188 Fun Facts About Sherlock Holmes

Which musical instrument does Sherlock Holmes play?

Holmes plays the violin; in 'The Cardboard Box' he says he bought his Stradivarius from a broker in Tottenham Court Road for fifty-five shillings.

In A Study in Scarlet, the word RACHE scrawled in blood on a wall is German for what?

Revenge: a Scotland Yard man assumes the killer was interrupted while writing 'Rachel', but Holmes tells him Rache is German for revenge and not to waste time looking for Miss Rachel.

Holmes's debut novel was first published in which periodical?

Beeton's Christmas Annual: its publisher bought the novel in 1886 but held it back a year, telling Doyle the market was 'flooded at present with cheap fiction', then led its 1887 shilling annual with it.

Which Holmes collection gathered the first twelve stories in 1892?

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes gathered the first twelve Strand stories; Doyle wrote 56 in all, though as early as 1891 he told his mother that Holmes 'takes my mind from better things'.

Dr Watson was wounded while serving as an army surgeon in which conflict?

Second Anglo-Afghan War: Watson was shipped home with his health 'irretrievably ruined' and nine months' leave on eleven shillings and sixpence a day, which is why he needed someone to share rooms.

What wounded Watson at the Battle of Maiwand?

A jezail bullet, fired from a long-barrelled musket, struck Watson at Maiwand; his orderly Murray saved him from capture by throwing him across a packhorse and leading him back to the British lines.

In Doyle's early plot notes, what was Holmes's companion called before he became John Watson?

Doyle's plot notes called the narrator Ormond Sacker; Holmes himself was pencilled in as Sherrinford in the same notes before Doyle changed his mind.

Mycroft Holmes spends his hours at which Pall Mall institution, where members may not speak to one another?

The Diogenes Club was started, Holmes says, for men too shy or misanthropic for company who still like comfortable chairs and the latest periodicals; three offences of talking can get a member expelled.

Which drug does Holmes inject as a seven-per-cent solution?

Holmes injects cocaine; Watson opens The Sign of the Four by asking 'Which is it today, morphine or cocaine?', and both drugs were legal in Victorian England.

The Reichenbach Falls, where Holmes apparently plunges to his death, are in which country?

Switzerland: Doyle saw the falls on a short holiday there with his wife and thought the 'terrible place' would make 'a worthy tomb for poor Sherlock', even if it buried his bank account too.

Holmes says he slipped Moriarty's grip at the falls thanks to which 'Japanese system of wrestling'?

Baritsu is apparently Doyle's misspelling of bartitsu, a real self-defence method that Edward Barton-Wright brought to London in 1898 after three years in Japan, mixing jujitsu with boxing and cane-fighting.

What nickname does Holmes give Professor Moriarty?

Holmes calls Moriarty 'the Napoleon of crime' in 'The Final Problem', echoing a phrase Scotland Yard's Robert Anderson had used of a real master thief.

Before turning to crime, Professor Moriarty held a university chair in which subject?

Moriarty won a mathematics chair at a small university on the strength of a treatise on the binomial theorem; his later The Dynamics of an Asteroid was said to be beyond any reviewer in the scientific press.

Holmes's index records that the opera singer Irene Adler was born in which American state?

New Jersey, in 1858, the index says; the American contralto goes on to beat Holmes at his own game, trailing him home in men's clothes and wishing him good night before she slips out of the country.

In A Scandal in Bohemia, what does the King of Bohemia hire Holmes to recover from Irene Adler?

The King wants a photograph of himself with Irene Adler, which he fears she will send to the family of his fiancée, a Scandinavian princess, and wreck the match.

After she outwits him, Holmes always refers to Irene Adler by which title?

To Holmes she is always 'the woman'; Irene Adler appears in only one story yet has become one of the most reused characters in Holmes adaptations.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is set largely on which English moor?

Baskerville Hall stands on Dartmoor in Devon; the novel was serialised in 1901-02, before Holmes had officially returned from the dead, so Doyle set it earlier in the detective's career.

Which journalist supplied Doyle with the legend and local colour for The Hound of the Baskervilles?

Bertram Fletcher Robinson, a journalist friend of Doyle, told him the West Country legend of a spectral hound and toured the moor with him in 1901; Doyle thanked him in the book's dedication.

How much was Doyle paid for the full rights to his first Holmes novel?

£25 was all Ward, Lock & Co. offered for the copyright, and they refused Doyle a royalty; he took it for the sake of getting into print and 'never at any time received another penny' for the book.

Which story did Doyle himself name as his favourite Holmes tale?

'The Adventure of the Speckled Band' topped the list of twelve Doyle drew up for The Strand in 1927; he was sure it would be on every reader's list.

Which 1903 story has Holmes reappear and reveal he faked his death?

'The Adventure of the Empty House' has an old book collector call on Watson and throw off his disguise; Watson, seeing his dead friend, faints 'for the first and the last time in my life'.

What do Holmes fans call the years 1891 to 1894, when the detective was presumed dead?

Sherlockians call 1891–94 the Great Hiatus; Holmes claims to have spent it travelling in Tibet, Persia and Sudan as a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson.

What occupation does the retired Holmes take up on the Sussex Downs?

Holmes takes up beekeeping in retirement on the Sussex Downs and in His Last Bow proudly shows Watson his Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, 'the fruit of my leisured ease'.

Doyle said Holmes was inspired by which Edinburgh surgeon he had once worked for?

