In this case, the clients are two police detectives who call Holmes to the scene of a murder they cannot make sense out of and assure him nothing has been moved. Given that they are detectives themselves, that seems a mark of high respect.
A man has been found dead in an empty building, contorted in horror, with blood all over, but no wound or other mark of violence on the body. The word "Rache" -- German for revenge -- is written on the wall in blood. In the man's pockets are cards identifying him as Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio and indicating that he and Joseph Strangerson are about to take a ship back to New York. As they move the body, a woman's wedding ring falls out.
Holmes first notes wheel marks from a cab in the mud from the rain the night before -- the sort of detail that modern mysteries would have taken care to mention in an offhand way. Neither detective arrived by cab, so Holmes concludes that the victim and killer must have arrived by cab. Since there is no wound to the victim, the blood must have come from the killer. Looking at the stride and height of writing, Holmes deduces the killer's height (about six feet), his shoe size (small, for his height), his age (young and vigorous, based on his strong stride and easily stepping over a puddle), and his cigar type (based on the ashes). He smells poison and also deduces that the killer was red-faced, though he declines at the time to say how he knew. The detectives made general inquiries to Cleveland, but no particulars.
Holmes dismisses the "Rache" as a red herring, designed to throw them off the scent, and believes the wedding ring shows the true motive -- a romantic rivalry. Talking to the constable who first found the body, Holmes gets confirmation when the constable reports he ran off a tall, red-faced drunkard from the scene. Clearly the killer, so why did he come back to the scene? Holmes says, to retrieve the ring.
In order to catch the killer, Holmes runs and ad, describing the ring and asking for the owner. To his surprise, a little old lady shows up, saying the ring belongs to her daughter Sally. She gives her name as Mrs. Sawyer and also gives an address. Holmes follows her into the street and observes her hailing a cab and asking for the address mentioned. He perches on the back of the cab, and when they arrive the passenger has vanished and the owner of the house never heard of Mrs. Sawyer. Holmes concludes that the old woman was an actor in disguise -- young and vigorous enough to jump out of a moving cab undetected. Embarrassing! Holmes makes inquiries and finds what he was looking for, but does not say what. He dispatches street urchins on an unspecified errand.
Soon afterward, Detective Gregson announces he has made an arrest. Checking the victim's hat, he was able to find the hatter, and the hatter had an address for the victim. He traced the victim to a boarding house and found that the victim was a supremely obnoxious drunkard who was always harassing the landlady's daughter. The girl's brother was understandable protective of her, hated the boarder, and went out around the time of the murder. Dum ta da!
Just then, Detective Lestrade comes in. He was investigating Drebber's companion and personal secretary, Joseph Strangerson as the most likely suspect, when Strangerson turns up dead, fatally stabbed, with the same word "Rache" written on the wall in blood. With him was a box containing two pills that looked identical, but one was poison and the other harmless.* The landlady's son is cleared! At this point, one of the street urchins says he has summoned a cab. Holmes tells him to send the driver up to help with his luggage. When the cab driver arrives, Holmes handcuffs him and introduces him as Jefferson Hope, the killer.
There is then a long digression giving Jefferson Hope's back story, which no clue has so much as hinted at up till then.** And we get some clear disappointments, and signs that not all Holmes' calculations were right. The killer is not as young and vigorous as Holmes thought. He is avenging a wrong done 20 years ago, which places him in his 40's, and he is not as vigorous as he seems -- he is dying of an aortic aneurysm. He confesses to the murders, including saying that he wrote "Rache" on the wall to mislead, but declines to name his accomplice who impersonated the old lady. We never do find out.
After Jefferson Hope is remanded into custody, Holmes explains his deductions to Watson. I can only say that some of them would pass muster in a modern mystery and some would not. He deduced that the blood at the scene was the result of the killer having a spontaneous nose bleed from stress (confirmed by the killer), leading to the deduction that he must have had an abundance of blood and been red-faced. I don't know if this would occur to a Victorian reader. It certainly would not occur to me, and I have no idea whether it is accurate. Since the cab driver who took the pair to the scene would be a dangerous witness, Holmes concludes that the killer must have been the cab driver. He also concludes that a stalker seeking out a particular victim could do so very effectively as a cab driver. That seems logical enough based on the clues we have and would probably pass muster in a modern mystery.
After seeing the wedding ring, Holmes concluded that the murder was the result of a romantic rivalry. He then made inquiries about the circumstances of Enoch Drebber's marriage. It turned out that he had sought protection of the law from a romantic rival named Jefferson Hope. and that Hope was present in Europe. So he sent the urchins out to find a cab driver by that name.
Since the inquiries took place completely outside the audience's knowledge, they would never be allowed in a modern mystery. The audience would have to know about the inquiry and what it found. So how would the author avoid giving the whole game away? Presumably by strewing the ground with more red herrings. "Rache" is one such red herring, intended to make the audience/investigators suspect secret German societies. In the novel, Holmes dismisses it out of hand. In a modern mystery, there would be plenty of investigation of secret societies to throw the reader off track.
The landlady's son is a perfectly good red herring. In a modern mystery, he would be better developed. We would learn more about Dreber's harassment of the landlady's daughter and the son going missing on the day of the murder.
Strangerson is also not a bad red herring. It is made quite clear that Dreber is a thoroughly unpleasant person to work for. It is also explained in the back story that, although they two men were originally peers, Dreber ended up rich and Strangerson poor and dependent on him -- a thing that tends to lead to resentments. The resentment increases if one drops hints that Dreber may not have come across his wealth honestly, but gained at Strangerson's expense.
And no doubt the inquiry can be made to yield other red herrings as well.
Then there is the matter of the old lady, which is really inexcusable. No modern mystery would allow something so important to go unresolved. And besides, why didn't Holmes subject her to the Sherlock scan, figure out that he had been slipped a ringer, and learn at least something about the impersonator -- if not enough to reveal him, at least enough to know something about him. That is even less excusable than the offstage inquiry.
Nonetheless, this was a first attempt. I look forward to future mysteries that help us see where many of the present-day conventions originated. Next up -- Sign of the Four.
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*Holmes tests them on a dying dog. Presumably he could have learned the contents from lab tests as well.
**To be brief, an old man and his little daughter are dying of thirst in the Utah desert when the Mormons rescue them, on condition that they become Mormons. The man agrees, but secretly vows never to take part in a polygamous marriage or to allow his daughter to be given into such a marriage. When the girl grows up, she falls in love with Jefferson Hope, a prospector from outside the Mormon community. The Mormons demand that Lucy (the daughter) marry a Mormon, and their secret police spy on the house, making clear that she has one month to choose -- or else. Jefferson Hope helps Lucy and her father to escape, but when he goes off to hunt a deer for them to eat, the Mormons attack. The father is killed and Lucy is forced to marry Drebber. She dies of a broken heart. Hope steals the wedding ring from her finger and vows revenge.
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