Parlor Pink Private Detective Sherlock Holmes’ “Murder By Decree” Screed-Once Again-With The Teen Queens 1950s Song Hit “Eddie, My Love” In Mind     

By Will Bradley

I have developed something a reputation around this publication (and others like Truth ) for busting up, busting up soundly all kinds of overblown if not false historical reputations what would now be called nothing but alternative fact press agent gibberish. I had originally been called to the task by the reaction of one fellow writer here the venerable Seth Garth, well-known for years as the king of all things detective who was offended that I would blow smoke number one pass the curled head, padlock hat and hashish-piped Sherlock Holmes who worked the docks (more later on this) so-called sleuthing against nefarious bad guys and as we shall see in this muck those who would foul up the works against Queen and Empire.  And other off-the-wall bullshit presumably done while high as a kite on his “dear friend” Doc Watson (once again for those wo don’t remember not the late Doc of mountain music fame) while some journalist-flak named Coyne, Coll, or whatever name he used depending on the publication addressed touting his small palaver work as, get this, an amateur parlor pink detective around the time of Queen Victoria.

I had enough sense gained from speaking to fellow writer and friend of Seth’s, Sam Lowell the famed film noir critic that I had better not go right after this old blowhard on the Holmes stuff right off but work my way up the food chain busting past overblown reputations to see what he would say, if anything once I pulled the hammer down on the Holmes-Watson operation and their quite unusual relationship which shocked the landlady at their digs on Baker Street to a heart-attack when she opened the door to find both men naked, so-called modelling themselves doing their “arts” But more on that later when I review the storyline of this film Murder by Decree and put a final put paid to that stinking moribund reputation.  

As acute readers well know, for my rookie effort (which drew some praise from the usually no praise editor), I blew the legend of one Robin Hood, you may not remember the name now since I did my “hatchet job”, that way back when who somehow had such good press agent, a guy named Nottingham I believe, that he went centuries looking like some friend of the poor and downtrodden. Of course, that was when he was sleeping under the stars eating tree bark. Once his boy Ricard the Lion-Hearted hit English shores and gave him some acreage he, under the name Robin Lockhart, became the worse rack-renter in England , had a few guys, guys who swore to follow him to the ends of the earth for a little medieval justice named John Little and Friar Tuck put on the thumbscrews just because they whined about the high taxes. With money and powerful friends on and around the throne he did awful sexually lustful things to the king’s underage female ward, Mary. I chopped this bum of the month down in about a week like so much Sherwood Forest forage. Now at the sound of his name women and children seek refuse from the cold in the arms of strong men or go screaming in the night. Easy work.

Of course, on the Lockhart case I had plenty of archival and manorial material to work with, including his payments for services rendered to that Nottingham press flak to prove that this bastard was from nowhere, was all hot air stuff. Later guys and gals were tougher strangely since the fine arts of press coverage vastly improved with the invention and workings of the printing press that would take anything you could ink on it. Despite that I gave Queen Elizabeth I a bloody nose over that nonsense about her being a virgin after reading some stuff from the Bodleian Library from her main lady-in-waiting who kept a diary and kept the back door to milady’s boudoir ready at all times for half of the in-house court to discretely come by, and not always men either.    

Lesser guys, guys with names surrounded by romance like Don Juan and Casanova proved to be much harder especially in the case of the former who may very well have been nothing but the wild unmet longings of some well-bred Spanish girls imprisoned by their families in convents. Casanova we know more about since he left plenty of love letters, diary entries and “broken hearts” except, and I granted him a few exploits for a short period when he was around Venice before they threw him in that silly so-called prison, most of the press stuff was written by his patron, one of the later generation of the Borgias who were trying to break out of their own  reputation for evil profligration.             

         

Before the Holmes bust up (and Watson let’s not forget Watson and if I do assume he is in the picture) my biggest “coup” was exposing a guy named Errol Flynn who worked under the name   

Captain Blood, who according to a well-respected writer of the times named Marlowe who actually did press work under another name while he was writing his plays, started out as a pirate, and then went into the King’s service allegedly to expand the Empire and fight off assorted bad guys at sea and make the whole world a British lake. Well that happened as we well know, still know a little and certainly had our noses dug in it in Sherlock’s time, but what is not well-known is all that swashbuckling bullshit was just that. Blood, and blood is the right name, was a kingpin in the Middle Passage trade, the slavery trade transporting Africans to the bloody sugar cane fields of the West Indies. The only sword he drew was when some shackled black man or women mumbled too loud. I have no proof but I believe the intellectual model for the English painter Turner’s chilling Slave Ship was directed at Blood’s horrible conduct.           

