Sherlock Holmes, In General

 

Sherlock Holmes

I really do want to do any number of posts on Sherlock Holmes.  He was written before the convention had been established for mysteries that the reader had to be able to solve the mystery with just the clues provided. Sherlock Holmes violates this all the time, partly with his trademarked Sherlock scan to figure out all sorts of things that Watson never noticed.  And he often presents the answer to the mystery by investigation off-stage that we learn about only after the fact. And, of course, he also violates the accepted convention that the mystery has to be about a murder.  

Still, there are little glimpses, now and then, of the requirement to stick to the clues in the story, especially in mysteries that Holmes solves (mostly) from the comfort of his own study, and with no more information that Watson has.  There is the famous dog that did not bark, for instance. 

In A Case of Identity, Holmes recognizes that the missing fiance's desperate pleas to be faithful no matter what do not mean he knew he was in danger.  Rather, his conspicuous muttonchop whiskers and glasses, his speaking in a whisper, his meeting his girlfriend only in dim light, her poor eyesight, and his refusal to give his address or sign his type-written letters could only indicate that the man was actually the girl's step-father in disguise.  

In The Speckled Band, Holmes observes the bed bolted to the floor, the ventilation shaft to the step-father's bedroom, the bell cord not attached to a bell, and the collection of exotic animals from India to figure out how his client's sister was murdered in her locked bedroom -- by a poisonous snake.  

In The Red-Headed League, Holmes figures out that the pawn broker's assistant's willingness to work for half-pay and his insistence that the pawn broker joint the Red-Headed League, which pays his to write from the Encyclopedia Britannica, indicates that he is in on the plot and that the Red-Headed League was simply a ruse to get the pawn broker out of the shop during the sinister activity.  The proximity of the pawn shop to a bank and the assistant constantly taking photographs and disappearing into the basement to develop them allows Holmes to deduce that the assistant is actually digging a tunnel to the bank.

And in The Sussex Vampire, Holmes solves the mystery of why his client's South American second wife is beating her stepson and sucking on wounds in her baby.  Observing South American weapons collected in the house, a suddenly paralyzed dog, and the older child's extraordinary attachment to his father, Holmes figured out that the boy tried to kill the baby with one of the poisoned darts and the mother was sucking the poison out.  (No wonder she hit him!).  

But I will confess to not having read most of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, and would have to read a lot more of them to see just how large a role Arthur Conan Doyle had in developing later mystery conventions.  In the meantime I am strangely drawn to one that Holmes did, indeed solve, with only the clues available to the reader.  It is Doyle's attempt at a Gothic novel -- Adventure of the Copper Beeches.