Wisteria Lodge: The Tiger of San Pedro

This is the second and final installment of the story about the Wisteria Lodge.

We last left John and Sherlock as they were going to go checkout Wisteria Lodge. Well John and Sherlock end up at Wisteria Lodge. Inside it seems pretty normal, actually, it doesn’t seem normal. It appears as if the tenants had simply used the house like a hotel room. There weren’t any personal belongings for the most part. The house was mostly bereft of anything.

When the gang had first arrived the police officer stationed at the house blurted out that something terrible had been in the window. It had a strange face. It was a strange color. Indeed someone had been at the window, a rather big someone. There is suspicion that it was Garcia’s cook. They looked around and found a dead rooster in the kitchen. There were burnt animal bones in the fireplace. There was also a dried-out thing in the house that is assumed to be a fetish.

After examining the house, Sherlock seems to do nothing. John and Sherlock stay in the town for about a week. One night it is made known that the cook of Garcia has been arrested. Sherlock tells the local detective that he thinks he has the wrong man and the detective just chuckles to himself.

Sherlock finally tells John what he’s been doing.

Sherlock: John, I’ve been peeping through windows. There is this woman in the house over that way that has…great tracks of land.

Ok, he didn’t actually say that, but what he said was close enough. He tells John he’s been examining all the houses in the area and gaining confederates among ex-employees. There is one house in particular belonging to a Mr. Henderson which fits the bill. Henderson seems to be a man no one ever sees. He is eccentrically rich. He employs a governess for his two daughters. Sherlock reasons that the governess is the woman who wrote the note to Garcia.

From his confederate he has learned some strange things about Henderson. They watch the house, but the local detective is also watching the house. They catch a cab that is about to spirit the governess away, but they catch her before she is taken away. She has been drugged. They let her recover and she tells her story.

The man in the house is not actually named Henderson, he’s named Murillo and he used to be a tyrant over San Pedro. The governess is actually the widow of one of the men Murillo had killed. Garcia was also a family member of someone who had been ill-done by Murillo. The governess and Garcia were both part of a plot to kill Murillo. She sent the note denoting which room he was in for the night, because Murillo switched rooms often, but she was caught in the act and forced to send the note. When the appointed time came, Garcia was murdered.

The governess was imprisoned and finally drugged. When people can finally get to the house, Murillo has fled, but some months later a man fitting his description has been found dead. Sherlock assumes that justice has been found.

Observations

San Pedro is a city. It’s not a country. I was wondering if what Arthur says of San Pedro in this story had any bearing on reality. I could totally have the wrong San Pedro, but the San Pedro I’m going with is on the largest inhabited island of Belize, Belize being a country in Central America. The area was once ruled over by ruffians and it’s a possibility that there could have been a guy like Murillo there. Belize was under Spanish control for a while, but it was also under British control for a while. Both of those facts do give it a place in this story. Perhaps Murillo was an agent of the British empire and he wasn’t very nice, or perhaps he was Spanish and England offered him sanctuary. I really don’t know. It’s just a story. Arthur made it up. There really isn’t a Murillo.

The situation is not that far-fetched. There have been dictators whom people have been unhappy with. Those people then plotted to assassinate said dictators. That’s life. Why wouldn’t the governess be in on the whole thing? Since I read In the Time of  the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, which is all about the Mirabel sisters, this story doesn’t seem that out of line. I can see something like this happening.

It turns out Arthur was using the term half-breed to describe a person who was a mulatto, although, I don’t think using the term mulatto is that PC by today’s standards.

These past couple of stories or so have used the word “grange.” I finally decided to look up what in the heck that meant. It means a country house with outbuildings attached. It’s a farm-house, but your tool shed is on the side of the house essentially. When this story says an outhouse is below the governess’s window, it doesn’t mean they put the toilet there, it means that’s where they keep the hay or something.

What in the heck happened to this guy’s kids?

If you’re Spanish, is it really so easy to pass yourself off as a British person?

Themes

Does everything have to be some government plot? It seems to be that Arthur has gotten a little political in his later stories of Sherlock Holmes. The dude got away for crying out loud. He got away. Sherlock and John did a whole lot of nothing, besides preventing the drugged governess from being put on a train against her will. I’m glad she’s ok, but come on!

Look here, if you’re a dictator, Hitler, Trujillo, Hussein, and so forth, somebody will kill you, if you don’t kill yourself first or die of some nasty disease. You can’t be a dictator and survive. Your reign may last for a while, but somebody is going to kill the heck out of you. Out of all the nasty dictators we’ve had in the history of the world, how many of them have not had the crap killed out of them? A lot of them have been assassinated. Why do dictators think they can get away with being dictators? People rebel. People don’t want to be treated like junk. If you’re the person treating them like junk, you better live in a box made of bullet proof glass and have a car that can withstand gunfire for eight hours, it exists.

