Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #32

Table of Contents

SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY MAGAZINE #32.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CARTOON, by Marc Bilgrey

STAFF

FROM WATSON’S NOTEBOOKS

ASK MRS HUDSON, by (Mrs) Martha Hudson

SCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Kim Newman

THE PERPLEXING PROBLEM OF THE PUZZLING PROPOSITION, by S. Brent Morris

HOPE, ORDEAL, SASSYWOOD, by O’Neill Curatolo

CANYON FODDER, by John H. Dromey

THE SAN FRANCISCO ADVENTURE, by Hal Charles

NO PLACE LIKE HOME, by Veronica Leigh

THE THREE LITTLE BIGGS, by John M. Floyd

THE CASE OF THE BELGRAVIA BEAST, by Gary Blackwood

THE CELL PHONE, by Ellen Wight

THE QUIGLEY METHOD, by Marlin Bressi

MILLER’S LAKE, by Ellen Denton

THE NEW SHERIFF, by Greg T. Nelson

THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

SHERLOCK HOLMES

MYSTERY MAGAZINE #32.

Vol. 9, No. 2, Issue #32.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2023 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved.

Visit us online at wildsidepress.com

CARTOON, by Marc Bilgrey

STAFF

Publisher & Executive Editor:

John Betancourt

Editor:

Carla Kaessinger Coupe

Assistant Editors:

Sam Hogan and Karl Würf

FROM WATSON’S NOTEBOOKS

Our Editor has kindly shared the contents of this issue with me, and I have passed several enjoyable afternoons reading the articles and stories. Gary Blackwood’s macabre The Case of the Belgravia Beast reminded me of so many of Holmes’s outre adventures. I daresay Holmes would have congratulated Mr Field on solving such a series of mysterious deaths.

Holmes himself narrates The San Francisco Adventure, filtered through the memory of Hal Charles. I read the story with great interest, for it not only took place during those years I believed him dead, it sheds light on the well-known personages Wyatt Earp and Josephine, his charming and courageous wife.

Lastly, I must protest the aspersions S. Brent Morris casts on my reporting in The Perplexing Problem of the Puzzling Proposition. Advanced mathematics may not have been part of my pre-med curriculum, but I am quite certain that I faithfully recorded Holmes’s words. While I do not intend to sully the character of my long-time friend, remember that he was under considerable strain at the time, and may have mis-spoken. Despite this, I found Morris’s article interesting.

And now I shall hand my pen to Our Editor, who no doubt has more to say.

* * * *

I’m pleased to present issue 32 of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, which will hopefully provide you with an excuse to sit in the shade and sip a cooling drink while you read.

As usual, we begin with a cartoon by the talented Marc Bilgrey and columns from our regulars, Mrs Hudson and Kim Newman. In addition to dispensing sage advice for lovers young and old, Mrs Hudson includes several delicious recipes for cold sandwiches, perfect for these hot days. Continuing his exploration of Sherlockian films and television adaptations, Kim Newman reviews the recent movie Enola Holmes 2 as well as a short-lived Larry Hagman vehicle, a Russian The Hound of the Baskervilles, and a recorded performance of Gillette’s play.

Poisons and propositions are the subjects of our articles by regular contributors O’Neill Curatolo and S. Brent Morris. In Hope, Ordeal, Sassywood, Curatolo traces Jefferson Hope’s use of two pills to evoke justice to the practice of Trial by Ordeal, in past and present forms. As Dr Watson mentioned above, Morris tackles The Perplexing Problem of the Puzzling Proposition. You must make up your own mind about who was wrong: Holmes or Watson.

This issue’s stories range from a tale of revenge to a Golden State adventure, so I’m sure there’s something for every taste.

In No Place Like Home, Veronica Asay asks: what do you do when you have agoraphobia and need to protect the woman you’ve loved from afar? Meanwhile, interoffice rivalries turn deadly in Ellen Wight’s The Cell Phone.

We’ve all heard about how some actors will take any role for money. But what happens if the director unexpectedly changes the script? Marlin Bressi explores this in The Quigley Method. Love, local politics, nepotism, and earphones can lead to deadly results in The New Sheriff by Greg T. Nelson. An old case is reopened in Ellen Denton’s Miller’s Lake, and it becomes clear that it was love that led to the tragedy.

We finish up in the west with John H. Dromey’s Canyon Fodder. An old man might be an easy mark, but the women who loved him are another matter. Finally, regular John Floyd’s Sheriff Lucy Valentine and her mother solve the case of a greedy heir in The Three Little Biggs.

