this is going around twitter rn but im also super curious: please tell me your top four comfort movies that you’re always down to watch bc my friend thinks mine are ridiculous and now we’ve realised everyone’s version of “comfort” is hilariously different
But one is a stranger, a woman she notices while she sits on a bench, gathering herself. It’s a type of woman she has never seen before, because there are no old women in Barbieland. When Barbie looks at her, she finds her beautiful and tells her so. The woman already knows. Suddenly Barbie, the fraught aspirational figure, has beheld someone she might aspire to be, and it is a radiantly content nonagenarian, reading a newspaper on a Los Angeles bench, who knows what she’s worth.
“The idea of a loving God who’s a mother, a grandmother — who looks at you and says, ‘Honey, you’re doing OK’ — is something I feel like I need and I wanted to give to other people,” Gerwig says. When it was suggested that this scene, which Gerwig calls a “transaction of grace,” might be cut for time, she remembers thinking: “If I cut that scene, I don’t know why I’m making this movie. If I don’t have that scene, I don’t know what it is or what I’ve done.”
They’re about to break so many laws it’s not even funny, I can feel it in my bones
It’s about PayPal. This is all about fucking PayPal
He’s still pissed they fired him. He’s still pissed they didn’t like his idea of calling PayPal X
20 years and he has not learned a single thing. He’s still throwing a tantrum about people not liking his bad name suggestion decades ago
Yeah, this again. :/
John Bull's Twitter thread takes this on in depth. Warning: contains idees fixe and boardroom backstabbing. :)
We are in (probably) Oxbridge and have a potential cheating scandal (quelle horreur!), three suspects and a “forgetful” servant who left the room to the papers unlocked.
Our suspects are: the hardworking ‘manly’ scholarship student (who needs the money), the Indian student (who knew the papers were there and may need the grade, but didn’t get a lot of description so I think we’re mostly supposed to suspect him because racism and opportunity??) and the rich lazy kid (who needs the grade because he hasn’t done the work).
Place your bets, please.
“I should like to have a peep at each of them,” said Holmes. “Is it possible?”
“No difficulty in the world,” Soames answered. “This set of rooms is quite the oldest in the college, and it is not unusual for visitors to go over them. Come along, and I will personally conduct you.”
You just let random strangers into your students’ rooms?
There were some really curious pieces of mediaeval domestic architecture within. Holmes was so charmed with one of them that he insisted on drawing it on his note-book, broke his pencil, had to borrow one from our host, and finally borrowed a knife to sharpen his own.
I love how even in his later accounts, Watson pretends not to know that Holmes is putting on an act. Yes, he was taken with the architecture, this had no ulterior motive and absolutely wasn’t to scope out the pencils and knife of the student. It was purely architecture-based enthusiasm that led to this.
The same curious accident happened to him in the rooms of the Indian…
Really? The same thing happened in that room!?
Also, I’m not going to bother comparing the descriptions of the two students because that way lies racism and I think we can all see it.
Only at the third did our visit prove abortive. The outer door would not open to our knock, and nothing more substantial than a torrent of bad language came from behind it. “I don’t care who you are. You can go to blazes!” roared the angry voice. “To-morrow’s the exam, and I won’t be drawn by anyone.”
Honestly, good for you. They’ve got no business coming into your room anyway. And also, good for you for studying (if you’re telling the truth) I don’t remember your name random rich student, but so far as actually meeting you goes, I fully support you. Keep that door closed. Fuck the lot of them.
“A rude fellow,” said our guide, flushing with anger as we withdrew down the stair. “Of course, he did not realize that it was I who was knocking, but none the less his conduct was very uncourteous, and, indeed, under the circumstances rather suspicious.”
Or… not suspicious because he’s the only one actually studying when there’s an exam tomorrow that seems to be vitally important. (Sure, he might not be studying, maybe he has someone in there with him… in which case, also good for him, I guess).
“Can you tell me his exact height?” he asked.
“Really, Mr. Holmes, I cannot undertake to say. He is taller than the Indian, not so tall as Gilchrist. I suppose five foot six would be about it.”
You what now?
He has a name! I don’t remember it right now because you haven’t mentioned it yet this section (I also don’t remember the rich kid’s name), but he has a name. You literally teach him. You know his name! Seriously? Seriously?
(His name is Daulat Ras, I checked the first part of the story. If it turns out to be him (which it won’t because it’s Gilchrist who doesn’t appear to be studying even though he clearly has the most riding on this exam) then I am hereby pre-emptively pardoning him on grounds of his teacher being shit because he cannot be bothered to remember his name.)
