Hang on, haven’t we read this before?

With a plot that’s remarkably similar to last week, we have…

‘The Resident Patient’ (1893)

The Case

Showing much promise but possessing little capital, newly-qualified doctor Percy Trevelyan accepts an offer of funding from the elderly Mr. Blessington to set up a practice with his backer as a resident patient. Why, though, doe Mr. Blessington so fear the news of sneak thieves operating elsewhere? And what of the mysterious Russian gentleman and his Brobdingnagian son who visit Percy with a medical complaint and then disappear in mysterious circumstances? The plot, it acquires the thickness…

The Characters

Dr. Percy Trevelyan, M.D, doctor-at-large; easily fooled.

Mr. Blessington, financially fluid; grey of hair and morals.

Inspector Lanner, Scotland Yard; who?

The Timeline

“I cannot be sure of the exact date, for some of my memoranda upon the matter have been mislaid, but it must have been towards the end of the first year during which Holmes and I shared chambers in Baker Street”. So this puts us after A Study in Scarlet (1887) but before The Sign of Four (1890), right? Not that it really matters.

The Tropes

Two simple deductions — that the brougham waiting outside Baker Street is that of a general practitioner, and that Trevelyan hasn’t been waiting long for Holmes to return — but when even Watson follows your reasoning then, frankly, there’s not much effort going in.

Points of Interest

It really does feel like Doyle has checked out with this one. Holmes was clearly a distraction by this point, and the plot here — Something Nefarious in My Past Comes Back to Haunt Me — is basically ‘The Crooked Man’ (1893) and ‘The Gloria Scott‘ (1893) again…that’s three times in a single year! And Holmes-as-detective is practically absent from this, too, except to tell us how many people were present to carry out a transparent murder.

That said, even the detection is pretty weak. Holmes deduces it was the son of the mysterious Russian visitor who ascended to Mr. Blessington’s rooms due to the nature and size of the marks on the carpet, but what’s to stop Trevelyan putting on bigger shoes? Later events would appear to bear out the correctness of his observation, but it’s lazy reasoning at best at the time.

Lady Day is the common name for the Feast of the Annunciation, commemorating the visit of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, and so occurs on 25th March. I’d never heard of it. You’d think the Christian church would go on about it a bit more, eh?

It’s to be wondered whether this was the source of the name Stanley Ellin used in his Edgar Award-winning short story ‘The Blessington Method’ (1956). Ellin wasn’t a huge proponent of the Doyle style of writing or plotting, but given the influence and reach of the Holmes canon, it doesn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility to me.

I can find no reference to the sinking of a steamer called Norah Creina, so there’s no idea for quite how long Blessington’s killers got to enjoy their spoils. A Study in Scarlet takes place in 1881 and this story was published in 1893, so given that they’re dead when Watson writes it we can infer that they had a decade to spend their ill-gotten gains. I don’t know why I’m curious, I just am.

£7,000 in 1875 would have lost about 6% of its value by 1881 — I’d be furious, too, on that sort of return. Might as well invest in cryptocurrency (PLEASE NOTE: do not invest in cryptocurrency).