The Lion’s Mane
Once again listened to the incomparable Sir Christopher Lee read this adventure to me.
This time Holmes gets to be the unreliable narrator, claiming that Watson only visits him on weekends. At his lovely secluded country house by the sea, mmhmm. ;)
And yet the story is still so romantic! not only is there the McPherson/Bellamy romance, but Murdoch, instead of being McPherson’s romantic rival, outdoes himself in BFF-dom. Hmm, bit of a character mirroring thing going on there I think? But, it turns out the whole romance/love triangle/BFFs thing is a massive red herring that has nothing at all to do with how McPherson actually died. Holmes includes it in the write up, I suppose, only to dismiss it, but I can just about hear Watson razzing him about putting it in.
McPherson is a dog lover/owner, seems to have had at least two, one small that got “thrown out a window”, and one large, an Airedale terrier who was apparently killed by the same Lion’s mane (or Portuguese man o war? they are more deadly after all) that did in his master. Elsewhere in Sherlock meta, @sagestreet has written a brilliant series on dogs in Sherlock and their metaphorical significance. I have thus been looking at dogs in ACD canon with greater scrutiny. Perhaps Murdoch was not McPherson’s romantic rival, but Maude Bellamy’s instead.
