MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

As happens to people with extreme sensitivity, Sherlock Holmes suffered periodic accesses of melancholy. This morbid state could last several weeks. My friend then locked himself in his room completely in the dark and refused to receive anyone other than Queen Victoria or someone who looked like Her. I had to talk to him through the closed door of his room and Mrs. Hudson was forced to pass his meal under the door, which meant reducing his food to very thin slices of ham and cheese. As for the intake of liquids, the only thing we could do was spill buckets of water in the hope that it formed puddles on the other side of the door so Holmes could slurp them through a straw. However, this diet seemed to me insufficient, so one day I showed myself up at home with a fruit capable of providing both solid and liquid food. "How do you plan to pass a coconut under the door?" objected Mrs. Hudson, who was a very nit-picking woman. In my youth I had played rugby and had an enviable a...

When Marie Lloyd, the so called “Queen of the Music Hall", unexpectedly showed up at 221B, Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes already knew what was the case that she was going to place in his hands. The “Thames” of the previous day had echoed the news under the title "The floating singer." So the first thing Holmes did when Mrs. Hudson announced her visit, was to close the windows to prevent Mrs Lloyd from floating out of the apartment. However, Mrs Lloyd’s account of the facts showed us that it had been an unnecessary precaution. Mrs Lloyd's spontaneous buoyancy was limited to the “Canterbury Music Hall" located in Lambeth and only while she was on stage. It had all started three days before, when during her performance she began to float aimlessly in the air. She did not want to interrupt her performance but, upon completion, she complained angrily to Mr Villiers, Canterbury Hall's manager, claiming that she had a reputation as a singer and could not afford to...

The deductive reasoning of Sherlock Holmes was very complex. (As complex as the way he clothed himself: suffice it to say that he put on his trousers over his head, in a display of flexibility that many contortionists only dream of.) I will give just one example: One day we received a letter addressed to "Charlotte Holmes, the famous detective." Analyzing that unique line of writing, Sherlock was able to determine a whole range of facts that later, when we opened the letter, proved to be true. Holmes deduced firstly that the author was a top-notch asshole. Secondly, that this was the first letter he sent in his life, and thirdly that the matter that had led him to take such trouble was a stupidity of such caliber that the letter he would get in reply would take away from him the desire to send any other letter anymore. Examining the progressive downward inclination of the line, he guessed in addition that, although the author presumably began to write it while awake, as he w...

In my view, the deductive capacity of Sherlock Holmes has no paragon in the history of Criminology. Sometimes it would be said that he possessed psychic powers, and that it was through such powers that he guessed things. And now that I've brought psychic powers up, let me tell you an episode that personally made me put my hair on end. From time to time, Holmes and I used to go for a walk late at night. The streets were calmer and lent themselves more to reflection and relaxed conversation. Well, there was an itinerary we frequented. We left Baker Street, took Marylebone Road, then along Kilburn High Road, to finally reach the Thames as it passed through Chelsea. In the course of this itinerary a curious phenomenon happened every time. When we passed a house that overlooked Paddington Basin, it fell at our feet a roasted hazelnut. Obviously, after experiencing this phenomenon a certain number of times, we were already forewarned and looked up trying to determine where "the gi...

When autumn came, a vociferous individual dressed in a long black cape and wearing a wide-brimmed hat used to stay stuck near 221B, Baker Street. To Holmes it seemed insufferable. Not only because of the hollering, but because of the content of his preaching. Holmes had read the Bible several times since his youth, which in his case amounted to saying that he knew the Bible by heart. And that's why he could not stand the falseness of the biblical quotations that the preacher voiced. Those quotes were not only inaccurate but totally invented. For example, one of his favorites was: "Saint Matthew says: Keep your sheep in a spacious place and do not pile them up, for the piles are an abomination and the one who piles up will be piled up and he will be called wicked blockhead and his gums will bleed." Holmes knew that nothing was said in the Bible about piling up sheep. As nothing was said about Chinese laundries, another favorite topic of that faker: “Saint John says: W...

Margaret Stanford Burton had been accused of killing her husband, John Burton, the famous fish-skeleton collector, a crime she pleaded not guilty to. Mr Burton was found pierced by the sword of a swordfish on the steps of the entrance to his house in London, where he lived with his wife until his death. (Thereafter they did not speak again, which was interpreted by the police as a clear sign that the couple was not as close as their neighbors thought.) Sherlock Holmes had met John Burton at a collectibles fair. (Holmes collected sunflower seed shells and chewing gum.) When the day after his death he went to offer his condolences to his widow, he found that she was behind bars accused of murder. After a brief interview in prison, my friend came out convinced of Mrs. Burton's innocence, and set out to find the real killer. First of all, he prepared to follow all of Burton's steps the hours before his death. He found out that in the afternoon he went to Brighton's fish marke...

