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house. Third, the fact that the two corridors were both covered in coconut matting meant it was likely that someone with poor eyesight might have taken the wrong corridor, ending up in the professor’s room. And finally, Holmes’s brilliant ploy with the cigarette ash: noticing a clear space in front of the bookcase, he had dropped ash over the floor. When he returned in the afternoon, the ash had been stepped in, revealing that the “prisoner” had come out of her hiding place.

These and various other details missed by Hopkins yielded their secrets to Holmes’s piercing eye. He knows it is crucial not to let the truth escape just because it is unexpected. “A simple case,” Holmes says, “yet, in some ways, an instructive one.” He clearly expects Hopkins to have learned from it— and feels sufficiently satisfied to congratulate him on bringing his case to a successful conclusion. ■

(Okhrana) cracked down on young revolutionary groups like the one Anna and Professor Coram were involved in, and pogroms were launched against Jews, who were thought to have been involved in the Czar’s assassination. The revolutionaries fought back with bomb plots and terrorism. One group, the Nihilists, became known throughout Europe for their willingness to use violence to bring about the political change they felt was essential.

WHEN A MAN IS LOST

IT IS MY DUTY TO

ASCERTAIN HIS FATE

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: August 1904 US: November 1904

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS Cyril Overton Skipper of the Cambridge University rugby team.

Godfrey Staunton

Missing “three-quarter,” Cambridge’s star rugby player.

Lord Mount-James

Godfrey’s miserly uncle.

Dr. Leslie Armstrong

Friend of Godfrey.

THREE-QUARTER (1904)

I

n a plot device deployed in only a few Holmes stories, no actual crime is involved in “The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter.” However, this fact comes to light at the end of the tale, in which Holmes investigates the mysterious disappearance of a talented Cambridge rugby player.

First impressions

While investigating the case, Holmes and Watson encounter two extraordinary—and contrasting— characters. The first, the missing man’s uncle and his only living relative, Lord Mount-James, is one of the richest men in England but

You live in a different world to me, Mr. Overton—a sweeter and healthier one.

Sherlock Holmes

also a mean-spirited miser who is spectacularly uninterested in his nephew’s whereabouts. The second, Dr. Leslie Armstrong, is a “grim, ascetic, self-contained, formidable” figure who is deeply suspicious of Holmes, regarding him as a meddler in search of a scandal. Bad-tempered and defensive, his unprovoked hostility toward Holmes seems likely to be masking criminality. Holmes even goes so far as to say that he has not “seen a man who, if he turns his talents that way, was more calculated to fill the gap left by the illustrious Moriarty.” In fact he could not be more wrong.

London to Cambridge

In addition to exploring how appearances can be disturbingly deceptive—how it is imperative to penetrate beneath the surface to find true motivation—this story explores the dangers of idleness. It opens on a gloomy morning in February when Holmes has little to do and is deeply bored. Watson is alarmed because he fears that the understimulated Holmes could relapse into his former drug addiction, the “fiend” that “was not dead but sleeping.”

THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING THREE-QUARTER 197

First played in 1872, and continuing to today, the Varsity Match is a hotly contested annual game of rugby union between the universities of Cambridge and Oxford.

The client is Cyril Overton, captain of the Cambridge University rugby team. His star player, Godfrey Staunton, a “three-quarter,” has gone missing just days before he is due to play in an important match against Oxford University. Holmes searches Staunton’s London hotel room, where he discovers part of a telegram message imprinted on blotting paper, then charms a post office clerk into revealing the telegram’s destination.

This leads him to the recalcitrant Dr. Armstrong in Cambridge. A cat-and-mouse game then ensues, with Holmes being led a merry dance as he tries to trail the doctor’s carriage, while his quarry becomes more and more incensed by the pursuit.

One morning, two days into their quest, Watson is panicked when he sees Holmes holding a syringe. In fact, the detective has just used it to squirt aniseed on the carriage wheels so they leave a scent trail for a sniffer dog, Pompey.