Our classic Holmes story this issue is The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez. Breakfast and betrayal, cocoanut matting and cigarette ash are critical in this twisted tale, where death arises from the sins of the past.

Happy reading!

Canonically yours,

Carla Kaessinger Coupe

ASK MRS HUDSON,

by (Mrs) Martha Hudson

As I sit down to write this, my little column, we are headed quickly towards Lammas Day. This year has flown by, filled with exciting—and occasionally dangerous—adventures for my illustrious boarder and his best friend, and lots of tea-making, door-answering, floor-pacing, and hand-wringing for me. Dear readers, you cannot imagine the strange things I have had to clean in that upstairs flat! But, while I might occasionally have a wistful thought of my quiet life before that January day, I would never wish to return to my lonely widowhood.

Lammas brings with it other memories, however. The hot summer day when I, a country girl, just sixteen, from a village near Dorking in Surrey met a young man from Nottingham. My father, a tinsmith with eight daughters, had died that June and, determined to support myself and help my mother and sisters, I had travelled to London, hoping to find a position in service with a wealthy family. I have always had a gift for homemaking and thought I could do better than working for the local vicar, who was well-known for….

But we must not speak ill of the dead.

I was fortunate enough to have a cousin in service in London, and while her master did not have a place for me, she was able to direct me to a reputable registry office, which saved me from falling prey to one of the many fraudulent employment agencies. Mr Holmes has, through the generosity of his great heart, rescued many a poor thing from one of those contracts and sent her home, poorer, but sadly wiser.

And so, I was nicely set up in the kitchen of a lovely home in Grosvenor Square, where I went to bed every night with dreams of one day becoming head cook. Fate had her own ideas, however, and that Lammas Day, while returning from the market with a basket filled with eggs, I stumbled over a loose brick in the yard. In that instant, I had a vision of three dozen smashed whites and yolks, and myself sent back to Surrey—but suddenly I felt two strong hands grabbing my forearms and looked up to see two deep brown eyes staring solicitously into mine.

My eggs and my position were thus saved by Richard Hudson, but my heart was forever lost. He was the new stable boy, but like many a young man from a land-locked town, he dreamed of going to sea. It was not long before I was a sailor’s wife. I must shake my head when I see Dr Watson reading yet another of his sea stories; shipboard life is not the romantic stuff he imagines it to be, and for the wife waiting at home, the weeks are lonely and long, and can remain so, even when her husband comes home. Gradually, those brown eyes grew distant, filled with sights I could not share, until one day the sea swallowed them entirely. But while married life was not the blissful condition I believed was mine the day my Richard and I exchanged our vows, the heavy summer air today reminds me of soft brown eyes and young love.

Romance is often on my readers’ minds as well. If I could have a penny for every letter in which a young lady inquires—discreetly, she thinks—into the state of Mr Holmes’s and Dr Watson’s private lives, with the obvious hope of one day becoming mistress of 221B, I should be able to buy Buckingham Palace! Save your ink, my dears. Dr Watson may portray himself as a dashing hero with an eye for the ladies, but it has only been two years since he lost his dear Mary, and I fear that no woman shall ever have his heart as she did. He does flirt a bit with shop girls and, on occasion, clients, but there have been many late-night conversations by the hearth in which he has confided in us that he does not believe he shall ever remarry, no matter how winsome the face or gentle the heart. Few are the women who could tolerate, let alone encourage, the life I lead, he said. Lord knows it was difficult on my Mary, and I have scant hope of finding another like her. I am not like you, Holmes—I do not mind a bit of ‘grit’, but I have come to see the wisdom of your devotion to bachelorhood.

Holmes nodded, staring into the fire. There are good reasons why the wives of physicians, soldiers, and policemen are among the most unhappy of women. I learned early on that the life I must follow is not one which accommodates marriage and family life.

The doctor and I were both startled at this. Mr Holmes rarely speaks of his life before 221B, and I must say we scrabble like greedy birds for those tidbits he does drop. But he said nothing more, and when he had finished his evening pipe, he retired early. I suppose that he, Dr Watson, and I shall always be one little household together, and while that is enough for an old woman like me, I do sometimes wish my boys had more than sorrows to look back upon.

And so, we come to today’s letters, each from a broken heart in need of balm.

