There are 10 messages totalling 326 lines in this issue. 
 
Topics of the day: 
 
  1. The Delaware Valley of Fear (2) 
  2. ABBE: The Beeswing (7) 
  3. obit for Bernard Archard 
 
---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
Date:    Tue, 6 May 2008 21:49:04 +1000 
From:    Bill Barnes 
Subject: The Delaware Valley of Fear 
 
Hiya Hounds, 
 
Can someone please supply contact details (name, postal and/or email 
addresses) for "The Delaware Valley of Fear" society. 
 
I've been given a name in conjunction with this society, James P. 
Suszynski, but not sure if he is one of the organisers or just a member. 
 
Thanks for any assistance (off-list of course). 
 
Langdale Pike 
("his human reference book on all matters of social scandal") 
    
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Tue, 6 May 2008 15:33:46 -0500 
From:    Don Dillistone 
Subject: ABBE: The Beeswing 
 
Our Courageous Orderly wrote: 
 
"== The Beeswing == This Holmsian deduction always bothers me. I doubt very 
much (and I have experiments that confirm this) that all the beeswing  
would have 
remained in only one glass if the contents of the other two had been poured 
into it, to form to a third party who supposedly drank from it. My results 
indicate that some of it would have remained on the sides of the two  
glasses 
emptied into it. The only way to avoid this would be by rinsing, which  
would then 
negate the sought-after result." 
 
On the other hand, I believe both our Orderly and Sherlock Holmes were  
wrong about the parts played by the various wine glasses.  The most  
logical explanation is that the wine glass with the beeswing in it  was  
the *only*  glass someone drank from the night of the killing, that it  
was Captain Crocker who alone drank from it, and no wine was poured from  
it into either of the two other glasses.  Here is what I believe happened. 
 
 Captain Crocker opened the bottle of wine and handed it to Lady  
Brackenstall. She drank directly from the bottle, then Crocker took back  
the bottle. He then poured himself a glass of wine and sipped it to  
steady his nerves.  He finished it while he and Theresa hatched  their  
plot to blame it on the burglars. Once decided, Theresa explained it all  
to Lady Brackenstall  while Crocker cut down the rope. Theresa kept on  
rehearsing Lady Brackenstall while  Crocker was busying himself fraying  
the rope. 
 
Then Theresa did her part. She fetched the bottle and two more glasses  
and into each new glass dropped just a smidgen of wine, leaving just a  
slight tinge of colour in each glass. Crocker, after finishing with the  
rope, took back the bottle, filled his glass again,  then asked Theresa  
if she wanted some to calm her nerves, pointing the bottle towards the  
two unused but slightly stained glasses. She said no. Crocker drank his  
wine, but since there was still too much wine in the bottle (after all,  
three "burglars" were supposed to have helped themselves), he then  
helped himself to  a third glass of wine, still  using  his original  
wine glass. He sipped that as the three combined to help Lady  
Brackenstall keep her story straight. 
 
The-end result about three burglars being involved  didn't fool Holmes,  
but how the beeswing ended up in only one glass did. The plan of the  
conspirators  was exposed by Holmes,  but one of the charms of this  
particular story was the irony in that Holmes was both  right and  
wrong.  He was right about there not being three intruders, but wrong  
about why the beeswing  ended up in only one glass. Actually,  since all  
three glasses had only a tinge of wine left in them, the two of them  
which had essentially been  unused bore no traces of the beeswing.  The  
other one, which had been filled with wine and emptied three times, did  
leave beeswing behind. And no one poured wine from one glass into another. 
 
The Hon. Ronald Adair - I locked the door lest the ladies should  
surprise me. 
AKA Don Dillistone M.Bt. 
Winnipeg 
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Tue, 6 May 2008 20:45:17 +0000 
From:    Ben Williams 
Subject: Re: ABBE: The Beeswing 
 
>  Captain Crocker opened the bottle of wine and handed it to Lady  
> Brackenstall. She drank directly from the bottle, then Crocker took back  
> the bottle. 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
         Drank DIRECTLY from the bottle?! 
         Certainly not the actions of a Lady of standing!! 
 
bw 
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Tue, 6 May 2008 16:52:01 -0400 
From:    
Subject: Re: ABBE: The Beeswing 
 
>  Captain Crocker opened the bottle of wine and handed it to Lady 
> Brackenstall. She drank directly from the bottle, then Crocker took  
back 
> the bottle. 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
         Drank DIRECTLY from the bottle?! 
         Certainly not the actions of a Lady of standing!! 
 
bw 
 
_______ 
 
or even sitting down. :) 
 
De M 
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Tue, 6 May 2008 17:00:35 -0500 
From:    Karen Murdock 
Subject: obit for Bernard Archard 
 
An excerpt of an obit in 
"The Independent" 
(England) 6 May: 
 
>Disillusioned with the experience of regular unemployment as an actor 
in Britain, in 1959 Bernard Archard booked a seat on the next boat to 
Canada, with plans to make a new start. But then he was asked to 
audition for the starring role in Spycatcher, as Lt-Col Oreste Pinto, 
a wartime Allied counter-espionage expert. 
 
 "Producer Terence Cook and I knew that Colonel Pinto - aged about 40 
- was a star part, but we wanted an 'unknown' to play it," said Robert 
Barr, who scripted the drama. "Agents laughed. No one of star value, 
they said, could possibly have reached that age without being a star." 
But Archard was summoned, after a BBC employee recalled him as a Coal 
Board official in a 1958 dramatised documentary on open-cast mining, 
and he landed the role. 
 
