The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Collins Classroom Classics)

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This Collins Classroom Classics edition includes an introduction and glossary to support students, written by an experienced teacher.

ISBN 978-0-00-840044-6

£2.50

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9 780008 400446

The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes

…it’s a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his brains to crime it is the worst of all.

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Contents Introduction iv The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes A Scandal in Bohemia 1 The Red-headed League 33 A Case of Identity 65 The Boscombe Valley Mystery 89 The Five Orange Pips 122 The Man with the Twisted Lip 148 The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle 180 The Adventure of the Speckled Band 208 The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb 242 The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor 270 The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet 299 The Adventure of the Copper Beeches 332 Glossary 366

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Introduction What would be your favourite Sherlock Holmes story?

That was the question The Strand Magazine asked its readers in 1927, some 30 years after publishing nearly 50 of the great detective’s adventures. This question formed the basis of a competition that offered the very handsome prize of £100 – the equivalent today of over £6,000 – to the person whose selection most closely matched those of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930).

Conan Doyle himself took this exercise very seriously, placing his list in a sealed envelope and, at the great reveal, explaining the reasons for his choices. Top of the list was ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’, which Conan Doyle firmly believed would be everyone’s favourite, as well as his own.1 This was followed by ‘The Red-headed League’, which he selected for the originality of its plot. Also in the list was ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ – the first story to appear in The Strand, in July 1891, which Conan Doyle noted had ‘more female interest than is usual’. ‘The Five Orange Pips’ was also named as a favourite, as it had ‘a dramatic quality of its own’.2 The winner of the competition, Mr R.T. Norman of Northants, correctly matched 10 of Conan Doyle’s 12 selected stories, the runner-up chose nine, and many readers shared eight of the author’s favourites.

Conan Doyle certainly knew his audience well. But the stories he named also showcase the crucial elements that had both secured Sherlock Holmes’s popularity and ensured his longevity: thrilling plots, tantalising clues, an intriguing cast of characters, and settings that range from the seedy backstreets of Victorian London to the country estates of rural England.3

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Introduction

Contexts

Conan Doyle and The Strand Magazine Conan Doyle introduced the adventures of his detective Sherlock Holmes to The Strand Magazine at the perfect time. By the late 19th century, a number of changes had taken place in British society that had created a new market for fiction. Literacy had increased dramatically thanks to a series of education reforms in the 1870s; the economy was booming and new legislation provided many workers with more free time and disposable income. There was an increase in leisure travel, as more people used the now-extensive rail networks to take holidays or go on weekend excursions. This led to a demand for entertaining material to read while travelling or during this new-found free time. In response, entrepreneurial publishers lost no time in introducing engaging and affordable periodicals and magazines – a process made easier by technological advances that allowed for swift, cost-effective mass production. The Strand Magazine was one such publication – a London-based monthly, which launched its first volume in January 1891 and soon became known for its society news, competitions, wide-ranging features on leisure pursuits and, of course, its first-rate, lavishly illustrated fiction. From the start, The Strand had a huge readership, with circulation figures in the region of 300,000 copies per issue.4 At the time of the magazine’s launch, Arthur Conan Doyle was still relatively unknown, despite being a keen and prolific writer and having published a range of articles, as well as some fiction. Among the latter were two full-length Sherlock Holmes novels, A Study in Scarlet (1887) and The Sign of the Four (1890), but

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neither book had attracted a great deal of attention.5 Conan Doyle relied on the income from his writing to supplement the meagre earnings from his medical practice. At that time, doctors relied on fee-paying patients and, in what was a highly competitive business, it took a long time to become established.

Conan Doyle was an ambitious man, and he wanted to achieve greater success with his stories. He decided that rather than serialising a novel in a magazine, which risked losing the reader’s interest if they missed an instalment, it would be a better strategy to write a series of self-contained short stories featuring the same compelling central character, who could embark on a different adventure in each issue. Conan Doyle realised that Sherlock Holmes – the detective on whom he had based his two earlier novels – would be ideal. So, he set about writing an intriguing tale called ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’, which was quickly accepted by The Strand.

The reader response was encouraging and the magazine swiftly commissioned Conan Doyle to write more stories featuring Sherlock Homes. At £36 per story (the equivalent of around £4,500 today) the original fee was handsome enough, but the money increased along with the detective’s popularity. Soon Conan Doyle no longer had to worry about finances, and he retired from medicine in order to write full time. Throughout his career, Conan Doyle wrote for several publishers, but all the short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes made their first appearance in The Strand. The first 12 of these tales were compiled into a volume entitled The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which was published in 1892.

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A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

I To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name.

In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him,

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and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.

I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. My own complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the man who first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all my attention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in following out those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless by the official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of his summons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singular tragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he had accomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyond these signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the daily press, I knew little of my former friend and companion.

One night — it was on the twentieth of March, 1888 — I was returning from a journey to a patient (for I had now returned to civil practice), when my way led me through Baker Street. As I passed the well-remembered door, which must always be associated in my mind with my wooing, and with the dark incidents of the ‘Study in Scarlet’, I was seized with a keen desire to see

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Holmes again, and to know how he was employing his extraordinary powers. His rooms were brilliantly lit, and, even as I looked up, I saw his tall, spare figure pass twice in a dark silhouette against the blind. He was pacing the room swiftly, eagerly, with his head sunk upon his chest and his hands clasped behind him. To me, who knew his every mood and habit, his attitude and manner told their own story. He was at work again.