Your closest confederates could be the people plotting to kill you. There are really no lengths wronged people won’t go to in order to get rid of a dictator. This guy thought he could hide. He thought he could pretend to be a different nationality. He thought he could live in a country house out in England and be safe. Yeah, well he thought wrong. He only narrowly escaped and then someone did eventually get him.

It blows my mind that people think they can treat an entire people like dirt and get away with it. You’re going to pay for it, maybe not right now, but it’s going to happen.

It’s almost stupidity of the highest degree. A dictator comes to power and he thinks, “I can treat all these people like crap for years and I’ll be fine. I’m better that Hitler. I’m better that Hussein. I’m better that Trujillo. Nobody will kill me.” Yeah, ok, dude, you’re not any different. If you’re a jerk and you’re a jerk to an entire people, you’re probably not going to escape death like you think you are. Go ahead and make your arrangements. Pick out that casket you want. The clock’s ticking.

Overall

I feel bad for Murillo’s children. they’re just little girls, but chances are whoever took out Murillo might have also taken out his kids. Children of dictators have been known to be collateral damage.



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Wisteria Lodge-The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles

For reasons that are tags and SEO ratings I had to shorten the title of this post. The full title would actually be The Adventure of the Wisteria Lodge: The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles. This story is a multi-part story and this is the first part, of course, otherwise I wouldn’t mention it. We have actually moved out of the previous collection of Sherlock short stories and into another collection. This collection is called The Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes.

This story takes place in 1892, according to John. Sherlock is asking John what his definition of grotesque is. Sherlock thinks his definition is stupid, but only asked because he got a telegram from John Eccles saying he has had a grotesque experience. Did he fall into a pit of worms? I don’t know, let’s find out.

They’re both called John, this is going to be a problem, let’s call him Eccles. So, Eccles shows up, conveniently after Sherlock has read his telegram. Eccles proceeds to tell John and Sherlock that he has had the strangest night of his life. Sherlock tells him he better start at the beginning, otherwise it’s going to be wrong all the way through. Before he can get started Gregson and another guy show up. They want to question Eccles about the death of a man named Aloysius Garcia.

Eccles is surprised to find that the man is dead. Sherlock prompts him to tell his story.

Eccles knows some people who know some people and was invited to a dinner. There he met a bachelor named Garcia. He worked for the embassy in some manner or another as he was from Spain, or something. He invited Eccles up to his house for a weekend.

He talked to Eccles for some time, keeping him somewhat late into the night. Eccles eventually went to bed, but Garcia popped in to ask if he rang. He said it was near one o’clock in the morning. Eccles said he had not rang and went back to bed. There weren’t many people in the house besides Garcia and Eccles. There was a cook and a servant and that was it. Garcia lived a rather sparse life.

Eccles woke up in the morning and there was no hot water. He angrily rang the bell but no one ever showed up. He walked through the house hoping to find one of the servants, but no one was to be found. He went to Garcia’s room and nobody was there. It looked as if his bed hadn’t been slept in at all.

He thought that maybe he was the butt of some sort of elaborate practical joke. He thought maybe Garcia was trying to get out of paying rent since quarter-day was coming up, but he asked the rental office and nothing.

Gregon has information on the case. Garcia was found dead in a field. He had died of repeated savage blows, BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA! hahahaha, oh, Arthur! The only reason Eccles is implicated at all is because the letter found in Garcia’s pocket was a letter Eccles had written to Garcia confirming his visit.

The only peculiar thing about the evening before is that Eccles received a note and wadded it up and threw it into the fire. The detectives were able to recover it, mostly.

“Our own colours, green and white. Green open, white shut. Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize. Godspeed. D.”

And that’s all the note said. Sherlock deduces that it was written by a lady, possibly a Dolores. Maybe Garcia was having an affair with a woman and the colors were their secret signals. He sends off a telegram asking for all the big houses in the area, because it seems that the note indicates a very large house. Sherlock also thinks that inviting Eccles up would serve as something of an alibi. Maybe it really wasn’t one o’clock when Garcia stepped in. At this point there is nothing for anyone to do, but go to the scene of the crime.

Observations

Shhh..! Everybody be quiet. You’re going to wake him up! We can’t do this, if he wakes up. He’s got to wake up and find no one in the house. He has to be alone. Ok?! Let’s do this.

Honestly, I actually think that would be a pretty good prank. Just leave the house and leave the person there alone. Dude, you should have seen your face! Ashton, come on man, why haven’t you done something like this.