Our guide cried aloud in his astonishment and dismay. “Good gracious, Mr. Holmes, you are surely not going to leave me in this abrupt fashion! You don’t seem to realize the position. To-morrow is the examination. I must take some definite action to-night. I cannot allow the examination to be held if one of the papers has been tampered with. The situation must be faced.”
Calm down, my dude. It’s really not the end of the world. Have a sit down, get a glass of brandy. Keep the brain fever at bay.
“The foul-mouthed fellow at the top. He is the one with the worst record. And yet that Indian was a sly fellow also. Why should he be pacing his room all the time?”
Thank you, Watson, for validating my suspicions by disagreeing with them. I always feel better about my ideas when they don’t match yours. No thanks for the racism, but at least you didn’t just choose Ras, and you’re also giving a secondary reason for suspecting him.
“He looked at us in a queer way.”
… ahem.
“So would you if a flock of strangers came in on you when you were preparing for an examination next day, and every moment was of value.“
Also that.
“Why, Bannister, the servant. What’s his game in the matter?”
IKR, Holmes, you get me. You understand. Clearly the guy is overly worried and who walks all the way across the room to sit down when they’re feeling faint.
But Bannister would have to be working with someone. Either one of the three, or a hypothetical fourth student he is related to. He could be related to Gilchrist, I guess. (What is rich boy’s name? I still can’t remember, luckily I am not his tutor, so I don’t have to feel bad about it.)
“He impressed me as being a perfectly honest man.”
Watson, my sweet summer child. Apart from all your many faults, biases and prejudices, you are so naive and trusting.
All were agreed that one could be ordered, but that it was not a usual size of pencil and that it was seldom kept in stock.
Does Bannister have, like, some illness that means he can’t hold standard-sized pencils? Arthritis of some kind? But everyone seems pretty sure that he’s not directly lying about anything. Unless he is cunning and running a whole business of copying translations then selling them to students.
"By Jove! my dear fellow, it is nearly nine, and the landlady babbled of green peas at seven-thirty. What with your eternal tobacco, Watson, and your irregularity at meals, I expect that you will get notice to quit and that I shall share your downfall”
Yeah, Watson. This is clearly your fault. How dare you! The poor landlady making you peas when you’re dragging Holmes out to stationers at all hours. You should be ashamed of yourself.
At eight in the morning he came into my room just as I finished my toilet.
Yet again, I know toilet had a different meaning, but picturing Holmes walking into the bathroom while Watson’s literally sitting on the toilet and the two of them carrying out a perfectly normal conversation is hilarious to me.
“I have put in two hours’ hard work and covered at least five miles, with something to show for it. Look at that!”
He held out his hand. On the palm were three little pyramids of black, doughy clay.
Ah yes, the random clay, which all I can think of is putty eraser or some sort of carbon copy thing.
“You will kindly close the door,” said Holmes. “Now, Bannister, will you please tell us the truth about yesterday’s incident?”
Yeah, Bannister. Are you secretly the head of a cheating ring?
“Well, then, I must make some suggestions to you. When you sat down on that chair yesterday, did you do so in order to conceal some object which would have shown who had been in the room?”
Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Whoever did do it was kind of rubbish at covering their tracks clearly this is not something they do often.
“There was no man, sir.”
So it’s either a girl, or Odysseus…?
He was a fine figure of a man, tall, lithe, and agile, with a springy step and a pleasant, open face.
Seriously, Watson, we get it, you think he’s hot. You’ve been very lonely since your wife died. You don’t need to describe how hot he is every time we see him.
Wait, it was the tutor who had that weird use of 'manly’ the first time around, wasn’t it?
If Gilchrist turns out to be a girl in disguise that line is going to be so funny.
"We want to know, Mr. Gilchrist, how you, an honourable man, ever came to commit such an action as that of yesterday?”
The unfortunate young man staggered back and cast a look full of horror and reproach at Bannister.
“No, no, Mr. Gilchrist, sir; I never said a word—never one word!” cried the servant.
Well now you have. People really need to get better at committing crimes. After it’s happened, you know nothing about anything. No matter how much people ask or how much they claim to know, you know nothing. You are blissfully ignorant of the whole affair. What affair? Oh, someone’s cheating? How terrible!
“No, but you have now,” said Holmes.
Is this the first documented use of this trope? Because it can’t have happened much before now.
The Indian I also thought nothing of.
His name.
"Such an idea was absurd. I was measuring how tall a man would need to be in order to see as he passed what papers were on the central table. I am six feet high, and I could do it with an effort.”
