East Wind Coming

by Yuichi Hirayama

  HY: Why, if April 27 was ‘just two months ago,’ did the notice on the door read October 9?

  JH: There have long been two schools of thought as to the date of ‘The Red-Headed League,’ one favouring a starting date for the scheme of April and a date for the case as a case of June; the other favouring a winding-up date for the League (and a date for the case as a case) of October. In each instance, the duration of the League is held to be the two months which Watson mentions.

  However, there is a third possibility, which does not appear to have been mooted before, and that is that both dates are correct but the computation of elapsed time is adrift. Watson would have retained the newspaper clipping with the original advertisement, and the note dissolving the League, they would be in front of him as he wrote his account. But the mention of ‘two months’ comes from Watson’s mouth in the course of a reported conversation; but there were no tape recorders, and Watson did not - according to his own account - actually note the conversation verbatim. Is it then possible that April and October are correct, and that Watson mistook six months for two? Possibly Watson never even mentioned any time, but added it later to give colour to his story.

  We can estimate how long Jabez Wilson spent on his nominal duties from his own words: ‘I had written about Abbots and Archery and Armour and Architecture and Attica, and hoped with diligence that I might get onto the B’s before very long.’ Tom Stix (‘Concerning “The Red-Headed League”,’ BSJ 4,2 , 1954, pp. 93-99) said, ‘the Encyclopaedia Britannica [1875 ed.]... has 928 pages in Volume One, and doesn’t reach the article on Attica until page 794 of Volume Two.’ Wilson thus had to copy 1,722 pages, in longhand. If he worked two months only, that is almost 36 pages a day; if he worked from April to October, the average is about 12, a far more manageable total.

  A further point concerns the tunnel itself. During WWII French POWs dug a tunnel at Colditz Castle. The number of prisoners digging the tunnel was initially nine, but later there were thirty. They worked twenty-four hours a day for eight months, and produced a tunnel 40 metres long, 0.7 m high and 0.6 m wide. Could John Clay and ‘Archie’ dig a tunnel into the bank in a mere two months? It seems unlikely. Indeed, for HY the five and a half months from April to October seems hardly sufficient; there is a strong case for thinking that the April was in one year, and the October the following year, a total of seventeen and a half months. In that event, Watson must have shortened the time span to ‘improve’ the dramatic content of the story. (Although JH points out that the French gold was only borrowed; a long time span would involve the possibility that the gold would not actually be there when Clay and Archie reached the vault; JH thinks April and October of the same year - with perhaps a fairly short tunnel - more likely.)

  JH: Why did Watson offer to wait in the next room?

  HY: JH thinks that Watson had been a partner (paid, or rather sharing the profits) before he got married to Mary Morstan. That is why Holmes did not know that Watson was going into general practice (in ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’) - because Holmes thought Watson had plenty of money in the bank from the detective work!) Watson did not want to push himself into Holmes’s case after leaving the partnership.

  HY: What did Spaulding’s accomplice do whilst Spaulding was digging the tunnel?

  JH: Archie must have helped with the digging! There was too much for one man; but perhaps one man took a rest after an hour’s work, say, to have some fresh air?

  HY: Why did the criminals close the offices of the League before the burglary?

  JH: The closing of the offices is the one serious flaw in the plan. If the office were open, Jabez Wilson would have gone to work as usual, and Holmes would not be called in until it was too late! There was no reason to close the office, it was silly, and put the robbers’ scheme at risk. John Clay was obviously not a clever crook! (And it seems unlikely that Prof. Moriarty planned the robbery, as some have suggested, because Moriarty would not do anything so stupid.

  4: “THE BOSCOMBE VALLEY MYSTERY”

  JH: Does the cry of ‘Cooee’ not give the solution at once? James McCarthy and his father used the cry of ‘Cooee,’ which ‘is a distinctly Australian cry,’ according to Holmes; the only other Australian in the district was John Turner, and since the father thought the son was in Bristol, it must have been Turner for whom the call was intended!

