The Norbury Chronicle

newsletter of the Holmesian Studies SIG of American Mensa

since '88, Baker Street Irregulars scion since '95

"Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed." (Mark 4:22)

Issue LI                               Summer '18

On Murray

Shared by Bruce Miller from ''Seven On Sherlock: Some Trifling Observations On the Greatest of All Private Consulting Detectives, Including, for Good Measure, the Constitution And Buy-laws [sic] of the Baker Street Irregulars (the Work of Elmer Davis) And a Poem On an Unheralded Hero'' by Thayer Cumings (Privately printed for the Five Orange Pips of Westchester County and other friends, 1968).

ON AN UNHERALDED HERO

A devoted and courageous man named Murray,
By nature a peaceful man from Surrey,
As an orderly, performed quite in a hurry
An act that would've made most men worry.

At Maiwand, that utter military disaster,
A jezail bullet struck down his master,
Shattering a bone, grazing a subclavian artery;
Murray, enraged, his legs going watery,

Rallied his strength, threw his master across
The convenient back of an old packhorse
And removed him safe to the British lines,
There to partake of health-giving wines.

Had Murray not heard his master's moans
We might never have even heard of Holmes.
For the murderous Ghazis would have gored him for sure
And Watson would have never reached Peshawur.

Watson mentions Murray just once,
Like the bull pup he says he kept:
A peculiarity of this dear old dunce
Who often knew not right from left.

L'ENVOIE

Murray indeed earned a better fate
Than to be classed with a mongrel pup.

Now is the time, then, better than late,
To see that his name goes nowhere but up.

In ''The Weeping Masks'' by James Lowder it was revealed that Murray shot himself after encountering He Who Is Not to Be Named (i. e., Hastur) and that Watson wore the St. Christopher medal that Murray had given him. In "Sherlock Holmes and the Great Game" in Gaslight Arcanum by J. R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec, we learn Murray also gave Watson a Zulu dagger, not the same as the one from Bali made from a 150-year-old meteorite used against the Black Naga by Sita Yugalimari (''The Case of the Wavy Black Dagger'' by Steve Perry). In ''The Adventure of the Young British Soldier" Watson and Holmes visit Murray's widow in 1894. In ''Watson's Wound" by Bruce I. Kilstein we learn that Murray's surname is Bates.

Moriarty Lives

In the prologue to ''The Adventure of the Haunted Bagpipes'' Holmes revealed that Professor Moriarty is Dr. Robert Knox, who escaped hanging along with William Burke in 1829. He shows up again in 1865, three years after his alleged death, in ''Assassin in the Limelight'' and survived after his fall at Reichenbach. That he continues to survive could be due to the time-bending mist revealed in "Medical Purposes'' by Robert Ross.

Jerry Neal Williamson suggests that Moriarty survived because Holmes let him survive, since he was actually Prof. James Holmes, Holmes' brother. William Leonard suggests in ''Re: Vampires'' that Moriarty survived because he was Dracula. More likely we think Holmes' dhampir twin Sherlock Rutherford (The Holmes Dracula File by Fred Saberhagen, Cardula series by Jack Ritchie) was mistaken for one or the other or both. A. Carson Simpson suggests in ''The Curious Incident of the Missing Corpse'' that Moriarty survived via an atomic accelerator to shrink himself. Holmes rescues Hilda Courtney and Belvedere Stone in Florence, and then trails the real Moriarty ("The Reichenbach Secret"), Dr. Omega from 1906 saves Moriarty. ("The Dynamics of an Asteroid")

Mary Jaffe in ''Yes, Dear Little Medea, There Was and Is a Professor Moriarty'' maintains that an innocent bystander went over the cliff and Page Heldenbrand in ''The Duplicity of Sherlock Holmes'' that it was Irene Adler Norton.

