A Study in Scarlet
Anno 1887A dead man in a rented room, a word written in blood, and an Afghan surgeon in need of lodgings.
Est. MDCCCLXXXVII · London
The Game
Is Afoot
An archive devoted to the world's first consulting detective — his methods, his adversaries, and the company that keeps the fire burning at 221B.
Open the case filesI The Detective
Sherlock Holmes is a figure of logic in a fog-bound city — a consulting detective who accepts the cases that baffle Scotland Yard, and who can read a stranger's history from the mud upon his boots, the wear of his sleeve, and the callus of his thumb.
He keeps his razor in the butter-dish and his tobacco in the Persian slipper; he plays the violin at four in the morning, and he holds that the highest function of the mind is to reason from the observed fact to the unobserved truth. His rooms at 221B Baker Street have become the address where the impossible is routinely reduced to the merely improbable.
To Holmes no branch of detective science is more important than the art of tracing footsteps — and no case so small that it cannot be examined with the eye of the expert.
— S. Holmes, Consulting Detective
- Residence
- 221B Baker Street, London W.
- Profession
- Consulting detective — the only one in the world
- Method
- Observation, deduction, the science of details
- Instruments
- A magnifying lens, a casebook, a violin
- Antagonist
- Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime
- Chronicler
- Dr. John H. Watson, late of the Army Medical Department
II The Cases
Eight entries from the tin dispatch-box — a selection of the fifty-odd adventures recorded by Dr. Watson.
The Sign of the Four
Anno 1890A lost treasure of Agra, a peg-legged hunter, and a lady who keeps watch from a garret.
A Scandal in Bohemia
Anno 1891A king, a photograph, and the woman whose wit outran the detective's own.
The Speckled Band
Anno 1892A whistle in the dark, a dying cry, and a bell-rope that was no bell-rope at all.
The Final Problem
Anno 1893At the Reichenbach Falls, the Napoleon of Crime and the detective met their reckoning.
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Anno 1902A spectral hound upon the Devon moors, and a curse older than the family name.
The Empty House
Anno 1903A bust of wax, a silenced air-rifle, and the return of the man presumed dead.
The Valley of Fear
Anno 1915A cipher warning, a country house in Sussex, and the long shadow of Moriarty.
III The Cast
The circle of Baker Street — allies, adversaries, and the tolerable company that surrounds the detective.
Dr. John H. Watson
The ChroniclerArmy surgeon of the Afghan campaign; lodger, friend, and the Boswell of Baker Street.
Professor Moriarty
The Napoleon of CrimeA spider at the centre of a web that spanned all London — Holmes's great adversary.
Irene Adler
The WomanOpera singer of boundless wit and nerve — the only one ever to best the detective.
Inspector Lestrade
Of Scotland YardThe sharpest of the official police, ever in want of a guiding hand at Baker Street.
Mycroft Holmes
The ElderSeven years older, and of greater power still, though he seldom ventures beyond his club on Pall Mall.
Mrs. Hudson
Keeper of 221BLandlady of Baker Street; keeper of the biscuits, the fire, and her most trying of tenants.
IV The Cipher Lab
The canon is thick with secret writing — the dancing men, the book cipher of the Valley of Fear, the ritual of the Musgrave family. Try your hand at the oldest code of all: Caesar's wheel.
— awaiting a message —