Known Unknowns

by Roger Johnson

To borrow a phrase from a very different discipline, the cases that Dr. Watson mentions but doesn’t actually relate are known unknowns.[1] We know that Sherlock Holmes did investigate the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, the Smith-Mortimer succession case, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, but the details are not recorded in the sixty Canonical accounts, and therefore remain unknown.

A recent meeting of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London was devoted to some of these unreported exploits. Eleven members were each invited to select the story that best deserved to be published and, within five minutes, to explain why. We were encouraged to avoid the likes of the giant rat of Sumatra and the whole story concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant, but there were more than eighty others more to choose from.

I commended the case of the Second Stain.

“The Adventure of the Yellow Face” opens thus: “In publishing these short sketches based upon the numerous cases in which my companion’s singular gifts have made us the listeners to, and eventually the actors in, some strange drama, it is only natural that I should dwell rather upon his successes than upon his failures. And this not so much for the sake of his reputation - for, indeed, it was when he was at his wits’ end that his energy and his versatility were most admirable - but because where he failed it happened too often that no one else succeeded, and that the tale was left forever without a conclusion. Now and again, however, it chanced that even when he erred, the truth was still discovered. I have noted of some half-dozen cases of the kind; the affair of the second stain and that which I am about to recount are the two which present the strongest features of interest.”[2]

Fascinating! But in “The Adventure of the Naval Treaty”, we’re told that the case of the Second Stain occurred in “the July which immediately succeeded [Watson’s] marriage” and that it “deals with interest of such importance and implicates so many of the first families in the kingdom that for many years it will be impossible to make it public. No case, however, in which Holmes was engaged has ever illustrated the value of his analytical methods so clearly or has impressed those who were associated with him so deeply. I still retain an almost verbatim report of the interview in which he demonstrated the true facts of the case to Monsieur Dubuque of the Paris police, and Fritz von Waldbaum, the well-known specialist of Dantzig, both of whom had wasted their energies upon what proved to be side-issues.”

Clearly we have two different cases, each dependent upon a second stain! Even more extraordinary is that neither of them is the investigation eventually chronicled in The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Having heard the outcome of each speaker’s scholarly speculation - or inventive fiction - or outrageous parody - our listeners voted for the case that best merited actual publication. My preference was firmly for the case of the two Coptic Patriarchs, advocated by the Revd. Simon Smyth, who is himself a priest of the Coptic Orthodox Church. It was exciting to learn that there actually were two Coptic Patriarchs at the time, and their followers were not on friendly terms. (Imagine those tense years in Western Europe when there were rival Popes). However, the winner by several lengths was the Dundas Separation Case, of which Holmes said, “as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaller, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife....” According to Peter Horrocks, who claimed that an account of this investigation, more than any of the others, deserved to be published, the “separation” was not between husband and wife, but between Mr. Dundas and his dentures!

Fortunately - perhaps - you won’t find anything of the sort in this book. David Marcum has ensured that the contributions are firmly in the tradition established by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and followed to their great credit by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr, William E. Dudley, Martin Edwards, M.J. Elliott, James C. Iraldi, Barrie Roberts, Denis O. Smith, Edgar W. Smith, June Thomson, Alan Wilson - and others who have written first-rate accounts of exploits that were merely hinted at by Dr. Watson.[3]

Enjoy!

Roger Johnson

BSI, ASH

July, 2018

1 In 2002, speaking of the evidence, or lack of evidence, linking the Iraqi government to the supply of weapons to terrorist groups, Donald Rumsfeld used the expressions “known knowns”, “known unknowns”, and “unknown unknowns”. This is not meaningless jargon: The terms are precise and entirely relevant.

2 At least, that’s how it runs in the standard British text. The American text follows The Strand Magazine in classing “The Musgrave Ritual” as a case in which Holmes failed to discover the truth. Which is patently untrue.

3 I’ll also recommend the adventures of Solar Pons, “The Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street”, created by August Derleth and active between the wars. His cases included “The Adventure of Ricoletti of the Club Foot”, “The Adventure of the Remarkable Worm”, “The Adventure of the Grice-Paterson Curse”, “The Adventure of the Trained Cormorant”, and “The Adventure of the Aluminium Crutch”. His authorised chronicler is now the amazingly industrious David Marcum.