One day Mrs. Hudson announced the visit of a woman named Boris, from whose name Holmes deduced that he was a Russian disguised as a woman. And indeed it was. He had come expressly from Saint Petersburg to hire the services of Sherlock Holmes, so my friend could not refuse to accept his case even if it meant moving for a time to the Russian capital. Language would not be an obstacle: Holmes spoke fifteen languages (although he dispensed with pronouns, prepositions, adverbs and words of more than one syllable). In St. Petersburg we stayed with our client in what he called "my hideout", which was accessed through a sewer cover. It turned out that our client belonged to the Russian nobility, which was subject to the dictates of a guy called "the Tsar," who had arranged for our client to spend a long vacation at a site called Siberia. However, our client did not want to take a vacation because he was dealing with a certain plot to overthrow the regime and couldn't l...

Sherlock Holmes was a master of disguise. This was very convenient when he was following a suspect. Particularly if the suspect was also disguised and following him at the same time. It was equally convenient when he purposely followed someone who was not the suspect so that the suspect felt jealous of the false suspect and thus took off his disguise staying in underwear, which directed Holmes’ attention to the true suspect. (On such occasions, it was necessary to prevent the false suspect from disguising himself as the true suspect as a result of feeling excluded from the suspicions, which could tear up the entire operation.) A case related to disguises was that of the “necklace killer”. In it, the suspect was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn who used to disguise himself as a Dragoon of the British Army and strutted around the Strand to attract a certain lady who was in love with a Dragoon of the British Army who in turn was posing as a barrister of Lincoln's Inn. Holmes knew tha...

One day we received a visit from an elegant woman whose name I will not reveal for the sake of gentlemanliness. Her husband was missing. According to her version of events, one afternoon they were both sitting by the fireplace planning their daughter's wedding, taking advantage of the fact that she was absent spending a few days with her aunt in Devonshire, when the husband got up to fan the fire. She had not seen him since. The case had a sufficient dose of mystery so that Holmes would not hesitate to accept it. The first thing we did was visit the scene: the living room of an elegant house in Piccadilly Circus. Holmes insisted on trying to discover a secret passage in the fireplace and, as a consequence, suffered several first-degree burns. It was clear to him that the husband had had to disappear through the fireplace. The problem is that, according to our client, at the time of the events the fire burned in the fireplace. Now Holmes put out the fire and began to climb the chim...

Sherlock Holmes kept up-to-day an archive with the full names and postal addresses of all the Archibalds of Great Britain. He had the firm conviction that behind much of the crimes that occurred in Britain, there was an Archibald. Such conviction was not the result of a whim but of a complicated mathematical calculation that he had been perfecting since, at school, a classmate named Archibald hid his breakfast sandwich. (Forty years after that incident, he still retained the hope of finding his sandwich one day.) Therefore, it should not be surprising that when a bachelor called Archibald Newcombe moved to No. 231A, Baker Street, my friend's instincts kicked in. Holmes put aside all the cases he had going on and concentrated all his efforts on unmasking that criminal brain that lived on the opposite sidewalk. He intended to take advantage of an absence of Archibald Newcombe to surreptitiously enter his home and search it thoroughly for some incriminating evidence. But it turned ou...

Sometimes Holmes got things without even trying. For example, he got all the dogs in the neighborhood to howl. That invariably happened when he started playing the violin. I also wanted to howl, but at that time it did not look good that a man howled. So I was content to lock myself in my bedroom and whimper. Is that Holmes only played the violin when he felt sad. A sad man in possession of a violin without having the most basic knowledge of how to play it, has got in his hands a tremendous power over others. So much so that hearing Holmes play the violin inspired Lestrade a revolutionary procedure to extract confessions from criminals. And since I have brought up the topic of blackmail, I am going to refer to a case that has not reached public opinion but had been driving Scotland Yard nuts until Lestrade put it in the hands of Sherlock Holmes. It turns out that His Royal Highness Duke of Cambridge began to receive anonymous letters where he was threatened to divulge a certain secre...

One night I was going back home to Baker Street after visiting a patient when I heard a death rattle behind me. I feared it was my patient, so I turned quickly. Then I faced myself with a dockworker-looking man. Not just any dockworker but one who is familiar with his trade from a theoretical point of view: a dockworker who has learned everything he knows about cargo stowage in Oxford or Cambridge and who has not set foot in a dock in his entire life. (Such insight I achieved working with Holmes.) He looked sick and I immediately realized what caused his unhealthy appearance: the man had a harpoon stabbed into his body. (Such insight I achieved at the University of Edinburgh Medical School.) The guy collapsed in my arms. But before breathing out his soul, he handed me a piece of paper and said: "My dying wish". I took the paper: it was a leaflet advertising a corner shop next to Covent Garden. Commenting on the incident with my friend at dinner, I noticed that Holmes was mov...

Sherlock Holmes provided numerous services to Queen Victoria. On one occasion he held her handbag while she knocked out a tribal chief from one of the virgin territories of her vast empire. On another occasion, Holmes had the honor of being knocked out by the Queen while the tribal chief held her handbag. On another occasion it was the tribal chief who knocked out the Queen while Holmes held his spear. During this unfortunate episode, the Queen's handbag disappeared and Holmes was entrusted with the task of recovering it. With Australia being an entire continent, the task of finding the handbag could have been titanic. However, Holmes' canine sense of smell greatly facilitated things. Indeed, Queen Victoria gave off a very characteristic smell, the effect of a perfume that a Birmingham perfumer made exclusively for her. Holmes rightly deduced that her handbag would emit the same smell, so he requested that he be allowed to sniff the Queen. An urgent meeting of the Ministers of...

