Sherlock Holmes FAQ by Dave Thompson

Author:Dave Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: television, film
Publisher: Applause
Published: 2014-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

The Curse of the Hell Hound!

Watson goes to meet Ms. Lyons and hears what appears to be a reasonable explanation; in an age when divorce was almost impossible for a woman to attain, and cripplingly expensive if she was even willing to try, Lyons had intended to ask Sir Charles, a family friend, if he could possibly help her finance the attempt. But he never turned up.

Holmes, however, has turned up; he had, in fact, been there for a while, hiding out in a prehistoric hut and simply observing all that went on. He is just telling Watson his own thoughts on the variety of subplots taking place around Baskerville Hall when he is interrupted by a livid scream. Selden, dressed for his escape in some clothes that belonged to Sir Henry, is dead. Murdered.

Holmes’s suspicions appear to be confirmed, but he keeps them to himself. Instead he announces that the whole case has left him baffled and he is returning to London. In fact, he has called for reinforcements in the form of Inspector Lestrade. Then all they need to do is lie in wait on a damp and foggy night, outside a neighboring house where Sir Henry has been invited to dine.

There the killer shows his hand. A gunshot rings out, the hound falls dead, and Holmes and Watson set off in pursuit of its handler. Jack Stapleton, a local naturalist, is in fact a minor heir to the Baskerville fortune, the nephew of Sir Henry’s younger brother Rodger and, by all accounts, a thief, a swindler, and now a murderer.

Taking hold of the old legend about the dog, he had painted a hound with phosphorous to ensure a ghostly glow, then set it loose upon the moors. The missing boots, as Holmes had deduced back in London, were intended to provide the hound with Sir Henry’s scent.

Stapleton does not escape. Pursued toward his hideout in the nearby Great Grimpen Mire, he loses his footing and is swallowed up in the swamp. Sir Henry can claim his inheritance with no fear of the old legend ever coming back to haunt him.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the best-known, best-loved, and most successful of all the Sherlock Holmes stories. In the past century, since the first movie version in Germany in 1914, close to two dozen adaptations of the story have been made for radio, TV, and movie, and included among them are some of the greatest visualizations of Holmes ever made.

Neither was Conan Doyle immune to the celebrations that tore through his readership once Holmes was returned to his rightful place on the bookshelves. Nor to the extravagant offers that the world of publishing was prepared to make for more of the same.

The Strand immediately offered to keep Conan Doyle on at a rate of £100 per thousand words if he would contract to six further stories; the American Collier’s Weekly went even further: $25,000 for six stories, $30,000 for eight, or $45,000 for thirteen. Figures that even Conan Doyle could not believe.

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