The Mystery of the Cambridge Bow
A Sherlock Holmes Adventure
Edited and arranged by Dr. A. I. Jackson
Editor’s Foreword
The original handwritten manuscript of The Mystery of the Cambridge Bow was found tucked away in an old tea-chest following a house clearance during the first Covid lockdown of 2020. Dr. Aaron Jackson, a specialist in British late-imperial history and culture and (more importantly) the Northern One of Broken Oars Podcast, was invited to study it. Close textual analysis has indicated that it was originally written between the late-1880's and early-1890’s. At the time of publication, research is ongoing to ascertain whether the manuscript represents original work by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an original story idea subsequently expanded by another author, or an early example of ‘fan-fiction’ by an admirer of the original stories.
However, finding them to be a hitherto unknown account of events leading up to the 1886 annual Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge, and feeling that they were of significance to historians as well as students of the original Sherlock Holmes canon, Dr. Jackson suggested that the manuscript be edited and published as it stood. Although still a massive commercial enterprise, it is perhaps difficult for modern readers to understand just how significant a cultural and sporting event The Boat Race was in Britain in the late-Victorian period. The nation would come to a standstill during it, and press coverage discussed little else for weeks on either side of it. The involvement of Holmes and Watson in the 1886 edition of one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious sporting events is, therefore, of considerable import.
The editor notes that he has no reason to doubt that this is a completely truthful account. Where historical events are touched upon they are invariably confirmed by the historical record, and he suggests that it is to be left to the reader to decide if the account is to be believed when it turns to more personal matters.
Dr. A. I. Jackson
Chapter One
One of the things I have always struggled with as the amanuensis (or perhaps more accurately biographer) of Sherlock Holmes, is not the difficulty posed by our friendship. This, of course, exists. Holmes, as I have stated elsewhere, is the best and wisest of men I have known, and the greatest friend I have had. If I have in some way helped and contributed to his work and standing, then it has been my honour, while remaining to his credit. Of course, friends have turned biographer before. Yet one thinks of Forster, penning his life of Dickens, perhaps, and sees that the danger in an existing relationship is that one is too close and despite all attempts to the contrary, the natural human instinct of fellowship can see one endeavouring to present the individual to their best advantage. In doing so one perhaps loses the distance and perspective necessary to see the subject in the round, and so present them, whole and human.
I suppose I feel that I do not struggle with this because I have little such skill with the pen; and also that my detailing of Holmes’s triumphs and occasional missteps has taken place as the events chronicled have unfolded. In this light, our virtues and failings both have, I hope, been disclosed as they occurred – and if failings there have been in Holmes’ case, I trust that they have only served for his virtues, many as they are, to shine brighter. With regards to accuracy, as a medical man, trained to assess the facts of a case before presenting a diagnosis, I can only assert any narrative I have hung about Holmes’ work has always been on the bones of a firm skeleton rather than any whimsical fancies of my own.
No, the difficulty as I see it is this. The cases that I have presented represent a fraction of the whole of my friend’s body of work. They have been selected at various times for various reasons. Occasionally, the demands of modesty and privacy have meant that some cases have not seen the light of day until such time as they would not cause distress or embarrassment to those involved. Others have lain in my archives unheralded for to publish them would touch on a still live issue of national or even international importance. Many that have been published have been in order to highlight a specific example of my friend’s singular brilliance; or illustrate a sequence of events beyond the run-of-the-mill; or even a quirk in our very legal system or way of life. Holmes’s work has taken in the highest and the lowest of our common humanity. Indeed, in this capacity, his canon perhaps represents a cross-section of our society that may be of some worth when it comes to reckoning our age and all of its graces and foibles at some later date. As with love, crime touches all.
However, having been presented to the reading public, and generally enjoyed, I feel, I know for a fact that my friend’s work has generated controversy and interest. Many have presented chronologies of his cases and assessed his professional trajectory and habits, despite the established canon only representing a fraction of his exploits. Claims regarding chronology and accuracy have been made. The comments and opinions of others are theirs to offer, of course. I might say that all is as accurate as can be made in a busy and hectic life, much of it lived beyond the pen – as should the case with all writers. If you do not live, you have little to write about. As for the contrary elements that might accrue over time; I would say that all human lives are studies in contradiction; and in my experience, that is because all of us are, intrinsically, little clouds of contradictions. What is true of us at one time, is not necessarily true of us at others. Thus where an assertion or conclusion is offered at one time in ink, it might well be contradicted or disproved at another by the same pen without lessening the humanity of those involved.
In this context, when reviewing notes of some previous cases, I was, however, struck to find that there were very few examples of my friend expressing his talent for deduction in the field of sports and recreation. There was, of course, the celebrated case of the Missing Wing Three Quarter, which Holmes solved with the help of liquid aniseed and a well-trained beagle hound. And there was the striking mystery of Silver Blaze, who went on to win the Derby after Holmes’s intervention. But very little else.
