The Adventure of the Deptford Horror

The Adventure of the Deptford Horror is a Sherlock Holmes story by Adrian Conan Doyle. The story was published in the 1954 collection, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes and Watson are called to a house in Deptford, due to the concerns of a young woman about her safety. Several of her relatives have died in the past few years of heart attacks. A relative who trains canaries also lives in the house. Holmes is not able to detect anything amiss until he and Watson are en route home, but he suddenly solves the mystery and returns to Deptford to save the life of the young woman from a death by heart failure.^[1]

For a time, we sat in silence. Our cab had reached the beginnings of the City and I was gazing out of the window, my fingers drumming idly on the half–lowered pane, which was already befogged with moisture, when my thoughts were recalled by a sharp ejaculation from my companion. He was staring fixedly over my shoulder.

"The glass," he muttered.

Over the clouded surface there now lay an intricate tracery of whorls and lines where my finger had wandered aimlessly.

Holmes clapped his hand to his brow and, throwing open the other window, he shouted an order to the cabby.

This apocryphal story was inspired by the mention in "The Adventure of Black Peter" of Holmes's "arrest of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East-End of London." In this story, Wilson is not arrested, but this discrepancy is explained as an error due to Dr Watson.

References

↑ The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, Chapter 11

Sherlock Holmes Novels by people other than Arthur Conan Doyle

Young Sherlock Holmes by Andy Lane	Death Cloud (2010) Red Leech (2010) Black Ice (2011) Fire Storm (2011)

The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr	"The Adventure of the Seven Clocks" (1954) "The Adventure of the Gold Hunter" (1954) "The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers" (1954) "The Adventure of the Highgate Miracle" (1954) "The Adventure of the Black Baronet" (1954) "The Adventure of the Sealed Room" (1954 "The Adventure of Foulkes Rath" (1954) "The Adventure of the Abbas Ruby" (1954) "The Adventure of the Dark Angels" (1954) "The Adventure of the Two Women" (1954) "The Adventure of the Deptford Horror" (1954) "The Adventure of the Red Widow" (1954)

by Nicholas Meyer	The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1974) The West End Horror (1976) The Canary Trainer (1993)

Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King	The Beekeeper's Apprentice A Monstrous Regiment of Women A Letter of Mary The Moor O Jerusalem Justice Hall The Game Locked Rooms The Language of Bees The God of the Hive Pirate King Garment of Shadows Dreaming Spies

The Boy Sherlock Holmes by Shane Peacock	Death in the Air (2008)

by Barrie Roberts	Sherlock Holmes and the Man from Hell Sherlock Holmes and the Railway Maniac

by Anthony Horowitz	The House of Silk (2011) Moriarty (2014)

Other works	Pursuit of the House-Boat (1897) A Double Barrelled Detective Story (1902) The Ultimate Crime (1976) The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (1978) "The Doctor's Case" (1987) All-Consuming Fire (1994) The Strange Case of Mrs. Hudson's Cat (1997) The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes (1999) Shadows Over Baker Street (2003) "A Study in Emerald" (2003) Sherlock Holmes: The Way of All Flesh (2004) A Slight Trick of the Mind (2005) The Italian Secretary (2005) Erasing Sherlock (2006) Sherlock Holmes: The Unauthorized Biography (2006) Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (2007) The Boy Sherlock Holmes (2007–12) Gaslight series (2008) Dust and Shadow (2009) The Devil and Sherlock Holmes (2010) Sherlock Holmes: The Breath of God (2011) Dead Man's Land (2013)

Parody	The Enola Holmes Mysteries Everybody's Favorite Duck The Final Solution The Fossil Island Lizzie Newton: Victorian Mysteries Sherlock Bones Stoker and Holmes Thuppariyum Sambu

Related	Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

The Adventure of the Deptford Horror

See also

References