The sherlock holmes book

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE 199

marriages: in this case with a write a textbook that will “focus find they had torn down the bell-
husband who is a violent drunkard. the whole art of detection into rope, using it to tie her to a chair,
Conan Doyle had had firsthand one volume.” and gagged her. Sir Eustace
experience of alcoholism, for his must have heard noises, as he
own father, Charles, was a weak- They are met at the doorway burst into the room brandishing
willed alcoholic; he addresses the of Abbey Grange by Inspector his “favourite blackthorn cudgel.”
subject in several Holmes stories Hopkins, who fills them in briefly However, one of the burglars struck
as well as in other works, including on what has happened. The murder him down with a poker taken from
his short story “The Japanned Box”. victim turns out to be Sir Eustace the grate. He fell and never moved
Brackenstall, “one of the richest men again. She passed out once more,
Holmes is summoned in Kent,” who is thought to have and when she came to, saw that
“The Abbey Grange” begins early been killed when three burglars the men had picked up the silver
one bitterly cold winter morning attacked him with a poker. Hopkins from the sideboard. They were
in 1897. Holmes rouses Watson: assumes from the descriptions talking in whispers and each of
they have been summoned by given by Lady Brackenstall (and them had a glass of wine in their
Inspector Hopkins to Abbey verified by her maid) that the hand, poured from a nearby bottle.
Grange—a Palladian mansion in attackers are the notorious Randall When they finally left, she managed
Marsham, near Chislehurst, Kent— gang, who “did a job at Sydenham to free herself and raise the alarm.
for what looks like a promising a fortnight ago,” rashly claiming Holmes has misgivings
murder case. that they did it “beyond all doubt.” The case seems to be clear-cut,
and Holmes and Watson leave for
On the train, Holmes indulges The Brackenstall victims London, and yet Holmes is plagued
in some lighthearted criticism Hopkins then introduces them to by doubts. Why would the Randall
of Watson who, he claims, has a Lady Brackenstall—originally Mary gang risk carrying out another
fatal habit of looking at everything Fraser from Adelaide, Australia. burglary in the same area again ❯❯
with the eyes of a sensationalist She is blonde, blue-eyed, and
storyteller, skating over the finer beautiful. “Seldom have I seen Murdered with a single blow from
points. Watson’s grumpy riposte so graceful a figure, so womanly a fire poker, Sir Eustace Brackenstall—
is that Holmes should try writing a presence, and so beautiful a face,” seen here in an illustration from The
up his cases himself. Holmes gushes Watson. She has a wound Strand Magazine—is not the helpless
assures his companion that he over one eye, along with two victim that he first appears.
intends to do so in his old age. “vivid red spots” on one of her
He claims that he will one day arms, which, she tells Holmes, have
nothing to do with the events of
A change had come the previous evening. However, the
over Holmes’s manner. nature of these marks soon becomes
He had lost his listless clear when she explains that her
expression, and again husband of about a year was a
“confirmed drunkard” who beat her
I saw an alert light up regularly and—we later learn—
of interest in his once doused her dog in gasoline
keen, deep-set eyes. and set it on fire. She has clearly
been trapped in an abusive and
Dr. Watson desperately unhappy relationship.

She proceeds to tell her version
of the events that occurred the
previous evening. Around bedtime,
on finding the dining-room window
open, she was confronted by three
burglars, who punched her in the
eye and threw her to the ground,
knocking her out. She awoke to

200 A LEGEND RETURNS

Three glasses
show signs of use,

but two do not
contain sediment.

The three glasses Only the third
of wine found near the glass contains sediment,
victim are the most crucial proving that the dregs from the
evidence of all because others were poured into it to
they prove to Holmes that suggest a third drinker
the crime scene has been
faked. The presence of was present.
beeswing (sediment) in
only one glass arouses his
suspicions and leads him
to conclude that only two
people drank the wine.

so soon? Why murder Sir Eustace minute and laborious investigations” has suffered at the hands of her
rather than simply overpower him, for which he is famous. Two hours husband, Holmes challenges
as the three of them could easily later, he concludes that someone had her gently to tell him the truth.
have done? Why steal so little? not torn down the bell-rope, which However, she maintains her story.
Why hit Lady Brackenstall to stop would have rung the bell and alerted
her screaming, as she would only the servants, but instead climbed On leaving the Grange with
scream more? And why did only onto the mantelpiece and cut it Watson, Holmes stares at an
one of the three wine glasses cleanly with a knife. To do so, they unfrozen pond and scribbles a note
contain sediment? Holmes had to be exceptionally tall—taller for Hopkins, then suggests they visit
suspects that only two people even than Holmes. And, from a the London shipping office of the
drank the wine, but then poured bloodstain found on the chair where Adelaide–Southampton line. From
the dregs into a third glass to give Lady Brackenstall was tied, he the real killer’s obvious agility,
the impression three people had deduces that she was placed and the knots used to tie up Lady
shared it. He decides to return there after her husband’s death. Brackenstall, Holmes has surmised
and investigate further. that the culprit is a sailor, and most
Establishing the truth likely someone she met when she
Holmes investigates Lady Brackenstall has told a pack sailed to England. Sure enough,
Holmes locks himself in the dining of lies, but after hearing from her Holmes ascertains that one of the
room and, in the words of Watson, austere but devoted maid Theresa ship’s officers, Jack Croker, who lives
devotes himself “to one of those the full extent of the abuse she in Sydenham, has not made the
return passage. Hopkins, meanwhile,

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE 201

learns that the Randall gang has to make it look as though a burglary Inequality of divorce
been arrested in New York, and had occurred, Croker departed,
therefore could not have committed feeling he had done “a real good It was once notoriously
the Abbey Grange “burglary.” night’s work.” difficult for women in England
Guided by Holmes’s note, he also to obtain a divorce, and
finds the “stolen” silver at the bottom Holmes plays judge Lady Brackenstall—trapped
of the pond. Confused as to why Satisfied with Croker’s account, in a marriage to an abusive
the thieves had thrown away their Holmes sympathizes with his drunk—speaks with passion
haul, he does not take the hint when actions and says he will delay about the “monstrous laws”
Holmes suggests it was put there telling Hopkins for 24 hours so that prohibit her escape.
“for a blind” to mislead people. that he can flee. Croker is outraged,
and swears that he would never Before the mid-19th
The case is resolved dream of leaving Lady Brackenstall century, a full divorce was
Summoned by Holmes, Croker to be arrested as an accomplice. obtainable only through a
arrives at 221B Baker Street, where Delighted by this response, Holmes Private Act of Parliament.
he is persuaded to tell the truth. elects himself judge, and Watson In 1857, the Matrimonial
“Be frank with me, and we may jury. They duly pronounce him Causes Act transferred
do some good. Play tricks with me, “not guilty,” and Holmes tells divorce proceedings from
and I’ll crush you,” Holmes tells him. Croker to wait a year before Parliament to a civil court,
claiming his beloved. but even then the grounds for
Tall, handsome, blond, blue-eyed, divorce remained limited, and
and young, Croker stands for For Holmes, Captain Croker’s in practice it merely enshrined
everything Sir Eustace did not: killing of a wife-beating tyrant is the double standard that
“as fine a specimen of manhood” a case of justifiable homicide. His existed between men and
as ever stood before them, reckons feelings of protectiveness toward women. From 1857 to 1922,
Watson. He is chivalrous, too, Lady Brackenstall are reinforced by adultery was considered
explaining that he fell in love with his admiration for Croker’s manly the sole ground for divorce.
Lady Brackenstall on board the ship and unflinching loyalty. He has However, a husband’s adultery
but, being a mere sailor, could only given Hopkins every chance to had to be accompanied by one
admire her from afar, and be happy solve the case, and has insufficient or more other transgressions:
for her when she later made a faith that the law would acquit incest, cruelty, bigamy,
“favourable” marriage. However, Croker. In this case, Holmes truly sodomy, or desertion. This
a chance encounter with the maid takes the law into his own hands. ■ did not apply to a husband
Theresa revealed the horrible truth who petitioned for divorce
about Lady Brackenstall’s husband. I should not sit here because of his wife’s adultery.
He resolved to see her again and in smoking with you if I thought Lady Brackenstall, therefore,
due course she fell in love with him. confronted by great cruelty
that you were a common but evidently not adultery,
On the fateful night, the lovers criminal, you may be sure of was completely trapped.
were surprised by Sir Eustace, who that. Be frank with me and we
rushed into the room, called his wife may do some good. Play tricks
“the vilest name that a man could with me, and I’ll crush you.
use to a woman,” and struck her
with his cudgel. This is the crux Sherlock Holmes
of the story—the moment when
Sir Eustace transgressed all moral
boundaries. Croker grabbed the
poker and struck him down, then
gave Lady Brackenstall some wine
to relieve her shock and had some
himself. Croker and Theresa then
acted swiftly to fake the scene.
After dumping the silver in the pond

202 IN CONTEXT

IT IS A CAPITAL TYPE
MISTAKE TO THEORIZE Short story
IN ADVANCE OF
THE FACTS FIRST PUBLICATION
UK: December 1904
THE ADVENTURE OF THE US: January 1905
SECOND STAIN (1904)
COLLECTION
The Return of Sherlock
Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS
Lord Bellinger
British Prime Minister.

Right Honourable
Trelawney Hope Secretary
for European Affairs.

Lady Hilda Trelawney
Hope Wife of the Right
Honourable Trelawney Hope.

Eduardo Lucas Spy (also
known as Henri Fournaye).

Madame Fournaye
Secret Parisian wife of Lucas.

John Mitton Lucas’s valet.

Inspector Lestrade
Scotland Yard inspector.

Constable MacPherson
Guard of Lucas’s house.

T his story is the final case
in The Return of Sherlock
Holmes. Within the canon,
Watson is both the chronicler and
“publisher” of Holmes’s cases, but
immediately he makes excuses for
publishing it, claiming that he had
made a “promise” to his readers—
even though there is no trace of
such a contract in any story. To
Holmes, now retired in Sussex,
“notoriety has become hateful” and
he clearly does not want any more
stories published. But this might be

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN 203

because he no longer requires the The situation is A document has gone missing
advertising that Watson’s stories desperate, but from Trelawney Hope’s home in
once usefully provided. In any case, not hopeless. Whitehall Terrace, Westminster—
it is hard to disagree with Watson’s Sherlock Holmes and its rediscovery is vital to
point that the collection surely national security. The paper
must end with “the most important The British Prime Minister in has disappeared from a locked
international case which he has this story, “the illustrious Lord dispatch-box in Trelawney Hope’s
ever been called upon to handle”. Bellinger,” bears clear similarities bedroom, and he claims it had
to the former real-life Liberal prime definitely been there the previous
Historical context minister William Gladstone, who evening, as he had seen it before
Owing to the importance of the left office in March 1894. Certainly, dinner, and that he and his wife
case, Watson insists on being Watson’s descriptions and Sidney would certainly have known had
“somewhat vague in certain details.” Paget’s illustrations published in someone entered their room and
For instance, he never specifies in The Strand Magazine strongly taken it in the middle of the night.
which year the story is set. There resemble Gladstone. Only two servants had access to
are references to a “Second Stain” in the room: his valet and his wife’s
“The Naval Treaty” (pp.138–41) and Distinguished visitors maid, but they are both trusted
“The Yellow Face” (pp.112–13) but At the start of the story, the arrival employees and would not have
these don’t help to date the story, of both the Prime Minister and his known that there was anything
as they seem to allude to a different Secretary for European Affairs, the valuable in the box. Only the
case entirely. However, the political Right Honourable Trelawney Hope, Cabinet, along with two or three
situation described in this story, in provide a certain gravitas to the departmental officials, knew
which Britain holds the balance of “humble room in Baker Street.” about the letter, and even then
power between a “double league” only since the previous day.
of European alliances, suggests that
the story must be set in the early The police have not been told,
1890s: in 1892, Russia and France for fear of the document’s contents
joined forces as a counterweight to being made public, and Bellinger
the “Triple Alliance” of Germany, and Trelawney Hope are reluctant
Italy, and Austria-Hungary (see to give Holmes any real details.
p.139). And if Holmes’s Great Hiatus Yet Holmes declares that unless he
(see p.164–65) is factored in, then the knows something of the document’s
date is probably 1894 at the earliest. contents, he is unable to help, and
that any further discussion ❯❯

European politics tensions that would erupt into
the Boer War in 1899. Although
The unnamed hot-headed “foreign this incident occurred after the
potentate” who wrote the missing story’s suspected setting, it was
letter might well have been based well timed for its publication—
on Kaiser Wilhelm II (pictured), by 1904 there were growing
who had ruled Germany since concerns about Germany’s
1888. In 1895, this belligerent burgeoning militarism. The
figure wrote a letter to South delicate balance of European
African president Paul Kruger, alliances—Russia, France,
offering his congratulations on the and Britain against the “Triple
recent defeat of a raid supported Alliance” of Germany, Italy,
by British interests (thus closely and Austria-Hungary—was
mirroring the “colonial” subject becoming increasingly tense,
matter of the letter in the story). and would, within just ten
This was a rash thing to do, years, result in one of the
risking the inflammation of deadliest wars in history.

