And so we come to the end.

Prepare for the first last bow in the canon, it’s…

‘The Final Problem’ (1893)

The Case

Sherlock Holmes has been busy in Europe, and appears suddenly in Watson’s chambers one day with a story of a criminal genius whose empire is far-reaching and whose very existence Holmes now threatens. If only he can live long enough to bring the man and his kingdom down…

The Characters

Professor Moriarty, Napoleon of crime; you haven’t heard of him.

The Timeline

Holmes enters Watson’s quarters on 24th April 1891, and the finale occurs 10 days later on 4th May. One of the rare times we actually have a certain date for events, as if Doyle was eager to underline the certainty of these events.

The Tropes

“Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the royal family of Scandinavia, and to the French republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches”. We’ll never learn what those cases may have been, but this reference is all we get of the usual hints and trappings — we’re in new territory here, and meant to feel it.

Points of Interest

Good lord, Doyle may have been keen to see the back of Holmes, but he wasn’t going to write this cheaply and quickly. The prose here is magnificent at times, to wit:

The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges into a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house. The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip. The long sweep of green water roaring forever down, and the thick flickering curtain of spray hissing forever upward, turn a man giddy with their constant whirl and clamour.

That said, if you’re “the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe” and only one man threatens the foundations of the multinational confederation you’ve meticulously established over the preceding decades, surely you can do better than send a cab to run him over, have someone throw a brick at him, and then employ a ruffian with a cosh in an attempt to kill him. Crikey, I could do better than that.

Good to see Mycroft out and about again, though his presence here is somewhat lessened, I can’t help but feel, by his pointless involvement in ‘The Greek Interpreter’ (1893). But, well, it does at least give the impression that Doyle was, after a fashion, planning for this end.

“Of late I have been tempted to look into the problems furnished by nature rather than those more superficial ones for which our artificial state of society is responsible,” we’re told, too, which might make sense of that moment of abstraction in ‘The Naval Treaty’ (1893) where her examines the rose growing by the window:

It was a new phase of his character to me, for I had never before seen him show any keen interest in natural objects.

Maybe I’m reaching, though. We’ll never know.

Interesting to note that Holmes is afraid of “air-guns” here, and that is the very device that will be employed — to much bafflement — in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903), Holmes’s return. I’ll rereread that in due course, naturally, but I find it curious, knowing the future as I do.

All told, this isn’t a bad ending. Watson’s heartsickness comes through beautifully, and it makes sense he would want to pass over elements of this. A shame our detective doesn’t do more detecting in his swan song, but you can’t have everything. Doyle could have ended it here and been rightly satisfied with his work…even though I get the feeling that Holmes is only remembered as fondly as he is on account of the writing about him which Doyle did after this. But that’s for the future.