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is a good fit for the murder weapon, and he seems entirely guilty of both the abduction and the killing—to everyone except Holmes, that is.

Dartmoor location

This case sees Holmes and Watson’s first encounter with Dartmoor, an evocative location to which they would return nine years later in The Hound of the Baskervilles (pp.152–61). But whereas the Dartmoor of the later story is described as “forbidding,” “desolate,” and “melancholy”—a fitting setting for the chilling menace of the hound— here it is an invigorating place of unkempt beauty. As the two friends stroll across to the neighboring stables at Mapleton, Watson briefly describes how “the long sloping plain in front of us was tinged with gold, deepening into rich, ruddy brown where the fading ferns and brambles caught the evening light.” He bemoans only the fact that “the glories of the landscape were all wasted upon my companion,” although in fact even Holmes is not immune to its appeal, later thanking his hosts for “a charming little breath of your beautiful Dartmoor air.” In spite of this, the locals do seem to have an alarming propensity to set their dogs on strangers, and perhaps this is a subliminal hint of things to come.

An uncommon policeman

The investigating detective is Inspector Gregory, a policeman to whom Holmes is uncharacteristically complimentary, describing him as “an extremely competent officer.”

Holmes is very impressed at the way Gregory has preserved the clues at the site of Straker’s apparent murder by instructing his men to stand on a piece of matting at the edge. This admiration for Gregory’s methods is in striking contrast to the ire Holmes expresses toward Lestrade when inspecting a crime scene in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” (pp.70–3): “Oh, how simple it would all have been had I been here before they came like a herd of buffalo and wallowed all over it.”

Gregory is consistently able to aid Holmes’s investigations— whether through appropriate snippets of information, a handy bag of boots, or a photograph produced from his pocket in timely fashion—which prompts the delighted detective to observe, “My dear Gregory, you anticipate all my wants.” Like another promising young inspector, Stanley Hopkins, who would not turn up at 221B Baker Street until more than a decade later, in “The Adventure of Black Peter” (pp.184–85), Gregory makes great efforts to adopt Holmes’s own methods. And yet despite being a man who “was rapidly making his name in the English detective service,” the tall, leonine Gregory never appears again after “Silver Blaze.”

Facts that suit theories

Holmes’s one criticism of Gregory is his lack of imagination, and the value of this particular asset to an investigator is a point he returns to later on in the story. Yet this is a curious criticism for Holmes to make given that in “A Scandal in Bohemia” (pp.60–1), he remarks that “It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data.” In “Silver Blaze,” ❯❯

108 THE GREAT DETECTIVE

The Epsom Derby was one of many popular races in Victorian England. The Wessex Cup in this story is fictional, yet the story has inspired several Silver Blaze Wessex Cup races globally.

Holmes in fact advocates the exact opposite: he contrives a theory as to the missing horse’s whereabouts, then goes in search of proof. When he finally finds it, he crows, “See the value of imagination… We imagined what might have happened, acted upon the supposition, and find ourselves justified.”

Holmesian methods

Holmes employs a number of his stock deductive methods as he proceeds to unravel the crime at King’s Pyland. First, there is the sifting of information: he plows through all the accounts in the popular press in an effort “to detach the framework of fact— of absolute, undeniable fact—from the embellishments of theorists and reporters.” In doing this, he trims off the suppositions of others, leaving the reader with the impression that perhaps imagination is a grand thing— so long as it is Holmes’s own.

Victorian horse racing

Horse racing was a hugely popular pastime in the Victorian era, one of the few events at which aristocrats and ordinary people met and mingled. Holmes has a shrewd understanding of the psychology of the betting man. In “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (pp.82–83), he tricks a wary poultry merchant into giving up information for a wager, observing that “when you see a man with …the ‘Pink ’un’ protruding out of his pocket, you can always draw

Once Holmes has arrived at the scene, there is the inevitable observation of small clues, in everything from the dead man’s effects to the environs of the stables and the murder scene. Various odds and ends of Holmes’s vast residual knowledge are here brought into play too, notably the fact of his being, as alleged in A Study in Scarlet (pp.36–45), “well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally.” Most famously,

him by a bet.” The “Pink ’un” was another name for The Sporting Times, one of several racing papers of the era. By the 20th century, however, the sport’s popularity had declined, and many of the smaller racecourses had disappeared, among them Winchester Racecourse at Worthy Down. In use since the 1600s, and patronized at one time by Charles II, its last race was run on July 13, 1887. By the end of World War I, it had been turned into an airfield.

there is Holmes’s last, tantalizing exchange with Inspector Gregory concerning the stable dog (see right), before he leaves Dartmoor.

