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IN CONTEXT

TYPE

Short story

FIRST PUBLICATION

UK: July 1904

US: October 1904

COLLECTION

The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1905

CHARACTERS

Stanley Hopkins Young police detective.

Professor Coram Elderly professor and invalid.

Willoughby Smith Young researcher working for Professor Coram.

Anna Former Russian revolutionary.

Mrs. Marker Professor Coram’s housekeeper.

Susan Tarlton Professor Coram’s maid.

Mortimer Professor Coram’s gardener and army pensioner.

This case shows Holmes at the height of his deductive powers, brilliantly piecing together the truth behind a baffling murder. Just a few easily overlooked clues are enough to lead him straight to the culprit. However, while the eager young police detective Stanley Hopkins, who is investigating the case, tries to apply Holmes’s forensic methods at the crime scene, he is left watching open-mouthed as the detective shows just how it should be done.

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Upon inspecting the pince-nez, Holmes describes the wearer as “a woman of good address, attired like a lady. She has a remarkably thick nose, with eyes which are set close upon either side of it. She has a puckered forehead, a peering expression, and probably rounded shoulders.”

A midnight visitor

Holmes and Watson are quietly at work at 221B Baker Street on a dark and stormy winter’s night in 1894. Watson notes how, even in the heart of London, a tempestuous night such as this is a reminder of the elemental power and wildness of nature. So often in the Holmes tales, the danger is lurking deep in the untamed darkness of the countryside beyond London—perhaps a reminder that the constant vigilance of Holmes’s reason is needed to keep the dark forces of chaos at bay.

Each man is focusing on his own area of interest: Watson is reading a medical treatise, and Holmes is studying a palimpsest, a very old document often made of parchment, from which the original writing has been erased so that it can be used again. However, a discerning eye, such as Holmes’s, can sometimes decipher the original, hidden text, beneath the overlay of the new; and his analysis of the palimpsest can be seen as a metaphor for his criminal detection methods.

Holmes and Watson’s evening is suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Police Inspector Hopkins, who is seeking Holmes’s help with a murder that has taken place earlier that day.

"What did you do, Hopkins, after you had made certain that you had made certain of nothing?"

Sherlock Holmes

The Yoxley murder

Willoughby Smith, a young man working as a researcher for the elderly, bed-bound Professor Coram in Yoxley Old Place—a secluded house in the Kent countryside—has been murdered in the professor’s study, stabbed in the neck with a paper knife taken from the desk. His dying words uttered to the maid who found him—“The professor—it was she”—indicate the murderer was female (Professor Coram being a man). Nothing has been stolen, no member of the household has seen or heard anything, and there appears to be no motive. Hopkins’s search indicated that the murderer’s only escape route would have been via the garden, but he found no footprints.

At this point Hopkins reveals that the victim was found clutching a golden pince-nez (glasses that are kept in place only by pinching the bridge of the nose), which the detective has brought with him. He says Smith had clearly grabbed them from the assassin at the time of the murder, as he did not wear glasses. While pince-nez were widely worn in the 1890s, Holmes is confident that this pair will yield valuable clues. Clearly relishing this chance to show off his powers to his young disciple, Holmes examines them closely, then jots down a full physical description of the wearer, including the key fact that she is incredibly nearsighted and so should be easy to track down—all deduced before he has even visited the crime scene.

On the path

The following morning, Holmes travels down to Yoxley Old Place with Watson and Hopkins. It is here that Holmes makes his most brilliant deductions, although he keeps them to himself until the dramatic denouement of the case.

On arriving at the garden of Yoxley Old Place, Holmes carefully inspects the path. Hopkins then reiterates that when he examined it the previous day, there had been no visible footprints, yet now there were signs of someone having trodden on the narrow grass border alongside it. Hopkins assumes someone had walked on that instead of the footpath in order to avoid leaving a track. When Holmes asks whether Hopkins is sure that the murderer must have left the house the same way she entered, Hopkins says she must certainly have done so, since there is no other way out. Holmes seems unconvinced—but the reader has yet to learn why.

On examining the professor’s study, Holmes immediately notices a new scratch near the lock on a bureau, and deduces that the murderer was trying to break into it when Smith interrupted her. Holmes then considers her escape route. There are two options—either the way she came, or along a corridor that leads into the professor’s bedroom.