So all Watson’s descriptions were just to point out how tall Gilchrist is? That’s all?
“He put his shoes on the table. What was it you put on that chair near the window?”
“Gloves,” said the young man.
Dude. My dude. You wear the gloves. I know this story was published a year before the first use of fingerprints in a criminal case in England, but my dude. You do not leave your gloves on a chair.
“Yes, sir, I have, but the shock of this disgraceful exposure has bewildered me. I have a letter here, Mr. Soames, which I wrote to you early this morning in the middle of a restless night. It was before I knew that my sin had found me out. Here it is, sir. You will see that I have said, ‘I have determined not to go in for the examination. I have been offered a commission in the Rhodesian Police, and I am going out to South Africa at once.’”
…well that’s a twist.
You’re seriously going to leave the country and go be a colonialist police officer in Africa. Because… you cheated on a test. Leaving the country seems a bit extreme.
"Time was, sir, when I was butler to old Sir Jabez Gilchrist, this young gentleman’s father. When he was ruined I came to the college as servant, but I never forgot my old employer because he was down in the world. I watched his son all I could for the sake of the old days.”
So not related to him, but associated with him. Yeah, that tracks. Servants are so loyal in these stories (apart from when they aren’t, I suppose).
Another person called Jabez.
“As to you, sir, I trust that a bright future awaits you in Rhodesia. For once you have fallen low. Let us see in the future how high you can rise.”
I mean… I’m not entirely comfortable with this turn of events. I feel like 'police officer in the colonial British Empire’ is pretty low, in the grand scheme of things.
And I never was reminded what the rich kid’s name was, and I think I’m going to leave it that way. ACD needs to stop forgetting character’s names, it makes it far too easy to guess who the culprit is. Also, it makes all your characters more racist.
Is it that guy, that guy, or Mr Diddit?
Next time, The Solitary Cyclist, which is one of my favourites, so I probably won’t be speculating as I’ve read it a lot.
Ed Greenwood's original hand-drawn map of the Forgotten Realms, sent to TSR in 1986… on Map Monday aka Dungeon Day!
Credit: Photo taken by D&D Sage Advice, map from Alex Kammer's collection
Last day of @cap-ironman's rec week event! Thanks so much to them for organizing this event, and all the other events that inspired the following fics!
The Highwayman's Baronet by mariana_oconnor, orphan_account (@mariana-oconnor) (MCU | Teen And Up Audiences | No Archive Warnings Apply | 125,525 words)
Written for: 2020 Captain America/Iron Man Big Bang
Summary: Steve Rogers has returned from the war. He has made his fortune, but lost everything in return. He is reeling from grief and at a loss of what to do with himself when the son of an old friend writes to offer him a home. He takes up the offer, but finds himself embroiled in a plot to bring down the country and raise Hydra from the grave. Can he uncover the traitor, save the handsome baronet, and avoid being hanged as a highwayman?
A Regency AU featuring highwayman!Steve, Baronet!Tony, treason, nefarious plots and a dash of magic.
The Laird in the Water by jellybeanforest (@jellybeanforest-a-go-go) (MCU | Mature | Graphic Depictions Of Violence | 17,920 words)
Written for: Cap-IronMan Bingo
Summary: In 14th century Scotland, Steve is a child with an imaginary friend that lives in a nearby river, the site of many drownings and horrific discoveries. His Nan claims it to be the work of a kelpie. Steve doesn’t believe her of course. Kelpies are a myth, old wives tales to keep children from playing near swiftly-moving streams and young women from entertaining the company of handsome strangers. However, as he grows, Steve realizes that the young man in the water may not be quite as imaginary nor as innocuous as he once believed.
For the Cap-IronMan Bingo 2019 Round 2 – AU: Fairy Tale Creatures.
Bugfuck Crazy (In Love With You) by Sadisticsparkle (sadisticsparkle) (616 | Explicit | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings | 7,912 words)
Written for: Cap-IronMan Bingo
Summary: It's the Avengers' first mission in a long time. Everything is familiar but awkward, but Steve is sure they'll find their groove.
And then Tony is turned into a giant bug.
Things get a little out of hand after that.
More below the cut!
Claudia Bueno is an artist born in Venezuela, now based in the USA, whose light art installations will tease and tantalise all your senses. Bueno works with circuits and motors to create ethereal installations which play with light, sound and touch, creating immersive art which is psychedelic and magical in nature.
are there any good Gwaine/Merlin fics?
ty!✨
The time has come again for me to rec the Secrets ‘verse
It’s long, it’s unfinished, but it is absolutely worth every second of reading.