* * * *

Dear Mrs Hudson,

I am writing you as I feel I have nowhere to turn. My mother died when I was six years old, and my father has never remarried. I have had a succession of governesses, maids, and companions, and I have many friends, but no one I consider experienced in matters of the heart, who could give me wise advice in my current predicament. Some five months ago, whilst walking in the park with friends, I made the acquaintance of a young solicitor, who was also there with several companions. We soon found ourselves in deep conversation and made arrangements to meet again. At first, I met him with friends or my maid, but eventually, I began to visit the park alone, and I have since been to his flat on three or four occasions, always on the pretext that I was visiting a friend. The last time, I was caught coming in the servants’ entrance by my father, who had come up to see me in my room and found it empty. I cannot lie to my father, and so told him all about Jack. As you might expect, he was furious, and forbade me to see him again. He says that at sixteen I am too young to know my own mind, and that a man who will take a woman to his flat with no thought to her safety and reputation is not a man he wishes to meet. In fact, he says he will have Jack horsewhipped if he shows his face at our house. He made me write and tell Jack that I do not wish to see him anymore, and after a while, I came to accept that he might be right. But now I have seen a message in the Standard that I know was meant for me. In it, Jack tells me how much he adores me, and how he fears I have changed and become cruel. All of my feelings of love for him have come rushing back, and I know not what to do! Should I respond to his message? Could I intercede between my love and my father? We have not done anything untoward, only kissing, but I do not think my father will believe me. If this is my chance at true love, I do not want to lose it!

—Heartsick in Mayfair

* * * *

My dear, dear Heartsick,

You must listen to your father. Not only does he have your best interests in mind, but he is also more aware than you know of the games men play with the tender hearts of inexperienced young ladies. And believe me, darling girl, you do not wish to learn all the lessons experienced women have had to write upon the scarred slates of their hearts. I have taken the liberty of showing your letter to Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, and they agree with your father that no man of morals, solicitor or not, would take a sixteen-year-old girl to his rooms, and that, even as he protested that, as a gentleman, he wants no more than a chaste kiss, he would soon be persuading you for more. At the risk of being indelicate, my dear, let me say that more women have been ruined by a gentleman than a rogue. Dr Watson also wishes you to know that a man who charges a woman with having changed or being cruel is only trying to manipulate her into thinking that she must prove herself nice and kind by giving him what he wants—and what he wants is never what is best for the woman he professes to love.

And lest you disbelieve me, I must tell you that Mr Holmes took it upon himself to look up your Jack. He is not a solicitor, my dear. Those law books belong to his cousin, at whose flat he is staying whilst trying to find work in London—and most of his work has consisted of meeting young ladies in parks, many of whom have also been to his flat—some in a professional capacity, if you get my meaning. Mr Holmes suggests that you burn the notice you clipped from the paper and cancel the appointment you made to meet Jack in Regent’s Park tomorrow. Instead, have a nice supper with your father. Your chance at true love is yet to come!

* * * *

Will she listen, dear readers? Mr Holmes says the odds are about fifty-fifty, and as he is not a gambling man, he and Dr Watson plan to be at the Griffin Tazza in Regent’s Park at 4:00 sharp, tomorrow afternoon.

And to show that foolishness in love is not limited to ladies, or the young….

* * * *

Dear Mrs Hudson,

I should like your opinion of the following situation. My mother, God rest her, died early last year, leaving my father utterly lost. While my brother and I try to visit him frequently, and he does enjoy spending time with our families, we are not able to be with him as much as he would wish. He has tried to fill his time with painting and other past-times, but his housekeeper confided to us that he had begun to spend most of his time at the local, and often was only able to make his way home with the help of friends or the constable.

Well, my husband and I went down to visit him, and suggested he go to church with us that Sunday. They have a new vicar there whom Father (who is quite particular about clergy) decided he quite liked, so he began attending services and church events. Mrs Goodwin reported that he was sober again, and that some of his pub evenings had turned into a visit with the vicar and a single glass of sherry. We were quite pleased and felt that the danger point of his grief had passed. When we went to visit and found him keeping company with the vicar’s sister, Mrs Black, we even dared to hope for more.

But Mrs Hudson, I find myself having doubts. The vicar’s sister seems nice enough. She is a widow like my father—three times over—and is independently wealthy, thanks in some degree to inheritances. I know what you are thinking, and I did, too, but each of her husbands died in a different way: one in a shipwreck, one of illness, and the other in a fall whilst out on a hunting party, and she was only present for the middle one. She has no children of her own and does not seem to have kept