it would create even more damning evidence, after Holmes had already examined the room where it was found. "He wished to improve what was already perfect", says Holmes, "and so he ruined everything." Background Conan Doyle lived in South Norwood from 1891 to 1894, and so was very familiar with the area. There is however a good deal of ambiguity as to specific settings within the story. The Norwood where Oldacre lives for instance is called "Lower Norwood", which until around 1885 would have been the term used for what is now West Norwood. The story however was penned some time after this date, and Oldacre is described as living in "Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that name". South Norwood itself might be a logical candidate for Lower Norwood, however the only discernible connection between the story and South Norwood is that Norwood Junction railway station is used by Oldacre. McFarlane spends the night in The Anerley Arms, a pub that still exists and which has a derelict upper floor (no more overnight guests). It is now one of the Samuel Smith's family of pubs and celebrates its connection with Sherlock Holmes. This is one of the few Holmes stories in which a fingerprint provides a good clue to the nature of the problem. The wax thumbprint reproduction idea was devised by, and bought from, Bertram Fletcher Robinson (1870–1907), who also helped plot The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901). At the start of the story, Watson mentions two unrecorded cases that Holmes investigated around the same time as this story: "The case of the papers of Ex-President Murillo", which Doyle later wrote as "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge". "The shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland", which loosely inspired a 1944 episode of the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the 1945 film Pursuit to Algiers, both starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes. A reference to Professor Moriarty prefaces the story. "'From the point of view of the criminal expert', said Mr Sherlock Holmes, 'London has become a singularly uninteresting city since the death of the late lamented Moriarty'". Moriarty is mentioned in two other 1903 stories: 'The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter' and 'The Adventure of the Empty House'. Publication history "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder" was first published in the US in Collier's on 31 October 1903, and in