Even though we aren't meeting in person, The Parallel Case of St. Louis is still having great meetings via Zoom! We had 17 folks at this month's meeting, including two new folks from the St. Louis area and two out-of-state visitors (Michigan & Massachusetts).
But first.....
Holmes in the Heartland will be back in 2021!
Covid-19 cancelled a lot of things this year, but we will have it all back up and running on July 9-11, 2021 at the Sheraton Westport. All of our speakers are signed on to return, and details on Friday night and Sunday afternoon's activities will be announced once they can be confirmed. If you have already paid for the 2020 weekend, your registration will roll over to the 2021 event.
And our neighbor to the south, Mike McClure, is having great success with his new Sherlock Holmes board game, The Original Sherlock Holmes and His Baker Street Irregulars. It is going gangbusters on Kickstarter and you can get a copy of this amazing game by backing it before July 25.
And then it was time to get into The Norwood Builder:
Our story starts off with Holmes lamenting that London is boring now that Moriarty is dead but Watson disagrees on moral grounds and tells the readers that they've had "the papers of ex-president Murillo" and "the shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland" in recent months.
Most Sherlockian scholars agree that the Murillo case was recorded as "Wisteria Lodge." It's worth noting that the Friesland also appeared in The Lost World, and was involved with Professor Challenger's escaped pterodactyl. Was that the event Watson was alluding to that almost cost he and Holmes their lives? The world may not yet be prepared for that story.
We also learn that Watson has sold his medical practice to move back into Baker Street. It was bought by a doctor named Verner who was actually a distant relation to Holmes, who provided the money for Verner to buy Watson out.
The story really gets rolling when John Hector McFarlane rushes into the room, expecting Holmes and Watson to recognize his name. They don't, but Holmes is able to deduce that the man is a bachelor, a solicitor, a Freemason, and an asthmatic. It's interesting to see that Watson is able to follow this line of deduction without Holmes explaining it to him. It seems that by this point in the partnership, Watson is seeing AND observing.
McFarlane tells Holmes and Watson that the police are after him for a murder and points out the story in the newspaper. A large fire was put out in the backyard of Jonas Oldacre's house and the man was missing. Investigation showed signs of a struggle and blood was found on a walking stick that belonged to McFarlane. The police suspect that McFarlane burned Oldacre's body in the fire in the back yard the previous night.
Inspector Lestrade arrives at Baker Street to arrest McFarlane, but Holmes convinces him to let the man tell his story. Lestrade allows it because Holmes has been helpful a time or two before.
McFarlane says that Jonas Oldacre arrived at his office the previous day, saying that he was an old friend of McFarlane's parents. Oldacre didn't have any children of his own, so he wanted to write up a will and leave everything to McFarlane.
Modern day lawyers, Ed, Rich, and Michael discussed whether or not this will would even be legal, citing facts that legal documents need two witnesses, and whether or not McFarlane could have written up a will where he was the beneficiary. Michael said that they could possibly come up with a definite answer to this, but they would have to bill us by the hour. Chris wondered if a notary would have been needed.
After McFarlane agrees, Oldacre tells him that he has leases, deeds, and other papers that McFarlane will need to see at Oldacre's house. He wants the young lawyer to come out to his house in Norwood that evening, but not to tell his parents because this is a secret.
Stacey pointed out that very few women would have fallen for this. A creepy man you don't know wants you to come to his house at night? Very sketchy. Kevin wondered if young men were just more gullible then, and Heather agreed that women had to make their decisions based on whether or not it would compromise their reputation. This ploy would not have worked with a woman during the Victorian age.
Once McFarlane shows up at Oldacre's house, a housekeeper shows him in and the two men have dinner. Afterwards, they go over Oldacre's papers until 11 or 12 that night and Oldacre let him out through the French doors of the office, so he wouldn't wake the housekeeper. McFarlane couldn't find his walking stick at the end of the night, but Oldacre said not to worry about it, as he could get it the next time he was at the house.