204 A LEGEND RETURNS would be a waste of time. In such with it—one of many “international
eminent company, this might seem spies and secret agents” with
Lady Hilda rather abrupt, but it is easy to see whom Holmes is familiar.
his logic—how can he be expected
It is never revealed if the tale’s to grasp his beloved “technical Hot off the press
second letter, which Lucas details” without a little information? When the two grandees depart,
uses to try to blackmail Lady The two statesmen finally agree. Holmes smokes a characteristically
Hilda (pictured, played by meditative pipe and gives the case
Patricia Hodge), refers to a An inflammatory letter some thought. Considering that the
relationship between them, It turns out that the document is letter does not yet appear to have
or to some other “impulsive” a provocative letter written by a been passed on, it then occurs to
youthful liaison. What is clear hot-headed foreign leader, and Holmes that the spy or secret agent
is that Lady Hilda is the very containing material certain to who has stolen it might well be
picture of feminine grace and agitate international relations. waiting for offers of money to come
Victorian respectability. Her As Bellinger tells Holmes, “I do not in, from Britain and the letter-
anguish at having potentially hesitate to say that within a week writer’s country, before handing
brought about the undoing of the publication of that letter this it over to the highest bidder. He
of her husband’s career, in a country would be involved in a states that there are only three
vain and desperate attempt to great war.” Holmes writes a name spies who would “be capable of
ward off the slightest blemish on a slip of paper—it is confirmed playing so bold a game”: Oberstein
on her dignity, proves this by the Premier as being that of the and La Rothière—both of whom
eloquently, while at the same sender, yet the reader remains none reappear in the 1908 tale “The
time demonstrating the social the wiser. This secrecy is clearly Adventure of the Bruce-Partington
pressure on ladies of her rank directed more at the reader than Plans” (pp.230–33)—and the
to have flawless reputations. at potential eavesdroppers and is a popular socialite Eduardo Lucas.
Lady Hilda also shows great masterful piece of drama on Conan
fortitude and resolve when Doyle’s part, keeping his readers Meanwhile, Watson reads in the
standing up to Holmes’s tantalized. Bellinger states that papers about a “sensational” crime
interrogations. As Watson publication of the letter would not committed the previous evening.
notes, she was indeed be in the interests of the “foreign The story reports the death of the
“grandly defiant” and “her potentate” who first wrote it, but in aforementioned Eduardo Lucas
courage was admirable.” the interests of his enemies. If the at his house in Godolphin Street,
letter’s contents became public, it just around the corner from the
In contrast, Madame would encourage a war between European Secretary’s house in
Fournaye is the embodiment Britain and the potentate’s own Westminster. Holmes is amazed
of a hysterical woman. When country, which would in turn create at the coincidence, and it forms a
she finds Lady Hilda with a power shift and thus assure the
her husband, she flies into a supremacy of the country that had It was with a sense of
murderous rage, throwing stolen the letter (see box, p.203). exultation that I realized
Lady Hilda’s composure and
self-control into stark relief. Holmes reasons that the letter how completely I had
must have been stolen between astonished him.
7:30pm, when Trelawney Hope was Dr. Watson
at dinner, and 11:30pm, when his
wife returned from the theater and
they went up to bed. If nobody
could have entered the second-floor
room from outside, that leaves only
the maid or the valet, in spite of
their reliability. And from there, it
was most likely taken to someone
who might know what best to do

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN 205

Holmes’s amazement on learning
of Lucas’s murder is captured in this
Strand illustration, as he snatches
the paper from Watson’s hands.

productive development in his Slow progress Paris and London. Madame
deductions: Lucas was murdered Over the next few days, Holmes is Fournaye has a history of violent
between 10pm, when the valet restless, and it seems that things attacks of jealousy, and although it
went out, and 11:45pm, when a are not going well with the case. is not clear what she was doing the
passing policeman found him From the papers, Watson learns night of Lucas’s murder, she was
stabbed in the heart with a dagger that no suspects were apprehended seen behaving wildly at Charing
taken from his own mantelpiece. for Lucas’s murder except his valet Cross the following morning. With
John Mitton, who was promptly his characteristic eye for the case
Shortly afterward, the elegant released because of insufficient above all else, Holmes writes the
Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope arrives evidence against him. There was incident off as “a trivial episode.”
at Baker Street, anxious to find out no apparent motive for the murder, In the meantime, he ruminates that
about the content and nature of the and none of Lucas’s many valuable during the days since the letter’s
document that her husband has possessions had been removed. loss there has been no related
lost. Holmes refuses to divulge any news, and points out that the only
details, but does agree that the loss However, on the fourth day, a important thing that has happened
of the document may have “terrible telegram from Paris appears in the “is that nothing has happened.”
public consequences,” and could news—a Frenchwoman (of Creole This is both an expression of
endanger her husband’s political extraction) who returned from his frustration and a real insight,
career unless it is found. When London on Tuesday was declared echoing the situation in “The Naval
Lady Hilda withdraws, Holmes insane, and there is evidence to Treaty”: it is likely that the letter
expresses his famous bafflement at suggest she was connected with has not yet reached dangerous
the “inscrutable” nature of women. the crime at Westminster. It then hands, or something catastrophic
However, he does remark on the transpires that her husband, Henri would have occurred by now.
fact that she clearly sat with the Fournaye, was in fact the exact
light behind her, in order that they same man as Eduardo Lucas, who A mysterious stain
could not see her expressions. had been leading a double life in At Godolphin Street, Inspector
Lestrade is convinced that the
Paris police are right in suspecting
Madame Fournaye. However,
he then mysteriously summons ❯❯

Only one important thing
has happened in the last
three days, and that is that
nothing has happened.

Sherlock Holmes

206 A LEGEND RETURNS

that Lestrade’s guarding officer,
Constable MacPherson, had indeed
let in a visitor—a “very respectable,
well-spoken young woman”—on
the previous evening.

Holmes (Jeremy Brett), Watson around, there is an opportunity for The penultimate act
(Edward Hardwicke) and Lestrade some dry wit from the Scotland Yard When Lestrade announces to
(Colin Jeavons) examine the rug in the inspector, who remarks, “The official the shamed constable, “It’s lucky
1986 ITV episode of “The Second Stain.” police don’t need you, Mr. Holmes, for you, my man, that nothing is
to tell them that the carpet must missing, or you would find yourself
Holmes back to the crime scene. have been turned round.” Still, he in Queer Street,” there is a deep
As it turns out, the police, convinced does want Holmes to explain who dramatic irony, since the reader,
that their investigation is as good did it and why. Holmes suggests together with Holmes and Watson,
as over, had started clearing up the that Lestrade interrogates the officer knows with great certainty that
crime scene that morning, only to who has been guarding the house, something is indeed “missing”
find something mysterious. The but while the inspector is busy in from the room, and that this
carpet, which had been stained the other room, Holmes and Watson disappearance is crucial to the
with Lucas’s blood at one corner, quickly search under the carpet for case. It is also worth noting Conan
must have been moved shortly after possible secret floor cavities, and Doyle’s reference to “Queer Street”
he was murdered, as the location of discover a hinged compartment— here—a colloquial expression that
the stain on the wooden floor does which, disappointingly, is empty. refers to Carey Street, where the
not correspond with the one on the Just as Lestrade returns, Holmes bankruptcy courts were once
carpet. When Holmes says it is clear faultlessly resumes his former located. Charles Dickens had used
that the carpet has been turned “languid,” bored posture. It turns out the expression to refer specifically
to bankruptcy in Our Mutual Friend
(1864), but its wider meaning of
being in financial difficulty had
already been employed in literature
by Conan Doyle’s friend Robert
Louis Stevenson, in his novel
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde (1886), when the upright Mr.
Enfield remarks, “the more it looks
like Queer Street, the less I ask.”

The reader soon realizes that the
“handsome” visiting woman was
unquestionably Lady Hilda. And
when Holmes holds up something
to the stunned constable—which
turns out to be Lady Hilda’s face cut
out of a portrait—Holmes declares,
“Come, friend Watson, the curtain
rings up for the last act.”

Dramatic timing
Holmes and Watson head straight
to Trelawney Hope’s residence,
where Holmes asks Lady Hilda to
hand over the letter, reassuring her
that her husband need not know of

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN 207

her involvement in the affair. After out between the jealous, knife- I would not bring one shadow
listening to Lady Hilda’s various wielding Madame Fournaye and on his life, and this I know
denials, Holmes threatens to inform Lucas. Lady Hilda fled the scene. would break his noble heart.
her husband, who will be home in It was not until the next morning Lady Hilda
15 minutes. Holmes plays a waiting that Lady Hilda learned of Lucas’s
game before Lady Hilda ultimately murder, and having learned from brilliance allows him to get away
relents; she produces “a long, blue Holmes the serious implications of with the dramatic “re-appearing
envelope” that contains the letter, the document’s falling into the act” of the letter, his silence also
then proceeds to tell her story. wrong hands, she then returned in means that the reader never finds
secret to Lucas’s house to retrieve out the identity of Lucas’s Cabinet
Lucas had somehow come into the letter from its hiding place. informant. More importantly, Lord
the possession of a compromising Bellinger is left without so much as
letter that Lady Hilda had written When Trelawney Hope and an inkling that such a spy exists.
before her marriage to Trelawney Lord Bellinger burst in, Holmes
Hope. He was using it to blackmail announces that he is convinced Holmes’s final moves in this
her, saying he would show it to her that the letter was not taken at case are, most likely, a play on
husband unless she was prepared all but surreptitiously returned Edgar Allan Poe’s 1844 tale “The
to exchange it for the document to the dispatch-box. Bellinger Purloined Letter,” in which the loss
that was hidden in the dispatch- is stunned to find it where Holmes of a vitally important note leaves
box. Lucas had heard about the suggests, and asks how the letter the Paris police utterly flummoxed,
letter through a spy in the Cabinet, managed to be returned. To this before Poe’s famous detective
and Lady Hilda had agreed to the Holmes roguishly remarks, “We (the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin)
deal in order to protect her dignity. also have our diplomatic secrets.” reveals that it had been in the
thief’s letter-rack the whole time.
That fateful Monday night, A nod to Dupin It is fitting that here, in a case
while Lucas and Lady Hilda were Despite Holmes having solved the purporting to be the last ever—
exchanging letters, they had been crime while preserving the dignity and which concludes The Return
surprised by the sudden arrival and reputation of Lady Hilda, there of Sherlock Holmes—Conan Doyle
of Madame Fournaye, and Lucas is a pronounced loose end here: should allude not only to one of
had quickly thrust the political although Holmes’s own reputation Holmes’s key sources, Dupin, but
letter into a hiding place beneath for demonstrations of unorthodox specifically to the last of the three
the carpet. A violent scuffle broke tales in which Dupin appears. And
the fact that this intricate story
Social Lucas acquired the International should turn so neatly on suggestion
scandal letter and used it to scandal as well as deception—the letter’s
blackmail Lady importance misleading both the
Hilda by threatening ministers and the reader into
to make it public believing that it must have traveled
much farther afield than it really
knowledge. did—gives good justification for
why Conan Doyle named it as
Lady Hilda’s secret Lady Hilda was A letter of highest one of his favorite cases. ■
and compromising forced to exchange political importance
letter threatens her has disappeared, and
reputation as well her letter for the risks international
as her marriage, if highly sensitive scandal, political
it were made public. political document ruin, and even war.
in her husband’s
dispatch-box.

HOLMES
A BOW

TAKES

210 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

Conan Doyle’s Conan Doyle Sidney Paget, Edward VII
Sir Nigel stories publishes “The The Strand Magazine dies at age 68,
are serialized in The Case of Mr. George and George V
Strand Magazine. Edalji”—which leads illustrator of becomes king.
to the real-life Sherlock Holmes,
subject’s exoneration
from the charge of dies at age 47.
cattle-maiming.

DEC 1905 1907 JAN 1908 MAY 1910

JUL 1906 SEP 1907 SEP 1908 1912

Event in Conan Doyle’s Conan Doyle marries The stories later Conan Doyle
the lives first wife, Louise his “close friend,” collected in His publishes his
of Holmes (“Touie”), dies from Jean Leckie. Last Bow start science fiction
and Watson to appear in The novel The Lost
tuberculosis. Strand Magazine. World (p.345).

IN THIS CHAPTER I n the preface to the 1917 which are key to this story, would
collection His Last Bow, Watson not play a serious part in warfare
NOVEL describes Holmes’s retirement until the start of World War II, in
The Valley of Fear, 1915 in England’s South Downs, and yet 1939. The story “His Last Bow”
the collection’s final, eponymous in which Holmes outsmarts the
COLLECTION tale has him returning to action as German spy Von Bork, is set two
His Last Bow, 1917 a secret agent on the eve of World days before Britain declared war on
Wisteria Lodge War I. Chronologically, that story is Germany, after the latter’s invasion
The Red Circle also Holmes’s final outing anywhere of Belgium, and it is imbued with
The Bruce-Partington Plans in the canon—the other stories in pathos and foreboding.
The Dying Detective His Last Bow are set much earlier,
The Disappearance of Lady while the action in The Valley of Belgium was elsewhere in
Fear, the final novel, occurs in 1888. Conan Doyle’s thoughts, too. In
Frances Carfax 1909, influenced by the work of his
The Devil’s Foot In the national interest friend Roger Casement, a human
His Last Bow The tension in the tales of His rights activist, he wrote against
Last Bow bears the imprint of the King Leopold II’s exploitation of
impending trauma of World War I. Africa in The Crime of the Congo;
“The Bruce-Partington Plans”—a his later chronicles of the Western
gripping tale of espionage set in Front would be focused on the
1895, featuring Holmes’s brother Belgian battlefields.
Mycroft—is an early example of the
“spy thriller” genre. Submarines, Conan Doyle’s shift to support
Irish Home Rule in late 1911 may
also have been influenced by

Holmes makes his Conan Doyle Conan Doyle’s friend INTRODUCTION 211
last chronological publishes The Valley Roger Casement
appearance in the of Fear (pp.212–21). The short story
canon (see “His Last is executed “His Last Bow”
for treason. (pp.246–47) appears
Bow,” pp.246–47)
in The Strand
Magazine.

AUG 1914 1915 AUG 1916 SEP 1917
SEP 1914
APR 1916 1917 OCT 1917

The Valley of Fear Conan Doyle’s The Conan Doyle Conan Doyle
starts appearing in British Campaign publishes accounts publishes the
serialization in The of the 1916 battles, collection His
Strand Magazine. in France and including the Battle
Flanders 1914 Last Bow.
appears in The of the Somme.
Strand Magazine.

