East Wind Coming

by Yuichi Hirayama

  Openshaw had a gun in his pocket, but considering the ease with which Openshaw’s father and uncle had been killed, Holmes should at the very least have called a cab to take Openshaw to Waterloo Station, and it would have been even better had Watson gone along with him. Ideally, Openshaw should have remained at Baker Street overnight, and returned - with Holmes and Watson - next day. As it was, there was insufficient time for Openshaw to convince the killers that the ‘KKK’ papers were destroyed.

  Some commentators detect the shadow of Professor Moriarty in this case, but there is no real evidence for this. Even if Moriarty were involved, the case predates Holmes’ investigation into the Moriarty gang, and so Holmes could hardly blame himself for not knowing that Moriarty had a hand in the case.

  Gavin Brend says ‘John Openshaw had the melancholy distinction of being one of the only two clients to be murdered after they had consulted Holmes, the other unfortunate being Hilton Cubitt of ‘The Dancing Men.’ (My Dear Holmes, p.85) Holmes had a pride in his profession, as he says; and he did not lose many clients. Even if Watson, and Watson’s readers, do not blame Holmes, there seems little doubt that he blamed himself.

  6. “THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP”

  JH: What was the real ‘Theological College of St George’s’ of which the late Elias Whitney, DD, was Principal?

  HY: According to Baring-Gould’s Annotated Sherlock Holmes, ‘This would be St Joseph’s College.’ Owen Dudley Edwards agrees with this (OUP edition, p.347) - ‘perhaps based on the theological college of St Joseph,’ but no source is listed. Baring-Gould adduces no evidence in support of the suggestion, so perhaps it was based merely on similarity of the names?

  It is difficult to determine the actual college. For example there was a College of St Mark in King’s Road, London. According to the London Encyclopaedia (Macmillan, London, 1983) ‘In 1840 the whole site became the College of St Mark, a training college for Church of England teachers. The first principal was Derwent Coleridge, son of the poet, and the Assembly Hall still bears his name. In 1923 the College of St John was transferred here from Battersea,’ and the school is now called the College of St Mark and St John.

  The relations between Watson and Isa Whitney are odd: Watson says ‘I was Isa Whitney’s medical adviser,’ but Whitney’s reaction - ‘My God! It’s Watson,’ and ‘But you’ve got it mixed up, Watson,’ are more like those of a personal friend. I suspect that Watson and Whitney were old friends, perhaps having been at school together. The Canon does not mention Isa Whitney’s profession, but he would not be a doctor. It seems probable that Whitney was a student at the same school as that attended by both Watson and Percy Phelps (see ‘The Naval Treaty’), and since Phelps was a member of the British upper classes, this was probably a Church of England School, not a Catholic one. It would be natural for the Whitney brothers to share the same religious beliefs, so that the fictitious ‘St George’s’ would be a Church of England establishment. That would rule out St Joseph’s, and in my view makes St Mark’s the more likely.

  JH: I think that the clue is in the saint’s name; as George is patron saint of England, so David is of Wales, and St David’s College at Lampeter is a well-known theological institution. I therefore suspect that Isa Whitney may have had a Welsh lilt in his voice.

  HY: Why did Holmes stay at St Clair’s house?

  JH: Watson asks the selfsame question: ‘But why are you not conducting the case from Baker Street?’

  And Holmes replies. ‘Because there are many enquiries which must be made out here.’

  Holmes has already given Watson such information as he has about St Clair: ‘a gentleman. . . who appeared to have plenty of money. . . He had no occupation, but was interested in several companies, and went into town as a rule in the morning, returning by the 5:14 from Cannon Street every night. . . ‘ (Holmes uses ‘interested’ in the City sense, meaning that St Clair was a shareholder in various companies.)