Roger Mortimore in ''Lying Detective'' maintains that he assumed the identity of Sebastian Moran, C. Arnold Johnson in ''An East Wind'' that of Fu Manchu, Jason Rouby in ''A Confidential Communication'' that of J. Edgar Hoover, Eustace Portugal that of Holmes himself. Kenneth Clark Reeler dates VALL after EMPT in ''Well Then, About That Chasm ...'', as opposed to John Dardess in ''On the Dating of 'The Valley of Fear''', G B. Newton in ''The Date of 'The Valley of Fear''' and James Buchholtz in ''A Tremor at the Edge of the Web'', who assume editing by Watson and/or Doyle.

There have been many recorded post-1891 confrontations with Moriarty, the final one in 2368 according to ''The Greatest Detective of All Time'' by Ralph Roberts, but the sorting out of timelines is problematic.

Holmes vs. the Great Old Ones

Some of the more interesting, certainly unmundane, cases thought lost have now been revealed by Ralph E. Vaughan in Tales of Adventure, Terror and Mystery and Sherlock Holmes: The Coils of Time and Other Stories. We first encountered Vaughan's Sherlock Holmes and the Dreaming Detective, which included ''The Adventure of the Laughing Moonbeast''. Sherlock Holmes was referred to there as ''Shaar-Hom, Scryer of the Secrets of the Gods''. In ''The Terror Out of Time'' he is called ''Shar, Killer of Dark Gods'', connecting Holmes in 2617 BC and M'tollo idol for which Lord Whitecliff was killed in 1895. As revealed in ''The Adventure of the Ancient Gods'' while on a speaking tour of the U. S. in 1927 Holmes investigated the Starry Wisdom cult. In ''The Whitechapel Terror'' Holmes rescued six victims from Shudde M'ell in 1889. In The Coils of Time Holmes investigates the Vanishments of 1894 and the time-traveling Mother-Thing in the distant past and future. In ''Lestrade and the Lost River Pirates'', likely in 1895 (between Martin Hewitt's and Sherlock Holmes' published stories), Inspector Geoffrey Lestrade solves a string of mysterious burglaries.

Shadows over Baker Street edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan conveniently arrange their collection chronologically. H. G. Wells accompanies Holmes to the Netherlands in 1888 to encounter Suggoth conjured via the Necronomicon. (''A Case of Royal Blood'' by Steven-Elliot Altman) Holmes could not prevent the death of Jack Chevaucheux in 1892 (''Art in the Blood'' by Brian Stableford), though he did save Violet Stone in 1894. (''The Curious Case of Miss Violet Stone'' by Poppy Z. Brite and David Ferguson). In 1897 immigrants from Innsmouth come to London. (''The Mystery of the Hanged Man's Puzzle'' by Paul Finch) In 1898 Watson witnesses Holmes committing murder. (''The Horror of the Many Faces'' by Tim Lebbon), Holmes destroyed tablets found in Whitby, Straithes and Frylingdales. (''The Drowned Geologist'' by Caitlin R. Kierman) and the Necronomicon in the original Arabic. (''The Adventure of the Arab's Manuscript'' by Michael Reeves) In 1899 he broke the curse of Carthon (''A Case of Insomnia'' by John P. Vourlis). The search for Phillip Llewellyn lead to the cursed Anthracite Palace of the Wisdom Temple of the Dark Heavens. (''The Adventure of the Voorish Sign'' by Richard A. Lupoff). In 1902 Watson encounters a golem. (''Death Did Not Become Him'' by David Niall Wilson and Patricia Lee Macomber) In 1903 Holmes saved the world by destroying Moriarty's Necronomicon. (''Nightmare in Wax'' by Simon Clark).

In An Improbable Truth: the Paranormal Adventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by A. C. Thompson we learn of the murder of Rupert Hayler over another copy of the Necronomicon. (''The Hunt of the Red Boar'' by Thomas Fortenberry) In 1901 Holmes and Watson encountered the Feeders. (''The Cararies of Clee Hill Mines'' by Robert Perret)