Casement, who was executed for politically engaged—he made Circle” contains a second reference
treason in 1917. Despite the author’s a second run for Parliament in to the Mafia (the first was in 1904’s
family roots, Ireland itself never 1906 and published the articles “The Six Napoleons”). And, like The
features in the canon. Holmes “The Case of Mr. George Edalji” Valley of Fear, the story features an
impersonates a specifically Irish- and “The Case of Oscar Slater,” undercover man from the real-life
American character in “His Last interventions on behalf of two Pinkerton Detective Agency, the
Bow,” however, and The Valley of wrongfully convicted men of first US detective organization,
Fear features the “Scowrers,” a foreign origin whose cases he had which had been founded in 1850.
secret criminal society based on investigated. In taking up their
the notorious “Molly Maguires,” an causes, Conan Doyle rose nobly Elsewhere in the collection,
Irish-American labor organization above the racial prejudice of his Watson has to go it alone in Europe
thought to have been responsible day. On the other hand, Holmes in “The Disappearance of Lady
for terrorist acts in the coalfields of stories such as “Wisteria Lodge” Frances Carfax,” before Holmes
Pennsylvania and West Virginia. feature blatant ethnic stereotyping, reveals himself in the guise of a
while the deadly poison in “The French laborer. In this story, the
Real-life detection Devil’s Foot” associated Africa detective is fairly cynical about
Conan Doyle considered his 1905– with horror, despair, and death. the doctor’s detection skills, and
1906 “Sir Nigel” series, set during in “The Dying Detective” he fools
the Hundred Years’ War of the A new age of crime his friend into thinking that he
14th–15th century, to be his “high- The advent of a harder, more violent has contracted a fatal disease.
water mark in literature.” Most of era, complete with organized crime Yet when Holmes has a real brush
Conan Doyle’s work at this time gangs, is reflected in the eight with death, in “The Devil’s Foot,”
was far more contemporary and stories of His Last Bow. “The Red it is Watson’s quick-witted
intervention that saves the day. ■

A GREAT BRAIN

AND A HUGE ORGANIZATION
HAVE BEEN TURNED TO THE

EXTINCTION

OF ONE MAN

THE VALLEY OF FEAR (1915)



214 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

IN CONTEXT Chapter 1 Chapter 3 Chapter 5
Holmes and Watson The Sussex police Mrs. Douglas
TYPE begin to investigate and Cecil Barker
Novel decipher a coded the murder and then tell Holmes and
message from decide to call in MacDonald their
FIRST PUBLICATION Scotland Yard and version of events.
UK: The Strand Magazine, Fred Porlock, an agent Sherlock Holmes.
September 1914 of Moriarty. It reveals

NOVEL PUBLICATION that a man called
George H. Doran, Douglas is in danger.
February 1915
PART 1
CHARACTERS
John “Jack” Douglas Chapter 2 Chapter 4 Chapter 6
Fearless, intelligent, and Inspector MacDonald Holmes discovers Holmes is sure
good-natured Irish-American arrives at 221B Baker
living in Sussex. The entire Street and announces that Douglas is Barker and
plot hangs on his backstory that John Douglas has somehow linked Mrs. Douglas have
and multiple identities. to America, and lied, and stresses
been murdered. He
Ivy Douglas John’s beautiful, is not convinced that finds a single the importance
young second wife. Moriarty is involved. dumbbell in of the missing

Inspector Alec MacDonald his room. dumbbell.
Young Scottish Scotland
Yard detective. H olmes receives a coded wedding ring is missing, and a
message from an informer card marked “V. V. 341” is beside
Fred Porlock Member of working within Professor the body. A houseguest, Cecil
Moriarty’s network, and Moriarty’s criminal network, about Barker, points out a bloody footprint,
informer for Holmes. a man called Douglas who is indicating that the killer escaped
in imminent danger. Inspector through the window and swam
Cecil James Barker House- MacDonald of Scotland Yard then across the moat. Barker suspects the
guest and wealthy English calls: John Douglas, an American, involvement of a secret society from
friend of John Douglas. has been murdered at his home, Douglas’s past—the dead man had
Birlstone Manor, in Sussex. Holmes told his wife Ivy, “I have been in the
Ted Baldwin Member of suggests that Moriarty is involved, Valley of Fear. I am not out of it yet.”
the Scowrers who tries to but the inspector is not convinced.
assassinate Douglas. Holmes finds a dumbbell at the
Holmes, Watson, and MacDonald crime scene, noting that they come
Professor James Moriarty travel to Douglas’s home. The victim in pairs. He then matches Barker’s
Holmes’s unseen archenemy, has been shot in the face with a slipper to the bloody footprint.
in cahoots with the Scowrers. sawn-off shotgun. Curiously, his Convinced that both Barker and

Ettie Shafter John’s
first wife, who he married
in Pennsylvania.

THE VALLEY OF FEAR 215

Chapter 7 Chapter 2 Chapter 4 Chapter 6 Epilogue
Barker is trapped McMurdo McMurdo and other McMurdo tells Holmes learns
into revealing the finds work as a Scowrers are on trial his fellow Scowrers that Douglas/
truth about the bookkeeper, and for the beating, but that a Pinkerton McMurdo/Edwards
murder. Douglas makes himself several “witnesses” agent called Birdy has been lost
appears and tells known to the leader provide alibis for them, Edwards is after overboard a ship,
of a gang called and they are set free. them, and volunteers murdered by agents
his story. the “Scowrers.” to trap the man. of Moriarty working
with the Scowrers.

PART 2

Chapter 1 Chapter 3 Chapter 5 Chapter 7
Twenty years earlier, McMurdo is initiated into McMurdo witnesses The trap set by McMurdo
John McMurdo travels the Scowrers and helps them the gang members
by train from Chicago beat up a newspaper editor. is actually for the
to Vermissa Valley, murder a mine Scowrers, and McMurdo
manager.
Pennsylvania, and reveals himself to be
finds lodgings. Birdy Edwards.

Ivy Douglas are lying, Holmes sets a Douglas hands Watson a written Moriarty was commissioned by
trap, telling Barker the moat will testimony. His real name is Birdy Edward’s enemies to kill him. At
be drained in the morning. Hiding Edwards and, 20 years ago, he Holmes’s urging, Edwards and Ivy
nearby that night, Holmes, Watson, had been a private detective with board a ship for South Africa, but
and MacDonald witness Barker the famous American agency, off St. Helena (where Napoleon was
fishing a bundle from the moat. Pinkerton’s. Under the name of exiled) Edwards is lost overboard.
John McMurdo, he had infiltrated A note arrives for Holmes, which
Caught in the act, Barker admits Lodge 341 of a secret society of simply reads, “Dear me!”—a
that the dead man was actually murderers, the “Scowrers,” a mocking use of one of Holmes’s
Douglas’s would-be assassin, shot corrupt faction of Freemasonry favorite expressions, in this and
in a struggle. With his features in “the Vermissa Valley”—“V. V.”, other stories. “There is a master
obliterated, they dressed him in the Valley of Fear—in Pennsylvania. hand here,” says Holmes. “…You
Douglas’s clothes, and threw his Edwards brought the gang to can tell an old master by the sweep
clothes in the moat, weighed down justice, but some of its members of his brush. I can tell a Moriarty
by the missing dumbbell. Holmes escaped, including the dead man, an when I see one.” The Napoleon of
then dramatically calls Douglas old rival of his named Ted Baldwin. crime has indeed struck. ■
forth from a hidden room.

216 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

T he fourth and final Sherlock that crime in motion. The Valley of In the US Civil War Pinkerton agents
Holmes novel may be a Fear has familiar themes too: namely like these were employed as Abraham
suitably resounding end to a dark past abroad finally catching Lincoln’s bodyguards. By the time of
the great detective’s exploits in the up with someone, and the deeds The Valley of Fear they were often
longer story form, but it also bears of an organized crime network in being used as strike-breakers.
the signs of Conan Doyle’s famous America. Conan Doyle had explored
disenchantment with his creation. both of these ideas previously in teases the doctor. The novel opens
While Holmes aficionados may be several of his short stories, such as with the two men in conversation:
disappointed that their hero is “The Five Orange Pips” (pp.74–9), “I am inclined to think—” begins
absent for half the narrative, the and “The Adventure of the Red Watson; “I should do so,” interrupts
adventure is nonetheless an Circle” (pp.226–29). Such a deep Holmes, pointing out the doctor’s
intriguing one, which cleverly fascination with organized crime language has inadvertently implied
channels real-life events in the US in America was uncharacteristic of that he wasn’t thinking at all.
into a typically baffling English British writers of this period, apart
country house murder mystery. from Edgar Wallace (1875–1932), The detective is in his element
who, unlike Conan Doyle, was no when he receives a coded message
Just like The Hound of the stranger to the far side of the from a criminal informer, Fred
Baskervilles (pp.152–61) a decade Atlantic himself. Porlock. He identifies Porlock as
earlier, The Valley of Fear also an agent of his greatest adversary,
appeared in monthly instalments Holmes in fine form Professor Moriarty, and compares
in The Strand Magazine. These The opening sections, dealing with the two men for Watson’s benefit:
prompted the usual enthusiastic Holmes’s investigation and solving “Picture to yourself the pilot-fish
response from Holmes fans, but of the murder, are as adroitly put with the shark, the jackal with the
ultimately the response to the novel together as anything in the canon, lion—anything that is insignificant
was not the unqualified success and as complicated yet satisfying in companionship with what is
that The Hound of the Baskervilles as ever. From the very start, Conan formidable.” He is clearly looking
had been. Even its admirers would Doyle adopts a more humorous tone forward to the challenge ahead as
be unlikely to disagree that The than usual, as Holmes frequently he describes his archenemy in
Valley of Fear is a book of two halves: admiring tones: “The greatest
a slightly uneasy marriage of a
detective puzzle and an espionage
adventure. As in A Study in Scarlet
(pp.36–45) and The Sign of Four
(pp.46–55), the first section of the
book details a crime, and the second
relates the circumstances that set

We think in the CID that
you have a wee bit of a bee

in your bonnet over
this Professor.

Inspector MacDonald

THE VALLEY OF FEAR 217

schemer of all time... the controlling Deciphering the coded message
brain of the underworld.” As
Watson puts it, after several dull 534 C2 13 127 36 31 Watson asks what can
weeks, “here, at last, there was a 4 17 21 41 be done with a cipher
fitting object for those remarkable message without the
powers which, like all special gifts, DOUGLA5S31709 293 cipher, and Holmes turns
become irksome to their owner this absence into a clue.
when they are not in use.” BIRLSTONE As the author did not include
the cipher (the volume to
The teasing reveal 26 BIRLSTONE which the message refers)
The highlight of any Holmes story— 9 127 171 he surely anticipated that
one that retains its charm despite Holmes owns a copy. The
its repeated use—is the moment at book must therefore be a
which Holmes theatrically reveals common household title.
to Watson the reasoning behind Its length and the number
a particularly baffling piece of of columns suggest a
deduction. This is always presented reference work.
by Conan Doyle in delayed fashion,
usually with Holmes first making The first number in the Watson suggests that
some striking and apparently cipher message, 534, is C2 refers to “Chapter the
random statement, so that both likely to indicate a page Second,” but as the page is
Watson and the reader are eager to number. If so, the book to already known, this must
hear its justification. In The Valley which it refers is a long one.
of Fear this comes when Holmes mean Column Two.
announces at the breakfast table,
“A great big, thumping, obtrusive, 13 and all the subsequent The words in the message
uncompromising lie—that’s what numbers must refer to the are critical but too
meets us on the threshold... The
whole story told by Barker is a lie. placing of individual obscure to appear in the
But Barker’s story is corroborated words on page 534 within column in question, so have
by Mrs. Douglas... They are both
lying and in a conspiracy.” Column Two. been written directly.

At the time this statement is The Bible is the first
made, Conan Doyle has allowed possible cipher, but there
us to connect some facts but not— are too many different
inevitably—as cleverly or completely editions to be sure of
as Holmes. Our awareness that a page number. Both
we are incapable of reaching the the dictionary and
correct conclusion only confirms Bradshaw’s (a book
Holmes’s almost supernatural of train timetables)
abilities. For example, Barker says are dismissed for their
he heard the gunshot at 11:30 pm. limited number of words,
The housekeeper says she heard before Holmes alights on
what she thought was the sound of a Whitaker’s Almanac
door slamming half an hour earlier. and tests his theory to
But only Holmes makes the correct find he is indeed correct.
deduction: what she actually heard
was the real gunshot.

The theatrics continue when
Holmes asks Watson and the
inspector to hide with him in the ❯❯

218 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

Groombridge Place is the moated Back to reality On completing the manuscript,
manor house that Conan Doyle used as With the murder mystery solved, Conan Doyle apologized to his
the model for Douglas’s home, Birlstone Conan Doyle embarks on a long publisher for providing lightweight
Manor. Living at nearby Crowborough, flashback, just as he did in A Study reading material when World
the author was a frequent visitor. in Scarlet. Once again, Holmes War I was looming large in
vanishes from the narrative, and everyone’s thoughts—not least in
bushes for several hours in the dark, now the reader relives Douglas’s those of the author himself. But
refusing to tell them why. When adventures among the “Scowrers” Strand editor Herbert Greenhough
MacDonald asks for an explanation, in America. Echoing Conan Doyle’s Smith thought that the public
Holmes replies, “Watson insists earlier use of authentic legend in needed some relief after the flood
that I am the dramatist in real life. The Hound of the Baskervilles, the of war reports in the press, and an
Some touch of the artist wells up Scowrers were based on a real-life exciting diversion featuring the
within me and calls insistently for a 19th century Irish-American secret nation’s favorite detective could
well-staged performance.” Holmes’s society, the Molly Maguires (p.220). be precisely the kind of escapism
discovery is worth the wait: he The Mollies were active in the readers were looking for. He was
has already found the bundle in the Pennsylvania mining communities right: sales of the magazine with
moat and put it back so Barker can until a series of violent incidents the first installment were as buoyant
be caught retrieving the evidence. resulted in 20 of their members as ever. War or no, readers had
being hanged. Much of the not lost their appetite for Holmes
The most shocking reveal is yet evidence against them was and Watson.
to come. To the further astonishment provided by a detective from
of Watson and MacDonald, Holmes the Pinkerton agency, James Conan Doyle was aware that
turns to Ivy Douglas, saying: “I McParland—the model for John moving Holmes offstage for a great
should strongly recommend that McMurdo. Conan Doyle heard part of the novel would not be to
you ask Mr. Douglas to tell us his about the Mollies and McParland the taste of all his readers, but he
own story.” Thus the supposedly from the American detective and defended the decision to his editor
dead man emerges from his hiding writer William John Burns, who as a necessary one. Many fans,
place and hands Watson a bundle visited the author at his home however, expressed their deep
of papers that comprise a written in the village of Crowborough. disappointment at the absence of
account called “The Valley of Fear.” Holmes. It is for this reason that, in
spite of The Valley of Fear’s gritty
storyline and cutting humor, it
is among the least regarded of the
Holmes novels, which also perhaps
explains the relative dearth of film
and television adaptations.

