A Scandal in Bohemia
"A Scandal in Bohemia" starts with Watson remembering Irene Edler and the awe she observes in the eyes of Sherlock Holmes. Watson, being busy in his new household, is unable to attend Sherlock for a long time so has no news of his friend except for what he reads in newspapers. He decides to pay him a visit as he is passing by his old address. Sherlock receives him and impresses him again with his observations from his attire. He informs Watson of his enigmatic client who calls them wearing a mask. However, Holmes deduces his identity as the king of Bohemia. The King tells Holmes of an old paramour, Irene Adler, who possess a photograph of them which she intends to use as blackmail. Holmes accepts the case. The next day, Holmes spies on Irene in a groom’s outfit and coincidentally witnesses her marriage to her lawyer, Gordon Norton. That evening, he with the assistance of Watson is able to scare her of a fire which leads her to reveal the photograph. The next day, as the two friends and the King arrive at her house to look for the photograph, they find she has left already having discovered Holmes' identity. She mentions of intending the photograph as a political insurance and not blackmail which assures the King. Holmes asks for a photograph of Irene Adler left in the house in return for solving the case.
The Red-Headed League
One day, when Watson is visiting Holmes, he finds him in presence of a stout red-headed man named Jabez Wilson. Wilson narrates his hiring by Duncan Ross at "The Red-Headed League" just on the basis of his hair color, where he was paid a great sum for nominal work. He works for two months when he finds that the League has been dissolved and it’s impossible to trace any lead on it. He asks Holmes for advice on this, who makes several enquiries about his assistant, Vincent Spaulding, and becomes excited when he meets a certain description. He later visits this person without letting Wilson know. That night, the duo along with a police officer, Jones, and a bank director, Mr. Merryweather, discover a tunnel in the basement of the bank dug up by Ross and Spaulding and catch them red-handed. Spaulding is revealed to be a clever and wanted criminal, John Clay. Holmes remarks that bizarre cases like this keep him entertained.
A Case of Identity
Holmes and Watson are called upon by a woman, Mary Sutherland, for the missing person case of Hosmer Angel, her fiancé. She narrates how her young stepfather would not bear her meeting people of her own age, and that he has complete control on their money. The woman earns good income and has a good inheritance. While her father was gone on a business trip, she persuades her mother to go to a ball where she meets Hosmer Angel and in a few weeks after some meetings and daily correspondence they decide to get married. However, the groom asks her to swear by the testament to "stay true to him" come what may and as a foreshadowing of this statement vanishes on the morning of their marriage. Sherlock asks her to forget him to which she refuses. He calls her father next day, who is discovered to be the man who disguised as Angel so as to deceive the daughter into a love that wouldn’t distract towards marriage to somebody else, thus preserving her money with him. Since this case has no criminal motive, Holmes can’t do anything except for warning the man.
The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Watson receives a note from Holmes to join him in his journey to Boscombe Valley. A man, Charles McCarty, had been murdered brutally and his son, James McCarthy, is suspected and has considerable circumstantial evidence against him. Holmes has been hired by a young woman, Alice Turner, who lives in the same neighborhood and is the daughter of the murdered man’s landlord and friend, John Turner. Holmes gathers that from the accused’s statement his father had called to his son by a peculiar cry, "Coee!" but was surprised to see him. They had an argument which he refuses to state the cause of. After the son left, he heard his father’s cry and found him dying alluding to a "rat." Holmes learns from Alice Turner that McCarthy had been unsuccessfully trying to convince his son to propose marriage to her. However, Holmes observes the crime scene to find the presence of another man and murder weapon, a stone. He avoids naming the murderer to Lestage as it is the landlord, Mr. Turner, who is a dying man and would rather avoid humiliating himself to his daughter. He confesses to Holmes that he had been a dacoit, Black Jack of Ballarat, who was once seen by McCarthy during a raid and has since been blackmailing him. To stop him from destroying the life of his daughter, Turner decided to murder him. Holmes avoids using this confession and gets James McCarthy acquitted on the basis of multiple objections.
