New Year's Eve

Chilly temperatures returned to Texas this week. What an end to the year!

I've finished listening to the final 3 stories of my BBC Radio dramas: VEIL, SHOS, and RETI. Although Wikipedia says they actually did HOUN and VALL afterward. These are just the final short stories. Book-wise, these are indeed the last published stories by ACD.

VEIL stars Harriet Walters as Eugenia Ronder, and she's an award-winning actor with a long career. I personally know her from the 1980s Lord Peter Wimsey TV shows with Edward Petherbridge. In the radio show, her husband's name is apparently Barrington Ronder, and Inspector Edmonds is dissatisfied with the coroner's verdict on his death. They set the Abbas Parva case to November 1888, seven years ago, so I guess the present time is 1895? Mrs. Merrilow asks Holmes and Watson to come see Mrs. Ronder, who has been having nightmares lately since Leonardo's death. The VEIL story was ok, but I hate how they linger on scenes depicting domestic violence and sexual abuse. Just because I can't see it doesn't mean I want to hear it. Why couldn't this have been summed up? But no, we have to hear endless scenes of Ronder sadistically hurting her, and Leonardo arguing with the clown Jimmy Griggs. Just ugh. Also weird is that Holmes is not as patient to listen to the whole confession as he should have been. He starts threatening to turn Eugenia in to the police once he realizes that she and Leonardo plotted to murder her husband. Then after she finishes telling how Leonardo was a coward, Holmes suddenly is all sympathy again with "poor girl" and willing not to tell anyone.

Anyway then we move on to SHOS, the late horseracing story. As Watson tells Holmes about Shoscombe Old Place, he explains that he had summer quarters there while he was a medical student. So where did he live when it wasn't summer vacation? Then John Mason the horse trainer arrives to tell about Sir Robert Norberton's strange behavior. Holmes and Watson come to the Green Dragon Inn and pretend to be fishermen to the chatty landlord Josiah Barnes. There's some attempt to fix the story by having Mason not take Holmes and Watson to the crypt; he doesn't want to get caught by Sir Robert, so he arranges a church official to take them while they pose as psychic people interested in the supposedly haunted crypt. Also, in the story, Lady Beatrice is impersonated by Carrie Evans's husband, who is an actor. No explanation is given for why she's been working under her maiden name, nor why it was implied that she was having an affair with Sir Robert. Are they a throuple? BBC Radio's version claims that Norlett is Carrie's brother, not her husband, and that they're just lying, like a reverse of what Stapleton did in HOUN. Carrie wants to be able to stay on with Sir Robert despite the death of Lady Beatrice. Norlett keeps protesting that he didn't commit any crimes, that it was all Sir Robert's plan, etc. Interesting, if minor change. Carrie successfully talks Holmes into not going to the police until after the Derby, though he goes in disguise and tests Sir Robert's honesty by making sure he doesn't cheat at the race. This is supposed to justifiy why Sir Robert gets off lightly and wins his race.

Then there's the final tale, RETI, where Holmes is in a black mood. For some reason Mycroft is in the story, having reluctantly hired his brother to solve a case; the two Coptic patriarchs case is apparently a political kidnapping that Sherlock has spent 3 weeks investigating. However, Mycroft already knew the solution; he just needed Sherlock to do the legwork of providing proof. Mycroft criticizes Sherlock's use of disguises, saying he should have grown out of this, and he hints that Sherlock's methods have now been adopted by the next generation of detectives. I don't know why this irritates Sherlock, but he asks accusingly, "Have long have you known?" and I don't know what he means exactly. The conversation is quite opaque and Mycroft claims he's giving Sherlock some brotherly advice, but I don't know what he means either. Then he wishes Sherlock good luck and goes; the scene is quite unclear. Then finally we get to Watson arriving and talking to Mrs. Hudson before going upstairs.

During Josiah Amberley's case, Holmes continues his bad mood and sends Watson to investigate, since he still has to finish his Coptic patriarchs case. When Watson reports to him afterward, they get into a fight; Holmes dismissively offers to have dinner and go to a Carina concert, but Watson declines and leaves. So Holmes realizes that he went too far, and he goes to see Lestrade; they discuss how Lestrade will retire in January, and mention that Gregson already retired. The next morning, Holmes comes to Watson's house to apologize and ask him back on the case; he got the necessary information from Lestrade instead. So they make up, but soon Holmes sends Watson off on the wild goose chase to keep Amberley occupied. The next day he finally introduces Watson to detective Rory Barker (no relation to Cecil Barker in VALL), and they expose Amberley as the murderer.

At Baker Street afterward, Holmes remarks that he was slow and clumsy in solving the case; he needs to make way for younger detectives like Barker. So Holmes decides to make an announcement to Mrs. Hudson and Watson. We don't hear the announcement, but it's implied that he finally has decided to retire to Sussex (even though this story is usually dated years before the 1903 retirement). Then even more bewilderingly, Watson comes to visit Holmes another time, expecting to see that he's packing boxes for the move, but no, something's happened. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asks, and Mrs. Hudson speaks a line from "Dying Detective" as if he's ill and she's worried. Watson rushes into the bedroom and is shocked, but we are not told what exactly he discovers. Is it an empty room and a farewell letter? Or something else? We hear Holmes speaking, but it's unclear if that's Watson remembering what Holmes said at his announcement, or if we're hearing words from a farewell letter.

It's really strange and haunting, and it sounds almost as if Watson has found Holmes dead instead, and that Coules is implying that Watson faked all the rest of the canon stories that happened after retirement. Is that just me imagining because of years of pastiches and Sherlockian theories? I looked for Bert Coules's contact information online and I tried to buy a script from him, hoping for clarity, but I've had no response. Am I crazy? Did anyone else think RETI ended grimly? If I'm right, what a crazy way to end the series, especially as Holmes told Eugenia Ronder not to kill herself, and he actively stopped Amberley from committing suicide to escape punishment. And what does this make of how Coules depicted Holmes being bitter about the world in LAST? Just utterly confounding.