Chapter 3

Test your knowledge with free interactive questions on Seneca — used by over 10 million students.

Chapter 3: In Quest of a Solution

Holmes returns. Holmes has been investigating some evidence in the case.

Captain Morstan has disappeared.
Major Sholto was in London when Captain Morstan disappeared, but denied seeing him.
Four years after Morstan disappeared, Major Sholto died.
Within a week of Sholto’s death, Mary Morstan began receiving the pearls.

Mary Morstan returns and she embarks on the journey with Holmes and Watson to the Lyceum Theatre.
Mary tells Holmes and Watson that her father (Captain Morstan) had been good friends with Major Sholto.
Mary then reveals that a ‘curious paper… which no one could understand’ was found with her father’s possessions – Holmes ‘methodically examined it all over with his double lens’.

When Holmes, Watson and Mary reach the Lyceum Theatre, a mysterious man greets them and asks them to confirm that Holmes and Watson are not associated with the police force.
When they confirm they are not, a carriage across the road (with an ‘Arab’ driver) opens its doors.
After they all board, with the mysterious man, the carriage quickly drives away.

Eventually, the carriage reaches a new row of terraced houses, which look especially mysterious because they are almost all in complete darkness – the carriage stops outside the one house that has a single light on.
After they knock on the door, it is opened by a ‘Hindoo servant clad in a yellow turban’.
A mysterious voice from within the house tells the servant to ‘show them straight in to me’.

Here is a short analysis of key aspects of Chapter 3:

Arthur Conan Doyle uses pathetic fallacy in this chapter to create a tense and mysterious atmosphere: ‘the fog lay low’, there were ‘mud-coloured clouds’, and it was ‘murky’.
- Watson and Mary cannot see properly through this dense, dark weather. Holmes, however, seems unfazed by this.
- The pathetic fallacy suggests that the case itself is unclear and causes Mary and Watson to feel unsure about what is going on.
- Holmes, on the other hand, could either be ‘unfazed’ by the murky details of the case because he knows he will figure it out.

In this chapter, the reader begins to realise that Mary and Watson are still acquainted with each other later in life – Watson tells the reader how Mary continues to tease him about his nervousness of this journey even in their current life.
We do not know how they know each other later in life, but we know that Watson has romantic feelings towards her in The Sign of the Four.

The contrast between Holmes and Watson is highlighted during this chapter as Watson admits: ‘I lost my bearings and knew nothing’ because of their pace and how the fog blocks their vision.
Holmes, on the other hand, ‘was never at fault’ and knows exactly where they are.

Arthur Conan Doyle ends a lot of these chapters on cliffhangers, which keep the reader reading on.
In this chapter, the reader does not know to whom the mysterious voice belongs, and whether this character is good or bad – we want to keep reading to find out what happens to our protagonists.

Here are three key quotations from Chapter 3:

‘Methodically examined it all over with his double lens’ (Sherlock Holmes).
- Sherlock shows his great powers of detection here. He zooms in on small details and, even though he does not immediately recognise the importance of the 'curious paper', he feels that it could be important.
- He shows that he does not dismiss any possible evidence until the case is solved.
- However, the fact that even Sherlock Holmes does not understand the link at the moment adds a great amount of mystery and suspense to the item.

‘We were driving to an unknown place, on an unknown errand’ (Dr Watson).
- The repetition of the adjective ‘unknown’ adds to the mystery and intrigue of the story, as the reader sees the events through Watson’s eyes – things that are unknown to him are unknown to us as well.
- In addition, they are in a strange carriage with people they do not know, heading to a destination they have no idea about – it makes the reader wonder if this will lead to a positive or negative outcome.

‘I lost my bearings and knew nothing… Holmes ‘was never at fault’' (Dr Watson).
- This quotation highlights the differences between Holmes and Watson.
- Watson, as the eyes of the reader, knows very little about the case. He feels metaphorically lost in this case.
- Holmes, on the other hand, does not falter – he is working out the details of the case in his brain, and knows where they are (literally and metaphorically) at all times.