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Well, Watson, what do you think of it?… Quite a little parlour game— sort of three-card trick, is it not? There are your three men. It must be one of them.

Sherlock Holmes

In “The Adventure of The Three Students,” Holmes and Watson are undertaking research in an unnamed university city, where the doctor notes that “my friend’s temper had not improved since he had been deprived of the congenial surroundings of Baker Street.” Fortunately, Holmes is always distracted by the prospect of a case, and an acquaintance, Hilton Soames, provides just the thing.

The trio of suspects

Soames, a university professor, had been checking a passage of ancient Greek text for unseen translation printed in an exam paper for a lucrative scholarship, when someone entered his office while he was out and copied part of it. The exam is the next day, and unless the culprit can be found it will have to be canceled—to the embarrassment of the college. Once again, in his capacity as a private operator, and with a reputation for discretion, Holmes is ideally placed to investigate the delicate matter.

The perpetrator had accessed Soames’s office when his servant, Bannister, accidentally left his keys in the door. Suspicion then immediately falls on the three

THE ADVENTURE OF THE THREE STUDENTS 191

students who live in the same building as Soames’s office. All three students use the staircase next to it, and are all about to take the exam. There are reasons to suspect each of the three students: McLaren has had a previous brush with scandal, Ras is quiet and elusive, and Gilchrist is apparently honest but short of money, giving him the most obvious motive.

Examining the clues

On inspecting the scene, Holmes’s first clue is suggested by some wooden shavings that allow him to discern the make and length of the miscreant’s pencil. He then deduces from the way that the papers are strewn around the room that the culprit was almost caught in the act. More mysterious, however, is the “small ball of black dough or clay, with specks of something which looks like sawdust in it.”

The key to the solution lies at the athletics track. Holmes turns up at the college early the next morning brandishing three little clay pyramids. He reveals them to be lumps of earth from the long-jump pit that had fallen from the spiked soles of track shoes. Faced

Universities in the Victorian age

with this evidence, the athlete, Gilchrist, owns up, claiming that he had already decided to do so prior to Holmes’s involvement.

Redemption overseas

Bannister, the servant, has also played a significant role. Upon first discovering Gilchrist’s crime, he hid a pair of gloves that he knew would implicate the young man. It then transpires that Bannister was once in the employ of Gilchrist’s father, and has been motivated by loyalty. It also appears that the trusty manservant has already had a chance to set his former young master on the straight and narrow. In the tradition of James Ryder in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” (pp.82–3) and James Wilder in “The Adventure of the Priory School” (pp.178–83), Gilchrist accepts exile rather than publicly disgracing himself and his college. Most top universities at this time still had strong religious backgrounds, and dishonorable behavior by one student would reflect on the whole institution.

Gilchrist announces that he intends to accept a commission with the Rhodesian police, an

In the Victorian era, attending university was still largely the preserve of wealthy young men, and usually meant receiving a education in subjects such as Latin and ancient Greek. While other subjects, such as medicine, were taught, undergraduates did not have access to the wide range of disciplines available today. Neither did they have access to the number of universities that exist now. For the Victorian scholar, choice was dominated by the ancient institutions of Oxford, Cambridge, and the old Scottish universities, along with some

The culprit confesses to Holmes, as illustrated by Paget in The Strand Magazine. He had, however, already decided to admit his guilt to Soames.

adventurous but respectable job, in what would at the time have been a rapidly changing part of Southern Africa, and one that would take him far away from the ivory towers of academia. ■

more recent additions, such as Durham and the University of London colleges. Women could sometimes attend universities, although they were not allowed to receive degrees until 1878, when University College London started to award them.

Change came at the turn of the twentieth century, when “red-brick” universities sprang up in industrial cities, including Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, and Leeds. With subjects such as engineering, there was a clear move toward more practical education.

SURELY MY

DEDUCTIONS ARE

SIMPLICITY ITSELF

THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ (1904)

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: July 1904 US: October 1904

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS Stanley Hopkins Young police detective.

Professor Coram Elderly professor and invalid.