  Now, Holmes knew that St Clair was last seen in the opium den; the logical course would be for Holmes to ask how St Clair got there. Holmes would naturally make enquiries of those who regularly used the 5:14 pm. train, and of those who were St Clair’s companions on the morning trains which he used. And Holmes would find either that none of these fellow-travellers knew which companies St Clair visited, or that St Clair had bandied about names which Holmes would subsequently find to be either dummies, or of firms which had never heard of St Clair. As a further point, an ordinary investor might attend the Annual General Meeting of a company in which he has shares, but does not normally visit that company, or others in which he has shares, every single day. Mrs. St Clair might be sufficiently financially naive as not to know this; Holmes would not. As a further point, Holmes talks of St Clair’s debts as amounting to ‘£ 88 10s, while he has £ 220 standing to his credit in the Capital and Counties Bank,’ so Holmes had evidently made enquiries of St Clair’s bankers; and these gentlemen would vouchsafe the quite astonishing information that St Clair had never in his life paid in a single dividend! More, that all his deposits, and quite substantial deposits at that, were in cash. This would surely make Holmes suspicious.

  The London end of the case having proved a very dead end, Holmes had no alternative but to make more detailed enquiries at St Clair’s home. Or at any rate, to say to Mrs St Clair that he had to make detailed enquiries, whilst actually engaging her in the sort of apparently innocuous conversation that he used in order to gain information that the other person was unaware that they possessed. (See e.g. ‘A Case of Identity,’ for an example of this.) Holmes would be hoping for some clue, something which Mrs St Clair said in the course of general conversation which would give Holmes some insight into St Clair’s odd life after he left home, or something at least that would give Holmes some kind of staring point.

  JH: Where was the real ‘Upper Swandam Lane’?

  HY: Many candidates have been advanced as the original, such as ‘Lower Thames Street’ and ‘Whapping High Street’ (CEC Townsend), ‘Upper Thames Street’ (Alan Wilson) and ‘Stoney Lane’ (HW Bell.)

  D Martin Dakin (A Sherlock Holmes Commentary) says ‘There is an alley called Swan Lane leading down to the river from Upper Thames Street, which, given the building changes in seventy-five years, might well be the one: although, as it is only a narrow passage leading down to the water, Mrs St Clair could not have walked along it looking for a cab, but only past it; and anyway it was too near to Cannon Street [rail] station for her to have needed a cab.’

  Which is all very well, but Watson does say that ‘Upper Swandam Lane’ was ‘north of the river’ and ‘to the east of London Bridge,’ and Upper Thames Street is to the west of the bridge, so it can’t be that. There are, however, many names to this west side which are tantalisingly close, Swan Lane, Old Swan Lane, Old Swan Pier, Old Swan Yard, and it seems logical to assume that these provided ACD with much of the inspiration for ‘Upper Swandam Lane.’

  As for actual locations on the ground, a glance at the street plans of the time shows that Lower Thames Street is the obvious starting point, although Lower Thames Street itself is too far from the river to be the actual location. Between Lower Thames Street and the river, and between the bridge and the great fishmarket of Billingsgate, however, as seen on plans of the time there was indeed a mass of wharves and buildings, exactly as Watson says. ‘Upper Swandam Lane’ is clearly meant for one of these - perhaps Lyons Quay or Somers Quay would be a good choice, not too far from the (probably inaptly named) Fresh Quay or Steam Packet Quay.

  JH: I wonder if the widely known ceremony of ‘swan-upping’ might have suggested the street name to Conan Doyle? (And, by the way, a swan’s ‘dam’ (mother) is a ‘pen,’ so it may just be a joke at the reader’s expense?)

  HY: Why did Mrs St Clair visit Upper Swandam Lane alone, a very odd thing for a respectable Victorian lady to do? Why didn’t she ask the Aberdeen Shipping Company
to send her the parcel by post?

  JH: This is an interesting point, and again one difficult to explain satisfactorily. Holmes says that it was ‘a small parcel of considerable value,’ and one possibility is that Mrs St Clair did not trust the postal service, although this seems unlikely. Nor is it probable that she wanted the parcel in a hurry, since in Victorian times there were six or seven deliveries per day, and a parcel posted in central London in the morning would reach her in the afternoon.

  As a further complication, the offices of the Aberdeen Shipping Co. are stated to be in ‘Fresno Street,’ but most of the big shipping firms in this general area had offices in Cannon Street (Wells, Fargo or Pitt & Scott) or Gracechurch Street (Continental Daily Parcels Express) or similar well-known thoroughfares, and none of these would have taken Mrs St Clair anywhere near the river. Aberdeen Shipping may have been a very small firm with its offices right on the river.

