Detective back by popular demand in ‘Return of Sherlock Holmes’ (1905)

For today’s readers, Sherlock Holmes didn’t stay dead for long. “Killed off” in “The Final Problem,” he re-emerges in the next-published short story, “The Adventure of the Empty House.” In the fictional chronology, this is a gap between 1891 and 1894. In the real world, it was a gap between 1893 and 1903.

The third short-story collection, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes” (1905), gathers yarns published in 1903-04. Arthur Conan Doyle may have been responding to public pressure in resurrecting the character for The Strand magazine, but he is quite engaged in these 13 installments, and I was too.

My biggest surprise in my Holmes venture is how little the famous villain Moriarty plays into the chronology so far. “The Final Problem” is more of an outline than an actual story. Were readers enamored by Moriarty just because Holmes speaks highly of him as an adversary?

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The sequel, “Empty House,” is much better as Holmes – having hidden from Moriarty’s underlings in various European countries for three years – shocks Watson by returning. It’s fun that he uses a wax dummy of himself, sitting in the window of 221B Baker Street, as bait to catch the underlings and thus allow himself to emerge from hiding.

Then the doctor becomes Holmes’ roomie again. Light research reveals that Watson’s wife Mary died during Holmes’ hiatus. It’s an interesting choice by Doyle to only hint at this by portraying Watson as in mourning (I had assumed merely over Holmes), but it further confirms that the cases are the thing in this saga, not so much the personal lives of the two leads.

A plurality of ‘singular’ cases

Although the old domestic setup is reinstated, a lot of these stories take place in the pre-faked-death era, and Holmes begrudgingly allows Watson to record them in prose. The way Watson alludes to hundreds of cases – with the recorded ones being of “singular” interest – is a neat way to build up a grand mythology without immediately contributing to it.

As is perhaps inevitable, the stories in “Return” – while universally enjoyable – aren’t quite as singular anymore. Doyle’s favorite plots begin to emerge. For instance, in “The Second Stain,” top-secret government documents that could lead to war if they fall into the wrong hands have disappeared, just like in “The Naval Treaty” from “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes” (1894). Doyle was well aware of this, as Watson alluded to this case in “Naval Treaty.” To its credit, this one is better, even if the papers remain a maguffin.

Potentially life-altering documents also come into play in “Charles Augustus Milverton,” in which we meet the titular professional blackmailer, a more interesting villain than Moriarty at this point simply because he is given a personality and skill set, rather than vague intimations. The timeless “The Three Students” is in this vein, too, as it centers around copied exam questions.

Dodging the police

From the start of the Holmes stories, Doyle has perceived the police as generally incompetent, but in “Return” they become useful idiots. Holmes has figured out how to solve cases while keeping the official inspector at arm’s length. Then he can choose to let the culprit go if he judges them to be a good person, or turn them over to the justice system if he judges them to be bad.

In “The Abbey Grange” – the collection’s best yarn — he appoints himself as the judge and Watson as the jury. Watson says “Not guilty, my lord,” and it’s wrapped up in a matter of seconds.

Agatha Christie would later have Poirot go extra-judicial at times, although often it played like a last-minute surprise. Holmes purposely threads a needle to solve the case without coordinating with police, thus allowing him the freedom to make that judgment.

At other times, the police are dangerous idiots. In “Black Peter,” circumstantial evidence points to one person, except that he couldn’t have committed the murder, because it would require a degree of strength he doesn’t possess. Detective Hopkins doesn’t care.

Doyle shows that a crime need not be committed in order for a Holmes story to be gripping in “The Missing Three-Quarter.” The missing “football player” is in fact a rugby player, by today’s terminology. (Rugby, soccer and American football all went by “football,” and it took a while for the modern terms to be codified.)

From implausible to solvable

While Doyle may have begrudgingly returned to Holmes, and while there is some repetition of themes, these 13 stories are well-crafted and many have a touch of fun, as the author pushes the plausibility of the bad guy’s scheme just short of the breaking point. In “The Norwood Builder,” it’s delicious the way Holmes ferrets out someone who has faked his own murder to frame an enemy.

“The Dancing Men” involves messages in code, with symbols of dancing stick figures standing for letters. It’s a rare case where the reader could play along, although I admit I blasted through the tale, preferring to watch Sherlock do the decoding. Fans of Scrabble might enjoy Holmes’ analysis of letter frequency.

Doyle also lets readers into the mystery more than usual in “The Six Napoleons.” A vandal is going around smashing cheap busts of Napoleon, and I think experienced mystery readers will be able to see past the police’s initial theory that it’s someone with an irrational degree of hatred for the historical figure.

The great outdoors

A sense of place and atmosphere – memorably wielded by Doyle in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (1902) – plays into many of these yarns. In fact, “The Priory School” likewise features a moor, and a student who has inexplicably fled across it on a bicycle.

That mode of transportation adds outdoor flavor to “The Solitary Cyclist,” too, wherein reader must recall this is an era when marriages were not always based on love and they were almost impossible to get out of unless both spouses agreed to it. As a battered woman’s maid puts it in “The Abbey Grange”: “If she made a mistake, she has paid for it, if ever a woman did.”

Also of the time: pince-nez! When reading Christie yarns, this is one of my favorite old-time terms; context clues tell me they are eyeglasses that the user holds up to their face, as opposed to being firmly affixed behind the ears. “The Golden Pince-Nez” is among Holmes’ most impressive uses of a singular clue to make so many deductions that he solves the case from that clue alone.

You may or may not require pince-nez when reading “The Return of Sherlock Holmes,” but remember to bring your magnifying glass, because Doyle lets you play along more than usual.

Sleuthing Sunday reviews the works of Agatha Christie, along with other new and old classics of the mystery genre.