In all my experience
I cannot recall any
more singular and
interesting study.
Sherlock Holmes

Love and hate of womankind.” The exception, THE VALLEY OF FEAR 219
When Holmes and Watson go to of course, is Irene Adler in “A
Sussex to investigate Douglas’s Scandal in Bohemia” (pp.56–61), James McParland
murder, they are put up at a local whose more “male” qualities of
inn, the Westville Arms, and share intelligence and ingenuity earned Birdy Edwards, one of the
what Watson describes as “a her the detective’s respect. most unusual characters in
double-bedded room.” This was the entire Holmes canon, was
apparently “the best that the little That Holmes adores Watson, based on a real person, James
country inn could do for us,” but it is and that the plainly heterosexual McParland. Born in County
not clear from Watson’s description doctor returns the compliment, is Armagh, Ireland in 1843, he
whether the room had one double not in doubt. Conan Doyle himself traveled to New York in 1867
or two single beds. Holmes has intended a platonic friendship, and worked as a laborer and
sometimes been portrayed as a although his successors may— then a policeman before
repressed homosexual—in Billy and do—speculate. moving to Chicago, where he
Wilder’s film The Private Life of owned a liquor store. When
Sherlock Holmes (1970) and (in Arguably, Holmes has almost that business was destroyed
the view of some fans) the BBC as strong a relationship with his in the Great Chicago Fire of
television adaptation Sherlock archenemy, Professor Moriarty, as 1871, he became a private
(2010– ) for example—but Conan with Watson, but this is a love/hate detective for the legendary
Doyle clearly depicts Holmes as an affair. Holmes is horrified by his Pinkerton’s agency, founded
asexual ascetic. In The Valley of nemesis’s criminality, but in thrall in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton,
Fear, Holmes admits to Watson that to the genius at work in his evil a Scottish American.
he is “not a whole-souled admirer acts. The detective cannot help
but reluctantly admire the professor’s McParland is best known
The Strand Magazine was designed extraordinary genius—as he tells for his success against the
to appeal to a new white-collar, Watson, the professor possesses clandestine group, the “Molly
middle-brow audience, who typically “a brain which might have made Maguires,” in the 1870s. Using
traveled to and from work by train. The or marred the destiny of nations”— the name James McKenna, he
Holmes stories were just the ticket. for it is the one intellect that matches gained the confidence of the
his own. Of all his foes, therefore, group, but was appalled when
Moriarty is the only one who ❯❯ it used information he supplied
in assassination attempts.
He also became disenchanted
with coal mine operators who
wished to exterminate the
Mollies. However, unlike his
murdered fictional counterpart
in The Valley of Fear, Birdy
Edwards, James McParland
died in bed, at the Mercy
Hospital in Denver in 1919.

220 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

presents him with a true challenge, Moriarty rules with a rod The view from abroad
and vice versa. They are perfectly of iron over his people. His Throughout the Holmes stories,
matched opponents, and it is discipline is tremendous. foreign lands are frequently
almost as if the one cannot exist There is only one punishment portrayed as a source of evil and
without the other. Yet, in the end danger, sometimes in animal
one of them must, inevitably, in his code. It is death. form, as in “The Adventure of the
lose. When Barker asks Holmes Sherlock Holmes Speckled Band” (pp.84–9), or via
if “this king-devil” can ever be a human agent. The “fear of the
defeated, Holmes replies without Writer Anthony Horowitz (1955– ) foreign” was a typical 19th century
his customary confidence: “I don’t simply ignored this problem when upper-middle-class English
say that he can be beat. But you he included Professor Moriarty in attitude, which (the Scottish)
must give me time.” his Holmes pastiche The House of Conan Doyle was happy to exploit.
Silk (2011). And the glitch hardly The author’s use of dangerous
Holmes and Moriarty are the matters, for “The Final Problem” animals and blowpipe-wielding
first crime-fighter and villain who represents the professor’s only other natives in the stories also shows
can be seen as alter egos of one appearance in the entire canon. him to be a product of his time and
another. It was to become a popular That he is a solely unseen presence social class. Contemporary readers
double act whose descendants in The Valley of Fear makes him enjoyed these types of storylines
include James Bond and Blofeld, the perfect eminence noir, subtly and devices for their exoticism.
and Batman and the Joker. Like manipulating events behind the The “exotic” may carry derogatory
Holmes, Gotham’s Dark Knight scenes. Indeed, it could be argued connotations today, but in Conan
has also been called “The World’s that being off-stage is crucial in Doyle’s time, it implied a rather
Greatest Detective.” making him believable as Holmes’s more innocent curiosity in strange
ultimate enemy. and unfamiliar things. However,
Bad timing if the reader has any doubts about
The attention that modern crime Conan Doyle’s morality, there is
writers apply to the chronologies of the vivid, overriding sense of his
their stories might have alarmed enduring humanity, expressed
the rather slack Conan Doyle; there in the tolerance and empathy of
is a prize error in The Valley of Fear. Watson’s character.
It is set before Moriarty’s famous
appearance in “The Final Problem,” As for Americans, Conan Doyle
(pp.142–47) yet in that story Watson clearly admired their vigor, yet
has apparently never heard of him. he was also fascinated by their

The Molly Maguires Conan Doyle based the Scowrers against property (destroying
on a real group of labor agitators, fences, plowing up converted
the Molly Maguires. The Mollies, croplands) and land agents,
as they were known colloquially, but in the US, violent beatings
were a 19th-century secret society and even murders became
that originated in Ireland but later commonplace occurrences.
also had dedicated memberships
in Liverpool and Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, the secret
There, the group instigated organization is now regarded
(sometimes violent) activism by historians as a violent group
among coal miners of Irish- struggling against a corrupt
American descent in reaction to institution. Some even argue
the inhuman working and living that the Mollies did not really
conditions, and the low wages exist, but were created by the
imposed by the ruthless mining mine operators as a focus for
operators. Agrarian rebellion in destroying dissent. If that was
Ireland was usually directed the case, the authorities were
largely successful.

THE VALLEY OF FEAR 221

The clever forecast of
coming events, the
triumphant vindication of
bold theories—are these not
the pride and the justification
of our life’s work.
Sherlock Holmes

excesses. The America he portrays different, edgier kind of crime The California Gold Rush of 1848
in The Valley of Fear and elsewhere fiction. It moves swiftly from the brought some 300,000 gold-seekers
is a land of boundless opportunity, comfortable domestic setting of to the state. They collected the gold
yet, at the same time, a hotbed of 221B Baker Street to a particularly mostly by panning in the rivers. Some,
gangsters and corruption, the evil gruesome and bloody murder and— like Douglas, made their fortunes.
tentacles of which extend right most significantly—a depiction
across the Atlantic as far as London of a violent America riven with humor of the opening, there is a
and even into quiet English country corruption and summary justice. sense of dark nihilism not found
houses. McMurdo/Edwards finds the In this it anticipates such hard- elsewhere in Conan Doyle’s work.
Vermissa Valley a grim place where boiled American crime fiction as This seems very modern among
“The terror is in the hearts of the Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest the usual Victoriana, and can be
people from the dusk to the dawn,” (1929). In the passages set in the seen to prefigure the 20th-century
but once his work there is done, he US, and the novel’s bleak ending, angst born of the mass slaughter
is able to assume a new identity and which is a marked contrast to the witnessed in World War I. ■
make his fortune in the California
gold fields. Later, living as Douglas
in Sussex, he becomes noted for his
bravery, cheerfulness, generosity,
and, most significantly, “democratic
manners.” Like Henry Baskerville in
The Hound of the Baskervilles, his
time in the New World has taught
him not to be a snob. But even while
Edwards’ good qualities make him
a popular figure in the village of
Birfleet, the cutthroat gangsters he
has left behind in the US are hunting
him down in league with Moriarty.

The modern age beckons
The Valley of Fear is notable, in the
Holmes canon, for looking nervously
forward to the modern age and a

222

THE WHOLE INEXPLICABLE
TANGLE SEEMED TO
STRAIGHTEN OUT
BEFORE ME

THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE (1908)

IN CONTEXT T his story was originally 1891 and 1894, and so either the
published in The Strand doctor, or Conan Doyle, must have
TYPE Magazine under the been mistaken.
Short story title “A Reminiscence of Sherlock
Holmes,” and split into two halves: Grotesquery and intrigue
FIRST PUBLICATION “The Singular Experience of Mr. The tale opens with Holmes
US: August 1908 (as “The John Eccles” and “The Tiger of San receiving a telegram: “Have just
Singular Experience of Pedro.” Later editions compiled had most incredible and grotesque
Mr. J. Scott Eccles”) the full text under the title “The experience. May I consult you?”
UK: September 1908 Adventure of Wisteria Lodge.” He asks Watson how he would best

COLLECTION According to Watson, the case Released in 1928, this silent Jean
His Last Bow, 1917 begins on a bleak day in March Epstein film of “The Fall of the House of
1892, but this date is squarely Usher” hints at the Gothic atmosphere
CHARACTERS within the so-called “Great Hiatus” also present in Wisteria Lodge.
John Scott Eccles (see pp.164–65), which fell between
Respectable English bachelor.

Aloysius Garcia Young
Spaniard living in Surrey.

Garcia’s cook Chef at
Wisteria Lodge.

Inspector Gregson
Scotland Yard policeman.

Inspector Baynes
Provincial policeman.

Don Murillo
Neighbor of Garcia.

Miss Burnet Governess
at Henderson’s house.

Lucas Henderson’s secretary.

THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE 223

define the word “grotesque,” and to between Holmes and his client, The 1988 television adaption of
Watson’s suggestions of “strange” which is contrasted with the sleuth’s “Wisteria Lodge,” starring Jeremy
and “remarkable,” Holmes adds, high opinion of Inspector Baynes, Brett, differs from the original tale and
“some underlying suggestion of who arrives shortly after with the sees the Tiger of San Pedro killed on
the tragic and the terrible.” He then familiar Gregson of Scotland Yard. a train while escaping Holmes.
retrospectively characterizes two Against all convention, Baynes, from
of his past cases, “The Red-Headed the local Surrey Constabulary, proves rung the bell. Eccles said that he
League” (pp.62–67) and “The Five to be a worthy rival for Holmes, had not, and Garcia apologized for
Orange Pips” (pp.74–79), as being and his methods elicit respect and disturbing him.
more than a little grotesque. In this a proud twinkle in the eye of the
exchange, Conan Doyle is alluding great detective. Events had taken an even
to Edgar Allan Poe, a past master of stranger turn the following morning.
the compulsively atmospheric short A bewildering dinner date Eccles found the house deserted—
story, and author of Tales of the Eccles has come directly from there was no trace of Garcia, nor the
Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Wisteria Lodge in Surrey, where surly servant who had served dinner,
Poe’s fictional French detective, he was an overnight guest of nor the gigantic cook who had
the Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, Aloysius Garcia—a young Spaniard prepared it. What he does not know
was an acknowledged inspiration with whom he had recently struck is that Garcia was murdered in the
for Sherlock Holmes. This case, up a friendship. Eccles had not early hours on the common near his
however, draws more parallels with enjoyed the visit: he found Garcia’s home. A note found by Baynes on
Poe’s earlier story “The Fall of the home rather disquieting, and the the dead man’s body confirmed
House of Usher” (1839), with its dark chain-smoking, nervous agitation Eccles’s presence at the lodge and
and sinister house, which is exactly displayed by his normally upbeat explains the police’s interest in him.
what Conan Doyle’s Wisteria Lodge host had not helped. Garcia’s mood Yet, satisfied by the Englishman’s
turns out to be. had worsened on reading a note clear respectability, they soon
that his servant delivered to him eliminate him as a suspect.
When the sender of the telegram, during dinner, and Eccles was
the highly respectable John Scott relieved to turn in for the night. But Baynes then produces another
Eccles, reaches 221B Baker Street, his reprieve was short-lived, for he note, the one delivered to Garcia
he professes an antipathy to the was surprised to be woken at 1am during dinner—although he had
business of private detection, but by his host asking him if he had thrown it on the fire, it got caught in
says he does not know where else the grating, where the inspector had
to turn. This begins a coolness spotted it. Holmes is impressed by ❯❯

My mind is like
a racing engine,
tearing itself to pieces
because it is not
connected up with
the work for which

it was built.
Sherlock Holmes

224 HOLMES TAKES A BOW Our own colours, Green and white
green and white. refers to the colors of the
The cryptic note found in the
hearth at Wisteria Lodge at first Green open, flag of San Pedro.
confused Holmes, who thought white shut.
that it referred to racing colors, A green light in the
and that it was written by a Main stair, window meant the door was
jealous husband. He later first corridor, unlocked for Garcia. White
deduces that it details the seventh right,
layout of what must be a large green baize. meant to stay away.
house nearby, with each part of
the note revealing an important Godspeed. D.
aspect of the property.

The directions to Don
Murillo’s bedroom were
needed as he frequently

changed the room
where he slept.

the policeman’s sharp eye and his slate-coloured sky.” There, the “Henderson”—in fact a fugitive
canny, Holmesian diagnosis that the constable on guard reports being former Central American dictator
handwriting in the note, a woman’s, spooked earlier by a huge, devilish named Don Murillo, who had been
does not match the address on figure at the window. Baynes also in hiding in Britain with his family.
the reverse side. The note itself has some peculiar and grotesque
is cryptic, and at first Holmes is things to show Holmes—a small Murillo, the notorious “Tiger
baffled. He later deduces that the shriveled humanoid figure on the of San Pedro,” had led a brutal
first part must be a signal, and the kitchen sideboard; the limbs and regime for over a decade, his
second an appointment (see above); body of a large white bird in the sink; name striking fear into the hearts
he also concludes that Garcia must a zinc pail full of blood; and a platter of people across Central America,
have been heading for a large house covered in pieces of charred bone. until he was deposed by a popular
near his own when he was killed, uprising and escaped to Europe,
and decides to list such properties. Unexpected teamwork his ill-gotten fortune intact. Garcia,
From here on in, Holmes and part of an organization set on
Alibi material Baynes indulge in some friendly bringing justice to this “lewd and
Holmes ponders the unnaturally competition, each man following
sudden friendship between Eccles his own leads, and the resolution This fellow is a perfect
and Garcia, and wonders why the of the case becomes an instance of savage, as strong as
Spaniard’s servants had fled. He perfect, if inadvertent, cooperation. a cart-horse and
concludes that while Eccles is When the “devil” who had startled as fierce as the devil.
“not a man likely to be congenial the constable returns to Wisteria Inspector Baynes
to a quick-witted Latin,” he is Lodge, he is found to be Garcia’s
nevertheless “the very type of cook, and Baynes charges him
conventional British respectability.” with murder. Holmes is certain the
That is, someone who might be inspector has the wrong man, but
counted on to provide an alibi. it transpires that Baynes’s move
was straight out of the detective’s
That evening Holmes, Watson, own box of tricks: his false arrest of
and Baynes head to Wisteria the cook later flushes out the real
Lodge, an old, tumbledown place culprit, a wealthy local man called
looming “pitch-black against a

THE ADVENTURE OF WISTERIA LODGE 225

Described as looking like a hungry
beast, the devilish appearance of the
cook, illustrated by Arthur Twidle in The
Strand Magazine, was a ploy by Conan
Doyle to give the story a sense of horror.

bloodthirsty” tyrant, had indeed
invited Eccles to his house to
provide an alibi for the night
he intended to kill Murillo.