Joseph Bell made Doyle his outpatient clerk and would tell a stranger's trade and travels at a glance; in 1892 Doyle wrote to him, 'It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes.'

Which actor is credited with originating 'Elementary, my dear Watson' in an 1899 stage play?

William Gillette is usually credited with 'Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow', though not every version of his script has it; when he cabled Doyle 'May I marry Holmes?', the reply was that he could marry or murder him.

Which Shakespeare play did Christopher Morley cite to date Holmes's January birthday?

Twelfth Night, also a name for 6 January, is the one Shakespeare play Holmes quotes twice, Christopher Morley argued in backing that date for a birthday the stories never give.

Which building society at 221 Baker Street employed a secretary to answer letters to Holmes?

Abbey National's Baker Street headquarters, Abbey House, took in number 221 from 1932, so the society employed a secretary to answer the letters that arrived for Holmes; the museum later took over the post.

The American backstory of The Valley of Fear is loosely based on which secret society?

The Molly Maguires, a secret society among Irish miners in Pennsylvania's coal country, were broken by a Pinkerton infiltrator in the 1870s, a story Doyle reworked as the Scowrers of Vermissa Valley.

Doyle was commissioned to write The Sign of the Four at an 1889 dinner also attended by which author?

Oscar Wilde dined with Doyle, the Irish MP T. P. Gill and Lippincott's editor J. M. Stoddart at the Langham Hotel in August 1889; Stoddart left with promises of both The Sign of the Four and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Who played Dr Watson in every one of the 1939–46 Holmes films?

Nigel Bruce played Watson as a lovable bumbler, dimmer and more comic than the capable army doctor who narrates Doyle's stories, which earned his version the nickname 'Boobus Britannicus'.

Which studio moved the Holmes films into the 1940s to fight Nazi agents?

Universal took the series over from Fox in 1942 and set it in the present day, with an opening caption assuring audiences that Holmes was 'ageless, invincible and unchanging'.

Which big-game hunter, once Moriarty's chief of staff, tries to shoot Holmes with an air-gun?

Colonel Sebastian Moran, whom Holmes's index calls 'the second most dangerous man in London', fires across Baker Street at what he takes for the detective but hits only a wax bust set up as a decoy.

Jeremy Brett's Holmes series (1984–1994) was produced by which British television company?

Granada Television made the series at its Manchester studios, where it built a full-scale Baker Street exterior set; the run covered more than forty of the sixty stories.

Who played Watson opposite Jeremy Brett before Edward Hardwicke took over the role?

David Burke played Watson for the first thirteen episodes (1984–85), then left for the Royal Shakespeare Company; Edward Hardwicke took over and later joined Brett on stage in The Secret of Sherlock Holmes.

Before playing Holmes, Jeremy Brett played Watson on stage in 1980 opposite which Hollywood star?

Charlton Heston played Holmes to Brett's Watson in The Crucifer of Blood in Los Angeles, then filmed the play for television in 1991, by which time his old Watson had become television's Holmes.

Which two writers created the BBC series Sherlock?

Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss created Sherlock, an idea that took shape on long train journeys while both were writing for Doctor Who; the first episode aired in July 2010.

Which real-life couple plays Sherlock and Mycroft's parents in series three of Sherlock?

Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton are Benedict Cumberbatch's real parents, so the family resemblance was no accident when they first appeared as the Holmes parents in 'The Empty Hearse'.

Who plays Jim Moriarty in the BBC series Sherlock?

Andrew Scott plays Moriarty, first seen in 'The Great Game' posing as 'Jim from IT', a shy hospital worker, before revealing himself at the swimming pool.

Which episode opened series two of Sherlock, with Lara Pulver as a dominatrix who matches wits with the detective?

'A Scandal in Belgravia' opened series two on New Year's Day 2012 and recast Irene Adler as a dominatrix; Sherlock wins only by cracking her phone's passcode, which makes the screen read 'I AM SHER-LOCKED'.

Exterior shots of 221B in the BBC series Sherlock were filmed at which London address?

The exteriors were shot at 187 North Gower Street, near Euston, because the real Baker Street was too busy and had too many things labelled Sherlock Holmes to disguise; Speedy's café sits beneath.

Although set in London, the BBC series Sherlock was filmed mainly in which city?

Sherlock was made by Hartswood Films with BBC Wales, so most filming took place in Cardiff, sharing a base with Doctor Who; the city stood in for many London streets.

How does Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock describe himself when accused of being a psychopath?

High-functioning sociopath is Sherlock's retort in 'A Study in Pink' when the forensics man Anderson calls him 'our favourite psychopath'; he tells Anderson to do his research.

Who directed the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes starring Robert Downey Jr.?

Guy Ritchie took over from Neil Marshall, who had been attached, in June 2008 and shot the film in London and Manchester that autumn.

Robert Downey Jr. won which award for playing Holmes in the 2009 film?

A Golden Globe: Downey won best actor in a musical or comedy in January 2010, and the film's takings of more than $500 million worldwide brought him back as Holmes two years later.

Who plays Professor Moriarty in the 2011 sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows?

Jared Harris plays Moriarty; the film borrows its ending from 'The Final Problem', as Holmes drags the professor off a balcony so that both plunge into the falls below.

Who plays Dr Joan Watson in the CBS series Elementary?

Lucy Liu plays Joan Watson, a former surgeon hired as Holmes's sober companion who becomes his full detective partner rather than his chronicler.

Which actor plays Holmes in Elementary?

