How Holmes Finished First in "Something for the Weekend"
Dearest Investigators,
We would like to thank you for the Olympic-grade assistance recently provided to Holmes and his client, Mr. Sebastian Parsons. Lord Cruikshank might have emerged victorious and unquestioned after his “win”, but courtesy of our corresponding detectives, Mr. Parsons and the other aspiring athletes will have their fair shot at glory!
Looking forward to the next mystery,
The Dear Holmes Team
——
16 June 1907
Dear Lord Cruikshank,
It was but a month ago when I was first alerted to some peculiar discrepancies in your cycling capabilities. Specifically, those between your ability to perform in the heat of competition, and your ability to perform otherwise. I then learned more of your performance as a competing cyclist in early June, leading me to realise that this matter warranted further investigation. I accordingly arrived in Camford on Wednesday 12th June accompanied by seven assistants, members of my Baker Street Irregulars.
Having secured quarters for them, I followed you for several days, ultimately witnessing your rather miraculous victory at the qualifying Olympic race on the 15th of June. Yet in the wake of your success, Lord Cruikshank, I am unable to offer you congratulations. Rather, I must say with the utmost confidence that you have been introducing extra quantities of blood to your body in order to enhance your performance in cycling competitions, such as this weekend’ s races. I implore you to cease this practice immediately.
Although the first place of note whence I witnessed you emerging was the St Peregrine ice-house, in which I conjecture you normally store your blood for these purposes, its relevance to your scheme went unseen until I encountered you on the morning of June the 14th. You were seated in a chair at the shop of Camford’ s last blood-letting barber, Mr Garnet, as he applied a bandage to your arm. You left the shop after putting on your coat, face flushed, in a hurry, undoubtedly stumbling into some of my assistants who were posted outside of the shop. Prior to this, I had seen you on more than one occasion (as had my informants) visiting St Peregrine’s ice-house in the company of a man who was dressed like a chef and claimed to be French. Again, this seemed innocent enough, until the day of the 14th. By the time I saw you leaving Garnet’s on that morning, I had discerned the connections between your alleged ‘French chef’, your uncharacteristic visits to Mr Garnet’s ramshackle shop, and indeed your supposed cycling prowess.
First of all, your demeanour in the aftermath of a ‘session’ with Garnet
made it evident that you were not engaged in blood-letting, in spite of it being one of his more popular services. For rather than drained and pale, you seemed flushed and invigorated, which made all the more sense when I recalled your interests in athletic competition.
Athletic performance relies on raw talent, single-minded training, and a clear head during an event. In purely mechanical terms it requires the delivery of oxygen to the muscles. The muscles use the oxygen to burn sugar which is what drives performance. The more oxygen the muscles burn, the higher the performance level.
One means by which a person could increase delivery of oxygen to the muscles is by increasing the quantity of blood in the body, though I suspect that you are acutely aware of this. This increased quantity could be attained by extracting blood from an athlete in anticipation of an event and chilling it, until just a day or so before the athlete’s performance. It could then be re injected into the athlete so as to facilitate this aforementioned increase in oxygen delivery.
Your ‘chef’, Monsieur Nicolet, I theorise was just another hired hand, in charge of assisting you with the storage and extraction of your blood. His help would allow you to minimise visits to Garnet’s shop, and by dressing as a chef, he could easily explain away blood stains on his garb as the mark of kitchen items such as jam, for example. Mr Garnet, on the other hand, exhibits a profound interest in the science of blood and would be more than likely willing to carry out the procedure of re-introducing it to your body. His knowledge of such science could be gleaned from the barber’s devotion to Dr William Harvey, who revolutionised the world’s understanding of blood and its circulation, and whose portrait he proudly displays in his shop. Knowing that most are unaware of the possibilities offered by such a procedure, I am sure that you took solace in being able to have it openly performed by Garnet; while those who noted any difference in what he was doing to you likely assumed it was a variant on his normal blood-letting.
By contrast, none of the other explanations I have considered can fully justify your visits to Garnet’s alongside your baffling cycling performance record. Most obviously, I first considered that your visits to Mr Garnet might consist of honest, straightforward hair trims, but this is highly unlikely. With all due respect to the kind barber, he is notably unskillful; and of course, though you might simply wish to patronise his establishment as a personal favour, the appearance of your hair indicated that it went untouched by the man on at least one of your visits. This, coupled with your reddened face when there, made it apparent that you were likely engaging in his other offerings.
I was able to discredit several other possibilities that crossed my mind later after witnessing your performance at this weekend’s races. Namely, those that involved your ability to circumvent parts of the course, or to alter your means of transportation. Despite my assertion that your achievements are not entirely self-earned– which I still hold to be true– I must admit that you did complete the entirety of the track on Saturday. You neither took advantage of any short cuts, nor employed a chauffeur to transport you along the route.
You did not modify your bicycle with any sort of device or motor, either. I was able to confirm so after stationing some of my associates along the course of Saturday’s race, and after observing the presence of your chauffeur and his motor car throughout the event.
The members of my team confirmed that you in fact traversed the course as all the other cyclists did, free of short cuts. Had you attempted to veer off into any of the viable alternate paths, you would have either been forced to dismount your bicycle or risk a collision. Moreover, it was obvious upon completion of the course that your bicycle had indeed suffered from the unfortunately flooded portions of the track, marked by their distinctive red brown soil.
Save for the mud from the track, your bicycle’s frame and tires remained the same throughout the competition, as well as in the moments before and after it– as one would expect. Any special motor or assisting device that you might have had manufactured would have been visible during the race, if not in the moments just beforehand, when your chauffeur openly brought your bicycle down from his trailer. So, this was not a reasonable line of thought to pursue.
In addition to the above, you not only appeared to be obviously exhausted from the race, but also could not have been transported by your chauffeur, for his trailer and motor car were relatively spotless in light of the muddy course.
Thus, I posit, this is what you have been doing to succeed in your competitive cycling endeavours: With the aid of your ‘chef’, Nicolet, you are storing your own blood in St Peregrine’s ice-house and having Mr Garnet inject it back into you before important athletic events. You have then been taking advantage of this burst of stamina to illicitly emerge victorious on the track as a cyclist, time and time again– most recently, at the final heat for a place on our country’s Olympic team, during which you covered up the injection site on your arm with a bandage.
Lord Cruikshank, my friend Dr Watson has quoted me as saying that amateur sport is the best and soundest thing in England. It is a world of fresh air and fair play. Had you used a performance enhancer or taken a short cut or a lift to achieve your win on Saturday, I would have had no hesitation in denouncing you to the British Association of Amateur Athletes, the organisation responsible for selecting athletes for the forthcoming Olympics. They would doubtless have barred you from all future competition as such behaviour would constitute cheating. However, the practice you have adopted to enhance your level of sporting achievement is, as it is, only disreputable. That is, not (as yet) illegal.
My suggestion to you therefore is that rather than benefit from this dubious blood practice, you surrender your place in the Olympic team on the grounds of injury. I am certain that the runner-up in Saturday’s race would be a worthy representative of the Crown at the forthcoming games. Besides, taking this honourable course would prevent you from becoming an object of ridicule among your circle of acquaintances as well, which I assure you would be the case if you were ever to be exposed.
I beg of you, Lord Cruikshank, to act as I have suggested so that your reputation, and that of your sport, remain unimpeached.
Yours sincerely,
