Canon Discussion: The Five Orange Pips
Jan. 21st, 2018 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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sherlock60This week we are reading The Five Orange Pips. It carries the theme of dark secrets.
We start off with a bit of poetic writing -- Watson remembering perhaps too fondly the past and the cases -- before we get to the heart of this case.
A young man asks for Holmes' advice and help; he has recently lost both his uncle and his father to deaths that were ruled as accidents, but which he believes to be otherwise. His uncle lived and worked in the US on a plantation and fought in the recent American war; he returned home not long after the end of the war, claiming that he was tired of the changes wrought by the war's end. All seems well until recently when he received an envelope which contained five orange pips and the letters K.K.K. A horrible change overcomes him and he not only burns some papers (kept in a box whose inner cover reads 'accounts'), but also sets his affairs in order. For the next few months, he spends his time either in his rooms drunk or calling out to whoever that he will face them head on. In May, his body is found face down in a pond.
The young man's father inherits the estate and soon receives the same missive as the uncle -- five orange pips, the letters K.K.K. on the envelope, and a request for the papers to be put on the sundial. The father dismisses it as fanciful. The young man remained suspicious. The father leaves to visit a friend and there slipped by a quarry; he dies from the head injury. The ruling for the death was accidental, but the young man insists otherwise. A few weeks later, he receives the same messsage as his other family. He is directed to Holmes for help as the police won't listen, though they place a policeman in his home.
Holmes tells the young man to go back to his home and put the singular sheet saved from the fire with the message that all other papers were burned.
Unfortunately in the morning they discover that the young man -- according to the papers -- tripped on a bridge and drowned. Holmes rallies and does leg work of his own and discovers who was likely sending the messages -- American sailors who would commit the murders when back in port in England. He sends off his own message to them with five orange pips.
But word of the ship or sailors never arrives. In time, they hear of a bit of ship board found with the initials L.S. on it -- likely the ship that Holmes had been hunting for.
And so we conclude with... Conjecture. A lot of loose ends and some supposition.
Thoughts?
We start off with a bit of poetic writing -- Watson remembering perhaps too fondly the past and the cases -- before we get to the heart of this case.
A young man asks for Holmes' advice and help; he has recently lost both his uncle and his father to deaths that were ruled as accidents, but which he believes to be otherwise. His uncle lived and worked in the US on a plantation and fought in the recent American war; he returned home not long after the end of the war, claiming that he was tired of the changes wrought by the war's end. All seems well until recently when he received an envelope which contained five orange pips and the letters K.K.K. A horrible change overcomes him and he not only burns some papers (kept in a box whose inner cover reads 'accounts'), but also sets his affairs in order. For the next few months, he spends his time either in his rooms drunk or calling out to whoever that he will face them head on. In May, his body is found face down in a pond.
The young man's father inherits the estate and soon receives the same missive as the uncle -- five orange pips, the letters K.K.K. on the envelope, and a request for the papers to be put on the sundial. The father dismisses it as fanciful. The young man remained suspicious. The father leaves to visit a friend and there slipped by a quarry; he dies from the head injury. The ruling for the death was accidental, but the young man insists otherwise. A few weeks later, he receives the same messsage as his other family. He is directed to Holmes for help as the police won't listen, though they place a policeman in his home.
Holmes tells the young man to go back to his home and put the singular sheet saved from the fire with the message that all other papers were burned.
Unfortunately in the morning they discover that the young man -- according to the papers -- tripped on a bridge and drowned. Holmes rallies and does leg work of his own and discovers who was likely sending the messages -- American sailors who would commit the murders when back in port in England. He sends off his own message to them with five orange pips.
But word of the ship or sailors never arrives. In time, they hear of a bit of ship board found with the initials L.S. on it -- likely the ship that Holmes had been hunting for.
And so we conclude with... Conjecture. A lot of loose ends and some supposition.
Thoughts?
