The Return of Elvis

I couldn't get to 221B Baker Street. It's in England to start with. And then there's the whole business of one hundred years of bombing, pilferage, and that whole business about changing the street numbers. The 221B that I wanted to see simply isn't there anymore. So I went to Graceland instead.

Graceland, for those of you to whom it is always 1895, was home to Elvis Presley during most of his career. It's Memphis, Tennessee's big tourist attraction and the closest thing to a modern-day shrine in America.

The logic of my going to Graceland as a substitute 221B may be lost on the average Sherlockian. In fact, most normal people can't see it, as it is the sort of reasoning usually reserved for mystics, madmen, and visionaries who are desperately seeking to get their column written for another month.

To look at Graceland through the eyes of a Sherlockian is a study in "what if." What if Holmes's rooms had been preserved this well for our study? What if you could buy the $16.95 "Altamont" ticket that would also get you into the cab museum and the cutter Alicia? What if Holmes had done "Viva Las Vegas" instead of "The Scarlet Claw"? Would Ann Margaret have been "the woman"? Would Watson'be reviled as the Albert Goldman of Sherlockiana, the biographer who just had to point out the drug use and less charming personal traits of the Master? The mind begins to wobble, threatening to derail from the slender tracks of reality.

So I returned home, wondering if I was treading the path to madness in my study of Elvis and Sherlock. But there I was to find the latest issue of The Serpentine Muse and anarticle entitled "A Tale of a Prince, the King, and the Master." Therein Susan Z. Diamond narrates a sequence of events which demonstrates that not only are Holmes and Elvis bound in the minds of some warped Sherlockians, they were actually father and son!

I had some reservations about Diamond's revelations (her estimations of the longevity of Holmes's potency seem a bit much to me), but her work convinced me that I was on the right track. Where exactly that track is leading I have no idea. Here, however, are my current leads:

• In a souvenir shop across the street from Graceland I spotted an Elvis genealogy chart. Among his forebears was a "Mary," last name unknown, born in 1860. What did happen to Mary Morstan-Watson? A pregnant Mary, fleeing to America, might make Dr. Watson the true Elvis ancestor at Baker Street.

• Why are we never told Professor Presbury's first name in "The Adventure of the Creeping Man"? Was it, possibly, Elvis?  Did the serum of langur actually work, giving Elvis Presbury the youth he craved, immortality, gyrating hips and that upper-lip sneer that black-faced langurs are noted for?

• Steve Allen, foe of early rock and roll, used a hound dog named "Sherlock" to get Elvis to stand still while on his television show (one wonders if the dog was trained to bite at the sight of pelvic gyrations). Could this be the tip-off of a negative relationship between Holmes and Presley? Remember, Elvis loved law enforcement officers and collected badges wherever he went, the exact opposite of Holmes. (Hey, Elvis's head did oscillate from side to side a lot ...)

• Is there a tie between White Mason, the local officer in The Valley of Fear, and White Mansell, Elvis's great - great - great - great - grandfather?

• William Ballew gets credit for this little Graceland theory: "Grace Dunbar resided on the land of Neil Gibson, which in the days of Elvis was a well-known brand of guitar, and Gibson was known as ‘the Gold King,’ whereas Elvis was known as ‘the King'." Mere coincidence?

• Elvis's middle name spelled backwards is "Nora." The Norah Creina was the ship Biddle, Hayward, and Moffat the bank robbers went down on. In Girls! Girls! Girls! Elvis sang "I saw three shrimp in the water, two were old and gray ..." Were the three shrimp symbolic of the three bank robbers?

Okay, okay, so I'm reaching. It's been fifty-three issues since my last Sherlock and Elvis column and I wanted to be sure and exhaust all the possibilities for another fifty-three. So, for now, Elvis has left the column.