“There,” said Sir Robert with a wave of his hand, “are Mr. and Mrs. Norlett. Mrs. Norlett, under her maiden name of Evans, has for some years been my sister’s confidential maid. I have brought them here because I feel that my best course is to explain the true position to you, and they are the two people upon earth who can substantiate what I say.”
“Is this necessary, Sir Robert? Have you thought what you are doing?” cried the woman.
“As to me, I entirely disclaim all responsibility,” said her husband.
Sir Robert gave him a glance of contempt. “I will take all responsibility,” said he. “Now, Mr. Holmes, listen to a plain statement of the facts.
“You have clearly gone pretty deeply into my affairs or I should not have found you where I did. Therefore, you know already, in all probability, that I am running a dark horse42 for the Derby and that everything depends upon my success. If I win, all is easy. If I lose—well, I dare not think of that!”
“I understand the position,” said Holmes.
“I am dependent upon my sister, Lady Beatrice, for everything. But it is well known that her interest in the estate is for her own life only. For myself, I am deeply in the hands of the Jews. I have always known that if my sister were to die my creditors would be on to my estate like a flock of vultures. Everything would be seized—my stables, my horses—everything. Well, Mr. Holmes, my sister did die just a week ago.”
“And you told no one!”
“What could I do? Absolute ruin faced me. If I could stave things off for three weeks all would be well. Her maid’s husband—this man here—is an actor. It came into our heads—it came into my head—that he could for that short period personate my sister. It was but a case of appearing daily in the carriage, for no one need enter her room save the maid. It was not difficult to arrange. My sister died of the dropsy which had long afflicted her.”43
“That will be for a coroner to decide.”
“Her doctor would certify that for months her symptoms have threatened such an end.”
“Well, what did you do?”
“The body could not remain there. On the first night Norlett and I carried it out to the old well-house, which is now never used. We were followed, however, by her pet spaniel, which yapped continually at the door, so I felt some safer place was needed. I got rid of the spaniel, and we carried the body to the crypt of the church. There was no indignity or irreverence, Mr. Holmes. I do not feel that I have wronged the dead.”
“Your conduct seems to me inexcusable, Sir Robert.”
The Baronet shook his head impatiently. “It is easy to preach,” said he. “Perhaps you would have felt differently if you had been in my position. One cannot see all one’s hopes and all one’s plans shattered at the last moment and make no effort to save them. It seemed to me that it would be no unworthy resting-place if we put her for the time in one of the coffins of her husband’s ancestors lying in what is still consecrated ground. We opened such a coffin, removed the contents, and placed her as you have seen her. As to the old relics which we took out, we could not leave them on the floor of the crypt. Norlett and I removed them, and he descended at night and burned them in the central furnace. There is my story, Mr. Holmes, though how you forced my hand so that I have to tell it is more than I can say.”
Holmes sat for some time lost in thought.
“There is one flaw in your narrative, Sir Robert,” he said at last. “Your bets on the race, and therefore your hopes for the future, would hold good even if your creditors seized your estate.”
“The horse would be part of the estate. What do they care for my bets? As likely as not they would not run him at all. My chief creditor is, unhappily, my most bitter enemy—a rascally fellow, Sam Brewer, whom I was once compelled to horsewhip on Newmarket Heath. Do you suppose that he would try to save me?”
“Well, Sir Robert,” said Holmes, rising, “this matter must, of course, be referred to the police. It was my duty to bring the facts to light, and there I must leave it.44 As to the morality or decency of your own conduct, it is not for me to express an opinion. It is nearly midnight, Watson, and I think we may make our way back to our humble abode.”
It is generally known now that this singular episode ended upon a happier note than Sir Robert’s actions deserved. Shoscombe Prince did win the Derby, the sporting owner did net eighty thousand pounds45 in bets, and the creditors did hold their hand until the race was over, when they were paid in full, and enough was left to re-establish Sir Robert in a fair position in life. Both police and coroner took a lenient view of the transaction, and beyond a mild censure for the delay in registering the lady’s decease, the lucky owner got away scatheless from this strange incident in a career46 which has now outlived its shadows and promises to end in an honoured old age.