Jonny Lee Miller plays Holmes; a year before Elementary began in 2012 he had alternated the lead roles with Benedict Cumberbatch in Danny Boyle's stage Frankenstein at the National Theatre.

Elementary relocates Holmes from London to which city?

Holmes settles in New York as a consultant to the NYPD after a stint in drug rehab that followed his fall from grace in London.

Which actress plays Jamie Moriarty, Holmes's nemesis and former lover, in Elementary?

Natalie Dormer plays Jamie Moriarty, introduced as Irene Adler before the series-one finale reveals that Adler and Moriarty are the same person.

Which Scotland Yard inspector appears in the most Holmes stories?

Lestrade appears in thirteen stories; Holmes starts by calling him and Gregson 'the pick of a bad lot', yet in 'The Six Napoleons' Lestrade tells him Scotland Yard is 'very proud' of him.

Which Edinburgh police surgeon and forensic expert is cited as a second model for Holmes?

Sir Henry Littlejohn doubted that a broken gas pipe had killed an Edinburgh woman in 1878 and found opium in the vomit on her nightgown; his evidence helped hang her husband, Eugene Chantrelle.

Holmes claims his grandmother was the sister of which French artist?

Vernet could be any of three painters of that family, and Holmes never says which; he raises the link to explain his own gift, telling Watson that 'art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms'.

Where does Holmes keep his tobacco at 221B Baker Street?

Holmes keeps his tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper, per 'The Musgrave Ritual', where Watson also notes cigars in the coal-scuttle and letters pinned to the mantelpiece with a jack-knife.

Which two musicians does Holmes hurry to hear in the stories, one at St James's Hall and one at Covent Garden?

Wagner and Sarasate: mid-case in 'The Red-Headed League' Holmes sits through Sarasate's recital 'wrapped in the most perfect happiness', and 'The Red Circle' ends with him dashing to a Wagner night.

Which astronomical fact does Holmes claim not to know in A Study in Scarlet?

The Earth orbits the Sun: Holmes says he never knew it, likens his brain to a small attic with room only for useful furniture, and tells Watson he will now do his best to forget it.

Holmes wrote a monograph on the Polyphonic Motets of which composer?

Lassus: Holmes fills a tense day's wait in 'The Bruce-Partington Plans' by losing himself in the monograph, which Watson says was later printed privately and judged 'the last word upon the subject'.

The stick-figure messages in 'The Dancing Men' are sent by a gangster from which American city?

Chicago: the American police cable Holmes that Abe Slaney is 'the most dangerous crook in Chicago'; Holmes then lures him into a trap with a forged message written in Slaney's own code.

In 'Silver Blaze', what was the 'curious incident' Holmes draws Inspector Gregory's attention to?

The dog did not bark: Holmes's 'curious incident of the dog in the night-time' was that the stable dog stayed silent, showing the midnight visitor was someone it knew well.

Which street urchin leads the band of boys Holmes uses as informants?

Wiggins leads the ragged boys Holmes calls his 'unofficial force'; he pays them a shilling each because, unlike a policeman whose mere look 'seals men's lips', they 'go everywhere and hear everything'.

Which two sports does Holmes say he practised at college, per 'The Gloria Scott'?

Fencing and boxing were his only athletic tastes at college, Holmes says; his one friend there, Victor Trevor, he met when Trevor's bull terrier froze onto his ankle on the way to chapel.

What does Holmes straighten after an angry visitor bends it in 'The Speckled Band'?

The visitor bends the steel poker into a curve to intimidate Holmes, who straightens it after he storms out, remarking that his own grip is 'not much more feeble'.

What has Holmes just discovered when Watson first meets him at Barts?

An infallible test for blood stains: Holmes runs up crying 'I've found it!', a reagent precipitated by haemoglobin and nothing else, and says it works however old the stain is.

Which New York fan society was founded in 1934, the same year as its London counterpart?

The Baker Street Irregulars, started in 1934 by the writer Christopher Morley, take their name from Holmes's gang of street boys; the London society of that year folded and was refounded in 1951.

What are Holmes fans traditionally called in the UK?

Holmesians is the British word and Sherlockians the American; Dorothy L. Sayers, an early member of the London society, said their mock scholarship 'must be played as solemnly as a county cricket match at Lord's'.

Which 1893 story has a near approximation to 'Elementary, my dear Watson'?

In 'The Adventure of the Crooked Man' Watson cries 'Excellent!' at a deduction and Holmes answers 'Elementary', one of the nearest things in Doyle's stories to the famous catchphrase, which he never wrote.

Where is Watson's war wound in A Study in Scarlet, before it migrates to his leg?

His shoulder is where he is hit in A Study in Scarlet, yet in The Sign of the Four Watson sits nursing a wounded leg; the stories never explain the change, and squaring the two became a favourite fan puzzle.

The Great Game treats Doyle as what, rather than the author?

Watson's literary agent: the Game pretends Holmes and Watson were real, a joke begun at Oxford by Ronald Knox, who turned the solemn methods of biblical criticism on the stories.

Holmes tells Watson that his brother Mycroft occasionally 'is' what?

The British government: on paper Mycroft is a subordinate on £450 a year, Holmes explains, but every department's conclusions pass through him, so that 'his specialism is omniscience'.

A Sherlock Holmes museum opened in 1991 in the former English Church of which Alpine town?

Meiringen is where Holmes and Watson spend the night at the Englischer Hof before the final struggle with Moriarty; the town's museum opened in its old English Church a year after London's.

