Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #3 Read online

  Table of Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  CARTOON, by Marc Bilgrey

  FROM WATSON’S SCRAPBOOK

  THE SCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Lenny Picker

  NOTABLE HOLMESIAN PAPERBACK PASTICHES & OTHER ODDITIES, by Gary Lovisi

  MEET NERO WOLFE: AN HOLMESIAN PERSPECTIVE, by Bob Byrne

  MRS HUDSON’S HOUSEHOLD HINTS, by (Mrs) Martha Hudson

  THE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  WATSON’S WOUND, by Sherlock Holmes (edited with Notes by Bruce I. Kilstein)

  A VOLUME IN VERMILLION, by Kim Newman

  THE DEATH OF FALSTAFF, by Darrell Schweitzer

  TOUGH GUYS DON’T PAY, by Stan Trybulski

  VACATION FROM CRIME, by Hal Charles

  WORKOUT, by Jean Paiva

  MAYHEM IN ST MARGARET MEDE, by Peter King

  CARTOON, by Whitney Darrow & John Betancourt

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Publisher: John Betancourt

  Editor: Marvin Kaye

  * * * *

  Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine is published quarterly by Wildside Press, LLC.

  Copyright © 2010 by Wildside Press LLC.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC.

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  * * * *

  The Sherlock Holmes characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle are used by permission of Conan Doyle Estate Ltd., www.conandoyleestate.co.uk.

  CARTOON, by Marc Bilgrey

  “I’ve authored over a dozen monographs on handwriting analysis, yet I can’t make out a word of this prescription for foot powder you’ve just written for me.”

  FROM WATSON’S SCRAPBOOK

  After Holmes perused the second issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, I felt considerable relief to discover that he did not altogether dislike it. Here I must confess my rôle in these proceedings; it was I who persuaded Holmes to lend his name to this periodical. Of course I offered him an equal portion in the honorarium agreed upon with the publisher, but Holmes generously declined, only stipulating that I keep a keen eye upon the contents.

  This is an issue I have discussed carefully with Mr Kaye, who, as editor, selects what appears in each number. Leading the mix each time, of course, is one of my own accounts of Holmes’s many adventures, followed by recountings by other authors of some of our exploits that I did not get around to recording myself. In these cases, I have provided these scribes with my own notes, together with whatever verbal addenda they may require.

  So far, so good. But in the preceding issue, Mr Kaye also elected to include a tale not only associated with that fellow Stoker’s infamous vampire, but was actually narrated by a cat. I tried to talk Mr Kaye out of publishing it, but I am glad, and as stated above, relieved to learn that not only did not Holmes object to “The Adventure of the Hanoverian Vampires,” he found it mildly risible.

  “Watson, Watson,” he chided me, “the author obviously wrote it with tongue in cheek. An amusing bit of fluff it is, hardly likely to damage the reputation I owe in good part to you, my dear fellow.”

  Holmes’s charity notwithstanding, I am pleased to note that the current issue of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine restricts itself to more traditional Holmesian fare, beginning with my own work, “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” and proceeding to that rare instance of Holmes himself narrating a story, the now-it-can-be-told adventure, “Watson’s Wound,” ably edited by Bruce Kilstein from Holmes’s difficult-to-decipher handwriting. (Perhaps I shouldn’t comment, given the abysmal reputation of physician penmanship.)

  I should explain why Mr Kaye chose to use the “Speckled Band” case in this, the third issue. He has elected to follow the dating of my stories as postulated by William S. Baring-Gould in his classic tome (or tomes, depending upon which edition one owns), The Annotated Sherlock Holmes. Thus, earlier issues have featured Holmes’s first two cases, the “Gloria Scott” and “The Musgrave Ritual.” According to Baring-Gould, the next in line ought to be A Study in Scarlet, in which is recounted how Holmes and I first met, as well how Holmes solved the murder of one Enoch J Drebber of America.

