FROM WATSON’S SCRAPBOOK

      Once more Holmes and I must do without the offices of Mrs Hudson for some time to come, inasmuch as she is nursing her ailing Aunt Ruth in Yorkshire. Her daily rounds and our personal needs are being ministered to by our landlady’s friend Mrs Warren, and whereas her cooking is not as interesting as Mrs H, it is perfectly adequate. Of course, we cannot include in this eleventh issue of Sherolock Holmes Mystery Magazine the usual column that Mrs Hudson normally contributes, but Mrs Warren has agreed to try her hand at a bit of authorship.

      Otherwise, I am pleased to offer no fewer than three Holmesian tales, the business of a countess who went missing, the Paradol Chamber adventure that I earlier alluded to (in each instance I made my own notes available to Messrs Grochot and Koons so they could do their best to understand my lamentable handwriting and chronicle those cases); also included is may retelling of the somewhat risible case of the Red-headed League.

      I pointed out to Holmes that I also prevailed upon Mr Dan Andriacco, of Ohio, to write an article pertaining to a well-known American detective and his chronicler’s agent, Mr Rex Stout, but I could not elicit any comment at all from my friend and room-mate other than to say that for “legal reasons” his lips are sealed upon this subject.

      Now for a few words from my colleague Mr Kaye.

      —John H Watson, M D

      * * * *

      Now that SHMM is on a bimonthly publication schedule, I am pleased to report that fictional submissions have kept pace with the demand for more content—both Holmesian and non-Canonical ratiocinative adventurings. But alas, our nonfiction folder is not in as healthy a condition, and we are therefore much in need of new contributions. If you think you have something to interest us, please describe the article you would like to write for us in a message sent to me at [email protected] (and do note there are two n’s in the middle of the address).

      In this the eleventh number of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, several non-Watsonian exploits include a clever ghost story solved by a Jewish cantor (mind you, not the rabbi!) as well as a new Marc Bilgrey piece and the latest of Kelly Locke’s semi-Holmesian cases by Hal Charles. Both of the latter authors also will appear in our next issue, as will regular contributors Gary Lovisi and Jack Grochot, and Fran Valentine is booked for a return engagement.

      —Canonically Yours,

      Marvin Kaye

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      SCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Lenny Picker

      The Devil’s Feet: The Cornish Horror On TV and Radio

      For many admirers of the Canon—whether diehard Sherlockians or just casual fans—the most memorable passage in the sixty stories is Watson’s description of witnessing the terror of The Hound of the Baskervilles first-hand (“A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.”) But for evocation of horror, there’s another, less-well-known passage that gives Stapleton’s demon dog a run for its money—after all, Watson was expecting to see some type of canine at the time:

      “I had hardly settled in my chair before I was conscious of a thick, musky odour, subtle and nauseous. At the very first whiff of it my brain and my imagination were beyond all control. A thick, black cloud swirled before my eyes, and my mind told me that in this cloud, unseen as yet, but about to spring out upon my appalled senses, lurked all that was vaguely horrible, all that was monstrous and inconceivably wicked in the universe. Vague shapes swirled and swam amid the dark cloud-bank, each a menace and a warning of something coming, the advent of some unspeakable dweller upon the threshold, whose very shadow would blast my soul. A freezing horror took possession of me. I felt that my hair was rising, that my eyes were protruding, that my mouth was opened, and my tongue like leather. The turmoil within my brain was such that something must surely snap. I tried to scream and was vaguely aware of some hoarse croak which was my own voice, but distant and detached from myself. At the same moment, in some effort of escape, I broke through that cloud of despair and had a glimpse of Holmes’ss face, white, rigid, and drawn with horror—the very look which I had seen upon the features of the dead.”

      This section, with its air of Lovecraftian menace (published six years before HPL’s first story, “The Alchemist,”) is, of course, from “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” which Doyle himself ranked as his ninth favorite short story. As with Hound, its power stems from the introduction of a supernatural element into the hyper-rational world of the Master. And the murderer must surely rank as one of the most sadistic in the Canon. The plot framework is familiar and easily summarized, although a bare bones description does not remotely do justice to the story.

      SPOILER ALERT—If you haven’t read the story, please stop and do so before proceeding—you will regret it otherwise, as an analysis of treatments of it require discussion of the solution.

      It’s 1897, and Holmes has given in to concerns about his “iron constitution,” leading to a rare vacation with Watson in Cornwall. The setting affords Watson a prime opportunity to display his descriptive chops:

      It was a singular spot, and one peculiarly well suited to the grim humour of my patient. From the windows of our little whitewashed house, which stood high upon a grassy headland, we looked down upon the whole sinister semicircle of Mounts Bay, that old death trap of sailing vessels, with its fringe of black cliffs and surge-swept reefs on which innumerable seamen have met their end. With a northerly breeze it lies placid and sheltered, inviting the storm-tossed craft to tack into it for rest and protection.

      In that remote part of the world, Holmes’s researches into the Chaldean roots of the Cornish language are interrupted, and his vacation becomes a busman’s holiday. Tragedy has struck the Tregennis family, leaving Brenda dead, and her brothers Owen and George raving mad. The sole unscathed family member, their sibling Mortimer, had left them affably playing cards, with the only portent of what was to come a brief glimpse by George of an unknown something moving in the bushes outside the dining room window. And soon, the killer strikes again, leaving Mortimer also amongst the dead, on his face the same look of fear that marked his sister, and leading the local vicar to believe his parish is “devil-ridden.” Displaying his typical brilliance, despite the strains to his system, Holmes deduces that Mortimer used the powder of rax pedis diaboli, devil’s foot root, an obscure African plant, burnt in the fireplace, to remove Owen, George and Brenda from the scene. Holmes, less brilliantly, had tried the powder out, with