Three of them? Are they medical students, because we’ve already discussed how disturbing that gets.
It was in the year ‘95 that a combination of events, into which I need not enter, caused Mr. Sherlock Holmes and myself to spend some weeks in one of our great University towns…
Is he withholding the name of the town for its protection?
It will be obvious that any details which would help the reader to exactly identify the college or the criminal would be injudicious and offensive.
Oh, he is.
Honestly Oxford and Cambridge, and probably most of the other universities, had the resources to sue him to hell and back for libel, so that might be a wise course of action. Other universities were available, but there were only about 12 universities in Britain at that time, and he specifies they were spending weeks in the town, so it won’t be the University of London. That leaves (in age order): Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Durham, Belfast, Cork, Galway, Manchester, or Cardiff. The University of Wales would only have been 2 years old in 1895, so Cardiff probably wouldn’t count as a 'great’ university town. Honestly, I don’t know if anything from Durham onwards would have been regarded as 'great’ because they were all founded in the 1800s. Durham would have been over 60 years old, does that count as a 'great university town’ to Watson? I don’t know.
Honestly, he’s probably leaving it vague so people can project their own biases onto it. The rivalries between universities are longstanding.
He’s never specified leaving anything out to prevent offence before, though. Like, maybe he changes the names, but he’s never specified anything, and has a few times referred to people being aware of things from the papers. I think it really shows Watson’s priorities here that he’s obscuring the information in this one especially when he’s published other people’s dirty laundry for all the world to see.
“I trust, Mr. Holmes, that you can spare me a few hours of your valuable time. We have had a very painful incident at St. Luke’s, and really, but for the happy chance of your being in the town, I should have been at a loss what to do.”
The more they talk about how painful and scandalous the incident is, the more convinced I am that I will not find it particularly painful or scandalous. But I may be wrong.
Also, the fact that we’re referring to colleges does narrow it down a bit. As far as I know, most universities in the UK don’t have a collegiate system. Oxford and Cambridge do, St Andrews does (on a smaller scale, I believe), Aberdeen does (similarly to St Andrews, only 3, I think), and Durham does. I don’t think Edinburgh and Glasgow have colleges in the same way, and I can’t find any evidence that they used to in a quick bit of internet searching.
The fact that Holmes was looking into English Charters makes me think that this is probably in England, though, not Scotland, so I’m still thinking Oxford or Cambridge, or possibly Durham, but less likely as it’s a newer university.
“…this is just one of those cases where, for the credit of the college, it is most essential to avoid scandal.”
Oh boy, I already don’t like these people. I smell cover-up all over this. I can feel the outrage already starting to brew inside me and we don’t even know what’s happened yet.
“My subject is Greek, and the first of the papers consists of a large passage of Greek translation which the candidate has not seen. This passage is printed on the examination paper, and it would naturally be an immense advantage if the candidate could prepare it in advance.”
Is this a cheating scandal? Seriously?
Also, I assume it’s taken from an extant Greek text, so surely there’s always a chance that that student will have studied that text in their own time as part of their reading? They presumably have access to the university library, which presumably contains texts in Ancient Greek?
“The only duplicate which existed, so far as I knew, was that which belonged to my servant, Bannister, a man who has looked after my room for ten years, and whose honesty is absolutely above suspicion.”
Nobody is above suspicion.
“I found that the key was indeed his, that he had entered my room to know if I wanted tea, and that he had very carelessly left the key in the door when he came out.”
A likely story.
“The proof was in three long slips. I had left them all together. Now, I found that one of them was lying on the floor, one was on the side table near the window, and the third was where I had left it.”
That’s just incompetence. You didn’t even try to leave them close to where you found them, unknown interloper? Come on. You’re better than this. You must have some brains.
"A large sum of money is at stake, for the scholarship is a very valuable one, and an unscrupulous man might very well run a risk in order to gain an advantage over his fellows.”
So this is for a scholarship? So probably not a spoilt little rich kid. Unless it is a spoilt little rich kid who can’t be bothered to do the work.
“Bannister was very much upset by the incident. He had nearly fainted when we found that the papers had undoubtedly been tampered with.“
Bannister knows who did it. He’s probably related to them. He let them in.
“This was not all. I have a new writing-table with a fine surface of red leather. I am prepared to swear, and so is Bannister, that it was smooth and unstained. Now I found a clean cut in it about three inches long—not a mere scratch, but a positive cut. Not only this, but on the table I found a small ball of black dough, or clay, with specks of something which looks like sawdust in it.”
