The Valley of Fear

Summary

The Valley of Fear is the fourth and last Sherlock Holmes novel, and like A Study in Scarlet it is built in two parts: an English country-house mystery and a long American backstory. It opens in Baker Street with a cipher message from Porlock, an informer inside the organization of Professor Moriarty, warning that danger threatens one Douglas of Birlstone. Holmes breaks the code using an almanac, but before he can act Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard arrives with news that John Douglas has been killed at Birlstone Manor, an old moated house in Sussex, his head destroyed by a sawn-off shotgun. Beside the body lies a card marked 'V.V. 341', and on the dead man's forearm is a strange branded mark. Douglas's wife and his friend Cecil Barker give accounts that do not quite fit: the drawbridge was raised, a bloody print on the window sill suggests the murderer waded the moat, and Douglas's wedding ring is missing though another ring remains. Holmes notices that one dumb-bell is missing from a pair, sits alone in the study by night, and orders the moat drained. The surprise solution is that the dead man is not Douglas at all. Douglas, an American once called Birdy Edwards, killed the intruder who came to murder him and, with his wife and Barker, dressed the body in his own clothes to fake his death and escape his pursuers. The second part, 'The Scowrers', tells his story. In 1875 a young Irishman, John McMurdo, arrives in Vermissa Valley, a coal-mining district in Pennsylvania terrorized by a lodge of the Eminent Order of Freemen, known as the Scowrers, who extort, beat and murder. McMurdo joins and rises in the lodge under the brutal boss McGinty, but he is in fact a Pinkerton detective, Birdy Edwards, and he finally delivers the gang into the hands of the law. The epilogue reveals that the surviving gang hired Moriarty to find him, and that Douglas has been lost overboard at sea. Doyle based the Scowrers on the Molly Maguires of the Pennsylvania coalfields and on a Pinkerton agent's real infiltration. The novel was serialized in The Strand from September 1914 to May 1915.

Top Lessons

• Courage in disguise

  Birdy Edwards lives among murderers for months, pretending to be one of them, to bring them to justice. The book asks what it costs to fight evil from the inside.

• Fear and the silent community

  The Scowrers rule because frightened townspeople will not testify. Doyle shows how terror spreads when good people stay silent.

• Facts that do not fit

  Holmes solves Birlstone by noticing what is missing, a dumb-bell and a ring. Absences can be clues.

Verified Quotes