately
those notes appear to be none too accurate, as Watson
immediately refers to Miss Aldebourne's father Professor
Aldebourne as "Professor Hawthorne".
P.181: A prison guard is introduced to
Holmes and Van Helsing as "Edgar Tennant" (P.173),
yet his file records his name as "George Arnold Tennant".
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.89: When their carriage is stopped, Evaline Stoker notes that, "The gas lamps weren't on yet because it was still midday" (P.88). Mere moments later after giving back Dylan's phone, Pix is described as "disappearing into the loud night".
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 and 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.41: "I noticed a Yorkshireman, one Francis Faulding, has established a pharmacy in Adelaide," says Watson, which can hardly have been news to his friend Brookes, as when this conversation supposedly occurred in 1890, Faulding had already been dead for twenty-two years. His pharmacy opened in 1845.
P.105: Sally Wiggins seems to have a rather long commute to work. We are told that she is working "as a fashion model for Herrod's Department Store in Stafford" and lives in "Priory Street in the East End". That would give her a journey of 150 miles.
P.74: Some very curious geography in this one: I was willing to overlook the fact that Heathcliff Vamberry, a winery owner from Hampshire keeps his money in a bank in Newmarket Heath (P. 70), about 150 miles away and on the other side of London in Suffolk. Maybe he used to live there, or maybe there's a Newmarket Heath we haven't heard of in Hampshire. But then...we're suddenly told that Oxford Circus Station, normally found in the heart of London's West End, where Oxford Street meets Regent Street, is now located "on the far western edge of London", and is a mere surrey-ride (no mention of whether it has a fringe on top, but nonetheless a rare sight in the English countryside, indeed) away from "picturesque and affluent Hampshire County". Oxford Circus Station is, in fact, a mere one mile walk from Baker Street.
It's also highly unlikely that Holmes and Watson would have spotted "a wild boar...munching acorns" in the Hampshire woodlands as these became extinct in the 13th century. It may, of course, have been a captive, privately-owned, reintroduced representative of the species, so perhaps we can allow Grochot the benefit of the doubt here.
Is Miss Maker's given name Mufalda (P.47) as Mrs Hudson announces her, or Mafalda (P.48) as Holmes says her shop sign reads?
P156: Holmes should, perhaps, be dubious about
Beatrice Denby's story, as the mman involved has changed his
name from "Silas Omerod" (P.155) to "Horace"
(P.156) in the course of her telling it.
P.83: He's not much of a historian, considering he's a
history teacher: in January, 1903, Mr Graves tells Watson that
the old, revered Abbey School (at which he himself had been a
pupil) "dates from the beginning of this century".
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.80: Geoffrey Weston jokes that the lawn of the
British Museum, dug up by the police is "A sorry place for
a picnic...Too many gophers" despite thew fact that
there are no gophers in the UK. A Brit would be more likely to
blame moles.
P.131: Holmes's mission with Mycroft's agent, Purslane, to "return to St Petronius's and see what clues we may find in daylight" is unlikely to meet with much success, as the events that he is hoping to gain further information about actually occurred in the ruins of St Romedius's Church in Blutstrasse (P.110-122). By the time they return to the church, it is indeed called "the church of St Petronius" (P.151), although the story told about the associated saint (P.115-116) is about St Romedius, not Petronius.
P.141: The woman on Enghilstrasse who introduces herself as "Frau Seidl" (P. 139-140), remains so until the bottom of P.140, but then is consistently referred to, only a page later, as "Frau Steidl", and remains so for the rest of her encounter with Dr Watson.
P.30: Has Watson changed his sporting allegiances? Despite assuring us in the Sussex Vampire that he and Bob Ferguson were members of Blackheath Rugby Club, here he claims that he was a member of "Blackheath Football Club".
