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IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: November 1891

US: December 1891

COLLECTION

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892

CHARACTERS

John Openshaw Young landowner from Horsham, West Sussex.

Joseph Openshaw John’s late father and owner of a bicycle factory.

Elias Openshaw John’s late uncle, who had emigrated to America before retiring back to Sussex.

Conan Doyle wrote “The Five Orange Pips” early in 1891, but was delayed in posting it to The Strand Magazine until May that year by an attack of influenza. It is one of the strangest and saddest of the Holmes tales—Holmes fails to prevent the murder of his young client or apprehend the murderers, and never quite gets to the bottom of the mystery. And yet Conan Doyle listed it as among his favorites.

Watson partially explains why when he introduces the story. He says that there have always been cases that have been only partially solved, with “explanations founded upon conjecture and surmise.” The strange case of “The Five Orange Pips,” he says, is one of these, but its remarkable details convince him that it is a story worth telling. Indeed, it is the rich narrative that makes this story. Also, Conan Doyle most likely felt that including a failure helped to enhance the sense of realism in the stories as a whole and keep his readers engaged, since they could not always be sure that an adventure would end well.

A stormy case

The story is set in 1887 and begins in the middle of a violent September storm, which Watson describes in apocalyptic terms. It seems as if the whole world might easily be overwhelmed by chaos, and it needs the constant vigilance of Holmes to keep its horrors at bay. As is so often the case in the Holmes tales, London is seen as a haven of rationality with danger lurking in the countryside beyond. But it is a fragile sanctuary that Holmes must be constantly on his guard to protect. No wonder he is in a dark mood.

As the storm reaches its height, there is a ring at the door. Such is the ferocity of the weather that it seems Holmes’s usual prescience has deserted him. He considers it unlikely that the visitor is a client on such a night, and assumes it is a “crony” of his landlady. He is wrong. It is a client—a man in his early twenties, dripping wet from the storm and deeply worried.

Recovering his alertness, Holmes at once deduces that the man has come from somewhere southwest of London due to the mix of chalk and clay on his boots. As Watson later acknowledges, Holmes is thoroughly informed on virtually every branch of knowledge relevant to his detective work, and geology is one of them. It turns out that the young man is from near Horsham, in what is now West Sussex, where distinctive blue gault clay is found at the foot of the chalky South Downs.

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Three members of the Openshaw family meet their death after receiving five dried orange seeds through the post: first Elias (John’s uncle), then Joseph (John’s father), and finally John himself.

A tale of three letters

His provenance established, the young man introduces himself as John Openshaw, and tells how his family has suffered a “mysterious and inexplicable chain of events.” His father, Joseph, became rich making bicycles and inventing an “unbreakable tire”; John’s uncle Elias, meanwhile, emigrated to America and made a fortune as a plantation owner in Florida, fought as a colonel in the American Civil War on the Confederate side, and then, strangely, retired to a secluded Sussex estate around 1869. John says his reason for leaving America was a “dislike of the Republican policy in extending the franchise to negroes”; but, as we discover later, that is only part of the story.

The grumpy Elias was a recluse and seemed to care only for his adolescent nephew, John, to whom he gave complete control over his household—except for an attic that was always kept locked. Then, one morning in March 1883, Elias was struck by terror on receiving a letter from Pondicherry, India, which held just five orange seeds (pips), the mark “KKK” on the envelope, and a note that he refused to let John read. In a panic, Elias rushed to the attic and returned with a brass box with the same letters “KKK” on the lid. He burned all the papers inside, then made his will in favor of John’s father, Joseph. Seven weeks later, Elias was found dead in a shallow pool. The verdict at the inquest was suicide, but John was unconvinced.

After Joseph took over the estate, nothing happened for more than a year, until in January 1885 he received a letter postmarked “Dundee” (Scotland), containing five orange seeds, with “KKK” and the words “Put the papers on the sundial” written on the envelope. Since Elias seemed to have burned the papers in question, Joseph did nothing. Three days later, he too was found dead, having apparently fallen into a chalk quarry.

John then inherited the estate, and for two years, all was quiet. But the day before coming to Holmes, he too had received an envelope with five orange seeds and the same message and “KKK” mark—this time with a London postmark.

"The laugh was struck from my lips at the sight of his face. His lip had fallen, his eyes were protruding, his skin the colour of putty…"

John Openshaw

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The original illustration from the Strand depicts Joseph Openshaw—the second member of the family to fall victim to the Ku Klux Klan—receiving five dried orange seeds. Within three days, he was dead.

