An Example of Problematic Plotting

As I mentioned in the last post, there are some plot problems in the stories “The Final Problem” and “The Empty House” by Arthur Conan Doyle which I now want to have a closer look at. They’re an example of plots which ignore the facts established before, which is a serious problem for a story.

In “The Final Problem”, Doyle wanted to kill Sherlock Holmes for good. To make it look good, he decided to give Holmes a spectacular death: locked in deathly combat with his equal on the other side of the law. That is not the problematic part of the plot, the problematic part of the plot is how Holmes gets to the stage for that last act, the Reichenbach Fall. After three attempts on his life and a threat from Professor Moriarty delivered in person, Holmes decides to take a trip to the Continent with Watson while the police is tightening the net and preparing to snatch all members of Moriarty’s organisation. So far, so good. Only - why would Holmes leave London and England in the first place? Holmes is known already at that point for his skills in disguising himself and going undercover. He has several hiding places throughout the city where he could stay for a few days - he tells Watson the net will be closed and everyone captured in three day’s time. Mycroft is already established with the readership, too, and a man who is sometimes said to be the British government should be able to hide his little brother for a couple of days. There is, in short, despite the threats, no reason for Sherlock to go gallivanting around the Continent, alone or in Watson’s company. This is the first part which is not quite logical, since Holmes is giving up his home turf where he has connections and knows every square inch, as Watson told us over and over again. The second part which is not quite logical is what happens in Strasbourg. There, Holmes receives a message from England that Moriarty and three of his lieutenants have escaped arrest. He even points out to Watson that Moriarty can never go back to England now, because he’d be arrested right away. Why, then, would Holmes not travel back home, where Moriarty now can’t touch him any longer? Escaping from England in the first place, the professor surely would rather seek a new life elsewhere than come back for revenge - and even if he did, he would no longer have that many agents to rely on and no longer be able to endanger Holmes like that.

Of course, those plot points are meant to direct Holmes to the Reichenbach Fall, to the place where he will die in deathly combat together with the Napoleon of Crime. Doyle needs Holmes to leave the security of England and travel to a far-away place where he can die heroically and his body will never be found (which can happen in such cases). Yet, Holmes is very much acting out of character (as fan-fiction writers would put it) in this story.

What would be better? Well, let me suggest a simple switch: Moriarty isn’t following Holmes, but Holmes is following Moriarty. Holmes has learned that Moriarty will leave England before he can be arrested and decides to follow to see where the professor goes, whether he’ll be able to apprehend him or leave it to the government afterwards to extract him. That would explain both why Holmes leaves London (he could take Watson along as a second gun, as during other adventures) and why he pushes on after learning that almost everyone has been caught. The biggest plot problems would  be solved and hunting down a criminal is perfectly within Holmes’ regular behaviour. Holmes forges ahead while Watson is kept back for some reason (you could even keep the fake letter), catching up with Moriarty at the Fall, getting into that fight. Everything else can, more or less, stay the same.

The story in which Holmes returns, “The Empty House”, also suffers from a major problem with the plot when it comes to explaining why and how Holmes didn’t die. Of course, Doyle couldn’t go back on the whole situation at the Reichenbach Fall. That had been published twelve years earlier and, clearly, all of the fans knew the story (and a lot had been upset about it, too). In “The Empty House”, Holmes explains that he wanted to hide from the three lieutenants of Moriarty who also escaped and decided to ‘fake’ his death because of that. That does make sense to a degree. He has climbed a sheer cliff wall (as not to leave footsteps leaving along the narrow path), lain on a ledge above the path for several hours, and then climbed down and left again. Before and while climbing down, one of said lieutenants, who clearly travelled with Moriarty, threw boulders at him, trying to kill him. He then disappeared for three years, not doing anything about those men, before the death of Ronald Adair brought him back home. Enter the lieutenant in question: Colonel Sebastian Moran, marksman and big game hunter - also, more or less, Moriarty’s right-hand man.

What is the problem with Holmes’ story? Well, there are two: first of all, even if he was tired of his life so far (as he mentions in the heavy foreshadowing “The Final Problem” delivers), he must be aware that the three men still alive and free will want him dead - and if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any reason for him not to tell Watson he was still alive, but preferred no longer working as a detective, as hinted. So as long as he didn’t perceive them as a danger to himself, he wouldn’t have to hide. If he perceived them as a danger, wouldn’t it be better to work on getting them out of the picture in some way? There is, essentially, no reason for Holmes to go into hiding in the first place - he could official say he’s no longer working or he could simply continue until those lieutenants are out of the way and then stop working. The second part which is a problem are the boulders. Not that there aren’t any suitable boulders up in the Swiss Alps, but that Moran would use them. As mentioned above and in the story, Moran is a sharpshooter. He’s also the proud owner of an air gun which shoots revolver ammunition and can be used without alerting anyone (he uses it to kill Ronald Adair). If he was, as Holmes suggests, watching proceedings from a hiding place above the footpath himself, there was no reason for him to round the area and get above the ledge to drop boulders - a good shot at Holmes, on the path, during his climb, or afterwards, would have taken care of everything.

How to change this part of the story? To be honest, I’m not sure what to do about that. If Holmes thought he could draw out the three lieutenants by appearing dead, he might have done so, but he wouldn’t have been gallivanting around for three years doing anything but detective work in this case. Instead, he would have spent three years following one or more of those lieutenants (why not Moran, while we’re at it?) and would now come back to finish the deed. Or he might have used one year each for each of the lieutenants, with Moran being the last one to target.

And the part on the ledge? Honestly, the only reason I could think of would be that Moran came along while Holmes was just recovering and he scrambled to hiding, climbing up a wall easier to scale than it looks in order to stay hidden, then decided to rather let the world think he was dead. No boulders, no attacks on him, just making sure people would believe him dead.

Those are the two things which vex me about the story of Holmes’ death and resurrection. Not the death or the resurrection as a such, but the plot devices used to get Holmes in place and provide information on how he didn’t die after all. With other plot points, the stories would definitely have been better. How to avoid it? Knowing your character is the first step - know what they would or wouldn’t do from their background. Ask yourself if that really makes sense and if a normal person acting on common sense would handle it that way - and if not, why your character should.