Discussion Post: The Adventure of the Norwood Builder

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

Sunday sneaks up on us again. Seems like this was a short week. Hi, everybody! What did you think about The Adventure of the Norwood Builder? As always, I have a few questions and thoughts of my own for the story -- please add your own!

- So last week in The Noble Bachelor, Watson was just about to leave their Baker Street rooms for his marriage. This week, Holmes is back (from the dead) at Baker Street and he lures the now-widowered Watson back as well, buying him out of his practice by proxy, "an incident which only explained itself some years later." What do you think Watson thought and said when he discovered this secret scheme to ensure his presence? It's both insulting and extremely complimentary, which is very Holmes indeed.

- A problem with The Norwood Builder is with Oldacre's method of faking his death. Holmes claims "a couple of rabbits would account for both the blood and the charred ashes", but does that make any logical sense? I find it hard to believe that the carcass of a rabbit or two could ever pass for human remains, no matter how severe the fire. There would be bones left surely, and they would be very wrong. Granada's version of NORW has Oldacre killing a tramp to pose as his body, a much more plausible scenario.

- The gamesmanship between Lestrade and Holmes is interesting. Lestrade almost gets the upper hand for once and relishes it, but of course Holmes is the victor in the end as always and puts the inspector back in his place with a showy case-ending reveal. At least Lestrade can console himself with the credit, even if he never gets the solutions right.

- Are we missing something that happened between John McFarlane's mother and Jonas Oldacre? She says he turned a cat loose in an aviary, an act of cruelty which led her to break off their engagement which in turn caused Oldacre to curse her, send her the mutilated photograph, and spend his years wishing for revenge upon her. This cannot be the whole story, can it? What do you think really happened between them?

Comments

[wild-huntress.livejournal.com]

I think Watson makes his money writing, but also living off of Holmes, who seems more than happy (and able) to take care of both of them.

So apparently we're to infer that Watson is a kept man after this point? =p And on second glance, it seems fairly unlikely that he's making his money by writing - at least by writing about Holmes - as he says that Holmes only sporadically gives him permission to publish acccounts. Curiouser and curiouser...

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Maybe he works as a locum. We see him later reading a medical journal.