1 At the end of “The Retired Colourman,” published in the January 1927 issue of the Strand Magazine, a forthcoming Holmes story was announced with the title “The Adventure of the Black Spaniel.” It eventually took the title “The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place” and became the last Holmes case to be published individually, appearing first in the United States in Liberty in March 1927 and then in the Strand in April 1927. When included in the first published edition of The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, it was moved to its present position as the penultimate tale. It turns out that the story could claim not two titles, but three: Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote a preface to the John Murray edition of Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories in 1928, referred to the story as “The Adventure of Shoscombe Abbey” (although he misdated it as appearing in 1925), and the manuscript (published in facsimile in 2002 by the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire Lausanne) plainly bears that title.
Watson wrote no preface to The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, turning the task over to Arthur Conan Doyle. Thus for reasons forever unexplained, these were the last words that readers would hear from Holmes’s devoted friend. “After this,” in the words of June Thomson in Holmes and Watson, “the rest, as Hamlet says, is silence.”
2 That is, skin.
3 The former borough of St. Pancras is home to St. Pancras Old Church, built in the fourth century and thought to be the first Christian church in England. That a policeman was murdered in the area evinces little surprise, for as Peter Ackroyd notes, the area around the church “has always been an isolated and somewhat mysterious place—‘Walk not there too late,’ counselled one Elizabethan topographer.”
4 Donald A. Redmond calls him “the only policeman Holmes ever called friend and (barring reference to Charlie Peace) perhaps the only person other than Watson whom he named ‘friend.’ ”
5 The manufacture of forged coins. See “The Engineer’s Thumb” for another case involving coiners.
6 About £2 per week. Nino Cirone calculates that Watson was making 8 to 20 bets a week, certainly an active habit!
7 The racing expertise that Holmes displayed throughout “Silver Blaze” now appears to have vanished, whereas Watson, who in that case showed little interest in the sport, has now become, as William S. Baring-Gould puts it, “a slave to the turf.” On the other hand, R. M. McLaren expresses considerable doubt that Watson in fact pays for racing with half of his wound pension. He believes that Watson spends the money instead on the stock market, since the doctor writes (in such stories as “The Stock-Broker’s Clerk,” “A Case of Identity,” and “Black Peter”) about the stock exchange and financial matters with “a much surer and more certain hand.” However, because the stock market was not the traditional losing ground for a gentleman (as was the turf), to save face, Watson engaged in a deception about his gambling habit.
8 Although this seems to imply Watson’s military period, W. W. Robson observes that in A Study in Scarlet, Watson is described as having spent most of his army summers in India. Perhaps, Robson speculates, Watson may have summered at Shoscombe (a rural village in Avon) when he was a medical student. Michael Duke suggests a stay there in 1892, when there was a hi
atus in the partnership, occurring when Watson was as yet unmarried (note the “my summer quarters”). Bernard Davies proposes “a practical exercise, involving a few days under canvas in the Berkshire Downs country attached to some regular Army or militia manoeuvres” as the likeliest explanation but rejects the “summer” aspect as inconsistent with the evident dates of Watson’s training. John Weber argues for 1892 and a summer convalescence for Mary Morstan Watson and her husband.
9 The Grand National is an annual steeplechase held at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool. The first official Grand National race was run in 1839, and while the winner of that inaugural race was the five-to-one favourite Lottery, the race is better remembered for Captain Martin Becher, who tumbled off his horse, Conrad, into what is now known as Becher’s Brook. It is unknown whether Grand National’s records reveal a second-place rider named Robert Norberton, and Watson does not mention the year in which Sir Robert achieved such a finish. Nonetheless, the list of those who may have bested Norberton’s horse include Wild Man from Borneo, who won the Grand National in 1895 and whose head adorns the wall in the room where winning teams are interviewed; Manifesto, who ran the Grand National eight times and won it in 1897 and 1899; or even Cloister, who finished forty lengths ahead of his closer competitor in 1893—in which case the accomplishment of second place loses a bit of its lustre.