The 221B sitting room in a London pub was first built for which event?

Festival of Britain visitors saw the room in Baker Street in 1951; the exhibit then moved into a Victorian pub near Trafalgar Square, which reopened as The Sherlock Holmes in 1957.

Which country's 1979–86 TV Holmes films earned their star an honorary MBE from Britain?

Soviet Union: Vasily Livanov's Holmes won him an honorary MBE in 2006, and a statue unveiled near the British Embassy in Moscow the next year gives Holmes and Watson the faces of Livanov and Vitaly Solomin.

Which 'story for which the world is not yet prepared' is mentioned in 'The Sussex Vampire'?

The giant rat of Sumatra is all Doyle ever wrote of the case, one line about a ship called the Matilda Briggs; later writers have filled the gap with many pastiches, including a 1976 novel.

Which old friend introduces Watson to Holmes in A Study in Scarlet?

Young Stamford, once a dresser under Watson at Barts, runs into him at the Criterion Bar and takes him to the hospital laboratory, where Holmes wants someone to share rooms.

Who is the victim found in an abandoned Brixton Road house in A Study in Scarlet?

Enoch Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, is found dead at 3 Lauriston Gardens with 'RACHE' scrawled in blood on the wall; his secretary Stangerson is murdered days later.

In The Sign of the Four, Mary Morstan has received what by post every year for six years?

A valuable pearl arrives each year from the son of the man who kept her father's share of a great Indian treasure; he sends them so that she 'might never feel destitute'.

Who was the fourth of 'the Four', alongside Jonathan Small, Mahomet Singh and Dost Akbar?

Abdullah Khan, one of the two Sikh guards at Agra Fort, swore the pact with Jonathan Small during the 1857 Mutiny; their map of the treasure bears the 'sign of the four'.

Which doctor brings the Baskerville legend to Holmes?

Dr James Mortimer, a country doctor from Grimpen, reads Holmes the 1742 manuscript telling how wicked Sir Hugo Baskerville met the hound in the days of the Great Rebellion.

Where had Sir Charles Baskerville amassed his fortune?

South Africa: Sir Charles made his money in South African speculation and, wiser than those who 'go on until the wheel turns against them', cashed out and came home to restore Baskerville Hall.

Which pseudonymous informant inside Moriarty's gang sends Holmes a cipher in The Valley of Fear?

Fred Porlock, a pseudonym for a weak link in Moriarty's chain, sends a book cipher keyed to Whitaker's Almanack that warns of danger to one Douglas at Birlstone House.

Which Pinkerton agent's undercover work in the 1870s inspired Birdy Edwards in The Valley of Fear?

James McParland spent years undercover for Pinkerton's among Pennsylvania coal miners, and his testimony helped send members of the secret society to the gallows; Doyle reworked him as Birdy Edwards.

What is the name of Helen Stoner's stepfather in 'The Speckled Band'?

Dr Grimesby Roylott, Helen Stoner's stepfather, had beaten his native butler to death in India and keeps a cheetah and a baboon loose on the grounds of Stoke Moran.

What does the Red-Headed League pay Jabez Wilson to copy?

Encyclopaedia Britannica: the well-paid copying job was a ruse to keep Wilson out of his shop for four hours a day while a tunnel was dug from his cellar to the bank behind it.

Which Eton-educated criminal, posing as a pawnbroker's assistant, tunnels towards a bank vault in 'The Red-Headed League'?

John Clay, grandson of a royal duke, is seized as he climbs out of the tunnel into the vault; Holmes had already rated him the fourth smartest man in London.

Which Poe story does the reasoning in 'The Dancing Men' closely resemble?

Holmes cracks the stick-figure cipher by frequency analysis — E is the commonest letter — just as Legrand decodes Captain Kidd's cipher in Poe's 'The Gold Bug'.

In 'The Blue Carbuncle', the gem is stolen from whose hotel suite?

The blue carbuncle vanished from the Countess of Morcar's rooms at the Hotel Cosmopolitan, and the plumber John Horner was wrongly arrested for the theft.

Which trainer of the racehorse Silver Blaze is found dead the morning the horse vanishes?

John Straker, trainer at King's Pyland, was found dead on the moor with his skull smashed; the bookmaker Fitzroy Simpson was arrested before Holmes showed the horse itself had killed Straker.

Which butler is caught studying the Musgrave family papers in 'The Musgrave Ritual'?

The butler Brunton, caught by Reginald Musgrave rifling the family papers at night, works out the ritual's riddle and is later found dead in the vault it led to.

Which missing man does Holmes investigate in 'The Man with the Twisted Lip'?

Neville St. Clair, a prosperous suburbanite, vanishes from an opium den; Holmes proves he is the beggar Hugh Boone, whose begging earns him more than any honest job.

From which city was the fatal letter to Elias Openshaw postmarked in 'The Five Orange Pips'?

Pondicherry was followed by Dundee for Elias's brother Joseph and east London for his nephew John; from the three seaport postmarks Holmes deduces that the sender is aboard a ship.

In 'His Last Bow', set on the eve of the First World War, Holmes traps a spy for which country?

Germany: Holmes spent two years posing as the bitter Irish-American Altamont to win the trust of the Kaiser's spy Von Bork, feeding him false naval secrets before seizing him.

Where was Arthur Cadogan West's body found in 'The Bruce-Partington Plans'?

West's body lay beside the Underground tracks near Aldgate station; seven of the ten Bruce-Partington submarine papers were in his pocket, and Holmes showed he had been placed on a carriage roof.

