The Falling Curtain (The Assassination of Sherlock Holmes Book 3) (28 page)

[1]
The only other examples are
The Hound of the Baskervilles
(serialized in
The Strand
between August 1901 and April 1902),
The Valley of Fear
(serialized in
The Strand
between September 1914 and May 1915), and
The Problem of Thor Bridge
, which was published in two parts a month apart in 1922.

[2]
An excerpt from that great meditative poem on the conflicting emotions of retirement and advancing old age, ‘Ulysses’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892): ‘Come, my friends, / 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. / Push off, and sitting well in order smite / The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds / To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths / Of all the western stars, until I die. / It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: / It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, / And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. / Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' / We are not now that strength which in old days / Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; / One equal temper of heroic hearts, / Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’

[3]
The westernmost islands of England, off the coast of Cornwall.

[4]
The precise services for which Holmes was offered and refused a knighthood are not yet known. However, Watson makes clear that they took place in 1902 (
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
).

[5]
The few examples of Holmes’ support of Watson’s writings can be found in
The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
and
The Adventure of the Creeping Man
.

[6]
Watson reported these scars in Chapter I of
The Sign of Four
.

[7]
While Watson can be seen attending to the wounds of Victor Hatherley and others, he never records treating Holmes himself, so this may be an allusion to another unrecorded case.

[8]
This is presumably a reference to Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, the performance given at the Royal Opera House on Bow Street, across from the cells which once held Hugh Boone (
The Man with the Twisted Lip
) and Dr. Benjamin Lowe (
The Adventure of the Manufactured Miracle
).

[9]
What Holmes muttered to feign delirium in
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
.

[10]
The term ‘concussion’ has been used by the medical community since the 16
th
Century.

[11]
Laudanum, a 10% tincture of opium, was much in vogue during Victorian times for treating virtually any ailment.

[12]
Watson was well familiar with the wounds caused by hounds, having treated both Jephro Rucastle (
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
) and Professor Presbury (
The Adventure of the Creeping Man
).

[13]
Harry Peters and his wife Annie were noted to have escaped from the clutches of Inspector Lestrade (
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
).

[14]
The weather gage is the advantageous position of a fighting sailing vessel relative to another, especially if it is in any position upwind of the other vessel. An upwind vessel is able to maneuver at will toward any downwind point. A vessel downwind of another, is much more limited in its ability to attack upwind.

[15]
It has been hypothesized by a variety of scholars that one of the reasons for Holmes’ great interest in bee-keeping was that he had learned a medicinal secret to one of the products produced by those creatures, though modern science remains somewhat dubious of such claims.

[16]
These are the three pillars of Holmes’
Whole Art of Detection
. See the Appendix for more details.

[17]
From
The Adventure of the Three Students
.

[18]
From
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
.

[19]
From
The Five Orange Pips
.

[20]
From
The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter
.

[21]
From
The Hound of the Baskervilles
.

[22]
From
The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
.

[23]
Mentioned in
The Adventure of the Bruce Partington Plans
, why exactly they so hated Holmes is never made clear.

[24]
From
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
.

[25]
From
The Reigate Squires
.

[26]
From
The Naval Treaty
.

[27]
Princetown was the famous prison on Dartmoor from which Seldon, the Notting Hill murderer, escaped (Chapter VI,
The Hound of the Baskervilles
).

[28]
From
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
.

[29]
From
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
.

[30]
From
The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
.

[31]
Parkhurst is also where Shinwell Johnson served two terms (
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
).

[32]
From
The Adventure of The Bruce-Partington Plans
.

[33]
From
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
.

[34]
Mentioned in
The Adventure of the Golden Pince Nez
.

[35]
Although commonly associated with the French Revolution, in fact, the guillotine remained the only legal method of execution in France until the death penalty was abolished in 1981, and it was last used in 1977.

[36]
The full details of Wilson, the canary trainer, have yet to be unearthed (
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
).

[37]
From
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
.

[38]
Joliet Prison was the main prison for Abe Slaney’s hometown of Chicago. It was built in 1858 and closed in 2002.

[39]
From
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman
.

[40]
Jack Ketch (d.1686) was an executioner for King Charles II. His name became synonymous with executioners in general.

[41]
From
The Adventure of the Priory School
.

[42]
Also from
The Adventure of the Priory School
.

[43]
He can only be referring to Irene Adler (
A Scandal in Bohemia
). Holmes’ notorious chauvinistic opinion of women can be found in many of the tales.