  Mr Kaye and I discussed this and came to the conclusion that as A Study in Scarlet is a novel, its length, even broken into two installments, would crowd out other compositions waiting to appear in these pages. Inasmuch as it is readily available elsewhere, it was decided to skip over it and go on to the next of our adventures, that of the “Speckled Band.”

  However, in lieu of my first Holmes novel, we have, instead, Kim Newman’s “A Volume in Vermillion.” Mr Newman, a fellow Brit, somehow managed to get his hands on a till-now unpublished manuscript by no less a villain than Colonel Sebastian Moran, whom you may recall was referred to by Holmes as “the second most dangerous man in London.” Thanks to Mr Newman’s efforts, a nefarious plan of his formidable employer comes to light for the first time, one that had its impact on A Study in Scarlet, to the utter astonishment of both Holmes and myself!

  I began with a confession, and must end with the same. I am glad our erstwhile landlady Mrs Hudson has elected to alter the nature of her ongoing column in these pages. Holmes and I were a tad dismayed at the advice feature she wrote for the past two issues, thus we are pleased to see that she has elected to alter the nature of her column. “Frankly,” she told me, “it was becoming rather a bore. In future, I shall restrict myself to suggestions of a more practical nature…useful hints for tending a well-ordered household.” At my urging, she has consented to include more of those splendid recipes that Holmes and I enjoyed at our Baker Street digs.

  And now I yield the floor to Mr Kaye.

  —John H Watson, M D

  * * * *

  It’s a pleasure to welcome back our columnist Lenny Picker, as well as Gary Lovisi, who gave us an excellent Holmesian tale last issue; this time Gary shares his passion for collecting scarce and rare Holmes books.

  Bob Byrne contributes an article introducing Mr Nero Wolfe, as if he needs any such thing…and yet I am always dismayed to learn how many avid mystery buffs have not read Rex Stout’s novels and stories about the only American detective worthy to be named as an equal to Sherlock Holmes. When this magazine was first contemplated by its publisher John Betancourt and myself, we seriously considered titling it the Nero Wolfe Mystery Magazine, but it was ultimately determined that Holmes’s name would (hopefully) attract more readers. In future, though, I do hope to include more articles about Wolfe, as well as stories.

  I have received several e-mails requesting guidelines for submission. I have not prepared any, nor shall I; I do not like to put restraints upon writers, and as a result I am often happily surprised. In the first issue, I outlined what we are striving to make the magazine; said information, slightly expanded, appears below. However, I am not reading new submissions at this time; our inventory is fully stocked at present.

  When I accepted the editorship of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, I had two models in mind: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, especially in its earlier years, when it and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction provided me with a liberal, detailed fund of knowledge about their respective genres. My second model was the old London Mystery Magazine, which ran from 1949 to 1982.

  I began reading EQMM during my graduate days at Penn State. My late friend Professor Ellis Grove gifted me with a huge number of issues dating back to at least the 1940s. (Alas, I lost them in a Wilkes-Barre PA flood!) Despite its name, it was, of course, a magazine containing a wide rang
e of detective and crime stories, and that ultimately is what SHMM is all about.

  So, to quote my first editorial, “while Watsonian pastiches and spoofs will appear as often as the merit of such submissions deserve, they will be counterbalanced by new mystery stories, period pieces, tales of murder and other crimes, puzzle/riddle tales if anyone still writes them, and in short, mysteries set in the present, past, and possibly even the future.” I lament the dearth of classic “reader solvable” mystery stories complete with clues and red herrings; any of those submitted will be highly regarded, and I have been fortunate to have received a few, though more often submissions are crime stories sans the kind of clue-stashing so ably executed by Bill DeAndrea, Anthony Boucher, Agatha Christie, Carter Dickson, etc., etc.

  The reason London Mystery Magazine is cited as a model is because that venerable publication interpreted “mystery” to include an occasional foray into the supernatural. Now this is something that sometimes irritates avid mystery buffs (John Dickson Carr comes to mind as an author who was not afraid to mix the two), so out of respect to this putative readership, such fiction will only appear occasionally in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.

