"When water is near and a weight is missing, it is not a very far-fetched supposition that something has been sunk in the water" - Sherlock Holmes
The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's based on the real life exploits of the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915, and the first book edition was published in New York on 27 February 1915.
The Valley of Fear is the fourth and final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It's based on the real life exploits of the Molly Maguires and Pinkerton agent James McParland. The story was first published in the Strand Magazine between September 1914 and May 1915, and the first book edition was published in New York on 27 February 1915.
Sherlock
Holmes and Dr. Watson receive a letter from an informant known by the pseudonym
Fred Porlock.
Porlock is part of Professor Moriarty's
criminal organization. The letter's written in a numeric code, and Holmes
realises that the numbers refer to words in a book, by page and column. They
decode the letter (finding the book in question to be Whitaker's Almanack),
which warns that John Douglas of Birlstone House is about to be
murdered.
After they
have deciphered the message, Inspector McDonald of Scotland Yard comes to
consult Holmes. McDonald is astonished when he sees the message, because it
has pre-empted his news: a man called John Douglas has indeed been mysteriously
killed in Sussex. McDonald demands to know the true identity of the informant
who predicted the crime, but Holmes does not know it, because he promised not
to try and find out who 'Porlock' really is. Holmes can only tell McDonald
that the informant works for Professor Moriarty.
McDonald,
Holmes and Watson go to the Birlstone Manor House in Sussex, working with Scotland Yard and beginning their
investigation along with Inspector White Mason and other officers from the
local police force. At least five people were in the house at the time of the
murder. John Douglas, Ivy Douglas (his wife), Ames (a butler), Cecil
Barker (a friend) and Mrs Allen (a servant). Cecil Barker is an old friend of
Douglas and had been intending to stay at Birlstone House for a few months on
holiday. He had met Douglas in America many years before and become his mining
partner as well as his friend.
The house is
surrounded by a moat that's fed from a nearby stream. The moat is wide but
only two or three feet deep, so no one can really swim (or drown) in it. The
house has a drawbridge, which is lowered every morning and raised every night.
Barker tells the detectives that Douglas locked all of the windows in the house
every night, and that he felt safer when the drawbridge was raised. It is
concluded that the murderer walked across the drawbridge and hid close to the house
before it was raised. The murderer could not have entered the house after 6:30
pm, since at that time the drawbridge was up.
Douglas's
body can only be identified by a strange brand on his arm, a circle with a
triangle inside it. He has been shot in the head with a sawed-off shotgun, at
close range, ruining his face and head. The investigators soon learn from
Barker that Douglas' wedding ring is missing. It stayed on the same finger,
under the nugget-ring he wore, which was found intact on the body. That means
the assassin removed both rings, and stole one while replacing the other. The
assassins also left a card reading "VV 341".
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