Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (3 page)

As for the strange bearded man, Holmes thinks for a while that it might be Barrymore, Sir Charles Baskerville’s servant. So
he sends him an innocuous telegram—asking if everything is ready at Baskerville Hall for Henry’s arrival—and then sends a
second telegram to the postmaster nearest to the Hall, requesting that the first message be hand-delivered to its recipient.
Unfortunately, the telegram is delivered to Barry-more’s wife, foiling the detective’s stratagem.

Research into the inheritance is no more fruitful. The fortune and the Hall are left to Henry, aside from a few sums bequeathed
to people like the Barrymore couple and Dr. Mortimer, or to various individuals and public charities. The total value of the
property Henry inherits is close to a million pounds. If he were to die, the legacy would revert to a distant cousin, an elderly
clergyman. Dr. Mortimer had met the clergyman once at Sir Charles’s house. He got the impression of “a man of venerable appearance
and of saintly life”
^1
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who declined to accept any settlement when Sir Charles offered it to him: in short, a man who could scarcely be suspected
of murdering for money. Henry, for his part, has not yet had the time to make a will.

Undeterred by the threats hanging over him, Henry—now Sir Henry—Baskerville decides to go to the family manor. Holmes approves
of his plan, but advises him against going there alone; further, he says, Dr. Mortimer will be too busy with his patients
to provide sufficient company.

Kept in London by his own clients and by a blackmail case, Holmes cannot accompany the new occupant of the Hall, but he suggests
the services of Dr. Watson, who is instructed to keep the detective scrupulously abreast of all the developments in the investigation.

II
On the Moor

SO DR. WATSON is charged with accompanying Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer to Devonshire; it is up to him to conduct
the investigation, and to keep Holmes informed. He settles into the manor house of Sir Henry Baskerville, the man he is expected
to protect.

The region the three men enter is harrowing, with its bleak landscape, all peat and quagmire, the frequent fog, and the array
of creatures—human and animal—that have chosen to live there. We learn that a particularly dangerous escaped convict lurks
in the vicinity. What’s more, mysterious cries can at times be heard at night.

During the period he is away from Holmes, Watson keeps him up to date about his discoveries by sending him regular letters,
which go unanswered; the detective sends no news of his own in reply. Watson’s letters, which are shared with the reader and
so become an integral part of the novel, allow the doctor to keep a link with his friend, who for a long time seems to be
keeping his distance from the investigation.

One of the first leads Watson follows is the servants at the Hall, the Barrymores, who make no secret of their intention to
leave the district soon; they had been attached to their master, and now that he is dead, they have decided to go.

Suspicion rests first of all on the husband. He is bearded, like the mysterious occupant of the hansom cab that followed Sir
Henry Baskerville in London. The investigators, as we’ve seen, had tried to ascertain Barrymore’s presence at the Hall on
the day Holmes learned about the shadowing, but were unable to find proof.
^*

Watson has noticed that Barrymore and his wife are behaving oddly at night: one of them comes holding a lamp up to a window
that looks out onto the moor. One night Watson and Henry keep watch on the window and see the servant making signals with
the light, signals that are answered from the moor.

Although Barrymore refuses to talk under the pretext that the secret is not his to divulge, Mrs. Barrymore finally explains
that she is the sister of the convict Selden, who has escaped from prison and is living on the moor. The signals serve to
arrange the meetings so they can take food to the escaped prisoner.

Having wrested the Barrymores’ secret from them, Watson and Henry decide that very night to pursue the convict, and start
out toward the place from which the signals had come. They find a lighted candle there and glimpse a silhouette running away,
but don’t manage to catch him.

Also of interest to Watson is a couple who live out on the moor, the Stapletons. Jack Stapleton is a naturalist who has settled
in the region along with his sister, Beryl.

During her first encounter with Watson, Beryl takes advantage of a moment when her brother is out of the room to rush over
to Watson, whom she mistakes for Sir Henry, and beg him, for his own safety, to leave the moor and return to London. As soon
as her brother returns, her attitude changes. A little later, alone once again with Watson, she apologizes for having confused
him with Sir Henry and asks him to forget her words. Watson goes away with the impression that the young woman is living in
terror.

As the book progresses, an attachment forms between Sir Henry Baskerville and Beryl Stapleton. Henry confides to Watson that
he has fallen in love with the young woman; he thinks this love is shared, and he plans to marry her.

