The Problem of Threadneedle Street (The Assassination of Sherlock Holmes Book 2) (21 page)

[58]
This appears to be a shortening of the proverb, ‘Give a man a fish, he easts for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ The origin of this phrase is obscure, but it certainly originated before 1900.

[59]
Clearly a reference to the ‘Trojan’ Sphinx found in
The Adventure of the Pharaoh’s Curse
.

[60]
Holmes is referring to the opium den that served as the base for Hugh Boone (
The Man with the Twisted Lip
).

[61]
Properly, the Larghetto, or slow second movement of the Sonatina in G major for violin and piano, Op. 100. The composer reputedly wrote down the notes on his shirt sleeve while on a visit to Minnehaha Falls, near St. Paul, Minnesota in 1893. His publisher then separately sold this movement under a romantic title not originally intended by Dvorak.

[62]
Where Lady Francis Carfax banked before her disappearance in the eponymous tale. There was no bank of this name, though from the description later provided by Watson, he can only be referring to the King William House on Pudding Lane. We are unable to confirm from the historical records that this building actually held a bank in 1909.

[63]
The registers of the famous insurance company Lloyd’s, founded in 1688, are mentioned in
The Five Orange Pips
.

[64]
Located opposite the Bank of England, the head offices of the London, the City and Midland Bank headquarters is a now the five-star Threadneedles Hotel.

[65]
Hall Pycroft hired Holmes in 1889 to assist him in
The Adventure of the Stock-Broker’s Clerk
.

[66]
The diamond core drill was invented and put to practical use during tunneling in 1863 by Rodolphe Leschot, a French engineer. Their use rapidly expanded into drilling oil wells, as well as more nefarious schemes.

[67]
Oriel windows are a form of corbel-supported bay window which projects from the main wall of a building but does not reach to the ground. They are commonly found in Arab architecture, where they are called
mashrabiyas
.

[68]
As happened to Ned Hunter, the groom on guard at the stables (
Silver Blaze
).

[69]
Holmes also boasted of this in Chapter XIII of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
.

[70]
Runnymede is a is a water-meadow alongside the River Thames in the English county of Surrey, approximately twenty miles west of central London. It is famous for being the location of the sealing of Magna Carta in 1215. Only four of the original charters still exist, none of them kept at Runnymede (two are in the British Library, one in Lincoln Cathedral, and one in Salisbury Cathedral).

[71]
Barker was Holmes’ hated rival upon the Surrey shore (
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman
).

[72]
The Ankerwyke Yew is a huge and ancient tree close to the ruins of St Mary's Priory, the site of a Benedictine nunnery built in the 12th century. The tree is at least 1,400 years old and is located on the opposite bank of the River Thames from the meadows of Runnymede. It is said to be the location where Henry VIII met Anne Boleyn in the 1530s.

[73]
Presumably a reference to the events detailed in
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
.

[74]
Morphia was an old-fashioned name for morphine, from Morpheus, the Roman god of dreams. How exactly Watson knew the man’s habit tended towards opioids, as opposed to a solution of cocaine, is not clear.

[75]
A trebuchet is a type of catapult commonly used as a siege engine in the Middle Ages.

[76]
Examples of such adventure tales would necessarily include
The White Company
(1891) and
Sir Nigel
(1906), both penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Watson’s first literary agent.

[77]
This use was invented by Dr. Joseph Thomas Clover (1825-1882), one of the pioneers of anesthesia, in 1862.

[78]
According to the Meteorological Office, the wind around London is most often out of the south west (20% of the time), the west (20% of the time), and occasionally the south (16%of the time) or the north (11% of the time). Despite Holmes’ allusion to the contrary, an east wind is rare (
His Last Bow
).

[79]
Large quantities of goldbeater's skin were used to make the gas bags of early balloons created by the Royal Engineers at Chatham, Kent starting in 1881–82. The method of preparing and making gas-tight joins in the skins was known only to a family from Alsatia called Weinling, who were thus employed by the Royal Engineers for many years. The British had a monopoly on the technique until around 1912.

[80]
Homes of the Royal Mallows, whose regiment was commanded by Colonel Barclay before his death in 1889 (
The Adventure of the Crooked Man
).

[81]
From where the Bruce-Partington plans were stolen in the eponymous
Adventure
.

[82]
Famously, Colonel Moran and his air-gun made their first appearance in
The Adventure of the Empty House
.

[83]
The last Canonical word that we have about Colonel Moran is that he was still living in 1902, the time of the Baron Gruner case (
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
).

[84]
It was relatively rare for Holmes to carry a gun, a task he usually left to Watson. Some examples to the contrary include when he fires at Tonga (Chapter X,
The Sign of Four
) and the eponymous hound (Chapter XIV,
The Hound of the Baskervilles
), and when he strikes Killer Evans with a pistol (
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
). Furthermore, Holmes does threaten with a pistol both Sir George Burnwell (
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
) and Professor Moriarty (
The Final Problem
).

