Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (9 page)

The pressure of their terror is so great that the animal is transformed by Watson’s gaze into a kind of mythological creature
risen from hell:

A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open
mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never
in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish, be conceived than that
dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.
⁴⁰

If we make the effort (unlike Watson) to avoid perceiving the animal through the prism of fantastical literature and mythological
references, we have no choice but to note that what Holmes and Watson see is just a large black dog covered with phosphorus,
running on the moor; this indeed merits some explanation, but it should not lead us to imagine ourselves at the very gates
of hell.

This fantastic transformation of the world, carried to its greatest height in the final scene, is already at work in the narrative
of the dog’s other two “attacks.” It appears even in the descriptions Dr. Mortimer gives during his first meeting in London
with Holmes and Watson; he tells them not of a large, scary dog, but of “a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this
Baskerville demon, and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. [Several people] all agreed that it was a
huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral.”
⁴¹

And although the dog, with good reason, does not appear directly during Selden’s death, Holmes and Watson manage to imagine
its presence from a noise heard on the moor—though there is no sign that the dog is its source. From this mysterious noise
they extrapolate a terrifying representation of the animal:

Again the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it,
a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea.

  “The hound!” cried Holmes. “Come,Watson, come! Great heavens, if we are too late!”
⁴²

Watson’s great narrative weakness—the habit of borrowing clichés from fantastic literature and applying them to reality—whenever
the dog is involved descends nearly to the level of caricature, but is present throughout his whole narrative.

He is even more apt to give way to the temptation of the frankly supernatural; and though Holmes officially refuses to let
himself be caught up by the legend of the Hound, he soon shows he is just as taken in by it. Of course he gives no credence
to the theory that the dog is a spectral creature that has wandered through the centuries, but he does accept a more modern
version of the legend, in which the dog is serving a criminal’s interests.

It is striking to see the way that Holmes, at the very beginning of the investigation, summarizes the affair for Watson. Having
procured a large-scale map of Devonshire, he describes the place this way to his friend:

“This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Mortimer has his headquarters. Within a
radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned
in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist—Stapleton, if I remember right,
was his name. Here are two moorland farmhouses, High Tor and Foul-mire. Then fourteen miles away the great convict prison
of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon
which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again.”
⁴³

The description is factually objective, since it is based on a map, but we can see that several terms (“the desolate, lifeless
moor”) already evince belief in a supernatural atmosphere conducive to somber tragedies and mysterious crimes.

The same subtle transformation of reality by writing is at work in the first reconstruction that Holmes offers of the death
of Sir Charles Baskerville:

“Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?”

  “What then?”

  “He was running, Watson—running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart and fell dead upon his
face.”

  “Running from what?”

  “There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run.”
⁴⁴

Here again, it is the choice of each word (he was “running desperately,” “crazed with fear”), and even the construction of
the sentences (with the panting repetition of “running”)—or, if you like, the writing of the scene—that transposes the tale
of Baskerville’s death into the domain of fantastic literature.

What is set in place at the beginning of the investigation continues throughout the novel. Watson, making himself the deputy
for Holmes’s vision, keeps perceiving the “facts” through the prism of their shared interpretation and transmitting his anxiety
to the principal witness, Dr. Mortimer. The tone is struck in the first report to Holmes:

My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken
corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one’s soul, its vastness, and
also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the
other hand you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk
are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples.
As you look at their grey stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see
a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel
that his presence there was more natural than your own.
⁴⁵

Not only in his reports to Holmes but in the notes he keeps for himself, Watson lets himself be mastered by Holmes’s anxiety,
as this extract from his diary reveals:

October 16th. A dull and foggy day, with a drizzle of rain. The house is banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and
then to show the dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the hills, and the distant boulders
gleaming where the light strikes upon their wet faces. It is melancholy outside and in. The baronet is in a black reaction
after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger—ever-present
danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it.
⁴⁶

When our heroic investigators have allowed themselves to be so caught up in this supernatural atmosphere that they are terrified
themselves, it is not that the truth is difficult to grasp. To find the truth would involve liberating words themselves from
the burden of the conventional ideas that keep them from coming close to recreating what’s real.

