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It was the end of November, and Holmes and I
sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire
in our sitting-room in Baker Street.
In the collected version of Hound of the Baskervilles,
the following two sentences appear just after the first sentence
of Chapter 15:
Since the tragic upshot
of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs
of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed
the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the
famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second
he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge
of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of
her step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will
be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in
New York.
These cases remain, alas,
undocumented by either Watson or Conan Doyle.
"His wife had some inkling of his plans; but she had such
a fear of her husband—a fear founded upon brutal ill treatment—that
she dare not write to warn the man whom she knew to be in danger.
If the letter should fall into Stapleton's hands her own life would
not be safe. Eventually, as we know, she adopted the expedient of
cutting out the words which would form the message, and addressing
the letter in a disguised hand."
Even if a disguised letter fell into Stapleton's hands, would this
brilliant criminal genius be unable to figure out that his untrustworthy
wife must be the culprit?
"With characteristic promptness and audacity he set about
this at once, and we cannot doubt that the boots or chambermaid
of the hotel was well bribed to help him in his design."
The "boots" is the staff person in charge of polishing the gentlemen's
boots and shoes in a hotel at night. Losing two boots in a row would
be a serious matter, so the servant would have to have been well
bribed to take such a risk.
Sir Henry had paid six dollars for his new footwear. In today's
currency, those boots might cost over $100. Sir Henry only had three
pairs of boots, so the loss of two pairs would have been a significant
expense for a man who was not very well off until he came into his
inheritance.
"The more outré and grotesque an incident is the
more carefully it deserves to be examined...."
"Outré" is French for exaggerated or outrageous—a
favorite word of Holmes's.
"In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and
was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine."
"Jessamine," or white jasmine, is a night-blooming white flower
having a distinctive sweet and pungent scent.
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