  Another possibility is that the parcel came from abroad and that Mrs St Clair had to pay duty on it and collect it from the Customs House, just east of Billingsgate, and it may be that Aberdeen Shipping had a small office near the Customs House, for precisely this sort of eventuality. However, in either of these cases, it is surely very odd that some gallant clerk of the Aberdeen Shipping Co. did not offer to walk with Mrs St Clair to the station, no great way off, or summon a cab for her?

  There are all sorts of possible explanations, most of them scurrilous or idiotic or both, but surely the most logical assumption is that Mrs St Clair was simply lost, that she took a wrong turning on coming out of the shipping office and quickly found herself in very insalubrious surroundings? This would explain her looking for a cab, when the station was so very close.

  JH: Why was the opium den, ‘The Bar of Gold’ known as ‘the vilest murder-trap on the whole riverside’? It would surely be better for the owners to keep customers alive so that they could buy more opium!

  HY: Even the villainous lascar would not wish to kill perfectly good customers, or he would have to close down his establishment! However, opium is a well-known addictive drug, and many addicts lose all their property as a result of their addiction. But even without money, they would turn up demanding more of the drug, and that would be a nuisance for the lascar, who would not have hesitated to dispose of such unfortunate wretches.

  Moreover, gullible people who had money but were not addicted may well have been inveigled to The Bar of Gold on the classic pretext of ‘having a good time,’ and there supplied with enough opium to lower their resistance, robbed, and thrown, drowsy but alive, into the river, to take their chances. The police would not treat any deaths which occurred as a result as being murder, as there would be no marks of violence on the bodies; suicide or accident would be the likely verdict. If the victim survived, he would probably be too embarrassed to make a fuss.

  HY: St Clair said; ‘All day a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me, and it was a very bad day upon which I failed to take £ 2.’ Is this figure realistic?

  JH: Holmes says of Hugh Boone, St Clair’s alter ego: ‘He is a professional beggar [who sits in an angle of the wall in Threadneedle Street]. . . I have watched the fellow more than once. . . and I have been surprised at the harvest which he has reaped in a short time. His appearance. . . [marks] him out from amid the common crowd of mendicants, and so, too, does his wit, for he is ever ready with a reply to any piece of chaff which may be thrown at him by the passer-by.’

  Holmes’s own observations, then, confirm (in general terms) that Hugh Boone is successful at accumulating cash. Let us look for a moment at the copper coins found in St Clair’s coat, recovered from the river bank, which represent the non-silver part of his earnings, and which may reasonably be assumed the be fairly typical of the ‘copper’ part of his average takings.: ‘421 pennies,’ says Holmes, ‘and 270 half-pennies,’ a proportion of 3 to 2, almost exactly (3:1.924 for the pedants.) Hugh Boone’s daily take of £ 2, then (remembering that the £ had then 240 pence (d) to it), is represented by 360 pennies and 240 half-pennies. Assume that each donor gives one, and only one, coin, and we need six hundred (less than generous) donors, which is a lot. However, should each donor give copper to the value of, say, 2 ½d or 3d, that cuts the number needed quite significantly. Hugh Boone’s pitch was carefully chosen, right in the heart of the financial district: a City gent (no ladies in those non-PC days!) might well grab whatever copper was in his pocket without bothering to count it, particularly if he had had a profitable day’s trading.

  As a further consideration, Hugh Boone himself says later on that: ‘a stream of pennies, varied by silver, poured in upon me.’ Regrettably we do not know the amount of this variation, but even a few of the smaller silver coins, 3d and 6d, would again soon cause the total to mount up.

  And there may have been larger silver coins, too; in the summer of 2003, the Daily Mail newspaper, investigating suggestions that modern beggars earn enormous amounts, paid several actors to pretend to be beggars and report back. The highest earner was an elderly man, a ‘character’ actor, who earned a respectable £ 60 or £ 70 in a day, and who said, significantly, that his ‘clients’ seemed to like his repartee. As Holmes specifically noted Hugh Boone’s gift in that regard, it is surely not too much to assume that Hugh Boone, a trained actor with a talent for picking up cues, overheard a good deal of financial gossip and used it in his patter: ‘Did well with those gold shares, did we, Mr Fanshaw?’ to which Fanshaw, who perhaps (as the City is a superstitious place) thinks that Hugh Boone is some sort of human talisman, replies: ‘We did, and here’s your share of it!’ as he throws the cheerful beggar a florin or half-crown.

