MISTER MYSTERY RESPONDS

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...

In the Victorian era there was a great passion for everything that came from ancient Egypt. The interest went from the mysterious pyramids to the mummies through the mortal concoction that ended the life of Cleopatra and whose formula (found in excavations in Cairo) was proposed in a parliamentary session by Sir Quincey Fitzpatrick as the national drink instead of tea, whose bitter taste he personally detested. Especially mummies exercised a powerful fascination over the English imagination of that time. In every castle or mansion of the high society, old-fashioned medieval armor had been cornered in the attic in favor of an imposing Egyptian mummy. In the market there were so many mummies for sale that one did not know what to do with them, and all kinds of products made with mummy powder began to be commercialized: medicines, aphrodisiacs, beauty ointments and it was even marketed as an exotic spice for season the most exquisite dishes. Naturally, the Society for Psychical Researc...