Sherlock Holmes

Observations: This story could be equally set in Cambridge or
Oxford – quadrangles only exist in the latter and black clay was
used for jumping pits in the former.
Verdict: A chirpy little tale with an obvious moral – cheating is
definitely not cricket. But nice to have a simple, non-fatal puzzle
that the Great Detective can solve before breakfast. 4/5
37) The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
UK: The Strand Magazine (July 1904, SP); USA: Collier’s  (29
October 1904, FDS)
The Case: The murderer of an invalid’s secretary seems to have
vanished into thin air…
Date: Late November 1894.
Characters: Stanley Hopkins, Professor Coram, Mrs Marker,
T H E C A N O N
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Susan Tarlton,Wilson, Anna, Sergius, Alexis, private  detective,
Willoughby Smith, Mortimer, Chief Constable.
Locations: 221B Baker Street;Yoxley Old Place, near Chatham,
Kent; unnamed inn.
Recorded Case:The Sign of Four.
Unrecorded Cases: Crosby the banker and the red leech, contents
of the Addleton barrow, Smith-Mortimer succession case,
Huret the Boulevard assassin.
Holmes: Likes Alexandrian cigarettes. Has received the French
Legion of Honour, which makes him a Chevalier of the Order,
technically a knight. Puts women at their ease, even though he
doesn’t like them.
Elementary: Produces a description of the assailant from her
pince-nez.
Quotable Quote: ‘What did you do, Hopkins, after you had made
certain that you had made certain of nothing?’
Problem: Holmes says about glasses that ‘it would be difficult to
name any articles which afford a finer field for inference’ – the
same comment he gives elsewhere in the canon about pipes,
watches and bootlaces.
Verdict: The trail of clues is meticulously and fairly followed,
and Holmes’ analysis of the pince-nez is clever stuff. But the
resolution – betrayal in a distant country – treads familiar
territory. 4/5
38) The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
UK: The Strand Magazine (August 1904, SP); USA: Collier’s (26
November 1904, FDS)
The Case: A rugby player disappears days before a major
game…
Date: February 1896/7.
S H E R L O C K H O L M E S
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Characters: Cyril Overton, hotel porter, Lord Mount-James, Dr
Leslie Armstrong, coachman, Pompey the draghound, Stanley
Hopkins, Godfrey Staunton, Moorhouse, Morton, Johnson, Stevenson,
Jeremy Dixon.
Locations: 221B Baker Street; Bentley’s private hotel, London;
Dr Armstrong’s practice, Cambridge; inn, Cambridge; Trinity
College, Cambridge; Scotland Yard.
Unrecorded Cases: Arthur H Staunton the forger, Henry Staunton
(whom Holmes helped to hang).
Holmes: No longer uses cocaine, but the habit is dormant within
him. Thinks Armstrong could replace the void left by
Moriarty’s death.
Watson: Has weaned Holmes off his drug habit.
Quotable Quote: ‘My ramifications stretch out into many
sections of society, but never, I am happy to say, into amateur
sport, which is the best and soundest thing in England.’
Problems: Holmes refers to himself as a private detective, yet
earlier in The Sign of Four he disparaged this title, calling himself
‘the only unofficial consulting detective’. Watson would have
understood Overton’s telegram, having played rugby for
Blackheath (as mentioned in The Sussex Vampire).