…This I do not understand. The cheater stopped to do some arts and crafts? They clearly were cutting something, but what’s the clay for? Putty eraser? Some weird way of making a copy?
“Either I must find the man or else the examination must be postponed until fresh papers are prepared, and since this cannot be done without explanation there will ensue a hideous scandal, which will throw a cloud not only on the college, but on the University.”
Yeah, I was right. I don’t consider this particularly scandalous. You could totally make up an excuse why the exam needs to be changed at the last minute, and even if you didn’t I still don’t think 'someone peeked at the answers’ is the kind of scandal that could bring an entire university into disrepute. But what do I know? I’m sitting here in the future where there’s an entire industry of students paying other people to write essays for them and if they don’t want to pay they can just get an AI to write it instead.
“Had anyone visited you in your room after the papers came to you?”
“Yes; young Daulat Ras, an Indian student who lives on the same stair, came in to ask me some particulars about the examination.”
Fingers crossed - please don’t be racist. please don’t be racist. please don’t be racist.
Of course, that’s only one student, according to the title there are three.
“Where is Bannister now?”
“He was very ill, poor fellow. I left him collapsed in the chair.”
Yeah, he knows something. He’s got to.
“Well,” said he, “let us go round. Not one of your cases, Watson—mental, not physical. All right; come if you want to.“
This bit made me laugh. Has Watson just been sitting there watching you pore over obscure English charters for hours, Holmes? And how many times has he come with you when nothing physical needed doing? But no, this isn’t one of his cases.
“Dear me!” said Holmes, and he smiled in a singular way as he glanced at our companion. “Well, if there is nothing to be learned here we had best go inside.”
Clearly there was something to be learned there and Holmes is being smug about finding it when no one else has realised.
It was a small pyramid of black, putty-like stuff, exactly like the one upon the table of the study. Holmes held it out on his open palm in the glare of the electric light.
“Your visitor seems to have left traces in your bedroom as well as in your sitting-room, Mr. Soames.”
OK, now it’s a scandal. You really shouldn’t be having students in your bedroom, Mr Soames. Especially right before exam time, and with allegations of cheating hovering in the air. What will the ethics committee say? Now, obviously, two consenting adults, but there are some distinct questions that need to be asked about these things in the circumstances.
Not that I expect there was an ethics committee in 1895.
“What could he have wanted there?”
Mr Soames, blissfully unaware of the world.
“I will tell you, then, in a few words the character of the three men who inhabit these rooms. The lower of the three is Gilchrist, a fine scholar and athlete; plays in the Rugby team and the cricket team for the college, and got his Blue for the hurdles and the long jump. He is a fine, manly fellow. His father was the notorious Sir Jabez Gilchrist, who ruined himself on the turf. My scholar has been left very poor, but he is hard-working and industrious. He will do well.”
So he really needs the scholarship then, is what I’m hearing here. Also 'fine, manly fellow’. People really did just say things like that back then, huh?
“The second floor is inhabited by Daulat Ras, the Indian. He is a quiet, inscrutable fellow, as most of those Indians are. He is well up in his work, though his Greek is his weak subject. He is steady and methodical.“
Ah, yes, racism. Could be worse racism, but still. And this guy probably isn’t going to do well in the exam, so wants to up his grade.
“The top floor belongs to Miles McLaren. He is a brilliant fellow when he chooses to work—one of the brightest intellects of the University, but he is wayward, dissipated, and unprincipled. He was nearly expelled over a card scandal in his first year. He has been idling all this term, and he must look forward with dread to the examination.”
And the spoilt little rich kid, previously hypothesised, seemingly lazy and didn’t bother with his lessons so now he needs to catch up. Seems to obvious from the description, though. My money is on the Fine, manly fellow at the moment, because clearly he’s the one Soames doesn’t suspect at all. OR all three of them are working together. I assume there are other people also taking the exam.
“That is singular, because you sat down in that chair over yonder near the corner. Why did you pass these other chairs?”
So he could be closer to the bedroom door? Though I don’t know how that would help him? To see out the window?
“Oh, I would not venture to say, sir. I don’t believe there is any gentleman in this University who is capable of profiting by such an action. No, sir, I’ll not believe it.”
These guys really don’t like cynicism, huh? Couldn’t possibly be anyone who did this. It all must have just happened on its own.
