#the boscombe valley mystery

[elinordash]

Sherlock Holmes | 5x04 The Boscombe Valley Mystery

– He has a daughter called Alice? – An only child and a most charming one. – We surmise that Miss Turner and the McCarthy boy are… friends? – 👀 – Great friends.

#HELP WHY DOES HOLMES GIVE WATSON THAT LOOK WHEN HE SAYS "FRIENDS"

#sherlock holmes #sherlock holmes granada #granada holmes #jeremy brett #edward hardwicke #holmes x watson #video #my post #the boscombe valley mystery #i was going to gif this but then i realised a gifset wouldn't do it justice #jeremy brett's acting choices i swear

[dipstick-university]

#sherlock holmes #jeremy brett #the boscombe valley mystery

[beekeeperspicnic]

Everyone meet my favourite character from the Boscombe Valley Mystery

[IMG Cartoon rock, caption reading Rocky the Murder Rock]

[IMG Holmes, Watson and Lestrade, Holmes is carrying the rock. Watson says "Holmes, why are you

WHY WAS THIS CHILLING IN MY DRAFTS?!!

#Sherlock Holmes #the boscombe valley mystery

[ofbakerst]

all this fresh air will kill me

#holmes will be like is anyone else gonna throw these papers on the ground and not wait for an answer #so much for the london press #granada holmes #the boscombe valley mystery #gawsworth hall #built in 1480 #sherlock holmes #jeremy brett #edward hardwicke #watson #my posts #architecture #queue #locations

[johnlockifconvenient]

Okay, Boscombe Valley is absolutely bursting with sexual tension. Holmes and Watson sharing a room out of town and talking about a deep, mad, “impossible” love? The fic writes itself

#johnlock #letters from watson #the boscombe valley mystery #I know I know I’m behind #I’ve been banking them up because I’m traveling this week and have a lot of airport hours to kill

[sarnie-for-varney]

"Mexican... 😒🙄"

#the sASS #sherlock holmes #the casebook of sherlock holmes #granada television #granada holmes #the boscombe valley mystery #dr john watson #dr watson #john watson #jeremy brett #edward hardwicke #sir arthur conan doyle #arthur conan doyle #conan doyle #acd #sherlock holmes memes #the casebook of sherlock holmes memes #granada holmes memes #the boscombe valley mystery memes #memes #video

[neverquiteeden]

"Many men have been hanged wrongfully-- oh look, a pheasant!"

-Sherlock Holmes

#granada holmes #sherlock holmes #acd holmes #sherlock holmes 1984 #granada sherlock holmes #the boscombe valley mystery #eden's insanity

[teaspoonnebula]

My favourite character from the Boscombe Valley Mystery

[ IMG A cartoon rock, with caption Rocky the Murder Rock]

[ IMG Cartoon. Holmes, Watson and Lestrade, Holmes is carrying a rock. Watson asks "Holmes, why are you still carrying that?" Holmes replies "We are friends now ]

#sherlock holmes #letters from watson #the boscombe valley mystery #BOSC #rocky #so pleased i can draw holmes wearing that and claim it's vaguely canonical

[pedanther]

“We have got to the deductions and the inferences,” said Lestrade, winking at me. “I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies.” “You are right,” said Holmes demurely; “you do find it very hard to tackle the facts.”

#letters from watson #sherlock holmes #the boscombe valley mystery

[pop-goes-the-weasel]

After Pretzel Holmes, meet semi-pretzel Watson.

This is, of course, by Paget

Link is along with the image)

#letters from watson #sidney paget #sherlock holmes #book illustration #the boscombe valley mystery

[no-side-us]

Letters From Watson Liveblog - Apr. 23

The Boscombe Valley Mystery, Part 2 of 3

First "rat-faced," then "bulldog features," and now "ferret-like." I can't wait to see what animal Watson will use to describe Lestrade next.

The use of a "women's intuition" as an explanation gets funnier the more simple and obvious the action is. Last time, it was used to describe a woman being able to recognize her own brother, something men would obviously be unable to do.

Here, Miss Turner is already familiar with Lestrade, and since she probably knows he called for Sherlock, she's probably read about him and would have some knowledge of his appearance.

This is a funny line if you remember that in the first letter young McCarthy was going rabbit hunting. That's why he had a gun with him.

Sherlock Holmes giving a young, distressed woman hopes is an established motif throughout these stories, so take that Lestrade.

Poor Watson, but this is what you get for comparing Lestrade to an animal in almost every case he's involved in.

Look at that, Watson using his medical expertise to help in the case. Although he's only doing so because he has nothing else better to do, it's nice to see him apply his skillset to solving the mystery instead of just observing Sherlock's.

