The Hook
Here is a strange fact about the most famous Sherlock Holmes novel. After the first few pages of chapter six, Holmes is gone. He does not come back until the very last line of chapter eleven. In between, the book runs on Dr. Watson’s letters, a lonely house, a giant dog, and a boot that goes missing.
This is a full summary of The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter by chapter, and it spoils the whole mystery. If you want to solve it yourself, read it first. I tracked every clue as I went, and those have their own video.
Which Edition
I read the Project Gutenberg text, ebook number two thousand, eight hundred and fifty-two. Its release date is the first of October, two thousand one. That is Gutenberg’s date, not the book’s. I give no first publication year, because the text does not state one and I could not source it twice.
It has fifteen chapters, and by my count about fifty-nine thousand, six hundred words. Before chapter one comes a short letter to a friend named Robinson. The author thanks him for a West-Country legend, which is where the tale began.
The Stick
Chapter one. Holmes and Watson study a walking stick left behind by a visitor, and Watson tries to read the owner from it. Holmes says most of Watson’s guesses are wrong. Then the owner walks in. He is Dr. James Mortimer, a country doctor from the village of Grimpen, on Dartmoor.
Chapter two. Mortimer brings an old family manuscript, dated seventeen forty-two. It tells of Hugo Baskerville, a cruel squire who chased a girl across the moor, and who was found dead, with a huge black beast tearing at his throat. Since then, the family has had a hound.
Mortimer then reads a newspaper account of a recent death. Sir Charles Baskerville, the last master of Baskerville Hall, was found dead in his yew alley. The inquest called it a weak heart.
Chapter three. The doctor admits what he left out. Near the body, he saw the footprints of a gigantic hound. And he wants advice about the heir, Sir Henry, arriving from Canada within the hour.
Baker Street
Chapter four. Sir Henry has already had a letter. It is made of words cut from a newspaper, and it tells him to keep away from the moor. Holmes names the paper, the Times, and the very column the words came from. Sir Henry has also lost a boot from a brand new pair.
Chapter five. Holmes and Watson follow the two men, and spot a bearded man in a cab, who escapes. Holmes sends a messenger boy to check hotel wastebaskets, and that fails. The cab driver arrives and says his passenger gave his name as Sherlock Holmes. Holmes laughs, and calls it a touch.
The brown boot reappears, but now a black boot is gone. Holmes cannot go to Devon himself, so he sends Watson with Sir Henry, and asks for careful reports.
Baskerville Hall
Chapter six. A convict named Selden has escaped from Princetown prison, and soldiers watch the roads. The Hall is gloomy, with two towers. The butler, Barrymore, a tall man with a square black beard, says he and his wife plan to leave. That night, Watson hears a woman sobbing.
Chapter seven. Barrymore denies it, but his wife’s eyes are red. Watson meets a naturalist named Stapleton, who warns him off the Grimpen Mire, where a pony is swallowed. They hear a long moan from the moor, which Stapleton blames on a bird.
Then Stapleton’s sister appears and tells Watson to go straight back to London. She had mistaken him for Sir Henry. Later, she says it was a whim.
Watson’s Reports
Chapters eight and nine are letters from Watson to Holmes. He describes the neighbours. Stapleton visits and takes them to the stones where Hugo died, and Sir Henry falls for Miss Stapleton. Stapleton plainly dislikes it. Then there is old Frankland, who loves lawsuits and spends his days with a telescope.
At night, Watson sees Barrymore with a candle at a window. The next night, he and Sir Henry follow. The candle is a signal to Mrs. Barrymore’s brother, who is Selden, the convict.
They chase Selden across the moor, and hear that eerie cry again. Then Watson sees a tall figure on a tor, standing still. Before he can point it out to Sir Henry, the man is gone.
The Diary
Chapter ten switches to Watson’s diary. Barrymore swears his brother-in-law is leaving the country, and he offers a fact about Sir Charles. His wife found a burned letter, signed L. L., asking him to be at the gate by ten o’clock.
Mortimer names Laura Lyons, Frankland’s daughter, who lives in a town called Coombe Tracey. His own spaniel has vanished on the moor.
Chapter eleven. Mrs. Lyons admits she wrote the letter, but says she never went. Frankland, bragging, shows Watson a boy carrying food across the moor. Watson finds the stone hut, with bedding and a note that reads, Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey. Then a voice says it is a lovely evening, and the tall figure is Sherlock Holmes.
Death On The Moor
Chapter twelve. Holmes has been on the moor all along, with a boy named Cartwright. He tells Watson that Miss Stapleton is really Stapleton’s wife. Then they hear a scream, and a deep, rumbling howl. They find a dead man in Sir Henry’s clothes. It is the convict, Selden, who was wearing the baronet’s old things.
Stapleton strolls up, sees the body, and is shaken. Holmes says they have no case against him, and plays along.
Chapter thirteen. Holmes spots a likeness between the painting of Hugo and Stapleton. He then pretends to leave for London, and has Sir Henry dine at Merripit House, and walk home alone across the moor. Mrs. Lyons learns Stapleton is married, and turns on him.
The Hound
Chapter fourteen. Holmes, Watson and the police detective Lestrade wait in the rocks near Merripit House. A fog begins to roll in from the mire. Sir Henry leaves the house alone, and the hound bursts out of the fog, with flames around its mouth.
Holmes and Watson shoot it dead. Sir Henry is unhurt, and the glow is phosphorus. They find Mrs. Stapleton tied up in a room of butterfly cases. Stapleton has fled into the Mire, and the book gives only a boot, and the hint of a grave.
The Retrospection
Chapter fifteen is Holmes explaining it all in Baker Street, in late November. Stapleton was a Baskerville, the son of the black-sheep brother who fled to South America. He married a woman from Costa Rica, ran a school in Yorkshire under the name Vandeleur, and when it failed, he moved south and called himself Stapleton. He learned that only two lives stood between him and the estate.
His wife, passing as his sister, was the decoy. Sir Charles was lured to the gate with a letter that Laura Lyons was talked into writing. The hound was bought in London, kept in the mire, and painted to glow. The warning letter in London was cut out by Mrs. Stapleton, and the boot was taken to give the dog a scent.
Holmes admits he used Sir Henry as bait, and that it was a reproach to his management of the case. Then he asks Watson to get ready, because he has a box at the opera.
By The Numbers
My counts, from the fifteen chapters. The word hound, or hounds, appears seventy-three times. Eleven of those are in chapter two, the legend. Holmes speaks on the page in chapters one to five, and again from the end of chapter eleven.
The moor, though, is the real lead. The word moor appears one hundred and sixty-one times. The dog is only the second biggest character.
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