The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, His Last Bow and The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (Non-slipcased edition) (Vol. 2) (The Annotated Books)

by Doyle, Arthur Conan

  Snake venom is the nominee of Hugh L’Etang, who cites the poison’s convenience and guesses that the “sharp spring” could have been fashioned like a snake’s fang, hollowed out or grooved to inject poison into a finger. “It seems likely that Victor Savage was killed by a neuro-toxic or nerve poison,” L’Etang writes. “This could certainly be produced by the King Cobra of Malaya and the East Indies.” W. E. Edwards disagrees, arguing that venom from a king cobra would kill its victim in a very short period of time. Recall that in “The Speckled Band,” the unfortunate Julia Stoner lost consciousness within minutes of being bitten by a snake; by contrast, Culverton Smith mentions that Victor Savage “was a dead man on the fourth day,” and Holmes’s putative illness likewise lasted several days.

  Edwards throws his lot instead with an injection of the germ of some form of tropical disease—such as Tapanuli fever or the black Formosa corruption, the two ailments mentioned by Holmes, “or something worse.” Dr. Robert S. Katz (“ ‘It is Horribly Contagious’”) proposes that the germ in question is pseudomonas pseudomallei, which causes acute septicemic melioidosis (ASM)—a bacterial infection transmitted when a skin abrasion comes into contact with contaminated water and soil.

  Most of these theories are rejected by S. E. Dahlinger, who, in “Of Mites and Men,” decides that Holmes’s symptoms do not correspond with either the plague, typhus, or acute septicemic melioidosis. She proposes some combination of infectious bacteria that was concocted by Culverton Smith, and writes, “It would have been easy enough for Smith to incubate the bacilli in a culture medium maintained in a Petri jar (‘those jars upon the side table’) in which, as he remarked, ‘Some of the very worst offenders in the world are now doing time.’ . . . The exotic bacteria could only have travelled to England via a culture medium or an infected host. No flea or mite bite would be necessary if the bacilli and a bit of gelatine for it to feed on were transferred to the point of a sharp spring—an extremely nasty box lunch.”

  22 June Thomson agrees that it was not in Watson’s nature to lie with any kind of conviction. “But this is hardly an acceptable excuse,” she chides Holmes—no matter how heartfelt the detective’s apology and his reassurances as to Watson’s medical abilities. (Recall, too, that Watson dropped everything to rush to Holmes’s side.) And what of Mrs. Hudson, who was equally anguished over her tenant’s health? “Holmes is far more concerned with the success of his deception,” Thomson concludes, “than with its effects on his old friend and his landlady.” This certainly fits with Holmes’s cold character, assessed as early as A Study in Scarlet by his friend Stamford: “ ‘Holmes is a little too scientific for my tastes—it approaches to cold-bloodedness. I could imagine his giving a friend a little pinch of the latest vegetable alkaloid, not out of malevolence, you understand, but simply out of a spirit of inquiry in order to have an accurate idea of the effects.’”

  23 The poisonous belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, is a dark, purple-red plant with bell-shaped leaves and shiny black berries that emit a sweet, inky juice. Indigenous to central and southern Europe, the plant derives its toxicity mainly from the alkaloid atropine, which has its highest concentration in the root of the plant. In ancient times, belladonna was sometimes used as a poison and a hallucinogen by cults that practised witchcraft. When applied medicinally, belladonna extract serves as a narcotic and a sedative; it has been used to treat everything from intestinal cramps, motion sickness, asthma, and nasal congestion to scarlet fever, typhoid fever, heart palpitations, pneumonia, and the effects of opium. The name—Italian for “beautiful lady”—is said to derive either from a belief that the plant would transform itself into an enchantress of tempting beauty, or, more likely, from the fact that sixteenth-century Italian women would use small amounts of extract to dilate their pupils, thereby making their eyes seem brighter. (Eye doctors still use atropine in examining their patients.) In Holmes’s case, dilating his pupils achieves the same results desired by those Italian women but the opposite effect, causing him to appear glassy-eyed rather than more attractive.

