The Case of the Cumberland Kidnapping

THE CASE OF THE CUMBERLAND KIDNAPPING

A Solve-It-Yourself Detective Case

You are Dr Watson's intellectual partner. Read the case, examine the clues, and reach your own conclusion - before Holmes reveals his.

Every fact you need is here, on the page. Nothing is withheld until the end. Holmes says remarkably little as the investigation unfolds - he notices, he does not narrate - and you are meant to do exactly what Watson is doing: watch, listen, and hold everything in mind until it adds up. When the story ends, you stop and make your deduction. Then, if you wish, you consult the appendix of supplementary clues Holmes gathered beyond Watson's sight, and deduce again. Only then does Holmes give his own solution. This is a genuine fair-play mystery: the question is not whether you can solve it, but how much help you need.

Cumberland, late summer, 1890. Evelyn Carrow - niece and ward of Colonel Carrow of Askham Grange - walks out one morning to sketch by an old chapel, and does not come home. There is no struggle, no ransom demand, nothing taken but the girl herself - only a satchel left behind, and a name from the family's past that no one at the Grange wishes to speak aloud. As Holmes and Watson dig into old grievances, forged letters, and a debt someone was desperate enough to hide, the ground itself begins to tell a story very different from the one the family wants told.

Written in careful homage to Conan Doyle's voice and grounded in the real geography and rail lines of Victorian Cumberland, this is Holmes as the canon rarely lets you have him: a case you can beat him to, if you're sharp enough to see what Watson sees.