The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
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| "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Arthur Conan Doyle |
| Released | 1910 |
| Series | His Last Bow |
| Client(s) | Mortimer Tregennis |
| Set in | 1897 |
| Villain(s) | Mortimer Tregennis, and arguably, Dr. Leon Sterndale |
The Adventure of the Devil's Foot, one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of eight stories in the cycle collected as His Last Bow.
[edit] Synopsis
Holmes and Dr. Watson find themselves in Cornwall one spring for the former’s health, but the holiday ends with a bizarre event. Mr. Mortimer Tregennis, a local gentleman, and Mr. Roundhay, the local vicar, come to Holmes to report that Tregennis’s two brothers have gone mad, and his sister has died. Tregennis had gone to visit them in their village,(Tredannick Wollas),played whist with them, and then left. When he came back this morning, he found them still sitting in their places at the table, the brothers, George and Owen, laughing and singing, and the sister, Brenda, dead. The housekeeper had discovered them in this state, and fainted. The vicar has not been to see yet. Tregennis says that he remembers one brother looking through the window, and then he himself turned to see some “movement” outside.
Mortimer Tregennis was once estranged from his siblings by the matter of dividing the proceeds from the sale of the family business, but he insists that all was forgiven, although he still lives apart from them. Indeed, everyone seemed to be in perfectly high spirits last night, and it is a mystery why Brenda died with such a ghastly look of horror on her face. The doctor who was summoned reckoned that she had been dead for six hours. He also collapsed into a chair for a while after arriving.
Holmes goes to the house in question and, apparently carelessly, kicks over a watering pot, soaking everyone’s feet. The housekeeper tells Holmes that she heard nothing in the night, and that the family had been particularly happy and prosperous lately. Holmes observes the remains of a fire in the fireplace. Tregennis explains that it was a cold, damp night.
Afterwards, Holmes lays the case out to Watson thus:
- Whatever happened to those people happened right after Tregennis left, for they had not moved and everything was in the same place;
- Mortimer Tregennis went swiftly back to the vicarage where he lives (a footprint sample was obtained in the watering pot “accident”);
- The only suggestion of an explanation — the “movement” — comes from Mortimer Tregennis;
- Given the weather, anyone appearing at the window and doing something horrifying enough to kill one and madden two would have had to trample the flowerbed, which is still intact, and come right up to the window;
- What on earth could this person have done to cause such horror?
None of this seems to make for an elementary case, but soon, new questions are raised. Dr. Leon Sterndale, the famous hunter and explorer, has chosen to miss his ship out of Plymouth to come back at news of this tragedy, the Tregennises being cousins of his. The vicar wired him with the news. He asks Holmes what his suspicions are, and is displeased when Holmes will not voice them. Holmes follows him discreetly after he leaves.
The morning after Holmes comes back to his room, apparently none the wiser for following Sterndale, the vicar arrives in a panic with the news that Mortimer Tregennis has now died in the same way as his sister. The two men, along with Watson, rush to Mortimer’s room, and find it foul and stuffy, even though the window has been opened. A lamp is burning on the table beside the dead man. Holmes rushes about, examining many things. The upstairs window seems especially interesting. He also scrapes some ashes out of the lamp, and puts them in an envelope. Holmes has already deduced how the victims died or went mad. It explains why people arriving later fainted or felt unwell in each case (a servant at the vicarage has also become sick).
He tests his hypothesis by buying a lamp like the one in Tregennis’s room. He lights it and puts in some of the “ashes” that he collected from the other lamp. The effect is immediate. It is clear that the smoke from this powder is a potent poison. Holmes and Watson get out of the room just in time.
It also seems clear to Holmes that Mortimer Tregennis killed his sister and maddened his brothers with this poison, but who killed him? Holmes’s investigation has made that quite clear. It is Dr. Leon Sterndale. He left physical evidence at the vicarage clearly implicating him. All that Holmes does not know is why Sterndale did it. Sterndale explains that he loved Brenda for years and killed Mortimer for what he had done. It also turns out that he knew about the poison long before Holmes. It is called Radix pedis diaboli (“Devil’s-foot root” in Latin), and he brought it from Africa as a curiosity, never meaning to use it. However, he once explained to Mortimer what it was and what it was capable of, and he apparently stole some to murder his siblings, throwing it on the fire that evening just before he left. Mortimer thought Sterndale would be at sea before news reached Plymouth. Sterndale, of course, recognized the poison’s effects from the vicar’s description of the tragedy, and deduced right away what had happened.
Holmes’s sympathies in this matter lie with Sterndale, and he tells him to go back to his work in Africa.
[edit] Commentary
The following exchange between Holmes and Dr. Leon Sterndale is considered one of the best quotes in the canon:
Sterndale: How do you know?
Holmes: I followed you.
Sterndale: I saw nobody!
Holmes: That is what you may expect to see if I follow you.