Which disease does the 'dying' Holmes quiz Watson about in 'The Dying Detective'?

Feigning 'a coolie disease from Sumatra', Holmes asks Watson what he knows of Tapanuli fever — Tapanuli being a region of Sumatra — to convince him the case is beyond a London doctor.

Who is Holmes's 'worst man in London'?

Charles Augustus Milverton demands £7,000 for Lady Eva Blackwell's letters; Holmes and Watson, burgling his house, watch one of his victims empty her revolver into him, and tell the police nothing.

Which young lawyer is accused of murdering builder Jonas Oldacre?

John Hector McFarlane, a young solicitor, is arrested after Jonas Oldacre names him heir and then vanishes; Holmes smokes the hidden Oldacre out with a fake fire.

Whose ten-year-old son disappears from the Priory School?

The Duke of Holdernesse's heir, Lord Saltire, vanishes with the German master Heidegger and a bicycle; Holmes finds the kidnap was planned by the Duke's own secretary, who is his illegitimate son.

In which county are Holmes and Watson holidaying in 'The Devil's Foot'?

Holmes is sent to Cornwall in spring 1897 to rest his health, lodging near Poldhu Bay, when the Tregennis siblings are found driven mad or dead by the fumes of devil's-foot root.

Holmes refuses what honour in June 1902, per 'The Three Garridebs'?

A knighthood: Watson dates the refusal to June 1902, the very year Doyle accepted his own, which he put down to his pamphlet defending Britain's conduct in the Boer War.

Which two stories does Holmes narrate without Watson?

The Blanched Soldier and The Lion's Mane, both in The Case-Book, are told by Holmes himself; with Watson away he writes 'I must act as my own chronicler' and admits the job is harder than he had thought.

What kills science teacher Fitzroy McPherson in 'The Lion's Mane'?

McPherson was stung by a lion's mane jellyfish, Cyanea capillata, while bathing; he gasps 'the lion's mane' before dying, welts curving across his back as if from a whip.

Whom does banker Alexander Holder catch holding the damaged beryl coronet?

Arthur Holder, his son, had in fact just wrestled the coronet back from the real thief, and stayed silent under arrest to shield his cousin Mary, who had passed it out of a window to her lover.

The stolen naval treaty in Percy Phelps's case was between England and which country?

The secret treaty was between England and Italy, and the French or Russian embassy would have paid an immense sum for it; Percy 'Tadpole' Phelps was Watson's old schoolfellow.

Which story is notable for Holmes's deduction proving wrong?

In 'The Yellow Face' Holmes wrongly deduces that Effie Munro's first husband is alive and blackmailing her; the truth is her hidden daughter, and he tells Watson to whisper 'Norbury' if he ever grows overconfident.

What does Susan Cushing receive in the post in 'The Cardboard Box'?

Susan Cushing opens a cardboard box posted from Belfast holding two severed human ears in salt, meant for her sister Sarah by the sailor Jim Browner.

Which famous cry does Holmes use to rouse Watson from bed at the start of 'The Abbey Grange'?

The game is afoot: Holmes shakes Watson awake with it by candlelight on a frosty winter morning, and ten minutes later the pair are in a cab bound for Charing Cross and a murder in Kent.

Which Prime Minister brings Holmes the case of the stolen letter in 'The Second Stain'?

Lord Bellinger, 'twice Premier of Britain', fears the missing letter from a foreign potentate could mean war; Holmes slips it back into the dispatch box so that it seems never to have left.

Which diamond thief attacks a wax effigy of Holmes in 'The Mazarin Stone'?

Count Negretto Sylvius, who has the Mazarin diamond, raises his cane at the wax Holmes in the window before the real one steps out; the page Billy had shown Watson the dummy.

Who hires Holmes to clear governess Grace Dunbar in 'Thor Bridge'?

Neil Gibson, the Gold King — an American magnate and one-time senator — hires Holmes to clear Grace Dunbar of shooting his wife, who in fact killed herself to frame the governess.

Where had Professor Presbury secretly travelled in 'The Creeping Man'?

Presbury slipped away to Prague to obtain a rejuvenating serum from the mysterious Lowenstein, returning with a carved wooden box and a changed, creeping personality.

Robert Ferguson's second wife in 'The Sussex Vampire' is from which country?

Peru: Ferguson's wife is caught with blood on her lips at her baby's neck, but Holmes shows she was sucking poison from a wound her jealous stepson Jacky had made with a South American arrow.

What odd condition is attached to Violet Hunter's governess job at the Copper Beeches?

The condition is that she must cut her hair short: Rucastle raised the salary to £120 a year for it, so Violet Hunter could pass at a window for his imprisoned daughter Alice.

In 'A Case of Identity', who is the vanished fiancé Hosmer Angel really?

Hosmer Angel was Mary Sutherland's stepfather James Windibank in disguise, courting her in tinted glasses and whiskers so she would pine single and he could keep enjoying her £100 a year.

Sir James Damery's unnamed 'illustrious client' is heavily implied to be whom?

King Edward VII is the usual reading: Watson glimpses armorial bearings on Sir James's brougham, and the case opens in September 1902, weeks after the coronation that August.

What is Josiah Amberley's former trade in 'The Retired Colourman'?

Amberley had been junior partner in Brickfall and Amberley, makers of artistic materials — an art supply dealer — and Watson finds the retired man busily painting his own house to mask the smell of gas.

Doyle took only one wicket in his first-class cricket career, dismissing which Victorian batting great?

