The Question
Did the book play fair?
The Hound of the Baskervilles ends with a big reveal. The killer is someone you probably liked, and the monster is not a monster. So I went back through all fifteen chapters, and I found eleven clues planted before Holmes explains a thing. Each one has a chapter number, so you can check me. Some were hiding in a single line, and some are spread over a whole scene.
This is full spoilers for the ending. If you have not finished the book, go read it first.
The Rules
Here is the answer to hold in your head. The killer is Stapleton, the friendly butterfly collector on the moor. He is a hidden Baskerville, and he killed Sir Charles with a painted dog. The woman who passes as his sister is his wife.
Holmes says this out loud in chapters twelve, thirteen and fifteen. So I only count a clue if it shows up before that. A few of the best pieces of evidence, the kind that make a reread fun, were kept from the reader until the end, and I will flag those too.
The Waiting Man
Clue one. Chapter three, the waiting man. Dr. Mortimer says Sir Charles stood at the moor gate for five or ten minutes before he died, because cigar ash dropped twice. Holmes takes it one step further. A man in damp weather does not wait unless he is waiting for someone.
Mortimer also says the houndβs prints were about twenty yards from the body, and the animal had not come near it. In my reading, a dog that never touches its victim is a dog with a master.
The Black Sheep
Clue two. Chapter three again, the black sheep. Mortimer lists the family. Sir Charles had two younger brothers. The youngest, Rodger, was the wild one, and he looked, Mortimer says, like the family portrait of old Hugo. He fled to Central America and died there in eighteen seventy-six.
Chapter five adds that he died unmarried. So the book tells you twice that this branch of the family has ended. In my reading, a writer does not stress a dead man twice, unless the dead man matters.
Two Senders
Clue three. Chapter four, two senders. Sir Henry gets a letter made of cut-out words telling him to keep away from the moor. Holmes says the sender is not ill-disposed toward him, because it is a warning.
Yet the same chapter has a bearded man in a cab, who follows them and then flees. We assume it is one enemy. It is two different hands, one warning and one hunting, and the book puts both in front of you in a single chapter.
The Boots
Clue four. Chapters four and five, the boots. Sir Henry loses a new brown boot, and the next day, an old black one. The new one turns up under a cabinet. The old one stays missing until chapter fourteen, when Holmes pulls it out of the Mire.
Holmes calls the first theft singularly useless. The thief gave back the new boot and kept the worn one. In chapter fifteen Holmes says that is what proved to him the dog was real, because a dog needs a scent, and a new boot has none.
The Square Beard
Clue five. Chapters five and six, the beard. The cab driver describes a black beard, cut square. Then in chapter six, Barrymore the butler is introduced with a square black beard.
That is a decoy. Holmes has already said in chapter four that the beard was probably false. Still, the book makes you suspect Barrymore for chapters, while Stapleton, who is clean-shaven, goes unwatched.
The Sisterβs Warning
Clue six. Chapter seven, the sister. Miss Stapleton rushes up to Watson and tells him to go back to London at once. She thought he was Sir Henry. When her brother appears, she changes the subject, and he greets her coldly.
Watson also notes that they could not be more different, his hair and eyes light, hers dark. In my reading, she is not afraid of the moor. She is afraid of her brother.
The Schoolmaster
Clue seven. Also chapter seven. Stapleton tells Watson he once ran a school in the north country. An epidemic killed three boys, the school failed, and his money was swallowed up.
He is telling the truth about this, and that is his mistake. In chapter twelve, Holmes says that single true piece of autobiography is what let him trace the man. A schoolmaster, he says, is easy to find.
The Moorβs Voice
Clue eight. Chapters seven and nine, the voice. Stapleton shows Watson the Grimpen Mire and says he has found the paths through it. Then a long moan rolls across the moor, and he calls it a bittern, a bird that is hardly found in England anymore.
Later, in chapter nine, Watson tells Sir Henry that Stapleton was with him the last time he heard it. So the first time anyone hears the cry, the naturalist is at his side, with a ready explanation.
The Sudden Rage
Clue nine. Chapters eight and nine, the rage. Watson notices Stapleton looks disapproving whenever Sir Henry courts his sister. Then he runs at them across the moor, like a madman.
That afternoon he apologizes, and asks Sir Henry to wait three months. It looks like a protective brother. In chapter fifteen Holmes says that encouraging the visits was part of the plan, which makes the anger a slip.
L. L.
Clue ten. Chapters ten and eleven, the burned letter. Barrymore tells Watson that Sir Charles got a letter signed L. L., asking him to the gate by ten oβclock. Mortimer names Laura Lyons, and says Stapleton helped her.
In chapter eleven, Mrs. Lyons says herself that Stapleton, an intimate friend of Sir Charles, brought her case to his attention. The man who helped her is the man who needed Sir Charles at that gate.
The Spaniel
Clue eleven. Chapters one and ten, the spaniel. In chapter one, Holmes guesses that Mortimer owns a curly-haired spaniel, and he is right. In chapter ten, Mortimer is upset, because his spaniel has wandered onto the moor and not come back.
In chapter fourteen, Holmes finds a skeleton in a cottage on the island in the mire. It is a curly-haired spaniel. The hound was kept there, and the book never says how the spaniel died.
The Hidden Clues
Now the three the book kept from you. First, the paper of the warning letter smelled of white jessamine, a scent Holmes noticed in chapter four. He does not tell us until chapter fifteen.
Second, the old manservant at Merripit House. He turns up in chapter seven as a wizened old man. His name, Anthony, and his lisp, appear only in chapter fifteen. Third, the hotel where Stapleton stayed in London was one the boy Cartwright had checked, and Holmes only says so at the end.
The Verdict
So, is it fair? Nine of the eleven clues point at Stapleton or his plan. One is a decoy, the beard. One tells you the warning came from a different hand.
In my reading, that is fair for who and why. Everything you need to suspect Stapleton is on the page by chapter eleven. The how, the paint, the scent and the wife, Holmes holds back, so you need the last chapters to see it. It plays better on a second read, when you can watch what Stapleton says every time he appears, and notice how often he is the one handing Watson an explanation.
Subscribe
If this helped, subscribe, and tap like. And tell me in the comments which clue you caught.