P.196: Holmes complains that the photographer Felix Nadar "has just likened my "fine brow" to that of Australopithecus afarensis", which is a remarkable comparison considering that it is made in 1886, a full ninety-two years before the naming of the species in 1978. The species was not known at all until the discovery of the fossilised remains of Lucy were found by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray at Hadar in Ethiopia in 1974.
P.95: Although Castello's letter plainly tells Holmes that Violet Kidd lives at "Twenty-Seven Canal Road", a mere half a page later after a precisely detailed journey through "Lambeth, the Elephant & Castle, Southwark and Bermondsey", the cab driver sets Holmes and Watson down in "Canal Street".
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.111: The watch that Holmes returns to Alec Ravenshaw in December 1890 is said to have been "manufactured by Touchon & Co of Geneva". Sady this company did not exist until 1907.
P.49: Most baffling is the fact that David MacPhail who runs a rubber plantation in Indonesia, tells Violet Warner that in order to obtain rubber from rubber trees "we process the leaves". He blames the decline in his profits on competition from Brazil, but might make a bigger profit if he tried tapping the bark of his trees, the more conventional way of extracting latex.
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 and 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.
P.124: Geoffrey Blake tells Holmes and Watson that
Molly Brighton's husband had been named "Albert" (P.37),
but his fiancée, Gwendolyn Tate, refers to him as "Gordon".
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 memory's 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 (as in "the man on the tor).
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.89: The reader may have been concerned that Holmes's retirement cottage has been relocated to "near Marlow on the Thames" (P.66), in Buckinghamshire rather than Sussex, but the reason for his change in location is explained here when he says that his "experiments in bee farming" became "a bore". Slightly confusing the issue is his statement that these experiments took place "on the Suffolk downs". As there are no downs in Suffolk, we can only assume that he was so bored with bee-farming that he couldn't even bring himself to remember which county he had done it in.
P.2: According to the Foreword to Sherlock Holmes: The Australian Casebook, this case took place in 1890, and yet Hamish Drake states that "Janet Achurch was in A Doll's House here in Sydney last year," a full year before she performed the play in 1891.
P.121: There seems to be a severe lapse in Holmes's geographical logic when he asks Conan Doyle, "Do you have a London directory" only to then ask Lestrade to "consult the directory and see if a Mrs Lamson lives in Cheltenham". It is remarkable, though, that this London directory does indeed appear to extend its coverage to include "Dr George Henry and Mrs Kitty Lamson, 38 Malvern Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire", ninety-five miles away on the other side of the country.
P.146:Lestrade is astounded at Holmes's ability to deduce the identities of the victims of the murder at Spivey House, saying, "We have not released any information as to the identities of the victims". This is odd, as Holmes's sole reason for travelling up to London from Sussex was an article in that day's Times which stated that "The victims of foul play at Spivey House included Lady Regina Spivey and Colonel Jonathan Mills" (P.143). By the time Holmes arrives at Spivey House, Lady Regina Spivey has been re-christened "Lady Penelope Spivey" (P.147).
P.157: Holmes states that the spirit at the prison séance was "Doyle's son Adrien [sic], lost in the war". In fact, Doyle's son, Adrian Conan Doyle, born in 1910, was very much alive. It was Doyle's first son, Kingsley, who had died in 1918, during the great flu pandemic, but not as a victim of the Great War.
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.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.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.247: Barkins, Lord Elmsfield's valet tells Holmes
and Watson that Lord Elmsfield was "widowed and lived
alone", even though a couple of hours earlier, Sir
Kenelm Digby had told them that "His wife says that he has
appeared happy and relaxed recently".
P.5: Virginia Crowe writes to the young Sherlock Holmes to tell him that she is engaged to "the son of an American businessman who is living just outside Guildford...His name is Travis - Travis Stebbins." This is odd because in the previous book (Snake Bite P.303), Mycroft had written to Sherlock to tell him that Virginia had become engaged to "the son of an American businessman working in Guildford. His name is Aaron Wilson Jr".