  24 Beeswax was widely used in Victorian times for the stiffening of moustaches, and as a polish.

  25 William S. Baring-Gould expresses doubt that Holmes ever wrote such a monograph, but grants that he might have intended it as a chapter in his planned textbook on the art of detection (referred to in “The Abbey Grange”). Even if published, Holmes’s monograph was not, Baring-Gould observes, mentioned in Sir John Collie’s expert Malingering and Feigned Sickness, published in 1913. Yet there is room for possibility. In his book, Collie alludes to an 1836 essay on “Feigned and Factitious Diseases, chiefly of Soldiers and Sailors,” and (as quoted by Baring-Gould) states that “[s]ince then only one small similar treatise has appeared.” Could the “small similar treatise” have been Holmes’s?

  26 There is no indication that Holmes determined the nature of the threat posed to him by the needle from a bacteriological examination of the box, and indeed such a determination would have been beyond the scope of Holmes’s skills as we know them. Therefore Holmes’s depiction of various symptoms depended on his observations of Victor Savage and replicating Savage’s symptoms, not merely acting out a textbook description of a certain disease.

  27 In this instance, “reversion” refers to the undisposed-of part of an estate, which will presumably fall into possession of the original grantor or his representative. Note that in “Shoscombe Old Place,” the eponymous residence reverts to the brother of the late Sir James Falder upon the death of Sir James’s widow, Lady Beatrice.

  28 S. E. Dahlinger remarks on the mental attitude of Holmes displayed in “The Dying Detective”: “Does he simply open a package arriving in the post? Noooo! Instead, he thinks, ‘A surprise package for me? Who wants to kill me now?’ Who wants to kill me now? There’s a well-adjusted question, but reasonable, one feels, given his line of work.”

  29 In 1828, Samuel Reiss opened the Grand Cigar Divan, a club located on the Strand that quickly became a companionable coffeehouse. As friendly competition with other coffeehouses grew more serious, Reiss’s club established a reputation as the centre of chess in England. Caterer John Simpson partnered with Reiss in 1848, and the two men undertook an ambitious expansion, renaming the club Simpson’s Grand Cigar Tavern and serving food and wine to such luminaries as Benjamin Disraeli, William Gladstone, and Charles Dickens. In 1898, Simpson’s was acquired by the Savoy Group, a hotel-and-restaurant developer; in 1904 (after a year of renovation while the Strand was being widened), the club acquired its current, rather unwieldy name: Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, Grand Divan Tavern.

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF LADY FRANCES CARFAX1

  Watson plays an unusually active rôle in “The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax” when Holmes asks him to travel to the Continent to hunt down “a stray chicken in a world of foxes.” The case is revealing of social attitudes in the late nineteenth century (and Holmes’s “male chauvinism”), for the “chicken” is a wealthy middle-aged single woman, whom Holmes describes as “one of the most dangerous classes in the world . . . an inciter of crimes in others.” Watson energetically pursues the matter, but Holmes is, as usual, highly critical of Watson’s work. Scholars are equally critical of Holmes’s performance in the case.

  BUT WHY TURKISH?” asked Mr. Sherlock Holmes, gazing fixedly at my boots. I was reclining in a cane-backed chair at the moment, and my protruded feet had attracted his ever-active attention.

  “English,” I answered, in some surprise. “I got them at Latimer’s, in Oxford Street.”

  Holmes smiled with an expression of weary patience.

  “The bath!” he said; “the bath! Why the relaxing and expensive Turkish rather than the invigorating home-made article?”

  “Because for the last few days I have been feeling rheumatic2 and old. A Turkish bath is what we call an alterative in medicine3—a fresh starting-point, a cleanser of the system.

  “By the way, Holmes,” I added. “I have no d
oubt the connection between my boots and a Turkish bath is a perfectly self-evident one to a logical mind, and yet I should be obliged to you if you would indicate it.”

  “The train of reasoning is not very obscure, Watson,” said Holmes, with a mischievous twinkle. “It belongs to the same elementary class of deduction which I should illustrate if I were to ask you who shared your cab in your drive this morning.”

  “I don’t admit that a fresh illustration is an explanation,” said I, with some asperity.