  HY: It was Sherlock Holmes who pointed out that ‘Cooee’ was a specifically Australian usage. The newspaper report of James McCarthy’s testimony said that it was ‘a usual signal’ between the McCarthys, father and son; while the coroner said only that he understood that the cry was ‘a common signal’ between the two. Outsiders reading this may well have thought that it was merely a family thing, and been unaware of the Australian connotations - the world then was not so small a place as it has since become, and Englishmen, particularly in rural areas, might well be unaware of the habits of Australian. Even had the general public known the call to be Australian, the newspaper did not make a point of reporting the presence on the district of the other Australian, Turner. Even Lestrade could not really be expected to know the significance of the call, - although one might perhaps argue that, like Holmes, Lestrade should have known!

  HY: If McCarthy junior loved Miss Turner, and not the ‘wife’ he had in Bristol, why did he spend three days in Bristol with the ‘wife’?

  JH: The most probable answer here is that McCarthy junior had originally intended to discuss the possibility of divorce with his wife. (Agreed, there was in fact no need, since the marriage was not legally valid in the first place; but McCarthy did not know this - indeed, had he done so, he would not have needed to visit Bristol at all.) However, the relationship seems to have been of a fairly basic physical nature, and it seems rather as if McCarthy junior succumbed yet again to the charms of the barmaid with the Bristols, and that caused him to stay longer than he had at first intended. (This if correct, would indicate that McCarthy junior was a somewhat weak character; but that is surely how he comes across anyway? A fact which does not augur well for the future happiness of Miss Turner.)

  As a further point, the nature of the relationship between Miss Turner and McCarthy junior is surely a trifle ambiguous. Miss Turner herself said that they had loved each other as brother and sister; scarcely a grand passion there. It may have been that McCarthy junior was not whole-heartedly devoted to Miss Turner, and quite enjoyed his three days dalliance in Bristol - again indicative of weakness of character?

  JH: James MacCarthy’s ‘right hand and sleeve were observed to be stained with fresh blood. However, the stone which Holmes identified as the murder weapon had ‘no marks’ on it. Why was James’s sleeve stained?

  HY: James said in his evidence that when he found his father dying, ‘I dropped my gun and held him in my arms,’ so that accounts for the blood on James’s hands and clothing.

  The real problem is the absence of any blood on the stone which Holmes identified as the murder weapon. Possibly Turner wiped off any blood there may have been? Incidentally a far more satisfactory way of hiding the ‘weapon’ would have been to hurl the stone into the Boscombe Pool, where any blood would be washed off, even if the stone happened to be recovered. But then Turner was under something of a strain.

  HY: James did not say what he and his father had talked about. Everyone knew about the problem of the marriage between James and Miss Turner, so it seems unlikely that the conversation was about that. What was it about?

  JH: Although everyone connected with the families concerned may have known of the problem of the prospective marriage, old Mr McCarthy did not know of his son’s ‘marriage’ to the Bristol barmaid. It is thus highly likely that the conversation did indeed concern McCarthy senior’s desire that his son marry Miss Turner. Naturally, James would not at first want to reveal this fact.

  JH: When Holmes returned from talking to McCarthy junior, he said, ‘And now let us
talk about George Meredith.’ Why George Meredith?

  HY: Although the works of George Meredith were popular in Victorian Britain, it is difficult to find a believable point of contact between the love stories he wrote and Holmes and Watson. Meredith’s other main theme, however, that of natural selection considered as Nature’s method of perfecting mankind, may be more to the point. Earlier in the same case, Holmes had been reading Petrarch, who has been called ‘the earliest of the great humanists of the Renaissance,’ and this may indicate that Holmes was in a somewhat philosophical mood; possibly the contrast of idealized humanity with the tangled affairs of McCarthy junior struck him forcibly just at that moment.

