Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle

At last I can get back to the Sherlock Holmes and one of the many good novel pastiches that abound at MX Publishing.

Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle, is full of surprises, even for the great detective himself.

The adventure begins in early summer of 1904. The President of the Kipling League, David Siviter, sends Sherlock Holmes a telegram, inviting him to Crick’s End in Sussex that afternoon to give a talk to the League as an expert on “the criminal mind.” The League includes Siviter (poet and children’s writer), Alfred Weit, Sir Julius Wernher, and Viscount Van Beers, all rich and powerful men, devotees of Kipling and adamant believers in empire. Pevensey, a famous, if mediocre, painter will also be on the premises.

Holmes accepts, but is suspicious. Ignoring the telegram’s instructions as to times and stations (and the promise that a chauffer will be waiting for them), he makes his own arrangements for a different train route that allows him and Watson to arrive at their host’s mansion three hours earlier than Siviter planned.

Following a long and effusive introduction by Watson, Holmes gives his talk, explaining his methods and giving examples from cases that Watson has made famous. After meeting Pevensey, who has completed two paintings commissioned by Siviter, the two are taken to Etchingham station for the trip home.

At the station, news headlines again arouse Holmes’s suspicions. The unclad body of a man has been discovered in a wagon pond at Scotney Castle, not far from Crick’s End. Watson thinks the death may be accidental or self-inflicted. Holmes feels the Kipling League is behind the death and hires a carriage to take them back for a confrontation, which leads to a serious quarrel between him and Watson. To tell why Holmes is convinced of what he calls “the smack of a great crime,” would create spoilers for the reader. Let me just say that his suspicious involve a discrepancy between two paintings, a strange hatband, an ill-fitting hat, and linseed oil, among other clues. 

There was much to like about this story. Symonds captures the flavor of the early Edwardian era in the settings and furnishing and the language of the time. His characters are interesting, and for the most part, Holmes and Watson feel true to character. There were times, however, when I felt they were a bit overdrawn. And there were some sections where too much detail slowed the story. That said, a reader will find this an intriguing case and will enjoy trying to put the facts together that explain who the dead person was and how his body ended up in a wagon pond at Scotney Castle.

Sherlock Holmes and the Dead Boer at Scotney Castle is available at:

Amazon,  Strand Magazine,  Book Depository,  and MX Publishing, 

and all good bookstores and e-bookstores worldwide including in the USA.