Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (17 page)

The taciturn occupant of the hansom cab is nonetheless careful to specify his profession and name to the driver, as if it
were of the greatest importance that he take note of the message and transmit it to Sherlock Holmes.

It is hard to understand what would impel Stapleton to this double stratagem, which runs completely counter to his interests.
If he is indeed responsible for the murder, he is not well served by attracting the attention of a detective as perceptive
as Sherlock Holmes to a crime no one has yet thought to question.
^*
Having succeeded at transforming Baskerville’s murder into an accident, it would be senseless to risk arousing the detective’s
suspicions.

On the other hand, the assertion of identity becomes only sensible if we suppose that the occupant of the cab is Beryl. She,
in fact, does need Sherlock Holmes, not to solve the investigation,
but so that there will be an investigation, and thus a murder
.

And what could be more perfect, to produce this investigation, than the interest of Sherlock Holmes? By his presence alone,
the investigator of all investigators arouses mystery; with his suspicious disposition and his assurance of infallibility,
he is capable of transforming any event—particularly a fatal accident—into a criminal matter.

The Stapletons’ journey to London, plotted by Beryl,
^†
is thus the centerpiece in the murder of the naturalist. It allows the construction of an ingenious arrangement in which
Sherlock Holmes occupies the central role of a guarantor—or even creator—of a nonexistent murder. And it is this ersatz murder
that permits, with Holmes’s blind complicity, the carrying out of the real murder.

If Sir Charles Baskerville’s accident is the first trigger for Beryl’s decision to commit murder, the second is the young
woman’s meeting with Henry. She sees the heir in London during her surveillance, but she actually meets him on the moor. And
not only is Henry a handsome man, and rich, but he soon shows his willingness to court her.

The opportunity is unhoped-for. The tentative plan for murder is now decided upon once and for all. Clearly, it is hatred
that it is the motive, and by itself is enough to explain the crime. But that the murder will also make the murderess extremely
wealthy is certainly no discouragement. These two reasons make her plan a perfect murder, not only because of its financial
benefits, but also by virtue of its elegance and simplicity.

* In our hypothesis, it is Beryl who, furious at finding that she has been deceived, refuses Stapleton, perhaps after an initial
escapade, the right to appear publicly as her husband.

* That is also the weak point in the theory suggested by Christophe Gelly in
Le Chien des Baskerville: Poétique du roman policier chez Conan Doyle
, Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2005. Following the track of my
Who Killed Roger Ack-royd?
, Christophe Gelly playfully suggests that Dr. Mortimer could have been Stapleton’s accomplice (pp. 112–116). The hypothesis
of a collusion between the two men was recently taken up by François Hoff in “Le chien des Baskerville: une erreur judiciaire?”
in
Le Carnet d’Ecrou: Revue d’études holmésiennes et autres, Section strasbourgeoise des Évadés de Dartmoor
,No. 5, January 2006. It comes up against the major argument that if Mortimer is an accomplice, he has no interest—quite the
contrary—in attracting Sherlock Holmes’s attention to this murder. Unless we think as François Hoff does, which does not completely
convince us, that Jupiter first makes mad those he wishes to destroy.

† We can suppose that, for weeks on end, she had pressured Dr. Mortimer, directly or through Stapleton, so that he would ask
for Sherlock Holmes’s help, a pressure all the more effective since the doctor is obsessed by the hound.

IV
And Nothing but the Truth

AS SOON AS the investigators are in Devon, Beryl continues on the same course she had begun in London. Everyone is convinced
that the death of Sir Charles Baskerville was murder. Her goal is now to continue to arouse the same atmosphere of anxiety
around the story, abetted by the presence of Holmes and his passion for mystery.

It is with this in mind that Beryl confides her fears to Watson, whom she pretends to mistake for Sir Henry Baskerville. Having
seen them both in London, she is quite capable of telling them apart. But she knows that Watson is best positioned to serve
as a messenger to Holmes. Properly primed, he can make the detective believe in the legend of the murderer-with-the-dog, and
more to the point can help make the clues converge on her innocent husband.

Whenever she appears, Beryl plays the same role with tenacity, both through her statements and by her physical attitudes:
that of a heroine terrorized by the man with whom she lives. Her aim is simple: to make her husband, a character of scant
charisma, seem to be a potential murderer.

In her criminal undertaking Beryl Stapleton will benefit from a stroke of luck, the death of Selden. While there isn’t the
slightest trace of dog around the corpse, the fantastical tension created by the young woman is such that Holmes, indefatigable
creator of intrigues, immediately chalks this accident up to the monstrous hound prowling the moor.

Though it is likely that Selden had a deadly fall, his death cannot be considered purely accidental. Pursued by the police
and the army, the convict is marked for death from the beginning of the book. Though she can’t know exactly what will happen,
Beryl can legitimately hope to benefit shortly from a second corpse.

That corpse does not fail to appear. Her fantastical rewriting of the story not only reorganizes reality, it also produces
events. The anxiety Beryl has managed to arouse in all the actors in the drama is conducive to the continual creation of tragedies,
as well as to an opportune reading of the “facts.”

Now comes the murder itself. If great criminals, like chess players, are recognized by the simplicity of their solutions,
there is little doubt that Beryl Stapleton can be counted a master. There have been few murders in all those that detective
criticism has identified that require such meager means for such profitable results.

