40 Fun Facts About A Study in Scarlet

In A Study in Scarlet, Lestrade takes the bloody word RACHE for an unfinished name; what does Holmes say it means?

Revenge is the German meaning, and Holmes tells Lestrade not to waste time looking for a Miss Rachel. The killer wrote it only to send the police chasing imaginary secret societies.

In A Study in Scarlet, Dr Watson has just been invalided home from which war when he meets Sherlock Holmes?

The Second Anglo-Afghan War left Watson wounded, feverish and alone in London on an army allowance of eleven shillings and sixpence a day. That thin budget is why he goes looking for someone to share rooms.

In A Study in Scarlet, which job title does Sherlock Holmes give himself, claiming to be the only one in the world?

Consulting detective is the trade Holmes invented for himself. When official and private investigators are stuck, they lay the evidence before him and he puts them back on the right scent.

In A Study in Scarlet, Watson is astonished that Holmes neither knows nor cares about which basic scientific fact?

Earth orbits the Sun, Watson explains, and Holmes replies that he will now do his best to forget it. He argues that useless facts only crowd out the knowledge his work needs.

In A Study in Scarlet, what job does Jefferson Hope take in London so he can follow his two enemies unnoticed?

Cab driver was the ideal cover: Hope, who says driving and riding come as naturally to him as walking, could shadow Drebber and Stangerson across London while earning his keep.

Which religious community rescues John Ferrier and the child Lucy from death in the desert in A Study in Scarlet?

The Mormons save the pair on condition that they adopt the faith. Conan Doyle's daughter later said he would have been the first to admit the novel was full of errors about them.

Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock opened with a loose version of A Study in Scarlet retitled after which colour?

Pink replaces scarlet in A Study in Pink, the BBC opener written by Steven Moffat. It keeps the two pills and the scrawled RACHE but throws out the entire American backstory.

A Study in Scarlet is credited as the first crime story in which the investigator uses which tool?

A magnifying glass comes out of Holmes's pocket, along with a tape measure, at the Brixton Road house. He trots about the room with them, kneeling and even lying flat on the floor.

In A Study in Scarlet, what small object rolls across the floor when the police lift Enoch Drebber's body?

A wedding ring of plain gold tinkles to the floor. It was Lucy Ferrier's: Hope took it from her finger the night before her funeral and held it up to Drebber as he died.

In A Study in Scarlet, Enoch Drebber lies dead in a blood-splashed room with no wound; how does Holmes say he died?

Poison, Holmes says curtly, having sniffed the dead man's lips. Drebber had been made to choose between two pills, one deadly and one harmless, while his killer swallowed the other.

In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes and Watson are first introduced in a laboratory at which London institution?

St Bartholomew's Hospital, or Barts, was also Watson's old medical school. The link runs deep enough that a Tokyo Sherlock Holmes society gave money to the Save Barts Campaign in the 1990s.

When Watson first meets Holmes in A Study in Scarlet, Holmes is celebrating a new laboratory test that detects what?

Bloodstains, old or new, show up with Holmes's reagent, which reacts to haemoglobin and nothing else. He boasts that hundreds of men then walking free would have paid for their crimes.

In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes defends forgetting useless facts by comparing a man's brain to what?

An empty attic, Holmes says, should be stocked only with the furniture you choose. A fool crams in every sort of lumber until the useful knowledge is jumbled up or lost.

A Study in Scarlet introduced Sherlock Holmes; which novel, commissioned as its sequel, brought him back next?

The Sign of the Four followed in 1890, written for Lippincott's Magazine. Real fame arrived only a year later, when the short stories began running in The Strand.

In A Study in Scarlet, on what does Holmes test the two pills found in Joseph Stangerson's hotel room?

A dying terrier, already due to be put out of its pain, laps up the first pill in milk and is none the worse. The second kills it in an instant, and Holmes's theory is proved.

In A Study in Scarlet, which old acquaintance bumps into Watson at the Criterion Bar and introduces him to Holmes?

Stamford had once been Watson's dresser, a junior who bandaged wounds for a surgeon. On the way to the meeting he warns that Holmes is a little too scientific for his tastes.

A Study in Scarlet was first published not as a book but inside which British magazine?

Beeton's Christmas Annual carried it in November 1887, after its owners bought the copyright outright for £25. Only eleven complete copies of that issue are known to survive.

In A Study in Scarlet, Holmes lures the killer up to the Baker Street rooms by asking for help with what?

His luggage, a small portmanteau, needs strapping, Holmes says without turning his head. As the man bends down to help, a pair of steel handcuffs clicks shut on his wrists.

In A Study in Scarlet, which Scotland Yard inspector writes to Holmes asking for help at the Brixton Road house?

Tobias Gregson is, by Holmes's reckoning, the smartest of the Scotland Yarders, which is faint praise. He and Lestrade are jealous rivals, and Holmes expects some fun if both take the case.

In A Study in Scarlet, Enoch Drebber has no wound, so where does Holmes say the blood on the floor came from?

The killer's nosebleed burst out in his excitement, and he dipped a finger in it to write on the wall. From that Holmes guessed the man was robust and ruddy-faced.

