First published in the October 1891 issue of The Strand Magazine

First published in a collective in 1892 in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 

Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson, Inspector Lestrade, James McCarthy, Charles McCarthy, Alice Turner, John Turner

Case Date: June 1889

 

Storyline:

Watson’s experience of camp life in Afghanistan has left him a prompt and ready traveller, whose wants are few and simple, and he is able easily to cope with a breakfast-table summons to join Holmes on the platform at Paddington in ample time to board the 11.15 to the West Country. The case they are to investigate is apparently a simple one, and therefore not so: ‘The more featureless and commonplace a crime is, the more difficult it is to bring it home’, is an aphorism which Holmes has been known to utter more than once.

Two people had seen Charles McCarthy striding from his farmhouse in the direction of Boscombe Pool, and one of them had noticed his son, James McCarthy, follow shortly after him, carrying a gun. A child picking flowers had shortly after seen the two men quarrelling violently, and before much longer had elapsed the younger of them had come flying from the pool-gunless, hatless and bloodstained-with the news of his father’s murder by a person unknown. Not surprisingly, he is now the occupant of a cell, awaiting trial at the next Assizes. But Holmes has another observation for Watson to cogitate upon: “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”