I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.

[READ: March 24, 2024] “The Noble Bachelor”

The tenth story in this collection is another one where Holmes doesn’t really do a lot.  The story is sort of a celebrity scandal.  I had to wonder, after reading this, if Conan Doyle was the first person to use this conceit in a mystery.

The story is a fairly simple one, but there’s lot of details thrown in to throw one of the scent, I assume.

This is the story of a failed wedding.  The bride left the groom at the altar.  But she had been in the church a few minutes before the wedding began.  And she hasn’t been seen or heard from since.

Some back story is that the man is a Lord, the woman is American.  Her father struck it rich in the gold rush and is probably worth more than the Lord.  They had met when he travelled to California.  And then she travelled to England where they met again and were engaged.  I love the way this is worded: “I met her several times, became engaged to her….”

The only thing that the Lord noticed on the day of the wedding was that she dropped her bouquet and a person in one of the pews handed it to her.  And that a woman who he once was involved with was seen with his bride to be just before she disappeared.

The police come in and say that they found her clothes in the river and assume she was killed.  They also found a note with the initials of the woman who was last seen with her.

Holmes obviously dismisses everyone’s ideas and quickly comes to conclusion of what happened.  But it is the note with the initials that leads him to be able to put things to right.

I more or less guessed what was going to happen from the start, but the details are quite good and interesting as he does twist things a little.

It’s a minor spoiler to say that someone has followed her from America, but I’m curious if this was t he first time that someone had written a story where her past caught up with her in quite this way.

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The four novels of the canon:

1. A Study in Scarlet (1887)
2. The Sign of the Four (1890)
3. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
4. The Valley of Fear (1915)

The 56 short stories are collected in five books:

1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
2. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894)
3. The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
4. His Last Bow (1917)
5. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1927)

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892) contains 12 stories published in The Strand between July 1891 and June 1892

1. “A Scandal in Bohemia” (June 1891)
2. “The Red-Headed League” (August 1891)
3. “A Case of Identity” (September 1891)
4. “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” (October 1891)
5. “The Five Orange Pips” (November 1891)
6. “The Man with the Twisted Lip” (December 1891)
7. “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (January 1892)
8. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” (February 1892)
9. “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb” (March 1892)
10. “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor” (April 1892)
11. “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” (May 1892)
12. “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches” (June 1892)