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I’ve always enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes stories. I’ve read them all many times over the years. While The Adventure of Silver Blaze remains one of my favourites, the last time I read the story I took a rather more critical view of Conan Doyle’s plot than I had previously done. Here’s a précis of that plot.
Silver Blaze is 3/1 favourite for the Wessex Plate before he goes missing at which point his price drifts to 15/1 on the expectation he won’t start. Sherlock Holmes is summoned. He discovers the horse (with his white bits dyed brown) at the stables of Silas Brown, trainer of the second favourite Desborough. Brown is hiding Silver Blaze to prevent him running in the Plate thereby giving his own horse a much better chance of winning. Holmes then persuades Brown to keep Silver Blaze under wraps at his yard until raceday and to produce him for the start of the race. In the minutes before the off Silver Blaze, still disguised as all-brown, reappears. The horse is backed in from 15/1 to 5/4 and wins by 6 lengths from Desborough.
From where I sit, Holmes is an accessory after the fact to the crime of horse theft. He’s also guilty of concealing a horse with a view to manipulating its price in the betting market. On the balance of probabilities, although the author doesn’t tell us, Sherlock took 15/1 about a missing horse which he knew would start, and be sent off a very warm favourite. He’s been known to have a bet because he had one in the race following the Plate. Somebody should take a look at his betting accounts.
Furthermore, the rules of racing do not permit a horse to run against description i.e. if it has a silver blaze it must run with one. What the Winchester stewards were doing allowing his to happen one can only wonder.
The author’s 56th and last story to feature the tarnished detective is The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place, in which it is revealed that Dr Watson is something of a punter. The passage goes like this.
Holmes: By the way, Watson, you know something of racing?
Watson: I ought to. I pay for it with about half my wound pension.
Holmes: Then I’ll make you my Handy Guide to the Turf.
This a clear admission by Conan Doyle that Holmes can’t solve a case concerning a racehorse without riding roughshod over the Rules of Racing. The author obviously accepts, somewhat belatedly I have to say, that in future Holmes must defer to the far more astute Watson in such matters.
Wonderful stories, all of them.
Contact the BHA!
Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries are always worth a read. On the screen, the Holmes/Watson duo of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce have never been equalled for me, least of all by Benedict Cumberbatch & Martin Freeman’s modern reboot. Check out The House Of Fear (1945) for a wonderful example.
Incidentally, Silver Blaze, more a novella, contains Holmes’ quote about “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time” which was taken as the title for Mark Haddon’s excellent book about a teenager with autism.
“But the dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.”Mike
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