第 35 页

Tall, handsome, blond, blue-eyed, and young, Croker stands for everything Sir Eustace did not: “as fine a specimen of manhood” as ever stood before them, reckons Watson. He is chivalrous, too, explaining that he fell in love with Lady Brackenstall on board the ship but, being a mere sailor, could only admire her from afar, and be happy for her when she later made a “favourable” marriage. However, a chance encounter with the maid Theresa revealed the horrible truth about Lady Brackenstall’s husband. He resolved to see her again and in due course she fell in love with him.

On the fateful night, the lovers were surprised by Sir Eustace, who rushed into the room, called his wife “the vilest name that a man could use to a woman,” and struck her with his cudgel. This is the crux 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 to make it look as though a burglary had occurred, Croker departed, feeling he had done “a real good night’s work.”

Holmes plays judge

Satisfied with Croker’s account, Holmes sympathizes with his actions and says he will delay telling Hopkins for 24 hours so that he can flee. Croker is outraged, and swears that he would never dream of leaving Lady Brackenstall to be arrested as an accomplice. Delighted by this response, Holmes elects himself judge, and Watson jury. They duly pronounce him “not guilty,” and Holmes tells Croker to wait a year before claiming his beloved.

For Holmes, Captain Croker’s killing of a wife-beating tyrant is a case of justifiable homicide. His feelings of protectiveness toward Lady Brackenstall are reinforced by his admiration for Croker’s manly and unflinching loyalty. He has given Hopkins every chance to solve the case, and has insufficient faith that the law would acquit Croker. In this case, Holmes truly takes the law into his own hands. ■

I should not sit here smoking with you if I thought that you were a common criminal, you may be sure of that. Be frank with me and we may do some good. Play tricks with me, and I’ll crush you.

Sherlock Holmes

Inequality of divorce

It was once notoriously difficult for women in England to obtain a divorce, and Lady Brackenstall—trapped in a marriage to an abusive drunk—speaks with passion about the “monstrous laws” that prohibit her escape.

Before the mid-19th century, a full divorce was obtainable only through a Private Act of Parliament. In 1857, the Matrimonial Causes Act transferred divorce proceedings from Parliament to a civil court, but even then the grounds for divorce remained limited, and in practice it merely enshrined the double standard that existed between men and women. From 1857 to 1922, adultery was considered the sole ground for divorce. However, a husband’s adultery had to be accompanied by one or more other transgressions: incest, cruelty, bigamy, sodomy, or desertion. This did not apply to a husband who petitioned for divorce because of his wife’s adultery. Lady Brackenstall, therefore, confronted by great cruelty but evidently not adultery, was completely trapped.

IT IS A CAPITAL

MISTAKE TO THEORIZE

IN ADVANCE OF

THE FACTS

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN (1904)

IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: December 1904 US: January 1905

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 advertising that Watson’s stories once usefully provided. In any case, it is hard to disagree with Watson’s point that the collection surely must end with “the most important international case which he has ever been called upon to handle”.

Historical context

Owing to the importance of the case, Watson insists on being “somewhat vague in certain details.” For instance, he never specifies in which year the story is set. There are references to a “Second Stain” in “The Naval Treaty” (pp.138–41) and “The Yellow Face” (pp.112–13) but these don’t help to date the story, as they seem to allude to a different case entirely. However, the political situation described in this story, in which Britain holds the balance of power between a “double league” of European alliances, suggests that the story must be set in the early 1890s: in 1892, Russia and France joined forces as a counterweight to the “Triple Alliance” of Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary (see p.139). And if Holmes’s Great Hiatus (see p.164–65) is factored in, then the date is probably 1894 at the earliest.

The situation is desperate, but not hopeless.

Sherlock Holmes

The British Prime Minister in this story, “the illustrious Lord Bellinger,” bears clear similarities to the former real-life Liberal prime minister William Gladstone, who left office in March 1894. Certainly, Watson’s descriptions and Sidney Paget’s illustrations published in The Strand Magazine strongly resemble Gladstone.

Distinguished visitors

At the start of the story, the arrival of both the Prime Minister and his Secretary for European Affairs, the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope, provide a certain gravitas to the “humble room in Baker Street.”

European politics

The unnamed hot-headed “foreign potentate” who wrote the missing letter might well have been based on Kaiser Wilhelm II (pictured), who had ruled Germany since 1888. In 1895, this belligerent figure wrote a letter to South African president Paul Kruger, offering his congratulations on the recent defeat of a raid supported by British interests (thus closely mirroring the “colonial” subject matter of the letter in the story). This was a rash thing to do, risking the inflammation of

A document has gone missing from Trelawney Hope’s home in Whitehall Terrace, Westminster— and its rediscovery is vital to national security. The paper has disappeared from a locked dispatch-box in Trelawney Hope’s bedroom, and he claims it had definitely been there the previous evening, as he had seen it before dinner, and that he and his wife would certainly have known had someone entered their room and taken it in the middle of the night. Only two servants had access to the room: his valet and his wife’s maid, but they are both trusted employees and would not have known that there was anything valuable in the box. Only the Cabinet, along with two or three departmental officials, knew about the letter, and even then only since the previous day.

