The Science of Sherlock Holmes
From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, The Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases
Chapter One
Dialogue with the Dead
"You can take him to the mortuary now."
-Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet
London in 1887. Cobblestones and narrow, twisting streets.
Hansom cabs driven on urgent errands, rumbling past public
houses bursting with noise and smoke. Bearded men wearing
capes, carrying walking sticks with silver heads. Vast museums
holding jumbled curiosities, visited by veiled ladies draped in furs
and discreetly scented with lavender-ladies whose rigid carriage
somehow implies they expect to be embraced rarely and reverently
by their husbands but firmly and constantly by their corsets.
Street women florid with gin. Homeless and diseased, laden
with every garment they own, agitated by lice, they move heavily,
heading to the public house, the doss-house, the workhouse, the
river ...
And the river is the slow-moving Thames. It penetrates the
city, its water ... read full excerpt from The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear, The Real Forensics Behind the Great Detective's Greatest Cases ebook
