The Confabulannotated Sherlock Holmes, Chapter 2.14

Featuring pop-up restaurants, dinner party tardiness and St Bernard puppies

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Previously on my confabulannotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles: Mortimer revealed Sir Charles’s mental anguish

And now, the story continues…

BAD AI IMAGE OF: Holmes on the case

“On the night of Sir Charles’s death Barrymore the butler, who made the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback¹ to me, and as I was sitting up late I was able to reach Baskerville Hall within an hour² of the event. I checked and corroborated all the facts which were mentioned at the inquest. I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the spot at the moor-gate where he seemed to have waited³, I remarked the change in the shape of the prints after that point, I noted that there were no other footsteps save those of Barrymore on the soft gravel, and finally I carefully examined the body, which had not been touched until my arrival⁴. Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug⁵ into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion⁶ to such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity⁷. There was certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest⁸. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did⁠—some little distance off, but fresh and clear.”

“Footprints?”

“Footprints.”

“A man’s or a woman’s?”

Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper⁹ as he answered.

“Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic¹⁰ hound!”

END OF CHAPTER TWO

1. This is now widely acknowledged as one of the earliest examples of Uber Same-Day Package Delivery

2. It was understood that the ‘hour’ would have included at least 45 minutes of searching for the most appropriate cuff links.

3. We are to assume that this is ‘waiting’ in the sense of passing time idly, rather than ‘waiting’ in the sense of attending to customers at some kind of moor-gate pop-up restaurant. Although, if such a restaurant existed, one would like to think it would be called, ‘Please Sir, I Want Some Moor’.

4. “Leave the body for Ol’ Doc Touchy!” would have been the order.

5. This last observation was the most scandalous, with Sir Charles resorting to the menial labour of ‘digging’ in his final moments likely to be considered the equivalent of denouncing God or asserting that women should be permitted to vote/enjoy sexual intercourse.

6. What strong emotions cause one to convulse? This was an exercise left for the reader, although the most common guesses of the time narrowed in on ‘paralysing dread’, ‘overwhelming terror’ or ‘being late for a dinner party’.

7. Swearing to a person’s identity was a privilege afforded to all medical practitioners at the time. This is why, in many Holmes mysteries, our detective is introduced by Watson with a simple ‘oh, fuck me, here’s Sherlock fucken Holmes on the fucken case’.

8. As decreed by Queen Victoria, all witnesses at a murder inquest were permitted to utter one (1) false statement. This was a ploy to generate buzz among ‘inquesties’ (fans of murder investigations who would enthusiastically follow cases from courtroom to courtroom, because reality television had not yet been invented). In the early 1900s, numerous betting markets held thousands of pounds of bets on which witnesses’ statements were true, and which were false, a market that eventually collapsed in 1911 due to the infamous Liar’s Paradox Testimony Scandal.

9. We are also to assume that this is a sufficiently dramatic moment that Holmes would be underscoring it with some bone-chilling pizzicato plucking of the strings of his violin.

10. Sloppy reasoning from Mortimer, who apparently has not countenanced the possibility that they were the footprints of a normal-sized hound with gigantic paws, like an adorable St Bernard puppy.