The police have not been told, for fear of the document’s contents being made public, and Bellinger and Trelawney Hope are reluctant to give Holmes any real details. Yet Holmes declares that unless he knows something of the document’s contents, he is unable to help, and that any further discussion ❯❯

tensions that would erupt into the Boer War in 1899. Although this incident occurred after the story’s suspected setting, it was well timed for its publication— by 1904 there were growing concerns about Germany’s burgeoning militarism. The delicate balance of European alliances—Russia, France, and Britain against the “Triple Alliance” of Germany, Italy, and Austria-Hungary—was becoming increasingly tense, and would, within just ten years, result in one of the deadliest wars in history.

204 A LEGEND RETURNS

Lady Hilda

It is never revealed if the tale’s second letter, which Lucas uses to try to blackmail Lady Hilda (pictured, played by Patricia Hodge), refers to a relationship between them, or to some other “impulsive” youthful liaison. What is clear is that Lady Hilda is the very picture of feminine grace and Victorian respectability. Her anguish at having potentially brought about the undoing of her husband’s career, in a vain and desperate attempt to ward off the slightest blemish on her dignity, proves this eloquently, while at the same time demonstrating the social pressure on ladies of her rank to have flawless reputations. Lady Hilda also shows great fortitude and resolve when standing up to Holmes’s interrogations. As Watson notes, she was indeed “grandly defiant” and “her courage was admirable.”

In contrast, Madame Fournaye is the embodiment of a hysterical woman. When she finds Lady Hilda with her husband, she flies into a murderous rage, throwing Lady Hilda’s composure and self-control into stark relief.

would be a waste of time. In such eminent company, this might seem rather abrupt, but it is easy to see his logic—how can he be expected to grasp his beloved “technical details” without a little information? The two statesmen finally agree.

An inflammatory letter

It turns out that the document is a provocative letter written by a hot-headed foreign leader, and containing material certain to agitate international relations. As Bellinger tells Holmes, “I do not hesitate to say that within a week of the publication of that letter this country would be involved in a great war.” Holmes writes a name on a slip of paper—it is confirmed by the Premier as being that of the sender, yet the reader remains none the wiser. This secrecy is clearly directed more at the reader than at potential eavesdroppers and is a masterful piece of drama on Conan Doyle’s part, keeping his readers tantalized. Bellinger states that publication of the letter would not be in the interests of the “foreign potentate” who first wrote it, but in the interests of his enemies. If the letter’s contents became public, it would encourage a war between Britain and the potentate’s own country, which would in turn create a power shift and thus assure the supremacy of the country that had stolen the letter (see box, p.203).

Holmes reasons that the letter must have been stolen between 7:30pm, when Trelawney Hope was 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 with it—one of many “international spies and secret agents” with whom Holmes is familiar.

Hot off the press

When the two grandees depart, Holmes smokes a characteristically meditative pipe and gives the case some thought. Considering that the letter does not yet appear to have been passed on, it then occurs to Holmes that the spy or secret agent who has stolen it might well be waiting for offers of money to come in, from Britain and the letterwriter’s country, before handing it over to the highest bidder. He states that there are only three spies who would “be capable of playing so bold a game”: Oberstein and La Rothière—both of whom reappear in the 1908 tale “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans” (pp.230–33)—and the popular socialite Eduardo Lucas.

Meanwhile, Watson reads in the papers about a “sensational” crime committed the previous evening. The story reports the death of the aforementioned Eduardo Lucas at his house in Godolphin Street, just around the corner from the European Secretary’s house in Westminster. Holmes is amazed at the coincidence, and it forms a

It was with a sense of exultation that I realized how completely I had astonished him.

Dr. Watson

THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN 205

productive development in his deductions: Lucas was murdered between 10pm, when the valet went out, and 11:45pm, when a passing policeman found him stabbed in the heart with a dagger taken from his own mantelpiece.

Shortly afterward, the elegant Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope arrives at Baker Street, anxious to find out about the content and nature of the document that her husband has lost. Holmes refuses to divulge any details, but does agree that the loss of the document may have “terrible public consequences,” and could endanger her husband’s political career unless it is found. When Lady Hilda withdraws, Holmes expresses his famous bafflement at the “inscrutable” nature of women. However, he does remark on the fact that she clearly sat with the light behind her, in order that they could not see her expressions.

Slow progress

Over the next few days, Holmes is restless, and it seems that things are not going well with the case. From the papers, Watson learns that no suspects were apprehended for Lucas’s murder except his valet John Mitton, who was promptly released because of insufficient evidence against him. There was no apparent motive for the murder, and none of Lucas’s many valuable possessions had been removed.

However, on the fourth day, a telegram from Paris appears in the news—a Frenchwoman (of Creole extraction) who returned from London on Tuesday was declared insane, and there is evidence to suggest she was connected with the crime at Westminster. It then transpires that her husband, Henri Fournaye, was in fact the exact same man as Eduardo Lucas, who had been leading a double life in

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

Paris and London. Madame Fournaye has a history of violent attacks of jealousy, and although it is not clear what she was doing the night of Lucas’s murder, she was seen behaving wildly at Charing Cross the following morning. With his characteristic eye for the case above all else, Holmes writes the incident off as “a trivial episode.” In the meantime, he ruminates that during the days since the letter’s loss there has been no related news, and points out that the only important thing that has happened “is that nothing has happened.” This is both an expression of his frustration and a real insight, echoing the situation in “The Naval Treaty”: it is likely that the letter has not yet reached dangerous hands, or something catastrophic would have occurred by now.

A mysterious stain

At Godolphin Street, Inspector Lestrade is convinced that the Paris police are right in suspecting Madame Fournaye. However, he then mysteriously summons ❯❯