  However, there is yet another possibility; Watson’s memory may have let him down, and Holmes may actually have said not ‘George’ but ‘Owen’ Meredith. This was the nom de plume of Edward Robert Bulwer, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831-91; and son of the writer EG Bulwer-Lytton), who was Viceroy of India from 1876-80. Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary says that he ‘effected reform but failed to prevent the Second Afghan War (1878),’ and it is noteworthy that his was the very war in which Watson fought and was wounded. Perhaps Lytton had consulted Holmes? Or perhaps Holmes just wanted to talk about a man in whom he knew Watson would be interested?

  HY: As old Mr Turner was not dead, Holmes could not mention the real killer’s name when he gave evidence which would clear James. How did he prove James was not guilty?

  JH: This is another real problem. I think that there was nothing else that Holmes could have done but lay the facts before the prosecution lawyers, saying that it would be pointless to arrest or charge old Mr Turner, who would never survive to come to trial; and presumably the prosecution saw the sense of thirst. Why, then, did Watson claim otherwise? In the first place, Watson may not have been closed associated with the actual process of the trial, and thus may have assumed that Holmes had indeed discovered some other facts material to the case. Or Watson may have known the truth, but decided that it was a bit of an anti-climax to say that Holmes had done what he had promised not to do, and revealed the truth about old Turner.

  5: “THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS”

  HY: Holmes said: ‘I have been beaten four times - three times by men and once by a woman.’ Who was this villainous but capable lady? And who were the men?

  JH: There are several problems with this one. One problem is that Holmes handled a great many cases which Watson never documented - Watson and Holmes between them refer in passing to over a hundred according to my own count (John Hall: The Abominable Wife, Calabash, 1998), and there may very well have been more which are not even mentioned in passing; so Holmes might easily have been referring to cases which we cannot possibly identify, or which we know only by the titles which Watson so tantalizingly mentions; the old Russian woman, for example, may perhaps have fooled a very youthful Holmes.

  If we consider only canonical cases, then a second problem is that of chronology. For example, if we take Watson’s own date of 1887 for ‘The Five Orange Pips,’ then it is unlikely - though not impossible! - that the woman referred to is Irene Adler; if, however, we accept Watson’s statement that he was married at the time of ‘The Five Orange Pips’ (and, by implication, that 1887 is probably too early), then it could well have been Miss Adler who bested Holmes. (Miss Adler would probably be the first choice of most Sherlockians when asked this question, though I have always thought that Holmes was too easily impressed by Miss Adler’s criminal abilities anyway.)

  Again, different chronologists put different cases before ‘The Five Orange Pips,’ so that the possibilities change according to the chronology we select.

  A further complication arises when we ask just what Holmes may have meant by the word ‘beaten’: did he consider that Mrs Grant Munro in ‘The Yellow Face’ had ‘beaten’ him? She certainly fooled him, at least up to a point, and this case occurred before ‘The Five Orange Pips’ according to many chronologists; but that is not necessarily what Holmes meant.

  Similarly, when Holmes speaks of men defeating him, the identities of the men concerned are far from clear. In ‘The Resident Patient’ (placed before ‘The Five Orange Pips’ by many commentators), Holmes was arguably ‘beaten’ in the sense that the man whom he should have protected was murdered.

  Then TS Blakeney puts ‘The Greek Interpreter,’ in which Watson saves the eponymous interpreter’s life, but Holmes failed to act quickly enough to save either Mr or Miss Kratides, before ‘The Five Orange Pips,’ so the villains there might be said to have beaten Holmes.

  And similarly HW Bell puts The Valley of Fear - in which Holmes failed to prevent Moriarty committing murder - before ‘The Five Orange Pips.’ These three might well be the cases to which Holmes refers; but this must remain speculative.

  JH: Why does Watson speak of his wife being on a visit to her mother’s? At this time he should not have been married, and anyway Mary Morstan had no relatives!

  HY: In some editions ‘mother’ appears, but in others it is ‘aunt.’ The obvious answer is that ‘mother’ is a misprint, and ‘aunt’ is correct.