The mysterious note found in
the hearth at Wisteria Lodge had
been written by “Miss Burnet,” the
governess in Murillo’s household.
Acting undercover, and secretly
working with Garcia, she was in
fact Signora Victor Durando, whose
husband had been killed by Murillo
in San Pedro. Her cryptic note was
to explain that the coast was clear
for Garcia to attack, and where in
the house he could find the former
tyrant. Unfortunately for them,
however, Murillo’s secretary, Lucas,
had caught her writing the note,
locked her away in a room, and
addressed and sent the note
himself—hence the different
handwriting. He then intercepted
Garcia on the common, killing him
before he could fulfill his mission.

The tyrant escapes station with Lucas and a heavily Watson reports Murillo’s murder in
From his appearance, Holmes had sedated Miss Burnet in tow. But Madrid six months later—clearly at
known only that Henderson—or Warner follows them, and when the the hands of Garcia’s organization.
Murillo—was “either a foreigner governess manages to break free But what of the lurid remains in
or has lived long in the tropics,” from her captors, the gardener Garcia’s kitchen, and of the “devil”
but the presence of two foreign rescues her and delivers her to that had frightened the constable?
households in one sleepy Surrey Holmes. Baynes explains that he In fact the devil was merely Garcia’s
village was enough to put him had a plainclothes policeman at cook trying to collect his personal
on alert. He had therefore hired the station all week, but it was belongings, and the mention of his
Murillo’s fired gardener, John Holmes’s man who saved the day. “savage” activities is a red herring,
Warner, to watch the house and to When the governess recovers, she used to embellish the “grotesque”
report back on developments. What reveals the full story of Murillo and atmosphere. In fact, “Wisteria Lodge”
he had not realized, however, was San Pedro’s band of freedom fighters. is one of the earliest works of English
that Baynes was also on to Murillo’s literature to feature depictions of
true identity. The two detectives’ Although, ultimately, Murillo voodoo—religious rites practiced
plans then converge when the and Lucas manage to escape from mainly in the West Indies. ■
tyrant, believing he is safe because Holmes and Baynes at the station,
the cook has been arrested, decides
to escape by train, heading to the

226

DIFFERENT THREADS
BUT LEADING TO THE
SAME TANGLE

THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED CIRCLE (1911)

IN CONTEXT O riginally published in two be disturbed. Since then, Mrs.
separate parts (apparently Warren explains to Holmes, he
TYPE against Conan Doyle’s has emerged only once, on the first
Short story wishes), “The Adventure of the Red night, when he left the house and
Circle” has a double, interwoven returned without being seen.
FIRST PUBLICATION narrative. In the first installment,
UK: March 1911 Holmes is asked to investigate the As per his instructions, the
US: April 1911 eccentric and mystifying behavior lodger’s meals are left on a tray
of a reclusive lodger in a London outside his door, and if he requires
COLLECTION boarding house; in the second, the anything else, he prints the word
His Last Bow, 1917 plot dramatically escalates into for it, in block capitals, on a piece
a major international hunt for an of paper and leaves it for her.
CHARACTERS infamous murderer and criminal
Mrs. Warren Elderly gang leader who is wanted in both
landlady of a boarding house. the US and Italy.

Gennaro Lucca Young A reclusive lodger
Italian man who flees to Landlady Mrs. Warren approaches
New York, then London. Holmes because she is concerned
about her new lodger, who never
Emilia Lucca Gennaro’s wife. leaves his rooms. Ten days earlier,
the young, black-bearded man,
Giuseppe Gorgiano Member who had spoken in good but
of the Neapolitan criminal accented English, had paid over
society, the Red Circle. and above the usual rate for two
weeks’ board, but with the strict
Inspector Tobias Gregson condition that he be given a key
Scotland Yard policeman. to the house and on no account

Leverton American detective
with the Pinkerton Agency.

The boarding house run by Mrs.
Warren is on Great Orme Street,
a fictional version of Great Ormond
Street, which has many buildings
in the Queen Anne style (pictured).

THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED CIRCLE 227

Holmes believes that the fact the Cracking the code
lodger writes notes is an attempt
to disguise a lack of proficiency in 1 20 20 5 15 20 1
English, and as other clues come
to light he deduces that the person Flashes of a candle
now occupying the rooms is not
the bearded man who had rented ATTENTA The number of flashes
them, and that one lodger has been Translates to of the candle corresponds
substituted for another. to a letter of the alphabet.
BEWARE Although he cracks the
The lodger regularly requests code, Holmes is confused
a copy of the Daily Gazette by the messages until he
newspaper, and Holmes suspects realizes they are in Italian.
that the bearded man may be The letters spell out words
sending messages to the lodger that translate as “beware”
via the paper’s personals column. and “danger”.
Scanning through his collection
of clippings, Holmes immediately That evening, Holmes and Watson The final message is interrupted
comes across an advertisement position themselves at a window in very suddenly. Alarmed, Holmes
posted just two days after the the lodging house. They witness a and Watson hurry down to the
room was let: “Be patient. Will find candle flashing in the nearby house, building in which “G” is located,
some sure means of communication. which must be “G” sending coded and are amazed to find standing
Meanwhile, this column. G.” Later messages to the lodger’s room. The in its doorway Inspector Gregson
postings seem to confirm that code makes no sense until Holmes of Scotland Yard, and Leverton—
Holmes is on the right track and realizes it is in Italian: attenta a detective with the Pinkerton
alert him to both a code and a (beware) and pericolo (danger). Agency (a private detective firm
nearby building—“a high red house established in the US in 1850,
with white stone facings”—from What is at the root of which also features in The Valley
which “G” will signal messages. it all? Mrs Warren’s of Fear, pp.212–21). They are on
whimsical problem the trail of Italian mobster Giuseppe
At that very moment, a flustered enlarges somewhat and Gorgiano—a notorious killer
Mrs. Warren arrives at Baker Street assumes a more sinister responsible for about 50 deaths.
with a peculiar story: that morning aspect as we proceed.
her husband was abducted by Sherlock Holmes Murder in the house
unknown assailants as he left the The men have traced Gorgiano to
house. After being driven around this building and have been lying
in a cab for an hour he was dumped, in wait for him. Since they began
unharmed, on Hampstead Heath; their watch, three men have come
Holmes guesses that the kidnappers out of the house, including one
had mistaken him for the lodger whose description fits that of Mrs.
in the foggy morning light, and Warren’s bearded lodger. However
so he asks to see the lodger. there is no sign of the killer himself.
Holmes tells the police about the
Warnings by candlelight warning signals that were sent ❯❯
Holmes and Watson visit the house
and, through the artful placing of
a mirror opposite the door of the
lodger’s rooms, they manage to
catch a glimpse of the substituted
lodger; to their surprise, rather
than seeing a man they observe
a beautiful, dark-skinned young
woman who seems very frightened.

228 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

from an upstairs window, and My poor Gennaro… the Red Circle. For a while, the
they assume that Gorgiano must had joined a Neapolitan couple enjoyed a settled life:
have been attempting to alert society, the Red Circle… Gennaro was given a responsible
his accomplices in London of The oaths and secrets of this job by a fellow Italian he had helped,
the dangers. brotherhood were frightful, and they bought a small house.
but once within its rule no But then Gennaro’s past caught up
Deciding to make an arrest, with him: he was tracked down by
the policemen enter the house and escape was possible. a member of the Red Circle called
Holmes and Watson follow. They Emilia Lucca Gorgiano – the “grotesque, gigantic
locate the room from which the and terrifying” thug who had first
messages had been sent and find husband for having killed him.” initiated him into the organization
Gorgiano’s dead body sprawled on The rest of the story, apart from back in Italy. Once they had taken
the floor. The blade of a knife has a short epilogue, is related almost an oath of allegiance, the Red
been plunged into his throat, and entirely through the lodger, who Circle’s members were in the
at his side lie a dagger and a single introduces herself as Emilia Lucca. organization’s grip for life.
black leather glove. Clearly there
has been a fight, and the huge Emilia’s tale After escaping the authorities
Italian has been felled. As the men Emilia explains that she and her in Italy, Gorgiano had settled
survey the grisly scene, Holmes husband Gennaro emigrated to down in New York, where he soon
retrieves the candle and signals New York from Italy four years ago, established a new branch of the
vieni (come) from the window. fleeing both her father’s disapproval Red Circle that funded its activities
of their relationship and Gennaro’s by blackmailing wealthy Italian-
Moments later, the mysterious naïve youthful involvement in a Americans, threatening violence
female lodger arrives. When she Neapolitan criminal society called if they did not cooperate. Gennaro’s
sees Gorgiano’s body, she reacts employer and benefactor (who
with joy and delight as she thinks was also his best friend) became
that the police have killed him. a target of the organization, but he
However, on realizing that, in fact, refused to give in to their demands,
her husband—“G” (Gennaro), the and so Gennaro was ordered, on
bearded man—is the murderer, she pain of death, to dispose of him,
insists on telling the investigators having been given a disc with
the whole truth; she is confident a red circle on it—“the mandate
that, given the dead man’s heinous for murder.” Of course, he had no
crimes, “there can be no judge in intention of murdering his friend,
the world who would punish my

The Black Hand The early-20th century saw a Extortion and protection rackets
dramatic shift in the nature of became rife, practiced by gangs
organized crime as criminal like La Mano Nera (the Black
networks began to emerge— Hand, pictured). In 1908, the
particularly in New York, but also Italian Bank of Pasquale Pati
in London. From 1880 to 1910 & Son was blown up by a
nearly 500,000 Italians arrived Black Hand bomb. This was
in New York. They clustered not an attempted robbery but
in the same neighborhoods, a warning to Pati, who had
living in overcrowded tenements. publicly stated he would not
Regarded with suspicion by yield to the gang. A run on the
longer-established citizens, some bank after the bombing, and an
Italians felt the only people who attack on Pati’s home, left him
could protect them were the ruined. It may have been this
members of Italian-American event that gave Conan Doyle the
criminal societies, who took law inspiration for the Red Circle’s
enforcement into their own hands. threat to Gennaro’s employer.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE RED CIRCLE 229

Holmes, Watson, and Inspector by the two other men seen exiting and Watson heading off to the opera.
Hawkins (played by Jeremy Brett, Tom the house. Neither does he say The last few pages introduce a
Chadbon, and Edward Hardwicke) whether he is later apprehended by rambling story that roams from Italy
investigate the mark of the Red Circle the police. Emilia’s fate also goes to New York to London, and some
in the 1994 Granada television episode. unrevealed, with the tale wrapping have suggested that Conan Doyle
up, rather abruptly, with Holmes was unable to produce a satisfying
and after warning him of the Red ending because of the Strand’s
Circle’s orders and notifying the Well, Watson, you have scheduling and space constraints.
Italian and American police, one more specimen
Gennaro and Emilia escaped to of the tragic and In spite of this, the story’s build-
London, with Gorgiano in pursuit. grotesque to add up is intriguing. Throughout much
to your collection. of the tale, Holmes’s own small
Once there, Gennaro ensured Sherlock Holmes investigation runs in parallel with
Emilia’s safety in Mrs. Warren’s the one headed by Scotland Yard
house, but it appeared that Gorgiano and the Pinkerton detective
had closed in on him, ahead of the agency—as Holmes observes, the
police. Fortunately, however, it two “different threads” lead “to
seems that it was Gennaro who the same tangle.” And so, while the
managed to strike the fatal blow. story begins in a familiar vein, with
Holmes piecing together small clues,
An inconclusive ending it becomes a drama about organized
Conan Doyle does not reveal how crime and intimidation within the
Gennaro managed to dispatch his US that seems in many ways far
enemy—single-handedly, or aided beyond the world of Holmes. ■

230

THE LONDON CRIMINAL
IS CERTAINLY
A DULL FELLOW

THE ADVENTURE OF THE
BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS (1908)

IN CONTEXT T he spy thriller was not army officer accused of espionage,
yet a fully formed genre had been resolved only two years
TYPE when “The Adventure of before Conan Doyle wrote this tale.
Short story the Bruce-Partington Plans” was The political scandal had alerted
first published. It is now widely society to the possibility of closely
FIRST PUBLICATION recognized as a forerunner of guarded military secrets finding
UK: December 1908 spy fiction. their way into the wrong hands.
US: December 1908
The tale is concerned with Conan Doyle had positioned
COLLECTION national security—it was written Holmes as a spy hunter once before,
His Last Bow, 1917 as alliances shifted, rivalries in “The Adventure of the Second
intensified, and the threat of
CHARACTERS conflict loomed across Europe— Woolwich Arsenal in London was
Mycroft Holmes Elder and draws on the media story established in the 16th century for the
brother of Sherlock Holmes and of that period. The notorious manufacture and storage of weaponry.
influential government official. Dreyfus Affair, involving the false Its activities were so secretive that it
imprisonment of a French-Jewish didn’t appear on London street maps.
Inspector Lestrade
Scotland Yard detective.

Arthur Cadogan West Junior
clerk at Woolwich Arsenal.

Violet Westbury Arthur
Cadogan West’s fiancée.

Sir James Walter Official
guardian of the papers.

Colonel Valentine Walter
Sir James Walter’s brother.

Sidney Johnson Senior clerk
at Woolwich Arsenal.

