This week’s story in the Chronological Sherlock Holmes Challenge is “The Resident Patient,” which was published in The Strand in 1893 and collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes and Watson go for a walk, and upon returning, they discover they have a client, Dr. Percy Trevelyan. He has a most unusual story to tell about his benefactor and resident patient, Mr. Blessington. Blessington invested in Dr. Trevelyan’s practice in return for a large percentage of the earnings Dr. Trevelyan made. Dr. Trevelyan is visited by a new patient, a Russian count with a form of catalepsy and brought to see Dr. Trevelyan by his son. The patient and son mysteriously disappear in the middle of their consultation when Dr. Trevelyan leaves the room for a moment, and Blessington insists someone has been in his rooms. The two men seek the help of Sherlock Holmes, who insists, upon hearing Blessington’s story, that the man is not being truthful. He leaves. Early the next morning, he and Watson are called and informed Blessington has committed suicide. A cursory investigation of the matter reveals that Blessington was murdered.

This was a good story, and it also stands out as one of more well-written Sherlock Holmes stories I’ve read so far. I liked Holmes’s insistence on the truth and refusal to help until he got it. It was a nice bit of characterization on Doyle’s part. As a side note, crooks are really stupid to leave behind any of their smoking evidence when Holmes is in London. He knows way too much about all forms of cigars, ash, and smoking ephemera. He also knows everything, it would seem, about footprints. At any rate, the story is satisfying with a deduction that is somewhat difficult, but that a reader can still follow and not feel cheated by a left-field leap of logic. I believe there is a tenuous connection between this story and the Sherlock series (SPOILER ALERT) in that Blessington is an informant for a gang of thieves, and once the gang is released from prison, they hunt him down and murder him. In the series, Mary Morstan Watson had been a member of a group of assassins called AGRA, after the group members’ initials. They are surprised and betrayed on one of their missions. Two of the members die, leaving Mary (aka Rosamund) and AJ left. Mary escapes, but AJ is captured. Mary believes him dead. AJ is tortured and imprisoned, and when he is released, he hunts down Mary with the goal of killing her for what he perceives as her betrayal. It’s a fairly loose connection, but it’s the closest one I noticed in the story. Also, Blessington uses an assumed name just as Mary did after the incident that broke up each of their “gangs.” A nice little Easter egg: one of the characters is named Moffat, like the writer and producer of Sherlock.

I read this story as part of the Chronological Sherlock Holmes Challenge. It is the eighth story in the chronology (time setting rather than composition). Next up is “The Reigate Squires.”

This week’s story in the Chronological Sherlock Holmes Challenge is “The Adventure of the Red Circle,” which is one of many stories that seems to follow a similar patter for Doyle: a mysterious “foreigner” shows up in London bringing intrigue from their country of origin with them, and Holmes must get to the bottom of it. In the case of this mystery, Holmes is initially uninterested, but he is moved to investigate by the pleas of a landlady, Mrs. Warren, who is increasingly suspicious of her new boarder. In spite of himself, Holmes finds himself interested Mrs. Warren’s story and agrees to help.

Holmes and Watson discover several suspicious anomalies as they begin investigating the case: first, the lodger’s notes are printed rather than written in cursive, and Holmes can somehow tell from the cigarette butts the lodger leaves behind that he does not have a mustache, while Mrs. Warren insisted he did have one. Holmes discovers that the landlady has no contact with the lodger aside from these written requests and a ringing bell for meals, which she leaves outside the lodger’s rooms. Breakfast includes copy of the The Daily Gazette. Holmes begins searching the Daily Gazette‘s extracts for messages and believes he is onto something when he finds a series of messages signed “G.”

This one didn’t grab me, though I did enjoy the fact that Holmes didn’t figure out all the pieces of the mystery before everyone else did. Gregson from Scotland Yard was a bit ahead of him on who the mysterious occupant boarding with Mrs. Warren is connected to, and he has a Pinkerton agent with him who is after the same man. I enjoyed Holmes’s comment to Watson, who questions why he is taking on this case when there doesn’t seem to be much substance to it: “Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last.” That said, it was long on exposition at the end when the mysterious lodger is revealed, and Holmes doesn’t play much of a role in his deduction, except for a few wild leaps that don’t make as much sense (to me) as his deductions typically do, as well as some substantial lack of resolution in the end. If you want to know what the Red Circle is all about, you’ll be disappointed. The villain is easily dispatched, given he is such a threat, and the man who obtained the lodgings from Mrs. Warren disappears, his fate unknown, though Doyle alludes to an escape.

This story originally appeared in His Last Bow and was 44th in composition. Those who have ordered the stories chronologically must have their reasons for ordering this story number 6, but I’m not sure how they figured it out, as there did not seem to me to be any timeline indicators, but I admit I’m not a Sherlock Holmes scholar. I didn’t notice any connections to the Sherlock TV series, possibly because as Sherlock Holmes stories go, this is not one of the more memorable.

I read this story as part of the Chronological Sherlock Holmes Challenge. It is the sixth story in the chronology (time setting rather than composition). Next up is “The Beryl Coronet.”