Based on the memoirs of Pinto - described by Eisenhower as "the 
greatest living expert in security" - Spycatcher (1959-61) charted the 
exploits of Pinto and his team of investigators as they relentlessly 
tried to root out potential spies entering Britain. The programme, 
which ran to four series, finally made Archard a star at the age of 43 
and he became a prolific character actor in films and on television. 
 
[. . .] 
Born in London in 1916, Archard won a scholarship to train at Rada, 
where he lost his cockney accent, before working for many years in 
repertory theatre. [. . .] 
 
But he was also seen in films as a vicar in Village of the Damned 
(1960), a Russian intelligence chief in The Spy with a Cold Nose 
(1966) and a priest in Fragment of Fear (1970). On television, he was 
frequently cast as doctors, in episodes of Danger Man (1961), No 
Hiding Place (1962), The Avengers (1968), The Rivals of Sherlock 
Holmes (1971) and Bergerac (1985, 1987). 
 
Archard also had two roles in Doctor Who serials, as Bragen, the 
security chief seeking complete control of a colony of humans on the 
planet Vulcan, in "The Power of the Daleks " (1966) and Marcus 
Scarman, an Egyptologist possessed by an evil force, in "Pyramids of 
Mars" (1975). 
 
Bernard Joseph Archard, actor: born London 20 August 1916; registered 
civil partnership 2006 with Jim Belchamber; died Witham Friary, 
Somerset 1 May 2008{ 
 
            ~May Blunder 
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Tue, 6 May 2008 18:21:08 -0500 
From:    Don Dillistone 
Subject: Re: ABBE: The Beeswing 
 
De Merville quoted Ben Williams' comment about my  comment about Lady B 
 
"Drank DIRECTLY from the bottle?! 
         Certainly not the actions of a Lady of standing!!" 
 
Then de M. added: " or even sitting down. :)" 
 
My observation about the above? She was either lying down or sitting  
down. In any case, this was no time for social niceties. Captain Crocker  
described her as "'half dead from shock.'" 
- Adair 
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Tue, 6 May 2008 16:52:03 -0700 
From:    Willis Frick 
Subject: Re: The Delaware Valley of Fear 
 
>From Sherlocktron list of Scions, 
 
The Delaware Deerstalkers 
                                               Leonard E. Sienko, Jr. 
      US NY Hancock                            12 East Main Street 
                                               Hancock, NY 13783-1128The  
modern world, 
Would be less snarled. 
 
If the most important Marx, 
Had been Groucho, instead of Karl. 
 
Willis Frick 
SYSOP, Sherlocktron 
http://members.cox.net/sherlock1/Sherlocktron.html 
----- Original Message -----  
From: "Bill Barnes" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:49 AM 
Subject: The Delaware Valley of Fear 
 
 
> Hiya Hounds, 
> 
> Can someone please supply contact details (name, postal and/or email 
> addresses) for "The Delaware Valley of Fear" society. 
> 
> I've been given a name in conjunction with this society, James P. 
> Suszynski, but not sure if he is one of the organisers or just a member. 
> 
> Thanks for any assistance (off-list of course). 
> 
> Langdale Pike 
> ("his human reference book on all matters of social scandal") 
>  
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Wed, 7 May 2008 00:29:11 +0000 
From:    Ben Williams 
Subject: Re: ABBE: The Beeswing 
 
 -------------- Original message ---------------------- 
From: Don Dillistone 
> De Merville quoted Ben Williams' comment about my  comment about Lady B 
>  
> "Drank DIRECTLY from the bottle?! 
>          Certainly not the actions of a Lady of standing!!" 
>  
> Then de M. added: " or even sitting down. :)" 
>  
> My observation about the above? She was either lying down or sitting  
> down. In any case, this was no time for social niceties. Captain Crocker  
> described her as "'half dead from shock.'" 
> - Adair 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
          You do NOT administer a liquid to a person who is "half dead from shock" -- ESPECIALLY 
if they're lying down!! 
 
bw 
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Tue, 6 May 2008 20:28:30 -0500 
From:    Don Dillistone 
Subject: Re: ABBE: The Beeswing 
 
Ben Williams replied: 
 
" You do NOT administer a liquid to a person who is "half dead from  
shock" -- ESPECIALLY 
if they're lying down!!" 
 
His argument  sounds logical, but it should not be  directed at me, but  
rather at Conan Doyle. But then, if Doyle were acting logically, he   
probably have prescribed brandy. And that would have ruined the whole  
story.  What would have aroused Holmes's suspicions?  Wouldn't he just  
have stayed on the train if  Lady Brackenstall had imbibed brandy?  I am  
afraid Mr. Williams may be driving a spike  right into the heart of the  
story. 
- Adair 
 
------------------------------ 
 
Date:    Wed, 7 May 2008 02:14:54 +0000 
From:    Ben Williams 
Subject: Re: ABBE: The Beeswing 
 
 -------------- Original message ---------------------- 
From: Don Dillistone 
> Ben Williams replied: 
>  
> " You do NOT administer a liquid to a person who is "half dead from  
> shock" -- ESPECIALLY 
> if they're lying down!!" 
>  
> His argument  sounds logical, but it should not be  directed at me, but  
> rather at Conan Doyle. 
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
          Absolutely! One must wonder at times about the medical expertise of ACD. Heavens, 
we have him writing in EMPT that Holmes administered brandy to Watson who had just 
fainted! Giving liquid to an unconscious person?? 
          Methinks it most fortunate that ACD forsook the "practice" of medicine for writing!! 
 
bw 
 
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End of HOUNDS-L Digest - 5 May 2008 to 6 May 2008 (#2008-71) 
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