There’s a recurring joke in Sherlock
about it “never being twins”, one of the many unfired Chekhov’s
guns. Now the smart and lovely @patiencegrenade has pointed me towards
the possible answer. Stay with me, please!
A Canadian show called Murdoch
Mysteries, about an 1890s detective solving crimes (sounds familiar,
anyone?), had three episodes which featured Arthur Conan Doyle as a
character. Whenever he visited, he and the main character detective
Murdoch had some serious Sherlock-Watson vibes.
In the episode Belly Speaker, which
aired in 2008 (so two years before ASIP), Doyle makes his second
appearance.
The episode starts when an alcoholic
dad (cue John Watson-reference) gets murdered. Murdoch and Doyle
enter the crime scene and open the closet, where the victim’s son
Harcourt and his puppet are found hiding. The man is a ventriloquist and
his puppet’s name is… Mycroft. I wish I was making this up.
Harcourt quickly confesses, but Murdoch doesn’t believe him: he gets
the cause of death wrong, for example.
Now – spoilers: Harcourt turns out to
be his own secret twin brother (also named Mycroft), who took revenge
on his dad for rejecting him at birth. He did this by murdering
Harcourt at age ten, burying his brother in/underneath the closet,
and then posing as his own twin for years and years. When he finally
killed his dad, he tried to act as if he was his own twin brother
Harcourt covering up for his twin Mycroft (all while really being
Mycroft), hoping the detective would think Mycroft had fled the
country and would let ‘Harcourt’ off the hook, thus getting away with
murder. Like a triple bluff.
Does this sound ridiculous? The very premise that a child could
plan something like this, is mocked by Sherlock in TAB, after John suggests Emilia Ricoletti had a secret twin.
One of the reasons Murdoch DOESN’T
think “Harcourt” did it, is because Harcourt is lefthanded and
the killer was righthanded. In other words, Mycroft went as far as pretending to be differently-handed to cover up for a murder. As
recent meta by @221bloodnun has pointed out (link), this is something that was seen
done by Sherlock and John in S4.
Also, there is the eye thing. Murdoch
uncovers that Harcourt is Mycroft because of his eyes: the right one is brown,
the left one is blue. This was the other way around in a childhood
picture. The different eye color thing is seen
in Sherlock when Eurus removes her contact lenses. Also, in an old
version of the Great Game script, Moriarty does the same
contact-lenses-trick.
Murdoch Mysteries thereby connects
Moriarty, Eurus AND Mycroft.
What about the puppet? Wouldn’t the
puppet have been referenced somehow in Sherlock and especially season
4, if there was really some significance? Glad you asked. In Eurus’s
bedroom, we can see a ventriloquist puppet hanging to the left of her
room – by that house; sorry for the bad quality pic. Now, dolls are normal for a child to play with.
Belly speaking puppets? Not so much.
The whole episode rests upon Mycroft
ACTUALLY getting away with the murder, disappearing at the end of the
episode. So, we could deduce that season 4 is basically about the
Holmes brothers getting away with murder. (hint: Mary’s murder)
Also, his brother was IN THE
CLOSET the whole time. Just saying.
sorry for the bad quality but this is from the Emmy’s script found here
fyi I’ve watched all of season 1 and this was the only confusing episode
@coffeeteaitsallfine and I were talking about Murdoch Mysteries s1e9 Belly Speaker and she pointed things out to me that I did not connect to Sherlock at first ( Also I know you were talking about lover’s quarrel and when you mentioned ACD saying “ someone is going to meet his maker” and then the camera pans to “ Harcourt” and “ Mycroft”. ) ( Maybe you could help me clear that up because I am a bit confused about that because I am having a hard time finding the scene. )
So Fake Harcourt aka real Mycroft is right handed yet he employees his left hand the most so that Murdoch wouldn’t think he’s the murderer because he used his right hand to kill his dad and Hannah pointed out to me that that connects to Sherlock s1e2 The Blind Banker
– Sherlock points out that Eddie Van Coon was murdered where as everyone thought he had committed suicide because Eddie was shot on the right side of his head where as the layout of his apartment proved that he was left handed
And yet again this leads back to the suicide theme, it seems…
@patiencegrenade Not quite, the fake suicide to make it look like a lover’s quarrel was in reference to episode 4 “Elementary, My Dear Murdoch” the first episode of the season to feature Arthur Conan Doyle as a character.A man’s son died and he wanted to keep talking to his son through a medium. But the woman was going to possibly discredit the medium, and he didn’t want to lose connection to his son so he shot the woman and framed it on her lover. Then he shot the man, putting the gun in his right hand to make it look like suicide, but they figured out it was fake because the man was left handed similar to TBB and what we know about john.