  With the above in mind, in this issue you will find, in addition to the stories Watson cited above, a period piece by Darrell Schweitzer, “The Death of Falstaff”; a hard-boiled adventure, Stan Trybulski’s “Tough Guys Don’t Pay”; a miniature classic detective tale, “Vacation from Crime,” which brings back Hal Charles’s delightful TV news anchor Kelly Locke and her Chief-of-Detectives father—the pair appeared in our first issue, and will be back again in the future. Also in this issue is “Workout” by the late Jean Paiva, a fantasy with a murderer unlike any you’ve ever encountered.

  Our final story, “Mayhem in St Margaret Mede,” is a splendid spoof of TV’s classic espionage adventure, The Avengers. I contracted for it to run in our second issue, but a computer crash destroyed the file; all that remained was the title and its author, whose e-address no longer was valid. After endless phone calls, I managed to track Peter King down, thanks to a newspaper editor in Sarasota; Peter resubmitted the file; and here it is, at long last!

  N. B. for readers who also may be copy editors —In the same fashion that this publication eschews “Sherlockian” in favour of “Holmesian,” which is the preferred term in England, so do we respect Dr. Watson’s Britishisms (which also appear in my editorials, and any article or story whose author prefers words with “u” such as “favour” or “honour”). In keeping with Watsonian as well as Dickensian style, there is an absence of periods in such usages as Mr, Mrs, Dr, and after middle initials, such as the above-mentioned Enoch J Drebber

  Canonically yours,

  —Marvin Kaye

  THE SCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Lenny Picker

  THE NON-SOLITARY CYCLISTS

  Not many experts on Sherlock Holmes would rank “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist” as one of the best stories in the Canon. Arthur Conan Doyle himself omitted it from his own ranking of the top nineteen short Holmes stories; and in his prologue to his account of the case, good old Watson frankly noted that, “It is true that the circumstance did not admit of any striking illustration of those powers for which my friend was famous,” before adding that “there were some points about the case which made it stand out.” My recent re-reading of the tale supports the Doctors’s two opinions. While the central puzzle—why does an unknown bearded man follow Violet Smith as she cycles between Charlington Hall and Farnham Station?—is an intriguing one, the resolution is much less so. After some atypical violence—the Master’s pub fight with the odious, over-the-top villain, Mr. Woodley, and some gunplay, Holmes foils the criminal’s schemes by being in the right place at the right time—and he is almost too late. And his deductions about the reason for Miss Smith’s shadow are less impressive than in “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” another damsel-in-distress short story.

  Despite these deficiencies, “The Solitary Cyclist” was one of the major inspirations for what I contend is one of the best Sherlock Holmes films of all time—although neither Holmes nor Watson appear in it. But the “curious incident of the Holmes” in the Murder Rooms is easily explainable. The 2001 BBC adaptation of David Pirie’s superior novel, The Patient’s Eyes: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, is one of a series constructed from Piries’s premise that the real-life model for the Master, Edinburgh’s Dr. Joseph Bell, did actual detection, aided by a young Arthur Conan Doyle. Considering it a Holmes film is, for me, an easy call, especially after enduring, albeit with an occasional chortle, viewing the execrable 1962 German-French-Italian production, Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, with its badly-dubbed dialogue and a jazzy musical score that has to be heard to be believed, in an ill-fated effort to craft a column examining screen adaptations of The Valley of Fear, for which the world is not yet prepared. Just because Christopher Lee plays a character called Holmes in the movie (with the addition of a very obvious prosthetic nose, and with someone else voicing his lines in English), doesn’t make it worthy of serious discussion as a Sherlock Holmes film, unless the subject is Screen Adaptations Of The Works Of Arthur Conan Doyle—Unintended Humor In. By contrast, in my opinion, the episode of Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes entitled “The Patient’s Eyes” has it all: intelligent writing, brilliant acting, especially from the three leads; outstanding production values; and a carefully-constructed plot. For those readers who have not yet seen it, I hope this column will convince you to buy, or at least rent it on DVD, as well as seek out the novel.