  “Bravo, Watson! A very dignified and logical remonstrance. Let me see, what were the points? Take the last one first—the cab. You observe that you have some splashes on the left sleeve and shoulder of your coat. Had you sat in the centre of a hansom you would probably have had no splashes, and if you had they would certainly have been symmetrical. Therefore it is clear that you sat at the side. Therefore it is equally clear that you had a companion.”

  “That is very evident.”

  “Absurdly commonplace, is it not?”

  “But the boots and the bath?”

  “Equally childish. You are in the habit of doing up your boots in a certain way. I see them on this occasion fastened with an elaborate double bow, which is not your usual method of tying them. You have, therefore, had them off. Who has tied them? A bootmaker—or the boy at the bath. It is unlikely that it is the bootmaker, since your boots are nearly new. Well, what remains? The bath. Absurd, is it not?4 But, for all that, the Turkish bath has served a purpose.”

  “What is that?”

  “You say that you have had it because you need a change. Let me suggest that you take one. How would Lausanne do, my dear Watson—first-class tickets and all expenses paid on a princely scale?”

  “Splendid! But why?”

  Holmes leaned back in his armchair and took his notebook from his pocket.

  “One of the most dangerous classes in the world,” said he, “is the drifting and friendless woman. She is the most harmless, and often the most useful of mortals, but she is the inevitable inciter of crime in others.5 She is helpless. She is migratory. She has sufficient means to take her from country to country and from hotel to hotel. She is lost, as often as not, in a maze of obscure pensions and boarding-houses. She is a stray chicken in a world of foxes. When she is gobbled up she is hardly missed. I much fear that some evil has come to the Lady Frances Carfax.”

  I was relieved at this sudden descent from the general to the particular. Holmes consulted his notes.

  “Lady Frances,” he continued, “is the sole survivor of the direct family of the late Earl of Rufton.6 The estates went, as you may remember, in the male line. She was left with limited means, but with some very remarkable old Spanish jewellery of silver and curiously cut diamonds to which she was fondly attached—too attached, for she refused to leave them with her banker and always carried them about with her. A rather pathetic figure, the Lady Frances, a beautiful woman, still in fresh middle age, and yet, by a strange chance, the last derelict of what only twenty years ago was a goodly fleet.”

  “What has happened to her, then?”

  “Ah, what has happened to the Lady Frances? Is she alive or dead? There is our problem. She is a lady of precise habits, and for four years it has been her invariable custom to write every second week to Miss Dobney, her old governess, who has long retired, and lives in Camberwell.7 It is this Miss Dobney who has consulted me. Nearly five weeks have passed without a word. The last letter was from the Hôtel National at Lausanne.8 Lady Frances seems to have left there and given no address. The family are anxious, and, as they are exceedingly wealthy, no sum will be spared if we can clear the matter up.”

  “Is Miss Dobney the only source of information? Surely she had other correspondents?”

  “There is one correspondent who is a sure draw,9 Watson. That is the bank. Single ladies must live, and their passbooks are compressed diaries. She banks at Silvester’s. I have glanced over her account. The last cheque but one paid her bill at Lausanne, but it was a large one and probably left her with cash in hand. Only one cheque has been drawn since.”

  “To whom, and where?”

  “To Miss Marie Devine. There is nothing to show where the cheque was drawn. It was cashed at the Crédit Lyonnais at Montpellier10 less than three weeks ago. The sum was fifty pounds.”

  “And who is Miss Marie Devine?”

  “What has happened to the Lady Frances? Is she alive or dead? There is our problem.”

  Frederick Dorr Steele, American Magazine, 1911

  “That also I have been able to discover. Miss Marie Devine was the maid of Lady Frances Carfax. Why she should have paid her this cheque we have not yet determined. I have no doubt, however, that your researches will soon clear the matter up.”

  “My researches!”

  “Hence the health-giving expedition to Lausanne. You know that I cannot possibly leave London while old Abrahams is in such mortal terror of his life. Besides, on general principles it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes. Go, then, my dear Watson, and if my humble counsel can ever be valued at so extravagant a rate as two pence a word, it waits your disposal night and day at the end of the Continental wire.”