Then in episode 9 “Belly Speaker” I was mistaken about the phrase “met his maker” which wasn’t in the scene I thought it was, and was in reference to someone else’s case Doyle was concerned about.
Another interesting thing I found, was that in TGG as the earlier scripts show that Kanan dug up, Moriarty “reveals his brown eye to now be blue,” but earlier in this scene as he is making John say whatever he wants he makes him say, “Gottle o’ geer … gottle o’ geer … gottle o’ geer.” This phrase is well-known as a garbled version of “Bottle of Beer” for being hard for ventriloquists to say because they can’t touch the lips together. So John is effectively being used as a puppet during this crucial moment as it is often thought that the 5 pips foreshadow each season respectfully.
Then in TSoT, in CAM’s telegram he says, "To Mary, lots of love poppet, oodles of love and heaps of good wishes, from Cam. Wish your family could have seen this…“ which sounds very close to puppet if CAM is trying to send her a message, and we know they like to play with words: ammo/amo, etc.
( Montage from TFP )
Here’s another lovely ‘coincindence‘: remember how in S4 they made Arthur Conan Doyle part of the story itself… as if he was present, watching it all happen? (x)
i’m still trying to absorb what’s going on with all of this but fyi Mr. Harcourt is one of the clients in the case montage in TEH
There’s a fantastic fic writer who’s quite prolific in this area. Sixty stories already! I don’t know if they’re doing any more. Their username is ‘Arthur_Conan_Doyle’ but you have to google their stuff. They don’t put it on ff.net or AO3 or anything like that. Real awesome period piece type stuff too. They get all the little details right. It’s amazing.
he hasn’t updated in like 86 years i think these fics got abandoned =(
That guy? Oh, he totally flounced. It was epic.
Oh, I remember that. He did some really cheesy thing with Reichenbach being an actual waterfall, and got really pissed when all the comments wanted him to write a sequel.
It’s a shame he mostly writes weird original fantasy about fairies or some shit these days.
Ungh, he was such a drama queen. I mean he replied every kudoes and comments with STOP FUCKING COMMENTING ON THIS FIC COMMENT ON MY NEW FIC. And when people wanted to draw fanart and write remixes he wasn’t even thankful. I remember one post of his yelling DO WHATEVER YOU WANT I DUN CURR.
Congratulations, it actually took me a minute to get the joke.
Quotes from the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle “My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.”
Grimspound is a late Bronze Age settlement, situated on Dartmoor in Devon, England. It consists of a set of 24 hut circles surrounded by a low stone wall. The site was most likely used for farming and not defensive purposes. The name was first recorded by the Reverend Richard Polwhele in 1797; it was probably derived from the Anglo-Saxon god of war, Grim (more commonly known as Woden, or Odin). Grimspound is thought to have been the model for the Stone Age settlement in which Sherlock Holmes camped in The Hound of the Baskervilles.
I have been reading up on life in the Victorian era but can’t seem to figure out a few things about Holmes & Watson.
What social class would they have been considered? They have to flatshare at the beginning but the eating out, concerts, and Turkish baths indicate that they have extra money. Holmes seems to have money to dress well and buy all the materials for his chemical experiments. They have tons of paper.
