Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (8 page)

The problem is that these doubts about Dr. Mortimer also apply to the other important characters in the case, all of whom
are in the position of telling part of the story at one time or another, with the notable exceptions of Selden, who never
appears directly, and the dog.

We have to take Sir Henry Baskerville at his word, then, about the life he led before he arrived in Devonshire. We have to
trust the Barrymores in their judgment of Selden’s personality, and the Stapletons on their life before they moved close to
the Hall. We have to believe Laura Lyons about the circumstances in which her meeting with Sir Charles Baskerville was arranged,
and Frankland about his reasons for refusing to see Laura Lyons.

Even Sherlock Holmes’s narratives must be questioned when we recognize (as we do many times in just this one novel) that he
makes mistakes. We learn about the investigations he claims to have been conducting in London while his friend was attending
to Sir Henry Baskerville’s protection only from his own testimony, which shouldn’t necessarily be given a higher status than
the testimonies of other characters.

Despite his intelligence and his successes, Sherlock Holmes remains one character among many, and his vision of events, as
it is communicated to us in his final analysis of the case, can only be one point of view—an interesting one, to be sure,
because of his participation in the investigation, but one that does not preclude other, equally legitimate points of view.

These constant delegations of narration do not absolve Watson of his initial responsibility, since each character’s narration
is taken up—and necessarily revised—by him. But they tend to make his testimony more fragile, and therefore even less credible.

The final result is that the reader who wants to form his own opinion has to deal with a multitude of uncertain accounts,
some of which we may think are willfully falsified and all of which have been passed through the sieve of the main narration,
Watson’s, which has been discredited from the very beginning. Faced with this patchwork narrative, only blind faith could
impel a reader to accept without reservations the official truth about the tragic events that bloodied the Devonshire moor—the
account that has been imposed on us for more than a century, even though it goes against common sense.

* Like this one about the man on the tor: “But I had my own experience for a guide, since it had shown me the man himself
standing upon the summit of the black tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there I should explore every
hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the
point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of
Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut, and its
tenant should not be within it, I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had missed him in London.
It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where my master had failed.” (
The Hound of the Baskervilles, op. cit.,
p. 862)

III
In Defense of the Dog

THE RECEIVED IMAGE of
The Hound of the Baskervilles—
an image that has gained strength from the film adaptations of the novel, all of which have confirmed the official version—is
that of a somewhat fantastical tale in which a monstrous hound spreads terror on the English moor, driving its victims to
death through fear or violence.

Distrustful on principle, the detective critic cannot subscribe to such a simplistic view. Although the existence of a huge
dog is attested to in the final scene, with several witnesses present, the dog’s responsibility for the various deaths is
not at all as obvious as Holmes seems to think. An attentive examination of the three scenes in which it is supposed to have
committed its murders should arouse our suspicion.

Let us consider these scenes calmly, one by one, trying to dispel the fantastic atmosphere in which the story tries to immerse
us and keeping to the facts alone.

The circumstances of Sir Charles Baskerville’s death do indeed suggest that an extremely large dog has been on the scene.
It is true that for most of our story, our only evidence of the dog’s existence is the testimony of Dr. Mortimer, but the
dog will indeed appear in the final scene of the novel. It is not unlikely, then, that it was also at the scene of Sir Charles’s
death. Is admitting that it was present enough to make it a murderer, or a murderer’s accomplice?

While we may concede that any large dog is a potential murderer, the case against this particular dog is limited to a mere
sighting as it ran by. On that basis, the charges against this animal should be reduced. But beyond that, the version presented
by the doctor, and confirmed by Holmes, contains a whole series of improbabilities that should suffice to have it thrown out.

These improbabilities arise when Holmes struggles to make two contradictory facts agree: the dog’s presence on the scene and
the dog’s absence of aggressiveness. In fact, the victim bears no trace of bites, which would be highly unusual if the large,
aggressive animal had been led to the scene with criminal intent.

To solve this problem, Holmes presents the argument that if the dog caused Baskerville to die of fear, it didn’t subsequently
approach the body, because hounds will not eat dead bodies. This assertion is backed neither by the actuality of the animal’s
behavior nor by literary fictions, which, from Athalie’s dream
^*
to “A Woman’s Revenge” by Barbey d’Aurevilly,
^*
describe dogs devouring corpses without the slightest hesitation.

But no hypothesis should be disregarded, and we can allow the supposition that this particular dog prefers only living flesh.
Even so, herein lies the most complete improbability in the book, one that borders on material impossibility: the speed with
which the action is supposed to have taken place. According to an examination of its footprints, the dog was about twenty
yards away from its victim; at a full run, it was only a few seconds away from reaching him. How can we think that in such
a brief time Sir Charles Baskerville could suffer a heart attack and die, leaving the dog time to make a precise enough diagnosis
to decide, in the interest of its dietary preferences, to cease its efforts before reaching the body?

