Sherlock Holmes: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Book 0: Sherlock Complete Set

by Arthur Conan Doyle

Genres: General Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective's notoriety as the arch-despoiler of the schemes concocted by the criminal underworld at last gets the better of him. Though Holmes and his faithful sidekick Dr Watson solve what will become some of their most bizarre and extraordinary cases - the disappearance of the race horse Silver Blaze, the horrific circumstances of the Greek Interpreter and the curious mystery of the Musgrave Ritual among them - a criminal mastermind is plotting the downfall of the great detective.

Release date: August 4, 2011

Publisher: Page2Page

Print pages: 214

Sample

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Picardy Place in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859, son of Charles Altamount Doyle and Mary (Foley)
Doyle, and one of seven children who survived to adulthood. The Doyles were an artistic family, the most successful being
Arthur’s uncle ‘Dickie’ Doyle, the noted illustrator for Punch, but his father suffered from alcoholism and later epilepsy, and was eventually committed to a mental hospital. Conan Doyle
maintained a distant relationship with him, but it was his mother, whom he affectionately referred to as ‘the Ma’am’, who
encouraged his love of literature, and he remained close to her throughout his life. The young Arthur was educated at the
northern Jesuit school Stonyhurst, going on to study medicine at Edinburgh and was an enthusiastic reader and storyteller
from a young age, as well as being an active sportsman.


Conan Doyle incurred the wrath of his rich relations when he announced he was an agnostic. Rejecting their strict Catholicism
and cut off from their patronage, he decided to set up his own practice in Southsea in 1882. There he met his first wife, Louise
Hawkins or ‘Touie’, and the couple were married in 1885, later having two children, a son and a daughter. But in 1897 Conan
Doyle met and instantly fell in love with Jean Leckie. They maintained a platonic relationship for ten years and Conan Doyle
struggled with his feelings of guilt and deep affection for his wife and his passion for Jean. When in 1906 Touie died of
consumption, Conan Doyle genuinely mourned her. He finally married Jean in 1907 and they had two sons and a daughter, living
very happily together on their estate in Sussex, Windlesham, until Conan Doyle’s death in 1930.


It was in the year after his first marriage that Conan Doyle began toying with a character called Sherrinford Holmes. This
was to become the first Sherlock Holmes story, his ‘shilling shocker’, A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887. And so the celebrated detective was born, with the faithful Dr Watson at his side. Conan Doyle
consistently gave credit for the character to Dr Joseph Bell, an old tutor of his from Edinburgh University whose precision
and powers of deduction Conan Doyle greatly admired. On the origins of the name, he commented that ‘I made thirty runs [at
cricket] against a bowler by the name of Sherlock, and I always had a kindly feeling for the name’.


But it was in the new, popular literary magazine the Strand that the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes really took off, with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ appearing in 1891. It was an instant
hit. Sidney Paget created the distinctive illustrations of Holmes, based on his younger brother Walter, depicted in a deerstalker
(the pipe would come later). This iconic image became etched in the public’s mind and was more glamorous than Conan Doyle
had envisaged: ‘the handsome Walter took the place of the more powerful, but uglier, Sherlock, and perhaps from the point of
view of my lady readers it was as well.’


By this time Conan Doyle had given up practising medicine entirely to write. He yearned to concentrate on his historical novels
and, despite his success, saw Holmes as ‘taking his mind from better things’. So, after only two years, in 1893 he decided
to kill him off in ‘The Final Problem’, where Holmes famously met his end alongside his nemesis Professor Moriarty. The public
outcry was instant: women wept, men donned black armbands and subscriptions to the Strand plummeted by over 20,000, yet Conan Doyle was unmoved: ‘I feel towards him as I do towards pâté de foie gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day.’ It wasn’t until 1901 that Holmes
reappeared in The Hound of the Baskervilles (a story that predated his death) and, with the public clamouring for more, Doyle finally brought him back to life in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903). By the beginning of the twentieth
century the fan base for Sherlock Holmes was massive and far-reaching, from a Boston cabby in America to Abdul Hamid II, the
then Sultan of Turkey, and has continued growing to this day. There have been countless stage productions and films, with
Holmes defined by such actors as Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett and Michael Caine. And the stories weren’t merely entertainment;
the investigative methods Conan Doyle used are said to have had a huge influence on police processes at the time.


Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s name will always be synonymous with Sherlock Holmes, his volume of works was huge and wide-ranging,
including historical fiction such as Micah Clarke and The White Company, histories of the Boer War and World War One, as well as the Professor Challenger stories, The Lost World (seen as the inspiration for Michael Crichton’s hugely popular Jurassic Park) and The Poison Belt. Conan Doyle’s fascination with spiritualism very much governed his outlook later on in life and he wrote The Coming of the Fairies in response to the case of the Cottingley fairies. Many fans found it hard to associate the creator of a detective so wedded
to cool logic and fact with this ardent champion of the supernatural, but he never swayed in his beliefs.


Conan Doyle died in 1930 at the age of seventy-one, with his beloved Jean by his side, and was buried in the grounds of Windlesham,
with the headstone inscribed, at his request, ‘Steel True, Blade Straight’. Sir Winston Churchill said, ‘I had a great admiration
for him. Of course I read every Sherlock Holmes story … [they] have certainly found a permanent place in English literature.’


‘I am afraid, Watson, that I shall have to go,’ said Holmes, as we sat down together to our breakfast one morning.


‘Go! Where to?’

‘To Dartmoor – to King’s Pyland.’

I was not surprised. Indeed, my only wonder was that he had not already been mixed up in this extraordinary case, which was
the one topic of conversation through the length and breadth of England. For a whole day my companion had rambled about the
room with his chin upon his chest and his brows knitted, charging and recharging his pipe with the strongest black tobacco,
and absolutely deaf to any of my questions or remarks. Fresh editions of every paper had been sent up by our newsagent only
to be glanced over and tossed down into a corner. Yet, silent as he was, I knew perfectly well what it was over which he was
brooding. There was but one problem before the public which could challenge his powers of analysis, and that was the singular
disappearance of the favourite for the Wessex Cup, and the tragic murder of its trainer. When, therefore, he suddenly announced
his intention of setting out for the scene of the drama, it was only what I had both expected and hoped for.


‘I should be most happy to go down with you if I should not be in the way,’ said I.


‘My dear Watson, you would confer a great favour upon me by coming. And I think that your time will not be misspent, for there
are points about this case which promise to make it an absolutely unique one. We have, I think, just time to catch our train
at Paddington, and I will go further into the matter upon our journey. You would oblige me by bringing with you your very
excellent field-glass.’


And so it happened that an hour or so later I found myself in the corner of a first-class carriage, flying along, en route for Exeter, while Sherlock Holmes, with his sharp, eager face framed in his earflapped travelling cap, dipped rapidly into
the bundle of fresh papers which he had procured at Paddington. We had left Reading far behind us before he thrust the last
of them under the seat, and offered me his cigar-case.


‘We are going well,’ said he, looking out of the window and glancing at his watch. ‘Our rate at present is fifty-three and
a half miles an hour.’


‘I have not observed the quarter-mile posts,’ said I.

‘Nor have I. But the telegraph posts upon this line are sixty yards apart, and the calculation is a simple one. I presume
that you have already looked into this matter of the murder of John Straker and the disappearance of Silver Blaze?’


‘I have seen what the Telegraph and the Chronicle have to say.’


‘It is one of those cases where the art of the reasoner should be used rather for the sifting of details than for the acquiring
of fresh evidence. The tragedy has been so uncommon, so complete, and of such personal importance to so many people that we
are suffering from a plethora of surmise, conjecture, and hypothesis. The difficulty is to detach the framework of fact – of absolute, undeniable fact –
from the embellishments of theorists and reporters. Then, having established ourselves upon this sound basis, it is our duty
to see what inferences may be drawn, and which are the special points upon which the whole mystery turns. On Tuesday evening
I received telegrams, both from Colonel Ross, the owner of the horse, and from Inspector Gregory, who is looking after the
case, inviting my co-operation.’


‘Tuesday evening!’ I exclaimed. ‘And this is Thursday morning. Why did you not go down yesterday?’

