A Study In Scarlet A Sherlock Holmes Mystery - Unabridged recap

Doctor John Watson, invalided home from Afghanistan and short of money, is introduced to Sherlock Holmes and takes rooms with him at 221B Baker Street, where he learns that his companion is a consulting detective the police fall back on when they are baffled. Their first case together is the death of an American, Enoch Drebber, found unwounded in an empty house off the Brixton Road with the German word for revenge scrawled in blood on the wall; Drebber's secretary Stangerson is then stabbed in a hotel near Euston. Holmes reads the traces at the scene, ignores the false trails the Scotland Yard men pursue, and traps the killer in his own sitting room: a London cabman named Jefferson Hope. The story then turns back thirty years to Utah, where Hope's promised bride Lucy Ferrier was taken from him and forced into marriage with Drebber, and her adoptive father was killed; she died within weeks, and Hope spent the years since hunting the two men across two continents. He confesses fully, dies of a heart aneurysm before he can be tried, and the newspapers give the credit to the police.

Doctor John Watson, an army surgeon invalided out after being wounded in Afghanistan, returns to London on a small pension and looks for cheap lodgings. A former hospital colleague, Stamford, mentions another man in the same position and takes him to a laboratory at St Bartholomew's, where Sherlock Holmes has just perfected a chemical test for identifying old bloodstains. Holmes disconcerts Watson by remarking at once that he has been in Afghanistan. The two agree to share rooms at 221B Baker Street. With time on his hands, Watson tries to work out what his companion does for a living, and is baffled by a man who knows chemistry, anatomy, poisons and criminal history in exact detail while being indifferent to literature, philosophy and even astronomy. Visitors of every class call at all hours. After Watson scoffs at a magazine article claiming that a trained observer can read a stranger's life from trifles, Holmes admits that he wrote it and explains his profession: he is a consulting detective, the last resort of private clients and of the official police alike, though the police are careful never to say so. A letter from a Scotland Yard man then arrives, asking for his help with a death in an empty house.

Watson has settled at Baker Street with Sherlock Holmes, a consulting detective the police call in when they are out of their depth. Inspector Tobias Gregson's letter takes the two men to an empty house at Lauriston Gardens, off the Brixton Road, where a well-dressed man lies dead. Papers identify him as Enoch Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, travelling in Europe with a secretary named Joseph Stangerson, who cannot be found. There is no wound on the body and nothing has been stolen, yet blood is spattered about the room, and the word RACHE is scrawled on the wall in blood. Lestrade, Gregson's rival at the Yard, takes it for a woman's name left unfinished; Holmes says it is the German word for revenge and warns the detectives not to be led by it. From the mud and dust Holmes concludes that two men arrived in a four-wheeled cab, that one was tall, wore square-toed boots and smoked a strong Indian cigar, and that the death was caused by poison. He also picks up a woman's wedding ring from the floor. The constable who found the body, John Rance, is questioned and describes a drunken man he helped along the road that night; Holmes tells him he had the murderer by the arm.

Holmes advertises the wedding ring as found in the road, expecting the man who lost it to come for it. An elderly woman calls to claim it for her married daughter, and Holmes follows her cab across London, only to find it empty at its destination: the passenger was a young and agile confederate in disguise, who slipped away in the traffic. Gregson then arrives in triumph. He has traced Drebber to a Camberwell boarding house kept by a widow, learned that Drebber drank heavily and pestered her daughter until he was turned out, and arrested her son, a young naval officer who had followed the lodger into the street with a stick and lost sight of him. Before the case can be argued through, Lestrade appears badly shaken: Joseph Stangerson has been found stabbed to death in a small hotel near Euston, the window open above the body and the same word written on the wall in blood. Again nothing was taken; the dead man's money and watch are untouched. Among the few objects in the room is a small box holding two pills.

Holmes tests the two pills found in Stangerson's room. Dissolved and given to an old, ailing terrier, the first does nothing at all, while the second kills the animal within seconds, confirming his reading of the Brixton Road death, where a man died with no wound on him and nothing was stolen. Holmes has already sent his band of street boys, led by Wiggins, across London on an errand, and has telegraphed for a particular cab to come to Baker Street. When the cabman climbs the stairs to help carry down a trunk, Holmes snaps handcuffs onto his wrists. The man fights with such strength that it takes Holmes, Watson, Lestrade and Gregson together to hold him down, and he nearly throws himself through the window before he is secured. Holmes then presents him to the two detectives as Jefferson Hope, the man who killed Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson, and the case that had baffled Scotland Yard for days is closed in the space of a few minutes.

