An Easter Egg So Big I Missed It

 

Frederic Door Steele illustration of Barker in "Retired Colourman"

“You see, Watson, it was perfectly obvious from the first,” Holmes says in “The Red-Headed League.” But Watson is not the only one who overlooks the obvious.

I recently wrote a blog post about all the Sherlockian Easter eggs in Will Thomas’s Barker & Llewelyn series in which I managed to miss the most obvious connection of all. And then Will called my attention to “The Adventure of the Retired Colourman.”

“It was undoubtedly the tall, dark man whom I had addressed in the street,” Watson tells Holmes in that story. “I saw him once more at London Bridge, and then I lost him in the crowd. But I am convinced that he was following me.”

“No doubt! No doubt!” Holmes replies.  “A tall, dark, heavily mustached man, you say, with gray-tinted sun-glasses?”

“Holmes, you are a wizard. I did not say so, but he had gray-tinted sun-glasses.”

“And a Masonic tie-pin?”

“Holmes!”

Tall? Check! Mustache? Check! Tinted glasses? Check! A Mason? Check! These are all characteristics of “private inquiry agent” Cyrus Baker.

And Holmes later says, “You had not met Barker, Watson. He is my hated rival upon the Surrey shore. When you said a tall dark man it was not difficult for me to complete the picture.”

Unfortunately, I am not Sherlock Holmes. But now that the picture has been completed for me, I will re-read the Barker & Llewelyn books with a new pleasure.