[85]
Guy Fawkes (1570-1606) was an English Catholic who planned to assassinate King James I and blow up Parliament in the failed Gunpowder Plot.

[86]
In fact, by 1909 airships had been in the development stage for several decades, with the first fully-controllable free flight conducted in 1884, and the first German Zeppelin in 1900. The British Army built their first dirigible in 1907.

[87]
As described in
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
.

[88]
As described in Chapter XIV of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
.

[89]
As described in Chapter VII of
The Valley of Fear
.

[90]
As described in
The Adventure of the Empty House
.

[91]
As described in
The Adventure of Black Peter
.

[92]
As described in
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons
.

[93]
The Monument to the Great Fire of London is a 202-foot tall Doric column which stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, 202 feet from the spot in Pudding Lane where the Great Fire started on 2 September 1666. Completed in 1677, it is the tallest isolated stone column in the world.

[94]
The Edinburgh-born writer James Boswell visited the Monument in 1763 to climb the 311 steps to what was then the highest viewpoint in London. Halfway up, he suffered a panic attack, but persevered and made it to the top, where he found it ‘horrid to be so monstrous a way up in the air, so far above London and all its spires.’

[95]
When Holmes surprised Moran in the act of an attempted assassination, the Colonel sprung upon Holmes with a great ferocity. He was only subdued by a blow to the head delivered by Watson (
The Adventure of the Empty House
).

[96]
Clearly a reference to the events recorded in Chapter VII of
A Study in Scarlet
.

[97]
Holmes employed a wax model in both
The Adventure of the Empty House
and
The Mazarin Stone
, however only the first was made by Monsieur Oscar Meunier of Grenoble. Since it was destroyed by Moran, he commissioned a second by Tavernier, the French modeler.

[98]
Pinner and Beddington were the main villains of
The Adventure of the Stock-Broker’s Clerk
.

[99]
John Clay was the grandson of a Royal Duke with royal blood flowing in his veins (which king produced such a wicked descendent is never specified), and by this comment appears to be implying that he has inherited the title.

[100]
Clay is paraphrasing quoting Mark Twain, who said something to this effect in 1897, in response to a false newspaper account that he was gravely ill.

[101]
When the British pubic read of Holmes’ supposed death in
The Final Problem
, they reportedly reacted with great despair. It was not uncommon for people to wear a black armband in mourning.

[102]
Eton is the famous boarding school, established 1440 near Windsor Castle, where generations of British aristocracy were educated. Only two men are recorded in the Canon as having attended it: John Clay & Sebastian Moran.

[103]
The details of Holmes’ original encounter with Victor Lynch, the forger, have yet to be unearthed. He is mentioned in the ‘V’ Index (
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
).

[104]
Where counting every third word made clear the details of the intended message (
The
‘Gloria Scott’).

[105]
The cipher created by the father of Elsie Cubitt (
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
).

[106]
Blaise de Vigenère (1523-1596) was a French diplomat who served under King Henri III and invented a new cipher in order to protect sensitive documents.

[107]
Such as during the American Civil War, primarily by the Confederate side.

[108]
A paraphrase of: ‘Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’ (
Book of Matthew
, 19:23-26).

[109]
The Metropolitan Police was formed in 1829 by Robert Peel, who selected a private house at 4 Whitehall Place as their headquarters. This building backed onto a street called Great Scotland Yard, and from the public entrance that was located there developed a permanent nickname. The original building expanded over the years to accommodate the growth of the Unit, but eventually a new headquarters needed to be built. In 1890, the C.I.D. moved into a new building located on the Victoria Embankment, very near Westminster Bridge and the statue of Queen Boudica. But the moniker followed them, and remains to this day, even as the 1890 ‘Norman Shaw’ Buildings were vacated in 1967 for a modern structure on Broadway and Victoria Street.

[110]
It is unclear whether this is an official term, but Holmes goes down to the Yard to see Lestrade and consult their record of faces when attempting to identify the supposed Mr. John Garrideb (
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
).

[111]
Watson calls it thus in
The Adventure of the Empty House
.

[112]
These handcuffs were actually invented by Sherlock Holmes (Chapter VII of
A Study in Scarlet
).

[113]
As seen in
The Adventure of the Resident Patient
.

[114]
As seen in Chapter VII of
The Valley of Fear
.

[115]
Under questioning by Holmes, Lestrade denied dragging the Serpentine and claimed that a park-keeper found these items floating along its edge, but this description appears to contradict his statement (
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
).

[116]
As seen in the Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.

[117]
As seen in Chapter VI of
The Sign of Four
.

[118]
As seen in Chapter XI of
The Sign of Four
.

[119]
As seen in
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
.

[120]
As seen in
The Man with the Twisted Lip
.

[121]
As seen in
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
.

[122]
As seen in
The Naval Treaty
.

[123]
As seen in
The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
.

[124]
As seen in Chapter XIV of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
.