Is this the British equivalent of getting blackout drunk and waking up married in Las Vegas? If so, I like to think getting "into the clutches of a barmaid in Bristol" was as common a trope back then as it kind of is today.

There's a whole other British drama occurring in the background of this case. McCarthy gets married young and foolhardy, meaning he can't marry the woman he actually loves, only for it to turn out that his wife isn't his wife at all and was already married, so he can marry the woman he loves, but her father doesn't like him and doesn't want the marriage to happen.

And also his dad is dead and he's in jail.

Throw in some classism and period-accurate clothing, and you've got yourself a series on the BBC.

Damn, looks like Charles McCarthy isn't the only one getting killed tonight.

This reads less like Sherlock investigating the scene of the crime and more like he's turning into a werewolf. Has that ever been done before? Sherlock as a werewolf? Adaptations have made him a mouse, sent him to the future, be into women, but I don't think there's one where he's a werewolf, which is a shame considering how well it fits here.

Turning back to human, you mean.

So he was killed with a stone.

Now that I think about it, considering that the elder Turner and McCarthy came back to England from Australia, that the killing blow was to the back of the head, and the lack of any other weapon at the scene of the crime, you know what would have been a cool murder weapon?

A boomerang.

Or you could do your job and catch a murderer. The information Sherlock gave was so specific I can't imagine Lestrade would have that difficult a time catching the guilty party.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

#letters from watson #the boscombe valley mystery #sherlock holmes #john h watson #inspector lestrade #john turner #charles mccarthy #james mccarthy #alice turner #dr willows #arthur conan doyle #liveblogging sherlock holmes

[quill-of-thoth]

Letters from Watson: The Boscombe Valley Mystery

Crimes in Context

Blackmail, again The mystery in Boscombe is remarkably similar in structure to Gloria Scott. Not only is the crime here committed by a former criminal who turned their life around to live as a productive community member, after a time of being blackmailed by a previous representative of the law / legitimate authority (which matches Trevor Sr. in all respects except the "actually committed a murder" part) but the story focuses on how the case affects the innocent adult children in that situation.

It has less-strong similarities to other blackmailing plots in the stories, (see The Second Stain) in being impossible to resolve without the death of the blackmailer, and difficult even then. I will save a full analysis of the Holmes' series attitude towards blackmail compared to other crime for it's proper place in Charles Augustus Milverton, but Holmes very clearly believes that it's not his place to deliver people ridding themselves of a blackmailer to justice, so long as there is any possible way to prevent someone else from taking the fall.

Bigamy, technically

The lack of follow through in the story to McCarthy Jr's marriage to a woman of lower class, (or to her statement that actually she's already married, whoops!) appears to have a lot to do with the class of the alleged bride. In the Noble Bachelor, the fact that the wedding is highly publicized and the bride is briefly presumed dead heighten the drama, but the class and wealth of the engaged couple definitely color Holmes and Watson's perspectives on Hattie's impulsive marriage to her gold rush sweetheart. They are much less sympathetic to the unnamed barmaid who has married McCarthy Jr. To untangle it from the period typical classism and misogyny tangle, lets look at this marriage from her perspective. It's 1890, you're a youngish lady working at a bar in Bristol, making a relatively average-ish wage compared to every other woman you know. (Because you do NOT know women who have fifty pounds a year and work as governesses or typists - your daddy does or did physical labor of some kind, your mama worked in some kind of physical job all your life too, your sisters and cousins and neighbors are never gonna be the idealized house angel of the middle class. You aren't in a workhouse and you aren't dying of working with caustic chemicals in a factory, life is certainly better than it could be! You even have enough education to be literate!) You meet a man who you really want to bang. Despite being above your station he also wants to bang, but hooking up with him is out of the question on both religious grounds, wanting to have a good life where your neighbors don't scorn you grounds, and the practical considerations of wanting a guarantee that this fling won't leave you worse off financially if, say, your boss finds out you're banging someone out of wedlock. Even if you were a hundred percent certain you could keep actually banging this guy a secret, effective birth control is not a thing yet, safe abortions are not a thing yet, and even if you're aware of the theoretical existence of either, even trying to find out more information about how you'd get them could have dire social, financial, or moral consequences. But he's also aware that hooking up is immoral and might send him to hell, so he's willing to marry you. Your best option is to low-key marry the fuck out of this dude. This way if you fall pregnant you've got a piece of paper somewhere that says your baby is not a bastard, the banging you've been doing whenever he bothers to drop by is absolutely moral and justified, and in your wildest romantic dreams you live a life where you have access to nice things because he's willing to spend money that a laborer will never have on you. This is the kind of nefarious "clutches" you've got young McCarthy in: a perfectly sensible arrangement that's only hindered by the fact that your have to keep it secret because your husband knows his family won't approve. (Unless you've got a similar thing going with a sailor as well, then you have to keep it secret or somebody might put two and two together and realize that you absolutely have banged more than one man and ONE of those marriages means that the other is invalid. You've been banging out of wedlock! Technically.)

