With it being tax season, our group was bumped down to the small meeting room, and we were at capacity for sure! 17 old and new Sherlockians got cozy to talk about a lot of news and the minutiae of one of Holmes' early cases, the Musgrave Ritual.
Joe brought everyone up to speed on the events from this year's BSI Weekend. He also pointed out that the latest issue of the Baker Street Journal had obituaries for a few St. Louis Sherlockians.
We discussed the Will Ferrell Holmes and Watson movie. Although the critics hated it, some of Parallel Case members liked it. Some of us agreed with the critics.
Tassy introduced everyone to a new group, Doyle's Rotary Coffin.
Netflix has a new show in development based off of Holmes' unofficial force, the Baker Street Irregulars.
The Enola Holmes movie now has a screenwriter and director.
A new coin with the likeness of Sherlock Holmes on one side was released in England. (One of our members may have bought one off of ebay before we were done with the meeting today, but we won't name names...)
One of our members, Michelle, was on a recent episode of the Three Patch Podcast.
Mattias Bostrom recently launched the Talking About Sherlock podcast.
Another new podcast that started last month is The Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast.
If you aren't seeing updates from The Parallel Case of St. Louis in your Facebook feed, please visit our Facebook Page and make sure that you are following us.
Many Sherlockian groups are planning to start sharing their newsletters, blog and website posts, and any other news through a new email exchange. It is scheduled to start in March.
If you are interested in Sherlockian discussions in your email, The Hounds of the Internet listserv might be something you'd like to try out.
The annual Noble Bachelors dinner will be on April 20 this year.
The next Harpooners of the Sea Unicorn meeting will be on February 15 at Pio’s.
Holmes, Doyle & Friends VI will take place in Dayton, OH on March 29 & 30. Speakers include Susan Bailey, Shannon Neihart Carlisle, Robert S. Katz, BSI, Ann Margaret Lewis, Jeffrey Marks, Scott Monty, BSI, Regina Stinson, BSI, & Vincent W. Wright.
221B Con will take place in Atlanta, GA on April 5-7. The programming list is extensive, but some of their presenters include Nancy Springer & Lyndsay Faye.
The Norwegian Explorers Conference will take place at the University of Minnesota on August 8-11. Speakers include Marcus Geisser, B.S.I., Cheryll Fong, Regina Stinson, B.S.I., Peter Calamai, B.S.I., Shannon Carlisle, Dan Payton, Bill Mason, B.S.I., Jeffrey Hatcher, B.S.I., Alan Rettig and Ross Davies, B.S.I.
The Left Coast Sherlockian Symposium will take place in Portland, OR on October 12 & 13.
The Baker Street Irregulars will dedicate their library collection at the Lilly Library in Bloomington, IN on November 8-10.
Joe showed the group some of the old Parallel Case of St. Louis pins, and we decided that it's time to have a new pin commissioned for our group. Details to come.
We talked about meeting on the off-months from meetings for social outings like movie nights and game nights. Nellie is going to look into hosting another movie night this summer.
We had more than our usual amount of giveaways this month. Rob brought his usual stack and Tassy contributed after Marie Kondo-ing her book collection. We are happy to report that everything found a new and loving home!
And if the giveaways weren't enough to appease folks, Rob and Michael had plenty of books on hand to sell. Rob presented some of the books that were duplicates from the St. Louis Sherlockian Research Collection at the St. Louis Public Library. Proceeds from these sales will go towards purchasing new items for the collection. Michael is helping the widow of Sherlockian Barry Hapner move his Sherlockian book collection to new homes. If you are interested in seeing just what these two have available for sale, please contact them personally or email The Parallel Case of St. Louis and we can put you in touch with them.
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And then, it was finally time for The Musgrave Ritual Discussion!
Rob passed out maps he found on Ross Davies' website and Randy shared a few pages from Canonical Crime Scenes.
The story starts off with Watson describing Holmes' housekeeping habits: "He was none the less in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow lodger to distraction."
Watson continues to tell us that Holmes kept his cigars in the coal scuttle (which led to a discussion on how bad they would taste!), tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper, and unanswered correspondence transfixed with a jack knife into the very center of his wooden mantelpiece.