The narrative now leaves London and Watson's account entirely, and goes back to the American West. On the alkali plain in 1847, a man named John Ferrier and a small orphaned girl, Lucy, the last survivors of a lost emigrant party, are found near death by a great column of travellers moving toward Utah under Brigham Young. They are taken in on the express condition that they accept the settlers' faith and their authority. Ferrier prospers as a farmer beside the Salt Lake and raises Lucy as his daughter, but he steadily refuses to take the wives the community expects of him, which makes him respected and distrusted at once. Twelve years later Lucy is grown. A young hunter and silver prospector from Nevada, Jefferson Hope, stops her horse when she is caught in a stampede, and the two fall in love. Ferrier consents to the marriage, and Hope leaves for two months' work with his mining party, meaning to come back for her. Almost at once Brigham Young calls at the farm to tell Ferrier that Lucy has a month in which to marry, and that her choice lies between the sons of two Elders, Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson. Numbers begin appearing about the house at night, counting the days down.

Ferrier refuses to hand Lucy to either suitor and gets word out to Jefferson Hope. Hope returns in secret, and the three slip out of the valley by night into the mountains, hunted by the settlement's enforcers. On the third day Hope goes ahead to shoot game, and comes back to find the camp destroyed, a freshly dug grave for Ferrier, and Lucy carried off. She is married to Enoch Drebber and dies within a month. Hope forces his way into the funeral, takes the wedding ring from her finger, and leaves the valley with nothing but the intention of killing both men. Drebber and Stangerson later quit Utah in the course of a split in the community, taking Drebber's money with them, and Hope follows them across the United States and then to Europe, losing the trail repeatedly and picking it up again, working whatever jobs will keep him moving. Years pass in this way. By the time he traces the two men to London he is a poor man and his health has begun to fail.

In custody, Jefferson Hope gives his statement. Knowing that an aortic aneurysm will kill him before long, he took work as a London cab driver so that he could watch the two men unnoticed. When Drebber, drunk and alone, hailed his cab, Hope drove him to an empty house in Lauriston Gardens, showed him Lucy's wedding ring so that he would understand who had come for him, and offered him a choice between two pills, one harmless and one poisoned; Drebber chose wrongly. Hope's nose bled with the excitement, which accounts for the blood in the room, and he wrote the German word for revenge on the wall to mislead the police. He then went to Stangerson's hotel, climbed in at the window and offered the same choice; Stangerson attacked him and was stabbed. Hope dropped Lucy's ring in the street and was nearly caught when Holmes advertised it, escaping only through a young friend who came for it in disguise. He says he regrets nothing. The night before he is to appear before the magistrates he is found dead in his cell, the aneurysm having burst. The newspapers credit Gregson and Lestrade with the arrest and do not mention Holmes, who is amused rather than aggrieved and explains to Watson how he reasoned backward from the scene to the man. Watson decides to write the case up himself.

In custody, Jefferson Hope gives a complete account of both deaths and shows no remorse for either. He explains that he tracked Enoch Drebber and Joseph Stangerson from Utah across America and then across Europe to London, took work as a cab driver so that he could follow them unnoticed, and offered each man a choice between two identical pills, one harmless and one poisoned, so that the outcome would be a judgement rather than a simple killing. Drebber took the poisoned pill and died in the empty house at Lauriston Gardens; Stangerson refused the choice and attacked him, and was stabbed. A nosebleed brought on by the strain accounts for the blood at the first scene, and the word scrawled on the wall was meant to send the police toward a political motive. Hope also reveals that he is dying of an aortic aneurysm, and on the night before he is to be brought before the magistrates he is found dead in his cell, so there is no trial. The newspapers report the case as a triumph of official detection by Gregson and Lestrade, and Holmes's name is not mentioned. Holmes takes this lightly and explains to Watson how he reasoned backward from the marks at Lauriston Gardens to the cabman. Watson, indignant on his friend's behalf, resolves to publish an account of his own, which is how the record of their partnership begins.