In A Study in Scarlet, who turns up at Baker Street to claim the lost property Holmes advertises in the newspapers?

An old woman hobbles in, collects it and then vanishes from a moving carriage with Holmes perched on the back. He decides she was really an active young man and an incomparable actor.

In A Study in Scarlet, which condition does Watson diagnose in the captured Jefferson Hope just by feeling his chest?

An aortic aneurysm, brought on by years of exposure and hunger in the mountains, was close to bursting. It did so in his cell on the night after his capture, sparing Hope a trial.

In A Study in Scarlet, how does Joseph Stangerson die in his room at Halliday's Private Hotel?

Stabbed with a knife, Stangerson dies only after flying at his visitor's throat. Hope had climbed in at the window and offered him the same choice of pills as Drebber.

In A Study in Scarlet, which street urchin leads the gang of boys Holmes pays to hunt for information?

Wiggins marshals half a dozen ragged boys, each paid a shilling for the day's search. After they clatter up the stairs, Holmes orders that in future only their leader comes up to report.

In A Study in Scarlet, whom does Scotland Yard first arrest, wrongly, for the murder of Enoch Drebber?

His landlady's son, a young navy officer named Arthur Charpentier, had chased Drebber off with a cudgel for grabbing at his sister. He was still locked up when the second body was found.

In A Study in Scarlet, the murderer returns to the Brixton Road house and fools Constable Rance by posing as what?

A drunk too far gone to stand was all Rance saw, so he propped the man up and let him go. Holmes tells the constable he has just thrown away his sergeant's stripes.

In A Study in Scarlet, a Jezail bullet strikes Watson in which part of the body at the battle of Maiwand?

His shoulder, where the bullet shattered the bone and grazed an artery. In the very next Holmes novel, Conan Doyle has Watson nursing a bullet wound in his leg instead.

In A Study in Scarlet, which fictional detective does Holmes dismiss as a very inferior fellow?

C. Auguste Dupin gets the insult just as Watson offers the comparison as a compliment. Holmes calls the Poe sleuth's trick of breaking in on a friend's thoughts showy and superficial.

In A Study in Scarlet, what warning appears at John Ferrier's farm each morning after Lucy is ordered to marry?

A shrinking number shows how many days remain of the month's grace: pinned to his bedclothes, scrawled on the ceiling, painted on the door. Ferrier keeps watch with a gun and never sees who leaves it.

In A Study in Scarlet, Lucy Ferrier dies within a month of her forced marriage; what cause does the novel give?

A broken heart is what the story blames: after John Ferrier's death Lucy never held up her head again. Her husband, who had married her chiefly for the property, showed no great grief.

In A Study in Scarlet, Jefferson Hope first meets Lucy Ferrier by rescuing her on horseback from what danger?

A cattle herd closes around Lucy on the road, and a horn in its flank sends her horse rearing in panic. Hope catches the bridle, forces a way out and is soon a regular caller at the farm.

At the end of A Study in Scarlet, Holmes says the grand thing in solving such a problem is to reason how?

Backwards, from a result to the steps that led up to it, is how Holmes works. He reckons fifty people can reason synthetically for every one who can reason analytically.

Which working title did Conan Doyle first give A Study in Scarlet, the novel that introduced Sherlock Holmes?

A Tangled Skein lingers in Holmes's own image of the case as a scarlet thread of murder to be unravelled. The story was rejected many times before it found a publisher.

The first book edition of A Study in Scarlet carried drawings by which relative of Arthur Conan Doyle?

His father, Charles Doyle, drew them for the 1888 edition. Charles's growing alcoholism had scattered the family when Arthur was a small boy.

Which fantasy author reworked A Study in Scarlet as A Study in Emerald, set in H. P. Lovecraft's universe?

Neil Gaiman won the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story with it. He cheerfully describes the tale as Lovecraft/Holmes fan fiction.

Which Edinburgh surgeon, whom Conan Doyle once served as a clerk, inspired the hero of A Study in Scarlet?

Joseph Bell was noted for drawing broad conclusions from minute observations, just as Holmes does. He went on to write an introduction for a later edition of the novel.

In A Study in Scarlet, Watson is warned that Holmes has been seen beating what with a stick, to study bruising?

Corpses in the dissecting-rooms take the blows, so that Holmes can verify how far bruises may be produced after death. The man who warns Watson swears he saw it with his own eyes.

In A Study in Scarlet, what name is given to the masked band of enforcers that John Ferrier fears in Part II?

The Avenging Angels, also called the Danite Band, give their name to a chapter of the novel. Asked about them later, Conan Doyle reportedly said the murders were historical, if luridly told.

In A Study in Scarlet, which kind of cigar does Holmes say the murderer smoked, judging by ash on the floor?

Trichinopoly ash is dark and flaky, says Holmes, who has written a monograph on the subject. He boasts he can tell the ash of any known brand of cigar or tobacco at a glance.

In Conan Doyle's early plot notes for A Study in Scarlet, which name did the future Dr Watson carry?

Ormond Sacker gave way to plain John Watson before the book was written. The surname was probably borrowed from James Watson, a medical colleague of Conan Doyle's in Portsmouth.