I’ll be uploading rankings of Sherlock Holmes villains from my new book, Wherever Fact May Lead Me: A Ranking of the Sherlock Holmes Stories, every day till we reach the greatest villain. You can find the rankings on my website, and you can buy a copy of the book on Amazon.
Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Villains
Tier Three: The Flickering Lights
We cannot trust these flickering lights to constantly guide us. Though the villains in this tier show flashes of brilliance, most often they do not shine consistently enough to earn our confidence as being truly strong antagonists.
30. Von Bork and his secretary, His Last Bow
Like Baron Gruner, Von Bork and his secretary ring a bit false. However, unlike Baron Gruner, there seems to me to be very little effort at disguising Von Bork as a symbol. If Baron Gruner was to stand as a symbol of arch-evil, then Von Bork was to stand as an extension of the Kaiser and all that he represents. Doyle does not tip-toe around the patriot themes of this story, nor ought he. Doyle’s sending a message, and that message is one of nationalist pride. The very things that Von Bork scorns are the foundations that the British will rely upon to help them stabilize themselves during the buffeting war. That Doyle lets Von Bork be flat is his way of making Von Bork be symbolic, and, in war, needs must.
29. Mr. Windibank, aka Hosmer Angel, and Mrs. Windibank, A Case of Identity
While Mr. Windibank’s actions toward his stepdaughter are indeed appalling, I find it difficult to consider him more villainous since his ruse seems so transparent. It is incredible that Miss Mary Sutherland could not see through Mr. Windibank’s ruse. Mary and Mr. Windibank met; they conversed; they became engaged. Catfishing is a tactic carried on to this day for one motive or another, but, with the advent of the internet and artificial intelligence, one person may catfish another far more easily and completely than before. In Victorian times, when people are actually meeting one another in person, this reader finds it hard to believe that Mary could have fallen in love with her own stepfather without recognizing him.
28. Catherine Cusack and John Ryder, The Blue Carbuncle
“What a shrimp it is, to be sure!” cries Holmes upon his first evaluation of Ryder’s intestinal fortitude. Holmes is not wrong. When accused of the crime, Ryder throws himself onto the floor and grabs at Holmes’ knees—and if there’s a less manly gesture when faced with the unveiling of one’s crimes, then I am hard-pressed to name it. Ryder says that he will flee, that he will leave the country, and, if that is true, then this American reader hopes that Ryder will at least elect to stay on the European side of the pond, because we’d be ashamed to have a criminal of Ryder’s stripe. Holmes castigates Ryder sternly, as he has every right to do, then lets the craven man leave. With any luck at all, Ryder starts a new life in a place like France, and he never strays again.
27. Rachel, The Musgrave Ritual
Whether the stone that fell upon Brunton the butler fell intentionally or accidentally seems to me to be of little consequence. What matters is that Rachel did nothing to help him. She fled from the scene, threw the jewels in the pond, and left the butler to die. Her conscience (we must presume, from the way she’s acted) must have eaten away at her, yet she ignored it for the sake of saving her own skin and avoiding scandal. Selfish and homicidal were her actions, and she gained nothing by them, save a psychological scarlet letter that promises to follow her to her own grave.
26. Mary Holder, The Beryl Coronet
Arthur Holder’s niece and adopted daughter, this traitorous woman betrays her uncle and her brother, leaving Arthur, who has remained chivalrously silent, to face the threat of prosecution, while she elopes with the degenerate Sir George Burnwell. So treacherous! So selfish! So ungrateful! For Mary’s actions, this reader hopes that the ultimate destination in her elopement is a drafty cell in the Tower of London.
25. The Duke of Holdernesse, The Priory School
“Unjustifiable” is Holmes’ fair assessment of the duke’s conduct. Indeed, if I were to put myself into the duke’s shoes, and I found that one of my children had conspired to abduct the other, then I would not have behaved so uncharitably to the victim as the duke does. Holmes lets Holdernesse off lightly thanks to the duke’s passivity and station. In reality, however, the duke seems to me to be nearly as culpable of crime as Rachel from The Musgrave Ritual: both characters had the opportunity to right a wrong, and both failed to do so.
24. Mr. John Turner, The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Old Black Jack of Ballarat has a temper. As a bandit, he was a murderer himself in his young, red-blooded days. As an old man, after bearing all the indignity from McCarthy that he can stand, Turner crushes McCarthy’s head with a stone when he feels that McCarthy has finally gone too far. Now McCarthy’s son stands in the dock, but Turner does not come forward to save him, though he certainly ought to. Holmes secures Turner’s confession, and Holmes says he’ll use it if necessary to save McCarthy’s son. Clearly there was a reason that Black Jack became the leader of a gang, and there’s a reason that the old expression, “A leopard never changes its spots” has survived so long.