Willoughby Smith Young researcher working for Professor Coram.

Anna Former Russian revolutionary.

Mrs. Marker Professor Coram’s housekeeper.

Susan Tarlton

Professor Coram’s maid.

Mortimer Professor Coram’s gardener and army pensioner.

T

his case shows Holmes at the height of his deductive powers, brilliantly piecing together the truth behind a baffling murder. Just a few easily overlooked clues are enough to lead him straight to the culprit. However, while the eager young police detective Stanley Hopkins, who is investigating the case, tries to apply Holmes’s forensic methods at the crime scene, he is left watching open-mouthed as the detective shows just how it should be done.

A midnight visitor

Holmes and Watson are quietly at work at 221B Baker Street on a dark and stormy winter’s night in 1894. Watson notes how, even in the heart of London, a tempestuous night such as this is a reminder of the elemental power and wildness of nature. So often in the Holmes tales, the danger is lurking deep in the untamed darkness of the countryside beyond London— perhaps a reminder that the constant vigilance of Holmes’s reason is needed to keep the dark forces of chaos at bay.

Each man is focusing on his own area of interest: Watson is reading a medical treatise, and Holmes is studying a palimpsest, a very old document often made of parchment, from which the original writing has been erased so that it can be used again. However, a discerning eye, such as Holmes’s, can sometimes decipher the original, hidden text, beneath the overlay of the new; and his analysis of the palimpsest can be seen as a metaphor for his criminal detection methods.

Holmes and Watson’s evening is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Police Inspector Hopkins, who is seeking Holmes’s help with a murder that has taken place earlier that day.

What did you do, Hopkins, after you had made certain that you had made certain of nothing?

Sherlock Holmes

THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ 193

Strong lenses suggest the wearer was likely to

Gold frame frown and stoop

suggests the wearer over her work.

was a refined lady.

The Yoxley murder

Willoughby Smith, a young man working as a researcher for the elderly, bed-bound Professor Coram in Yoxley Old Place—a secluded house in the Kent countryside—has been murdered in the professor’s study, stabbed in the neck with a paper knife taken from the desk. His dying words uttered to the maid who found him—“The professor— it was she”—indicate the murderer was female (Professor Coram being a man). Nothing has been stolen, no member of the household has seen or heard anything, and there appears to be no motive. Hopkins’s search indicated that the murderer’s only escape route would have been via the garden, but he found no footprints.

At this point Hopkins reveals that the victim was found clutching a golden pince-nez (glasses that are

Wide clips suggest the wearer had a broad, short nose, with close-set eyes.

kept in place only by pinching the bridge of the nose), which the detective has brought with him. He says Smith had clearly grabbed them from the assassin at the time of the murder, as he did not wear glasses. While pince-nez were widely worn in the 1890s, Holmes is confident that this pair will yield valuable clues. Clearly relishing this chance to show off his powers to his young disciple, Holmes examines them closely, then jots down a full physical description of the wearer, including the key fact that she is incredibly nearsighted and so should be easy to track down—all deduced before he has even visited the crime scene.

On the path

The following morning, Holmes travels down to Yoxley Old Place with Watson and Hopkins. It is

Upon inspecting the pince-nez, Holmes describes the wearer as “a woman of good address, attired like a lady. She has a remarkably thick nose, with eyes which are set close upon either side of it. She has a puckered forehead, a peering expression, and probably rounded shoulders.”

here that Holmes makes his most brilliant deductions, although he keeps them to himself until the dramatic denouement of the case.

On arriving at the garden of Yoxley Old Place, Holmes carefully inspects the path. Hopkins then reiterates that when he examined it the previous day, there had been no visible footprints, yet now there were signs of someone having trodden on the narrow grass border alongside it. Hopkins assumes someone had walked on that instead of the footpath in order to avoid leaving a track. When Holmes asks whether Hopkins is sure that the murderer must have left the house the same way she entered, Hopkins says she must certainly have done so, since there is no other way out. Holmes seems unconvinced—but the reader has yet to learn why. ❯❯

194 A LEGEND RETURNS

On examining the professor’s study, Holmes immediately notices a new scratch near the lock on a bureau, and deduces that the murderer was trying to break into it when Smith interrupted her. Holmes then considers her escape route. There are two options—either the way she came, or along a corridor that leads into the professor’s bedroom.