  Two days later found me at the National Hôtel at Lausanne, where I received every courtesy at the hands of M. Moser, the well-known manager. Lady Frances, as he informed me, had stayed there for several weeks. She had been much liked by all who met her. Her age was not more than forty. She was still handsome, and bore every sign of having in her youth been a very lovely woman. M. Moser knew nothing of any valuable jewellery, but it had been remarked by the servants that the heavy trunk in the lady’s bedroom was always scrupulously locked. Marie Devine, the maid, was as popular as her mistress. She was actually engaged to one of the head waiters in the hotel, and there was no difficulty in getting her address. It was 11, Rue de Trajan, Montpellier. All this I jotted down, and felt that Holmes himself could not have been more adroit in collecting his facts.

  Only one corner still remained in the shadow. No light which I possessed could clear up the cause for the lady’s sudden departure. She was very happy at Lausanne. There was every reason to believe that she intended to remain for the season in her luxurious rooms overlooking the lake. And yet she had left at a single day’s notice, which involved her in the useless payment of a week’s rent. Only Jules Vibart, the lover of the maid, had any suggestion to offer. He connected the sudden departure with the visit to the hotel a day or two before of a tall, dark, bearded man. “Un sauvage—un véritable sauvage!”11 cried Jules Vibart. The man had rooms somewhere in the town. He had been seen talking earnestly to Madame on the promenade by the lake. Then he had called. She had refused to see him. He was English, but of his name there was no record. Madame had left the place immediately afterwards. Jules Vibart, and, what was of more importance, Jules Vibart’s sweetheart, thought that this call and this departure were cause and effect. Only one thing Jules would not discuss. That was the reason why Marie had left her mistress. Of that he could or would say nothing. If I wished to know, I must go to Montpellier and ask her.

  So ended the first chapter of my inquiry. The second was devoted to the place which Lady Frances Carfax had sought when she left Lausanne. Concerning this there had been some secrecy, which confirmed the idea that she had gone with the intention of throwing someone off her track. Otherwise why should not her luggage have been openly labelled for Baden?12 Both she and it reached the Rhenish spa by some circuitous route. This much I gathered from the manager of Cook’s local office.13 So to Baden I went, after dispatching to Holmes an account of all my proceedings, and receiving in reply a telegram of half-humorous commendation.

  At Baden the track was not difficult to follow. Lady Frances had stayed at the Englischer Hof14 for a fortnight. Whilst there she had made the acquaintance of a Dr. Shlessinger and his wife, a missionary from South Ameri
ca. Like most lonely ladies, Lady Frances found her comfort and occupation in religion. Dr. Shlessinger’s remarkable personality, his whole-hearted devotion, and the fact that he was recovering from a disease contracted in the exercise of his apostolic duties, affected her deeply. She had helped Mrs. Shlessinger in the nursing of the convalescent saint. He spent his day, as the manager described it to me, upon a lounge-chair on the verandah, with an attendant lady upon either side of him. He was preparing a map of the Holy Land, with special reference to the kingdom of the Midianites,15 upon which he was writing a monograph. Finally, having improved much in health, he and his wife had returned to London, and Lady Frances had started thither in their company. This was just three weeks before, and the manager had heard nothing since. As to the maid, Marie, she had gone off some days beforehand in floods of tears, after informing the other maids that she was leaving service forever. Dr. Shlessinger had paid the bill of the whole party before his departure.

  “He spent his day upon a lounge-chair on the veranda, with anattendant lady upon either side of him.”

  Alec Ball, Strand Magazine, 1911

  “By the way,” said the landlord, in conclusion, “you are not the only friend of Lady Frances Carfax who is inquiring after her just now. Only a week or so ago we had a man here upon the same errand.”

  “Did he give a name?” I asked.

  “None; but he was an Englishman, though of an unusual type.”

  “A savage?” said I, linking my facts after the fashion of my illustrious friend.

  “Exactly. That describes him very well. He is a bulky, bearded, sunburned fellow, who looks as if he would be more at home in a farmers’ inn than in a fashionable hotel. A hard, fierce man, I should think, and one whom I should be sorry to offend.”