The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume II - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [12]
Then there is the troubling case of “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton.” In that story Holmes abandons the moral code he followed in previous stories. First, while spying on Milverton, Holmes pledges to marry Milverton’s housemaid in order to get information out of her about her boss. When Watson reacts with shock to this admission, Holmes nonchalantly replies, “You can’t help it, my dear Watson.” Then before he and Watson break into Milverton’s house (no talk of a search warrant here!), Holmes tells Watson that they will “take no articles save those which are used for an illegal purpose.” Later, however, when he empties the contents of Milverton’s safe into the fire, he doesn’t stop to examine which papers are for such purposes and which are not. Most serious of all, he stays Watson’s hand when a wronged woman pulls a pistol on the blackmailer and shoots him; then Holmes refuses to cooperate with the police in finding her. Milverton may have been what Holmes calls him, “the worst man in London,” but blackmail is not a hanging crime. Holmes admits that Milverton got “the best of the first exchanges” between them, then vows, “but my self-respect and my reputation are concerned to fight it to a finish.” Holmes seems to act out of revenge for his wounded pride, the law be damned.
Finally, in “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange” Holmes takes it upon himself to be judge and jury for Captain Croker. (“Hold on!” you may object: “Holmes quite explicitly makes Watson the jury.” True enough, but Holmes knew with certainty what Watson’s judgment would be, and thus only pretends to let him decide Croker’s fate.) Here we again sympathize with his judgment, as Croker is an admirable fellow in every way. The man he kills, Sir Eustace Brackenstall, is not only a drunken brute, but his implied sexual mistreatment of his refined wife is more than enough to convince us that the world is a better place without him. (We might note here another case of corrupt aristocracy, a common element of the entire Saga.) The speed and assurance with which Holmes takes upon himself this authority, even enlisting Watson’s conscious intercession, is the noteworthy point of this story. He is coming more and more to feel and act like an embodiment of Justice itself.
What can be the cause of this change in Holmes? It stems in part from Conan Doyle’s exasperation with the English legal system. Because people assumed that the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories was every bit as clever as his fictional creation, Conan Doyle often received requests to solve mysteries or to set straight the course of justice gone awry. A prominent example, although it occurred in 1906, after the publication of The Return, illustrates the kind of thing that frustrated him. George Edalji, the son of an Indian minister, was convicted of killing farm animals on evidence that was obviously trumped up. His main crime seemed to be that he was Indian at a time when there was much anti-Indian sentiment in England. Conan Doyle took up his case, collected evidence overlooked by the investigators, interviewed witnesses not called at trial, and for years made speeches, wrote articles, and badgered officials to set the poor bloke free. He did the same a few years later for another man framed for murder, Oscar Slater.