P.17: Sherlock and Mycroft's aunt has been called Anna throughout the series so far, but here she has become "Aunt Jane".
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.1: "People with elegant surnames like Sherlock and impressive features to match inspired confidence in their clients," suggests Rupert Snodgrass, forgetting that "Sherlock" is Holmes's christian name.
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.7: Watson introduces this story by referring to cases Holmes worked on after his retirement: "Two such instances I have recorded under the titles "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" and "His Last Bow"." While "His Last Bow" may arguably have been recorded by Watson in the third person, "The Lion's Mane" is one of the two cases from the canon that was written up by Holmes, not Watson.
P.311: Holmes tells Watson that while searching for him on his return to London "I tried to locate you at the usual haunts, 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.72: A disappointingly un-proofread novella containing a considerable number of grammatical errors, anachronistic dialogue, and other typos. Here Mycroft says of the elderly Countess Von Duenfeld, "Her line goes back to Bismarck". As, in the year the story is set in, 1905, Bismarck was only seven years dead, that's not saying a great deal.
And just who is this Dr Watson? Aside from the fact that we are told that he came from the gentry , we are also told that despite his statement in A Study in Scarlet that he had neither kith nor kin in England, and being told that this case occurs after both Mary Morstan's death and that of the second Mrs Watson, his "funeral had been a closed family affair...they would not allow me to pay my last respects...They, each member of the family, saw me as his killer". (P.76)
This is also a London in which the zoo is no longer in Regent's Park, but has become "Hyde Park Zoo" (P.106), where Holmes has brought an end to the career of the blackmailer "Charles Augustus Malveton" (P.85), and where Watson's wound was inflicted by a "jezzial bullet" (P.90).
P.32: Holmes and Watson board a train at Victoria Station and have a "long trip" to Professor Challenger's home, Enmore Park. This is odd, because, according to The Lost World, Enmore Park is in Kensington, only one stop away from Victoria Station on the Underground, and accessible via the Circle Line from Baker Street Station. It is, therefore, equally strange that Challenger insists that Holmes reads all his Titanic research "Before you leave for London." (P.42)
The Irregular
P.74: Wiggins is arrested shortly after the Tottenham Outrage in January, 1909, and spends six months in prison, and yet when he is released and visits Holmes in Sussex, it is still April.
P.245: When Watson first mentions the double suicide
victim, his name is "John Benjamin" (P.105). By
the time he and Holmes visit his home, he has become "James
Benjamin".
P.35: Leaving aside that, if it is the same officer, Watson refers to The Resident Patient's Inspector Lanner as "Inspector Lanners" throughout this story, one of the suspects also undergoes a more dramatic name change, from being "Alastair Franklin" when we first meet him (P.28), to "Alastair Reynolds" here, then "Alastair Dayton" (P.37).
P.16: Sponsorship in sport is evidently not a new phenomenon, as Watson attends the Epson Derby. Presumably still run in Epsom, though.
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", Queen Victoria's favourite ghillie. 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".
Spurious bank clerk Benedict McCrory doesn't seem to sure of his cover story. He refers to his late client as "Mr Everett" (P.107) when introducing the story of the vanished village to Mrs Watson. When he returns the following day, he is now calling him "Mr Elliot" (P.112).
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, seven years before Garnier's
death in 1898.
P.81: In 1917, Gertrude
Schmidt's apartment has "shelves full of Hummel figurines
bought years ago on a trip to Germany". This is
obviously a misidentification, as Hummel figurines are ceramic
pieces based on the art of Maria Innocentia Hummel who was
only born in 1909. Her artwork did not begin to appear until
the 1930s and the first figurine was produced in 1935.