‘Because I made a blunder, my dear Watson – which is, I am afraid, a more common occurrence than anyone would think who only
knew me through your memoirs. The fact is that I could not believe it possible that the most remarkable horse in England could
long remain concealed, especially in so sparsely inhabited a place as the north of Dartmoor. From hour to hour yesterday I
expected to hear that he had been found, and that his abductor was the murderer of John Straker. When, however, another morning
had come and I found that, beyond the arrest of young Fitzroy Simpson, nothing had been done, I felt that it was time for
me to take action. Yet in some ways I feel that yesterday has not been wasted.’


‘You have formed a theory, then?’

‘At least I have a grip of the essential facts of the case. I shall enumerate them to you, for nothing clears up a case so
much as stating it to another person, and I can hardly expect your co-operation if I do not show you the position from which
we start.’


I lay back against the cushions, puffing at my cigar, while Holmes, leaning forward, with his long thin forefinger checking off the points upon the palm of his left hand, gave
me a sketch of the events which had led to our journey.


‘Silver Blaze’, said he, ‘is from the Isonomy stock, and holds as brilliant a record as his famous ancestor. He is now in
his fifth year, and has brought in turn each of the prizes of the turf to Colonel Ross, his fortunate owner. Up to the time
of the catastrophe he was first favourite for the Wessex Cup, the betting being three to one on. He has always, however, been
a prime favourite with the racing public, and has never yet disappointed them, so that even at short odds enormous sums of
money have been laid upon him. It is obvious, therefore, that there were many people who had the strongest interest in preventing
Silver Blaze from being there at the fall of the flag next Tuesday.


‘This fact was, of course, appreciated at King’s Pyland, where the colonel’s training stable is situated. Every precaution
was taken to guard the favourite. The trainer, John Straker, was a retired jockey, who rode in Colonel Ross’s colours before
he became too heavy for the weighing chair. He had served the colonel for five years as jockey, and for seven as trainer,
and had always shown himself to be a zealous and honest servant. Under him were three lads, for the establishment was a small
one, containing only four horses in all. One of these lads sat up each night in the stable, while the others slept in the
loft. All three bore excellent characters. John Straker, who was a married man, lived in a small villa about two hundred yards
from the stables. He had no children, kept one maidservant, and was comfortably off. The country round is very lonely, but
about half a mile to the north there is a small cluster of villas which have been built by a Tavistock contractor for the use of invalids and others who may wish to enjoy the pure Dartmoor air. Tavistock itself
lies two miles to the west, while across the moor, also about two miles distant, is the larger training establishment of Capleton,
which belongs to Lord Blackwater, and is managed by Silas Brown. In every other direction the moor is a complete wilderness,
inhabited only by a few roaming gypsies. Such was the general situation last Monday night, when the catastrophe occurred.


‘On that evening the horses had been exercised and watered as usual, and the stables were locked up at nine o’clock. Two of
the lads walked up to the trainer’s house, where they had supper in the kitchen, while the third, Ned Hunter, remained on
guard. At a few minutes after nine the maid, Edith Baxter, carried down to the stables his supper, which consisted of a dish
of curried mutton. She took no liquid, as there was a water-tap in the stables, and it was the rule that the lad on duty should
drink nothing else. The maid carried a lantern with her, as it was very dark, and the path ran across the open moor.


‘Edith Baxter was within thirty yards of the stables when a man appeared out of the darkness and called to her to stop. As
he stepped into the circle of yellow light thrown by the lantern she saw that he was a person of gentlemanly bearing, dressed
in a grey suit of tweed with a cloth cap. He wore gaiters, and carried a heavy stick with a knob to it. She was most impressed,
however, by the extreme pallor of his face and by the nervousness of his manner. His age, she thought, would be rather over
thirty than under it.


‘“Can you tell me where I am?” he asked. “I had almost made up my mind to sleep on the moor, when I saw the light of your
lantern.”


‘“You are close to the King’s Pyland training stables,” she said.