Holmes, Watson, and Hopkins visit the professor. While Holmes chain-smokes the professor’s Egyptian cigarettes, they discuss the possible causes of Smith’s death, which the professor says he believes was suicide. Holmes then departs, saying he will return that afternoon to report back on the case. When asked by his companions whether he has any clues, Holmes’s enigmatic response is that “the cigarettes will show me.”

"It would be difficult to name any articles which afford a finer field for inference than a pair of glasses."

Sherlock Holmes

The Russian in hiding

Holmes returns to the professor’s room at the specified time, and after “mistakenly” dropping the box of cigarettes offered to him and picking all the stray cigarettes off the floor, he announces that he has solved the mystery, much to everyone’s amazement. He immediately identifies a bookcase with a secret closet as the place where the assassin has concealed herself. Realizing the game is up, the murderer—who is exactly as Holmes has described her—emerges, and tells her story. She confesses that she had entered the house to recover some crucial personal documents, but was caught in the act by Smith, and killed him accidentally while trying to escape. Fleeing down the wrong corridor in panic, she ended up in the professor’s bedroom—and he, although surprised to see her, then hid her from the police.

It turns out that the woman is the professor’s Russian wife, Anna. Years earlier, the couple were involved in a revolutionary movement in their homeland, but their activities were uncovered by the authorities and in order to save his own life, the professor betrayed Anna and their comrades, and fled to England. Many of the group were jailed, including Anna’s close friend Alexis, who was innocent of any wrongdoing and had written many letters dissuading his comrades from the path of violence. The professor had discovered these letters, which may have prevented Alexis’s conviction, but he withheld them, prompting Anna to take matters into her own hands and try to steal them.

Having explained her noble quest to save her friend, Anna falls on to the bed and dies, having taken poison before she revealed herself. The story’s ending is tragic, but the case has been solved, and Holmes has the documents that may ensure Alexis’s freedom.

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Smith’s dead body lies in the professor’s study and the murderer has apparently escaped. Ruling out where the assailant couldn’t have fled to, Holmes deduces the most likely—unlikely, as it turns out—hiding place.

The detective’s summary

What is remarkable about this case is the speed at which Holmes succeeds in solving it: barely 14 hours had passed since Hopkins’s arrival in Baker Street. In few other adventures do we see Holmes working so swiftly to solve a crime from just the slimmest of clues.

As always, the secret to Holmes’s success is in his observation of details that others have overlooked. He tells his stunned companions how he reached his conclusions. First, the style and fit of the pince-nez found at the crime scene enabled him to create a detailed image of the wearer. Second, on examining the garden path, he realized that the murderer—half-blind without her glasses—could not possibly have made her escape down a narrow strip of grass without making a false step, so she must have still been in the house. Third, the fact that the two corridors were both covered in coconut matting meant it was likely that someone with poor eyesight might have taken the wrong corridor, ending up in the professor’s room. And finally, Holmes’s brilliant ploy with the cigarette ash: noticing a clear space in front of the bookcase, he had dropped ash over the floor. When he returned in the afternoon, the ash had been stepped in, revealing that the “prisoner” had come out of her hiding place.

These and various other details missed by Hopkins yielded their secrets to Holmes’s piercing eye. He knows it is crucial not to let the truth escape just because it is unexpected. “A simple case,” Holmes says, “yet, in some ways, an instructive one.” He clearly expects Hopkins to have learned from it—and feels sufficiently satisfied to congratulate him on bringing his case to a successful conclusion.

RG

Egyptian cigarettes, as smoked by Professor Coram, were the height of fashion in Victorian society. British and American companies copied Egyptian motifs, hence today’s US Camel brand.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARIES

Russia’s Czar Alexander II was a reformer who freed the serfs in 1861, but many thought it was a ruse and that autocratic rule would go on as before. Young intellectuals, in particular, came to believe that the only way to achieve true freedom was through violent revolution.

Alexander II survived one assassination attempt in 1879, only to be killed two years later in St. Petersburg. After his death, the stakes were raised even higher. The secret police (Okhrana) cracked down on young revolutionary groups like the one Anna and Professor Coram were involved in, and pogroms were launched against Jews, who were thought to have been involved in the Czar’s assassination. The revolutionaries fought back with bomb plots and terrorism. One group, the Nihilists, became known throughout Europe for their willingness to use violence to bring about the political change they felt was essential.

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