​Our 13th meeting was conducted on Tuesday, April 17th, and began at 7pm as usual. Attending was Barry, Candace, Pat, Rick, Michelle, Beth, Bill, Henry, Ken, Chuck, and myself.

Here is the quote that members were asked to identify at the beginning of this meeting:

The man sprang from his chair and paced up and down the room in uncontrollable agitation. Then, with a gesture of desperation, he tore the mask from his face and hurled it upon the ground. “You are right,” he cried; “I am the King. Why should I attempt to conceal it?” 

Of course, most members were able to identify this quote coming from one of our favorite stories (and definitely Barry's favorite story) "Scandal in Bohemia".  After that little exercise, I introduced a new segment that I hope will become a permanent part of future meetings... character identification.  This is where I gave clues about a character that appeared in a Sherlock Holmes that we have already studied, and then I asked members to guess the identity of that character. For this meeting, my character was none other than Neville St. Clair, from "The Man with the Twisted Lip."  No one was able to guess the characters name, but many knew it was a character from "Twisted Lip".  

​Next, we tackled the Puzzle of the month, which was entitled "A Fast Kill" The mystery in this puzzle was how Michelle was able to poison the Swami since he refused to eat or drink anything.  After much discussion, it was Bill who suggested that the Swami was poisoned by the smelling salts that Michelle administered to try to revive him from his fainting spell. She had laced the smelling salts with poison, so when she held it under his nose, she was in fact killing him!

The Story we discussed was "Adventure of the Dancing Men", led by Henry. Everyone enjoyed Henry's interesting observations on this story, and were eager to add their own. I believe that just about everyone had something to say about this great story!

Our next meeting will take place on May 15th, and as always, be held at the usual place. The story to read beforehand is "The Priory School", and the discussion will be led by Bill. 

​The quote for the May meeting appears below:

“My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outrè results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

The puzzle to solve appears below:
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​Candace volunteered to bring a character description for us all to guess.

See you at the next meeting!

​Our 12th meeting was conducted on Tuesday, March 20th, and began at 7pm as usual. Attending was Barry, Candace, Rick, Pat, Michelle, Lacy, Beth, Bill, Barbara,  Henry,  Linda (not in the picture), and myself (12 members present for our 12th meeting... interesting!).

True to form, we began the meeting by trying to identify the quote of the month, which turned out to be from a story we had discussed earlier in the year, "The man with the twisted lip". Credit goes to just about everybody for matching the quote with the correct story title.

Next, we tackled the Puzzle of the month, which was entitled "Don't Shoot!" The mystery in this puzzle was how the murders took place. Boris and Nick planned a gag for their friends. They hired an actor to appear at their poker party and shoot blanks at Boris. But a vengeful Nick put real bullets in the gun, and the actor unknowingly killed Boris. Nick, pretending to protect his guests, silenced the actor by shooting him. Several members participated in revealing this mystery, but it was Pat who asked if the bullets in the gun contained blanks. Therefore, Pat gets credit for this one.
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The Story we discussed was "The Yellow Face", led by Barry. Of course, Barry did a masterful job at pointing out the best parts of this story. When he opened his presentation for discussion, most people had something to say about it. We all agree that it was not one of Conan Doyle's better works, but still, it was a good read.

See you at the next meeting, which will take place on April 17th!