  But let us assume that all this is nonsense; that Hugh Boone did not, in fact earn £ 2 a day. Perhaps he exaggerated, not wanting Holmes and Watson to think that he was an unsuccessful beggar; or perhaps Watson, as so often in these instances, misheard or misremembered. Let us assume that Hugh Boone earned for St Clair not £ 2 per day, but £ 2 per week. Very well: but Mr Hall Pycroft, ‘The Stock-broker’s Clerk,’ the sort of a man who was working in the very buildings outside which Hugh Boone sat, was earning £ 200 a year at Mawson’s, or £ 4 a week; Watson himself had, on his return to London from India, 11/6 a day, again around £ 4 a week. Our £ 2 a week is thus fairly respectable, more than a working man might expect; a man could live (though admittedly not in any great style) on it, and it would not take too much good luck for Hugh Boone to equal the income of a Hall Pycroft or a Dr Watson - at the very least.

  We may thus assume that St Clair spoke the truth, and that Hugh Boone’s earnings were as he says, £ 2 a day.

  7. “THE BLUE CARBUNCLE”

  HY: What did Henry Baker do in the British Museum? Was he a clerk in the library, or did he perhaps study like Karl Marx?

  JH: Henry Baker himself says, ‘There are a few of us who frequent the Alpha Inn, near the Museum - we are to be found in the Museum itself during the day, you understand,’ which suggests that Baker was in the Museum full-time, in whatever capacity. He was not a rich man, and he was too old to be a student, which suggests that he was employed by the Museum itself. It has been suggested that Baker earned his living as some sort of researcher, working for those who wished to consult the Museum’s resources, but could not visit the Museum personally. However, there would surely be other sources of information, record offices, other museums and libraries, where such a researcher might be found? Why would Baker be always at the one place, were he not an employee? The logical conclusion is surely that he was employed in a fairly humble capacity at the Museum.

  JH: When Watson first calls on him, Holmes has ‘a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand.’ Why? Holmes has already deduced that Mr Henry Baker has suffered a ‘decline of fortunes,’ and thus could hardly be expected to advertise for the goose’s return; and the theft or loss of a goose is hardly the sort of thing to make the front
page! So, what was Holmes looking for in the newspapers?

  HY:As noted throughout the Canon, the newspapers were a fertile source of information for Holmes in a general sense; the newspapers noted by Watson might have been Holmes’s normal morning reading, and have no relation wt all to the Baker case.

  Again, Holmes might initially have expected that Baker would advertise for the goose, the loss of which would be a blow to Baker. His ‘I am at a loss to know now why you did not advertise’ may have been intended to draw the answer, ‘Shillings have not been so plentiful with me as they once were,’ thereby confirming his own deductions.

  Another possibility might be that Holmes expected a further altercation between Baker and the gang of roughs who first attacked him. The attack itself might, for all Holmes knew, have had nothing at all to do with the goose, but be connected with some other matter altogether, and the in that case ‘roughs’ might well have sought out Baker, intending to do him further harm, when once the fuss had calmed down. Holmes may well have been looking in the newspapers for an account of an injured, or dead, man in Tottenham Court Road or nearby.

  HY: What was Henry Baker doing with a goose in Tottenham Court Road at 4 o’clock in the morning, leaving his wife at home? Why didn’t he go straight home with the goose immediately he got it from the landlord of the Alpha Inn? And was the Alpha Inn open on Christmas Eve?

  JH: What he was doing was going home! True, 4 am. is a trifle late; but we must remember that the licensing laws were not then so strict as they later became. (Indeed, the licensing laws which governed Britain for a century were instituted during the First World War precisely because the liberal opening hours previously in force were seriously damaging wartime production, or, rather, the absenteeism they induced was.)