Holmes, Watson, and Hopkins visit the professor. While Holmes chain-smokes the professor’s Egyptian cigarettes, they discuss the possible causes of Smith’s death, which the professor says he believes was suicide. Holmes then departs, saying he will return that afternoon to report back on the case. When asked by his companions whether he has any clues, Holmes’s enigmatic response is that “the cigarettes will show me.”

It would be difficult to name any articles which afford a finer field for inference than a pair of glasses.

Sherlock Holmes

The Russian in hiding

Holmes returns to the professor’s room at the specified time, and after “mistakenly” dropping the box of cigarettes offered to him and picking all the stray cigarettes off the floor, he announces that he has solved the mystery, much to everyone’s amazement. He immediately identifies a bookcase with a secret closet as the place where the assassin has concealed herself. Realizing the game is up, the murderer—who is exactly as Holmes has described her— emerges, and tells her story. She confesses that she had entered the house to recover some crucial personal documents, but was caught in the act by Smith, and killed him accidentally while trying to escape. Fleeing down the wrong corridor in panic, she ended up in the professor’s bedroom—and he, although surprised to see her, then hid her from the police.

It turns out that the woman is the professor’s Russian wife, Anna. Years earlier, the couple were involved in a revolutionary

Stanley Hopkins’s sketch of the crime scene

Door

Window

The maid was at the study door within seconds of the murder. She would have seen the attacker if they’d fled that way.

Smith’s dead body lies in the professor’s study and the murderer has apparently escaped. Ruling out where the assailant couldn’t have fled to, Holmes deduces the most likely—unlikely, as it turns out—hiding place.

Desk and bureau

Smith’s

Professor’s

body

study Corridor

Back door

Corridor

Professor’s bedroom

Wardrobe Stairs

The two corridors from the study have identical carpets, so the nearsighted murderer could have easily chosen the wrong one.

Without glasses, the murderer would not have been able to balance along the narrow grass border of the path.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE GOLDEN PINCE-NEZ 195

movement in their homeland, but their activities were uncovered by the authorities and in order to save his own life, the professor betrayed Anna and their comrades, and fled to England. Many of the group were jailed, including Anna’s close friend Alexis, who was innocent of any wrongdoing and had written many letters dissuading his comrades from the path of violence. The professor had discovered these letters, which may have prevented Alexis’s conviction, but he withheld them, prompting Anna to take matters into her own hands and try to steal them.

Having explained her noble quest to save her friend, Anna falls on to the bed and dies, having taken poison before she revealed herself. The story’s ending is tragic, but the case has been solved, and Holmes has the documents that may ensure Alexis’s freedom.

The detective’s summary

What is remarkable about this case is the speed at which Holmes succeeds in solving it: barely 14 hours had passed since Hopkins’s arrival in Baker Street. In few other adventures do we see Holmes working so swiftly to solve a crime from just the slimmest of clues.

As always, the secret to Holmes’s success is in his observation of details that others have overlooked. He tells his stunned companions how he reached his conclusions. First, the style and fit of the pincenez found at the crime scene enabled him to create a detailed image of the wearer (see p.193). Second, on examining the garden path, he realized that the murderer— half-blind without her glasses— could not possibly have made her escape down a narrow strip of grass without making a false step, so she must have still been in the

Russian revolutionaries

Russia’s Czar Alexander II was a reformer who freed the serfs in 1861, but many thought it was a ruse and that autocratic rule would go on as before. Young intellectuals, in particular, came to believe that the only way to achieve true freedom was through violent revolution.

Alexander II survived one assassination attempt in 1879, only to be killed two years later in St. Petersburg. After his death, the stakes were raised even higher. The secret police

Egyptian cigarettes, as smoked by Professor Coram, were the height of fashion in Victorian society. British and American companies copied Egyptian motifs, hence today’s Camel brand.