sarahthecoat:

acdhw:

This is the second story written from Holmes’s POV, but unlike BLAN, it doesn’t feel like Holmes at all. While the narrative in BLAN is always strictly to the point of the case (except those 9 times when Holmes mentions Watson, saying how he misses him), LION features a lot of romantic descriptions of nature, florid similes, admiration of a pretty lady… doesn’t it remind you of someone? The very voice of Holmes is off and there are too many inconsistencies:

• Holmes yearned for Nature while living in the gloom of London? Oh please, Holmes didn’t care for it and loved the atmosphere of the metropolis. “…as to my companion, neither the country nor the sea presented the slightest attraction to him. He loved to lie in the very centre of five millions of people, with his filaments stretching out and running through them, responsive to every little rumor or suspicion of unsolved crime. Appreciation of Nature found no place among his many gifts, and his only change was when he turned his mind from the evil-doer of the town to track down his brother of the country.” (RESI)
• Holmes waxes poetic about the beauty and merits of a woman and compares her to a flower??
• Holmes reads everything indiscriminately and stores “out-of-the-way knowledge without scientific system” in his brain attic??? “A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.” (STUD) Seriously, it’s Watson who reads anything all the time, from yellow-backed novels to decent fiction to medical literature and etc. 

The relationship between McPherson and Murdoch is a curious parallel between Holmes and Victor Trevor. In both cases two men meet because the dog which belongs to one of them attacks the other. Murdoch resembles Holmes in many ways, being tall, thin, dark, and somewhat detached from reality, living in his own world. 

Murdoch says a rather interesting thing after McPherson’s death: “I have lost to-day the only person who made The Gables habitable.”

Maud Bellamy, when asked whether Murdoch was an admirer of hers, says: “There was a time when I thought he was.” It implies that later she discovered that she was mistaken. 

So there’s a picture which becomes quite clear: “for a year or more Murdoch has been as near to McPherson as he ever could be to anyone”, his feelings for McPherson being most likely unrequited. Then McPherson fell for Maud. And Murdoch, loving him selflessly, agreed to be a messenger between them.

Another interesting detail is that Murdoch is a math teacher and ACD makes him a prime suspect. As we remember, Moriarty was a mathematician too. It must have sprang from ACD’s distaste for math. “It is indeed, as you say, a very great consolation to know that I will never more need mathematics. Classics I like, and I shall always try to keep up my knowledge of them, but mathematics of every sort I detest and abhor.” (ACD in a letter to Dr Bryan Charles Waller, a family friend, September 9, 1876)

Holmes lives with “his old housekeeper” who is rather outgoing and knows every bit of gossip in the village. The very same housekeeper then takes care of an injured Murdoch, being obviously proficient in administering medical aid. And note that when Murdoch pleads for “oil, opium, morphia” to relieve his pain, there’s only oil in Holmes’s house. No opium or morphine, considering his past.

Taking into account all of the above, I’m pretty sure that it was Watson who wrote this story. From Holmes’s POV. But his obvious is showing. In BLAN Holmes tried very zealously to make an impression that Watson and he are estranged. In LION these two cunning gentlemen continue this charade, to protect their privacy, of course, as always. They live quietly together in retirement and have fun by still mystifying their readers.

I like it!