W. G. Grace had made 110 for London County at Crystal Palace in 1900 when Doyle, bowling for the MCC, had him caught; Doyle put it down to good luck against 'the greatest of all cricketers'.

Which party did Doyle twice stand for in parliamentary elections?

Liberal Unionist: Doyle called himself a Liberal who could not support Gladstone's Irish policy, and he lost both times he stood, at Edinburgh Central in 1900 and in the Hawick Burghs in 1906.

Doyle spent seven months of 1880 as surgeon aboard what kind of ship?

Whaler: aboard the Hope of Peterhead in the Arctic he fell into the icy sea three times in one day, and had to answer to 'the great northern diver' for a long time afterwards.

Doyle set up his first medical practice in 1882 in which seaside area?

Doyle hung his plate at 1 Bush Villas in Southsea, Portsmouth, in 1882 with less than £10 to his name, and wrote A Study in Scarlet there while waiting for patients.

Which magician's friendship with Doyle collapsed over spiritualism in the 1920s?

Harry Houdini's exposés of fraudulent mediums wrecked the friendship: Doyle, a committed spiritualist, refused to credit them, and the two fell out in public.

Which speculative-fiction subgenre took its name from Doyle's 1912 Professor Challenger novel?

Lost world: Doyle's 1912 novel sent Professor Challenger to a South American plateau where dinosaurs survive, and Michael Crichton reused its title in homage for his Jurassic Park sequel.

Which Napoleonic soldier starred in Doyle's humorous stories?

Brigadier Gerard, a vain but gallant hussar who tells his own tall tales, was founded largely, Doyle said, on the memoirs of Napoleon's real General Marbot.

Doyle publicly championed pictures taken by two Yorkshire girls in 1917 that appeared to show what?

Fairies: Doyle used the Cottingley pictures to illustrate a Strand article in 1920, but the figures were paper cut-outs held up with hatpins, as the cousins admitted in the 1980s.

Doyle's own account popularised the mystery of which abandoned ship, adding fictional details?

Doyle's 1884 story 'J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement' turned the Mary Celeste, found drifting in 1872, into legend, spelling it 'Marie Celeste' and inventing details, such as the boats left aboard, that were later repeated as fact.

Which BBC Sherlock special is set in Victorian London?

The Abominable Bride took its title from a case Doyle only mentions in passing, 'Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife'.

Which Sherlock character is a pathologist at Barts Hospital?

Molly Hooper, played by Louise Brealey, was written as a one-off to help introduce Sherlock, but Brealey was so good that the writers kept bringing her back.

In 'The Speckled Band', what does the deadly 'band' of the title turn out to be?

A swamp adder: the killer sends the snake through a ventilator and down a dummy bell-rope to the bed below, until Holmes lashes it with his cane and it turns back and bites its master.

Which future Doctor Who star auditioned unsuccessfully for Watson in BBC's Sherlock?

Matt Smith was the first actor seen for Watson and was judged too 'barmy' for a part that needed someone straighter; shortly afterwards he was cast as the Eleventh Doctor.

Which TV illusionist appears as himself in the first episode of Sherlock's third series?

Derren Brown cameos in 'The Empty Hearse' (2014), hypnotising Watson on the pavement in one of the fan theories about how Sherlock survived the fall.

Which Sherlock episode won Cumberbatch and Freeman 2014 Emmys?

His Last Vow was entered as a television movie, and its writer won as well, so a single 90-minute episode took three Emmys for acting and writing.

Whose voice, from a 1966 recording, was used for Sherlock Holmes in The Great Mouse Detective?

Basil Rathbone's reading of 'The Red-Headed League', recorded in 1966, a year before his death, was sampled for the off-screen Holmes in Disney's 1986 film.

Which Doyle story mentions 'Basil' as one of Holmes's aliases?

In 'The Adventure of Black Peter' Holmes poses as 'Captain Basil', a sea captain hiring harpooners, to lure the killer of Peter Carey to Baker Street.

Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) was the first feature to include what?

The stained-glass knight that leaps from a church window was the first fully computer-generated character in a feature film, created by Lucasfilm's computer graphics group that became Pixar.

Who wrote the screenplay for Young Sherlock Holmes?

Chris Columbus, fresh from writing Gremlins and The Goonies, said he wanted to show why Holmes became so cold and alone, so his script gives the schoolboy detective a first love to lose.

Who plays a 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes (2015)?

Ian McKellen's Holmes, long retired in 1947, is trying to write the true account of his last case because he is unhappy with the version Watson published, yet he can no longer recall how it ended.

Who plays Holmes's housekeeper Mrs Munro in Mr. Holmes?

Laura Linney plays the widowed housekeeper Mrs Munro, who accepts a hotel job elsewhere and plans to take her son Roger with her just as the boy grows devoted to the old detective.

Enola Holmes adapts novels by which author?

Nancy Springer invented Enola: Doyle never gave Holmes a sister, so the teenage heroine of The Case of the Missing Marquess and its sequels is entirely her own creation.

Who plays Sherlock Holmes, older brother of the title character, in Netflix's 2020 film Enola Holmes?

Henry Cavill's warmer Holmes prompted the Conan Doyle estate to sue Netflix, arguing that a Sherlock who shows emotion belonged only to the last stories, which were still in copyright.

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, which butterfly collector turns out to be the hound's master?

Jack Stapleton, secretly a Baskerville cousin with a claim on the estate, passes his wife off as his sister and daubs a huge dog with phosphorus, then vanishes into the Grimpen Mire.