The detective at work

Hearing John’s story, Holmes is aghast, realizing at once the terrible danger his client faces. When told the police would not take the situation seriously, Holmes explodes: “Incredible imbecility!” John has a charred scrap of paper with some “enigmatic notices” written on it saved from the brass box, and Holmes advises him to go straight home at once and put it on the sundial, together with a note saying the rest of the papers have been burned and that this is the only one remaining.

As John sets off into the night, Holmes explains to Watson how he sees the case. He has, from just a few telling clues, worked out the nature of the threat. Holmes explains how just as the French naturalist Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) could describe a whole animal from looking at a single bone, “so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.” Holmes was not the first fictional detective to be inspired by Cuvier in this way. Both C. Auguste Dupin, in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders on the Rue Morgue,” and Émile Gaboriau’s character Monsieur Lecoq, invoke Cuvier as well.

This logic-based approach of a “new breed” of detective differed from that of the police, who would look at cases in isolation and work just with the facts before them, rather than drawing on information from other sources—including a broad knowledge base—and then making connections. This is one reason why, as here, the police often exasperate Holmes. Only in modern police investigations has a logical, scientific way of thinking become an official part of detective work.

"A man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it."

Sherlock Holmes

The secret society

Holmes deduces that Elias must have had a strong reason for leaving America, and that his reclusiveness suggests he was in hiding. The efficiency of the murders suggests an organization—rather than an individual—is behind them, and the letters “KKK” must be its initials. Holmes shows Watson an American encyclopedia that cites “KKK” as the initials for the Ku Klux Klan—a secret society that was formed by ex-Confederate soldiers after the Civil War. In just a few years, they acquired a terrible reputation for their killings of their opponents and black people, often sending chilling warnings in the form of oak twigs, melon seeds, or—as in this case—orange seeds.

The seeds, Holmes believes, are a warning to do what the KKK demands or face the consequences. The surviving fragment of paper suggests to him that the burned papers were a list of those who had previously been sent seeds by the KKK and their resulting response. He guesses that Elias Openshaw’s possession of this list must be a huge threat to the organization. Interestingly, his disappearance from the US in 1869 coincided with the sudden collapse of the real KKK.

Holmes has also worked out that the killer or killers take longer to reach the victim than the warning letter, because they are traveling by sailing ship, whereas the letter goes much faster by a mailboat steamer. The delay from Pondicherry would have been seven weeks, but it was just three days from Dundee. The London postmark on the most recent letter indicates the killers are now extremely close.

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In 1945 the movie The House of Fear was released. Loosely based on “The Five Orange Pips,” it features Holmes investigating a series of deaths at an old manor house, each death foretold by the delivery of orange seeds to the victim.

THE KU KLUX KLAN

The Ku Klux Klan (or KKK) emerged in the southern United States during the late 1860s, in the aftermath of the Civil War, as resentment boiled over the freeing of slaves and their resultant inclusion in the political process. The KKK allegedly began when six former Confederate officers formed a social club in Tennessee in 1866. They named it the Ku Klux Klan in mockery of their Greek-named fraternities at college, and dressed up in white robes to frighten local black people. But what started as a joke soon escalated into violent terror, as white-sheeted vigilantes roamed across the South on horseback, killing black people and burning their houses.

Confederate general Nathan Forrest was the organization’s first “grand wizard,” but the mob attracted every white person with a grudge in the South. Tens of thousands of black people died as they were lynched, shot, or burned alive in their homes. It is unknown whether the encyclopedia article that Holmes cites is genuine, or whether the KKK really did use orange seeds as warnings. But the heart of the movement was certainly secretive and used every conceivable method, from intimidation to horrific violence, to instill terror and loyalty.

After a massive crackdown by the federal government of President Grant, clan activity did die down around 1870, just as Conan Doyle suggests in this story. But the KKK simply went underground, only to reemerge in the early 20th century, and then again more recently.

Disaster strikes

After his brilliant analysis, and feeling there is nothing more to be done that evening, Holmes picks up his violin and starts to play. However, unusually for Holmes, this time he has drawn the wrong conclusion. The following morning, he and Watson awake to a report in the newspaper of a tragic and fatal accident to young John Openshaw, who has been found drowned in the Thames River near Waterloo Bridge. “Holmes,” writes Watson, “was more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him.”

A poignant ending

Determined to avenge Openshaw, Holmes pledges to track down the killers himself. The police are not to be trusted. “I shall be my own police,” he insists, “When I have spun the web they may take the flies, but not before.”