A flair for the dramatic

The matter of the stable dog’s silence as Silver Blaze was led out of his stall is one of several clues upon which the solution hangs, and soon Holmes has a firm handle on them all. The silent dog indicates its familiarity with the intruder; the curry used to mask the taste of opium and drug the stable boy in fact exonerates Simpson, as (being a guest) he could have had no hand in its preparation nor in its devising as a meal; and the “singular knife”—suited to surgical procedures—that was found on the dead man hints at a dark and specific purpose. It is well within Holmes’s power to resolve the matter before he leaves Dartmoor, but he chooses not to. Instead he assures Colonel Ross, the horse’s owner, that Silver Blaze will run in the Wessex Cup, and arranges to meet him at the Winchester Racecourse in four days.

SILVER BLAZE 109

I was marvelling in my own mind how I could possibly have overlooked so obvious a clue.

Sherlock Holmes

Holmes justifies this delay as a playful form of retribution toward Ross, who has been dismissive of his abilities and somewhat prickly toward him: “The colonel’s manner has been just a trifle cavalier to me. I am inclined now to have a little amusement at his expense.” Whether we believe him entirely, of course, is a rather different matter, but Holmes is fond of a dramatic denouement and, as he remarks to a fellow detective in The Valley of Fear (pp.212–20), “surely our profession… would be a drab and sordid one if we did not sometimes set the scene so as to glorify our results.”

Whatever Holmes’s motivation, the reappearance of the racehorse and the unmasking of the villain are beautifully staged. Silver Blaze turns out to have been both victim and killer, having fatally kicked his trainer in the head while the debt- ridden Straker attempted to rig the race by laming him with a “slight nick upon the tendons.” Since then, Silver Blaze has been hidden away at Mapleton, after being found wandering the moor by Silas Brown, Straker’s rival trainer, and subsequently disguised with dye to conceal his true coloring. Holmes neglects to reveal this fact to Ross, but as a bay-colored Silver Blaze dashes to victory at Winchester, the colonel is happy enough.

A vice revealed

At the races, Holmes cannot help indulging yet another vice: “But there goes the bell, and as I stand to win a little on this next race, I shall defer a lengthy explanation until a more fitting time.” His enthusiasm for the races is evidently shared by Watson who, in “The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place’”(pp.288–91), confesses that he spends half his pension on betting. It is, however, unlikely that Conan Doyle was an enthusiast himself. In his biography, Memories and Adventures, he acknowledges how his ignorance of horse racing “cries aloud to heaven” in “Silver Blaze,” which was at the time criticized by experts because had his characters really acted as he described, they would have either ended up in prison or been banned from the sport. “However,” Conan Doyle retorted, “I have never been nervous about details, and one must be masterful sometimes.” ■

A key clue for Holmes was the lack of noise made by the stable dog, which allowed the thief to lead Silver Blaze from the stable unheard. His deductions in this case gave rise to the phrase “the curious incident of the dog in the night- time,” later immortalized by Mark Haddon in his novel of the same name.

Inspector Gregory:

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

Holmes:

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

Inspector Gregory:

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

Holmes:

“That was the curious incident.”

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

US: January 1893 UK: January 1893

COLLECTION

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1894

CHARACTERS Susan Cushing Quiet and respectable retired spinster.

Sarah Cushing Sister of Susan; a proud, fierce woman.

Mary Browner

Third Cushing sister; married to James Browner.

James Browner

Tempestuous, heavy-drinking ship’s steward.

Alec Fairbairn Dashing, swaggering competitor for Mary’s affections.

Inspector Lestrade

Scotland Yard detective.

