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In this first encounter with the men, Conan Doyle turns Wilder’s caginess and the Duke’s unease

The Duke of Holdernesse

The Duke of Holdernesse’s name may have alluded to the original location of the Priory, written in the manuscript as Castleton in Derbyshire. Holderness is the name of a large area in the east of Yorkshire, not far from this county. Scholarly attempts to match the Duke with a real person have proved more fruitless than most, and this has led some Holmesians to attribute this lack of information to Watson’s masterful smudging of delicate facts.

After following his cycle tracks, Holmes and Watson discover the body of Heidegger, illustrated here by Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine.

to dramatic effect, weaving the case’s characters into an atmosphere of intrigue. It also gives Holmes an occasion to indulge in his love of play-acting. When Wilder pointedly suggests that Holmes should depart, he counters by making his visit sound like a simple vacation. “This Northern air is invigorating and pleasant. I propose to spend a few days upon your moors, and to occupy my mind as best I may.” In truth,

The Holdernesse whom Watson describes in the story is a cold, aloof figure, with a flaming red beard, “a drawn, thin face, and a nose which was grotesquely curved and long.” This is quite appropriate, perhaps, for one of the most decorated noblemen in Britain—a Knight of the Garter, a Privy Councillor, a Lord Lieutenant, and more—but not exactly consistent with the secretly weak-hearted romantic that the case’s true history reveals him to be.

he is planning to explore the moors not for the air but to find the missing boy, Lord Saltire.

Later that evening, Holmes and Watson pore over a map of the area. A main road runs across the front of the Priory, and on the fateful night, a police constable who had coincidentally been posted at its eastern end had seen nothing. A similar incident at the nearby Red Bull Inn conveniently rules out late-night fugitives at that end. To the south, the land is impassable by bicycle, while to the north a copse gives way to the rolling Low Gill Moor, eventually leading to the Duke’s home, Holdernesse Hall. As Holmes concludes that this moor should be their focus, Huxtable joins them, brandishing Saltire’s blue cricket cap in his hand. It has been found in a caravan of gypsies who left the moor on Tuesday, showing that this is indeed the place to search.

On the right track

A major aspect of the case hinges on Holmes’s ability to read tracks. Venturing onto the moor, they find bicycle tire marks. In keeping with his usual precision, Holmes claims to have an expert knowledge of bicycle tracks, and states that these tires have been patched and do not match the tread on Heidegger’s bike.

This is a fairly convincing deduction, but Holmes’s logic that the bicycle’s direction of travel (away from the school) can be seen by the heavier rear tire’s tracks periodically overlaying those of the front tire is misleading—in fact, this would offer no clue to the direction of travel. Conan Doyle often argued that accuracy was unimportant next to dramatic effect, but later admitted in his memoirs that some illogical plot details had generated questions from fans all over the

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL 181

A bicycle, certainly, but not THE bicycle… I am familiar with forty-two different impressions left by tyres.

Sherlock Holmes

world. These troublesome tire tracks were a case in point, and Conan Doyle even went as far as to conduct his own experiments to prove his idea: “I had so many remonstrances upon this point, varying from pity to anger, that I took out my bicycle and tried. I had imagined that the observations of the way in which the track of the hind wheel overlaid the track of the front one when the machine was not running dead straight would show the direction. I found that my correspondents were right and I was wrong, for this would be the same whichever way the cycle was moving. On the other hand the real solution was much simpler, for on an undulating moor the wheels make a much deeper impression uphill and a more shallow one downhill, so Holmes was justified of his wisdom after all.”

A gruesome discovery

As the pair scour the moor, they find the distinctively narrow tread of Heidegger’s Palmer tires, soon followed by the gruesome discovery of the German master’s lifeless body, his head brutally smashed. Heidegger is wearing a nightshirt and is without socks, indicating a hasty exit from the school, in pursuit of Saltire. The violent death suggests it was committed by a strong adult, who was presumably with Saltire. Heidegger, an expert cyclist, had cycled five miles to reach that point, so Saltire and his companion must have had some means of travel. However, there are no other bicycle tracks, or even footprints, around the body—just cattle hoofprints.