P.51: Portia Adams appears to be enrolled
at the same "Oxford University" as that in Rock Dilisio's "The
Adventure of the Project", as she states that "King's
College was part of Oxford University and about a half hour
away from Baker Street by tube." Perhaps, she has
confused it with King's College, London, which might have been
half an hour from Baker Street by tube (current tube schedules
suggest 22 minutes). A journey from Baker Street to Oxford, by
train, would take more than an hour. Equally strangely, this
university college has a "headmistress" rather than
a dean. In Thrice Burned it remains King's College,
Oxford, until Portia is investigated by John Howard,
whereupon, for a brief spell it becomes "Somerville
College" (Thrice Burned, P.183).
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.233: A whole new complex set of Baker Street relationships? What are we to make of it when Holmes tells Watson, "I am sure that my wife will not begrudge you a couple of hours in my company - especially now that you have purchased the birthday present she has wanted for some time." It's clearly not a slip of the tongue because moments later, after deducing that Watson has purchased a piece of furniture, he says (P.234), "Armed with the knowledge that my wife's birthday falls in early September, I had thought at the time that you were minded to buy the piece".
P.5-6: "Most of the coins are pence, but the one shifted is a pound coin" says Holmes of evidence found beside a body at the Diogenes Club. It is not clear where the pound coin originates from as they did not take the place of pound notes in the United Kingdom until 1983.
P.107 (and elsewhere): "Irish Mike..was serving
pints of English bitter to two other tapsters." Tapsters
are the people who serve the beer, not the pub's customers.
P.22: Holmes appears to be putting up a bit of bluff when he announces confidently that he intends to pay a call at "the home of Mrs Alicia Someringforth in Cadogan Gardens, Kensington", as after he has paid the call, then spent an evening trailing her through London, he encounters Amelia Butterworth, who tells him all about "the lady you've been following tonight, Chloë Someringforth" (P.32).
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. (Garrett the longshoreman also drinks bitters by the pint in Sherlock Holmes & the Whitechapel Vampire (Dean P. Turnbloom), as does Jack Crompton in The Star of India (Carole Buggé)).
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.129: When Holmes returns to his lodgings in Sigerson Bell's shop sporting a bruised head, the old apothecary immediately fetches out the ingredients for a cure: "a jar of frog eggs and another of lama milk". Watson is well-known to have confused Peruvian beasts of burden with Tibetan holy men when he reported that Holmes had met with the "head llama" during the hiatus, but somehow now, that seems so much more dignified than the idea of milking a monk.
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. (The same error appears in Sherlock Holmes in Japan by Vasudev Murthy (P.181).)
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. (This remains uncorrected in The Bughouse Affair (Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini) (P.52)).
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". (This remains uncorrected in The Bughouse Affair (Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini) (P.245)).
P.45: Watson's father clearly had a hard time knowing which son he had named after himself as he is first referred to as "Henry Moray Watson", becoming "John Watson Senior" further down the page, before becoming "Henry Watson Senior" again on P.46.
P.74: Holmes should have been suspicious of Alice Morel, who later ran off and married the villain of the piece, when she told him that the prize for the 1898 Accademia di Santa Cecilia piano competition would be a year's study with Anton Rubinstein, who had been dead for four years by then.
P.83: Is Holmes making it up when he tells Watson that he is taking him to meet "Amilcare Sanzio"? The man they meet on the folowing page is introduced as "Arrigo Sanzio".
P.165: When Holmes is called upon by Henri Murger, he solves the associated case, but misses the mystery of how Murger, who died in 1861, could be visiting him in Rome in 1899.
P.167: When the composers Puccini and Leoncavallo arrive at Holmes and Watson's apartment in Rome, Watson states that he "did not recognise their names". By the following day he is able to talk to Holmes about "the similarity of some of Dvorak's Rusalka to Puccini's La Rondine".
PP.16, 18 etc.: While Holmes is in India during his 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.93: Just how heavy a sleeper is Watson? He and Holmes encounter Fred Porlock in the British Museum, "early in December of 1891 on a snowy morning towards the beginning of the month". It is after midnight (P.99) when Watson goes to bed that night, only to be woken by the arrival of Porlock's carrier pigeon, with a message that refers to "May 2, 1901", a date which Holmes states (P.101) is "tomorrow".
