[ SECRET POST #2598 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2598 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 031 secrets from Secret Submission Post #371.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not firing on all cylinders tonight, so I'm trying to remember how many people he let go. There was the woman who shot Milverton, the trio in Abbey Grange, and the thief who stole the blue carbuncle. After that, I'm having trouble remembering who else?

And of those, the one only I'd maybe agree with the OP is the blue carbuncle thief. I've always thought that was a dodgy decision, Christmas or no. That being said, though, given what Victorian prisons were like, Holmes' rationale that sending him there would only guarantee that he'd be a thug for life probably wasn't far off the mark either.

Abbey Grange and Milverton, though, I think I'm more inclined to agree with Holmes. Mostly because Lord Brackenstall and Milverton's victims just didn't have a lot of other options. The Abbey Grange trio were forced into action to defend themselves from a violently abusive man, and though they did try to pin his murder on someone else, at least they picked some genuine criminals to pin it on, rather than an innocent. And Milverton ... kind of deserved what he got, and considering the fact that Holmes was having serious difficultly figuring out a way to bring him down without socially destroying all his victims in the process, you can see why he and Watson covered for her. Plus, in both those cases, there's no evidence that any of them would have reason to commit any other crimes. They were victims or friends of victims striking back at their abusers/extortionists, not wilful murderers.

Am I forgetting anyone, though? It's been a while.

[swamp_adder]

There was the dude in The Devil's Foot, which I think was a pretty iffy decision on Holmes' part. He DID have other options for taking down his girlfriend's murderer besides murdering him in retaliation -- but apparently Holmes thought the original crime was just so grotesquely awful that taking personal revenge was justified in this case.

[intrigueing]

Yeah, I think the Devil's Foot is the most morally iffy one too, and it seems like it was more Holmes's personal sympathy talking than morality. He explains it by saying "well, in his position I'd do the same" -- which is probably true, since it's a sentiment he bears out in other stories (ie, "if you had killed Watson, you would not have gotten out of this room alive" from The Three Garridebs.)

[(Anonymous)]

In a way, he let Adler go as well - but that was more out of stupidity. Seriously, you make it pretty clear to someone that you know they're guilty for something and then wait a whole night to go get them without maybe thinking they'd run in the meantime? Please.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder if he did it on purpose? It's been a long time since I read "Scandal in Bohemia" but I remember neither Holmes nor Watson sounded happy to work for the Prince, especially since Irene wasn't actually blackmailing him.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, actually they didn't realize that at first -- Holmes thought she really was blackmailing him. Watson felt bad about it when he saw how nice she was being to Holmes, but he also thought she was blackmailing him and told himself he was being silly because they weren't hurting her, just stopping her from hurting the King.

It was only when they read the letter that they realized that they had assumed that the King's sexist assumptions about Irene were true when they were actually nothing but bullshit suppositions because the King was so puffed up that he was convinced his penis was so amazing that Irene would do anything to destroy him for depriving her of it.

Also, Holmes knowingly letting Irene go would kind of completely defeat the entire purpose of the story and the reason Holmes respects Irene in the first place.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, well, that's the other option. I actually tend to go with this one, because even if ACD didn't mean it like that when he wrote it, it seemed a little OOC and naiive for clever, clever Holmes to act like he did. The other version would be that, considering Holmes never thought too much of other people and especially women (as was par for the course in that time) he simply didn't expect some woman to not just passively wait around for her arrest.

[intrigueing]

Uh...What "arrest"? All he was doing was trying to retrieve the picture to make sure Irene couldn't blackmail the King (he didn't know that she had no intention of blackmailing him). The whole reason the King came to Holmes was because there was no law being broken here (except on the King's part -- burgling Irene's room and such) so he couldn't ask the police to cover his ass, and Holmes could be discreet.