It is at the Fighting Cock, a nearby inn, that Holmes puts in a second dramatic turn, feigning a sprained ankle as an excuse to borrow a bicycle from the sour, bad-tempered innkeeper. Alas, Reuben Hayes has the manners of a criminal, but no bicycle, only horses. It is not until Holmes spots the stable and the smithy that he makes a sudden deduction. He notes that while there were cow hoofprints all around the bicycle tracks and the body on the moor, neither he nor Watson have seen a single cow. Furthermore, the tracks indicated distinctly un-cowlike movements—“it is a remarkable cow which walks, canters, and gallops”—remarks Holmes. He then investigates the horses in Hayes’s stable and surmises that they have been freshly shod—in old shoes.

Hereditary scandals

As the pair leave the Fighting Cock, the Duke’s secretary speeds past on a bicycle, heading for ❯❯

Granada Television’s adaptation in 1987, starring Jeremy Brett, was filmed at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, just a few miles away from Castleton, where the story was originally set.

182 A LEGEND RETURNS

Holmes studies a map

of the area around the

Priory school and

Holdernesse Hall, to Holdernesse

deduce where Saltire Hall

and Heidegger may have gone. The bicycle tracks Fighting Cock Inn

on the moor provide him

with useful clues.

General direction of cattle tracks The Palmer tracks are from Heidegger’s bicycle. His body is found

The Dunlop bicycle tracks head away from the Priory Heidegger’s body surrounded only by cattle tracks.

school, to an unknown destination.

Lower Gill Moor

Palmer tire

Dunlop tire

tracks tracks

People at the

inn declared that no one passed along the Ragged Shaw A police constable stood on duty all night

High Road all night. Lawn but saw no one.

Red Bull Inn Priory School Constable

High Road

the inn. Upon closer inspection, Wilder’s patched bicycle tire matches that which Holmes first identified from the set of tracks on the moor, and his unexpected appearance at the inn is the first sign that a plan is falling apart. After peering into a window at the inn, Holmes declares the case closed—he now has his answers.

At Holdernesse Hall the next morning, Holmes reveals the name of his suspect, and accuses the Duke of knowing exactly where his son is. Quite apart from Holmes’s extraordinary abruptness with the nobleman, the real revelation here is that the Duke admits that Wilder is his first-born son—the illegitimate result of an earlier love affair—who has no hope of ever inheriting his father’s wealth or title. The Duke now assumes a sympathetic character: for all his concern with propriety, he has brought Wilder up himself after the death of his beloved.

The real villain turns out to be the nervous and shifty Wilder. Since discovering his parentage, he has been holding the Duke to ransom with the threat of scandal. His plot to abduct Holdernesse’s rightful heir, the young Lord Saltire, hiding him at the Fighting Cock Inn in order to blackmail his father, had been the culmination of a lifetime’s hatred toward his half-brother and an intense bitterness at the injustice of his lost inheritance.

The letter that Saltire received had been from his father; however, Wilder had added a note purporting to be from Saltire’s mother, asking him to meet a man with a horse that evening, who would take him to meet her. This man was Hayes, employed by Wilder, and he and Saltire set off on horseback. Unknown to Saltire, however, he had been spotted leaving the school by Heidegger, who duly followed him by bicycle, concerned for the boy’s well-being. As the

THE ADVENTURE OF THE PRIORY SCHOOL 183

school master caught up with the fleeing pair, Hayes struck him with a stick and killed him. Heidegger’s death was unplanned, a result of Hayes’s desperation and brutality.

Justice is served

The Duke reveals that he had learned of the plot after the discovery of Heidegger’s body, but he had “yielded—as I have always yielded” to Wilder’s plea for him to “keep his secret for three days longer” to allow Hayes to escape. Fearing that Hayes’s capture would expose his eldest son’s involvement, the Duke felt he had no alternative but to acquiesce.

There is certainly an interesting moral situation here, and Holmes himself points out its muddiness. The Duke’s extraordinary sympathy toward Wilder and Hayes seems hard to credit, and even a little irrational. He allowed time for Hayes to make his escape, and has graciously tried to clear up the mess of his first son’s sordid machinations. In doing so, however, he has not only conspired to aid a murderer’s evasion of justice, but has also left his younger son, and precious heir, in the hands of a known, violent killer.

The rules of

succession

Holmes has little sympathy for the Duke’s cold, remote way of conducting family relationships, saying, “To humour your guilty elder son, you have exposed your innocent younger son to imminent and unnecessary danger.” He insists that the young Saltire be brought from the inn immediately, and suggests that Wilder be sent away. Holmes suggests that the Duke attempt a reconciliation with his wife not that his illegitimate son is gone.

