In the opening chapter of A Study in Scarlet Dr Watson is introduced to Sherlock Holmes. Holmes says, 'How are you?' and adds: 'You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.' Watson asks in astonishment: 'How on earth did you know that?' and Holmes, 'chuckling to himself', answers: 'Never mind.' In the following chapter the two men observe through a window 'a stalwart, plainly dressed individual' walking down the street with in his hand. Watson says, 'I wonder what that fellow is looking for?' and Holmes says: 'You mean the retired sergeant of Marines.' In each instance Holmes details the observations and deductions leading to his conclusion, but he does so only after a more or less teasing delay. Watson, if a close observer, could have marked what was chiefly revealing in the Marine - notably, 'a great blue anchor tattooed on the back of the fellow's hand'. ('That smacked of the sea,' Holmes explains.) But we ourselves have not been allowed to note either this, or the military carriage, or the regulation side-whiskers, or 'some amount of self-importance and a certain air of command', or the manner in which the Marine held his head and swung his cane. As the Holmes saga developed, Conan Doyle came to see that it would be to the advantage of the stories that his readers should be afforded a clear glimpse of the clues as they turn up. But he sets no great emphasis on his. In the main, we simply follow Holmes around and admire in due season. There is no premium, such as there is in the developed detective story, on driving us to exclaim: 'I ought to have stooped that!'

LRB 5 May 1983 | PDF Download