The Adventure of the Retired Novelist
Date - October, 1926
The Case
Thomas Wilgreave, a retired novelist, had been lured out
of his home by a forged letter that proposed a meeting with another writer. A
few weeks later, he was standing in front of his house when he witnessed an
‘accident’ and was hurriedly driven to another place and let in a room. He was
told to wait for a police officer who never came. Wilgreave returned home after
an hour and found his table lamp warm. Pons agrees to investigate what is behind
the attempts to decoy him away from his house.
Quotes
Ø Pons touched his ear lobe thoughtfully (Parker’s narration)
Comments
Ø Was Pons subject to criminal liability when he cut open the furniture during his search at T. Woodly & Son’s?
Ø The villain’s hiring of an acting troupe to stage an accident in front of Wilgreave's bungalow is similar to the ploy used by Sherlock Holmes to gain admittance to Irene Adler’s home in A Scandal in Bohemia.
Ø Pons recovers the sought after object and leaves a receipt for the villain in its place. This is one of the finest examples of Pons’ mischievous sense of humor.
Ø The quote listed above mentions that Pons touched his ear while listening to a client’s explanation. In his Notebooks, Parker mentions that Pons is in the habit of toying with his ear; pulling at the lobe when deep in thought. Humphrey Bogart used this action quite often when detecting: most prominently in The Big Sleep.
Ø While this is a moderately interesting case, there is very little excitement in it. The reader is two-thirds of the way through the story before The Peacock’s Eye is mentioned and there is no dramatic confrontation of any kind, nor even an arrest.
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