Sherlock Holmes and The Case of The Bulgarian Codex

Glossary

Those who have read Sherlock Holmes And The Dead Boer At Scotney Castle, and now Sherlock Holmes And The Case of The Bulgarian Codex will note that Watson gets a better deal than he does in the original canon or in most television and motion picture portrayals. Though not gifted with Holmes’s sharp intellect, Watson has a good intelligence and many excellent qualities which should be burnished like the brass on his old Regimental uniform. Words written later by an editor describing the Crime writer John Carr could equally have applied to the fictional Dr. John H. Watson: ‘All his instincts were for a less scientific world, a less mechanised one, a more romantic one...he would have been happier in the 18^th Century, with sword play and sudden personal dramas, with costumes and carriages, and beaus and belles, with long talks over mugs of wine near the fireplace, and if any crimes had been committed, they were fashionably done, with éclat’.

Watson is brave, honourable, loyal, unshakeable in pursuit of justice, an immediate and deep admirer of women. The actions of a man falling in love are never far from comedy. Every so often Conan Doyle seemed tempted to offer his character schoolboy infatuations, as I have here with Mrs. Barrington, alas, far too young for him in Victorian or Edwardian England. Best Man at her future wedding, courtesy of Holmes, is all I could offer him.

Watson puts up with Holmes’s put-downs with good grace, although they sting. He thinks hard about life. The fact he has so many friends ever ready to meet him at one of his several watering-holes like The Guards or the Punjab Club indicates he is an engaging presence and a man of the world.

Orient Express: The Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train service originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. It ran from 1883 to 2009 and is not to be confused with the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train service, which continues to run.

The two city names most prominently associated with the Orient Express are Paris and Constantinople (Istanbul), the original endpoints of the timetabled service.

‘Swamp adder’: this appears in Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band. The (mythical) dangerous creature is said to be yellow with brown speckles and to slither around in India.

A Scandal in Bohemia: this was the first of Watson’s chronicles to be published in the Strand and is one with no dead bodies. While the currently married Dr. Watson is paying Holmes a visit, the great detective is called upon by a masked gentleman introducing himself as Count Von Kramm, an agent for a wealthy client. Holmes quickly deduced he is in fact Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and the hereditary King of Bohemia. The King admits this, tearing off his mask. The King is to become engaged to a young Scandinavian princess but his in-laws-to-be would certainly not agree to the marriage if any evidence of his former liaison with an American opera singer, Irene Adler, was passed to them. A well-known adventuress, Adler is threatening to reveal the relationship upon the announcement of the King’s betrothal by sending a photograph of the King (then the Crown Prince) and Adler together to the newspapers.

The Diogenes Club: this is a fictional gentleman’s club co-founded by Sherlock’s older brother, Mycroft Holmes. It features in several Sherlock Holmes stories, most notably ‘The Greek Interpreter’. It seems to have been named after Diogenes the Cynic (although this is never explained in the original stories). It is described as a place where men can go to read without any distractions, and as such the number one rule is that there is no talking, to the point where club members can be excluded for coughing.

Kaldrmi: cobbled roadway.

Pennsylvania Limited: the Pennsylvania Railroad was an American Class I railroad founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the “Pennsy”, it was for decades the largest railroad in the world, with 6,000 miles of track, and famous for steady financial dividends, high quality construction, constantly improving equipment, technological advances (such as replacing wood with coal), and innovation in management techniques for a large complex organisation.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle: the intriguing story of what was to be found in the crop of a Christmas goose. The seventh in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The Adventure of the Copper Beeches: the attempt by Mr. Rucastle to prevent his daughter marrying her sweetheart by getting a young woman resembling her to be visible in his house, while his daughter is locked away. Holmes frees her. The last of twelve in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans: secret submarine plans are missing. One of eight stories in the cycle collected as His Last Bow, the second and final appearance of Mycroft Holmes.

10 Downing Street: this is still the official residence of the British Prime Minister while holding the office. At the time of The Case of The Bulgarian Codex the Prime Minister, the third Marquess of Salisbury, took a particular interest in foreign affairs. He died in 1903 and was buried in Westminster Abbey in an altar tomb of black marble with a bronze effigy.

Poshteen Long Coat: (also ‘Posteen’) was an Afghan outer garment often worn by officers for warmth in low temperatures, in Sikh Brigades etc. Can be made from fur, leather or sheepskin.

The Watson Codex: this is a fictional treatise on rigor mortis and an important element in Holmes’s solution to the crime in Sherlock Holmes And The Dead Boer At Scotney Castle (MX Publishing 2012).

Sarus Crane: this is the tallest crane species and tallest of all flying birds, with a height of about 176 cm. The adult male has pale grey plumage.

Yataghan: this is a type of Ottoman knife or short sabre in general use from the mid-sixteenth to late nineteenth centuries.

Chapeau de haute forme: top hat.

fée verte: translates as ‘green fairy’ and was the colloquial French term for absinthe, an anise-flavoured spirit derived from botanicals, including the flowers and leaves of Artemisia absinthium (a.k.a. ‘grand wormwood’), together with green anise, sweet fennel, and other medicinal and culinary herbs. Absinthe originated in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland in the late eighteenth century. For decades from 1915 it was considered so dangerous a potion the French passed a law forbidding its sale.

Ortolan: a bird in the bunting family. It was sometimes consumed drowned in armagnac, plucked, and stripped of its feet and a few other tiny parts.

Pinkerton Agency: the famous American detective agency established by Allan Pinkerton in 1850, which was at its height in the last decades of the nineteenth century up to 1914, the largest private detective agency in the world. Conan Doyle knew William Pinkerton, and his final Holmes novel, Valley of Fear (1915), was based on the exploits of a Pinkerton detective

The Adventure of the Reigate Puzzle: published as The Adventure of the Reigate Squire, and one of the twelve stories in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, it was among Conan Doyle’s favourite Holmes stories, dealing with the murder of a coachman who turns out to have tried to be a blackmailer. Holmes uncovers the two local squires who are the perpetrators.

The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet: this was the eleventh story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and features the attempted theft of the beryl coronet, a family heirloom left as security for a loan. Holmes solves the mystery of the real attempted burglar from clues such as footprints in the snow.

Ribston-pippin: Also known as ‘The Glory Of York’. A small aromatic apple possibly grown from one of three apple pips sent from Rouen, Normandy, in 1708 to Sir Henry Goodricke of Ribston Hall at Knaresborough, Yorkshire. Ribston is one of the possible parents of the Cox’s Orange Pippin.

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons. One of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Set in 1900, Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard brings Holmes a seemingly trivial problem about a man wandering about London shattering cheap plaster busts of Napoleon Bonaparte.

The Adventure of the Speckled Band: one of four Sherlock Holmes stories classified as ‘a locked room’ mystery. First published in the Strand Magazine in February 1892, with illustrations by Sidney Paget and published as ‘The Spotted Band’ in New York World in August 1905. Doyle later stated this was his best Holmes story.

The Red-Headed League: the story involved a newspaper want-ad offering work solely to gloriously red-headed male applicants. It first appeared in the Strand Magazine in August 1891, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. Conan Doyle ranked it second in his own list of twelve favourite Holmes stories.

Fauteuil: a style of open-arm chair with a primarily exposed wooden frame originating in France in the early eighteenth century.

Dolly Varden: character in Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, known for her colourful attire, large hats and flirtatious attitudes.

Apotropaics: Apotropaic magic (from Greek apotrepein, to ward off: apo-, away + trepein, to turn) is a type of magic intended to ‘turn away’ harm or evil influences, as in deflecting misfortune or averting the evil eye. Doorways and windows of buildings were felt to be particularly vulnerable to evil.

Salomé, Oscar Wilde: originally written in 1891, in French and translated into English in 1894. Plans for a performance in 1892 were halted as the Lord Chamberlain banned it (it was illegal to depict Biblical characters on stage). It was premiered (in French) in Paris in 1896, when Wilde was in Reading Gaol and then its next public performance was in Berlin in 1903. The first known performance in England, in English, was a private one, in 1905. Wilde used the form Iokanaan for John the Baptist.

Crape: The spelling ‘crape’ is the anglicised versions of the French crêpe, the silk or wool fabric of a gauzy texture, having a peculiar crisp or crimpy appearance.

l sol tace: translates as ‘Where the sun is silent.’ The Prince was very widely read.

Cui prodest? To whose benefit?

The Adventure of the Second Stain: Britain’s Prime Minister Lord Bellinger and Trelawney Hope, the Secretary of State for European Affairs, come to Holmes in the matter of a document stolen from Hope’s dispatch box, which he kept at home in Whitehall Terrace when not at work. If divulged, this document would bring about very dire consequences for all Europe, even war.

The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton: in this, Holmes refers to the death of the eponymous blackmailer. Holmes deliberately fails to reveal the identity of the woman who shot Milverton.

In 1905 Ford Madox Hueffer published his travellers’ book on London titled ‘The Soul Of London’.