[44]
Watson reported on these individuals who desired Holmes’ death in
The Adventure of the Empty House
.

[45]
The clearest examples of this can be found in
The Adventures of the Dying Detective
and
The Six Napoleons
.

[46]
As noted by John Clay in
The Problem of Threadneedle Street
, the British public was so distraught when the learned of Holmes’ supposed death at Reichenbach that they began to wear black armbands as a sign of mourning (though it has been argued that this is an urban legend).

[47]
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
.

[48]
Chapter VI of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
.

[49]
Watson’s perhaps ill-conceived disguise as a Chinese pottery collector (
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
).

[50]
Despite Watson’s relative failure with Moran, Holmes would again employ a disguised Watson as a chauffeur in
His Last Bow.

[51]
From
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
.

[52]
Both of these physicians were mentioned in
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
.

[53]
The story of how Holmes saved the life of Dr. Lowe can be found in the non-Canonical tale
The Adventure of the Manufactured Miracle
.

[54]
Sir James Saunders appears in both
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
and the non-canonical tale
The Adventure of the Fateful Malady
.

[55]
Dr. Percy Trevelyan, the expert on obscure nervous lesions, employed Holmes in
The Adventure of the Resident Patient
.

[56]
Dr. Armstrong vainly attempted to save the life of Godfrey Staunton’s wife in
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
.

[57]
From a glance at a map of London, it is clear that Watson is referring to Buckingham Palace, and then the boroughs of Belgravia, Chelsea, and Battersea. The New Battersea Bridge was built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette (engineer of London’s sewers) in 1890, replacing the decaying but romantic old bridge which had been the inspiration of many famous painters.

[58]
Moran appears to be speaking metaphorically, as Watson’s war pension of ‘eleven shillings and six-pence a day’ ran out after a span of nine months (Chapter I,
A Study in Scarlet
).

[59]
On 30
November, 1909, the House of Lords rejected the Budget, forcing a general election to be held six weeks later. This resulted only in a reduced Liberal Party majority, rather than an outright victory by some other party which Moran believed to be more sympathetic to him.

[60]
Brunei was a British Protectorate from 1888 until its independence in 1984. The Straits Settlements were a group of British territories formed in 1826 and which dissolved in 1946 into Malaysia and Singapore.

[61]
There is no known case involving aqua tofana, an arsenic-based poison much used in Italy in the 17
th
century, though it is referred to in Chapter VI of
A Study in Scarlet
, while arsenic plays a major role in the non-Canonical The
Adventure of the Manufactured Miracle
.

[62]
Hughes from Farnham is one of the most buried of the lost Holmes cases, as even the mention of him was suppressed from the published version of
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
. He can only be found in the original manuscript, which is in private hands.

[63]
Prussic Acid, or hydrogen cyanide, was also the intended poison of Eugenia Ronder (
The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger
).

[64]
Holmes was ‘well up in belladonna’ as well (Chapter II,
A Study in Scarlet
). The story of Mrs. Peterson has yet to be unearthed, but we assume that she is no relation to Commissionaire Peterson (
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
).

[65]
Holmes rarely discussed how exactly he managed to disguise himself so effectively, though he is widely thought to have spent some time as a stage actor before beginning his professional career.

[66]
Watson’s early background (before he attends the University of London) is relatively obscure. One of the few certainties is that he attended boarding school in England with Percy “Tadpole” Phelps, who was two classes ahead of him (
The Naval Treaty
). It is much debated exactly which school Watson and Phelps attended. The two major candidates include Winchester College, Hampshire and Wellington College, Berkshire, with Winchester being the winner, if the authenticity of this manuscript can be ascertained beyond a measure of doubt.

[67]
There is a Wells and Mendip Museum, founded 1893, located at 8 Cathedral Green in Wells. Why Watson failed to obscure the name, per his usual fashion, is unknown, though it should be noted that their records fail to mention a Dr. Basil Gennery. The Mendip Hills are famous for their particular geology which resulted in the highest concentration of caves in all of England.

[68]
Watson reported that Holmes’ imagination was appealed to be prehistoric man in
The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
, thus it seems odd that Holmes was singularly uninterested in the account of Dr. Gennery.

[69]
I have been unable to verify the existence of a cave named Haybridge, but the village of Haybridge is very near Wookey Hole, which was haunted by the Witch of Wookey Hole. It seems possible that Watson obscured the name for purposes unknown.