But Stapleton obviously disapproves of the relationship. Watson, who has discreetly followed Henry to protect him, sees the
naturalist confront him violently one day as Henry is courting Stapleton’s sister. Baskerville later tells Watson that in
the course of their brief conversation, Beryl seized the chance to put him on guard against the dangers of the moor and to
beg him to go back to London.

Two other people live on the moor, far apart from one another yet connected by family ties: a man named Frankland and his
daughter, Laura Lyons. Frankland is a cantankerous old man who is given to suing his neighbors for the most trivial reasons.
He is estranged from his daughter, who married an artist without his consent; the daughter and her husband are now separated,
but Frankland still refuses to see her.

Watson is struck by the girl’s name; he has learned from Barrymore that Sir Charles went to the yew alley on the night of
his death after receiving a mysterious letter signed “L. L.,” burnt fragments of which Mrs. Barrymore found in the fireplace.
The letter ended with these words: “Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o’clock.”
¹¹

When he contrives to meet Laura Lyons, Watson asks her if she is indeed the author of the letter to Sir Charles; she denies
this, but then admits that it’s true. She had needed his financial aid, she says, and made such a late appointment with him
because she had learned that he was leaving the next day for London for several months. The choice of the place was explained
by her fear of being seen alone in a house with an unmarried man.

But in the end, the help Laura sought turned out to be unnecessary, so she did not keep the appointment, and is thus unable
to explain Sir Charles’s death. During their visit, the young woman refuses to give Watson any more details about why the
meeting became unnecessary.

There is another riddle Watson must solve: the presence in the neighborhood of a mysterious individual. Watson glimpses him
for the first time as he and Sir Henry are pursuing Selden over the moor. They catch a glimpse of a tall, lean silhouette
on top of a rock, someone standing “with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding
over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him.”
¹²
It can’t be the convict; he has fled in another direction.

The presence of this man is confirmed by Barrymore, who hasn’t seen him directly but has heard talk of him from Selden. According
to Selden, the mysterious individual is hiding but is not himself a convict. He gives the impression of belonging to the middle
class, and lives in one of the old stone huts dotting the moor; a boy brings him provisions.

Watson pays a visit to Frankland, who has the habit of observing the terrain around his hut with a telescope. Through him,
Watson gets on the track of the boy, and even manages to catch a glimpse of him. He sets out after the boy and discovers the
hut where the unknown man is living, although the man is not there. He has just settled down to wait for him when Holmes announces
himself from outside: “ ‘It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson,’ said a well-known voice. ‘I really think that you will be
more comfortable outside than in.’ ”
¹³

Holmes, who turns out to have been the mysterious unknown man, explains that he stayed in London not to investigate a matter
of blackmail, as he had claimed, but to avoid the risk of alerting his adversaries that he was on their trail; that way he
would be able to carry out his investigation undisturbed. He has read Watson’s reports with the greatest attention, but chose
not to tell him of his presence for fear his friend would unwittingly reveal it.

Holmes then details the first results of his investigation. He tells Watson that Stapleton has a mistress, Laura Lyons, and
that Stapleton is the husband, not the brother, of Beryl. Investigating the naturalist’s past, Holmes has discovered that
he had once run a school in the north of England, which he had driven to ruin and then had to flee.

In Holmes’s eyes, then, it is Stapleton who is their enemy, the one responsible both for the murder of Sir Charles Baskerville
and for following Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer to London:

“It is murder,Watson—refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him,
even as his are upon Sir Henry, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy. There is but one danger which can threaten
us. It is that he should strike before we are ready to do so.”
¹⁴

The detective doesn’t realize how truly he has spoken. No sooner are Holmes and Watson reunited than another tragedy occurs.
As they are talking over the affair, the two men hear cries and barking in the distance. They rush to the place and discover
the corpse of a man whom they identify from his clothes as Sir Henry Baskerville.

Holmes is appalled by his own negligence and reproaches himself bitterly, before turning the body over and recognizing that
it is actually the convict Selden. He is wearing clothes given him by his sister,Mrs. Barrymore, who had been given them by
Sir Henry; hence the detective’s confusion.

But according to Holmes this confusion might also have brought about Selden’s death. The detective explains: in his view,
Selden died as he was being pursued by a dog belonging to Stapleton. Already the cause of Sir Charles Baskerville’s death,
the animal was sent after Sir Henry but was deceived by the scent of his castoff clothes. Although Holmes is convinced of
Stapleton’s guilt, he realizes that the evidence is weak and that it will be difficult to charge him. When the naturalist
is drawn by the commotion and joins them on the moor, Holmes is careful not to accuse him.