The Adventure of the Deptford Horror

The Adventure of the Deptford Horror is a Sherlock Holmes story by Adrian Conan Doyle. The story was published in the 1954 collection, The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes.

Holmes and Watson are called to a house in Deptford, due to the concerns of a young woman about her safety. Several of her relatives have died in the past few years of heart attacks. A relative who trains canaries also lives in the house. Holmes is not able to detect anything amiss until he and Watson are en route home, but he suddenly solves the mystery and returns to Deptford to save the life of the young woman from a death by heart failure.

For a time, we sat in silence. Our cab had reached the beginnings of the City and I was gazing out of the window, my fingers drumming idly on the half–lowered pane, which was already befogged with moisture, when my thoughts were recalled by a sharp ejaculation from my companion. He was staring fixedly over my shoulder.

"The glass," he muttered.

Over the clouded surface there now lay an intricate tracery of whorls and lines where my finger had wandered aimlessly.

Holmes clapped his hand to his brow and, throwing open the other window, he shouted an order to the cabby.

This apocryphal story was inspired by the mention in "The Adventure of Black Peter" of Holmes's "arrest of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East-End of London." In this story, Wilson is not arrested, but this discrepancy is explained as an error due to Dr Watson.

See also

• The Canary Trainer