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 refers to his wife as "Elizabeth" (P.77), but is calling her "Margaret" a short time later (P.80).
P.37: Montague Druitt and Clifton Reed stare "in wonder at the iridescent trails of modulating light left by the lightning-bugs." We must put it down to their doped up state, for the closest England has to a lightning-bug is the humble glow-worm, which does little more than sit and offer a faint glow.
P.241: Deciding that Mrs Watson will be safer staying with her sister, Watson tells her that he will pay the taxi driver "to take you straight to Sissy's", which is odd because when Mrs Watson first suggested the idea (P.134), she said, "Millie's been asking me to visit for months now."
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.
P.119: Grimbold Pratt's angina attack seems to have
affected his memory. He refers to Helen Hunter's father as "Major
Hunter" despite having previously called him "Colonel
Hunter" (P.60).
P.123: Henry Vernier's fear of Pratt's wild animal
pets gets the better of him and he refers to Kanha the wolf
and Rudra the tiger as "the lion and the tiger".
P.27: Holmes tells Henry James that "almost exactly two years ago" he accepted a retainer from Edward Hooper to investigate a murder in Washington DC. Moments later, he says "it has taken these three years for me to become active in the...mystery".
P.30: Holmes tells James about Ned Hooper's death from pneumonia in an asylum "two weeks ago" (in 1893). In reality, Ned Hooper's death from pneumonoia occurred in 1901, eight years later.
P.104: In a fight with members of the Washington DC gang, the Southwest Toughs, Holmes kills one of the Finn brothers, but delivers "a lesser blow to knock the slightly shorter Finn down, but to leave him semi-conscious". It's therefore a surprise when a few lines later he jumps over "the dead Finns", particularly as one is immediately described as "twitching on his back, moaning".
P.134: When Henry James reads "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" in Clara Hay's copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes we learn that "Jephro Rucastle had imprisoned his still-living daughter - Judy" (P.127), which comes as a surprise to those familiar with the canonical Alice Rucastle. Our doubts are allayed on P.135 when Holmes tells James, "Alice was her real Christian name, by the way", but this does not explain why, having read about "Judy", and prior to Holmes's revelation, James refers to Mr Fowler as "The imprisoned Alice Rucastle's fiancé" (P.134).
P.144: Henry James listens to Holmes and Clarence King talk about climbing exploits, including "using one's bootlaces for Prusik knots when dangling from a rope". Karl Prusik, after whom this particular knot was named was not born until 1896, three years after this adventure.
P.174: Holmes shows John Hay a photograph, which Hay identifies as "Rebecca Lorne's...young cousin, Clifton Richards" who supplied Clover Adams with the photographic chemicals with which she killed herself. Earlier, however, (P.32), Holmes had told Henry James that this was "a brother...of Miss Rebecca Lorne".
P.181: While pursuing his quarry through New York, Holmes recalls that the man "belonged to several rather elite...clubs, including two where he kept a room", one of which is given as "the Century Club at 42 East 15th Street". Moments later he deduces that his man can't be heading in the wrong direction for the Century Club, whose address is now given as, "7 West 43rd Street".
P.485: Henry Adams is having problems remembering names. Holmes introduces himself to Mrs Gaddis as " an old friend of Miss Irene Adler, the lady to whom you forward the letters sent here to a certain Miss Rebecca Lorne Baxter" and she is referred to as such through the remainder of the novel. Earlier, however, (P.390) Holmes had been told by Adams that, since marrying, Rebecca Lorne is "Mrs Braxton, of Boston".
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 and 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. It's curious then, that he believes that "A man named Moriarity was Sherlock Holmes' archrival".