Bannister might have let one or more of them in under false pretences and then realised what was going on after the fact. That would explain his excessive reaction (although, it occurs to me that since they’re taking this so seriously, he might lose his job over it, which would explain a large reaction, but then sitting in the furthest seat possible is odd).
Last time I came to the decision - entirely logically and data-driven and not at all because he made an incredibly rude comment about one of his servants - that The Professor was a hack, his life’s work is founded on a lie and he either commited or is complicit in the murder of Willoughby Smith.
I also came to the conclusion that he smokes too many cigarettes. (1000 a fortnight, you know over a year that’s 26,000? And he’s getting them imported from Alexandria? Guy has a problem.)
Stanley Hopkins had gone down to the village to look into some rumours of a strange woman who had been seen by some children on the Chatham Road the previous morning.
Was she stumbling around blindly, because I feel like with the prescription Holmes described, she’s going to find it very difficult to get around on her own without her glasses.
I had never known him handle a case in such a half-hearted fashion.
Let’s play: Is Sherlock bored, or does he dislike the conclusion to this story?
Even the news brought back by Hopkins that he had found the children and that they had undoubtedly seen a woman exactly corresponding with Holmes’s description, and wearing either spectacles or eye-glasses, failed to rouse any sign of keen interest.
So she definitely exists and has been in the area. But Holmes doesn’t seem to care about that, possibly because he already knows it must be the case and therefore this is of little concern.
He was more attentive when Susan, who waited upon us at lunch, volunteered the information that she believed Mr. Smith had been out for a walk yesterday morning, and that he had only returned half an hour before the tragedy occurred.
Man goes for walk. Vitally important information. It means that things may have occurred in the house without his knowledge, or that he might have been involved in something on his walk without anyone else’s knowledge, such as meeting up with our lady with bad eyesight.
He was, indeed, a weird figure as he turned his white mane and his glowing eyes towards us.
Why are his eyes glowing? Eyes are not supposed to glow, Watson. Does he have tapetum lucidum? Is he a werewolf? Is he a demon? Has he finally smoked enough cigarettes that he has merged with the cigarette and now he is literally smoking?
Holmes stretched out his hand at the same moment, and between them they tipped the box over the edge.
Second recorded incident of Holmes knocking things off tables like a cat.
I don’t know what the cigarettes have to do with all this. I feel like it’s going to be obvious. The only idea I can have is that he’s part of some sort of artefact smuggling ring and every two weeks he gets a massive batch of 1000 cigarettes but hidden in the package are antiques. But why would that affect his appetite? And clearly he is getting all 1000 cigarettes because he’s smoking all day and night. And why would that require Holmes to smoke like fifty in a go before?
So there must be something in the cigarettes? Are the rolling papers money? Are the rolling papers ancient documents? But then he smokes them, so that makes no sense either.
“Yes,” said he, “I have solved it.”
Stanley Hopkins and I stared in amazement. Something like a sneer quivered over the gaunt features of the old Professor.
“Indeed! In the garden?”
“No, here.”
“Here! When?”
“This instant.”
You solved it by knocking some cigarettes off the table?
^Holmes and the Professor, probably
I mean, obviously he has connected the dots, he’s Sherlock Holmes and he is controlled by the almighty god-writer of his universe who’s feeding him all the lines. But still. What can you work out from knocking cigarettes off a table? Did they fall wrong? Or was there something on the bottom of the box?
“A lady yesterday entered your study. She came with the intention of possessing herself of certain documents which were in your bureau. She had a key of her own.“
So far, so not what I thought… this is not in keeping with my thoughts that the Professor dunnit.
UNLESS she was looking for evidence that he was a fraud and had previously talked to Willoughby about it, then when he refused to help her - loyal to his employer as he was - she took matters into her own hands.
Her possession of the key intimates that she has at one time had access to this desk. She’s one of the previous secretaries that was let go for creative differences. Creative differences that were The Professor being a fraud, obviously (I refuse to believe this man has any academic ethics).
SO using the key that she kept after the termination of her old employment, she snuck in using her knowledge of the household and its schedule. The Professor came upon her and killed her, but knocked her pince-nez off and under the desk as he did so. No clue what he did with the body… put it in a crate of cigarettes?
THEN Willoughby comes back and asks if she came to see the professor, enquires about the allegations she made. The Professor says ‘Oh no, dear boy. She hasn’t been to see me, and she was a vary fanciful girl. You know what women are like.’ Because he’s a terrible person.
