The Boscombe Valley Mystery

First published 1891

Although we think of Doctor John Watson as being Holmes’s constant companion, it was not always that way. In the Sign of Four he met his wife-to-be, Mary and between then and A Scandal in Bohemia they were married. Thus in the early stories there is a need to address the fact that, even in Victorian times where women were almost entirely decorative, a chap couldn’t just go gallivanting off without explanation. The Boscombe Valley Mystery opens with Watson and Mrs Watson around the breakfast table enjoying their Frosties and toast when a telegram is received from a certain gaunt deducer of trifles.

"Have you a couple of days to spare? Have just been wired for from the west of England in connection with Boscombe Valley tragedy. Shall be glad if you will come with me. Air and scenery perfect. Leave Paddington by the 11:15."

Mrs Watson, being a good sport, tells him he should go and that his colleague, Anstruther, would cope with his patient list. For Watson is, of course, not only a married man but a married doctor with ill people depending upon him. But, with those two impediments taken care of, Holmes and Watson are happily rattling off in a train to Herefordshire and a case of murder most foul.

"It seems, from what I gather, to be one of those simple cases which are so extremely difficult."

"That sounds a little paradoxical."

"But it is profoundly true. Singularity is almost invariably a clue. The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home."

The simplicity in the case is that a man has been murdered and his son is obviously guilty. He was observed running from the scene of the crime, with blood upon his sleeve, having been overheard quarrelling in most violent terms with the deceased. It is the standard murder mystery novel with one suspect (who is so obviously guilty that we know he is innocent) and the heroic ‘tec arrives at the request of a loved one and finds the real guilty party. All Holmes has to go on are some footprints, a curious cry of "Cooee" and the dying man’s apparently delirious mention of a rat.

"I see," said I as I glanced down the column, "that the coroner in his concluding remarks was rather severe upon young McCarthy. He calls attention, and with reason, to the discrepancy about his father having signalled to him before seeing him, also to his refusal to give details of his conversation with his father, and his singular account of his father’s dying words. They are all, as he remarks, very much against the son."

Holmes laughed softly to himself and stretched himself out upon the cushioned seat. "Both you and the coroner have been at some pains," said he, "to single out the very strongest points in the young man’s favour. Don’t you see that you alternately give him credit for having too much imagination and too little? Too little, if he could not invent a cause of quarrel which would give him the sympathy of the jury; too much, if he evolved from his own inner consciousness anything so outre as a dying reference to a rat, and the incident of the vanishing cloth.

One of the myths about Sherlock Holmes is that the stories centred around the foggy Victorian London of lore. Already, in only the sixth Holmes tale, we’ve visited India, America and now Australia, not to mention sorting out a singular problem which had its birth in Germany. For this messy problem has its roots in the colonies and yet another lengthy back story of crime and revenge. You almost expect by now that the mystery will be solved about two thirds of the way through and then the guilty man will begin his lengthy, mitigating narrative. On the one hand it adds to the tales because it gives a motive which is so much more satisfying than killing someone out of nothing more than a lust for cash.

Ultimately, Holmes gets a signed confession out of the murderer but promises not to use it unless there was a danger of the innocent party being convicted and hanged for a murder he didn’t commit. Holmes was a wise enough man to know the difference between legal retribution and true justice and wasn’t prepared to be a party to the former unless the latter was also the case. It was, perhaps, a cop out for yet another "justified" killer to be in ill health – a sign perhaps that churning out a new Holmes story every month for the Strand would bring diminishing returns. Thankfully that wasn’t to be the case.

"You are yourself aware that you will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes. I will keep your confession, and if McCarthy is condemned I shall be forced to use it. If not, it shall never be seen by mortal eye; and your secret, whether you be alive or dead, shall be safe with us."