Scottish castles are really scary. Especially because of the low doors. After two days entering and leaving the infinite rooms of Castle Menzies in the Highlands, Holmes and I had got a tremendous headache. Those damn stone lintels! Holmes had the outlandish theory that the Middle Ages were populated by dwarves. However, the ghost we had seen the first night in the castle was of a larger stature, which led Holmes to think that the ghost that harassed Menzies family was not of medieval times; that he might even be a contemporary of ours... and not exactly dead. “And how do you explain that he has no head?” I asked. And then Holmes mentioned the huge amount of aristocrats who ended up guillotined during the French Revolution. I didn't know whether he was teasing me or he believed that all those people had continued to lead a normal life after their heads had been cut off. Sherlock Holmes’ mind was inextricable. By way of background, let me say that Lord Menzies had placed his trust ...

One day, at midnight we received a notification from Inspector Lestrade, who required our immediate presence in a certain number of the Strand, near Temple Bar. Holmes was so eager to take action that I was not able to convince him to take our time to dress, so Lestrade was puzzled when he saw us appear in night shirt and night cap. However, the case in front of him was too complex to give relevance to such a trivial thing. Indeed, in the middle of a room no larger than the Royal Albert Hall lay a paleontologist in the middle of a large pool of ink. "What has happened?" I asked Lestrade as Holmes took out his large round magnifying glass and began to trot around the corpse with the trunk very tilted forward to approximate the magnifying glass as much as possible to its target. “You tell me” was the answer of Lestrade, whose expression was so remarkably baffled that I felt seriously troubled at his appearance. "The body has no apparent signs of violence except for that ...

One winter morning, Holmes and I were sitting by the fireplace when I took the floor: "Holmes, I must tell you something." "You have already done it, my friend." "I don't remember doing it," I said surprised. "You just did it unconsciously when you blinked." "Really?" I exclaimed. "What have I tell you unconsciously?" “That today you don't want to eat cauliflower. But it's not me to whom you should tell such a thing, but to Mrs. Hudson.” On the occasions when, as in this case, Holmes was wrong, it was annoying to have to prove him right, but it was necessary not to undermine his self-esteem: “You guessed it! You are a genius, Holmes! They should rename Trafalgar Square after you!” “No guesswork at all, Watson. It's just a matter of deductive logic.” "Yes, well... But other than that, I wanted to tell you that I have taken the liberty of inviting one of my patients, who wishes to speak with you ab...

One night Holmes and I could not sleep a wink because of a guy dressed as a Scotsman who played the bagpipes right in front 221B Baker Street. Our housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, went out to see what the hell that guy wanted. It turned out that he was the same individual who had come in the morning requesting the help of Sherlock Holmes to find his pet, a fox terrier named Fritzi. The man was offended because Holmes had rejected the case on the grounds that that was not his usual line of work. However, at the insistence of Mrs. Hudson, who wished to sleep peacefully, Holmes had no choice but to grant the piper an interview. "Mr. Holmes, by rejecting the case so quickly, I had no opportunity to tell you that Fritzi is not an ordinary dog." "What can be extraordinary about a fox terrier?" "That he is a telegrapher." "I beg your pardon?" “Yes, yes, you heard it right. He knows the Morse code by heart and is capable of transmitting messages by sending...

One afternoon Holmes and I were having tea in the sitting room when our landlady and housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson, opened the door to announce an unexpected visit. "A man is asking for Sherlock Holmes." “He must be an American”, I commented. “Only that can explain that he doesn't respect tea time.” “Show him in, Mrs. Hudson”, my friend ordered while lighting his pipe up. “And tell him to leave the clothes down in the hall.” "Holmes!" I blurted out horrified. "Don't you intend to receive him naked?!" "Explain it to this moron, please Mrs. Hudson." "The man is loaded with a large bundle of clothes", she said. "But how have you known it, Mr. Holmes?" "Why, yes!" I echoed her stupor. "How in the world did you deduce that?!" "It's blatantly obvious", he said petulantly while Mrs Hudson was descending the stairs in search of our mysterious visitor. “Just like you, Watson, Mrs. Hudson con...

Sherlock Holmes's brain needed to be permanently busy, otherwise it would gargle. The noise made by a brain gargling is one of the most painful things to hear, perhaps only comparable to the noise made by two members of parliament when they are crushed against each other. If this noise is accompanied by the continuous turning of the eye pupils and a convulsive movement of the whole body similar to that of a “rumba” dancer, you will understand that I, Dr John Watson, decided to invent a case only for appease my friend's fasting brain. Who would have thought that what began as a purely invented case would eventually lead to the neutralization of an imminent attack on Queen Victoria herself. But let's take it bit by bit. One morning my friend Holmes received a letter that I had written using the automatic writing system. That is: taking care to forge the handwriting, I had let my hand write at will without me being aware of the words I was producing. The result was as follow...