The Five Orange Pips
The case starts on a stormy night when a client calls. Holmes suspects it to be of urgency given the weather and the agitated state the client, John Openshaw, is in. He states that he has inherited considerable wealth from his uncle who after working in an American plantation, fought in the American Civil War and later retired to the quiet country life of England. One day, the uncle received a letter containing five orange pips, with just "K.K.K." written inside the envelope. This scared him, and he hurriedly prepared his will and named his brother his benefactor. Openshaw also observed his uncle to have burned some papers taken from a tin with the same letters inscribed inside. He noticed an unburnt margin and preserved it. After seven weeks, his uncle died in an unexplained but innocuous manner. After a year, the same incident happened with his father and he himself received the same letter with the inscription, "Put the papers on the sundial" a day before. Holmes gets extremely worried and urges him to put out the empty tin, the remaining margin with a note explaining the burning of the other papers. However, the next day Openshaw is found dead. Holmes traces the perpetrators to a gang called the Ku Klux Klan who extorted money from people and that Openshaw’s uncle was once a member and had escaped with gang papers to England. Holmes wires the police of Savannah where these men were headed but it turns out that the ship they were on sank midway.
The Man with the Twisted Lip
Watson, on an errand to rescue an acquaintance from an opium den, runs into Holmes sitting in a disguise. They meet soon after and Holmes requests Watson’s assistance in a case. He tells him of a man gone missing or probably dead from the first floor of the opium den, managed by a Lascar. The man, Neville St. Claire, was rich, had a huge villa, and was devoted to his family. One day, after he had left for work, his wife went to town for an errand and found him crying to her and being pulled in from a window of the opium den. On search, the man is not found, but his effects are. A deformed, ugly beggar who lived in that room claims of not having seen St. Claire, but when blood stains and his coat is found in the river below, the beggar, Hugh Boone, is arrested. Presently, Mrs. St. Claire receives a note from her husband to not to worry which makes Holmes rethink his approach. The next day, he visits the prisoner and washes his ugly face to reveal the missing man. Apparently, St. Claire had been begging for all these years as his income. The police agree to hush the matter given that St. Claire stops the business of begging.
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
During Christmas, Watson finds Holmes inspecting a hat which had been brought by an inspector after its wearer dropped it along with a goose, in a scruple with some thugs. The hat is found to belong to a Henry Baker, to which no one pays interest till it’s found that the goose had a priceless blue stone in its crop. It is revealed to be a jewel of a Countess missing for five days for which a plumber had been arrested. Holmes calls Baker who is indifferent to the goose and so is not suspected. He then proceeds to trace back to the farm where the goose was raised and thus, runs into Jack Ryder, the manager of the hotel where the Countess was staying, making enquiries about the same goose. It is revealed that he stole the jewel, implicated the plumber, and in order to hide the stone dropped it in the crop of a goose in his sister’s poultry farm. By coincidence, the geese got mixed resulting in the chain of events. Ryder is too shaken with the crime, so Holmes lets him go stating it’s the season of forgiveness.
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Holmes and Watson are roused from sleep by the arrival of a lady, Susan Turner. She looks agitated and in a great state of fear. She says that she is the stepdaughter of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, a quick-tempered retired doctor from a very old family, with eccentric habits like keeping wild animals and entertaining gypsies on his land. She also tells them of her twin sister’s death two years ago from an unexplained cause except for her last words, "The band! The speckled band!" just a fortnight before her marriage. Ms. Turner is also set to marry in some time and has to sleep in her sister’s bed given some repair work in her room, when she heard a low whistle as her sister used to before her death. Scared, she decided to visit Holmes. Holmes is threatened by her father to not interfere. However, Holmes and Watson visit this house and find a dummy bell rope installed on top of the bed with a ventilator connecting to her father’s room. Holmes decides to spend the night in her room and hears the same whistle upon which he strikes at the bell pull brutally. It turns out to be a spotted snake, which used the rope to travel to the bed, and in rage bites Roylott after it travels to his room back through the rope and ventilator. Roylott had planned to murder his stepdaughters so as to get their money.