Remarkably, he does just that, discovering from Lloyd’s shipping registers that an American sailing ship named the Lone Star was in Pondicherry and Dundee on the corresponding dates—and has just left London bound for Savannah, Georgia. There are three Americans on board, including a Captain James Calhoun. Holmes sends a letter containing five orange seeds, with “SH for JO” written on the flap of the envelope, to “Captain James Calhoun, Bark Lone Star, Savannah, Georgia,” knowing the mail steamer will arrive in Savannah ahead of the Lone Star. He then cables the police in Savannah to pick up the three wanted murderers as soon as they arrive.

It is one of the most brilliant pieces of detective work in the Holmes canon. Within 24 hours, from an envelope containing some orange seeds and some initials, he has identified and tracked down the ringleaders of a frightening and murderous organization from across the Atlantic, and arranged for their arrest. However, for all of Holmes’s successes here, the young man who came to him for help is dead, and, as it turns out, the Lone Star never reaches Savannah. The storms at sea were severe, and Holmes learns that “somewhere far out in the Atlantic a shattered stern-post of the boat was seen swinging in the trough of a wave, with the letters ‘L.S.’ carved upon it.” The story has seen one of the greatest triumphs of Holmes’s methods, and perhaps their most dismal resolution.

"It becomes a personal matter with me now, and, if God sends me health, I shall set my hand upon this gang."

Sherlock Holmes

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Holmes identifies the ship on which the murderers are traveling by a process of elimination. He begins with three facts about the ship: the ports in which it docked, the dates on which it docked, and the fact that it is American. A ship that matches all three criteria is the one he is looking for.

Reaction to the tale

Not long after the “The Five Orange Pips” was published, four brothers—Edmund, Dillwyn, Wilfred, and Ronald Knox—analyzed it in detail and found a string of inaccuracies and contradictions. They wrote to Conan Doyle to inform him of their findings, but the author did not reply for a long time. Twenty years later, in 1911, Ronald Knox wrote the first serious analysis of the Holmes stories entitled Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes, and in the process launched a tide of studies known as the Grand Game, which have grown ever since, and in which Holmes enthusiasts examine the tales and analyze any errors as if Holmes were a real person.

When Knox sent him the article, Conan Doyle finally broke his silence and replied: “I cannot help writing to tell you of the amusement—and also the amazement with which I read your article on Sherlock Holmes… That anyone should spend such pains on such material was what surprised me. Certainly you know a great deal more about it than I do, for the stories have been written in a disconnected (and careless) way, without referring back to what had gone before.”

In their analysis of “The Five Orange Pips,” the Grand Game enthusiasts have shown their disbelief that the infallible Holmes could let his client venture out into the night to his death. They have criticized the suicide verdict on Elias Openshaw as implausible, and found inconsistencies between the historical Ku Klux Klan and the KKK in Conan Doyle’s story. They have also queried why the KKK didn’t ever attempt to directly recover the incriminating papers.

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A view of Waterloo Bridge from Hungerford Bridge in 1888. It was from here that the final KKK victim, John Openshaw, fell to his death—yet it was officially recorded that he “had been the victim of an unfortunate accident.”

Power and fallibility

Although those participants in the Grand Game were Holmesian in their thoroughness and research, their criticism and analysis of the story rather misses the point, as Conan Doyle would no doubt have agreed. “The Five Orange Pips” is deeply atmospheric. The five little seeds exert a terrifying symbolic power, as each appearance signals another death and the story gathers an unstoppable momentum, as dark events and secret conflicts across an ocean come home to roost in the quiet Sussex countryside.

In no other Holmes tale do we see the great detective so nakedly vulnerable and so keenly aware of the huge responsibility he has in his role as crime fighter. “I am the last court of appeal,” he admits to his young client, and we see in this story that he knows the burden is a heavy one. His failure to prevent his client’s death cuts him to the quick, and it is perhaps this fallibility and compassion that emerge briefly from time to time—in between his feats of brilliance—that has sealed Holmes in the hearts of readers all over the world for so long.

ELIAS OPENSHAW

In “The Five Orange Pips,” Conan Doyle uses a device that is familiar in detective and horror stories of a ghost coming out of someone’s past to haunt them or their offspring. In Elias Openshaw’s case, the KKK are still coming to get him long after he believes he left them behind. His nephew recalls how he was a “fierce and quick-tempered, very foul-mouthed” man. Elias was a racist who made a fortune in Florida on a slave plantation and fought for the Confederates in the Civil War. Readers can only guess that he joined the KKK in 1866, that he was somehow involved in their violent campaigns, and that around 1869 he fled the US with papers that will incriminate many KKK members. Unusually for this kind of story, the reader never learns what Elias did, how the papers came into his hands, why he left America, or why the KKK is on his trail. By not providing the background story, Conan Doyle tantalizes the reader brilliantly with a past that remains an enigma.

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