This struck me as odd as games and sport are in many ways the defining obsession of our gilded Victorian age. Thousands if not tens of thousands from all walks of life flock to watch and play cricket and rugby and Association Football; horse-racing continues to attract the attentions of high and low; the prize ring is no longer the preserve of pugs and gentlemen, with boys learning to box in most schools – and there is no finer exercise for the temper or the muscles of the legs and back. And that is before we reach other worthy games such as tennis, croquet, squash, rounders and those that have continued with us through the ages like archery, shooting, athletics and the quirks of the sporting wager contests where a man might swim from Hammersmith to Waterloo against a Newfoundland dog for £50 and both drown. All of these are carried by newspapers; some play; and all are interested.
Except for my friend. Holmes, as I have said elsewhere, is indeed a fine boxer and a more than capable fencer and single stick man; and is capable, when consumed by the case in front of him, of more muscular exertion and endurance than perhaps any other man I have ever met of his height and weight. I have heard him speak, moreover, of the nobility of the amateur sporting tradition. But sport in and of itself is not for him. He has shown little interest in attending a cricket match when I have invited him, for example, or in taking in a contest at Blackheath, my old rugby ground. He would rather attend the Opera, or a recital.
To address this disparity and somewhat redress the balance, I offer you a case that I do not think is unfair to say not only piqued Holmes’ interest, touching as it did on the subject of murder, but also helped preserve one of our country’s noblest institutions: the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. I am, of course, referring to the Mystery of the Cambridge Bow.
Chapter Two
It began in the second week of March in the year 1886. Our friendship and working relationship was some five years deep at that point, and Holmes and I had slipped if not into routine – for while crime can become mundane it is always shocking – then certainly into the pattern that extended living and working together brings to all. It had been a dark, hard winter. We had suffered a decade or more of them in the Britain at the time, with the weather being often unusually cold and yet unusually sunny between November and February. This had seen the Serpentine, among others, freezing over, and crowds of up to 50,000 had attended skating festivals, enjoying the fun. We had seen little of this. It had seen like an endless procession of long, cold nights, short bleak days, each revealing a new window into the depravity the human animal is capable of wreaking on its fellows. Case had followed case. Murder and worse. Common burglaries. Forgeries and Frauds. Attempted kidnappings and shanghaiings. We had followed scents from Belgravia to the rookeries of St. Giles and back, and by the time February began to slip into March we were sick of it.
‘I tell you, Watson,’ began Holmes one morning, throwing his paper down as breakfast was served. ‘The common theory is that crime goes up as the temperature rises. As the blood heats, so too does the temper, and with that come the flashpoints that are the hallmark of the vast majority of crimes, certainly violent ones. However, I feel that when darkness draws a veil over all, as it has done this long and dreary winter, and outdoors is uninviting, the pressure of living without the release of fresh and air and sunlight is just a volatile a mix. I don’t think I’ve known a winter like it. I rarely ask for or want a break from work, which is just as well, as crime never sleeps. But I can’t help thinking that now we are in March, with the weather turning to spring perhaps the tide in this will also turn.’
‘One can only hope so,’ I replied. ‘It has been a hard winter.’
‘Perhaps the hardest of all,’ replied Holmes sombrely, reaching for his pipe. ‘Do you ever look at our work, Watson, and feel that no matter how hard one works there will always be crime – which means our work will never be done?’
I glanced keenly at my companion. When working Holmes was prone to focusing on nothing else but the case in hand, often to the detriment of his own mental and physical health. But that was nothing compared to the lassitude and torpor that would overtake him when the flood of cases dried to a trickle and there was little to occupy his prodigious capacities. Then, I knew, the danger lay in his desire to find other methods of stimulation – and although I had tried to wean him from the cocaine bottle and the morphine solution at these times, I knew they retained a powerful attraction for him when the drug of work was unavailable.
‘It’s a perennial of human nature,’ I said. ‘To err is human, to forgive divine. We cannot forgive, for we are not divine. But the errors and mistakes that humanity makes we can in our own small way attend to.’
‘You have hit on the nub of it, my dear Watson. I was, I am afraid, imprecise in my language for once. I mean that it has been a while since we have seen anything new. Yes, we have seen crime, crime in all its colours but there has been nothing to excite my imagination or truly test my skill for all that we have been busy.’
‘There was the Case of the Wapping Wharf Steps,’ I ventured.
‘Simple enough for any man who knew the times of the tide on the days leading up to and through the Winter Solstice. Even Lestrade could have worked it out.’
‘Lestrade didn’t. You did,’ I reminded him. ‘And there was the Case of the Driverless Hackney.’
‘Obvious enough if one knows something of the layout of Deptford.’
Holmes prowled our apartment, jetting smoke impatiently from his pipe before declaring: ‘I want something that tests me, Watson. Something that tells me something about the human condition beyond that it is deplorable and only occasionally redeemed.’
As he spoke, I caught sight through our windows of a telegram boy making his way across Baker Street, heading unerringly for our door.
‘Well,’ I said, drawing his attention to it. ‘I cannot guarantee it, but there may be something arriving that will fulfil your wishes. If it does not, I suggest a brisk turn around London. Fresh air and exercise are what I recommend for winter blues.’
It was indeed a telegram for Holmes. From Lestrade, it was terse and to the point.