Then Willoughby finds the pince-nez, recognises them from his previous meeting with the lady and just as he’s putting it all together STAB in the neck from the professor, but this time there isn’t time to hide the body, the maid, Susan, is already there. the Professor hotfoots it away and leaves Willoughby there, forgetting all about the pince-nez still clutched in his rapidly cooling hand.
There are still some holes, and the cigarettes still make no sense and we have no body, so habeas corpus isn’t exactly satisfied. We habeas pince-nez instead.
I could just read the story and find out, I guess.
I really want the professor to be a fraud. I want him to be totally discredited and disgraced. I want it so bad, you guys.
The Professor blew a cloud from his lips. “This is most interesting and instructive,” said he. “Have you no more to add? Surely, having traced this lady so far, you can also say what has become of her.”
This might seem like he genuinely doesn’t know what’s going on, because he doesn’t seem worried. Or, per my hypothesis, he’s just an arrogant bastard who’s convinced he’s smarter than anyone else in the room.
“I will endeavour to do so. In the first place she was seized by your secretary, and stabbed him in order to escape. This catastrophe I am inclined to regard as an unhappy accident, for I am convinced that the lady had no intention of inflicting so grievous an injury.”
Really? Random lady we don’t know did it? That would be very unsatisfying. 'Guy dies in room holding glasses belonging to the person who killed him’ isn’t a very intriguing murder mystery.
“She ran down a corridor, which she imagined to be that by which she had come—both were lined with cocoanut matting—and it was only when it was too late that she understood that she had taken the wrong passage and that her retreat was cut off behind her. What was she to do? She could not go back. She could not remain where she was. She must go on. She went on. She mounted a stair, pushed open a door, and found herself in your room.”
Ah, that’s why the shortsightedness is relevant. Should have guessed that was connected.
This is where the Professor kills her and stuffs her under his bed right, then smokes a million cigarettes to cover up the smell of her rotting corpse?
(I’m grasping at straws, let me be)
“And you mean to say that I could lie upon that bed and not be aware that a woman had entered my room?”
“I never said so. You were aware of it. You spoke with her. You recognised her. You aided her to escape.”
OK, that was like my… second theory last time? He’s complicit in aiding the murderer.
Again the Professor burst into high-keyed laughter. He had risen to his feet and his eyes glowed like embers.
Demon professor
Y'know, if he went into higher education and got tenure.
God that show freaked me out as a kid. Could not watch it.
“She is there,” said Holmes, and he pointed to a high bookcase in the corner of the room.
OK, I know I suggested he was feeding her and that was why he was eating so much last time, but she’s really been hiding in his room this whole time? Behind the bookcase? I guess she can come out when no one else is there, but she’s just been living behind the bookcase this entire time?
…at the best she could never have been handsome, for she had the exact physical characteristics which Holmes had divined, with, in addition, a long and obstinate chin. […] And yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, there was a certain nobility in the woman’s bearing, a gallantry in the defiant chin and in the upraised head, which compelled something of respect and admiration.
Watson: She was ugly, but for some reason I still respected her. It was a very confusing situation for me. This has never happened before.
It’s okay, Watson. We all know you’re a shallow bitch sometimes and we love you for it.
“Madam,” said Holmes, “I am sure that it is the truth. I fear that you are far from well.”
Yeah, because she’s been stuck in this room with the chain-smoker for over twenty four hours and he hasn’t cracked a window. Honestly impressed she hasn’t suffocated.
“I have only a little time here,” she said, “but I would have you to know the whole truth. I am this man’s wife. He is not an Englishman. He is a Russian. His name I will not tell.”
Secret Russian! Did not see that coming. I’d ask if that’s why the imported cigarettes, but he was getting them from Alexandria, wasn’t he? Although there’s probably an Alexandria in Russia, there were like fifty gazillion Alexandrias. Every time Alexander the Great stopped somewhere for the night, he called it Alexandria. Now there was a guy who like the sound of his own name too much.
For the first time the old man stirred. “God bless you, Anna!” he cried. “God bless you!”
She cast a look of the deepest disdain in his direction. “Why should you cling so hard to that wretched life of yours, Sergius?”
You just said you weren’t going to tell them his name? I get that’s not his full name, but still…
Also, this does not seem like a happy marriage. Not least because no one seemed to know he had a wife and he was hiding her behind the bookcase. Not traditionally a good place to keep one’s spouse. Although I suppose it is more original than the attic. Professor Coram/Sergius beats Mr Rochester on that point, I suppose.
“I have said, gentlemen, that I am this man’s wife. He was fifty and I a foolish girl of twenty when we married. It was in a city of Russia, a University—I will not name the place.”
