A Day at the Beeches

"The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" is the last of the 12 stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and having finished it, I'll be moving on to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes collection. It was a good note to go out on it (though really, it just represents an arbitrary pause in the journey, since these stories were originally published individually in a magazine).

A woman approaches Holmes seeking reassurance about a strange job she's been offered as governess to a couple in the country. The husband wants to pay her an exorbitant sum to watch just one child, but he wants to impose some odd conditions: she must consent when asked to dress in clothes they provide for her, and she must agree to cut her hair. Though skeptical, she finds she can't refuse the job, even though Holmes advises her something is amiss. When she contacts Holmes again after two weeks on the job, she has gotten in over her head, and it's up to the detective and Watson to extricate her.

This story is in the mode of "The Red-Headed League" and "The Noble Bachelor," where the mystery is less of a whodunit than a what's going on? There's a reason behind the odd requests being made of Holmes' client in this story, and it up to him (and the reader) to deduce it. It's an intriguing way to build a tale, and a more pure exercise in reasoning: what scenario could fit all of these peculiar facts?

There are a number of aspects to this story that make it stronger. One is that Holmes is engaged rather early on, instead of late in the client's story. The typical model for a Sherlock Holmes story is this, as I've come to see it in two novels and a dozen short stories: someone approaches Holmes to resolve a puzzle, and spends fully half of the tale recounting a narrative of events that have already transpired. This approach can be difficult at times, because Holmes is essentially being brought into a story at the halfway point, and rather dryly being caught up on events.

"The Copper Beeches" seems similar at first, with this young woman recounting her strange job offer. But things are helped right away by the peculiarity of her story, and they're helped even more by the fact that, from her perspective, we're not arriving at the final act of her story, but at the conclusion of the first. After consulting Holmes, she takes the job anyway, then comes back to him later having had still further adventures. It's a subtle distinction, given that Holmes and Watson don't actually do any investigating at this point in the story, but I nevertheless feel it makes a big difference that they aren't being brought in at the end of someone else's tale.

The short story is also intriguing in its opening pages, which follow a bit of an argument between Holmes and Watson over the way the doctor has recounted his cases in past stories. Holmes feels Watson has sensationalized things a bit, taking the focus away from the best part (the deduction) to focus on the strangeness of the cases themselves. Yet even Holmes acknowledges that the truly sensational thing to do would have been to write of nothing but crimes, which Watson has not always done in the strictest sense; a good number of the stories to this point have not turned on an illegal activity.

This is a compelling opening on several levels. First, it's a fun brush against the fourth wall, telling us that the characters themselves are aware that readers like us are out there following these tales through publication. Doyle has done this before, but never so directly. Second, it's the first taste of strain of any kind in the Holmes/Watson relationship. It's hardly a true argument; you don't even get the sense of raised voices from the writing. But it is a rare moment where Watson is not in awe of Holmes, and the two characters aren't seeing eye to eye. Third, it's a wry commentary on what's about to happen in this story. This case is perched right on the line between criminal and suspect-but-not-illegal, and this opening foreshadows that. It may even be a sort of indignant interjection by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, who perhaps didn't want to be thought of simply as a "crime writer."

I'd rate "The Copper Breeches" a B+. I consider among the best of the Holmes stories I've read so far.