Hugo Oberstein German spy.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS 231

Stain” (pp.202–07). Continuing the Underground tracks just outside Submarines captured the public
theme of espionage, Holmes later Aldgate station. His skull has been imagination in 1870 when Jules Verne
acts as a double agent in “His Last fractured, and he has a sheaf of published his novel 20,000 Leagues
Bow” (pp.246–47). Of these stories, top-secret government papers in under the Sea. The British Navy
“The Bruce-Partington Plans” his pocket. These were the Bruce- commissioned its first vessel in 1902.
brings the theme of government Partington Plans, concerning
intrigue to life most vividly, thanks a revolutionary new submarine. code for this particular pioneering
to the central role of Holmes’s elder Such vessels were not in use war vessel. The plans comprised
brother Mycroft, who features in until World War I, but research 10 pages, but only seven are found
only four stories in the canon and and development was ongoing on the clerk; three of the four most
makes his final appearance here. in the early years of the 20th vital pages are missing. Mycroft
In previous stories, Mycroft is century, so the story anticipates urges his brother to find them as
known to Watson as a junior the critical role these covert naval a matter of vital national security.
government official, but it is not vessels were to play in the coming
until this story that Holmes finally decades. Work on Britain’s E-class Piecing things together
reveals that his brother is in fact so submarine was also in progress at As the story unfolds, it seems that
important that “occasionally he is the time, and the Bruce-Partington the apparently steady and honest
the British government.” submarine may well have been a Cadogan West is in fact guilty of
the crime. The plans were kept in
A stolen military secret The thief or the a safe in a locked office next to the
It is late November 1895. A dense murderer could roam arsenal. Only two people had keys
fog has hung over London for some London on such a day to this office—Sir James Walter,
days, and Holmes and Watson have as the tiger does the a prominent government scientist
been confined to their apartment. jungle, unseen until he who is beyond reproach, and
This fog is a running theme and pounces, and then Sidney Johnson, the loyal senior
an important narrative device evident only to his victim. clerk. However, Cadogan West
throughout the story. Sherlock Holmes worked alongside Johnson and had
daily access to the plans. Holmes
Mycroft arrives at Baker Street surmises that he could have had
with Inspector Lestrade to ask for duplicate keys made as part of a
his brother’s urgent assistance. plan to steal and sell the papers
Holmes is restless from inaction to a foreign agent for a large sum.
and eager for adventure, and agrees
to help with the case. Holmes visits the spot where
the clerk’s body was found—a
The body of Arthur Cadogan junction in the line—and learns
West, a young clerk working at the that a passenger had heard a loud
Woolwich Arsenal (an armaments thud at around 11:40pm, but was ❯❯
factory), has been found on the

232 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

The final journey Trains stop agitated man boarding the 8:15pm
of Cadogan West directly behind train to London. Holmes is stumped,
Oberstein’s home, so and says he cannot recall that he
Alive the body is placed and Watson “have ever had a case
Dead on a train car roof. which was more difficult to get at.”

Aldgate A clever conceit
station Holmes asks his brother for a list
of all the foreign agents in London.
In pursuit of the stolen Body falls off One of these, Hugo Oberstein, has
plans, Cadogan West follows at a sharp bend, and just left town. This is the German
the thief to Oberstein’s house is found just before spy’s second appearance in the
in Caulfield Gardens, London, Holmes stories—he was one of the
where he is murdered. The Aldgate station. foremost agents in “The Second
villains use the passing train Stain” (pp.202–07)—but plays a
to dispose of his body. more significant role in this story.

unable to see anything through the Next, they visit the murdered In his pursuit of moral justice—
thick fog. Strangely, although the clerk’s fiancée, Miss Violet even at the expense of the law—
poor clerk’s head had been crushed, Westbury, who tells them that she Holmes persuades Watson to
there were no signs of violence in and Cadogan West had been on help him break into Oberstein’s
the train cars, nor any blood on the their way to the theater when he residence. The lodgings back onto
line. Holmes deduces that he must had inexplicably disappeared into an above-ground section of the
have been killed elsewhere, and that the fog near his office at about Underground line near Gloucester
his body, which Holmes believes 7:30pm. The two theater tickets Road station, at a junction where
was placed on the train’s roof, had found in his pocket would seem to the trains often stop for several
fallen as the train turned the corner. corroborate her story. She says he minutes. They soon notice scuffs
would never sell a state secret, but and bloodstains on the window
A round of calls does admit that he had seemed overlooking the line and conclude
Holmes and Watson proceed to visit upset and said something about that Cadogan West’s body was
several people connected with the “foreign spies” and “traitors.” placed on the roof of a carriage from
case. First, they go to the home of the window, which is immediately
Sir James Walter, but to their A visit to Sidney Johnson at above where the train would have
surprise they discover that he has the arsenal yields information that stopped. They also come across a
died that morning; his brother, excites Holmes: outside the window series of coded messages in the
Colonel Valentine Walter, informs of the office from which the papers
them that the scandal of the missing were stolen is a bush with snapped- This must be serious,
papers was a “crushing blow” that off branches; also, the shutters do Watson. A death which
killed him. Holmes wonders whether not close fully, making it possible has caused my brother
it is suicide—a “sign of self-reproach for someone outside to observe the to alter his habits can
for the duty neglected”—but activity inside the room. Finally,
strangely, the reader never learns they speak with the railroad be no ordinary one.
the cause of his death. officer at Woolwich station, who Sherlock Holmes
remembers having seen a very

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRUCE-PARTINGTON PLANS 233

I’m afraid… that all write to the treacherous agent, who The birth of the
the queen’s horses and is now on the Continent, offering London Underground
all the queen’s men cannot him the fourth vital page he needs
to be able to build the submarine. As the population of London
avail in this matter. ballooned in the first half of
Sherlock Holmes Oberstein takes the bait, returns the 19th century, it became
to London, and is captured, and the increasingly difficult and
Daily Telegraph agony column, missing pages from the Bruce- time-consuming to cross the
posted by “Pierrot,” arranging to Partington plans are discovered city along its busy streets.
buy the Bruce-Partington plans in his trunk. Holmes’s genius at A group of engineering
from a mystery seller. solving the crime wins him an entrepreneurs came up with
emerald tie pin from a “certain a radical vision of “trains in
In an ingenious move, Holmes gracious lady”—Queen Victoria drains”—an underground
posts another “Pierrot” message in herself. Colonel Walter goes to system of passenger
the paper, requesting to meet the prison and dies there. Oberstein steam trains.
unknown document thief that night serves 15 years—a light sentence
at the agent’s Caulfield Gardens for what was then a capital offense, After years of investment,
apartment. The ruse works, and prompting critics to suggest that he planning, and construction,
Colonel Valentine Walter arrives “bought” his life with more secrets. the world’s first underground
to find Holmes, Watson, Lestrade, railroad, the Metropolitan Line,
and Mycroft waiting for him. Real-life crimes opened in 1863. One of its
The fog—so much a feature of stations was Holmes’s local—
A satisfying conclusion Victorian London—plays a pivotal Baker Street. The gas-lit
Colonel Walter confesses to the role in this story of conspiracy and wooden carriages carried
theft, explaining that he was in deception. Its presence, as Holmes 40,000 Londoners the 3-mile
debt and motivated by the financial maintains at the story’s opening, (5-km), 18-minute stretch
reward, and had copied his brother’s allows people to roam around on its first day. Detractors
keys to the office. Cadogan West, unnoticed. The heavy shroud it warned of the slippery slope
while out with his fiancée, had seen casts over the city makes it possible to social equality as upper-
lights on in the office and had gone for Cadogan West to follow Colonel class passengers were forced
to investigate. He had then boarded Walter to Oberstein’s house, and “to ride side by side with
the 8:15pm train to London in both enables Oberstein to place Billingsgate ‘fish fags’.” But
pursuit of the colonel, and followed Cadogan West’s body on the train, the Underground network
him to Oberstein’s lodgings where and allows it to fall unseen. expanded rapidly and became
he met his unfortunate end. largely responsible for the
Over the years, experts have move of low-paid workers
Colonel Walter insists that the debated the extent to which real-life out of inner-city slums, the
fatal blow to the young clerk’s crimes inspired this Holmes tale. expansion of the suburbs,
head was inflicted by Oberstein, It has been suggested that the and the birth of commuting.
who had taken three of the most body of a young woman found in a
important pages of the document, London train tunnel gave Conan
hoping the remaining seven would Doyle the idea for Cadogan West’s
be enough to incriminate the clerk. end, and that the character of
Holmes persuades the colonel to Colonel Walter is based on Frank
Shackleton, brother of polar explorer
Sir Ernest Shackleton and a prime
suspect in the 1907 theft of the Irish
Crown Jewels. Whether accurate
or not, one thing is certain: Conan
Doyle was a master at weaving real-
life circumstances—from political
scandals to the lead-up to war—
into his intricately crafted fiction. ■

234

WELL WATSON WE
SEEM TO HAVE FALLEN
UPON EVIL DAYS

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DYING DETECTIVE (1913)

IN CONTEXT H olmes often goes to great Holmes at death’s door
lengths to solve his cases, One foggy November day, a
TYPE and in “The Adventure of distressed Mrs. Hudson calls on
Short story the Dying Detective” he takes his Watson with devastating news:
dedication to the cause to a new Holmes is at death’s door. Poor
FIRST PUBLICATION level. Having been previously unable Mrs. Hudson; Holmes, not content
US: November 1913 to prove a case of poisoning—and merely with swamping her house
UK: December 1913 having provoked the wrath of the with acrid tobacco fumes, keeping
murderer in the meantime—Holmes wildly uncivilized hours, conducting
COLLECTION prepares a cunning trap, while in “weird and often malodorous
His Last Bow, 1917 the process coldly and calculatedly scientific experiments,” and firing
deceiving those who love him most his revolver indoors—making him
CHARACTERS into believing that he is dying. the “very worst tenant in London”—
Mrs. Hudson
Holmes’s landlady. The tools of Holmes’s transformation

Culverton Smith Planter
and amateur microbiologist.

Inspector Morton
Scotland Yard detective.

Belladonna Beeswax Vaseline

Belladonna is Beeswax crusted Vaseline applied
used by Holmes around his mouth across Holmes’s
to imbue his eyes makes him look like forehead further
with “the brightness he has not had food embellishes his
of fever.” or water for days. “ghastly face.”

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DYING DETECTIVE 235

The sick room was A formidable foe A deadly cosmetic
a gloomy spot, but it The ill-tempered Smith is small
was that gaunt, wasted and frail, but with “menacing” eyes, Holmes fooled Watson
face staring at me from and a “skull of enormous capacity.” and Mrs. Hudson by dilating
the bed which sent Clearly he is a mastermind from the his pupils with belladonna,
a chill to my heart. same mold as Moriarty. Initially smearing beeswax around his
reluctant to receive Watson, he mouth, and rubbing petroleum
Dr. Watson brightens up when he hears of jelly on his forehead. The
Holmes’s plight: “He is an amateur belladonna that Holmes
now adds extreme emotional of crime, as I am of disease. For uses would have come from
manipulation to the catalog him the villain, for me the microbe.” Atropa belladonna, or deadly
of indignities he has perpetrated Smith agrees to call on Holmes. nightshade. Highly poisonous,
on his landlady over the years. belladonna’s Latin name
Obeying Holmes’s strict, cryptic (which translates as “beautiful
A distraught Watson rushes instructions, Watson returns alone woman”) derives from a habit
to Holmes’s bedside to find him to 221B and hides behind his common among Venetian
rambling deliriously about oysters friend’s bed. When Smith turns up, ladies during the Renaissance
and apparently suffering from a it is to gloat. Thinking he and of using the atropine from
highly contagious tropical disease Holmes are alone, he admits to the plant to dilate their pupils.
he says he must have caught while sending the small ivory box, which As a former ophthalmologist,
“working on a case” among Chinese he had booby-trapped with a Conan Doyle would have been
sailors at Rotherhithe docks. Not deadly disease. He also confesses well aware of its properties.
caring for his own safety, Watson to murdering his nephew in a like
wants to examine him, but Holmes manner to secure a “reversion”; that A sensational case took
insists he stay back, woundingly is, to get his hands on the young place in New York in 1893,
making reference to his “mediocre man’s property. At Holmes’s when doctor Robert Buchanan
qualifications.” Mysteriously, request, he turns the gaslight up, was convicted of murdering
Holmes also sharply reprimands unwittingly signaling to Inspector his wife with morphine: he
him when he is about to touch a Morton outside, who promptly had also given her belladonna
small ivory box on the mantelpiece. arrives to make the arrest. With to disguise the characteristic
Watson as a witness to all that narrowing of the pupils that
Holmes dispatches Watson, now has been said, the game is up, and would betray the presence of
bitterly hurt as well as distressed at Holmes admits to deceiving his the drug. During the trial, the
the imminent death of his friend, to adversary as well as his friend. courtroom was subjected to
fetch the one man Holmes says a horrifying demonstration in
can help him: Culverton Smith, a The truth comes out which a cat was given a fatal
planter and amateur microbiologist Holmes tries to soothe Watson dose of morphine, and then
visiting London from Sumatra. On by explaining that he could never belladonna was applied to
his way out, Watson encounters a have deceived him if he had let its eyes to show the effect.
strangely excited Inspector Morton him get close—“Do you imagine
of Scotland Yard (described here that I have no respect for your
as “an old acquaintance,” but never medical talents?”—and that in
explicitly encountered anywhere turn Watson could never have
else in the canon). fooled Smith without himself really
believing that Holmes was dying.
Having not eaten for three days, he
suggests a restorative meal at one
of their favorite establishments,
Simpson’s-in-the-Strand. That he
has put Watson and Mrs. Hudson
through the wringer does not
seem to cross his mind. ■

236

WE SIMPLY CAN’T AFFORD
TO WAIT FOR THE POLICE
OR TO KEEP WITHIN THE
FOUR CORNERS OF THE LAW

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF
LADY FRANCES CARFAX (1911)

IN CONTEXT T his case begins, as so Lady Frances is not a wealthy
many do, in the sitting woman, but she does own some
TYPE room at 221B Baker Street, unique and valuable items of
Short story where Holmes divines Watson’s jewelry, which she carries with her
recent activities from the splashes everywhere. Holmes is buried in
FIRST PUBLICATION of mud seen on his left coat sleeve another case, and says, half-joking,
UK: December 1911 (which indicate that he shared a that “It is best that I should not
US: December 1911 hansom cab that morning) and leave the country. Scotland Yard
the way his boots have been tied feels lonely without me, and it
COLLECTION differently than usual (by the boy causes an unhealthy excitement
His Last Bow, 1917 at the Turkish baths). He teases among the criminal classes.” So
the doctor about his extravagant Watson is dispatched as Holmes’s
CHARACTERS bathing habits, asking, “Why the representative, and the pair agree
Lady Frances Carfax relaxing and expensive Turkish to keep in contact via telegram.
Noble lady of modest means. rather than the invigorating home-
made article?” A little hypocritical Conan Doyle himself was very
Honourable Philip Green of him, perhaps, given Watson’s fond of Switzerland, having first
Englishman who has made later claim in “The Adventure of visited the country in 1893. He took
his fortune in South Africa. the Illustrious Client” (pp.266–71) his first wife Louise (or “Touie”) on
that “both Holmes and I had a
Dr. Shlessinger Convalescent weakness for the Turkish bath,” Ah, what has happened
missionary recently returned but the detective nevertheless to the Lady Frances?
from South America. suggests a far superior form of Is she alive or dead?
therapy for his friend—a trip to There is our problem.
Mrs. Shlessinger Switzerland to undertake some Sherlock Holmes
Missionary’s wife. preliminary research on a case.

