A Brief History of Sherlock Holmes by Nigel Cawthorne

Author:Nigel Cawthorne [Cawthorne, Nigel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780331560
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

‘The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans’ was first published in Strand Magazine in December 1908 with six illustrations by Arthur Twidle, then in Collier’s Weekly in December 1908 with five illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele.

In the third week of November 1895 it is unusually foggy in London. Holmes receives a telegram from his brother Mycroft, telling him to come at once. A government employee named Cadogan West has been found dead on the Underground. A clerk at Woolwich Arsenal, he was last seen by his fiancée, Miss Violent Westbury, at 7.30 p.m. the previous evening, when he left abruptly. His body was found on the track just outside Aldgate Station and it appears that he had fallen from the train, but there is no ticket in his pocket. However, he had been carrying seven pages of the top-secret plans of the Bruce-Partington submarine. Three are still missing.

Holmes quickly deduces that West had been killed elsewhere and his body deposited on the roof of the train. At the bend at Aldgate, it had fallen off.

Holmes goes to see Sir James Walter, the expert in charge of the project and official guardian of the plans. But Sir James has just died. His brother Colonel Valentine Walter says that loss of the plans was responsible for his death.

West’s fiancée says he had something on his mind for the last week or so and feared foreign spies getting their hands on the plans. On the night in question, they had been walking past his office when he dashed off without a word.

At West’s office, the senior clerk Sidney Johnson says anyone trying to steal the plans would have needed three keys – for the building, the office and the safe. Only he and Sir James had the keys. No duplicates were found on Cadogan West’s body.

At Woolwich station, the ticket clerk remembers seeing West on Monday night. He looked nervous and shaky, and took a train to London Bridge.

Using his government connections, Mycroft supplies the name of a spy, Hugo Oberstein, who had left town that Monday. Holmes discovers that Oberstein’s house backs on to a place near Gloucester Road Station where the Underground line is above ground. A nearby junction means that trains often stop there. Holmes and Watson break in and find a bloodstain on a windowsill overlooking the track.

In a cash box, they find calculations concerning water pressure and enigmatic cuttings from the agony column of the Daily Telegraph, posted by ‘Pierrot’, which hint at some transaction. Holmes posts another message, under the name ‘Pierrot’, suggesting another meeting.

That night, Colonel Walter shows up at Oberstein’s house to find Holmes, Watson, Lestrade and Mycroft waiting. He confesses to the theft of the plans. His motive – money. He had taken impressions of his brother’s keys and with the duplicates had broken in to the office but West saw him and followed him to the rendezvous with Oberstein. When West intervened, Oberstein killed him and kept three originals that were too complicated to copy.

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