Doctor Watson Investigates: The Case of the Scarlet Neckerchief: Individual Short Stories and Novellas
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About this ebook
When Holmes is called away, Watson is left to assist a client with a uniquely horrible problem. Can Watson solve the mystery of the scarlet neckerchief before his client is murdered?
Doctor John H Watson was the companion and biographer of Sherlock Holmes for many decades, but here for the first time is proof of the good Doctor's own deductive abilities.
Andrew Hickey
Andrew Hickey is the author of (at the time of writing) over twenty books, ranging from novels of the occult to reference books on 1960s Doctor Who serials. In his spare time he is a musician and perennial third-placed political candidate.
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Doctor Watson Investigates - Andrew Hickey
Introduction
It has long been known to Sherlockians that Doctor Watson only reported a small fraction of the cases for which he had taken notes, that fraction often being placed at some five percent.
There are known to have been at least sixty books of Watson’s case notes, often written up in as much detail as his later published versions, in existence in the early years of the twentieth century. These were thought lost, presumably forever, upon the good Doctor’s death.
Late last year, however, I was browsing in an antiquarian bookshop in, of all places, Manchester (not a city ever known to have been inhabited by Dr Watson), when I found a large, leather-bound volume full of near-indecipherable handwriting - handwriting that I recognised instantly as belonging to Watson. I purchased it, of course, and have requested the shopkeeper to investigate the possibility of further volumes’ survival.
Upon further investigation, the book appeared to contain all Watson’s notes for every case from 1889. Many of these were, of course, not published for good reason - tales of Holmes finding lost cats, for example, hardly show the Great Detective’s deductive skills at their best.
But other stories appeared of far more interest, such as the one I reproduce here. It is unusual in being one of the very rare occasions where Watson himself is at the forefront of the case, rather than Holmes solving it.
Scholars of Watson’s work will note that there are some inconsistencies here with the published accounts, notably in the matter of the date of Watson’s first wife’s death. It is to be remembered that Watson freely admitted that he altered dates and place-names in his accounts in order to respect the privacy of Holmes’ clients. With luck, as more of these fragments are deciphered and published, a better understanding of the chronology of the Holmes-Watson partnership will result.
I would like to thank especially Richard Flowers, who corrected my early transcription of some of Watson’s writing, which is known to all Holmesians to be the typical medical man’s scrawl. Holly Matthies, Gavin Robinson, Alex Wilcock, Simon Bucher-Jones, Lawrence Burton and Bill Ritchie have also offered invaluable advice and assistance.
And now, dear reader, I shall leave you in the capable hands of John H Watson, M.D.
An Unusual Beginning
While I am not unhappy with the little fame and fortune my modest literary endeavours have brought me, I have become aware over the years that, while their effect has been mostly positive, my reputation has not wholly been improved by the tales of my adventures with my good friend Sherlock Holmes.
Indeed, Holmes himself would often remark upon this. It seems to me, Watson,
he would say, that you portray yourself most unfavourably in your tales. By exaggerating my own accomplishments, and playing up the more romantic aspects of what are often quite sordid affairs - though not, of course, without their intellectual challenges - you create a quite impossibly idealised version of myself, in comparison to whom even someone so estimable as yourself would appear inferior.
I accept I admire my friend’s deductive talents unreservedly, and this admiration cannot help show itself in my writings, but recently I have noticed a tendency in those people who are kind enough to discuss my writings at all to refer to