As we will see farther on, the fact that the dog ran toward Baskerville and then abruptly stopped running can be explained
much more simply. But Holmes is so locked into his scenario of the murderer-with-the-dog that none of the other hypotheses
worthy of being examined is allowed across the threshold of his famous mind.

The fantasy scenario of the murderer-with-the-dog so occupies Holmes’s imagination that it can function even in the dog’s
absence. And that is just what happens at Selden’s death.

Having taken refuge on the moor, where he lives in fear of being caught by the police and the army who have organized searches,
the escaped convict falls off a cliff on a gloomy night and dies. Though there is nothing especially surprising about the
manner of his death, Holmes detects the dog’s presence here too.

It is true that, just before the body is discovered, Holmes and Watson hear cries coming from the moor, along with barking.
But the cries can be readily explained if Selden, starting to fall and grabbing onto a bush or a rock for support, was crying
for help. As for the barking, we imagine it is frequent in the countryside; furthermore it is heard at other times throughout
the book, all of them apparently unconnected to murder.

The first bit of evidence against the hypothesis of the dog is the absence of traces left by the animal, either on Selden’s
body or on the ground around it. Yet the moor surrounds the rocky slope from which Selden fell, and an enormous animal of
this sort would have left tracks that could be easily read.

Then there is another improbability that makes the dog’s presence even more difficult to accept. Just after discovering the
corpse, Holmes and Watson are joined by Stapleton, who has also heard the convict’s cries. If he has indeed trained the dog
well enough to attack Selden on command, the animal would most likely be well enough trained to return to its master, which
is not the case. Where has Stapleton hidden the animal?

The possibility that the dog killed Selden is so remote that Holmes dissuades Watson from mentioning it. After recalling that
there was no proof of attack by a dog in the death of Sir Charles Baskerville, he notes that the file is just as empty for
Selden’s death:

“We are not much better off tonight. Again, there was no direct connection between the hound and the man’s death. We never
saw the hound. We heard it; but we could not prove that it was running upon this man’s trail. There is a complete absence
of motive. No, my dear fellow;we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present, and that it is worth
our while to run any risk in order to establish one.”
³⁴

And to Watson, who tries to reassure his friend that there is still a case to be made, Holmes replies, in a flash of lucidity:

“Not a shadow of one—only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such
evidence.”
³⁵

Though the dog is probably innocent of the first two deaths, it is hard to argue for its innocence in the third attack, the
one against Sir Henry Baskerville. For it is indeed a violent attack, even a lethal one; Watson witnesses the dog leap onto
Sir Henry, throw him to the ground, and “worry at his throat.”
³⁶
This scene is indisputable; unlike the others, this time there are several witnesses.

But if we make an effort to break free of the perspective of Watson, who shares the Holmesian fantasy of murderer-with-dog,
things appear a little more complex. It is true that an enormous hound, shining with a terrible glow, rushes toward Henry
and throws itself upon him. But as dreadful as this fiery beast seems, it shows no sign of aggression at first, seeming content
to run across the moor. It is only after it has been wounded by Holmes and Watson that it is seized with madness:

With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed
were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together,
and the creature gave a hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but bounded onwards.
Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly
at the frightful thing which was hunting him down.
³⁷

Although Watson can hardly be suspected of sympathizing with an animal he regards a priori as guilty, a careful examination
of his account leaves little doubt about the order in which things occurred. The dog committed no actual violence before being
hit by the bullets, and it’s only after being shot that it sprang onto Sir Henry.

Although it’s impossible to be certain, we are compelled by fairness to say that the gunshots do not punish the attack but
cause it, and that there is a reasonable doubt about whether the attack would have occurred in their absence. Can we reproach
a dog hit by a bullet for being overcome with rage and rushing at one of the people it legitimately supposes to be its assailants?

But there is something even more important than these doubts about the attack. An attentive rereading of Watson’s account
shows how the fantasy of the murderer with the dog subtly influences the narration—and probably even the events themselves.

Even before it appears, the dog is caught in the web of a tale that makes the most ordinary fact seem fantastical. This literary
alchemy is particularly revealing in the scene in which Holmes,Watson, and Lestrade are keeping watch, waiting for Sir Henry
to leave the house:

“Hist!” cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. “Look out! It’s coming!”

  There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards
of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes’s
elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But
suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement.
³⁸

Though they still haven’t seen anything, the three men are at the height of excitement (“we glared at [the fog],” “uncertain
what horror was about to break from the heart of it”;Holmes’s face was “pale and exultant,” his eyes “shining brightly”).
In this state of mind, steeped in a supernatural universe that colors or even determines their perceptions, anything that
appears before them will naturally seem terrifying.

In such a context it is not surprising that the dog seems to them like a monstrous creature:

At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my
inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the
fog.
³⁹