The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
Watson is called upon by a patient, Victor Hatherley, with a severed thumb. On learning that the act was an attempt to murder, he takes the man to Holmes. He tells them that he had a small practice of hydraulic engineering and, one day, received a very suspicious man, Lysander Stark offering a large fee for minor work but demanding absolute secrecy as he had been extracting fuller’s earth. Hatherley agreed and set to the place in night, where he was warned by a woman. But, ignoring the woman’s warning he followed Stark to the hydraulic press and offered them advice. While examining the inside of machine, he noticed deposits of tin and nickel and realized that the men were counterfeiting coins. When he confronted Stark, they tried to kill him by trying to squash him inside the machine but he was rescued by the woman who opened a wall of the machine. Stark tried to kill him with a cleaver but only managed to sever his thumb, as Hatharley jumped to safety. Fatigued, he fainted and was carried to the station by the woman and another accomplice. When all arrived at the station, they found a house burning and the gang had left with no clue to their whereabouts.
The Adventure of Noble Bachelor
Holmes is called upon by Lord St. Simon for the case of his missing wife, immediately after his wedding. The wife, Hatty Doran is the daughter of a rich American millionaire who made his fortune in mining, and it is made clear that her dowry is the main reason for this match. Holmes learns that the bride had dropped her bouquet at the wedding and was jittery immediately after the wedding and left from the breakfast table to never be seen again. Lestrade arrests a woman who is claimed to be harassing Lord St. Simon and whose note is found in the abandoned clothes of the bride. Holmes notes the hotel mentioned in the back of the note and arrives at the conclusion that Doran left on her own account with the man, Francis Moultan, who picked her bouquet. It is revealed that they were married already with no knowledge to her father, and presuming him to be dead, Doran decides to marry Lord St. Simon. However, on having found Moultan in church, she decided to flee with him but Holmes convinces them to reveal their marriage.
The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
Holmes receives a banker, Alexander Holder, who describes the robbery of the Beryl Coronet. Since the Coronet is the property of a royal person, he decided to keep the Coronet with him at all times out of anxiety over its security. He narrates of having told his shy niece Mary and wayward son Arthur about it. The same night the Coronet was stolen from Holder’s bedroom safe, he caught his son red-handed but with a corner from the Coronet missing. Arthur denied stealing the item while Mary was inconsolable about the implication on Arthur. Holmes deduces that Mary is having an affair with Sir George Burnwell, a charismatic friend of Arthur who led him into gambling, and she was the person who stole the Coronet and gave it to Burnwell. Arthur however, discovered her in the act and tried to get it back when the Coronet broke in the scuffle between Arthur and Burnwell. Holmes traces the Coronet corner and gets it back to the banker when they discover that the niece has deserted Holder.
The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
Holmes receives a call from a woman, Violet Hunter, asking for advice in a case in which she has been offered a position as a governess. The household sounds strange, but the money is good. Holmes asks her to accept but to inform him if something gets wrong. She telegrams him sometime later. When they meet her, she says that the family is quite strange, her employer Jephro Rucastle is unpredictable and cunning, and his second wife is strangely sad but devoted to the family. Their child is unusually cruel. They have two servants, the Tollers, who keep to their own and take care of the mastiff. They also have a daughter who doesn’t like Mrs. Rucastle and so has left for America. Violet is periodically asked to wear a dress and sit at a window outside where she spots a man, at which point she is asked to wave the person away. She finds a lock of hair similar to her own and a wing of the house which seems locked up but appears to be occupied. Holmes deduces that the wing is occupied by Miss Rucastle who is kept by her father to avoid meeting the man outside her window, possibly her fiancé, so as to control her money. The three lock up Mrs. Toller as her husband passes out from drinking and decide to let out Miss Rucastle while her parents are away. But, they find nobody when they break open her door. Rucastle arrives and tries to set the mastiff on them, but is bitten grievously as only Toller can handle the hound. Mrs. Toller reveals that she had already planned to let Miss Rucastle out. Miss Rucastle marries her fiancé and Hunter leaves satisfied.