23. Beppo, The Six Napoleons
A luckless Italian who perhaps ought to have operated with greater subtlety, Beppo is caught red-handed. After his capture, Holmes does what Beppo ought to have done all along, viz: to simply buy the Napoleons instead of stealing them. Had Beppo done so, his profile might have remained lower, and he might have gotten away with the black pearl of the Borgias. As it stands, the fellow shall return to the place whence he came: prison.
22. Abe Slaney, The Dancing Men
It is not Abe himself who develops the ingenious alphabet of dancing men, it is that Sequoyah of a father of Elsie’s: Patrick, leader of the Joint. Abe merely uses the alphabet, having been taught it. His role in The Dancing Men is to harass and hound poor Elsie, and, when her husband intervenes, then Slaney’s entire, poorly thought-out plot goes up in a puff of smoke. Thanks to his harassment, Abe ends up murdering an innocent man and nearly killing the woman whom he professes to love. For his troubles, Slaney gets a prison term, and one may only hope that, by the time he’s emancipated, he will have overcome his consuming love for Elsie.
21. Josiah Amberly, The Retired Colourman
Derivative of Jonas Oldacre of Lower Norwood is Mr. Josiah Amberly of The Haven. His description places him closer to the “Medieval Italian,” than the “modern Briton,” classifies him as a chess player, and, like Oldacre, a miser. The retired colourman could perhaps have surpassed Oldacre, if only we had been able to spend more time with him. I would have loved have seen an interview between Holmes and Amberly, in which Amberly plaintively wails about the ingratitude of his wife, while Holmes listens with a mistrustful ear. As it is, Amberly is left to chafe Watson with his stingy ways, and we readers are chafed by the rather stingy portions that we receive of Amberly’s character, and of this case in general.
20. Reuben Hayes, The Priory School
Though overshadowed by the jealous secretary, James Wilder, the oafish Reuben Hayes nevertheless deserves an entry of his own on this list. After all, it is Hayes who murders the German master, Heidigger, and so precipitates Wilder’s downfall. Hayes was intended to be Wilder’s ace-up-the-sleeve, but he proved to be part of a hand that was aces and eights. Unpredictable and violent, Hayes acted autonomously in a far more bloodthirsty capacity than Wilder dreamt of. The result is that Hayes will end in the gallows, and that Holmes will not lift a finger to save him.
19. Patrick Cairns, Black Peter
In killing Captain “Black” Peter Carey, Patrick Cairns says that he’s saving the law “the price of a hempen rope.” Cairns may well be right. However, casting iniquity on Black Peter does not transmute Patrick Cairns into a saint himself. Let’s be clear: Cairns is a man who invited himself to Black Peter’s cabin in order to extort the captain, and, as the two fell to rum and to arguing (two descents that often well pair), their tempers flashed. Black Peter drew his knife. Cairns was quicker, and he put a harpoon through the old sailor: driving the steel through the captain’s burly chest and pinning him, like a butterfly, to the wall. Though the killing was done in the heat of passion, it hardly exonerates Cairns, for he appeared at the cabin on an evil errand of his own devising, and—like a battered, piratical mercenary—was driven by nought but memories of the wild old days and of fantasies of the gold ahead.
18. Colonel Valentine Walter, The Bruce-Partington Plans
A traitor to his country and a man whose actions are so abhorrent as to bring about his brother’s death from sheer mortification, Colonel Valentine Walter’s case is, improbably, not as bad as it could be. Holmes suspects that Valentine’s murdered Cadogen West, but, in fact, Oberstein has done the deed with, oxymoronically, a life preserver. Additionally, Walter makes efforts at reparations. Dictating a letter at Sherlock’s command, Walter draws Oberstein out of hiding, where the agent is nabbed by the authorities and sentenced to fifteen years confinement. Still, Walter is a traitor to his country and, therefore, a louse.
17. Baron Adelbert Gruner, The Illustrious Client
A character who causes me indecision to rank, for he both confronts and wounds Holmes, Baron Gruner perhaps ought to be considered more villainous, only I find his character annoyingly stereotypical. Unlike, for instance, Colonel Walter, Baron Gruner seems drawn from stock. His mannerisms come off as trite, and his speech is a tad theatrical. For instance, upon having vitriol throne in his face, he exclaims, “It was that hell-cat, Kitty Winter! Oh, the she-devil! She shall pay for it! She shall pay!” I appreciate the fact that Doyle does not want to use foul language, so he substitutes curse words with language like ‘hell-cat’ and ‘she-devil.’ That said, I can’t shake the fact that throughout the story, I always end up feeling that Gruner is a mite too artificial.
