The Redacted Sherlock Holmes, Volume 6 by Orlando Pearson

Author:Orlando Pearson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sherlock Holmes, mystery, murder, Perth, Serjeant-at-Arms, members of parliament, Houses of Parliament, royal family, king, annulment, Venice, Italy, London Savoy, The King of Scandinavia, The King of Bohemia, World War I, coded message, Prime Minister, British Intelligence, German spies, Pi, Netherlands-Sumatra Company, France, Lyon, Paris, currency, Treasury, economy, stock exchange, composer
ISBN: 9781787055803
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2020-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

The Sorceress and the Sea-Lord

The 1880s were a time of major financial shocks in the global economy with large swings in exchange rates, interest rates, and terms of trade. As is the way with such things, the wealthy seemed largely unaffected by this instability, while those of us of more modest means—for example, an invalided-out army surgeon with a weak leg and a weaker banking account, as I describe myself in The Sign of Four—viewed the uncertainty with dismay.

The Reigate Squires of ’87 occurred right in the midst of this economic turmoil and was one of the earliest of the investigations undertaken by my friend, Mr Sherlock Holmes, that I chose to set before the public, although it did not appear in print until as late as 1894. In it I told of a case that chanced to come Holmes’s way while he was recuperating from what I then described as his brilliant resolution of the matter involving the Netherlands-Sumatra Company and the now notorious Baron Maupertuis. I also commented at the time that the events of the latter were too fresh in the public’s memory to require enumeration and focused instead on the murder that Holmes investigated at Reigate as this had received only local coverage at the time.

Some years have now elapsed since 1887, and this story now sets out the Netherlands-Sumatra Company case. What I relate will come as a surprise to those who may have thought they knew already the facts of my friend’s investigation into that company through what they had seen in the press. As my reader will discover, the way the press presented the matter, as well as the way I presented Holmes’s disturbed state of mind at the time of The Reigate Squires, were at complete variance with the facts—even though what I presented in the Reigate story was a reflection of what I knew when I wrote it.

I am under no illusions that the disjunction between the appearance given at the time and the reality I present now will result in the text that follows being suppressed for many years, but it is as well that a true and fair record is made. This narrative also includes a discovery about my friend, which will, I am sure, be of the greatest interest to his many followers, and which also, in its own way, demonstrates how deceptive appearances can be. The story is presented in the order in which I became aware of events, as I would like to place my readers in my shoes as matters unfolded with the complexity of an operatic plot. Should they at times feel disoriented by this mode of narration, then they will be sharing the confused emotions that I myself felt during 1886 and the first half of 1887.

The fraud case referred to above had its inception just over a year before it came to the public’s attention and in a most unexpected way, which at first sight had nothing to do with any financial matter.

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