Thus the representations of the evil hound and the fantasies it gives birth to in this book are only the first sign of a more
general distortion in the narrative. Even as they try to defend themselves against it, our investigators are caught in the
teeth of the genre of fantasy, forced to abandon common sense—even though it is their business to unravel lies and illusions.

It is in fact impossible to disprove Holmes’s theory of a triple attack by the hound. We have no choice, however, but to think
that the three scenes in which the dog appears—whether they have no surviving witness, as in the first two, or are observed
by several people, as in the third—are so infiltrated by a stereotyped imagination that it becomes extremely difficult for
the rational investigator to know what actually occurred out on the Devonshire moor.

* At the end of the famous dream, Athalie sees her mother’s corpse torn apart by dogs: “But I could find nothing but a horrible
mixture/ Of bones and bruised flesh dragged in the mud,/ Bloody strips of flesh and frightful limbs/ That starving dogs squabbled
over” (Racine,
Athalie
, v. 503–506).

* In the story by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, the cuckolded duke gives his wife’s lover’s heart to the dogs to eat, in front
of his adulterous wife: “But the sight of such a love made the duke fiercely implacable. His dogs devoured Esteban’s heart
in front of me. I fought over it with them; I struggled with those dogs. I could not tear it from them. They covered me with
terrible bites, and dragged and wiped their bloody muzzles on my clothes” (Barbey d’Aurevilly,
Les Diaboliques
, Paris: Robert Laffont, coll. “Bouquins,” 1981, p. 1037).

IV
Stapleton’s Defense

ONCE THE GUILT of the hound of the Baskervilles has been called into question, we are free to ask ourselves what remains of
the accusations made by Holmes against the prime suspect, Stapleton. Apart from all the improbabilities that make the animal’s
participation in the murders scarcely credible, the culpability of the naturalist seems obvious at first—especially when he
is regarded from Holmes’s point of view. But it grows drastically less so when we rigorously examine all the evidence in the
case, when we try at all costs not to bend reality to fit the fixed idea that Stapleton is a murderer.

Even if psychoanalysis allows us to justify the strangest behavior by finding its hidden motives, it is rather difficult for
the reader to make what he knows of Stapleton’s personality coincide with that of a serial killer whose entire life is determined
by the lust for money.

The only real passion of this bland character, attested by everyone who knows him, is his passion for scientific research,
especially entomology. At the end of the book we learn that he is a well-known authority on the subject, and that he has even
given his name to “certain moth which he had, in his Yorkshire days, been the first to describe.”
⁴⁷

Of course, the passion for entomology does not necessarily preclude a love of money. But it does seem that up to now Stapleton
has not organized his existence according to financial interests. (He was, after all, the headmaster of a school.) It is strange
that Holmes never wonders about the duality of a character whose motivation in life is supposedly split between scientific
research and the yearning for affluence.

Although it is true that one can be simultaneously a scholar passionate about one’s field and an unscrupulous criminal, Stapleton
seems to show a certain absentmindedness in the performance of his crimes. Thus Holmes is the first to acknowledge that the
scholar might not have known about the existence of an heir in Canada,
^*
which is clearly the sign of a singular lack of curiosity; it seems safe to say that most motivated criminals, in similar
circumstances, would have taken the trouble to make inquiries.

Even if we leave aside the suspect’s personality, even if we suppose that Stapleton is guilty, the unfolding of the action
itself allows quite a number of improbabilities to appear.

The first scene with the dog again poses problems. Without reprising Holmes’s unlikely explanation for the animal’s abrupt
halt, the very choice of this method of doing away with Sir Charles Baskerville is hard to understand.

In Holmes’s vision, Stapleton, wanting to inherit from Sir Charles and knowing about his weak heart, has quietly provided
himself with an enormous hound, with the intention of provoking a heart attack in the owner of the Hall.

It can’t be said that this would be an easy method for Stapleton to reach his ends. Even on a moor as deserted as the one
in Devon, there is a strong risk that the dog will be spotted—as it is—or that Stapleton, at some point or other, will be
seen with it. For someone who intends to promptly apply for the inheritance of a man he intends to murder, a minimum of discretion
seems in order.