10 A reckless bettor; a dashing or venturesome gambler or speculator (as in, to plunge headlong into a risky bet).
11 See “The Second Stain,” note 24.
12 Deleted in the manuscript is the sentence “In fact by all accounts it passes clean out of the family if she dies.”
13 An interest in an estate that terminates with the death of the holder.
14 Deleted in the manuscript is the sentence “I sorely need your advice for it is not a matter I can take either to the police or to doctors.”
15 By this Holmes means that one of the many physicians on Harley Street, in Cavendish Square, might be more appropriate for a case requiring psychiatric care. (See “The Resident Patient,” note 9, and “The Devil’s Foot,” note 5.)
16 The Derby (now, changing with the times, known as the Vodafone Derby), established in 1780, is run annually at Epsom Downs, in Surrey. In 1900, the Derby stake was £6,000, £5,000 to the winner, £500 to the nominator (that is, the person in whose name the horse is entered) of the winner, £300 to the second, and £200 to the third. The winners in the years possible for “Shoscombe Old Place” were:
Year Horse Owner Jockey
1882 Shotover Duke of Westminster T. Cannon
1883 St. Blaise Sir F. Johnstone T. Cannon
1887 Merry Hampton “Mr. Abington,” a k a Charles Baird J. Watts
1888 Ayrshire Duke of Portland F. Barrett
1894 Ladas II Lord Rosebery J. Watts
1896 Persimmon H.R.H. Prince of Wales J. Watts
1897 Galtee More Mr. J. Gubbins C. Wood
1898 Jeddah Mr. J. W. Larnach O. Madden
1899 Flying Fox Duke of Westminster M. Cannon
1900 Diamond Jubilee H.R.H. Prince of Wales H. Jones
1901 Volodyovski Mr. W. C. Whitney L. Reiff
1902 Ard Patrick Mr. J. Gubbin J. H. Martin
Information courtesy of the Vodafone Derby website.
Francine and Wayne Swift conclusively identify the horse Shoscombe Prince as “Merry Hampton”; the owner as Charles Baird; and the year as 1887.
17 That is, odds of forty to one.
18 Agents seeking inside information on horses, for the purposes of advantageous betting. Fitzroy Simpson of “Silver Blaze,” it may be recalled, was decried by a stable boy as “one of those damned touts” (see “Silver Blaze,” note 9).
19 The phrase “fifty yards in the mile,” which would never be used in racing parlance, has been deleted in the manuscript, and the more likely reference to furlongs inserted. A furlong is an eighth of a mile. “Two lengths in a furlong” means two lengths of a horse for every furlong run. Therefore, the Derby being one and a half miles (twelve furlongs) in length, the Prince would be expected to outrun its half-brother by twenty-four lengths. A “length” is a very imprecise distance, as the size of horses vary considerably (War Admiral, for example, was a legendarily large race horse, while Seabiscuit was very small).
20 Deleted in the manuscript is the sentence “When we have the Prince out it’s where no one can ever see him. Sir Robert nearly killed one tout and was had in the police court for it.”
21 That is, fighting off his creditors. While Jews no longer dominated the money-lending profession as they had during the Middle Ages before their expulsion (see “The Sussex Vampire,” note 3), the image of the Jew as usurer persisted, and some did still engage in the trade. London’s Jewish population had recently gotten larger, with thousands of immigrants streaming in from Russia and Poland in the 1880s. Crowded into the East End, these new arrivals worked primarily as tailors in sweatshops, although many took other factory work or peddled goods such as old clothes, fruit, jewellery, and knives out of street carts.
Anti-Semitism was a fact of life, and—despite the premiership of Benjamin Disraeli and the rise of the Rothschilds (see “Charles Augustus Milverton,” note 26)—Jews tended to be viewed as either squalid or stingy (or both) and, even more perilous, likely to rise out of the ghetto and take work away from Christians. Beatrice Potter, wondering at the success of Polish and Russian Jews who immigrated “with no ready-made skill of a marketable character,” wrote, in Charles Booth’s survey Life and Labour of the People in London (1889–1903), “They are set down in an already over-stocked and demoralized labour market; they are surrounded by the drunkenness, immorality, and gambling of the East End streets; they are, in fact, placed in the midst of the very refuse of our civilization, and yet . . . whether they become bootmakers, tailors, cabinet-makers, glaziers, or dealers, the Jewish inhabitants of East London rise in the social scale. . . . [They] slowly but surely invade the higher provinces of production, bringing in their train a system of employment and a method of dealing with masters, men, and fellow-workers which arouses the antagonism of English workmen. . . . The Polish Jew regards manual work as the first rung of the social ladder, to be superseded or supplanted on the first opportunity by the estimates of the profit-maker, the transactions of the dealer, or the calculations of the money-lender; and he is only tempted from a life of continual acquisition by that vice of the intellect, gambling.”
22 The phrase “in her brother” has been deleted from the manuscript.
23 A “week” in the original manuscript.
24 The Green Dragon is “seven” miles off in the original manuscript.
25 A build-up of fluids in body tissue, creating swelling, often in the ankles and lower legs. Now referred to as edema, the condition may be indicative of heart failure, severe malnutrition, obesity, or kidney disease, among other concerns. In Lady Beatrice’s case, no doubt her weak heart, causing blood to accumulate in her veins and capillaries, was a major factor in inducing the dropsy.
26 The manuscript deletes the phrase “folk come all the way from France to see. He’s got the oldest coffin in England in it.”
27 The manuscript reads “spoken with.”
28 The manuscript deletes the phrase “dropped a sort of iron stick which was in his hand.”
29 The manuscript deletes the sentence “I said no one would go near the crypt at night but there are some of us afraid of it by day too, and I told you we have to show some of them [illegible] over it.”
30 The manuscript deletes “he’s holding the Jews off, I expect, till after the Derby.”
31 Deleted from the manuscript is the following exchange:
“How long is it since you observed the change between Sir Robert and his sister.”
“About a week.”
32 An entire paragraph is deleted here in the manuscript:
“I want you to keep me from becoming as mad as my employer, Mr. Holmes. Look at my position. I have a De
rby winner to attend to. Any moment it might be seized for Sir Robert’s debts. There is Sir Robert himself, quarreling with the one person that could save him and has saved him in the past. There is all this coming and going at night, with Sir Robert meeting a stranger and digging up a dead body. It’s more than a man’s nerves can stand. And on top of it all, Mr. Holmes, what do you make of this.”
33 In anatomy, the condyle is a protuberance on the end of a bone, usually meant to align with another bone. Jack Tracy comments that the condyle for the femur (or thighbone) is located on the lower end of the bone, at the knee joint; there is no upper condyle. Therefore, he concludes, Watson must have been using the word “condyle” in a very loose sense, referring simply to the end of a bone.
34 The manuscript deletes the sentence “I think we must get the police on this advice, Mr. Mason. You say it was only this morning so no time has been lost.”
35 D. Martin Dakin remarks on the extraordinary social snobbery displayed here by Watson, who should have remembered that upper-class gentlemen such as Sir George Burnwell (“The Beryl Coronet”), old Baron Dowson (“The Mazarin Stone”), and John Clay (“The Red-Headed League”) were, despite their appearances, capable of immoral deeds. “Moreover,” Dakin adds, “since Watson himself told Holmes that Sir Robert had been nearly guilty of murder already . . . , why should he think it incredible that a man capable of such primitive savagery towards one who had offended him should commit an even more serious crime?”
36 A dace is a small freshwater fish, a member of the minnow family. One wonders whether Holmes’s comment here is meant as a subtle slight of the innkeeper; as Donald Girard Jewell writes, “While the trout and the pike were viewed worthy of the gentleman angler’s attention, the dace and the eel were left to the lower strata of society. The two are lumped into a category of fish referred to by the British as ‘coarse.’ ”
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) Page 112