Thirty years is quite a big age gap… I feel like even at the time it would have been larger than average. Also, is she trying to hide things or could ACD just not be bothered to come up with a Russian sounding name?
“We were reformers—revolutionists—Nihilists, you understand. He and I and many more. Then there came a time of trouble, a police officer was killed, many were arrested, evidence was wanted, and in order to save his own life and to earn a great reward my husband betrayed his own wife and his companions.”
Firstly, I have now decided that this story is the sequel to Oscar Wilde’s play Vera; or The Nihilists. Also, he’s a Snitch. I knew I didn’t like him. We all know what snitches get…
“Among our comrades of the Order there was one who was the friend of my heart. He was noble, unselfish, loving—all that my husband was not. He hated violence. We were all guilty—if that is guilt—but he was not. He wrote for ever dissuading us from such a course. These letters would have saved him. So would my diary, in which from day to day I had entered both my feelings towards him and the view which each of us had taken.“
So, she was maybe kind of cheating on him? Honestly, they both seem a little terrible. although they might have just been good friends. It’s a little ambiguous.
Also, the name of the love interest in Vera; or The Nihilists is Alexis, so… like… Is this deliberate? Admittedly that’s not his real name… sort of… but still.
“I must finish,” she said. “When my term was over I set myself to get the diary and letters which, if sent to the Russian Government, would procure my friend’s release.”
But would they though? Would they? Maybe I’m cynical, but are they really going to let one guy go from the gulag just because you sent some letters purporting to be from him saying 'no, we have to be nice little nihilists and not kill people’? You’re placing a lot of trust in a government you literally were attempting to undermine and overthrow because you believed it was corrupt.
I’m just saying.
“With this object I engaged an agent from a private detective firm, who entered my husband’s house as secretary—it was your second secretary, Sergius, the one who left you so hurriedly. He found that papers were kept in the cupboard, and he got an impression of the key.”
So, I was right, one of the secretaries was involved!
Winning!
Also losing, but if you cut up all my theories and put them together you can sort of Frankenstein the right answer.
Still no explanation for the cigarettes, though.
She tore from the bosom of her dress a small packet.
I assume that this did not involve tearing her actual dress and she’s not just standing there, tits out, from here onwards. I have to assume that, although the wording is very dramatic, I feel like that would be mentioned.
“Too late!” she said, sinking back on the bed. “Too late! I took the poison before I left my hiding-place. My head swims! I am going! I charge you, sir, to remember the packet.”
…
Anna, what have you done?
I have saved Alexis.
(There may possibly be 1 person who understands this… if that’s you, hi! Thanks for existing.)
AND THEN, after she dramatically dies right in front of them from self-inflicted poisoning, there’s a hardcut to them chatting on the way home.
“When you asked me to believe that she walked along a narrow strip of grass without once making a false step I remarked, as you may remember, that it was a noteworthy performance.”
That does explain the grass, but not the cigarettes. Did you use the smoke to find the hidden room by looking where it blew?
“I therefore smoked a great number of those excellent cigarettes, and I dropped the ash all over the space in front of the suspected bookcase.”
I feel like you didn’t need quite that many cigarettes to do this. But also, dropping ash all over someone else’s carpet is really rude. I know the Professor’s a dick, but it’s not like he’s the one cleaning up after you. You just gave that poor housekeeper a horrible job and I bet she doesn’t have a vacuum cleaner, and even if she does it’s a manual one that requires pumping or something like that.
“…by upsetting the cigarette-box, I obtained a very excellent view of the floor…”
You definitely did not need to knock the cigarettes off the table to get a good look at the floor, Holmes. You have on several occasions in the past literally just fallen face first onto the floor to examine it without bothering to say a word. You knocked those cigarettes onto the floor because you wanted to.
“Well, Hopkins, here we are at Charing Cross, and I congratulate you on having brought your case to a successful conclusion.”
Not sure how successful it is to turn up with an extra body rather than a prisoner, but I guess the killer found justice??
Not exactly what I’d class as success. But ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess.
Good for you, Hopkins!
“I think, Watson, you and I will drive together to the Russian Embassy.”
And Alexis was freed from the gulag, Professor Coram/Sergius died from complications due to smoking and his work was never complete, and everyone else lived happily ever after. Apart from the dead people, who were still dead.
Never would have guessed betrayed Russian nihilist wife trying to free her lover from the salt mines. But really, in hindsight it’s so obvious 🤣
And the next one takes place in a famous university town. Is it Oxford or is it Cambridge, that’s the question.
