sherlock holmes and the case of the sussex vampire

‘t is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple enough in itself. As he states himself in ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men’, describing the trick he uses to strike wonder into his audience: However, this is precisely what Holmes goes on to do – repeatedly – for the remainder of his time with Watson, solving seemingly impossible conundrums, but always taking time to explain his methods, insisting that anyone else could do the same, if they too simply bothered to look. ‘You know a conjurer gets no credit once he has explained his trick and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.’ In the very first case they work together ( A Study in Scarlet), Holmes at first refuses to describe his entire deductive process, momentarily withholding his suspicions about the murder in question and thereby propelling the plot. He will often make an impossible observation, state the seemingly unknowable – ‘You have just come back from France’ ‘I see you are thinking of investing in the stock market’ ‘Your fly is open’ (…maybe that one’s not so miraculous) – and the characters surrounding Holmes will gasp in astonishment. Of course, Holmes is not himself adverse to pulling such tricks upon his audience.

It’s ‘elementary’ because he was never taken in by the ruse.

In his final exegesis of each crime he metaphorically strides onto the magician’s stage, drags back the curtain and snaps on the house lights, revealing every trapdoor and wire to the stupefied crowd.

The great fun of the Holmes character, ultimately, is that he goes out of his way to spoil such illusions. Sure the clues are there, but the aperture through which the reader must view the story is so narrow that one can only ever glimpse a sliver of the overarching tale. It’s a trick, of course, a lie – as all detective fiction must be in order to function. I have taken quite a liking to the Sherlock Holmes stories lately.* There is something paternally soothing about them – an assurance that no matter how bewildering the circumstances of a mystery may be, at the end of ten pages Doyle’s legendary character will deliver you back to the rational world with a condescending smirk and a lecture about how plainly obvious the whole matter was to anyone who cared to look. IMAGE: The Hound of the Baskervilles frontispiece, illustration by Sidney Paget

Sherlock holmes and the case of the sussex vampire