The Five Orange Pips
| The Five Orange Pips | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author | Arthur Conan Doyle | |
| Released | 1891 | |
| Series | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | |
| Client | John Openshaw | |
| Set in | Sept 1887 | |
| Villain(s) | The Ku Klux Klan | |
"The Five Orange Pips", one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is the fifth of the twelve stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The story was first published in The Strand magazine in November 1891. Conan Doyle later ranked the story seventh in a list of his twelve favourite Sherlock Holmes stories.
Synopsis
A young Sussex gentleman named John Openshaw has a strange story: in 1869 his uncle Elias Openshaw had suddenly come back to England to settle on an estate at Horsham Sussex after living for years in the United States as a Planter in Florida and serving as a Colonel in the Confederate Army.
Not being married, Elias had allowed his nephew to stay at his estate. One strangeness is that although John could go anywhere in the house he could never enter a locked room with his Uncle's trunks. A second strangeness was in March 1883 a letter postmarked from Pondicherry India arrived for the Colonel inscribed only "K.K.K." with 5 orange pips enclosed.
More strange things happened: papers from the locked room were burned and a will was drawn up leaving the estate to John Openshaw. The Colonel's behaviour became bizarre-he would either lock himself in his room and drink or he would go shouting forth in a drunken sally with a pistol in his hand. On May 2, 1883 he was found dead in a garden pool.
On January 4, 1885 Elias's brother Joseph receives a letter postmarked Dundee with the initials "K.K.K" and instructions to leave papers on the sundial - Despite his sons urging, Joseph Openshaw refuses to call the Police. Three days later Joseph Openshaw is found dead in a chalk-pit.
In Sept 1887 John Openshaw receives a letter postmarked from London-eastern division and the same message his father received. The only clue John can furnish is a diary page marked March 1869 in which "pips" are sent to three men of whom two have "cleared" and one was "Visited" which he had found in a fireplace among the burned papers.
Holmes advises Openshaw to leave the diary page with a note telling of the destruction of the Colonel's papers on the garden sundial. After Openshaw leaves, Holmes deduces that from the time between the letter mailings and the deaths of Elias and his brother that the writer is on a sailing ship.
Holmes also recognizes the "K.K.K" as Ku Klux Klan an anti-reconstruction group in the South until its sudden collapse in March 1869 -- and theorizes that this was the result of the Colonel's taking their papers.
The next day there is a newspaper account that the body of Openshaw has been found in the Thames River and believed to be an accident. Holmes checks sailing records of ships who were at both - Pondicherry in January/February 1883 and at Dundee in January 1885 and recognizes a Georgia bark named Lone Star - named after a Confederate State. Furthermore Holmes confirms that the Lone Star had docked in London a week before.
Holmes then sends five orange pips to the captain of the Lone Star and has the police send a cable to Savannah that the Captain and two mates are wanted for murder. The Lone Star never arrives in Savannah; there are severe gales that year and the only trace of the bark is a signpost marked "L.S." sighted in the waves.
Analysis
In fact, at the time, the Ku Klux Klan was already decisively broken by the U.S. authorities, with its revival in 1915 still long in the future - and even at its peak, it never had the ability to strike so far away from the U.S. South.
Here, as in other Holmes stories and books, America plays the role of a wild untamed place, out of which emanate various dark affairs and vendettas which impinge upon the life of civilised Britain.
America plays the same role in the very first Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, and in a more humorous way in The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor. The role of foil to Great Britain is assigned to India in The Sign of Four and The Adventure of the Crooked Man, to Australia in The Boscombe Valley Mystery and to Russia in The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez. In this the Holmes stories accurately reflect their time and the mindset of Victorian Britain which regarded itself as the centre of civilization.
Irene Adler?
In "The Five Orange Pips", Holmes mentions that he has been beaten four times, three times by a man and once by a woman. Since "The Five Orange Pips" is set in September 1887, before "A Scandal in Bohemia", which is set in March 1888, the woman Holmes mentions who beat him cannot be Irene Adler if the chronology is correct. However, most Holmes fans consider this to be a chronological error on Doyle's part, as "The Five Orange Pips" was published after "A Scandal in Bohemia". Doyle had made clear chronological mistakes in other Holmes stories, and no other woman is mentioned to ever be held in the same regard by Holmes or to have beaten Holmes. Also, in "A Case of Identity", Watson mentions that Adler is the only person he has ever known to have beaten Holmes. For these reasons, most Doyle fans believe Adler to be the woman mentioned in "The Five Orange Pips".
Wikisource links
Works related to The Five Orange Pips at Wikisource