the observance of trifles.” (5)“There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”Holmes“It is really very good of you to come, Watson,” said he. “It makes a considerable difference to me, having someone with me on whom I can thoroughly rely.”“Sherlock Holmes was transformed when he was hot upon such a scent as this. Men who had only known the quiet thinker and logician of Baker Street would fail to recognize him. His face flushed and darkened. His brows were drawn into two hard black lines, while his eyes shone out from beneath them with a steely glitter. His face was bent downward, his shoulders bowed, his lips compressed, and the veins stood out like whipcord in his long, sinewy neck. His nostrils seemed to dilate with a purely animal lust for the chase, and his mind was so absolutely concentrated upon the matter before him that a question or remark fell unheard upon his ears, or at the most, only provoked a quick, inpatient snarl in reply.”Holmes’ Observations of Watson“My dear fellow, I know you well. I know the military neatness which characterizes you. You shave every morning, and in this season you shave by the sunlight, but since your shaving is less and less complete as we get farther back on the left side, until it becomes positively slovenly as we get round the angle of the jaw, it is surely very clear that that side is less well illuminated than the other.”
Notes:“my pocket Petrarch,” an Italian 14th century poet Holmes read on the train to Boscombe Valley.Watson married and not living at Baker St.
The Five Orange Pips
Publication & Dates:Strand, November. 1891The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. (5th story) 1905Illustrations: Sidney Paget (6)Conan Doyle’s 7th storyHolmes’ 13th case
Story Introduction:When I glance over my notes and records of the Sherlock Holmes cases between the years ’82 and ’90 I am faced by so many which present strange and interesting features, that it is no easy matter to know which to choose and which to leave. Some, however, have already gained publicity through the papers, and others have not offered a field for those peculiar qualities which my friend possessed in so high a degree, and which it is the object of these papers to illustrate. Some, too, have baffled his analytical skill, and would be, as narratives, beginnings without an ending, while others have been but partially cleared up, and have their explanations founded rather upon conjecture and surmise than on that absolute logical proof which was so dear to him. There is, however, one of these last which was so remarkable in its details and so startling in its results, that I am tempted to give some account of it, in spite of the fact that there are points in connection with it which never have been, and probably never will be, entirely cleared up.The year ’87 furnished us with a long series of cases of greater or less your interest, of which I retain the records. Among my headings under these twelve months, I find an account of the adventure of the Paradol chamber, of the amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British barque Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case. In the latter as may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes was able by winding up the dead man’s watch, to prove that it had been wound up two hours ago, and that therefore the deceased had gone to bed within that time—a deduction which was of the greatest importance in clearing up the case. All these I may sketch out at some future date, but none of them present such singular features as the strange train of circumstances which I have now taken up my pen to describe.It was in the latter days of September and the equinoctial gales had set in with exceptional violence. All day the wind had screamed and the rain had beaten against the windows so that even here in the heart of great hand-made London we were forced to raise our minds for the instant from the routine of life, and to recognize the presence of those great elements forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilization, like an untamed beast in a cage. As evening drew in the storm grew higher and louder, and the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney. Sherlock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, whilst I at the other was deep in one of Clark Russell’s fine sea-stories, until the howl of the gale from without seemed to blend with the text, and a splash of the rain to lengthen out into the long swash of the sea waves. My wife was on a visit to her mother’s, and for a few days I was a dweller once more in my old quarters at Baker Street.“Why,” glancing at my companion, “that was surely the bell. Who could come to-night? Some friend of yours perhaps?”“Except yourself I have none,” he answered. “I do not encourage visitors.”“A client, then?”“If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less would bring a man out on such a day, at such an hour. But I take it that it is more likely to be some crony of the landlady’s.”Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his conjecture, however, for there came a step in the passage, and a tapping at the door. He stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and towards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit. “Come in!” said he.* A Holmes failure. Young John Openshaw was murdered before Holmes could do anything.Case Information
Date:1887 Latter days of September, afternoon
Duration:2 Days
Crime:Murder.
Client:John Openshaw, son. “I have come for advice.”— “”That is easily got.”— “”And help.”— “”That is not always so easy.”
Victims:1st Elias Openshaw, uncle. Former member of the Ku Klux Klan. Found face downwards, in a little green-scrummed pool, which lay at the foot of the garden. Ruled a suicide.Young man became a planter in Florida, where he was reported to have done very well. He fought in Jackson’s army, and afterwards under Hood, where he rose to be a colonel. “About 1869 or 1870 he came back to Europe, and took a small estate in Sussex, near Horsham. He was a singular man, fierce and quick-tempered, very foul-mouthed when angry, and of a most retiring disposition. He drank a great deal of brandy, and smoked very heavily, but he would see no society, and did not want any friends, even his own brother.” His estate of some fourteen thousand pounds lay in his credit at the bank.2nd Joseph Openshaw, father. Died from falling over a deep chalk-pit which abound the neighbourhood near Fareham, while returning in the evening to Major Freebody’s home. Ruled, death from accidental causes.Patentee of the Openshaw unbreakable bicycle tire. Had a small factory in Coventry.3rd John Openshaw, son. He had missed his path, and walked over the edge of one of the small landing places for river steamboats. The deceased had been the victim of an unfortunate accident.“a young man, some two-and-twenty at the outside, well groomed and trimly clad, with something of refinement and delicacy in his bearing.”
Crime Scene:1st, Horsham, home of the Openshaws, near Elias’ home. Where Elias was murdered.2nd, near Fareham, where Joseph was murdered, near the home of Major Prendergast, Joseph’s friend.3rd, the embankment near Waterloo Bridge, where John was murdered.
Criminal:Captain James Calhoun, of the barque Lone Star, Savannah, Georgia. Leader of the gang. “he had two mates.”
Punishment:None, returning to Savannah, the Lone Star was struck in a very severe equinoctial gale and was lost at sea with no survivors.
Official Police:Police-constable Cook, of the H division, on duty near Waterloo Bridge“by the aid of the water police, the body (John) was eventually recovered.”Police in Savannah, USA.
Characters:No Others.
Others Mentioned:Major Prendergast recommended Holmes to John Openshaw. Holmes had cleared him in the Tankerville Club Scandal. He was wrongly accused of cheating at cards.Ku Klux Klan (KKK) over whose papers the Openshaws were murdered.Mary, Elias’s housekeeper.Mr. Fordham, Horsham lawyer. Drew up Elias’s will.Major Freebody, an old friend who Joseph was visiting when he died.Hudson, Mc Cauley, Paramore, John Swain, names mentioned in the note.Finns and Germans. The rest of the crew aboard the Lone Star, heading for Savannah.Two mates, accomplices of Captain James Calhoun, all native-born Americans.
Locations:Baker Street.
Locations Mentioned:Coventry, location of Joseph Openshaw’s small factory.USA, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Texas.Pondicherry India, postmark of 1st letter received by Elias.Dundee, postmark of 2nd letter received by Joseph.London—eastern