He had risen out of drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.

His manner was not effusive. It seldom was; but he was glad, I think, to see me. With hardly a word spoken, but with a kindly eye, he waved me to an armchair, threw across his case of cigars, and indicated a spirit case and a gasogene in the corner. Then he stood before the fire and looked me over in his singular introspective fashion.

‘Wedlock suits you,’ he remarked. ‘I think, Watson, that you have put on seven and a half pounds since I saw you.’

‘Seven!’ I answered.

‘Indeed, I should have thought a little more. Just a trifle more, I fancy, Watson. And in practice again, I observe. You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.’

‘Then, how do you know?’

‘I see it, I deduce it. How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?’

‘My dear Holmes,’ said I, ‘this is too much. You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a

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Glossary A Scandal in Bohemia 2

Bohemian: someone who leads an unconventional life – often an artist

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Baker Street: a street in the Marylebone district of London, just north of Oxford Street. Holmes has lodgings at the fictional 221b, which he shared with Dr Watson until Watson’s marriage.

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civil practice: referring to Watson’s medical practice, which now deals with ordinary citizens rather than military personnel

3

spirit case: a holder for bottles of alcohol

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gasogene: an early device for producing a sparkling drink, usually soda water, comprising two linked glass spheres. The top one contained a mix of sodium bicarbonate and tartaric acid, which would produce carbon dioxide gas when mixed with a liquid.

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slavey: maidservant

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Continental Gazetteer: a book containing a list of place names in continental Europe

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Bohemia: in Conan Doyle’s time, a kingdom in what is now a region of the Czech Republic

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Boswell: Holmes compares Watson to James Boswell (1740–95), the Scottish biographer, diarist and lawyer who was famous for writing the biography of his friend, the literary figure Samuel Johnson (1709–84).

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Hercules: in Greek mythology, Hercules was known for his great strength

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beryl: a family of gemstones that includes emeralds

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vizard mask: an oval mask, often made of black velvet, used to protect the face while travelling

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adventuress: a woman of dubious reputation, often seeking social or financial gain by unscrupulous means

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GLOSSARY

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monograph: a book containing a detailed study of a particular subject

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carte blanche: without restrictions, to have the freedom to do as you please

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cabinet: a mounted photograph, the size of a postcard

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brougham: a lightweight, four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage

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Chubb lock: a high-security door lock

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ostlers: people who looked after customers’ horses in stables at inns

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half and half: a drink made up of half stout and half beer or ale

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shag tobacco: coarsely shredded tobacco leaf

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Serpentine-mews: a fictional street in St John’s Wood in north-west London. At that time, a mews was an area full of horse stables.

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Inner Temple: one of the four legal societies in London that together form the Inns of Court. All barristers and judges in England and Wales must belong to an Inn of Court.

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hansom cab: a two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage, often used as a vehicle for hire

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guinea: a coin worth 21 shillings or £1 1s

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landau: a heavy four-wheeled carriage with two folding hoods, usually drawn by four horses

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sovereign: a gold coin with a face value of one pound sterling

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twenty-five minutes to twelve: Until the 1886 Marriage Act, weddings in England and Wales had to take place between 8 a.m. and midday.

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plumber’s smoke rocket: a smoke-emitting device used to test for leaking pipes

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ulster: an informal overcoat for men, originating in Northern Ireland and fashionable in the Victorian and Edwardian era, when it had a short cape and sleeves

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wire: to send a telegram

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The Red-headed League 35

Albert chain: a watch chain with a bar at the end to attach it securely to a pocket. The style was favoured by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert.

36

snuff: ground tobacco leaf mixed with various flavourings, which the user inhales through the nose

36

Freemason: a member of a widespread secretive order that has its origins in the medieval stonemason’s guilds. Generally open only to men, the order is committed to the support of its members, as well as providing help and support to others through charitable works. Conan Doyle was a member of the Freemasons at various periods in his life.

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Omne ignotum pro magnifico: a Latin phrase meaning ‘everything unknown is taken as magnificent’

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pawnbroker: a person who lends money in exchange for a personal possession, which is held as collateral and can be sold if the loan is not repaid

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the City: the historic financial district of London, also known as the Square Mile

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coster: short for ‘costermonger’ – someone who sells items from a barrow in the street

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Encyclopaedia Britannica: the oldest English-language general encyclopedia; when Conan Doyle wrote this story, the encyclopedia was in its ninth edition and consisted of 24 volumes, plus an index volume

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blotting paper: a thick, absorbent paper that soaks up and dries ink on a piece of paper, so avoiding smudging

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quill pen: a pen made from the flight feathers of a bird

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foolscap paper: a sheet of paper, slightly larger than A4

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gypsy: a traveller who lived outside conventional society, considered by some at the time to be an undesirable

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Sarasate: Pablo de Sarasate (1844–1908) was a famous violin virtuoso and composer.

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frock coat: a formal day coat, single- or double-breasted and reaching to the knees

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pea jacket: a sailor’s short, heavy, double-breasted overcoat made of navy wool

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