History Headscratchers / SherlockHolmes

** "Moriarty will kill him if he's discovered, but that doesn't mean he has to make it easy for Moriarty to discover him" - the thing is, the very fact that Porlock wrote a letter to someone using a code would probably be enough for Moriarty to kill him, regardless of whether he breaks the code or not. So it's the handwriting that really counts here, and according to Holmes, Porlock probably made no attempt to change it. And yet again - if we assume that Moriarty has got some agents at the mail who are able to open the letters, "Douglas" and "Birlstone" are more than enough. If not, the whole cryptography thing doesn't seem to make any sense, since Moriarty wouldn't be able to read it anyway. If anything, the chosen method is actually likely to ''ignite'' suspicion, since it is so obvious that the message is encrypted. It is actually [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography steganography]] that the situation called for, not cryptography - of the "Gloria Scott" kind at the very least.

** Using the cypher in the first place could be chalked up to simple paranoia; it might be redundant, but someone who has decided to spy on the greatest criminal mastermind of his generation for his arch-enemy is likely to also be someone who decides that there's no such thing as too much security (even if it is redundant), and Holmes does describe him as "shifty and evasive". Moriarty will kill him if he's discovered, but that doesn't mean he has to make it ''easy'' for Moriarty to discover him. Using a cypher also makes it a bit easier for Porlock to bluff his way out of any possible exposure (as, indeed, he claims to have done) than if he'd just written "Yo, Holmes, you ain't gonna believe what Moriarty's up to right now..." or something similar. The holes in the cypher are likely Porlock discovering either that encoding a good cypher is harder than he thought or that he doesn't have resources on hand to make it as strong as he'd like (such as a book with the words "Douglas" and "Birlstone" in it on top of the other words he needs to include). And the final letter is pretty clearly suggested to be Porlock just panicking on top of a pants-shittingly terrifying meeting with Moriarty that he just barely managed to get through by the skin of his teeth without being exposed, and desperately trying to back out of his arrangement with Holmes. Holmes himself deduces that "Friend Porlock is scared out of his senses", which explains why he bottled it on finishing the code. Presumably Porlock, who we never meet, is incredibly paranoid (with good reason, to be fair), not as skilled at cryptography as he'd like, and ultimately weak-nerved in the face of Moriarty himself.

** Not to mention that, in eliminating Moriarty and faking his own death, Holmes had incidentally granted Moriarty's various underlings the ''perfect'' opportunity to re-bury their own criminal enterprises which Holmes had unearthed. If they abduct Watson, he's no longer around to publicly grieve for his "dead" roommate or bicker with Colonel James about alleged slurs to the Moriarty family name, thus keeping the wider world's attention on their deceased leader, '''not''' on whatever schemes they might be up to, now. Sure, Moran may have taken his boss's death personally enough to try to hunt Holmes down, but most of Moriarty's minions were just in it for the money and would have no stake in revenge, either by proxy through killing Watson as payback, or by risking a kidnapping with no profit margin in it.
As for Moran himself, Watson is much more useful to him as ''unsuspecting'' bait than obvious bait.

** Not to mention that Doyle would've named Mary Marston ''years'' before he started thinking of killing off Holmes, let alone bringing him back (and needing an excuse to have Watson move back to Holmes's bachelor pad).

** Not to mention that, in eliminating Moriarty and faking his own death, Holmes had incidentally granted Moriarty's various underlings the ''perfect'' opportunity to re-bury their own criminal enterprises which Holmes had unearthed. If they abduct Watson, he's no longer around to publicly grieve for his "dead" roommate or bicker with Colonel James about alleged slurs to the Moriarty family name, thus keeping the wider world's attention on their deceased leader, '''not''' on whatever schemes they might be up to, now. Sure, Moran may have taken his boss's death personally enough to try to hunt Holmes down, but most of Moriarty's minions were just in it for the money and would have no stake in revenge. As for Moran himself, Watson is much more useful as ''unsuspecting'' bait than flagrant bait.

** (a) Having Sherlock Holmes triumphantly return from the dead having very cleverly outwitted his arch-nemesis is a very dramatic and attention-grabbing way of reintroducing your hero to the world -- certainly more than just "here's a story from the archives, everyone" (it works in ''Hound'', but then ''Hound'' also has a giant demon dog in it). (b) It saved Doyle from having to include some kind of "here's another one from the archives, boys and girls" note to every subsequent story, which would quickly get repetitive and frustrating, especially if he could save himself the trouble by just establishing that Holmes had returned. (c) Depending on how many stories he'd end up writing, all of those stories being from some hidden archives might have started to stretch credibility, whereas extending how long Holmes practiced gives him more time to set the stories between. (d) It allowed him to update the stories a little to the more contemporary world that he was living in rather than setting them all twenty or thirty years in the past. (e) Doyle had long since stopped giving a shit about Holmes, and people were going to buy his stories anyway, so he frankly didn't care whether or not the newer stories seemed like a postscript season.