How long is the 1900 film Sherlock Holmes Baffled?

Sherlock Holmes Baffled runs about 30 seconds, made by American Mutoscope and Biograph for hand-cranked Mutoscope arcade machines; it is the earliest known film to feature Holmes.

In 'The Blue Carbuncle', the stolen gem turns up inside which Christmas bird?

A goose: the thief hid the gem by feeding it to one of his sister's geese, then carried off the wrong bird; Holmes lets him go, remarking that 'it is the season of forgiveness'.

Which patriotic initials does a bored Holmes shoot into the wall of his Baker Street rooms?

V.R., for Victoria Regina: Watson complains that Holmes would sit in an armchair with a hair-trigger pistol and a hundred cartridges and pick the letters out in bullet-pocks.

Which Holmes trademark came from Sidney Paget's Strand illustrations rather than from Doyle's text?

The deerstalker is Paget's choice: Doyle's text gives Holmes only a 'close-fitting cloth cap' in one story and an 'ear-flapped travelling-cap' in another, and the word never occurs in the stories.

The star of the 1939-46 Holmes films was born in 1892 in which city?

The star was born in Johannesburg in 1892 to British parents, who took him to England as a small boy after his father was accused of spying for Britain in the run-up to the Boer War.

Which two swashbucklers did the star of the 1940s Holmes films duel on screen?

Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power both got to beat him: his villains lose the duels in Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Mark of Zorro, though he was the skilled, experienced fencer.

In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, who helps Holmes beat his drug addiction?

Watson lures Holmes to Vienna, where Sigmund Freud hypnotises him out of his addiction; the 1974 novel, framed as a lost Watson manuscript, was filmed in 1976 with Alan Arkin as Freud.

Which animals populate the 1984–85 Holmes anime partly directed by Hayao Miyazaki?

Sherlock Hound, a Japanese–Italian co-production, casts its Holmes, Watson and nearly everyone else as dogs; Hayao Miyazaki directed six episodes before a dispute with the Doyle estate halted production.

Who directed The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), starring Robert Stephens as the detective?

Billy Wilder shot a far longer film, but the studio cut whole episodes before release, and despite repeated searches much of the missing footage has never been found.

What is the twist in the 1988 Holmes comedy Without a Clue?

Watson is the genius; Holmes an actor: Ben Kingsley's doctor invents the detective so that sleuthing will not harm his medical career, then has to hire Michael Caine's washed-up actor to play him.

Hammer's 1959 film of The Hound of the Baskervilles, starring Peter Cushing, was the first adaptation shot how?

In colour: Terence Fisher's film was the first adaptation of the novel shot in colour, and Christopher Lee, its Sir Henry, went on to play both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes in later films.

In A Scandal in Bohemia, what was Irene Adler's profession when she starred at La Scala?

Opera singer Irene Adler was a contralto who became prima donna of the Imperial Opera of Warsaw, where the future King of Bohemia fell for her.

What does Watson throw through Irene Adler's window on Holmes's signal in A Scandal in Bohemia?

A smoke rocket with a self-lighting cap at each end filled the parlour, and the cry of fire sent Adler rushing to the one thing she valued most.

How is Irene Adler dressed when she trails Holmes home at night in A Scandal in Bohemia?

As a young man in a long coat she walked right past his door and wished him good night; trained for the stage, she often used male dress for its freedom.

In A Scandal in Bohemia, what has Watson seen hundreds of times yet cannot put a number to?

The steps to 221B number seventeen, as Holmes knows because he has both seen and observed, while Watson had climbed them for years without ever noticing.

In A Scandal in Bohemia, what does Holmes call a capital mistake to do before one has any data?

Theorise too early, Holmes warns Watson, and you start bending the facts to fit your idea instead of shaping the idea to fit the facts.

What unexpected part does a disguised Holmes play at Irene Adler's wedding in A Scandal in Bohemia?

Witness to the marriage, Holmes was paid a sovereign by the bride, which he planned to wear on his watch chain as a memento.

As what does Holmes disguise himself to be carried into Irene Adler's villa in A Scandal in Bohemia?

A clergyman, kindly and simple-minded, was a part Holmes played so completely that Watson felt the stage had been robbed of a fine performer.

Which language's verb order gives away the author of an unsigned letter in A Scandal in Bohemia?

German verbs pile up at the end of a sentence, and the message's stiff phrasing told Holmes its writer's homeland before the visitor arrived.

Which periodical first published A Scandal in Bohemia, the earliest Sherlock Holmes short story?

The Strand Magazine ran it in its July 1891 issue with ten illustrations, the first of the tales later collected as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

Which disguise does Holmes wear in A Scandal in Bohemia to gather gossip near Irene Adler's villa?

A stable groom out of work found a ready welcome among the ostlers, who traded him all the local gossip for help rubbing down their horses.

Under which assumed name does the masked King of Bohemia first introduce himself to Sherlock Holmes?

Count Von Kramm fooled nobody: Holmes calmly addressed him as Your Majesty, and the King tore off his mask and admitted who he was.

Which English lawyer does Irene Adler marry in haste during A Scandal in Bohemia?

Godfrey Norton, of the Inner Temple, called on her at least once a day, and the pair raced to church with only minutes to spare.

In A Scandal in Bohemia, where in her sitting room does Irene Adler hide what the King wants back?

Behind a sliding panel in the wall was the recess she darted to during the staged alarm, and one glimpse of it was all Holmes needed.