Sniffer dogs

The dog duly leads Holmes and Watson to a remote cottage where they find Staunton weeping over his wife, who has just died of tuberculosis. He had married her secretly and kept her hidden in the knowledge that his uncaring uncle, Lord Mount-James, would be enraged by her humble birth. Armstrong had been treating her illness, and turns out to be the kindest of men—deeply loyal and protective of his friend, Staunton.

Bloodhounds have been used to track outlaws since the Middle Ages; in Scotland, they were known as “slough hounds,” the origin of the word “sleuth.”

In 1869, following a public outcry about the failure of the Metropolitan Police to capture Jack the Ripper (p.312), the police commissioner, Sir Charles Warren, had two bloodhounds trained to perform tracking tests and hunt for the serial killer. The investigation proved unsuccessful, however, as Warren was bitten and both dogs ran away.

Conan Doyle himself was only too familiar with the horrors of tuberculosis. His first wife, Louise, was diagnosed with the disease in 1893, succumbing to it in 1906.

No crime has been committed, but Staunton has suffered a tragic loss. Holmes insists that he will do his utmost to keep the truth from the papers. He and Dr. Armstrong have misjudged each other, and their gaining of mutual respect is the true climax of the story. ■

In his hunt for Godfrey Staunton, Holmes is, fortunately, much more successful. Pompey is a drag hound. This breed of dog is generally a cross between a foxhound and a beagle, and is trained to follow the trail of a scent (often made up of aniseed oils) either laid or “dragged” over a course. The Cambridge University Drag began in 1855, and today is the only pack of drag hounds in England still run by students. Certainly Holmes would have had no difficulty in locating a dog such as Pompey in Cambridge at the time.

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: September 1904 US: December 1904

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS Stanley Hopkins Young police inspector.

Sir Eustace Brackenstall

Wealthy man and owner of the Abbey Grange.

Lady Brackenstall

(née Mary Fraser) Sir Eustace’s Australian wife.

Theresa Wright Lady Brackenstall’s maid.

Jack Croker Sailor and Lady Brackenstall’s admirer.

THE GAME

IS AFOOT

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE (1904)

F

requently in the canon, Holmes’s sense of justice is at odds with legal convention—in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” (pp.70–73), for example, the detective sympathizes with the murderer because he was being blackmailed, and agrees to keep his crime a secret because he is an old man who is dying, and will soon have to answer “at a higher court than the Assizes.”

In “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” Holmes goes even further, allowing a healthy young killer to walk free. “Once or twice in my career,” he tells Watson, “I feel that

Like this grand house in Hampshire, Abbey Grange is a mansion built “in the fashion of Palladio.” Palladian design was popular in 18th-century Europe.

I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.” Watson, in turn, readily colludes with his friend’s morally dubious stance.

“The Abbey Grange” is notable, too, for tackling the dilemma of women trapped in abusive

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE 199

marriages: in this case with a husband who is a violent drunkard. Conan Doyle had had firsthand experience of alcoholism, for his own father, Charles, was a weak-willed alcoholic; he addresses the subject in several Holmes stories as well as in other works, including his short story “The Japanned Box”.

Holmes is summoned

“The Abbey Grange” begins early one bitterly cold winter morning in 1897. Holmes rouses Watson: they have been summoned by Inspector Hopkins to Abbey Grange—a Palladian mansion in Marsham, near Chislehurst, Kent— for what looks like a promising murder case.

On the train, Holmes indulges in some lighthearted criticism of Watson who, he claims, has a fatal habit of looking at everything with the eyes of a sensationalist storyteller, skating over the finer points. Watson’s grumpy riposte is that Holmes should try writing up his cases himself. Holmes assures his companion that he intends to do so in his old age. He claims that he will one day

A change had come over Holmes’s manner. He had lost his listless expression, and again I saw an alert light of interest in his keen, deep-set eyes.

Dr. Watson

write a textbook that will “focus the whole art of detection into one volume.”

They are met at the doorway of Abbey Grange by Inspector Hopkins, who fills them in briefly on what has happened. The murder victim turns out to be Sir Eustace Brackenstall, “one of the richest men in Kent,” who is thought to have been killed when three burglars attacked him with a poker. Hopkins assumes from the descriptions given by Lady Brackenstall (and verified by her maid) that the attackers are the notorious Randall gang, who “did a job at Sydenham a fortnight ago,” rashly claiming that they did it “beyond all doubt.”