P.4: Not just delusional, but
also suffering from a split personality: does the asylum
matron mean Sir Francis Drake or Sir Walter Raleigh when she
says that one of the inmates believes he is "Sir Walter
Drake".
PP.84-85: An "F" in Botany for Enola Holmes
then, when she complains that the copper beech is "the
most difficult of all trees to climb, for the trunk is
straight and exceedingly tall with smooth silver bark as
glossy as satin". That would be the silver birch she's
describing (the clue is in the name), not the copper beech,
which is really quite a good climbing tree, if that's your
sort of thing.
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)".
Sherlock Holmes and the Nine-Dragon Sigil
P.54: Watson receives a telegram from Holmes; somehow, at the bottom of it is a diagram of a new gun Holmes has invented.
P.93-94: Watson comments on the Scottish missionaries, Macpherson and his wife, establishing themselves in a region "with plenty of the creator's finest waterfowl nearby", but his list of those "water" fowl amounts to "wild duck, partridges and pheasants". I suppose one out of three isn't too bad.
P.157: Watson claims that "Mycroft had underlined several of the Red Queen's dramatic exclamations" in his copy of Alice in Wonderland. The Red Queen doesn't feature in Alice in Wonderland, she is a character from Alice Through the Looking Glass. What makes this edition even curiouser is that the first underlined quote, "In the wrong hands, you'd be surprised what magic can do" is not from Carroll at all, but from the episode "Heart of the Matter" from the TV series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland first broadcast in 2014, while the second, "How would you like to have your head hacked off?" is from the 2010 Tim Burton film Alice in Wonderland.
A Three-Pipe Problem (Julian Symons)
P.110: Boxing instructor "Riverboat Jackson" (P.32) has become "Riverboat Johnson" by the time Sheridan Haynes spars with him at the Anglo-American Fitness and Athletic Club.
P.105: Wiggins's cab driver asks for a fare
of "eighty p, if you please" fully 84 years before
decimalisation in 1971 led to the British using "p" as an
abbreviation of "pence". The seven shillings plus a half crown
tip that Wiggins pays the driver seems excessive for the 2.2
mile cab ride from the Tower of London to the Savoy Hotel. Reynolds
Shilling Map of 1895, suggests that cab fares were a
shilling for the first two miles, and 6d for each extra mile
thereafter. On the same page the Savoy Hotel is referred to as
a "motel".
P.183: Wrong Maskelyne! Watson compares the guests at a seance to an audience for "Jasper Maskelyne's stage "magic" at the Egyptian Hall". He dates the case to spring of 1898, four years before Jasper Maskelyne was born in 1902. (See also "The Case of the Phantom Chambermaid" below).
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, traditionally 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.15: "My associate is as Welsh as Tintagel Castle," says Barker of his Welsh associate, Thomas Llewelyn. One can only imagine Llewelyn's respect for his employer's omniscience being somewhat dented by this, as Tintagel is in Cornwall, England, not Wales.
P.316: Barker refers to Aaron Kosminski as "The young man with whom you have been sharing the premises at 27 Goulston Street". When he and Llewelyn first began investigating Kosminski, however, it was established that the address was "Twenty-two Goulston Street" (P.98).
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.133: In order to discuss the contents of Langdale Pike's letter, Holmes suggests that he and Watson go somewhere private. "The 'somewhere' he referred to was, as I had expected, the cove" (P.126). The conversation carries on for several pages until miraculously on P.133 Holmes "turning abruptly on his heel...took several short paces up and down the room" and as if by magic he and Watson are back in Holmes's cottage.
Watson introduces a visitor to Baker Street as "the lovely Sarah MacGuillicudy" (P.82). Moments later, he tells us that "her given name was Eliza" (P.84).
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 and 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 women, 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.
"Lewis Owen" (P.46) whom their client thought he had seen murdered has become "Lester Owen" (P.55) by the time Holmes and Watson confront him in his home.
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".
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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