But above all, the choice of a dog as the murder weapon is absurd. Whatever Baskerville’s physical state, whatever the shock
of his encounter with a giant hound might be, the result of such an encounter is by no means certain. Baskerville might not
have a heart attack. Or he might have one that isn’t fatal. He would then be called to testify. How would Stapleton, if he
had been seen, justify his presence on the moor in the company of a giant dog coated with phosphorus?

What’s more, if Baskerville is actually bitten by the dog, whether or not he dies, an investigation will be opened and the
police will inevitably discover the animal’s trail, by questioning either the inhabitants of the moor or the keepers of the
specialty shops in London, as Holmes does with some ease when he sets out to prove that Stapleton had bought a dog. In short,
Stapleton has chosen an extremely complicated—not to mention risky—path to the intended result of getting rid of Sir Charles
Baskerville.

Stapleton’s attitude after the supposed murder is just as incomprehensible. He acts as if he were motivated by an obsession
to make himself noticed by Sherlock Holmes. Not only does he go to London—a journey that does not seem necessary if he is
the murderer, since he just has to wait for his future victim to come to Baskerville Hall—but he does everything possible
while there to attract the detective’s attention.

He begins by shadowing the heir so clumsily that Holmes is able to see him. But he doesn’t stop there. Convinced that Holmes
will end up identifying the hansom-cab driver, he asks the driver to convey his greetings to the detective. Surprising behavior,
which Holmes tidily avoids explaining in his final account. Not of course that some criminals don’t take pleasure in boasting
about their crimes, but Stapleton’s best interest obviously lies in not making himself noticed, since Sir Charles Baskerville
is supposed to have died accidentally.

Stapleton is scarcely more discreet when it comes to procuring a piece of Henry Baskerville’s clothing. While it would scarcely
be difficult for someone familiar with the Hall to get hold of a piece of the new owner’s clothes once he’s settled into the
premises, and while there are surely items of clothing less conspicuous than a shoe, Stapleton goes about things in such a
way in London that he cannot fail to provoke the detective’s interest.

The second murder attempt attributed to Stapleton also poses a problem. In Holmes’s reasoning, the first attack (by means
of the dog) was aimed at provoking a heart attack. The same cannot be true for the second, which was directed at a healthy
young man.

It is Watson himself who points this out to Holmes at the end of the book, when Holmes has boasted of not leaving any essential
point overlooked:

“He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done the old uncle with his bogie hound.”
⁴⁸

A sensible argument, which Holmes rebuts with these words:

“The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze
the resistance which might be offered.”
⁴⁹

If we grant (even in the absence of conclusive evidence) that the dog is aggressive, it makes attack-by-hound possibly acceptable
as a technique for murder. But Holmes’s reply does not solve the problem of Stapleton’s choice of this technique. If a heart
attack is unlikely in this case, a throat-rending is what he’s hoping for. Though this is certainly an effective way to get
rid of the second Baskerville, it would also most likely prompt an investigation, and thus make it impossible to claim the
inheritance.

As we can see, the use of the same weapon—a menacing dog—to kill both Baskervilles poses a formidable problem of logic. The
first murder would succeed only if the death appeared to be of an accidental heart attack. And if the second victim dies by
having his throat bitten, there is every chance that the investigation of the first death would be reopened, nullifying the
attempt to make it pass for an accident.

Stapleton’s attitude when he is threatened with arrest is no clearer, and one element casts strong doubt on his guilt.

Understanding that his murder attempt has failed, Staple-ton supposedly flees into the bogs, clutching the famous shoe that
had let him lure the dog to the Baskervilles; sensibly, he has decided to get rid of this clue that has every chance of sending
him to the gallows. Here comes what might be the most glaring improbability in Holmes’s “solution” in the entire novel.

Let us put ourselves for a moment in Stapleton’s place and relive in our minds the situation in which he finds himself. He
is running through the marshes, which stretch out as far as the eye can see. The reaction of any normal person, even in the
full blush of panic, would be to get rid of the incriminating shoe by throwing it into the mire farthest from the path, where
no one could recover it, or even see it.

That is not at all Stapleton’s attitude; here again, his principal desire seems to be to help the police force. The shoe is
found in a grassy spot by the side of the path, a place where it is visible to passersby—including Holmes, who does not fail
to see it. The detective is jubilant at this new clue that points to Stapleton but is not surprised by the suspect’s obligingness.