California Girls, Watson

By Wells Dungerabber

Like the Beach Boys, Sherlock Holmes must have wished they all could be California girls. Holmes, however, wasn't interested in bikinis or suntans, surfboards or T-birds. Lolling about the beach just wasn't his forte. As the detective once said to rugby player Cyril Overton, "You live in a different world to me . . . a sweater and healthier one."

True, California girls in their native habitat held no interest for Holmes, but pluck one out of her native clime and set her down in London, get her engaged to an English aristocrat, and soon you may get something that did interest Sherlock Holmes -- a case. Miss Hatty Doran of NOBL was just such a California girl, and she sparked just the sort of case Holmes envisioned filling his career when he began work as a consulting detective.

"Here in London we have lots of government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime, to set them straight." Holmes envisioned himself a bit like Mycroft, never leaving his orbit, getting the facts presented to him and producing a solution therefrom. Later he was to find that other people never seemed to bring him the right facts, but in NOBL he comes closest to fulfilling his original vision.

He has the case solved before he leaves Baker Street to follow up its details. He cites two similar cases from the history of crime, and seems quite pleased with himself throughout the whole affair. And who was responsible for this case that fit so perfectly into his view of what a job shouzd be like?

Hatty Doran.

Brides from foreign climes always brought trouble to their husbands in Holmes's adventures. There was always something in their pasts they just didn't want to tell their spouses, and the spouses would then turn to Holmes when things went awry. But all these exotic foreign brides did not make for such easy cases for Sherlock Holmes. South American brides, as in SUSS, THOR, and other cases, tended to live out in the country, making Holmes leave not only Baker Street, but London as well in order to take up their cases. An Australian bride almost caused Holmes to completely blow a case in ABBE. And a Chicago girl in DANC caused Holmes the tragedy of seeing his client dead before the case was finished.

Only Hatty Doran, with her past full of gold mines and red Indians, gave Holmes the sort of case he originally wanted. As instigators go, she was a good one, a fact Holmes seemed to acknowledge by having dinner with her and her true husband at the case's end. The relationships betwen men and women gave Holmes a large share of his cases, and before his career was over he would deal with Italian brides, Russian brides, and still more American ones. However, there never came another like Hatty Doran.

Maybe instead of a catered dinner, Holmes should have thrown her a beach party.

This month's centerspread contributor is a native of San Dimas, California. A second generation Sherlockian, he is the son of Peasley Dungerabber, noted Sherlockian collector and columnist for the extremely rare and infrequent Reichenbachian Cliff Notes.

(Printed in Plugs & Dottles, May 1989)