What would have been the considerations around romantic attachments/marriage? Would it have been considered odd at the time that neither of them seem to be interested in getting married, at least until Watson is swept away… Would men of that era typically have discussed women/sex or was it not generally a topic of conversation? The nuances of close male friendship even in the current time period seem to elude me…
Watson and Mary seem to meet and get engaged very quickly, although the timeline for their actual marriage is confusing to me. Would an engagement typically happen so quickly? If Watson had broken the engagement, what would have happened?
All the Victorian novels I have read seem to have side-stepped the mundane.
Tagging some ACD writers in case they have time to provide any insight….
Well, this is based primarily off of my general Victorian-era novel reading, and not very much systematic study of the culture, so please correct me, better-informed writers; but I think Watson and Holmes are both middle class; most likely Watson lower-middle and Holmes upper-middle; neither firstborn sons, so neither have property, and both have to establish a career and work their way into a decent income; but they have some resources (violin, chemistry set) and some expectations of necessary luxuries (papers, tobacco), just as a penny-pinched middle class modern woman in her twenties might share an apartment, but still get Starbucks and have her hair done and get drinks with friends.
Also, eating out and dressing well weren’t confined to the higher classes; every working person, even the poorest children, bought meals at a pub or on the street when they didn’t have time to cook, while the middle class went to slightly nicer hotels or clubs if they could afford it; and dressing decently was considered a basic requirement for social respect; not stylishly, necessarily, but with clean, well-kept, tailored clothes, and a full outfit (coat, cravat, hat, etc.). It made the difference between life and death for the poorest; a decently-dressed beggar would be considered a respectable person fallen on hard times, and helped, while a beggar in rags would be thought of as degenerate. I think some of the concerts and Turkish bath episodes came a little later when they had money to spare from a successful case or two; and I still don’t think those were truly extravagant–more like a movie night or a pedicure, a smallish indulgence.
Middle and upper class Victorian men were expected to wait to marry until their careers were well-established, or their property developed, and they could support a family; so it wouldn’t be odd for the two of them not to be married, or looking, initially. Their focus on their work and the occasional night out was normal for young men just getting settled in the world. Later on Watson was a widower, so a lack of interest in women wouldn’t be suspicious; and Holmes’ general eccentricity would probably have prevented anyone wondering why he hadn’t married too much; he’s a sort of scientific ascetic, and the Victorian conception of sex and desire was not particularly compatible with rationality and mental focus. He might be expected to set courtship aside for science’s sake.
I think the amount of discussion of sex would depend on the breeding and morals of the individuals–there was a fair amount of bawdy material available for inspiration, but it wasn’t good manners to talk about sexual things casually, I believe; a philosophical discussion of morals or a medical question, maybe, but not simple sex talk; and discussing women of their own class would only occur if one of them had definite interest in one and needed advice or encouragement. That’s a reading of them individually, though, not a proscription; some men would idly discuss the beauty and income of all the women in their circle, and their flirtations with them; but it wasn’t thought to show high character.
A quick engagement isn’t too surprising. Once a man had a career, any woman of his class with good sense and breeding could be chosen after a little time getting to know her, and his judgment go unquestioned, as long as he loved her; to me the more surprising part was that neither Mary nor Watson seems to have met one another’s friends or families, and she has no dowry to contribute. But both of them seem relatively unconnected in the world; and Holmes did meet her; and Watson doesn’t seem the kind of man to look for a wife to help his social standing or his finances, particularly; more likely to marry for love or pity.
If Watson had broken the engagement soon after he’d made it without a compelling reason, he’d have lost some social respect, and his own self-respect, if he left her without other resources or connections; but again, he seems fairly unconnected, Mary seems to have no one except her mother, and Holmes wouldn’t judge him, so the social repercussions for Watson, in this situation, would be very few.
As of this month, March 2017, “The Problem of Thor Bridge” is no longer under copyright in the United States.
The story was first published in the US 95 years ago in March 1922. 10 stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon remain protected by US copyright, and they will all have entered the public domain by the year 2022.
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