Our Next Featured Detective Is...
The Featured Detective Program
Each mystery, dozens of detectives send in letters with questions, theories, new evidence, and solutions. After each mystery, we reward the detective who sends in the best solution with a special prize and recognition as our “Featured Detective”.
Thank you to all the detectives that competed in another exciting Featured Detective competition. “In Plain Sight” proved a deceptively challenging mystery for the detectives of Dear Holmes. Many correctly identified that the jewels in the Ruy Blas costume were real, and smuggled, but few picked up on the two seperate crimes (perpetrated by two seperate criminals) that brought this mystery to Holmes’s attention.
This month’s Featured detective is “the Collins Agency”, a family collaboration across states that sent us a timely and thoroughly entertaining account of the case and the challenges they faced in solving it. I’ll share one passage we loved from their elaborate backstory:
“We at the Collins Detective Agency are pleased to respond to you with our analysis of the annoying little problem presented by the Gaiety Theater. You perhaps have already come to the same conclusions as we have, and we apologize for the belated letter. Our own agency has suffered several frustrating situations that have caused us some annoyance of our own, with the result that we have been a bit slow to answer your request.
Our Philadelphia area Division office has had to deal with the recent outbreak of typhoid in the neighboring states of New York and New Jersey. Typhoid Mary, it seems, is once again cooking up a storm, having escaped her quarantine several months ago.
As our Philly agents were sidestepping this outbreak, our Minneapolis Division was dealing with quite a different situation. Our office is located on the third floor of a downtown office building, and the office directly above ours has been vacant for several months. Our secretary arrived at work two weeks ago, to find water dripping from the ceiling and down the walls. The building superintendent discovered that a water line in that fourth floor office had broken, and had been spewing water the entire night. There was some evidence that the break may have been helped along by a rasp, but it was never conclusive. However, in addition to the ceiling and walls, there was some damage to several important documents in the filing cabinet. Our very able secretary was able to retype and restore these documents, but it took her several weeks of closed-door intensive work, during which time we were unable to use her services to write our report to you. But, as with many things in life, there was a silver lining to our dark cloud. The newspaper wrote up a fine article about our misfortune, including a detailed description of the work our detective agency does, and even describing several of our more infamous cases! We have gained one or two new clients every day since this incident! And then a few days ago, the well-known Pinkerton Detective Agency contacted us, and has put us under contract to do some work for them in this area of the American Midwest. All of that, not to mention the insurance money that will pay for the damage to the ceiling and walls”
Congratulations to the detectives at Collins on their selection. A special prize will soon be headed their way.
Timeline note: We know that some detectives didn’t feel they had enough time to submit a solution to this mystery, so we’ll be modifying the timeline of this current mystery so that all can share their theories of the case before Holmes shares is. Those who correctly solve the case first do have the best chance of being selected as Featured Detective, so be sure to send in your solution as soon as you’ve solved (If your theory of the case changes, you’re welcome to submit more than once).
Want to win next month’s Featured Detective competition? Send in your solution by mail to 1101 14th St Nw, Suite 910, Washington, DC 20005, or online (less fun, of course).
Keep solving.
- Michael & The Dear Holmes team
P.S. Don’t forget to renew your membership to keep the mysteries coming.