Oxshott and Esher are both real places. Wisteria Lodge is described as being between the two areas. They’re not very far apart, so the area isn’t that big, but there doesn’t seem to be much between the two areas, so Wisteria Lodge was not in any one town. It was in between, there was no quick response if something were to happen.

Garcia was found on Oxshott common, which is a stated one mile from his estate. Did he walk? Did he run? Was he drawn in a chariot pulled by chickens? We just don’t know, but what we do know is that Oxshott wasn’t too terribly far away and Garcia probably went there to buy eggs and milk and stuff.

Arthur uses the term half-breed in this story to describe the cook. First off, I’m wondering if he means half-bred in the American sense. Nobody really goes around a calling anyone a half-breed these days, it’s rather rude, but if you did happen to hear the term in the states, it would most likely refer to a person who had a white parent and a Native American parent. Arthur could be referring to a person of Native American lineage in this story, but I’m guessing he probably means this cook is half of some other race with darker skin, not necessarily Native American. I seriously doubt Arthur would use the term half-breed to apply to someone who was half-white and half-Spanish. England had been dealing with Spain for many years, and although I don’t know everything, I don’t believe that English people regularly went around looking down on Spanish people. I think it was more of a “Hey they’re from another country,” deal, not a, “hey, they have darker skin” type of deal.

The word tumbledown is used to describe Garcia’s house in this story. Well, since I’m American I don’t use the word tumbledown very often. I figured it probably wasn’t a compliment, but I didn’t know for sure. If you say someone’s house is tumbledown, you’re basically saying that their house needs to be on an episode of This Old House and a lot of repair work needs to done, like they need to get to Home Depot, stat!

I’ll use it in a sentence.

My mom’s house is tumbledown.

It’s true. I’m not being mean. It’s totally and completely true. My mom’s house is tumbledown. There’s no central heat and there’s only one bathroom.

Themes

It’s kind of mean, but if you’re one of those people who don’t quickly make friends and then all of a sudden someone wants to be your friend and it seems in other aspects your friendship would not form, then maybe they’re using you for something. It’s like when Carrie got asked to the prom, it was a joke. It was a cruel joke. Nobody actually wanted to go to the prom with Carrie. It’s not that Carrie wasn’t neat, I mean, who doesn’t want to have pyrokinesis, but she wasn’t popular. She was shy. She had a very hard time talking to anyone. She was raised in a very strange position.

While I don’t think that Eccles was a total social outcast, he did know that other guy, I don’t think he was the life of the party. He wasn’t the guy that everyone invited over because he was great at Balderdash and could do awesome impressions of celebrities. He strikes me as the kind of person who has a few friends, but not many.

Garcia clearly had ulterior motives when inviting Eccles over. We don’t know what those are yet, but we’ll find out. Garcia and Eccles wouldn’t have hung out normally. Garcia would walk by Eccles in his Rayban sunglasses with a woman on each arm while Eccles sat over in the corner doing crossword puzzles with the neighbor’s half-blind niece. They sound as if they operate in two different social circles. While friendships between people of different social circles isn’t impossible or unheard of, it’s just not likely.

Does Martha Stuart hang out with Kanye West? No, she doesn’t. Could she? Yeah, probably. The two of them could probably hang out, but would it be likely? Nope. I just can’t see Kanye West baking in the kitchen with Martha all afternoon, special brownies maybe.

If you’re an Eccles of society, if you’re the person who sat in the corner quietly, if you’re the kid who got bullied in school–first off: congratulations on making it this far; you showed those jerks; second off: if you’re still kind of that personality, you have to be suspicious. I really, really hate to say that, but you do. You have to be on your guard. You’re smart enough to know that the popular girls don’t want you to sit at their table. If the popular girls suddenly invite you to their table, it’s probably not because they’ve had a change of heart. They have another motive. Yeah, they’re jerks, but you don’t have to let their jerkness happen to you. You can learn to recognize when they’re going to exercise their powers of the jerkdom and just not take it.

It’s sad that I say all of this, but it’s true. A person has to learn to guard themselves if they’re the type of person people pick on. You have to learn how to discern who is a bully and who is genuinely a good person. You have to learn how to be more assertive in your life as well. You eventually learn how not to take things from other people, but it can take a heck of a long time to do so. If you don’t do this, you’re going to end up like Eccles. Somebody is going to use you as an excuse, as an alibi, or as a scapegoat.

Notice the first thing that Eccles thinks is that someone is playing a practical joke on him. Well, that’s because people have played jokes on him before.

Overall

I still think this would be an awesome prank. I’m bad. I’m terrible. It would awful to do this to a person.



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