  Mary says in The Sign of Four that ‘My mother was dead, and I had no relative in England.’ If ‘aunt’ is correct, this statement certainly means that her mother was dead, but it may mean not that she had no living relatives whatsoever, but that that her other relatives were simply not in England. At that date it needed not only money but time to go round the world. Even if Mary’s aunt, and perhaps also other relatives, were alive and well, the fact that they were not in England would make it difficult for Mary to seek her (or their) advice when her father died. But it would be perfectly logical for Mary to invite such relatives to her wedding, and given enough notice, they would probably return to England if they were able to do so.

  As a final point about the date, it is possible that Watson was not actually married at the time of the case. He may have meant ‘wife’ in the sense that Mary later became his wife. It is possible (though at that time frankly unlikely) that Watson and Mary were sharing a house though unmarried - a more likely possibility is that Mary had moved into their future home, and Watson was still at 221b, and Watson may not have wished to state this in print.

  In any event, the fact that Mary (then still Miss Morstan) was away on a visit meant that Watson did not have to think about the forthcoming wedding ceremony, or look for a suitable house etc; he had nothing to distract him from taking an interest in Holmes’ work.

  HY: Why did Captain Calhoun waste so much time between the murders of Elias, Joseph and John Openshaw?

  JH: Calhoun was on board a sailing ship; he was obliged to wait until he reached land before he could act. After killing Elias, Calhoun would wait to see what effect produced on Joseph; and similarly the killing of Joseph might have the desired effect (desired, that is, by Calhoun) on John. In each case Calhoun waited to see what would happen; what with that, and with the circumstance of his being at sea for much of the time, delay was inevitable.

  On the other hand, Calhoun did manage to visit England in order to kill Elias Openshaw and later Joseph. Why then did Calhoun not use those ‘visits’ to search the house? It seems very much as if Calhoun were not really serious about the papers? Perhaps his motive was mostly revenge against the Openshaw family, rather than a desire to recover the papers?

  JH: How did the villains decoy Openshaw to the Embankment, which was out of his way?

  HY: The easiest way would be for one of the villains to pose as a cab driver and wait for Openshaw. As it was the proverbial dark and stormy night, and as he was naturally in a very nervous state, Openshaw might well take a cab, and could then be driven wherever the villains wished.

  As an alternative, perhaps they did not actually ‘decoy’ him, but merely overwhelmed him by sheer weight of numbers, knocked him unconscious and carried him to the Embankment?

  HY: Why did Elias destroy his KKK pap
ers and so cause his own death?

  JH: There are two separate, though related, issues here. One is that the destruction of the papers may not actually have caused Elias’s death; when the first letter with the orange pips arrived, Elias ‘shrieked. . . “My God, my God, my sins have overtaken me!”’ and when John asks ‘“What is it, uncle?”’ ‘“Death,” said he.’ It was only after realizing that he was under sentence of death that Elias burned the papers, as a sort of act of defiance - ‘“They may do what they like, but I’ll checkmate them still,”’ he says. It seems likely that Calhoun and his associates intended to kill Elias, not so much for the sake of the papers, as for what they considered his betrayal of them, or their cause - a possible explanation, again, for Calhoun’s failure to pursue actively the acquisition of the papers when he had killed Elias, and later Joseph?

  Calhoun then asked Joseph, and then John, for the return of the papers. Calhoun did not know that Elias had burned the papers; Calhoun would be afraid that the papers contained evidence which might incriminate himself and others as members of KKK. (And perhaps Calhoun intended to use the information about those others for blackmail, and was acting in self-interest more than from motives of ‘justice’?) Had John been able to do as Holmes suggested, and convince Calhoun that the papers had been destroyed and were thus no danger, then John might have lived.

  JH: Should Holmes have blamed himself for Openshaw’s death?

  HY: John Openshaw had waited (wasted?) two days after receiving his ‘KKK’ letter, posted in London. The killers would be either in London, or lurking near Horsham when Openshaw visited Baker Street. In addition, it was a stormy night. The killer might be following Openshaw closely, might easily be seated next to him, without Openshaw’s being aware of the fact. The killer or killers were evidently not without skill, for Openshaw’s uncle and father had been killed easily enough.