This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781409077053
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Published by Vintage 2009
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Introduction copyright © P.D. James 2009
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Vintage
Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
www.vintage-classics.info
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099529934
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
A STUDY IN SCARLET
Part 1: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., Late of the Army Medical Department.
1. Mr. Sherlock Holmes
2. The Science of Deduction
3. The Lauriston Garden Mystery
4. What John Rance Had to Tell
5. Our Advertisement Brings a Visitor
6. Tobias Gregson Shows What He Can Do
7. Light in the Darkness
Part 2: The Country of the Saints
1. On the Great Alkali Plain
2. The Flower of Utah
3. John Ferrier Talks with the Prophet
4. A Flight for Life
5. The Avenging Angels
6. A Continuation of the Reminiscences of John Watson, M.D.
7. The Conclusion
THE SIGN OF FOUR
1. The Science of Deduction
2. The Statement of the Case
3. In Quest of a Solution
4. The Story of the Bald-headed Man
5. The Tragedy of Pondicherry Lodge
6. Sherlock Holmes Gives a Demonstration
7. The Episode of the Barrel
8. The Baker Street Irregulars
9. A Break in the Chain
10. The End of the Islander
11. The Great Agra Treasure
12. The Strange Story of Jonathan Small
ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
A Scandal in Bohemia
The Red-headed League
A Case of Identity
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
The Five Orange Pips
The Man with the Twisted Lip
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
Silver Blaze
The Yellow Face
The Stock-broker’s Clerk
The “Gloria Scott”
The Musgrave Ritual
The Reigate Puzzle
The Crooked Man
The Resident Patient
The Greek Interpreter
The Naval Treaty
The Final Problem
THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
The Adventure of the Empty House
The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
The Adventure of the Dancing Men
The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
The Adventure of the Priory School
The Adventure of Black Peter
The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
The Adventure of the Six Napoleons
The Adventure of the Three Students
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
The Adventure of the Second Stain
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
1. Mr. Sherlock Holmes
2. The Curse of the Baskervilles
3. The Problem
4. Sir Henry Baskerville
5. Three Broken Threads
6. Baskerville Hall
7. The Stapletons of the Merripit House
8. First Report of Dr. Watson
9. Second Report of Dr. Watson
10. Extract from the Diary of Dr. Watson
11. The Man on the Tor
12. Death on the Moor
13. Fixing the Nets
14. The Hound of the Baskervilles
15. A Retrospection
THE VALLEY OF FEAR
Part 1: The Tragedy of Birlstone
1. The Warning
2. Sherlock Holmes Discourses
3. The Tragedy of Birlstone
4. Darkness
5. The People of the Drama
6. A Dawning Light
7. The Solution
Part 2: The Scowrers
1. The Man
2. The Bodymaster
3. Lodge 341, Vermissa
4. The Valley of Fear
5. The Darkest Hour
6. Danger
7. The Trapping of Birdy Edwards
Epilogue
HIS LAST BOW
The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge
1. The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles
2. The Tiger of San Pedro
The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
The Adventure of the Red Circle
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
The Adventure of the Dying Detective
The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
His Last Bow
THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
The Adventure of the Illustrious Client
The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier
The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone
The Adventure of the Three Gables
The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire
The Adventure of the Three Garridebs
The Problem of Thor Bridge
The Adventure of the Creeping Man
The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane
The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger
The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place
The Adventure of the Retired Colourman
INTRODUCTION
—
It is a fair assumption that enthusiasts for detective fiction, whatever their country or nationality, if asked to name the th
ree most famous fictional detectives, would begin the list with Sherlock Holmes. To his Victorian readers he was the unchallenged Great Detective whose brilliant intelligence could outwit any adversary, however cunning, and solve any puzzle, however bizarre, and in the decades following his creator’s death in 1930 he has become a myth. He made his debut in 1887 when Arthur Conan Doyle, a not very successful general practitioner living in Southsea, published his first full-length Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet. Here, through the eyes of his flatmate, Dr Watson, Holmes is brought clearly before us in an image which, with the addition of his deerstalker hat and pipe, has remained fixed in the public imagination.
His very person and appearance were such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was rather over six feet, and so excessively lean that he seemed to be considerably taller. His eyes were sharp and piercing, save during those intervals of torpor to which I have alluded; and his thin hawk-like nose gave his whole expression an air of alertness and decision. His chin, too, had the prominence and squareness which mark the man of determination. His hands were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently had occasion to observe when I watched him manipulating his fragile philosophical instruments.
The inspiration for Sherlock Holmes was Dr Joseph Bell, a consultant surgeon at the Edinburgh Infirmary whose reputation as a brilliant diagnostician was based on his ability closely to observe and interpret the symptoms, appearance and habits of his patients. Conan Doyle also acknowledged the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, whose detective, Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin, was the first fictional investigator to rely primarily on deduction from observable facts. But Sherlock Holmes remains unique. We may not feel personally drawn to his eccentricities, but generations have entered into his world and have shared the excitement, entertainment and pure reading pleasure of his adventures. And that perhaps is the secret of his appeal. Conan Doyle was a superb storyteller and the Sherlock Holmes canon is still in print and the stories are being read by new generations seventy-nine years after Conan Doyle’s death.