‘“Oh, indeed! What a stroke of luck!” he cried. “I understand that a stable boy sleeps there alone every night. Perhaps that
is his supper which you are carrying to him. Now I am sure that you would not be too proud to earn the price of a new dress,
would you?” He took a piece of white paper folded up out of his waistcoat pocket. “See that the boy has this tonight, and
you shall have the prettiest frock that money can buy.”


‘She was frightened by the earnestness of his manner, and ran past him to the window through which she was accustomed to hand
the meals. It was already open, and Hunter was seated at the small table inside. She had begun to tell him of what had happened,
when the stranger came up again.


‘“Good evening,” said he, looking through the window, “I wanted to have a word with you.” The girl has sworn that as he spoke
she noticed the corner of the little paper packet protruding from his closed hand.


‘“What business have you here?” asked the lad.

‘“It’s business that may put something into your pocket,” said the other. “You’ve two horses in for the Wessex Cup – Silver
Blaze and Bayard. Let me have the straight tip, and you won’t be a loser. Is it a fact that at the weights Bayard could give
the other a hundred yards in five furlongs, and that the stable have put their money on him?”


‘“So you’re one of those damned touts,” cried the lad. “I’ll show you how we serve them in King’s Pyland.” He sprang up and
rushed across the stable to unloose the dog. The girl fled away to the house, but as she ran she looked back, and saw that
the stranger was leaning through the window. A minute later, however, when Hunter rushed out with the hound he was gone, and though the lad ran all round the buildings
he failed to find any trace of him.’


‘One moment!’ I asked. ‘Did the stable boy, when he ran out with the dog, leave the door unlocked behind him?’

‘Excellent, Watson; excellent!’ murmured my companion. ‘The importance of the point struck me so forcibly that I sent a special
wire to Dartmoor yesterday to clear the matter up. The boy locked the door before he left it. The window, I may add, was not
large enough for a man to go through.


‘Hunter waited until his fellow grooms had returned, when he sent a message up to the trainer and told him what had occurred.
Straker was excited at hearing the account, although he does not seem to have quite realised its true significance. It left
him, however, vaguely uneasy, and Mrs Straker, waking at one in the morning, found that he was dressing. In reply to her enquiries,
he said that he could not sleep on account of his anxiety about the horses, and that he intended to walk down to the stables
to see that all was well. She begged him to remain at home, as she could hear the rain pattering against the windows, but
in spite of her entreaties he pulled on his large macintosh and left the house.


‘Mrs Straker awoke at seven in the morning, to find that her husband had not yet returned. She dressed herself hastily, called
the maid, and set off for the stables. The door was open; inside, huddled together upon a chair, Hunter was sunk in a state
of absolute stupor, the favourite’s stall was empty, and there were no signs of his trainer.


‘The two lads who slept in the chaff-cutting loft above the harness-room were quickly roused. They had heard nothing during
the night, for they are both sound sleepers. Hunter was obviously under the influence of some powerful drug; and, as no sense could be got out of him, he was left to sleep
it off while the two lads and the two women ran out in search of the absentees. They still had hopes that the trainer had
for some reason taken out the horse for early exercise, but on ascending the knoll near the house, from which all the neighbouring
moors were visible, not only could they see no signs of the favourite, but they perceived something which warned them that
they were in the presence of a tragedy.


‘About a quarter of a mile from the stables, John Straker’s overcoat was flapping from a furze bush. Immediately beyond there
was a bowl-shaped depression in the moor, and at the bottom of this was found the dead body of the unfortunate trainer. His
head had been shattered by a savage blow from some heavy weapon, and he was wounded in the thigh, where there was a long,
clean cut, inflicted evidently by some very sharp instrument. It was clear, however, that Straker had defended himself vigorously
against his assailants, for in his right hand he held a small knife, which was clotted with blood up to the handle, while
in his left he grasped a red and black silk cravat, which was recognised by the maid as having been worn on the preceding
evening by the stranger who had visited the stables.


‘Hunter, on recovering from his stupor, was also quite positive as to the ownership of the cravat. He was equally certain
that the same stranger had, while standing at the window, drugged his curried mutton, and so deprived the stables of their
watchman.