Which reward from the grateful King does Holmes turn down at the end of A Scandal in Bohemia?

An emerald ring was pulled from the King's own hand, but Holmes asked for a keepsake of Irene Adler instead and left without a handshake.

In A Scandal in Bohemia, the King is about to marry a daughter of the king of which land?

Scandinavia's fictional king had a daughter, Clotilde, whose family was so strict that a shadow of doubt about her suitor would end the engagement.

What is the name of Irene Adler's villa in St John's Wood in A Scandal in Bohemia?

Briony Lodge was a small two-storey villa on Serpentine Avenue, with window catches that Holmes said a child could open.

At which real London hotel does the King of Bohemia stay under an alias in A Scandal in Bohemia?

The Langham was London's largest and most modern hotel when the Prince of Wales opened it in 1865, and Doyle used it again in The Sign of the Four.

What does Holmes call his landlady in A Scandal in Bohemia, a name that still puzzles fans?

Mrs Turner brings in a tray of food in this one tale, and fans still argue whether she was standing in for the usual landlady or was simply the author's slip.

Which famous biographer does Holmes liken Watson to in A Scandal in Bohemia, insisting that he stay?

Boswell wrote the celebrated life of Samuel Johnson, so Holmes was naming Watson the chronicler he could not do without.

In The Speckled Band, what kind of creature do Julia Stoner's dying words about a 'band' describe?

A snake: Holmes calls it a swamp adder, the deadliest in India, after a camp of gipsies on the estate first put him on the wrong scent.

Which two exotic animals roam the grounds of Helen Stoner's home in The Speckled Band?

A cheetah and a baboon, shipped from India by a correspondent, are why the Stoner twins locked their bedroom doors every night.

Why does Helen Stoner's stepfather want her dead before her wedding in The Speckled Band?

To keep her inheritance: her late mother's will gave each daughter £250 a year on marriage, out of an income that had shrunk to about £750.

Which sound in the dead of night troubles Julia Stoner shortly before she dies in The Speckled Band?

A low whistle at about three each morning was the signal calling the deadly visitor back before daylight could reveal it.

Which item does Holmes link to the training of the deadly creature in The Speckled Band?

A saucer of milk was the reward that taught it to come back when called; Holmes spotted it in a household that kept no cat.

Besides a toothbrush, what does Holmes tell Watson to bring on their trip in The Speckled Band?

His revolver, an Eley's No. 2, struck Holmes as a sound argument to carry against a man of such alarming strength.

Which fitting beside Helen Stoner's bed does Holmes find is a dummy in The Speckled Band?

The bell-rope rang nothing: it hung from a hook up on the wall and reached the pillow, a ladder for something to climb down.

In The Speckled Band, what links Helen Stoner's room to her stepfather's, as cigar fumes hinted?

A ventilator opened into the next bedroom instead of the outside air, a builder's folly that Holmes had predicted before he arrived.

What odd fact about the bed in Helen Stoner's room strikes Holmes in The Speckled Band?

It is clamped down, so the sleeper can never shift away from the one spot that the killer's whole plan depends on.

Where is the deadly creature of The Speckled Band kept hidden during the day at Helen Stoner's home?

In an iron safe: the metallic clang Helen heard as her twin lay dying was its door being slammed shut in haste.

What crime sent Helen Stoner's stepfather to prison in India before The Speckled Band begins?

Killing his butler in a rage over household thefts in Calcutta nearly earned him a death sentence; he served a long term instead.

How did Helen Stoner's mother die, eight years before the events of The Speckled Band?

In a rail accident close to Crewe, soon after the family came home from India; her widower then shut himself away in the old family seat.

Which crumbling Surrey mansion is home to Helen Stoner and her stepfather in The Speckled Band?

Stoke Moran was two hundred years old and heavily mortgaged, with one wing in ruins and only a few acres of bramble left of the estate.

In The Speckled Band, what in Helen Stoner's glove shows Holmes that she came by train?

A return ticket's unused half showed in her left glove, while fresh mud on her sleeve told him she had first ridden in an open cart.

In The Speckled Band, Holmes cites Palmer and Pritchard, real poisoners from which profession?

Doctors gone wrong are the first of criminals, Holmes says: both men were hanged for poisoning, Pritchard before a huge Glasgow crowd.

What excuse moves Helen Stoner into her dead twin's bedroom in The Speckled Band?

Building repairs had pierced her bedroom wall, though Holmes saw at once that the end wall needed no work at all.

What was found in Julia Stoner's right hand after her mysterious death in The Speckled Band?

A burnt match showed she had struck a light and glimpsed her attacker, which is why her last words described what she saw.

In A Case of Identity, what does Holmes say has as much individuality as a person's handwriting?

A typewriter wears unevenly, Holmes explains, and sixteen quirks shared by Hosmer Angel's love letters traced them to one office machine.

How does Hosmer Angel vanish on the morning of his wedding to Mary Sutherland in A Case of Identity?

From inside a cab: he climbed into a four-wheeler bound for the church, and when it pulled up the driver found nobody there.

Which accessory does Hosmer Angel always wear, supposedly against the glare, in A Case of Identity?

Tinted glasses, bushy whiskers and a whisper blamed on a childhood illness all struck Holmes as the trappings of a disguise.

Why does the trickster unmasked by Holmes in A Case of Identity walk away unpunished?

He has broken no law, as he boasts himself, so Holmes can only predict that such a man will one day end on the gallows.