Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (2 page)

Investigation

I
In London

ONE MORNING SHERLOCK HOLMES is visited at his London flat in Baker Street by a country practitioner, Dr. Mortimer. He is carrying
a document dated 1742, entrusted to him by his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville, who has died tragically three months earlier.
This document, handed down from generation to generation, relates the legendary death of Hugo Baskerville, who was said to
have been slain by an enormous hound of diabolical aspect as he was chasing a young woman who had escaped from the manor house
where he had imprisoned her.

Sherlock Holmes shows little interest in Dr. Mortimer’s document, which he deems interesting only “to a collector of fairy
tales.”
¹
But the doctor hasn’t come only to tell about events long past. He has come to request Holmes’s aid. He has been wondering
if, more than two centuries after its first crime, the Hound of the Baskervilles hasn’t just made its reappearance.

Dr. Mortimer then tells a strange tale, the story of the death of his friend and neighbor Sir Charles Baskerville, Hugo’s
descendant. Sir Charles had the habit of strolling every evening in a yew-tree alley on the grounds of his manor house. Three
months before Dr. Mortimer’s visit to London, Sir Charles went out one night as usual, but did not return. At midnight, his
servant, Barrymore, finding the door unlocked, grew worried and went out in search of his master. He found him dead in the
yew alley, without any mark of violence on his body but with his face profoundly distorted. Everything indicated that Sir
Charles had been the victim of a heart attack, and that indeed was the conclusion of the police investigation.

Dr. Mortimer, however, is not satisfied with this conclusion. He believes that Sir Charles Baskerville’s death cannot be separated
from the legend of the evil hound. His friend had lived in dread, convinced that a curse had weighed over his family for centuries
and that the monster was bound to reappear. This, Dr. Mortimer reasons, could not be unrelated to his friend’s death.

But above all Dr. Mortimer’s reasoning is built on his access to the scene of the murder. There he saw, about twenty yards
from the body, the footprints of a gigantic hound. These prints were on the path itself, not on the grass borders to either
side of it. The prints escaped the attention of the police who, since they were unaware of the legend of the Baskervilles,
had no reason to be interested in marks of this sort.

But they immediately attract the attention of Holmes, who subjects Dr. Mortimer to close questioning about the murder scene.
These questions elicit the importance of a wicket-gate opening from the yew alley onto the moor. The victim must have paused
for some minutes in front of this gate; the fact that the ashes from his cigar fell twice testifies to this. It was as if
he were waiting to meet someone.

Holmes also pays attention to the variations in the footprints left by Baskerville. According to the doctor’s testimony, the
prints changed their appearance as soon as Baskerville went past the gate giving onto the moor, as if he were “walking upon
his toes.”
²
Holmes is careful not to neglect this detail and suggests a hypothesis to Watson early on:

“Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley.”

  “He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?”

  “What then?”

  “He was running, Watson—running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart and fell dead upon his
face.”

  “Running from what?”

  “There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run.”
³

To understand what happened, Dr. Mortimer comes close to resorting to a supernatural explanation. Before the event, at least
three people have seen on the moor “a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral.”
⁴
Their testimonies agree perfectly, all suggesting that the legendary hound has reappeared.

Keenly interested in this story, Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer to go to the train station in London to greet Henry Baskerville,
Sir Charles’s nephew and heir to the fortune, who is arriving from abroad. He instructs him to come again the next morning,
bringing the young man with him, leaving Holmes some time to think.

The next day, Henry Baskerville presents himself at the detective’s flat and tells him of several mysterious occurrences that
have befallen him since he arrived in England. First, he received that very morning in his hotel an envelope with an address
written in rough characters, containing a sheet of paper with a single sentence formed of words cut out of the newspaper:
As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor
.
⁵
Only the word “moor” is written in ink. This letter is all the stranger since no one could have known that Henry Baskerville
was going to stay at this hotel; the decision had been made at the very last moment by Dr. Mortimer and Henry himself.

Reconstructing the way the letter was composed is child’s play for Holmes. Asking Watson to hand him the previous day’s
Times
, he finds all the words of the anonymous message in an article on free trade, except for the word “moor.” Familiar with the
characteristics of type in most of the major newspapers, and thus able to identify an editorial in the
Times
, Holmes easily guesses the source.

But he doesn’t stop there. He also determines, by observing the shape of the letters, that the message was cut with short-bladed
scissors. What’s more, the fact that the pen spluttered twice in a single word and that the ink ran dry three times indicates
to him that the letter was written in a hotel, a place where pens are of poor quality and inkwells are seldom filled.

Receiving this anonymous letter is not the only peculiar thing that has happened to Henry Baskerville since he arrived in
London. Urged by Holmes to tell him about even the most trifling incidents, he tells him that one of his shoes—he had put
a pair of them outside his hotel room—disappeared during the night. Holmes at the time pays little attention to this.

But the detective shows more interest the next day when Baskerville tells him that not only was his shoe not returned to him,
but that another one, belonging to a more well-worn pair, is now nowhere to be found. A hotel employee, when summoned, is
incapable of explaining this series of disappearances.

This time Holmes seems much more concerned about Baskerville’s revelations:

“Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you’ll excuse my troubling you about such a trifle—”

  “I think it’s well worth troubling about.”

  “Why, you look very serious over it.”

  “How do you explain it?”

  “I just don’t attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest thing that ever happened to me.”

  “The queerest perhaps—” said Holmes thoughtfully.
⁶

Strange occurrences seem to accumulate during Henry Baskerville’s and Dr. Mortimer’s stay in London. Just after this interview,
Holmes and Watson follow the two men out and notice that they are being followed by a hansom cab. They rush toward it, but
its driver spurs the horse on. Although they are unable to catch up with the cab, the two investigators glimpse “a bushy black
beard and a pair of piercing eyes”
⁷
staring at them through its side window.

Having taken down the number of the vehicle, Holmes summons the driver to his flat. The driver is unable to provide a precise
description of his passenger; he can tell Holmes only that the man told him he was a detective and offered him two guineas
to obey his orders without asking questions. The driver and the detective had followed Mortimer and Baskerville from the train
station to Holmes’s flat before taking flight when they were spotted.

At Waterloo Station, where he asked to be driven, the mysterious passenger paid the sum promised, then turned to the driver
and said, “It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
⁸
The actual Holmes, laughing, obtains a rough, disappointing description of his passenger from the driver:

“And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

The cabman scratched his head. “Well, he wasn’t altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I’d put him at forty years
of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff, and he had a
black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don’t know as I could say more than that.”

“Colour of his eyes?”

“No, I can’t say that.”

“Nothing more that you can remember?”

“No, sir; nothing.”
⁹

The anonymous letter, the disappearance of the shoe, and the shadowing by the bearded man, added to Dr. Mortimer’s revelations,
have the effect of creating a disturbing atmosphere.

About all these mysterious occurrences that accompany the arrival of the Baskerville heir, Holmes’s investigation produces
no conclusions. Searches made through hotel registers fail to identify the author of the anonymous letter, and the shoe thief
remains elusive.