‘As to the missing horse, there were abundant proofs in the mud which lay at the bottom of the fatal hollow that he had been
there at the time of the struggle. But from that morning he has disappeared; and although a large reward has been offered, and all the gypsies of Dartmoor are on the alert,
no news has come of him. Finally an analysis has shown that the remains of his supper, left by the stable lad, contain an
appreciable quantity of powdered opium, while the people of the house partook of the same dish on the same night without any
ill-effect.


‘Those are the main facts of the case stripped of all surmise and stated as baldly as possible. I shall now recapitulate what
the police have done in the matter.


‘Inspector Gregory, to whom the case has been committed, is an extremely competent officer. Were he but gifted with imagination
he might rise to great heights in his profession. On his arrival he promptly found and arrested the man upon whom suspicion
naturally rested. There was little difficulty in finding him, for he was thoroughly well known in the neighbourhood. His name,
it appears, was Fitzroy Simpson. He was a man of excellent birth and education, who had squandered a fortune upon the turf,
and lived now by doing a little quiet and genteel bookmaking in the sporting clubs of London. An examination of his betting-book
shows that bets to the amount of five thousand pounds had been registered by him against the favourite.


‘On being arrested he volunteered the statement that he had come down to Dartmoor in the hope of getting some information
about the King’s Pyland horses, and also about Desborough, the second favourite, which was in the charge of Silas Brown, at
the Capleton stables. He did not attempt to deny that he had acted as described upon the evening before, but declared that
he had no sinister designs, and had simply wished to obtain first-hand information. When confronted with the cravat he turned
very pale, and was utterly unable to account for its presence in the hand of the murdered man. His wet clothing showed that he had been out in the storm of the
night before, and his stick, which was a Penang lawyer, weighted with lead, was just such a weapon as might, by repeated blows,
have inflicted the terrible injuries to which the trainer had succumbed.


‘On the other hand, there was no wound upon his person, while the state of Straker’s knife would show that one, at least,
of his assailants must bear his mark upon him. There you have it all in a nutshell, Watson, and if you can give me any light
I shall be infinitely obliged to you.’


I had listened with the greatest interest to the statement which Holmes, with characteristic clearness, had laid before me.
Though most of the facts were familiar to me, I had not sufficiently appreciated their relative importance, nor their connection
with each other.


‘Is it not possible’, I suggested, ‘that the incised wound upon Straker may have been caused by his own knife in the convulsive
struggles which follow any brain injury?’


‘It is more than possible; it is probable,’ said Holmes. ‘In that case, one of the main points in favour of the accused disappears.’

‘And yet,’ said I, ‘even now I fail to understand what the theory of the police can be.’

‘I am afraid that whatever theory we state has very grave objections to it,’ returned my companion. ‘The police imagine, I
take it, that this Fitzroy Simpson, having drugged the lad, and having in some way obtained a duplicate key, opened the stable
door, and took out the horse, with the intention, apparently, of kidnapping him altogether. His bridle is missing, so that
Simpson must have put it on. Then, having left the door open behind him, he was leading the horse away over the moor, when he was either met or overtaken by the trainer. A row naturally ensued, Simpson beat out the
trainer’s brains with his heavy stick without receiving any injury from the small knife which Straker used in self-defence,
and then either the thief led the horse on to some secret hiding-place, or else it may have bolted during the struggle, and
be now wandering out on the moors. That is the case as it appears to the police, and improbable as it is, all other explanations
are more improbable still. However, I shall very quickly test the matter when I am once upon the spot, and until then I really
cannot see how we can get much further than our present position.’


It was evening before we reached the little town of Tavistock, which lies, like the boss of a shield, in the middle of the
huge circle of Dartmoor. Two gentlemen were awaiting us at the station; the one a tall fair man with lionlike hair and beard,
and curiously penetrating light blue eyes, the other a small alert person, very neat and dapper, in a frock-coat and gaiters,
with trim little side-whiskers and an eyeglass. The latter was Colonel Ross, the well-known sportsman, the other Inspector
Gregory, a man who was rapidly making his name in the English detective service.


‘I am delighted that you have come down, Mr Holmes,’ said the colonel. ‘The inspector here has done all that could possibly
be suggested; but I wi. . .