Hey guys, it's my second NPE Proposal today. I hope to eventually propose all of the NPE villains from the original Sherlock Holmes stories, which I am very fond of, in this wiki. Let's get to it.
What's the Work?
"The Five Orange Pips" is my favourite Sherlock Holmes short story. A young man by the name of John Openshaw goes to visit Holmes and Watson. He is afraid for his life, as since four years ago, his family has received three mysterious threatening messages from a strange organisation known as "KKK" (When this story was first written, the KKK was fairly obscure in England). As we learn over the course of the story, John's uncle, Elias, was a racist and an important member of the KKK. When the organisation disbanded in 1869, Elias stole its important documents and memoranda that implicated many of its leading members and took them with him.
Since four years ago, the three remaining most passionate KKK members had been sending threats after long periods of waiting, trying to get the family to give up the documents so they would have no evidence left against them. The messages they sent were extremely cryptic and Elias himself refused to explain anything, so the rest of the family never really understood that they were in danger and why. Elias burned up (most of) the papers privately, but stubbornly refused to inform his enemies about this, probably because he knew he would be murdered for his betrayal either way, and just wanted to make them fight for it.
The KKK members soon drowned Elias in a shallow pool while making it resemble a suicide. Two years later, they sent a message to Elias' brother and John's father, asking him to put the papers on the sundial. He didn't really get the memo, so three days later they threw him down a mineshaft which cracked his skull open, making it look like an accident. Two more years later, they sent a message to John himself, the only remaining member of the family.
He went to Sherlock Holmes for help, who gave him advice, however it was already too late for him. That night, right after he visited Holmes, they kidnapped him and threw him into the river over Waterloo Bridge, causing him to drown in the storm. Enraged upon learning of John's death, Holmes completely tracked down the three KKK members, who were already on their way back to America, and arranged it so that they would be arrested as soon as they set foot on there for their crimes.
Somewhat anticlimactically though, their ship, the Lone Star, went overboard in a storm before it even reached America (this happens a lot in the original Holmes stories).
Who is He? What Has He Done?
Captain James Calhoun is obviously the ringleader of the three KKK members who killed off the Openshaw family. He was not only a fanatically devoted and determined member, but is also implied to be a high-ranking one, as the papers probably contained something that directly implicated him. He committed these murders to ensure the evidence of his and / or others' atrocities as part of the KKK were destroyed. Their modus operandi was to send five orange pips to whoever had outraged them, keeping him in immense fear, and then murder him so secretly that it wouldn't be traced back to them. And while Elias definitely deserved his death for being a high-ranking member of the KKK and probably overseeing a lot of vile crimes, his other family members were completely innocent and never even understood who was hunting them.
Heinous Standards
Now this is the complicated part. When it comes to secret evil societies, there are several in Holmes Canon, such as the Mormons (I'm not joking), the Red Circle and the Scowrers, all of which cause much more damage than the KKK. However these organisations were at the prime of their power when their respective stories took place, unlike the KKK, which is already on its last legs and so only commits three murders in the story (that aren't dependent on Fridge Horror and Offscreen Villainy). So I believe James Calhoun can still pass the Heinous Standards due to his lower resources and explicitly being mentioned to be a fanatically devoted member of the KKK, as well as the ringleader behind the three murders.
I was concerned that he fails the Heinous Standards to Giuseppe Gorgiano, an important member of the Red Circle who kills over fifty people for its cause, but he has much higher resources than James Calhoun due to having extreme physical strength as well as the Red Circle being a much more powerful organisation than the KKK, and having a lot of cronies by his side to do his bidding. So I think James still passes due to very low resources.
What Makes Him Close to Being Pure Evil?
He's literally a devoted member of the KKK who kills three people, two of which were completely innocent, all to ensure its crimes go unpunished. He has no redeeming qualities to speak of either.
What Prevents Him From Being Pure Evil?
I think it's pretty obvious — insufficient characterization. He never directly appears in the story and has no lines at all, and his personality is a complete blank slate. However, he has clear moral agency due to being a human, and a clear motive (to destroy all the evidence that may implicate the members of the KKK, at all costs), and according to this Wiki, that's enough to be an Insufficiently Characterized NPE. What crimes he personally may have committed as part of the KKK (while it was still active) are left vague, but he still barely passes the Heinous Standards without them, in my opinion. Even if he fails the Heinous Standards, it's only slightly, so he should still qualify.
Verdict
I would say an average Yes.