Marie Devine Lady Watson goes abroad
Frances Carfax’s maid. Lady Frances Carfax, the middle-
aged, unmarried daughter of an
Jules Vibart Marie earl, has gone missing. She was
Devine’s fiancé. staying at a hotel in the town of
Lausanne, but left very suddenly
and has not been heard from since.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY FRANCES CARFAX 237

Holmes deduces Watson’s movements that day

Watson is in the habit of tying his boots in a certain way,
but today they are fastened with an elaborate double bow.

It is clear that he has removed his boots, and that
someone else has later tied them.

It could only be either a bootmaker, or the boy at the
Turkish baths.

It is unlikely to be the “Well, what remains?
bootmaker, since Watson’s The bath.”

boots are nearly new.

an extended vacation to Davos in an some new friends—Dr. Shlessinger, Conan Doyle helped to popularize
attempt to alleviate the symptoms a charismatic missionary who was skiing, and correctly predicted that
of her tuberculosis. While there, recovering from a disease he had in the future people would flock to
he became a very early exponent contracted in South America, and Switzerland to enjoy the skiing season.
of skiing—a Norwegian sport that his wife. “Like most lonely ladies,
was almost unheard of in the Swiss Lady Frances found her comfort in Montpellier, and she confesses
Alps. But perhaps the greatest and occupation in religion,” Watson her own suspicions about the “fierce
testament to his affection for the remarks on being told by the hotel and terrible” bearded man; as the
country was that, shortly after his manager that Lady Frances had two talk, the man himself appears
first visit, he was inspired to use it helped Mrs. Shlessinger nurse in the street outside. Watson accosts
as the location for Holmes’s death the “convalescent saint.” It also him, demanding to know what he
in “The Final Problem” (pp.142–47). emerges that Marie Devine no has done with Lady Carfax. The
longer works for Lady Carfax, and man is amazed, and then furious,
A suspicious stranger that the mysterious Englishman grabbing Watson by the throat:
In Lausanne, Watson speaks with has been in Baden, inquiring after the doctor is saved only by the
the fiancé of Marie Devine, Lady her whereabouts. By now Watson unexpected intervention of a
Carfax’s maid, who reports that is convinced that this “sinister and local workman, who turns out
the noblewoman’s abrupt departure unrelenting figure” is pursuing poor to be Holmes, in disguise. The
came shortly after she was seen Lady Carfax from place to place, half-strangled Watson is then
talking earnestly to a wild-looking, forcing her to flee in fear of him. In told mockingly by Holmes, “A very
bearded Englishman. He also a telegram to Holmes, he boasts of pretty hash you have made of it!…
discovers that her next destination how “rapidly and surely I had got I cannot at the moment recall any
was the German town of Baden. down to the roots of the matter.” possible blunder which you have
Hot on her trail, he heads there, omitted. The total effect of your
only to find that three weeks earlier, Watson then heads to France, proceeding has been to give the
she had departed for London with in the hope of getting a lead from alarm everywhere and yet to ❯❯
Marie Devine. He tracks her down

238 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

discover nothing.” He lampoons Well, there’s nothing Lady Frances is undoubtedly in
his friend’s investigative efforts for it now but a grave danger. Together with Green,
before going on to trumpet his they return to London to continue
own superior findings in the case. direct frontal attack. the search. It proves fruitless until
Sherlock Holmes some distinctive ancestral jewelry
If Watson feels bitter about turns up in a pawnshop. Green
this, he is probably justified, since South Africa. He explains that lies in wait there and before long,
Holmes’s treatment of him is even he and Lady Frances had been Peters’s so-called wife returns with
more insensitive than usual. It is sweethearts when they were more of Lady Frances’s inheritance;
not the first time he has sent young. However, as he had been a he follows her, first to an undertaker,
Watson on ahead, following more “wild youngster” and “she could not and then to an address in South
discreetly himself, but unlike in tolerate a shadow of coarseness,” London. Ominously, as he watches
The Hound of the Baskervilles ultimately she rejected him. Now, the building, a coffin is delivered.
(pp.152–61), in which Watson’s many years later, he has made his
presence as the apparent sole fortune in South Africa and has One funeral or two?
investigator serves a valuable been attempting to win her over. Inside the “dusty and moth-eaten”
purpose, Holmes’s somewhat apartment, Holmes and Watson
unsatisfactory explanation for his Holmes is then provided with confront Peters, demanding to
sudden appearance here is simply information which confirms that know what happened to Lady
that he was able to get away from “Dr. Shlessinger” is in fact an Frances. He claims that she had
London after all. Holmes can be a extremely dangerous Australian traveled to London with the couple
mercurial creature, and there is criminal by the name of “Holy” before giving them the slip, leaving
clearly no sign of the occasionally Peters, who preys on “lonely ladies a few old-fashioned jewels behind
humble and affectionate man who by playing upon their religious to cover her bills. Although he has
exclaims, in “The Adventure of the feelings,” and that the vulnerable no warrant, Holmes announces that
Devil’s Foot” (pp.240–45), “Upon my he wants to search the place, and
word, Watson! I owe you both my while Peters’s wife calls the police,
thanks and an apology.” he barges into a room off the hall.
Inside is a coffin, and when Holmes
On the trail of a scoundrel lifts the lid he is astonished to find
Watson’s irascible assailant turns the wizened body of an old woman.
out to be the Honourable Philip Peters taunts him mercilessly: had
Green—an English noble who has he expected it to be Lady Carfax?
recently returned from living in

Chloroform at least five minutes, and a
continuous supply needs to be
Widely used as an anesthetic administered thereafter. This
during the Victorian period, did not stop people from trying,
chloroform—a colorless liquid, however, and there are many
the vapors of which can cause stories of criminals attempting
unconsciousness—eventually fell to sedate their victims in this
out of favor in the early 20th way. The notorious serial
century, when it was linked to poisoner and (tenuous) Jack the
heart complications. Although Ripper suspect Dr. Thomas Neill
the image of a sinister kidnapper Cream (pictured) is alleged to
clapping a chloroform-soaked have used it in at least one of his
handkerchief over the mouth murders, when in 1879 one of
of his victim is a popular one in his patients (perhaps also his
fiction, it is actually very difficult lover) was discovered dead of
to incapacitate a non-consenting a chloroform overdose in an
person with chloroform. It takes alleyway behind his clinic.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY FRANCES CARFAX 239

The corpse is that of his wife’s old two bodies), the results are reached Victorian workhouses, from one of
nurse, who they found, close to mainly through patient surveillance which Peters takes the old lady, were
death, in the local workhouse and and straightforward questioning. set up to house and provide work for the
brought home with them; she is to poor, elderly, and infirm. Those living
be buried at 8am the next day. The An unwanted admirer? in workhouses faced tough conditions.
police arrive and eject Holmes and Philip Green displays distinct
Watson; they can do nothing more similarities to Leon Sterndale in true that Conan Doyle’s stronger
until a warrant is secured. “The Devil’s Foot.” Both are big, female characters tend to be
bearded men with hot tempers who middle-class, such as Violet Hunter
Back at Baker Street, Holmes have lived for long periods in Africa in “The Adventure of the Copper
spends a sleepless night relentlessly and returned to Britain with an Beeches” (pp.98–101) or Irene Adler
going over every detail of the case; element of residual savagery and a in “A Scandal in Bohemia” (pp.56–
then, the next morning, he suddenly propensity to take the law into their 61), and Lady Carfax’s propensity
realizes what is going on. “Quick, own hands. Most significantly, to be so easily duped seems to
man, quick! It’s life or death… I’ll both men are frustrated lovers—a place her in the same category of
never forgive myself, never, if we motivation that makes them at once credulous noblewomen as Violet de
are too late!” He and Watson race to gallant and potentially dangerous. Merville in “The Illustrious Client”
Peters’s house and arrive just as the (pp.266–71). However, at no point
casket is being carried out. Holmes Modern readers may feel uneasy do Holmes or Green consider the
demands that it is opened and about Green’s persistent stalking possibility that her independent
inside, along with the old woman, of Lady Frances, not to mention lifestyle might be a conscious
they find Lady Frances, who has Holmes’s apparent complicity. choice rather than an unhappy
been heavily chloroformed. They Although Green claims that she circumstance. Lady Frances’s true
are able to revive her, but in the “loved me well enough to remain feelings are not known, but there
confusion, the criminals slink away. single all her sainted days just for is something faintly alarming about
my sake alone,” the fact is that the ending, as Green’s heavy step
Unusually, Holmes’s methods Lady Carfax has turned him down is heard, and Holmes withdraws,
are fairly unsophisticated here. at least twice, even going to the leaving the semiconscious and
There are few illustrations of his extraordinary lengths of fleeing defenseless spinster in the hands
analytical mind at work, and, save Lausanne and taking an elaborate of “someone who has a better right
a timely inference drawn from one route to Baden with the intention to nurse this lady than we have.” ■
important clue (the admission of throwing him off her trail. It is
by the undertaker’s wife that the
coffin “took longer, being out of
the ordinary”—large enough for

My night was haunted by
the thought that somewhere
a clue, a strange sentence, a
curious observation, had come
under my notice and had been

too easily dismissed.
Sherlock Holmes

240 IN CONTEXT

I HAVE SELDOM TYPE
KNOWN A CASE Short story
WHICH AT FIRST
SIGHT PRESENTED FIRST PUBLICATION
A MORE SINGULAR UK: December 1910
PROBLEM US: January 1911

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT (1910) COLLECTION
His Last Bow, 1917

CHARACTERS
Dr. Leon Sterndale
Lion-hunter and explorer.

Mortimer Tregennis
Bachelor lodging at the
local vicarage.

Owen and George
Tregennis
Mortimer’s brothers.

Brenda Tregennis
Mortimer’s sister.

Mr. Roundhay Local vicar.

Dr. Richards Local doctor.

Mrs. Porter Housekeeper
at Tredannick Wartha.

W hen asked by The
Strand Magazine in 1927
to list his 12 favorite
Holmes stories (see p.18), Conan
Doyle commented laconically: “‘The
Devil’s Foot’ has points. It is grim
and new. We will give it the ninth
place.” It is indeed a grim tale—one
of Conan Doyle’s most atmospheric
and chilling, with a wild, sinister
setting, and a horrific mystery at
its heart that hints at the dark
forces of the supernatural. To
solve this case Holmes has to be
at his most objective, ingenious,
and daring.

In 1910, Conan Doyle and his
second wife Jean went to Poldhu in
Cornwall for a spring break, staying

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT 241

The dramatic setting of Mounts disqualified from work.” And so But it is the “sombre” rolling moors,
Bay, Cornwall, has inspired writers and Holmes and Watson rent a cottage ancient Cornish language, and
artists for centuries. This painting was on the headland at Poldhu. It is a prehistoric stone monuments that
made in 1909 by Canadian Elizabeth wonderfully atmospheric setting, fascinate Holmes, as they did Conan
Forbes, who settled in Newlyn. overlooking “the whole sinister Doyle. For a few days they enjoy a
semicircle of Mounts Bay, that old “simple life” of walks on the moors,
at the Poldhu Hotel. Jean was deathtrap of sailing vessels, with while Holmes theorizes that the
pregnant with their second son, its fringe of black cliffs and surge- Cornish language developed from
Adrian, who was born just a few swept reefs on which innumerable Chaldean, an Aramaic language
weeks before “The Adventure of the seamen have met their end.” brought over in the Bronze Age by
Devil’s Foot” was published. This Phoenician tin-traders. This idea,
area of England was steeped in Why not tell them of the for which there is little evidence,
legends of witchcraft, and Conan Cornish horror—strangest was popular among antiquarians
Doyle evidently decided it was the case I have ever handled. at the time.
perfect setting for “The Devil’s
Foot”; the story is also perhaps Sherlock Holmes Now and again during their
influenced by Conan Doyle’s wanderings outdoors, they catch
increasing interest in spiritualism. sight of a famous local, “the great
lion-hunter” Dr. Leon Sterndale, a
Holmes on vacation giant of a man with grizzled hair
It is March 1897, and work has and a white beard.
taken its toll on Holmes—he has
been advised by an eminent Harley Madness and death
Street doctor to take a vacation, “on One morning, while Holmes and
the threat of being permanently Watson are eating their breakfast,
two men arrive: the local vicar, ❯❯

242 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

Mr. Roundhay, and his lodger, There still lingered upon it A visit to the scene
Mortimer Tregennis, a bachelor of something of that convulsion Accompanied by Mortimer, Holmes
independent means. Between them of horror which had been her and Watson go to the house to
they have a terrible tale to tell. investigate. On the way, they pass
last human emotion. a coach taking Owen and George
The previous evening, Mortimer Dr. Watson to the asylum. Watson glimpses a
had been playing cards with his “horribly contorted, grinning face
brothers, George and Owen, and his fainted. Concluding his narrative, glaring out at us. Those staring
sister Brenda at Tredannick Wartha, Mr. Roundhay tells Holmes, “In all eyes and gnashing teeth flashed
their house on the moor. The three England you are the one man we past us like a dreadful vision.”
siblings live in the family home, need.” Despite orders for a peaceful
while Mortimer lives locally. He vacation, Holmes is as thrilled by Arriving at Tredannick Wartha,
had left them in good spirits just the mystery as “an old hound who Holmes trips over a watering can,
after 10pm, but while out on a walk hears the view-halloa.” All Watson’s spilling its contents. An act of
the following morning, he met hopes of a respite are dashed. apparent clumsiness at the time,
Dr. Richards, the local physician, Holmes uses this to gauge a
rushing to the house in response clear impression of Mortimer’s
to an urgent summons. There they footprint. From this he is able to
found the three siblings still seated trace Mortimer’s tracks from the
around the card table, just as previous night and verify his claim
Mortimer had left them. Brenda that he had gone straight back to
was dead and her brothers were the vicarage. Once inside, Holmes
both shrieking dementedly, “an and Watson see Brenda, once a
expression of the utmost horror” on great beauty, laid out on her bed.
each of their faces. On entering the They learn that the housekeeper,
room, Dr. Richards himself almost Mrs. Porter, fainted on entering the
room where her mistress had died.
Examining the scene, Holmes finds
it odd that a fire had been lit in such
a small room on a spring evening.
Mortimer explains the night had
been “cold and damp.”

