Exit, Stage Right

". . . so I think, Watson, that we had best escort Miss Hunter back to Winchester, as it seems to me that our locus standi now is rather a questionable one." -- COPP

"This, I fancy, is the time for our exit, Watson," said Holmes in a whisper. "If you will take one elbow of the too faithful Dolores, I will take the other. There now," he added as he closed the door behind him, "I think we may leave them to settle the rest among themselves." -- SUSS

Look at that. Two perfect examples of Holmes and Watson getting the girl at the end of their adventure. Sure, they only got one girl between them each time out of sixty adventures in the Canon (Mary Morstan of SIGN doesn't count, because Watson wasn't sharing that one) . But at least they did get the girl.

Talk about your storybook endings. If only they had ridden off into the sunset at least once, and preferably in a story in which they also got the girl. Ah, that would be bliss, wouldn't it?

One of the big problems with the endings of the Sherlock Holmes stories is that at the end of darn near every story, somebody has to talk for a long period of time. Sometimes it's Sherlock, explaining exactly how the crime was done and how he solved it. Sometimes it's the criminal, telling his whole ever-so-sad life story. No matter who it is, though, somebody talks . . . at length.

The length of these digressions is probably the reason that most of them (twenty-five, in fact) take place in 221B Baker Street. Holmes and Watson know they're going to have the end-of-the-case lengthy digression, so they make sure it happens in a place where they can toddle off to bed once they've started to nod off. And when they're not at Baker Street, they at least try to find a place to sit down.

It's for that reason that eleven more of the stories end with Holmes and Watson seated: four times in someone's house, three times on a train, once in an inn, once in a police station, once in a four-wheeler, and on just a bench under a tree. Nobody wants to stand up for the final explanation, or Exegesis/metamenusis as the German scholar Ratzegger was wont to call it. In a full thirty-six instances in the Holmes stories, the Exegesis/Metamenusis takes so much out of poor Watson that the story ends right there. The poor scribe has no energy left for a proper ending.

Out of the four and twenty that remain, exactly half end with the detective duo's departure. A grand (or even hasty) exit is, at least to me, something of an acceptable ending. In three of these cases, they head to the local inn. In the two we saw at the start of this column, they drag off the womenfolk. (These do not overlap with cases ending in a trip to the inn, either, so no wise cracks.) They leave for a concert, head off to catch a train, and drive away in their car. They're gone, the story's over. Fini. Caput.

Of the tales that remain, however, we get some of the best endings of the Canon. Watson standing alone at Reichenbach Falls. Holmes showing Watson a portrait in a shop window. Watson saving Mr. Melas's life. And my favorite ending of all, the happy ending. Holmes doesn't get the girl. He doesn't ride off into the sunset. He does, however, enjoy himself immensely.

"I am a poor man," said he, as he patted it affectionately, and thrust it deep into the depths of his inner pocket." -- PRIO

Holmes definitely never patted a female so affectionately at the end of a case. Neither did Watson, even when he married the female lead. So what was Holmes patting?

A check for six thousand pounds. Comparable to about three hundred thousand dollars in modern American currency, Holmes's patting his check was a very happy ending.

Who needs a sunset?

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, November 1991)