Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong Read Online Free PDF

against Stapleton, whose psychological reactions
     he carefully studies. In the middle of the story, the naturalist fails to show disappointment when he discovers that the man
     fallen on the moor was not Sir Henry Baskerville, but the convict Selden. This is Holmes’s comment:
    “What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he
     found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot.” 22
    Note that this second category of clues can be applied not just to human beings but also to animals. This sort, although rarer * in Conan Doyle’s work than the human variety, is central to The Hound of the Baskervilles . Its protagonist—and perhaps the murderer—is an animal, and the hypotheses Holmes forms about the animal’s behavior during
     Sir Charles Baskerville’s death are decisive in his solution of the mystery. So it is not only human psychology but also animal
     psychology that should interest us here.

    The other operation included in Holmes’s method, as presented by the detective himself, is deduction. As much as observation
     and the search for clues, deduction is inextricably linked with the legend of Holmes.
    A bit of study shows that deduction is in fact a complex mechanism, which should be divided into at least two distinct operations.
     These two are usually successive, though sometimes simultaneous.
    First, deduction is made possible not only by the examination of clues but by a preliminary knowledge the detective has that makes the clues decipherable. The solutions in Holmes’s cases are funded by a vast treasury of knowledge
     he has little by little amassed, specialized knowledge of the sort that might inspire a serious detective to write monographs—on
     tobacco ash, for instance, or on the tire tracks left by vehicles.
    This first stage of deduction might also be called comparison . It is not entirely separate from the act of observation; clues observed are meaningless if not read correctly. Holmes reads
     his clues by comparing them to a collection of similar signs, about which he has accumulated a great amount of information.
    Many passages in the text reveal the comparative manner in which the reading of clues functions for Holmes. Taking the anonymous
     letter Henry Baskerville receives at the beginning of the book, Holmes is soon able to demonstrate that it was written using
     individual printed words cut from an article in the Times . The conversation at this point between Holmes and Dr. Mortimer, who is impressed by the detective’s results, reveals the
     place of comparison in his method:
    “Really, Mr. Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined,” said Dr. Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement.
     “I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came
     from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?”
      “I presume,Doctor, that you could tell the skull of a negro from that of an Esquimau?”
      “Most certainly.”
      “But how?”
      “Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve,
     the—”
      “But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the
     leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The
     detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that
     once when I was very young I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News . But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else.” 23
    Comparison, then, is at the heart of the clue’s interpretation, since it