“The Man with the Twisted Lip” is one of my favourite Holmes stories, both for delivering what I think every fan of Holmes expects as well as for being weird in some ways that are new.

It even starts off being weird, with the superfluous story of Watson being sent to rescue a wretched opium addict from one of his “orgies.” And here I have to immediately step in with a quick digression. The word orgy derives from the Greek orgia, meaning “secret rites.” Specifically these were the secret rites of the god Dionysus, involving dancing, singing, sex, and lots of drinking. It had the meaning of overindulgence in wine (or other intoxicants) for a long time, but in common use today I think its meaning has come to be restricted to group sex. If you told a friend you were going to an orgy tonight I’m sure they wouldn’t think you meant a drinking party. But the way Doyle uses it here it has the broader meaning, as the man being rescued by Watson isn’t capable of having sex with anyone given his condition.

Getting Watson to the opium den is important to the plot though because it’s there where he meets Holmes, in disguise. This is all coincidence (the first of two remarkable ones in the story), as Holmes is working on a totally unrelated case. I call the stuff about Watson’s friend who is an addict superfluous though because meeting Holmes is the only thing it does, and (1) I don’t see how it was otherwise necessary, and (2) I can  think of easier ways to have gotten the ball rolling.

Another weird thing about the story is the way Holmes solves the mystery of the disappearing Neville St. Clair. Of course his powers of deduction always strike onlookers as preternatural, but here it’s not through following crumbs of evidence that he comes to understand what’s going on. He does twig to the fact that an envelope had been licked “by a person who had been chewing tobacco” (he’s always picking up traces of tobacco), but this point is irrelevant. Instead, he follows his most famous axiom: “that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” As I’ve said previously, I’m not sure how trustworthy a precept this is, but it does seem to be the key in this story. All Holmes has to do is reflect on the impossibility of St. Clair’s disappearance to arrive at a solution. And the way he does so is significant: arranging a bunch of cushions on the floor to fashion himself a sort of divan, and then taking a seat and meditating while smoking his pipe. “I wish I knew how you reach your results,” Inspector Bradstreet says to him at the end. “I reached this one,” Holmes replies, “by sitting upon five pillows and consuming an ounce of shag.”

You can see that as being both continuity and disruption. Just like the way the plot hinges on yet another disguised double life, but in a way that’s truly remarkable. The career path St. Clair has chosen comes as a shock, but it’s something that resonates into the twenty-first century. Neville had, after all, only been a reporter, and like a lot of other professional work, journalism is a job that isn’t nearly as well paid as many people think (if you can even find work as a reporter these days). Meanwhile, alternative forms of employment that white-collar workers might look down on can actually be highly remunerative. Would St. Clair’s mendicancy be an example? Scholars have looked into it and found that it’s at least possible.

The same scholars, and other Holmes aficionados, like to pick out two points in particular from this story as problematic. First, the date is wrong. June 19, 1989 was a Wednesday, not a Friday, as here. Second: Watson’s wife calls him James when his name is John.

Much ink has been spilled trying to come up with ingenious explanations for both of these slips, but especially the second. I think it likely that Doyle didn’t consider the accuracy of the date important in the slightest and so didn’t bother to look the correct day of the week up. As for the name, it was probably another casual error. If Homer nods we can excuse Doyle. I don’t think he could have imagined how carefully these stories were going to be examined over a century later.

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