Yet if Holmes’s dressing-down of Holdernesse runs counter to the story’s sycophantic attitude toward the Duke and nobility, his willingness to accept the Duke’s money and hush up both the nobleman’s involvement and his relationship to Wilder (who is set to depart for Australia) only seems to confirm it. It seems easy to forget that an innocent teacher has been brutally murdered, and the Duke’s none-too-subtle trick of quietly doubling Holmes’s payoff, which he duly accepts, marks an ignobly neat transition from reward to bribe.

Holmes’s final question about the peculiar horseshoes might seem like a return to his usual interest in

“Primogeniture” is the practice by which land and titles are left to the eldest son within a family. In Britain, this has meant that power and land ownership have always been a male prerogative. Regardless of whether he was the first-born, an illegitimate son, born out of wedlock, had no right to inherit his father’s estate. Even today, many historic aristocratic families still follow the rules of primogeniture. However, by the turn of the 21st century, most remaining monarchies, including Britain’s, had established gender-blind succession, which means

I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.

Sherlock Holmes

technical details above all else. Shaped like cows’ hooves, the horseshoes turn out to be family relics from “the marauding Barons of Holdernesse in the Middle Ages,” designed to throw pursuers off their trail. It is thought that similar tricks were really used during the English Civil War. Yet the detective declares the crafty ironwork to be only the “second most interesting object that I have seen in the North”— clearly, his hefty, dubious check takes first place. ■

that a princess with a claim to the throne will no longer be usurped by a younger brother.

In Conan Doyle’s time, the principle of “entail” also meant that it was illegal to break up or sell landed estates, so they remained in the hands of a small, powerful minority. Along with primogeniture, entail was a relic of medieval feudalism— in France, entailment was one of the first things to be overturned after the 1789 revolution. It was abolished in Britain by the Law of Property Act of 1925, after which many estates were sold.

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

US: February 1904 UK: March 1904

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS

Captain Peter Carey (“Black Peter”)

Retired whaling captain.

John Hopley Neligan

Banker’s young son.

Patrick Cairns Whale harpooner who once served under Peter Carey.

Stanley Hopkins

Young police inspector.

ONE SHOULD ALWAYS

LOOK FOR A POSSIBLE

ALTERNATIVE

AND

PROVIDE AGAINST IT

THE ADVENTURE OF BLACK PETER (1904)

Holmes deduces the identity of the murderer

Whoever impaled the victim had amazing strength.

He drank rum and water, a sailor’s favorite.

“All these pointed to a seaman, and one who had been a whaler.”

He had great skill in the use of the harpoon.

S

et in 1895, Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of Black Peter” is an atmospheric story of the murder of a brutal retired whaling captain. Its rich authenticity comes in part from the author’s personal experiences. As a young medical student, he spent seven months as surgeon on a whaling ship, the Hope, as it hunted in the Arctic. As Conan Doyle wrote later, he “came of age

He carried a seal-skin tobacco pouch, suggesting a life at sea.

at 80 degrees north latitude,” amid the ice floes and flailing whales. The whalers themselves were a tough breed, and Conan Doyle would have gotten to know hard men like Black Peter only too well.

The tale opens with Holmes returning to his and Watson’s lodgings with a harpoon tucked under his arm. Holmes reveals that he has been at the butcher shop, trying to spear a pig carcass with

THE ADVENTURE OF BLACK PETER 185

…if I killed Black Peter, the law should give me thanks, for I saved them the price of a hempen rope.

Patrick Cairns

a single strike and singularly failing. Watson, familiar with such extraordinary behavior, concludes that Holmes is engaged in an investigation. In fact, Holmes is conducting a forensic experiment that is itself far ahead of its time— a controlled test of the effectiveness of a murder weapon. Tests such as this are now standard practice for a forensics team undertaking a murder investigation, but Holmes, it seems, was a (fictional) pioneer.

Inspector baffled

Holmes and Watson are soon joined by the young police inspector, Stanley Hopkins, a great admirer of Holmes. It seems that Hopkins has been investigating the same case—the gruesome murder of retired whaler Peter Carey. He has had little success and is seeking Holmes’s help.