Their chambers "were always full of chemicals and criminal relics which had a way of wandering into unlikely positions, and turning up in the butter-dish or in even less desirable places." (What relics and what places are less desirable than food dishes?)
These few sentences have influenced so many interpretations of 221B over the years, from Gillette to Ferrell.
Holmes would also "sit in an armchair with his hair trigger and a hundred Boxer cartridges and proceed to adorn the opposite wall with a patriotic VR done in bullet pocks."
We had quite the discussion about this statement and how plausible it would be. Randy and Tassy talked about what Boxer cartridges actually were. It was pointed out that 1887 would have been the queen's golden jubilee, so perhaps Holmes was caught up in all of the hoopla. Nellie shared her expertise by comparing Holmes' bullets to their modern day counterparts. We also debated if it would be probable for him to write VR in the wall, or if his bullets would have just caused the plaster to explode from the wall and create a cloud of dust in the room.
Watson then turns his descriptive pen upon himself when he tells us that "The rough and tumble work in Afghanistan coming on the top of a natural Bohemianism of disposition, has made me rather more lax than benefits a medical man."
We see this in action in other stories where Watson is quick to hand over his patients to the doctor next door, and this may have led to why Watson has left practice once or twice throughout the Canon. We all agreed that any doctor who would describe himself as "lax" wasn't necessarily one we'd rush right out to consult.
We hear all about Holmes' stacks of papers that are never to be touched and how he tends to them once every two years. Heather labeled Holmes as a hoarder, and we talked about the fire hazard that all of the papers would've been, especially with an active fireplace, chemical experiments, and gunfire going off. Rob posited that maybe it wasn't Moriarty after all that set fire to Holmes' rooms in a later story.
Watson is hounding Holmes to clean up his papers. Holmes distracts Watson by sharing a story that started with, "Before my biographer had come to glorify me..." Holmes has a very different view of Watson's writing when he's getting out of cleaning the apartment....
Holmes lists some of his early cases including the Tarleton murders, Vamberry the wine merchant, the old Russian woman, the aluminium crutch, and Ricoletti of the club foot and his abominable wife. We spent a few minutes kicking around ideas of what these stories could be as well as discussing some of the writings that Leslie Klinger listed in the Sherlock Holmes Reference Library about Holmes' early years.
While Holmes is musing about his early days, he pulls out a crumpled piece of paper, and old brass key, a peg of wood with a ball of string attached and three rusty disks of metal, telling Watson that these were the remnants of the Musgrave Ritual, of which Watsonhad heratd him mention more than once.
Holmes was living on Montague Street at the time when Reginald Musgrave, a college acquaintance from four years ago, brought this case to him.
Holmes described his station at college by saying that "A good deal of talk about myself and my methods" had taken place. Rob thought that this was very different from Holmes saying that he had no friends during his retelling of The Gloria Scott. Randy, Adam and Heather joined in, saying that maybe Holmes was a topic of discussion. Instead of being talked TO, he was talked ABOUT.
Musgrave was a scion of one of the very oldest families in the kingdom and had always been interested in Holmes' methods. His was a cadet branch, and Elaine enlightened everyone on just what that term meant.
Many of us noticed that Musgrave lived in his manor house alone, but employed:
8 maids
1 butler
1 cook
2 footmen
1 boy
Complete garden staff
Complete stable staff
Out of all of these employees, Brunton the butler was Musgrave's concern. He had been there for twenty years, was a former schoolmaster and overqualified for the position. He was a bit of a Don Juan. He had just become engaged to a maid, Rachel Howells, but dumped her for the daughter of the game keeper, leading Rachel to come down with "a touch of brain fever."
It's always brain fever!
One night, Musgrave couldn't sleep and saw a light coming from the library. He picked a battle ax off the wall.
Let's stop right there. We had some thoughts on this. Musgrave was described as being thin, with languid courtly manners, and a bit of a dandy. And this little guy picks up a battle ax to defend his home.
