The Valley of Fear characters

Appears from the start

The consulting detective of Baker Street, well established and selective about the cases he takes. He opens the book working out a cipher message from a nervous informant, and is at his most combative on the subject of the criminal organisation he believes stands behind half the unsolved crime in London. He is impatient with official routine, keeps his conclusions to himself until he can stage them, and treats a country murder inquiry as an opportunity to test a theory rather than as a duty.

Also known as Dr. Watson

Appears from the start

A doctor and former army surgeon, Holmes's friend, lodger and biographer, who records the case and supplies the patient questioning that draws Holmes out. He is used to being kept in the dark about his friend's reasoning and says so, and he narrates the English half of the story.

Appears from the start

A frightened informant inside a criminal organisation who occasionally sends Holmes warnings for money, using a false name and never meeting him. He posts a message in a book cipher and then writes again in obvious panic to say that his position has become dangerous and that Holmes should ignore what he sent.

First appears in chapter 2

A former mathematical prodigy and author of a celebrated treatise on astronomy, living quietly as a coach in London. Holmes describes him as the organiser of a large part of the crime of the capital, a man who plans and never appears, and points to a costly painting on his wall as evidence that his modest salary is not his real income. Nothing has ever been proved against him, and the police regard Holmes's conviction on the subject as a private obsession.

First appears in chapter 2

A Scotland Yard inspector, tall, bony and Aberdonian, taciturn and slow to enthusiasm but genuinely able. He has consulted Holmes on two previous cases and respects his methods while refusing to accept his theories on trust. He brings the Birlstone case to Baker Street and works it in the country with Holmes.

First appears in chapter 3

The master of Birlstone Manor House, a Sussex property surrounded by a moat and reached by a drawbridge that is raised at night. He is an American of about fifty who arrived in the district five years before with money made in the California gold fields, and is liked locally for being generous, unpretentious and fearless. He is reserved about his past, hinting only that he has enemies, and the case opens with the body in his study being identified as his.

First appears in chapter 3

The master of Birlstone's closest friend, a well-built, handsome Englishman who knew him in America and stays at the manor for long periods. He raises the alarm on the night of the killing and gives the first account of what he found. His manner afterwards strikes the investigators as unusually composed for a man who has just lost a friend.

First appears in chapter 3

The mistress of Birlstone Manor, an Englishwoman considerably younger than her husband, who met him after his arrival in the district. She is calm and self-possessed in circumstances that would break most people, shows little grief in public, and does not immediately ask to see the body, which the local police note against her.

First appears in chapter 3

The butler at Birlstone Manor House, a correct and nervous servant who is among the first into the study after the alarm and who can speak to the household's routine, the raising of the drawbridge, and his master's habits.

First appears in chapter 4

The head of the Sussex county detective force, a brisk, capable countryman who is already at work when the London men arrive. He is open-minded, welcomes Holmes's help without resentment, and lays out the local evidence fully.

First appears in chapter 7

An American who came to Birlstone with a sawn-off shotgun of a make sold in the United States, and who is the source of the whole affair at the manor house. His quarrel with the master of the house goes back many years, to their shared past in America.

First appears in chapter 8

A young Irish American who arrives in the coal and iron valley of Vermissa in 1875, out of a job in Chicago and cheerfully unbothered about why. Confident, quick with his fists and openly contemptuous of the local police, he carries the recognition signs of a fraternal order whose lodge effectively governs the valley, and sets out to make himself known to its leaders as soon as he arrives.

First appears in chapter 8

The daughter of the German boarding-house keeper with whom McMurdo lodges in Vermissa, a fair-haired young woman who hates the valley and what goes on in it. She is already being pursued by a powerful member of the lodge, and her father wants her out of the district altogether.

First appears in chapter 8

A friendly, easy-going lodge man who travels into the valley on the same train as McMurdo and gives him his first account of how things are run there, and who remains one of the few men in Vermissa McMurdo can talk to plainly.

First appears in chapter 9

Bodymaster of Lodge 341 at Vermissa and the real power in the valley: saloon keeper, county official, and organiser of the order's business. Black-bearded, genial in manner and instantly dangerous when crossed, he presides over the lodge's meetings and decides which men are to be beaten and which are to be killed.