I believe I have demonstrated my “street cred” on this legend-busting business. Take it or leave it. The Holmes case drove me, continues to drive me crazy, since I have made nothing but a small dent in that blowhard’s “rep.” I have tackled the problem from several different angles and will try yet again to break this down, especially since this case involved state interests which he should have blown the whistle on, and didn’t (probably saving old Watson a heart attack since it involved the royal family, Prince Albert, named Eddy). Let’s see.

Strangely the storyline here of dear Eddy (Queen Victoria’s son and heir presumptive) and his well-known indiscretions with whatever lady, high-born or low attracted his attention, has the same moral and plea behind it as a popular song from the 1950s Eddie, My Love by the Teen Queens. Eddie come back and do the right thing. In the song the young woman, let’s call her Betty which is what Bart Webber called her when he did an analysis of the lyrics as part of a classical age of rock and roll series. Some good-looking Eddie from nowhere drifted into town on his high-end motorcycle, saw Betty, pretty and ready Betty I assume, walking on the street or at some soda fountain and charged forward. Bingo, they get along, for the times unstated but go “all the way.” Then Eddie, claiming he has a job in New Jersey somewhere, although it is not always Jersey for this caper, says he has to get dough to live, for them to live and he will be back come fall. And as you may have guessed way back at the start of this paragraph, Eddie is long gone and has not written to Betty for months-and it was not because he did not have the price of a postage stamp. Pine away Betty and take care of the little one as best you can when you go to “Aunt Emma’s for that nine month visit which means you are not coming back to town soon.

Forward to our Eddy, our philandering Eddy, as already noted, who got attracted to some serving girl at one of the family estates. Wined, dined, fake married her (since he was already married to some cousin-age arranged woman) bedded her and abandoned her. Not though without the obligatory child produced which made things very complicated in the crazy quilt line of succession that had been dead weight on England forever. Enter the cabal, the parliamentary leadership with Queen and Empire in mind. The child, and if necessary the mother must go under the sword. This after all is an affair of state. It is hard to believe that these guys could run a green grocery much less a far-fling empire, but they put together some of weirdest plans to achieve their goals, including trying to lay off the murders of innocents who got in the way, or who knew where mother and child were, or could be forced to tell on some Jack the Ripper wannabe.

Enter Sherlock who eventually sees the whole Jack the Ripper thing as a smoke screen for more nefarious conduct up in the ruling elite where he is not without friends or knowledge about the peculiarities of that elite. The blast is that while they, the cabal, had the mother locked up tight and on whatever passed for downers in those days so she couldn’t continue to blab about her affair with the ungallant Prince, and about their love child he was on the trail after the few false leads. It took Holmes’ energies to figure the whole mess out, with a little help from Watson when he found the mother, found out what was up and then the why of the ruling elite’s crushing desire to find the child and put her, the child, mother, whoever got in the way down. Never happened since for once Sherlock played the gallant.

More disconcerting though and not gallant is when Holmes confronted the cabal and basically balked at turning the big guys over in what in the film would have been the Queen’s and Empire’s mercies, not well known for mercy when it came to her own bastard Albert and his women. Why, and that is finally where I can wind up on this bum of the month Holmes who has haunted my dreams more than somewhat. A lot of what got my ire, got Seth Garth’s countervailing ire up was the proposition that I presented in a series of films that we both reviewed. My main contention, my main contention now as well, was that Holmes and Watson were part of the “Homintern” W.H. Auden’s shorthand name coined in the 1930s for those who were of male same sex persuasion, homosexuals in those days among gentile society, fags and Nancy boys further down the social chain where I lived.

Following Auden, who kept serious tabs on this segment of society, I found compelling evidence (this well before the shocked landlady found them buck naked on some drugged escapade at Baker Street) that they were using their so-called investigative powers to run a male whorehouse among other things featuring the dregs of sailor, wharf, and river life. Were running under cover of night every illegal operation known to man from white slavery to liquor. That made a certain sense since neither man was otherwise gainfully employable yet wanted to keep up the lifestyle of that crummy elite that lived and died for Queen and Empire when the deal went down.

Most troubling though, the thing that should put the punk Holmes (and the viciously punk Watson who had the audacity to proclaim for the foolish prince out loud and in public) in the shades was going back to my original take on these high-end English. Then I started putting two and two together. Started looking at the real connections between the edgy Holmes and the cabal. As it turned out, and I should kick my own ass for not realizing this early on, they all went to Cambridge or Oxford, places like that notorious as breeding grounds for the “love that dare not speak its name.” The interconnectedness between the members bonded them together into some sort of sordid brotherhood not permitting them to “drop the dime” on each other-ever. No wonder nobody fell for all the murders, the death of the mother and Eddy succeeded to the throne and that was that. If this doesn’t put a big dent in the Holmes mythology nothing else could. And I say shame.