  A fictional Bell/Doyle pairing had been attempted before in Howard Engel’s 1997s novel Mr. Doyle and Dr. Bell, an inferior book in which the doctor and his protegé race the clock to save a man from the gallows. But there’s no comparison between Engel’s work and Pirie’s. The latter, a British screenwriter, film producer, film critic, and novelist, whose previous work included a 1997s adaptation of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman In White, made a careful study of Doyle’s early life in constructing his historical fictions.

  Pirie had asked himself, “What is it with Holmes that he has such an uncanny reality about him? Reading the stories undoubtedly brings us closer to the truth, for they have an odd and unexpected intensity. There is a genuine emotion in Doyle’s portrayal of Holmes and Watson, which explains some of its impact, but makes the creative origins of this emotion even more mysterious.” He began to wonder whether “Holmes seems real because, in certain respects we are only just starting to appreciate, he was real?”

  For Pirie, Sherlock Holmes was a product of Doyle’s difficult early life. He was well aware of Doyle’s letter to the charismatic teacher and physician Joseph Bell, who taught him at Edinburgh University, which stated, “It is certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes.” But for Pirie, there was a psychological background to the Bell-Doyle connection. As he has written: “And so it was that Doyle started his early years at Edinburgh medical school with a father who was deranged and whose condition had to be kept secret and now, in the same house, an arrogant older rival for his mother’s affection, a man who had succeeded at the profession he was only just beginning. He seems at first to have been deeply alienated from the university. But at this critical time, when Doyle, by his own admission, was feeling wild, full-blooded, and a trifle reckless, someone else appeared: a teacher opposite in every way to these other troublesome fathers. And his name was Joseph Bell.”

  From this foundation, Pirie crafted a fictionalized Bell and Doyle, spinning engaging narratives taking off from the evidence that the real Bell did assist the official authorities in solving crimes, much as Holmes did. He further imagined that “Bell may have supplied Doyle with some of the actual details of criminal investigation he later put to such good use,” in stories like “The Solitary Cyclist.”

  The first fruit of Pirie’s efforts was the 2000 BBC telefilm, Murder Rooms, which showed how B
ell and Doyle met at the University of Edinburgh, and teamed up to track down a serial killer whose methods anticipated those of Jack the Ripper. Ian Richardson, who had played Holmes in middling 1980s television film adaptations of The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sign of the Four, was perfectly cast as Bell, managing to imbue the character with humor and passion to accompany his formidable intellect. Robin Laing, a relative unknown, played Doyle. (While Murder Rooms is available on DVD, some significant footage, aired when it was first shown on PBS, has been cut.)

  The novel of “The Patient’s Eyes” alluded to those events; and it expanded on the telefilm’s account of the beginning of the Bell-Doyle team. It cleverly uses elements from “The Solitary Cyclist,” “The Speckled Band,” and “Wisteria Lodge,” as Doyle, some years removed from the trauma that marked the ending of his first investigation as Bell’s assistant, attempts to start a new life on the South Coast. He soon finds himself at odds with his employer, Dr. Cullingworth, who values profits over his patients’ health. (This character’s name, derived from Doyle’s “The Stark-Munro Letters,” was changed to Turnavine in the screenplay, one of the real names of the man who exploited Doyle in his early days as a doctor.) Despite himself, Doyle falls for one of his patients, Heather Grace, who consults him about an eye problem, and then confides that she has been shadowed by a cloaked figure on a bike. Doyle lies in wait for her pursuer, almost exactly as Watson did in “The Solitary Cyclist,” but when, on his second attempt, he spots the person, the man inexplicably vanishes from view. Bell, who has learned of Grace’s problem via a letter from Doyle, arrives on the scene and takes command of the case. As the situation escalates to murder, the roster of suspects expands to include not only Cullingworth, Grace’s former physician, whose advances were repulsed by her, but Grace’s uncle and guardian, Charles Blythe, and her would-be fiancée, Guy Greenwell. The plot is so carefully constructed that it would do a great disservice to those who have neither read the novel nor seen the film to say much more about it. (Those who have who are interested in engaging me on the ending are welcome to email me—my address is at the end of the column.)