Michael pointed out the symbolism of this weapon. It was used by the royal cavalry during the British civil war, and the same type of weapon was used to behead Charles I by a man named Richard Brandon. Are these just coincidences, or is there some allusion going on here?
Anyway, Musgrave finds Brunton going through the family papers, particularly an old family document called The Musgrave Ritual, a set of questions that had been passed down through the family for years. Musgrave fires him for snooping. Brunton begs to not be disgraced and asks for one month's time until he can quit. Musgrave give the man a week's time and is told to use whatever excuse he chooses.
Three days later, Bruton has disappeared and Rachel Howells is shrieking with laughter at his disappearance. His bed was not slept in, all of his belongings were still there, but all of the doors and windows were still locked. There was not a trace of him anywhere.
Rachel soon disappeared, leaving only footprints that led to the deep lake on the property. It had been drug, and the only thing that was found was a bag that held rusted metal, several pebbles and pieces of glass.
Holmes asked to see the paper that had the Musgrave Ritual on it, which Nellie and Kristen acted out for us. Nellie then noted that parts of this were used by T.S. Eliot for "Murder in the Cathedral."
We noted that all of us were using different versions of the Canon, so some of us had eight stanzas to the ritual, while others only had seven. Klinger goes into the history of this discrepancy in his Sherlock Holmes Reference Library title.
Peter, Randy and Nellie discussed the age of trees and if it was plausible for oaks and elms to grow for so many years.
We talked about if something had been around for centuries, and prominently mentioned an oak and an elm tree, both of which were on the property, wouldn't that have been a hint to someone in this family along the way? Maybe that's why Holmes tells Musgrave, "Your butler... had a clearer insight than ten generations of his masters." Which is just a nicer way of saying your butler is smarter than your whole family. This might be why Holmes didn't have friends in college.
Holmes and Musgrave to to Hurlstone Manor, where all of this has taken place. Holmes notices a large oak in front of the house and learns that a large elm was struck by lightning. He asks Musgrave the height of it, and Musgrave remembers that Brunton had recently asked him about the same tree.
Holmes measures the shadow from the oak and finds his starting point, just two inches from a spot where Brunton had made in the ground.
And here's where we started talking about math.
We discussed just how tall oaks and elms can grow, their circumferences, girth, diameter, etc. Admittedly, most of us were a trifle rusty on our geometry. But a lot of us took issue with the fact that this ritual would still work hundreds of years after it had been written due to the fact that these trees would still have grown. Even if they had topped out, they would still gain an inch or so in height each year. Compounded over centuries, this would have been enough to throw the whole starting point off.
Whether the starting point would have been true or not, Holmes steps out the ritual, eventually finding himself in a cellar where a space had been cleared away over a heavy flagstone. On it lay Brunton's scarf.
The contables were called in, and the flagstone was removed to find Brunton's dead body in a chamber next to an old chest that held rusted metal disks.
Holmes deduces that Brunton and Rachel opened the chamber and he went in. Either she trapped him in there or the supports gave way, sealing his fate. Was it homicide or an accident? There were plenty of opinions all around the table for either option.
It was wondered how long it would've taken Brunton to die in the enclosure. After some quick calculations (more math!), Dr. Tassy figured that Brunton had about two hours in the chamber before he died.
Musgrave looks closer at the metal disks and realizes that they are coins from the time of Charles I. Holmes then looks at the bag's contents and sees that the twisted metal was the ancient crown of the kings of England!
The crown remained at Hurlstone Manor, but Rachel got away.
Rob, Mary, Michael, Kristen and Nellie all debated if the crown would have really stayed there with lots of historical discussion and conjecture.
New member Michelle wondered if Hurlstone Manor was the only place that the crown was after Charles I. This would have influenced some of the historical timing of this case.
Michael offered that Holmes did track down Rachel. And for the price of half of her bounty, he allowed her to get away. This would have been why Holmes always had enough money in the early days.
Nellie pointed out that if a man had left a woman to die in the chamber, he would have definitely been held accountable at the story's end.
As always, we had lots of questions, thoughts and opinions on our story of the month. Another great discussion time!
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Our next meeting is just one month away, on March 9, to discuss The Reigate Puzzle. Come at once if convenient!
