11 - The Whole Queer Business of Wisteria Lodge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2021
Summary
‘Wisteria Lodge’, published in the Strand in 1908 and collected in His Last Bow (1917), is in two parts. The first, entitled ‘The Singular Experience of Mr John Scott Eccles’, covers the client's narrative of a most unusual dinner at Wisteria Lodge, a house near Oxshott in Surrey; the dinner is given by a Mr Garcia, who is found murdered the following morning. The second part, ‘The Tiger of San Pedro’, tells the story of the investigation of Garcia's murder. ‘Wisteria Lodge’ turns out to be a story of revolution and tyranny: Don Murillo, the former kleptocratic dictator of a South American country, has escaped with his loot and his life, adopted a new identity in Surrey, but is being pursued by a syndicate of his surviving victims led by Garcia.
The word used by both Holmes and his client for this case is ‘grotesque’, and Holmes's reflections on the meaning of this word bookend the tale (Last Bow, 5, 36). ‘Grotesque’ is one of many adjectives signifying the unusual or abnormal – Watson defines the word as ‘[s]trange – remarkable’ (5) – that recur throughout the story. The subtitle tells us that the case is ‘singular’ (5). Scott Eccles describes his experience as ‘incredible and grotesque’ (5), ‘most singular and unpleasant’, and ‘most improper – most outrageous’ (6). His subsequent narrative is, Watson records, ‘extraordinary’ (8) and ‘bizarre’ (11), while Holmes describes it as ‘perfectly unique’ (11), ‘remarkable’ (15) and ‘extraordinary’ (16). In the second part, Holmes's deductions lead him to Don Murillo, posing as Mr Henderson of High Gable, who ‘was by all accounts a curious man, to whom curious adventures might befall’ (26). Describing Henderson's ‘strange household’ (27), Holmes identifies them as a ‘singular set of people’ and ‘the man himself the most singular of them all’ (26); labouring the point, he exclaims: ‘Curious people, Watson! I don't pretend to understand it all yet, but very curious anyway’ (27). Reflecting on the business more than six months later, Holmes describes it rather differently as a ‘chaotic case’: ‘It covers two continents, concerns two groups of mysterious persons, and is further complicated by the highly respectable presence of our friend Scott Eccles, whose inclusion shows me that the deceased Garcia had a scheming mind and a well-developed sense of self-preservation’ (35).
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- The Case of Sherlock HolmesSecrets and Lies in Conan Doyle's Detective Fiction, pp. 112 - 122Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2018