Happy Puzzling Sherlock Saturday: My latest read The House of Silk

Happy Puzzling Saturday

It’s  Happy Puzzling Saturday. How can that be? Never heard of such a thing. Has Marje, aka, Kyrosmagica, gone bonkers? No, she’s just in a playful, poetic, puzzling, Saturday kind of mood.

I think my reading The House of Silk, has done it, Watson, I’ve gone all Sherlock Holmes like. My detective cap’s on, but don’t worry I haven’t started smoking a pipe, or ended up in an opium den.

Have you read The House of Silk? What did you make of it? Are you a Sherlock Holmes fan?

Can you guess where I’m at in the novel?  Have a go, see if you can  puzzle out the answer. Have I finished, or am I half way through, have I arrived at a particularly exciting juncture? Do feel free to leave comments below.

Let’s find the key to a fantastic time this weekend! My detective work tells me that you will not be puzzled by any perplexities or stumped by any unfathomable doubts that you can’t solve during your weekend break! As ever enjoy, stay out of the cold weather, keep warm, drink hot chocolate, and don’t think too hard. Confound it! Sherlock, I mean it!

I’m leaving you with these pearls of Sherlock wisdom:

Top Ten Sherlock Holmes Quotes:

#1:  “Excellent! I cried. “Elementary,” said he.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893)
Watson and Holmes in “The Crooked Man” (Doubleday p. 412)

#2: “It seemed to me that a careful examination of the room and the lawn might possibly reveal some traces of this mysterious individual. You know my methods, Watson. There was not one of them which I did not apply to the inquiry. And it ended by my discovering traces, but very different ones from those which I had expected.”

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893)
Sherlock Holmes in “The Crooked Man” (Doubleday p. 416)

#3. “You will not apply my precept,” he said, shaking his head. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? We know that he did not come through the door, the window, or the chimney. We also know that he could not have been concealed in the room, as there is no concealment possible. When, then, did he come?”

The Sign of the Four, ch. 6 (1890)
Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four (Doubleday p. 111)

#4. “Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”
“They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.“

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
Sherlock Holmes in “The Copper Beeches” (Doubleday p. 323)

#5. I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air—or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought.

A Study in Scarlet, ch. 1 (1887)
Dr. Watson in A Study in Scarlet (Doubleday p. 15)

#6. To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen…. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892)
Dr. Watson in “A Scandal in Bohemia” (Doubleday p. 161)

#7.  At this moment there was a loud ring at the bell, and I could hear Mrs. Hudson, our landlady, raising her voice in a wail of expostulation and dismay.
“By heavens, Holmes,” I said, half rising, “I believe that they are really after us.”
“No, it’s not quite so bad as that. It is the unofficial force—the Baker Street irregulars.“

The Sign of the Four, ch. 8 (1890)
Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four (Doubleday p. 126)

#8.  She looked back at us from the door, and I had a last impression of that beautiful haunted face, the startled eyes, and the drawn mouth. Then she was gone.
“Now, Watson, the fair sex is your department,” said Holmes, with a smile, when the dwindling frou-frou of skirts had ended in the slam of the front door. “What was the fair lady’s game? What did she really want?”

 The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905)
Sherlock Holmes in “The Second Stain” (Doubleday p. 657)

#9. Colonel Ross still wore an expression which showed the poor opinion which he had formed of my companion’s ability, but I saw by the inspector’s face that his attention had been keenly aroused.
“You consider that to be important?” he [Inspector Gregory] asked.
“Exceedingly so.”
“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
     “The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
     “That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893)
Inspector Gregory and Sherlock Holmes in “Silver Blaze” (Doubleday p. 346-7)

#10. “But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did—some little distance off, but fresh and clear.”
“Footprints?”
“Footprints.”
“A man’s or a woman’s?”
Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered:
“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!“

The Hound of the Baskervilles, ch. 2 (1902)
Dr. Mortimer in The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doubleday p. 679)

More details of these quotes can be found in full at the following link:

Link: http://www.bestofsherlock.com/top-10-sherlock-quotes.htm#elementary