No writer achieves fame without meeting the needs and expectations of his age. The Sherlock Holmes saga provided for an increasingly literate society and the emergence of the middle class with stories which were original, accessible, exciting and with that occasional frisson of horror to which the Victorians were not averse. Conan Doyle was himself a representative of his sex and class. He was a man his fellow countrymen could understand, a stalwart imperialist, patriotic, courageous, resourceful and with the self-confidence to congratulate himself on having ‘the strongest influence over young men, especially young athletic sporting men, than anyone in England, bar Kipling’. But his most attractive characteristic was undoubtedly his passion for justice and he was indefatigable in spending time, money and energy in righting injustices wherever they came to light. He imbued Sherlock Holmes with the same passion, the same courage. But in many ways Holmes seems an odd hero for such a man to have created. Although exhaustively energetic when engaged on a case, he spent days lying on a sofa without uttering a word, regularly injected himself with cocaine, and with his erratic lifestyle and habit of firing off his revolver in the sitting room, must have been an uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous companion for his friend and room-mate, Dr Watson. Mrs Hudson was certainly a most accommodating landlady.
In addition to his four full-length novels – A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear – Conan Doyle published five collections of short stories featuring his hero. With such a large output, the quality is inevitably sometimes uneven. A number of the stories are frankly incredible, an example being one of the most popular and best known, ‘The Adventures of the Speckled Band’. It is also among the most terrifying of the short stories; Conan Doyle was a master of suspense. Here we encounter the most evil of Holmes’s adversaries, Dr Roylott, who from his first entrance in 221B Baker Street, reveals his strength and brutality. As a doctor, he surely had the means to dispose of his step-daughter with expedience and safety, but the method he employed somehow seems a wanton wish on his part to make the investigation as complicated as possible for Holmes rather than a rational plan to commit a successful murder. There are other inconsistencies in a number of the stories but I agree with the judgement of a notable critic, Julian Symonds, that we should not fall into the error of preferring technical perfection to brilliant storytelling, and that if one were choosing the best twenty short detective stories ever written, at least half a dozen would feature Sherlock Holmes.
No writer who achieves spectacular success does so without a modicum of good luck. For Conan Doyle this occurred when he was invited to contribute a series of self-contained short stories for the Strand Magazine, founded by George Newnes in 1880. The Strand broke new ground in providing a variety of attractions from interviews with celebrities, general articles, photographs and free gifts. It had a readership of over 300,000 and provided Conan Doyle with a double bonus: not only could he be assured of a huge and growing readership, but was now able to concentrate on short stories, the form which suited him best. Today such good fortune could only be equated by a long-running major television series. This too, posthumously, he gained. To add to his wide exposure during his lifetime, the exploits of Sherlock Holmes have been a gift to radio, television and film, and millions of viewers have thrilled to The Hound of the Baskervilles who have never read the novel.
Holmes’s lasting attraction derives largely from the setting and atmosphere of the stories. We enter into that Victorian world of fog and gaslight, the jingle of horses’ reins, the grind of wheels on cobblestones and the shadow of a veiled woman walking up the stairs of that claustrophobic sanctum at 221B Baker Street. Such is the power of the writing that it is we, the readers, who conjure up this enveloping miasma of mystery and terror. The actual descriptions in the books are comparatively few. The Sign of Four mentions a dense, drizzly fog, but the weather is rarely described except briefly in phrases like, ‘a bleak windy day towards the end of March’, or ‘a close rainy day in October.’ We provide what our imaginations need including the detail of the small sitting room, the untidiness, the initials ‘VR’ in bullet marks in the wall and the smell of Holmes’s pipe. We may not always believe in the details of the plot, but we always believe in the man himself and the world he inhabits.
And the magic has remained. Although rooted in Victorian England, Sherlock Holmes is a man for our time, indeed for all time. We readers have a greater respect for him than had his creator. Conan Doyle was a man of high literary ambition and although he was too good a craftsman not to take care over the Holmes stories, he didn’t take them seriously and had every intention of killing off his hero when the first series ended so that he could devote himself to what he saw as more prestigious literature. It was at the end of the second series of stories that he decided to kill both Holmes, and his adversary, Moriarty, by plunging them over the Reichenbach Falls. But Holmes was not so easy to kill, and by public demand was reinstated. Conan Doyle could not resist such a clamour nor say no to the enormous fees he was earning. But he still deplored the egregious success of his detective and wrote to his friend, ‘I have had such an overdose of him that 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.’ But we, the readers, can feast on the Holmes short stories, not with nausea but with renewed appetite. Holmes remains one of the immortals of popular fiction and this complete collection of his short stories will be as welcome to modern readers as it would have been to the aficionados of his day.
P.D. James, 2009
A STUDY IN SCARLET
Part 1
BEING A REPRINT FROM THE REMINISCENCES OF JOHN H. WATSON, M.D., LATE OF THE ARMY MEDICAL DEPARTMENT
Chapter 1
MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES
IN THE YEAR 1878 I took my degree of
Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it, the second Afghan war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes, and was already deep in the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment, and at once entered upon my new duties.
The campaign brought honours and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse, and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.
Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawar. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda, when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was despatched, accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty, with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.
I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air–or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel, and take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes Page 1
