​On August 29th, the Sherlock Holmes Society of the Cape Fear held it's sixth meeting, and was attended by 7 members. Those attending were Tom, Barry, Rick, Barb, Chuck, Candace, and Henry. Although still not up to what I would consider to be "full strength", it turned out to be a great meeting! 

​As organizing member and moderator of the club, I opened the meeting with "Welcome and Announcements", and then went right into the agenda. First up was the quotation of the month, which came from the story "The Sign of Four". Only Chuck came up with the correct answer, but congratulations to all who participated in making a guess. 

Next, we attempted to solve the murder of "Oxford Dan", which took a little longer than I thought it should. To solve the murder, club members had to ask me "yes" and "no" questions about the crime, and then be able to tell me how Dan was  killed and why. After about 20 minutes (and 40-50 questions later), Candace put us all on the right track by guessing that the place of the murder was a shoe store. After that, Rick came up with the solution before anyone else! Thanks Candace and Rick!

The story of the month was "The Bascombe Valley Mystery", which I introduced using the famous illustration by Sidney Padget. That, plus Henry's "6 reasons why he didn't like the story" challenge maintained the discussion at a lively pace. It turned out that everyone had something to add to the discussion of this story.

​At the end of the meeting, we decided that next month's meeting would be held at 7pm on Tuesday, September 19th, at the usual place (if you are not sure where that is, read the posts about previous meetings). The story to discuss will be "The Five Orange Pips", and the discussion will be led by Henry. The quote for September will be as follows:

​The mystery that we will try to solve is entitled "The Widow Wendy", which is shown below. Begin to think about "yes" and "no" questions that you can ask to get to the bottom of this mystery!

There you have it! I look forward to seeing all club members at the September meeting! Be sure to RSVP the email I send to each of you. Also, be sure to bring a friend, but let me know how many chairs I need to put out!
The game's afoot!

Tom and Barry decided that the best time to conduct the August meeting would be Tuesday, August 29th. The time will still be 7pm, and the place will still be Beach PC's computer repair shop at 5905 Carolina Beach Road.

The story to be discussed will be "The Boscombe Valley Mystery". Be sure to read the story and be ready to discuss the finer points.

Two additional activities that will be introduced at the August meeting will be (a) identification of a quotation from a story, and (b) solving a crime by asking questions about the scenario. The quote is as follows:

If you think you know which story from which this quote comes, then write it on a piece of paper and bring it to the August meeting.  The crime to solve is shown in the picture below:

Even though the information is sketchy at best, this crime can be solved if you know which questions to ask!

The game is afoot!