Holmes laments there are simply
too few clues: “To let the brain work
without sufficient material is like
racing an engine,” he says. “It racks
itself to pieces.” He suggests a walk
to Watson, to talk things over. Both
agree that they can rule out any
supernatural “diabolical intrusions
into the affairs of men.”

Murder at the vicarage
When they return to the cottage,
Holmes and Watson are surprised
to find the eminent Leon Sterndale

The Victorian fascination with drugs
and madness informed contemporary
fiction, such as R L Stevenson’s Strange
Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and this
appeal continued into the 20th century.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT 243

Leon the lion-hunter is based on English naturalist
and explorer Charles Waterton
Dr. Leon Sterndale, lion-hunter and (1782–1865, pictured), who once
explorer, was already a somewhat walked barefoot through the
dated figure in 1910. The image Amazon. His book Wanderings
of the romantic adventurers that in South America (1825) inspired
Conan Doyle had idolized in his naturalists such as Charles
youth was tarnished by the Darwin and Alfred Wallace.
growing realization that white But Sterndale is probably
colonials had not behaved well a mix of the great Victorian
toward native people in Africa. explorers. His name may
However, Conan Doyle admired have been inspired by Robert
the exploits of men like Richard Sterndale, who wrote about
Burton and John Speke who big-game hunting in India in
blazed trails into the African books like Seonee (1877)—the
wilderness. Some Holmes scholars inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s
have suggested that Sterndale The Jungle Book (1894).

waiting for them, eager to hear The next day, Mr. Roundhay calls to the one in the room in which
Holmes’s suspicions about the on Holmes and Watson in a state Mortimer was found, Holmes
tragedy. He claims he had been of deep agitation. “We are devil- conducts a series of tests. He
about to leave for Africa, but rushed ridden, Mr. Holmes! My poor parish reveals that he has realized a
back from Plymouth on receiving a is devil-ridden! Satan himself is connection between the lamp,
telegram from the vicar with news loose in it!” Mortimer Tregennis has the fire in the room at Tredannick
of the tragedy, even though some of been found dead in his downstairs Wartha, and the “horrible stuffiness”
his luggage was already on board room, in a similar state to his sister. at both crime scenes. He reasons
the ship. Holmes is unconvinced by that something toxic must have
the explanation that this loner chose They rush to the crime scene been burning in both of the fateful
to abandon his African trip due to before anyone (including the police) incidents. To clinch this theory, he
his friendship with Owen, George, can disturb it, and find Mortimer needs to test the powder retrieved
and Brenda, and refuses to give sitting dead in his chair, with the from the lamp, and invites Watson
him any details. Sterndale leaves, same look of horror on his face as to join his experiment. The loyal
Holmes following him in secret. had been on Brenda’s. They also doctor does so willingly. Holmes
Sterndale goes to the vicarage, note the stuffy atmosphere in the puts the powder taken from the
looks around, then returns home. room—a lamp is still “flaring and second crime scene on a burning
smoking” on the table. With this lamp, and together they sit down
There is a thread here fresh lead, Holmes rushes around: to await its effect. Within moments,
which we have not yet “He was out on the lawn, in through Watson is suffering from terrible
grasped and which might the window, round the room, and hallucinations, but when he catches
lead us through the tangle. up into the bedroom, for all the a glimpse of Holmes’s face, “white,
Sherlock Holmes world like a dashing foxhound rigid, and drawn with horror,” it
drawing a cover,” notes Watson. rouses him enough to grab his
Holmes examines the lamp and friend and drag him outside into
takes a sample of powder from it, the garden, where they both lie
leaving some for the police. gasping in relief in the open air.
It has been a close call, and
A dangerous experiment there follows an unusually touching
Back at the cottage, Holmes once moment that reveals the depth of
again becomes the experimental their friendship. For an instant, the
scientist, just as when Watson curtain is lifted, and each says what
first met him in A Study in Scarlet he truly feels, knowing they have ❯❯
(pp.36–45). With a lamp identical

244 HOLMES TAKES A BOW

Using a lamp similar to the one that Medical experimentation At the very first whiff of it my
burned in the vicarage, Holmes, here The idea of self-experimentation brain and my imagination
played by Jeremy Brett, experiments was very much a part of doctors’ were beyond all control.
with the burning times of different oils. lives in the 19th century. Before Dr. Watson
the days of clinical trials for testing
escaped death by a hair’s breadth. drugs and poisons, often the only on his siblings. He had admitted
“I owe you both my thanks and an way doctors could discover the being in a bitter dispute with
apology,” says Holmes. “It was an effects of such chemicals was to them over an inheritance, but had
unjustifiable experiment… I am experiment on themselves. There claimed “it was all forgiven and
really very sorry.” Watson replies, was an element of bravado about forgotten”—but as Holmes observes,
“You know that it is my greatest joy this, but also a sense of pushing at “He is not a man whom I should
and privilege to help you.” Within the frontiers of science. Conan Doyle judge to be of a particularly
seconds, however, Holmes is back himself tried the poison gelseminum forgiving disposition.”
to his usual sardonic self. (made from the root of yellow
jasmine) while a medical student Holmes knows all
in Edinburgh, and wrote a paper Sterndale soon arrives, at Holmes’s
for the British Medical Journal in invitation. The great explorer is
1879 about his observations. When visibly bristling at the summons,
Watson first meets Holmes, the but goes quiet when Holmes
detective is covered in scars from informs him that he knows he
his own experiments. His drug habit killed Mortimer. Holmes reveals
may even have begun this way. that he had followed Sterndale
home after their first meeting, and
Nevertheless, to involve Watson
in this experiment was, as Holmes
admits, sheer madness, and they
were lucky to escape with their
lives, even if it confirmed how the
deaths at Tredannick Wartha and
the vicarage occurred. Holmes is
now certain that Mortimer threw
some of the powder on the fire as he
left Tredannick Wartha, leaving the
fumes to wreak their terrible effect

Poisonous plants The fictional devil’s-foot root is tropical Africa by missionaries,
reminiscent of the Mandragora, only saving himself by drinking
or mandrake, genus of plants, his shaving water and making
whose forked roots are said to look himself sick. He was also known
human, and supposedly “scream” for firing blowpipes when
when pulled up. Mandrakes lecturing on the South American
contain poisonous hallucinogens plant poison curare. Explorer
and are a staple of European Charles Waterton (1782–1865)
witchcraft. Witch doctors across who, like Conan Doyle, went
the world use a variety of plants to school at Stonyhurst College,
to induce hallucinations and even Lancashire, showed that a
madness and death. A legendary donkey poisoned by curare
teacher at Conan Doyle’s medical could be kept alive by artificial
school in Edinburgh, Robert respiration until the effects wore
Christison (1797–1882), nearly off. This led Waterton, rightly,
killed himself by eating part of to conclude that the plant could
a Calabar bean (left) sent from be used as an anesthetic.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S FOOT 245

Brenda Mortimer Owen George

Poisons Poisons

Loves Poisons Poisons

Loves

Dr. Leon Mortimer Tregennis poisoned his siblings as
Sterndale he could not bear them to remain in the home
that he felt was his. Sterndale, recognizing
the cause of their deaths, returned to make
Mortimer pay for the death of his dearest love.

then how a later investigation found “medicine-men in certain districts if the woman I loved had met such
gravel from his cottage on the lawn of West Africa.” Mortimer, upon an end, I might act even as our
below Mortimer’s bedroom window. learning of its deadly effects, had lawless lion-hunter has done.”
From this Holmes concluded that stolen some and used it to kill his
Sterndale had gone to the vicarage siblings, thus making himself “sole There is something so marked
early that morning and thrown guardian of their joint property.” To and poignant in Holmes’s sympathy
gravel at the window to wake avenge Brenda’s murder, Sterndale, for Sterndale’s predicament that it
Mortimer. Sterndale had then shut armed with a gun, forced Mortimer is hard to escape the idea that this
him in the room with the burning to sit in his chair and face the same could be Conan Doyle speaking
lamp, while he stood outside hideous death. “In five minutes he from the heart. In 1897, the year
on the lawn smoking a cigar and died,” the explorer tells Holmes. in which “The Devil’s Foot” is set,
watching him die. “My God! How he died!” Conan Doyle had met and fallen in
love with Jean Leckie. But his wife
“You are the devil himself!” cries Remarkably, the detective Louise (or “Touie”) was very ill with
a stunned Sterndale to Holmes. He sympathizes with Sterndale and, tuberculosis, and rather than leave
confesses what Holmes suspected now that he knows the truth behind her at this time of crisis, he kept
all along—that he had been in love his motives, decides to let him go his affair quiet and looked after his
with Brenda for years, but had a free. Holmes always leans in favor wife until she died in 1906, without
long-estranged wife whom he was of acting fairly over the letter of the her ever knowing she had a rival.
unable to divorce. Just a few weeks law, and is rarely concerned with Conan Doyle finally married Jean
earlier, Sterndale had shown legal process once he feels that in 1907. This decade of heartache
Mortimer some of his “African justice has been done. He advises meant that the author would know
curiosities,” among them a reddish- the great explorer to go and finish what star-crossed love felt like,
brown powder made from Radix his work in Africa. After Sterndale and could only too well imagine
pedis diaboli, or devil’s-foot root, leaves, Holmes tells Watson, “I have Sterndale’s agony of having his love
a secret “ordeal poison” used by never loved, Watson, but if I did and suddenly snatched away from him. ■

246

THERE’S AN
EAST WIND
COMING WATSON

HIS LAST BOW (1917)

IN CONTEXT S o great is Sherlock Holmes’s Army. “Mon général,” replied
popularity it is often forgotten Conan Doyle, “he is too old to serve.”
TYPE that Conan Doyle received his However, it is clear that he soon
Short story knighthood for his role as a reporter reconsidered this. Published in
in the Boer War rather than for the 1917, “His Last Bow” documents
FIRST PUBLICATION creation of the world’s favorite the now-retired detective’s
UK: September 1917 detective. Indeed, the author could undercover military activities, and,
US: September 1917 never quite escape Holmes. In his chronologically, its 1914 setting
World War I account A Visit to Three features Holmes’s final appearance
COLLECTION Fronts (1916), Conan Doyle records anywhere in the canon. Originally,
His Last Bow, 1917 being asked by a French officer the story was subtitled “The War
whether Holmes was in the British Service of Sherlock Holmes,” but this
CHARACTERS was dropped from later editions.
Von Bork Avid sportsman
and a German spy. It is also one of only two tales
written in the third person, the
Martha Von Bork’s servant. other being “The Adventure of
the Mazarin Stone” (pp.252–53),
Baron Von Herling Chief published four years later. This
Secretary of the German might have been an intentional
legation to London. decision by the chronicler, Watson;
in “The Problem of Thor Bridge”
Altamont Anti-British, (pp.254–57) he makes passing
Irish American informant. reference to cases in which he
“was either not present or played
so small a part that they could
only be told as by a third person.”

Using chloroform, Holmes subdues An ominous moment
the German agent, Von Bork—shown The language of the opening lines,
here in a Strand Magazine illustration “It was nine o’clock at night upon
by Alfred Gilbert—before bundling him the second of August—the most
into the back of his car, set for London. terrible August in the history of the
world,” is unusually ominous, and
the doom-laden atmosphere can be

HIS LAST BOW 247

explained by the date, for August 2, Stand with me a chloroform-soaked rag. Thrillingly,
1914 saw a war-bound Germany here upon the it is then revealed that Altamont is
deliver its ultimatum to Belgium, terrace, for it may none other than Holmes in disguise,
overthrow Luxembourg, and sign a be the last quiet whisked out of his beekeeping
secret alliance with Turkey. Russia talk that we retirement two years earlier to
invaded Prussia that same day, and shall ever have. scupper the troublesome German.
Britain declared war on Germany Sherlock Holmes As he and his “chauffeur,” Watson,
only two days later. help themselves to Von Bork’s wine,
is supposed to be a stolen copy of Holmes explains that Martha (whom
At his country house in England, the British Navy’s secret signals. some Holmesians believe is Mrs
Von Bork—a German spy—is in Von Bork boasts to Altamont about Hudson) was in on the secret, and
conversation with his superior, his safe, which is filled with secret he had spent two years undercover
Baron Von Herling. In expectation intelligence. Its combination code, (including some time in the US) to
of the approaching conflict, Von “August 1914,” set four years earlier, prepare for his dealings with the spy.
Bork is preparing to leave the indicates that the Germans had The similarities with Birdy Edwards
country. Von Herling suggests been plotting the beginning of the in The Valley of Fear (pp.212–21),
this may not be necessary, since war for some time. published a month later, are striking.
he feels England is unprepared for
war and distracted by domestic On opening the package Holmes is notably even-handed
troubles, particularly Ireland. Most containing the book, Von Bork is with Von Bork when he wakes,
of Von Bork’s family and staff have stunned to see a copy of Practical characterizing his brand of patriotic
already departed, leaving only Handbook of Bee Culture, but benevolence perfectly. However, the
his servant Martha, of whom Von before he can react, Altamont tale ends with a note of warning,
Herling remarks contemptuously, leaps up and knocks him out with with the detective voicing Conan
“She might almost personify Doyle’s own feelings about the
Britannia, with her complete menace of Germany: “There’s an
self-absorption and general air east wind coming… such a wind
of comfortable somnolence.” as never blew on England yet. It
will be cold and bitter, Watson, and
Deep undercover a good many of us may wither…
After Von Herling leaves, Von But it’s God’s own wind none the
Bork’s star informer—an anti- less, and a cleaner, better, stronger
British, Irish American man named land will lie in the sunshine when
Altamont—arrives to deliver what the storm has cleared.” ■

Wartime espionage

Contrary to public concern, there Casement (pictured), whose
was little German espionage in courting of German support
Britain during World War I. Only led Germany to supply arms
31 German spies were brought to for the 1916 Easter Rising.
trial, 11 of whom were executed at Casement, who knew Conan
the Tower of London. In “His Last Doyle and his writing, helped
Bow,” Von Herling implies that put an end to Belgium’s ruthless
Germany had a hand in stirring up colonial exploitation of the
trouble in Ireland and inciting the Congo. He was later denounced
suffragettes. While there is no for homosexuality before being
evidence for the latter, German tried for high treason and
support of the Irish campaign for executed by the British in 1916
“home rule,” to weaken British as a persona non grata. Even
power, is well documented. A key Conan Doyle’s intervention
figure was the Irishman Roger could not save him.

THE FIN
DEDUCT