THERE IS NO PART

OF THE BODY WHICH

VARIES SO MUCH

AS THE HUMAN EAR

THE CARDBOARD BOX (1893)

T

he story opens on a “blazing hot day in August” and Watson is dying to get out of the sweltering city. Restless and bored, his gaze wanders to two portraits on the wall. Moments later, Holmes makes a comment that is so in tune with his thoughts, it is as if he has read the doctor’s mind. The detective explains the trick: he had followed his friend’s facial expressions and, from a mere quiver on his lips, had deduced that Watson had been musing on “the preposterous way” of settling arguments through violence. This observation neatly foreshadows the action to follow. Holmes announces

The 1994 television adaptation of “The Cardboard Box” was set during a snowy Christmas. It starred Jeremy Brett at the end of his Holmes career, due to his declining health.

THE CARDBOARD BOX 111

Conan Doyle’s self-censorship

When the stories published in The Strand Magazine between December 1892 and November 1893 were compiled as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, “The Cardboard Box” was left out at Conan Doyle’s insistence. The story was included in the first American edition of the Memoirs, but removed in a revised second printing, and the original edition destroyed. Debate about Conan Doyle’s reasons has raged among

his involvement in a sensational new case, which “may prove to be more difficult of solution than my small essay in thought reading.” An innocuous spinster, Susan Cushing, has received a very grisly package of two severed human ears. Lestrade suspects it is no more than a prank by her former lodgers (three medical students) but, as usual, he turns out to be wide of the mark.

Unpacking the box

At Susan’s home, Holmes’s major deductions revolve around the package, the cardboard box of the title. To the sharp-eyed detective, this box yields a host of clues— including tarred twine and an especially well-executed knot— to the sender’s identity. The ears themselves are preserved in rough salt, which is not a substance that a medical practitioner would use, and they are not a matching pair: one is a woman’s, the other a man’s. Holmes deduces that this is no student joke—it is a double murder.

Susan then unwittingly provides almost all the extra information Holmes needs to solve the case, telling him that she has two sisters, Mary and Sarah. Mary lives in

Holmesians ever since. As Christopher Roden points out, the author offered various excuses: “that it was out of place in a collection intended for boys; that it was more sensational than he cared for; and that it was a weak story.” However, salacious content appears elsewhere in the canon, and the tale is a compelling one. Whatever the reason, there was one part of the story that Conan Doyle thought too good to lose. For the Memoirs

Liverpool with her sailor husband James Browner; her other sister Sarah had once lived with the couple, but after a “quarrel” she returned to London to lodge with Susan (although she has recently moved out). As they talk, Holmes notes a strong resemblance between Susan’s ear and one in the box.

En route to sister Sarah’s house, Holmes wires a police contact in Liverpool. Sarah is ill and cannot meet them, but Holmes says that he had only wanted to “look at her,” and that he already has the information he needs. Back at Scotland Yard, he receives a response to his telegram, and tells Lestrade that Browner sent

What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear?

Sherlock Holmes

publication, the opening mind-reading passage of this story was moved to the start of “The

Adventure of the Resident

Patient” (pp.134–

35). While “The

Cardboard Box”

was eventually

included in

1917’s His Last

Bow, most modern

editors return it to

the Memoirs and,

to avoid duplicating

the opening passage,

restore both stories to

their original versions.

the parcel, and can be apprehended when his ship next docks in London. By now, Holmes is convinced that one of the ears belongs to Mary Browner, and the other to her lover.

A husband’s betrayal

Once under arrest, Browner readily admits to his crime in a confession that portrays him more as the victim of the case, rather than the villain, confusing the story’s morals. Sarah was in love with him, but when he gently spurned her advances, she became vengeful, poisoning his marriage and encouraging Mary to have an affair with a dashing seaman, Alec Fairbairn.

One day, Browner saw the lovers, and, in a jealous rage, he armed himself with a heavy stick and followed. When they rented a boat and rowed out to sea, he did the same and, after a confrontation, he killed them both. He hacked off their ears, later sending one of each to Sarah, in a crazed bid to show her where her “meddling” had led. All of this precipitates a melancholic closing remark from Holmes, echoing Watson’s thoughts on “the sadness and horror and useless waste of life” involved in violence. ■

ANY TRUTH IS

BETTER THAN

INDEFINITE DOUBT

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION