The Five Orange Pips

Lore & Background

Elias Openshaw had emigrated to the United States as a young man, become a planter in Florida and risen to colonel in the Confederate States Army before returning to England around 1869 or 1870 and buying an estate near Horsham in Sussex. Holmes recognises "K.K.K." as the Ku Klux Klan and theorises that its sudden collapse in 1869 was triggered by Elias's return to England with vital records, which the other members have been trying to recover ever since. Opponents of the Klan received a warning and were killed unless they fled or gave up their opposition. From the postmarks - Pondicherry, Dundee and London - Holmes concludes that the letters were sent from a sailing ship.

Reader's Guide

John has now received a letter of his own, postmarked London, ordering him to put the papers on the sundial. Holmes advises him to leave the one surviving page of his uncle's diary there in a box, with a note saying that the rest were burned. The next morning's newspaper reports John's body found in the Thames, apparently drowned after a fall from Waterloo Bridge. Holmes traces the letters to an American barque, the Lone Star, posts five orange pips to its captain and wires the police in Savannah, Georgia, but his wish for vengeance goes unfulfilled: the ship is destroyed in a severe gale.

Did You Know?

• It is one of only two Sherlock Holmes short stories in which the client dies after seeking his help; the other is "The Adventure of the Dancing Men".
• When the story was written the real Ku Klux Klan was broken and effectively defunct.