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** (a) Having Sherlock Holmes triumphantly return from the dead having very cleverly outwitted his arch-nemesis is a very dramatic and attention-grabbing way of reintroducing your hero to the world. (b) It saved Doyle from having to include some kind of "here's another one from the archives, boys and girls" note to every subsequent story, which would quickly get repetitive and frustrating, especially if he could save himself the trouble by just establishing that Holmes had returned. (c) Depending on how many stories he'd end up writing, all of those stories being from some hidden archives might have started to stretch credibility, whereas extending how long Holmes practiced gives him more time to set the stories between. (d) It allowed him to update the stories a little to the more contemporary world that he was living in rather than setting them all twenty or thirty years in the past. (e) Doyle had long since stopped giving a shit about Holmes, and people were going to buy his stories anyway, so he frankly didn't care whether or not the newer stories seemed like a postscript season.

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** If we assume that Watson is not speaking strictly literally, then it's worth noting that large sections of ''A Study in Scarlet'' and ''The Valley of Fear'' involve the characters uncovering events that occurred in the United States, and "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" revolves around a backstory in Australia. Otherwise, it's probably just more {{Noodle Incident}}s that the reader is supposed to speculate on.

** The guy ''had'' just had his head bashed in. It's not like he had full command of his faculties at the time, when trying to reveal his killer he was literally experiencing his last moments of life. That sort of thing is presumably quite disorientating. We can perhaps excuse him under the circumstances for not quite having the mental wherewithal to make his last message crystal clear or to pick the best possible words to identify his murderer with laser-sharp accuracy; presumably he was trying his best to reveal something that would identify his killer while simultaneously trying to cope with massive head trauma, brain damage and the gradual slowing of his heart-rate to fatal levels.

** Because ''Holmes himself'' considers her an equal (or near enough). The story itself begins with Watson waxing lyrical about how Holmes respects her enough to consider her above any other woman of his acquaintance, it ends with Watson describing how Holmes acquires and prominently displays a memento of her to remind him of their encounter, and in general the story is presented in such a way as to leave little doubt that Holmes has developed a regard for Adler that, if not exactly considering her an equal, at very least suggests that he clearly feels that she's very close to being an equal by his standards. In short, it's not hard for readers to view Adler as being an equal to Holmes (or close enough at least) when the protagonist of the stories himself clearly gives the impression of viewing her that way.

* The real answer, of course, is AnthropicPrinciple. If Watson wasn't able to write down the stories, we wouldn't be able to read them since they're from his perspective. Ergo, Watson is for whatever reason able to write them down (and we just need to take a deep breath, remember that [[MST3KMantra it's just a story and we really should relax]], and enjoy reading it).

## If those involved don't want it published at all, Watson still writes it down but doesn't submit it for publication, but may be willing to ask again in future, or at least wait until either (a) those involved who object or would be negatively impacted are no longer around to be affected (either via death or emigration) or (b) such a time that the events recorded are no longer considered scandalous enough to worry about; or

** The guy ''had'' just had his head bashed in and was literally experiencing his last moments of life. That sort of thing is presumably quite disorientating. We can perhaps excuse him under the circumstances for not quite having the mental wherewithal to make his last message crystal clear or to pick the best possible words to identify his murderer with laser-sharp accuracy.

## If those involved don't mind it being published but don't want their identities revealed, Watson changes or obscures sufficient details to prevent those involved from being identified while still preserving what happened;

* At least one story directly addresses several of these questions. "The Veiled Lodger" opens with Watson openly saying that he's got boxes and boxes filled with records of cases that he and Holmes worked together to solve, but many of them will likely never see the light of day because those involved have asked him to keep them secret (which, we can presume, also includes Holmes). He assures the reader that he's happy to acquiesce to any reasonable request for confidentiality... but also notes that someone involved with a case has apparently tried resorting to burglary or other unscrupulous methods to get at Watson's records in order to keep the affair he or she was involved with secret, with a barely-veiled warning that if said person doesn't knock it off sharpish the world will soon know rather a lot more about the affair "concerning the politician, the lighthouse, and the trained cormorant" than said person would presumably like. In addition to other examples listed, several stories also note that much of the affair in question is already public knowledge and Watson's just offering another perspective. So we can presume that with the stories that are published, either: