Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (16 page)

III
The Truth

IT IS NOT at all surprising that Stapleton’s death goes unnoticed, since the murderer has been working toward that aim since
the beginning of the story. As obsessed as the investigators with the so-called crimes of the mysterious killer-with-a-dog,
the reader—like the writer—pays no attention to the only murder that matters to the murderer. And lacking a murder to investigate,
he cannot undertake a search for the truth.

The few allusions to the death of Stapleton, scattered throughout the book, portray it as a nonevent—more a disappearance
than a death—and therefore unworthy of special commentary.

The first allusion to this death comes in the passage where Holmes and Watson free Beryl. When the two men ask what has become
of her husband, the young woman replies that he could only have fled to one place, the island in the heart of the great mire
where he hid his dog. Seeing the density of the fog, Holmes notes that no one could find his way in it, and the young woman
confirms that Stapleton would have had no chance of finding his path.
¹⁰⁰
In this exchange death isn’t even mentioned directly, but simply suggested by Beryl, without arousing any suspicion about
the cause of Stapleton’s demise.

The same is true for the passage, set on the next day, in which this death is announced. The fog having lifted, Holmes and
Watson let themselves be guided by Beryl through the mire. Thanks to her, they discover the shoe theoretically abandoned by
Stapleton, a find that proves, Holmes says, that the naturalist reached this spot alive.
¹⁰¹
But the actual conditions of death remain vague:

But more than that we were never destined to know, though there was much which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding
footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the morass
we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton
never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the heart
of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted
man is forever buried.
¹⁰²

There could be no better way to nullify a man’s death than by claiming that it lacks a location and that it is not even possible
to be sure that it actually has occurred.

Stapleton’s death is a nonevent, given no place or date; it is totally erased from the story and thus unable to stir even
a cursory investigation. His murderer has managed to make his crime disappear, and, by the same gesture, to vanish himself.

If we accept the premise that
The Hound of the Baskervilles
actually narrates the slow execution of Stapleton, we must deduce from this that the mistake of the investigators lay in
their inability to grasp the murderer’s motive, which is not money, but hatred. Conan Doyle’s novel doesn’t just disclose
the hatred of the writer for his detective; it also recounts another story of hatred, and everything about Stapleton’s death,
shown clearly to the reader’s eyes through the whole book, expresses this feeling in the murderer.

We can suppose that the humdrum existence Stapleton offered Beryl, this Costa Rican beauty, counted for something in her original
desire to get rid of her husband. But it was the discovery of Stapleton’s affair with Laura Lyons that was probably the decisive
element. Sherlock Holmes comes very close to the truth several times, as if he had unconsciously perceived it.

The instant he “frees” the young woman, she heaps insults on her husband, whom she calls “this villain,”
¹⁰³
producing a remark from Holmes of a profundity that no doubt escapes him: “You bear him no good will, madam.”
¹⁰⁴

A little later, the detective comes even closer to the truth. Summarizing the affair for Watson’s benefit, with the aid of
Beryl’s testimony, Holmes tells how the couple’s relations had degenerated after Sir Charles’s death (of which Beryl accused
her husband), and how a furious scene set them against each other, until Stapleton was forced to tie her up:

“Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up, therefore, that
she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put down the baronet’s
death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and
to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been
there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly.”
¹⁰⁵

An excellent analysis—except that it doesn’t apply to what Holmes thinks might have occurred, but to what actually took place:
Beryl Stapleton—to say the least—had not forgiven the offense to which she had been subjected.

To suggest that Stapleton was not a murderer, but himself the victim of a carefully plotted crime, by no means implies that
he was a model of virtue. It is altogether possible that he was guilty of embezzlement when he was headmaster of the school
from which he had to flee, even if it is more likely, given what we know about his character, that the problems had more to
do with his absent-mindedness and inability to manage business affairs.

What’s more, Stapleton did secretly buy an enormous dog, with which, we can suppose, he took a certain pleasure in terrorizing
the credulous country-folk of the region.

But demonstrating carelessness in the management of business matters and taking pleasure in dubious hobbies does not make
one a murderer. Stapleton’s guilt seems impossible to believe, unless we suppose that he would choose to commit a murder by
ridiculous means and for no apparent benefit, and then do everything he could to get himself noticed, even after the police
decided it was an accident.

When Holmes mentions Beryl’s criminal potential, it is because he senses that the strong one in this couple is the woman,
not her vapid husband, terrified of his wife, taking refuge in the world of his research. It is she, and not her weak companion,
who is the source of that threat we feel in the background of the entire book.
^*

Though Beryl had contemplated ridding herself of her husband for a long time, two events solidify her wish for murder and
hasten the attempt. The first is Sir Charles Baskerville’s accident.

Did she learn of it from her husband, or did she guess what happened? Whatever the case, Beryl immediately begins to devote
all her energy to transforming the accident into a murder by creating around it an atmosphere of evil—and by effectively creating
the character of the murderer with the dog. The entire London sojourn bears the mark of this literary production of a legend,
where a pernicious hand rewrites the most ordinary events in the language of mystery.

We have only Beryl’s word for it that she was locked up by her husband in their hotel room in London. It must be a rather
unusual hotel where the rooms are never cleaned by the staff, since the first visit from a cleaning lady would give the captive
the means to escape. It is more likely to suppose that rather than being kept a prisoner—a fantasy we will return to later
on—the young woman prudently advised her husband not to let her be seen and took things in hand herself.

We know that it is she who writes the threatening letter to Henry (how could she send it if she were locked up?) as a way
of adding mystery to the atmosphere and whetting the detective’s appetite. But it is also she who follows Henry and Dr. Mortimer
around in London. Two points in the description of the mysterious occupant of the hansom cab support the theory that the passenger
is none other than Beryl disguised.

The first has to do with the size of the passenger, described thus by the driver:

I’d put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir.
¹⁰⁶

The person is described as average in relation to Sherlock Holmes. Since the detective is traditionally described as a tall
man, we can think that the unknown person is at least average height, probably somewhat tall. But this characteristic does
not correspond at all to Stapleton, who is presented as a short man:

He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age.
¹⁰⁷

On the other hand, the driver’s description could match Beryl’s height:

There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister, for Stapleton was neutral-tinted, with light hair
and grey eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England—slim, elegant, and tall. She had a proud,
finely cut face, so regular that it might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the beautiful dark,
eager eyes.
¹⁰⁸

Especially if one takes into account the fact that a woman considered tall is generally less tall than a man, Beryl seems
to fit perfectly the height of the figure glimpsed in the hansom cab.

But another point of description attracts our attention, this time having to do with the mysterious person’s eyes. Whereas
there is nothing unique about Stapleton’s eyes, Beryl’s are called “beautiful dark, eager eyes,” which again corresponds to
Watson’s image of the unknown person in the cab:

I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes turned upon us through the side window of the cab.
¹⁰⁹

Though the two expressions (“dark, eager eyes” and “piercing eyes”) are not identical, they emphasize the same quality of
this gaze, its intensity, a quality that Stapleton’s gaze singularly lacks.

It is regrettable that Holmes, who devoted a lot of time at the beginning of his investigation to trying to identify the occupant
of the hansom cab, then completely loses interest in that problem. Although it is not absolutely decisive (if anything is
more subjective than a judgment about someone’s height, it is a judgment of the intensity of someone’s gaze), the obvious
fact that Stapleton seems not to resemble the passenger and Beryl does cannot be ignored—especially because the passenger
takes care to say very little, as if afraid the voice would betray the gender.