I'm frankly not certain if the Bermuda Dockyard husband letter is the truth. Sailors are not known for their fidelity and any relationship with one would be difficult at the time, since they'd be away and un-contactable so often and for so long. On the other hand, put yourself back in the shoes of our friend the Bristol Barmaid. One day you wake up and read in the newspaper that your secret husband of two years, who you don't know terribly well despite the marriage and all the banging, has murdered his father in a fit of rage and is likely to be hanged for it. You're shocked and you probably want as far as possible away from the social and legal ramifications of that, so if you instantly write to him and make up a story about having already been married to a sailor to make sure he doesn't presume he has any connection to you in the future, I don't particularly blame you. It's certainly less messy than many other methods of separating from your husband we'll see in the stories

#Letters from Watson #crimes in context #The Boscombe Valley Mystery

[ofbakerst]

Boscombe Arms Hotel

#just uploading a bunch of pics and calling it a post i guess #the hotel is my favorite thing about this episode #mobberly old hall #built in 1612 #the boscombe valley mystery #granada holmes #jeremy brett #edward hardwicke #sherlock holmes #watson #my posts #architecture #queue #locations

[mariana-oconnor]

The Boscombe Valley Mystery pt 1

We were seated at breakfast one morning, my wife and I, when the maid brought in a telegram.

Watson's back living with his wife at this point. I assume he means Mary and he's not got married again without mentioning it.

'Have just been wired for from the west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect.'

The word 'tragedy' does not fill me with optimism. But I suppose maybe if the tragic part is already out of the way before the story even starts, this might be less tragic than some of the others (Greek Interpreter, I'm looking at you).

But the airy tone and positivity here 'Air and scenery perfect' is such a wonderful juxtaposition with 'tragedy'. Hey Watson, want to investigate a horrible death? It's a beautiful part of the country.'

"What do you say, dear?" said my wife, looking across at me. "Will you go?" "I really don't know what to say. I have a fairly long list at present." "Oh, Anstruther would do your work for you. You have been looking a little pale lately. I think that the change would do you good, and you are always so interested in Mr Sherlock Holmes's cases." "I should be ungrateful if I were not, seeing what I gained through one of them," I answered.

Yeah, Mary wants him out of the house. But Watson doesn't seem enamored of the idea.

And Watson being cute with his wife is such a weird thing to see here. In fact this entire exchange is strange. We don't usually have Mary on the page, and the fact that they're here having a nice chat over breakfast and Watson's flirting like 'of course I'm interested in Sherlock's cases, they're how I met you.' He's being quite smooth here. Gonna give him that.

But Mary absolutely wants him to get out from under her feet for a bit. And he doesn't take a lot of persuading, but more than I anticipated.

It's kind of nice to see this little slice of domesticity between them.

We had the carriage to ourselves save for an immense litter of papers which Holmes had brought with him.

An entire carriage to yourself? On a train in the UK? Wow. Excuse me while I try to imagine this...

"Have you heard anything of the case?" he asked. "Not a word. I have not seen a paper for some days."

How the turns table!

Watson, not reading the paper? Unthinkable!

"The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home. In this case, however, they have established a very serious case against the son of the murdered man."

So we have a dead man and a son convicted of his murder. And Holmes is once again saying that boring crimes are more difficult to solve.

"The men had known each other in the colonies, so that it was not unnatural that when they came to settle down they should do so as near each other as possible."

I'm not the only one getting vibes, here, right?

"One was an old woman, whose name is not mentioned, and the other was William Crowder, a game-keeper in the employ of Mr Turner."

I am instantly suspicious of this old woman. Who is she? What was she doing there? What's her name? How is she connected?

Watch her just be a random bystander who happened to be taking a walk.

"A girl of fourteen, Patience Moran, who is the daughter of the lodge-keeper of the Boscombe Valley estate, was in one of the woods picking flowers."

Moran, you say?

It is not looking good for young Mr McCarthy, I have to say. But do we trust Patience Moran who heard some bad language and went running to snitch to her mother.

"There are several people in the neighbourhood, however, and among them Miss Turner, the daughter of the neighbouring landowner, who believe in his innocence, and who have retained Lestrade, whom you may recollect in connection with 'A Study in Scarlet', to work out the case in his interest."

Is that a whiff of romance I smell in the air?

And Lestrade! Hi Lestrade. Good to have you back.