What really makes this murder possible is Stapleton’s attachment to his dog; along with his passion for entomology, it is
the key to this absent-minded scholar’s character. With this in mind, we will see how the murderer needs nothing more than
a gesture and a phrase to rid herself of her victim—in a way so brilliantly constructed as to be risk-free, since it is murder-free.

Beryl has every reason to sense, on the fatal night, that Holmes and Watson have lingered in the vicinity and are keeping
watch over the house. But the arrangement will function just as well if Sir Henry reaches his home without surveillance. She
does take a certain number of precautions in case the house is being watched, however, including not being present at the
meal with Sir Henry and Stapleton: with the excuse that she isn’t feeling well, she preserves her alibi.

Everything happens very quickly once Sir Henry leaves the house. Watson, who has come in close in the moments before Henry
leaves, sees Stapleton go into a shed and hears suspicious noises, but doesn’t see him free the dog. He has in fact no reason
to do so.
^*
It’s not until a few minutes later, when Sir Henry has made his exit, that Beryl goes to the shed and sets the animal free.

By doing this, she doesn’t put Sir Henry at risk; the dog, for all its great size, is not aggressive, and the likelihood is
strong that Holmes is still keeping an eye on the heir. It is impossible to entirely predict the animal’s reactions, but there
is every reason to think that it will follow Baskerville, or, at the very least, will move away from the house, which is enough
for her plan to succeed.

All Beryl has to do is run to Stapleton and tell him the dog has gotten loose and fled toward the marsh; it is this brief
announcement that constitutes the murder. Frantic with worry about his pet, Stapleton runs toward the path from which Beryl
has removed—or more likely altered—the trail markers, a strategy she coolly admits to considering at the end of the book:

The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the lamp towards it.

  “See,” said he. “No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire tonight.”

  She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment.

  “He may find his way in, but never out,” she cried. “How can he see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he
and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out today. Then indeed you would have had
him at your mercy!”
¹¹⁰

The shoe had been placed in full view a few hours earlier. All that’s left is for Beryl, in case Holmes and Watson continued
their surveillance, to transform herself into one of those heroines in the melodramas Holmes so appreciates. After locking
the door to the room from within, she will tie herself up, offering the detective a spectacle of suffering femininity that
cannot fail to move him to pity.
^*

Once Stapleton has disappeared, Beryl at last becomes the true mistress of the story. Most of the evidence of Stapleton’s
guilt is conveyed by his wife with no corroboration at all. After her husband’s death, she becomes the narrator of a text
that she had already secretly controlled.

A number of pieces of evidence missing from Holmes’s version are in fact provided by Beryl and incorporated by the detective
into his final explanation. Holmes seems unperturbed that his story rests completely on Beryl’s allegations. Under the sway
of the young woman, he has obviously lost all critical sense:

“I have had the advantage of two conversations with Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that
I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us.”
¹¹¹

We don’t doubt for an instant that these two conversations with the murderer allow Holmes to reach a satisfying version of
the facts. But unfortunately the skeptical reader recognizes that this version is supported at many points only by Beryl’s
unverifiable testimony.

We are thus reduced to relying on her word about the events preceding the couple’s arrival in Devonshire. Likewise the life
she and her husband led in Costa Rica, where he supposedly “purloined a considerable sum of public money,”
¹¹²
as well as some of the mysterious circumstances that led them to leave the school he headed (“the school which had begun
well sank from disrepute into infamy”
¹¹³
), are known only thanks to Beryl, who is at ease in her role as witness for the prosecution since her husband is not there
to take issue.
^*

Our information about the recent past and the preparations for murder relies mostly on Beryl. The reconstruction of the Stapletons’
stay in London depends wholly on the young woman’s testimony. And it is because Holmes trusts her blindly that he can believe
in the unlikely myth of Stapleton’s outdoing himself to attract attention by shadowing Baskerville, claiming to be Sherlock
Holmes himself, and twice stealing a shoe from the hotel.

But Beryl is only making public a function she had secretly been fulfilling all along. The official version of the facts she
relates to Holmes at the conclusion is only the shadow of the more secret narrative she has woven throughout the book, ensnaring
the reader and all the characters.

Although everything in this story depends on Beryl’s narration, she does not confine herself to the final summary. She begins
her co-narration of
The Hound of the Baskervilles
long before, as early as the episode in London. In her desire to captivate the detective, she begins to drag the story toward
melodrama and never relents.

It is to her we owe the oppressive atmosphere that accompanies Henry Baskerville’s arrival in London, since she sends the
anonymous letter, makes the shoes disappear, and organizes his shadowing. There is nothing puzzling about the fact that a
criminal should allow her acts to be so conspicuous; conspicuousness is precisely her goal. Beryl’s narrative begins even
before her arrival on the scene, and each of its elements aims at seducing and intriguing its special target, the man who
will make the murder possible: Sherlock Holmes.

But it is also to Beryl that we owe the love affair with Baskerville and the imaginary story Holmes makes of it. Although
it is proven that Stapleton has lost interest in Laura Lyons, Beryl manages to represent him as a jealous man incapable of
tolerating her budding relationship with Sir Henry; thus she justifies the suspicions of ill treatment that hang over her
husband, which certainly adds insult to injury when we know that she is plotting his murder!
^*