Offline
nakahara wrote:
Oh my.... look what some bloggers have found!
The well is right behind John and the house is just a few steps from there....
And yet no one found Victor in there? Were they even looking?
That was one of the questions I asked earlier (I think in this thread), how did they not think to check the well when Victor went missing? In my post I said that maybe they could have been unaware of the well but the proximity of it to the house (and seeing as it is the ancestral home you'd think they would have known about it) does make that seem unlikely. Even if they didn't know it was there whatever search party was out looking for Victor can't have been a very good one!
Offline
Poor Victor.... they literally forgot about him right away....
Offline
Possibly at that stage they didn't know how evil Eurus was...they never imagined she would have put him there?
Offline
Possibly, but you'd think that even if they didn't think she were capable you'd have a quick look everywhere just to make sure. Also when she started referring to him as "drowned Redbeard" that must have set some alarm bells ringing. It might have indeed been too late by then to save him but clearly as the bones were in the well they didn't ever find him.
Offline
Could be the well someway hidden?
Offline
Lis wrote:
Possibly, but you'd think that even if they didn't think she were capable you'd have a quick look everywhere just to make sure. Also when she started referring to him as "drowned Redbeard" that must have set some alarm bells ringing. It might have indeed been too late by then to save him but clearly as the bones were in the well they didn't ever find him.
+1 on this. "Drowned Redbeard" must have been a pretty obvious giveaway...
Offline
I'm still puzzled if we are clearly shown the well as so close to the house in the episode...but anyway, it's not important to me.
Offline
TheOtherOne wrote:
Lis wrote:
Possibly, but you'd think that even if they didn't think she were capable you'd have a quick look everywhere just to make sure. Also when she started referring to him as "drowned Redbeard" that must have set some alarm bells ringing. It might have indeed been too late by then to save him but clearly as the bones were in the well they didn't ever find him.
+1 on this. "Drowned Redbeard" must have been a pretty obvious giveaway...
And they had the brilliant mother, who should be able to understand her five yrs old daughters song...
Offline
Mrs Holmes is very clever, but I don't know if she thinks in the same way as Sherlock does. And maybe everybody was too oblivious to see that a five year old child had set up a puzzle to find a dying a child - it seems to unlikely! I think the well being close to the house comes under suspension of disbelief - yes, the police would probably have looked there. And Victor would have been all over the papers, possibly still to this day - it would have been virtually impossible for Sherlock to miss hearing about him growing up or as an adult, no matter how quiet his family kept. And Sherlock's selective amnesia is unusual ... but I'm happy to accept all those things for the sake of the story!
Offline
Of course selective amnesia is unusual. But it exists. My therapist found out during the last weeks that there were a lot of details about things happening in my past which I had totally "forgotten" because I did not want to know them. It was scary.
Offline
athameg wrote:
Of course selective amnesia is unusual. But it exists. My therapist found out during the last weeks that there were a lot of details about things happening in my past which I had totally "forgotten" because I did not want to know them. It was scary.
I also learnt about something I completely erased from my memory at the age of 5. Nothing as traumatizing as shown on "Sherlock" But still a strange feeling. My mother was in hospital for a while when I was five and my father used to locker me up in my dark room at night. I still can't remember it but wondered for years why I am so afraid of darkness.
I even replaced part of it by something different in my memory. I turned part of my experience into a story I thought I had made up, with kind of reversed roles. I used to imagine that in my closet there were two miniature children locked up by a witch and I always made sure it was closed so they couldn't get out at night. :-/
Offline
Oh, I didn't say it didn't exist (it has happened to me too!)! And Sherlock was very young - some people's memories of their early childhood are very hazy anyway. But the circumstances seem particularly unusual - his involved wiping out all memory of having a sister, and even I think the house and so on, and that being backed up by everybody around him right into adulthood. It would have been made easier by everything being destroyed in the fire, presumably (photos, artwork, toys, clothes and so on - I suppose the family film must have been recorded just after Eurus left), so the family were able to carry on as if Eurus had never existed. I'm not sure in real life how common it would be to create a cover-up like that. Presumably his family just didn't want to see him distressed and grieving (for two losses, his sister and his friend), so kind of colluded with him when he forgot the losses.
Offline
It is not so implausible, I think. First, Sherlock was very young, and peoples's memories of their early childhood are often hazy, like Liberty said. Second, it was indeed easier to forget by everything (the house and so on) destroyed - thus no things who could remind him. And, most important: the parents tried to carry on as if Euros never had existed; perhaps ist was the only chance for them to survive without losing their mind. So they could have used it as an excuse before themselves: it will be better for Sherlock to forget about all this because it will save him from grieving the loss of his sister and his friend.
The same excuse would not work at Mycroft, because he was some years older at this time.
Offline
I think poor Mycoft had more than enough to carry on his young shoulders, particularly when he took over from Uncle Rudy.
Offline
Of course he had. It makes "caring is not an advantage" very understandable. If he had cared (or himself allowed to care) he would not have done it.
Offline
We do not know, where Mycroft was that time. Very likely - not home, but in the best boarding school instead. However, he could feel responsible, even for not being there, when he could be possibly helpful.
But I still wonder, how is possible to "loose" the well (it is not a portable hole!). Could exist sort of building in the garden, designed to mask it, like a arbour, or maybe forgotten cellar without visible connection with the house?
...I guess, family moved to another house soon, and then was easier to pretend, Eurus never existed.
Last edited by Naavy (January 24, 2017 6:06 pm)
Offline
athameg wrote:
Of course he had. It makes "caring is not an advantage" very understandable. If he had cared (or himself allowed to care) he would not have done it.
I don't think Mycroft's credo of "caring is not an advantage" means that he doesn't care. I think we have seen on many occasions that he actually cares a lot. Not caring is just his wishful thinking as caring hasn't caused him anything but pain.
Naavy wrote:
But I still wonder, how is possible to "loose" the well (it is not a portable hole!). Could exist sort of building in the garden, designed to mask it, like a arbour, or maybe forgotten cellar without visible connection with the house?
...I guess, family moved to another house soon, and then was easier to pretend, Eurus never existed.
My theory is that it is a very old well. Too old to be in any maps or blueprints. When Sherlock, Eurus and Mycroft were children, the well was very well hidden in a thick coppice or hedge and nobody but Eurus knew of its existance. And as the kids were constantly playing around the house, the dogs weren't able to find poor Victor because his smell was all over the place. And as the well had a metal cover, no one would hear his screams. Probably he wasn't even screaming for very long because of exhaustion.
And as Eurus burnt down their house soon afterwards, they moved away to a different place where it was much easier to forget all about Victor and Eurus. No one around the new place and school would even have known the two of them had ever existed and I don't think Victor's picture would have been in the national papers so often that Sherlock couldn't forget him. And as for the family never mentioning them, probably they thought it best for Sherlock to replace the very painful memories with something less painful.
Offline
It's only just dawned on me that this means another bond between Sherlock and John: they've both experienced the grief of losing a best friend...except of course Sherlock only pretended to be dead...though John has really lost his wife, of course.
Offline
Remember John lost Sherlock in TRF. Or thought he did.
Which is made more wierd considering TFP.
Offline
Yes, that's what I meant!