"...in this season you shave by the sunlight; but since your shaving is less and less complete as we get farther back on the left side, until it becomes positively slovenly as we get round the angle of the jaw, it is surely very clear that that side is less illuminated than the other. I could not imagine a man of your habits looking at himself in an equal light and being satisfied with such a result. I only quote this as a trivial example of observation and inference."

Watson, you look a right mess. Oh, I'm only saying this to demonstrate my observational brilliance.

Lol. This is not objective, Holmes. You use the word 'slovenly'. You know what you're doing. Although I cannot deny that after some of Watson's descriptions of perfectly nice people, he kind of deserves this a bit.

I also feel like maybe this is the sort of thing a spouse is supposed to mention. Like 'James, dear. Your beard is a good quarter inch longer on the left side than the right. Maybe you should check that?'

"On the inspector of constabulary informing him that he was a prisoner, he remarked that he was not surprised to hear it, and that it was no more than his deserts."

Omg I've been spelling deserts wrong in this context for my entire life. Wtf. I mean, it makes sense because 'what I deserve', 'my deserts'. But I've only ever heard the one s word pronounced as dezert, not dizert so I just assumed. Wow.

"He appeared to be much surprised at seeing me and asked me rather roughly what I was doing there. A conversation ensued which led to high words and almost to blows, for my father was a man of a very violent temper."

Methinks the man was waiting for someone else and did not want his son around to see the meeting.

"He mumbled a few words, but I could only catch some allusion to a rat."

Was it a giant rat, perhaps from overseas? Say... Sumatra?

"It is really impossible for me to tell you. I can assure you that it has nothing to do with the sad tragedy which followed."

I always get so annoyed when people say this in mysteries. Like, my dude, if you don't know who killed him and you don't know why then you have no idea if it was related to your argument or not. Maybe someone overheard/saw your argument and went up to argue with him about the very same thing. You cannot know. Either you don't know why your father was killed or you do know why your father was killed, you cannot have it both ways.

"The Coroner: 'I understand that the cry of "Cooee" was a common signal between you and your father?' "Witness: 'It was.' "The Coroner: 'How was it, then, that he uttered it before he saw you, and before he even knew that you had returned from Bristol?'"

I mean... it's not exactly a top secret password? It's not like 'The fourth hawk hunts the night fox on the road to Atlantis'. It's a word. That is used in a certain context. Being used in that context. Unless coo-ee wasn't a phrase until after this?

OK, researching it has brought me dangerously close to spoilers, but I scrolled back up quickly enough that all I saw was the name of the story.

But apparently it's a Native Australian term originally, which I feel will be relevant because the two really good friends have come over from Australia. The wiki article says that it wasn't unknown in London in 1852 which is significantly before this story was written and set, but maybe it would be strange in a rural context. BUT if the guy is Australian why would he only use it with his son?

He was talking to his 'friend' from Australia.

Is this going to be a 'they're not really friends, they just know each others secrets' kind of situation?

"'Yet I have a vague impression that as I ran forward something lay upon the ground to the left of me. It seemed to me to be something grey in colour, a coat of some sort, or a plaid perhaps. When I rose from my father I looked round for it, but it was gone.'"

Weird to see the word 'plaid' here as I've never heard an English person use it, I don't think. But it doesn't seem to be being used to describe a pattern, but a specific item here. Which research tells me could be the full kilt with the bit over the shoulder and everything - that would be a strange thing to be lying around in the grass - or it's a type of jacket... so it's just another way of saying coat?

Now we have a mysterious missing piece of grey fabric that may or may not have been a coat. Implying that the younger Mr McCarthy missed a whole ass person while he was cradling his father's dead body. Not that I can blame him for that.

Though I suppose it could have been a dog or an animal of some sort that grabbed the item.

"Both you and the coroner have been at some pains," said he, "to single out the very strongest points in the young man's favour. Don't you see that you alternately give him credit for having too much imagination and too little?"

Like I said before, you can't have it both ways, Watson.

But I like Holmes's point: it's both too weird and too useless for him to have made it up. If you're going to make up a story, you make it believable and relevant to your innocence.

"And now here is my pocket Petrarch, and not another word shall I say of this case until we are on the scene of action."

Reading time now. Shhh, Watson!

#Letters from Watson #The Boscombe Valley Mystery #Sherlock Holmes #Qd

[red-umbrella-811]

I can’t articulate why but this is so fucking funny to me

#Sherlock Holmes #the boscombe valley mystery #letters from Watson

[fancypersonvoid]

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact...

Sherlock Holmes

#sherlock holmes #the adventures of sherlock holmes #the boscombe valley mystery #acd canon #acd holmes #sir arthur conan doyle #221b baker street #arthur conan doyle #Sherlock Holmes quotes #sherlock holmes fandom