Michael's article from an old Baker Street Journal was cited where he offered that McFarlane was actually an illegitimate heir to the Oldacre estate.
After all of this, Lestrade's officers take McFarlane to a four wheeler while Holmes and Lestrade look at the papers McFarlane brought. The papers show two different styles of writing, some clear and some bad, proving it was written on a train. This leads to a great exchange between the two:
Holmes: What do you make of that?
Lestrade: Well, what do you make of it?
Lestrade says that McFarlane's guilt is obvious, but Holmes says it's a little TOO obvious and offers one possible theory that meets Lestrade's facts.
After Lestrade leaves, Holmes goes to Blackheath to meet with McFarlane's mother. It turns out that Oldacre was an old suitor of hers, but she dumped him. He sent her a defaced picture on her wedding day. This actually strengthened Lestrade's case. We talked about how long Oldacre would've had to hold on to that picture just to deface it and send to her. What a creep!
Now that we've met Jonas Oldacre, Rich shared his poem recapping the story for us. The amount of planning that Oldacre would've had to put into this plan made some of us think he may have been the most evil man in the Canon.
Back at Baker Street, Holmes knows something is wrong with this case. "All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my; theories over Lestrade's facts."
Holmes and Watson head off to Norwood. The police have searched the burn pile and found "the charred organic remains" and buttons from a pair of Oldacre's pants.
It's never really discovered what those organic remains were, but at the end of the story, Holmes throws out that they could have been rabbit bones. This led to a group discussion on the plot hole and how it was addressed in the Granada version of the story. We also wondered why Watson didn't investigate the organic remains. It should have been pretty easy to tell that it wasn't human remains.
Holmes searched the house and grounds and questioned the housekeeper, but got nothing to help his case. The only interesting thing he found was that Oldacre's checking account was low because he had been making payments to a man named Mr. Cornelius.
The next morning finds Holmes and Watson back at Baker Street when a telegram arrives from Lestrade saying there is fresh evidence against McFarlane and that Holmes should abandon his case.
Holmes and Watson go to Norwood and Lestrade shows them a bloody thumbprint on a white wall - McFarlane's thumbprint. Rob wondered just how a perfect thumbprint would be pressed onto a wall without someone knowing. A couple different arm contortions were tried, but no one could imagine how it was supposed to have happened.
But this new evidence proves that Holmes is correct. He knows that that thumbprint was not there the previous day when he inspected the house. We also thought it seemed unlikely that all of the police would have missed such an obvious clue as a bloody print on a white wall.
Holmes and Watson walk around the outside of the house and then pace around the inside. After this, Holmes tells Lestrade that he can produce an important witness with his help. He borrows three constables on the scene and two bundles of straw. The group goes to the top landing, lights the straw on fire, and everyone started yelling "Fire!"
...and Jonas Oldacre appears from a hidden room.
Randy sparked a discussion of fires. It was agreed that the second fire set inside the Oldacre home by Holmes was very reckless and dangerous. Randy showed some of his historic firefighter collection, including old pictures and a very impressive crested helmet.
When he's found out, Oldacre's defense was that it was all a joke
Holmes tells Lestrade to alter his report to make the force look good. He doesn't want to be mentioned. "The work is its own reward." (And probably a payment from Mr. McFarlane.)
Holmes figured that the upstairs was six feet shorter than the floor below it, but not on the outside, leading to the deduction of a hidden room.
This led to a discussion of secret rooms. A question was raised whether the secret room may have been an old priest hole, which Oldacre merely freshened up. Others thought it was all new construction, since Oldacre was a home builder, and Norwood was then a fairly new suburb of London.
Holmes says that Oldacre was out for revenge on McFarlane's mother for jilting him and wanted to disappear from his creditors by taking on a new life as "Mr. Cornelius." Oldacre won't confirm or deny any of Holmes's theories, but Holmes is just happy to have saved McFarlane from an unjust fate.
And Lestrade wasn't right after all. Better luck next time.
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