The Brackenstall victims

Hopkins then introduces them to Lady Brackenstall—originally Mary Fraser from Adelaide, Australia. She is blonde, blue-eyed, and beautiful. “Seldom have I seen so graceful a figure, so womanly a presence, and so beautiful a face,” gushes Watson. She has a wound over one eye, along with two “vivid red spots” on one of her arms, which, she tells Holmes, have nothing to do with the events of the previous evening. However, the nature of these marks soon becomes clear when she explains that her husband of about a year was a “confirmed drunkard” who beat her up regularly and—we later learn— once doused her dog in gasoline and set it on fire. She has clearly been trapped in an abusive and 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 find they had torn down the bell-rope, using it to tie her to a chair, and gagged her. Sir Eustace must have heard noises, as he burst into the room brandishing his “favourite blackthorn cudgel.” However, one of the burglars struck him down with a poker taken from the grate. He fell and never moved again. She passed out once more, and when she came to, saw that the men had picked up the silver from the sideboard. They were talking in whispers and each of them had a glass of wine in their hand, poured from a nearby bottle. When they finally left, she managed to free herself and raise the alarm.

Holmes has misgivings

The case seems to be clear-cut, and Holmes and Watson leave for London, and yet Holmes is plagued by doubts. Why would the Randall gang risk carrying out another burglary in the same area again ❯❯

Murdered with a single blow from a fire poker, Sir Eustace Brackenstall— seen here in an illustration from The Strand Magazine—is not the helpless victim that he first appears.

200 A LEGEND RETURNS

Three glasses show signs of use, but two do not contain sediment.

The three glasses

of wine found near the victim are the most crucial evidence of all because they prove to Holmes that the crime scene has been faked. The presence of 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 rather than simply overpower him, as the three of them could easily have done? Why steal so little? Why hit Lady Brackenstall to stop her screaming, as she would only scream more? And why did only one of the three wine glasses contain sediment? Holmes suspects that only two people drank the wine, but then poured the dregs into a third glass to give the impression three people had shared it. He decides to return and investigate further.

Holmes investigates

Holmes locks himself in the dining room and, in the words of Watson, devotes himself “to one of those minute and laborious investigations” for which he is famous. Two hours later, he concludes that someone had not torn down the bell-rope, which would have rung the bell and alerted the servants, but instead climbed onto the mantelpiece and cut it cleanly with a knife. To do so, they had to be exceptionally tall—taller even than Holmes. And, from a bloodstain found on the chair where Lady Brackenstall was tied, he deduces that she was placed there after her husband’s death.

Establishing the truth

Lady Brackenstall has told a pack of lies, but after hearing from her austere but devoted maid Theresa the full extent of the abuse she

Only the third glass contains sediment, proving that the dregs from the others were poured into it to

suggest a third drinker

was present.

has suffered at the hands of her husband, Holmes challenges her gently to tell him the truth. However, she maintains her story.

On leaving the Grange with Watson, Holmes stares at an unfrozen pond and scribbles a note for Hopkins, then suggests they visit the London shipping office of the Adelaide–Southampton line. From the real killer’s obvious agility, and the knots used to tie up Lady Brackenstall, Holmes has surmised that the culprit is a sailor, and most likely someone she met when she sailed to England. Sure enough, Holmes ascertains that one of the ship’s officers, Jack Croker, who lives in Sydenham, has not made the return passage. Hopkins, meanwhile,

THE ADVENTURE OF THE ABBEY GRANGE 201

learns that the Randall gang has been arrested in New York, and therefore could not have committed the Abbey Grange “burglary.” Guided by Holmes’s note, he also finds the “stolen” silver at the bottom of the pond. Confused as to why the thieves had thrown away their haul, he does not take the hint when Holmes suggests it was put there “for a blind” to mislead people.

The case is resolved

Summoned by Holmes, Croker arrives at 221B Baker Street, where he is persuaded to tell the truth. “Be frank with me, and we may do some good. Play tricks with me, and I’ll crush you,” Holmes tells him.