The Real Boscombe Valley
Sherlock Holmes describes to Watson en route to the murder: “Boscombe Valley is a country district not very far from Ross, in Herefordshire.” There is no such location by this name or description in England. Leslie S. Klinger in his The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes calls it ‘a disguised name’ and lists the possible true locations of the murder site as posted by other researchers. Obviously Watson changed the location of the crime.Through that insight, it is possible that names and other identifying characteristics of the crime would have just as easily been changed.
Adaptation
The events of this story were recently adapted into a promenade-style play for the 2007 Edinburgh Festival, now under the name of “Murder in the Gardens”. ln this version of the story, although most of the names and histories of the characters remain unaltered, the events of the mystery are relocated to Edinburgh, with the murder of McCarthy taking place in Princes Street Gardens and Holmes and Watson being called in while attending lectures on police methods in Edinburgh University. As well as this, the killer is, in the end, revealed to be Jane Turner's mother rather than her father, her father having died long before the events of the play, with James McCarthy cleared of the crime after Watson's diagnosis of the body confirms that it would have been impossible for the son to kill his father due to the angle and location of the wound on the back of the head.