A SHERLOCKIAN ADVENTURE IN SERENDIPITY (Page Two)
It all began when I realized that this cruise would take us to a place Selma and I had never before visited, the island of Bermuda. Naturally, even before thinking of packing, I grabbed my copy of Jack Tracy’s Encyclopedia Sherlockiano and sought the name, Bermuda. What Sherlockian references have there been to this Caribbean locale? Tracy reported just one such reference. As some of you doubtless know, this reference is to the Bermuda dockyard, where, in BOSC, James McCarthy’s barmaid-wife revealed that her previous husband was working. Tracy says that this name, “Bermuda Dockyard,” may refer to the fictionalized name of a dockyard around Bristol, named for the area of the world to which ships from Bristol sailed. Or, he goes on to say, it may refer to an actual dockyard located upon Bermuda Island in the West Indies, across the harbor from the city of Hamilton. Of course, this bit of information provided the impetus for me to reread BOSC, an impetus which needed little
	encouragement to be carried out. A little research on the story involved a number of other volumes being moved from shelf to desk, notably Michael and Mollie Hardwick’s The Sherlock Holmes Companion, and Martin Dakin’s A Sherlock Holmes Commentary. My readings disclosed the interesting fact that this story is the only one that includes the word “mystery” in its title, despite the fact that it is used so often in Victorian fiction (as in The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens, Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, and even one book by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mystery of Cloomber.) Moreover, I learned that the Bermuda Dockyard was actually on Ireland Island in the Bermudas rather than on the main island itself.

While rereading the story, a faint buzz tickled the back of my mind at several points, a feeling of deja vu, as if I had read these passages, or at least similar passages, before. This caused me to rise from my desk and examine the collection of books I have put together over the years, a collection that fills two walls of bookshelves in my study. Many of the volumes are Sherlockian, of course, but the bulk of my collection concerns a major interest of mine, the history and development of the detective story. Somewhere, in one of those volumes, I had read paragraphs, come across ideas, which appear in BOSC. My eyes scanned my books and then I caught it. Of course. It was Monsieur Lecoq, the detective created by Emile Gaboriau in the mid-1860s in such books as The Widow Lerouge, Monsieur Lecoq, and File 110. I removed Monsieur Lecoq from its place on the shelf and rifled through the pages until I found what I was looking for. Let us compare: In BOSC: the Master approaches the murder scene on the shores of Boscombe Pool. Then the text reads, “Sherlock Holmes was transformed... his face flushed and darkened... his brows were drawn into two hard, black lines… he drew out a lens and lay down... to have a better view... what have we here? … tip-toes, tip-toes! … Holmes... lay down once more upon his face with a little cry of satisfaction.”
	Now to Lecoq: Lecoq exits the door of the murder house which opened into a little garden. Then the text reads, “...the snow had not melted and upon its white surface numerous footprints lay, like dark stains. Without hesitation, Lecoq threw himself upon his knees in the snow, in order to examine them; he rose almost immediately... ‘These indentations were not made by the feet of men,’ said he. ‘There have been women here.” Once more I flipped the pages. Ah, yes. Another example. I turned to Boscombe. Here’s Holmes, saying, “It is entirely a question of
barometric pressure.” To which Lestrade looked startled. “I do not quite follow,” he said. And Holmes explains, “How is the glass? Twenty-nine, I see. No wind, and not a cloud in the sky.” Holmes is concerned with the weather. Should it change, the footprints at the murder scene would be obliterated before he could examine them.
Now to Monsieur Lecoq once again, whose mood changed as he became aware that misfortune threatened his investigation. He, too, is concerned with footprints. We read, “A very great misfortune. Do you not perceive that the weather has undesirably changed... the wind is now coming from the south. the fog has disappeared... it will rain in less than an hour... twenty minutes of merely gentle rain, and our time and labor will be lost... if it rains, farewell to our proofs.” There is little doubt that Emile Gaboriau’s writing was a major source of the inspiration for the methods of Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes it seems that Lecoq exploits were copied so faithfully that Holmes’ stories appear to be quoting from them directly.