Sherlock Holmes
VV341 - The Valley of Fear
The Audio Dramatisations of Sherlock Holmes
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(Extracts from
"The Valley of Fear")
The sergeant picked up a card, which lay
beside the dead man on the floor. The initials V. V. and under them the number
341 were rudely scrawled in ink upon it.
"What's this?" he asked, holding it up. Barker looked at it
with curiosity. "I never noticed it before," he said. "The
murderer must have left it behind him.""V. V. -- 341. I can make no
sense of that." The sergeant kept
turning it over in his big fingers. "What's V. V.? Somebody's initials,
maybe.
"The clothes
are commonplace," remarked Holmes, "save only the overcoat, which is
full of suggestive touches." He held it tenderly towards the light.
"Here, as you perceive, is the inner pocket prolonged into the lining in
such fashion as to give ample space for the truncated fowling piece. The
tailor's tab is on the neck -- 'Neal, Outfitter, Vermissa, U. S. A.' I have
spent an instructive afternoon in the rector's library, and have enlarged my
knowledge by adding the fact that Vermissa is a flourishing little town at the
head of one of the best known coal and iron valleys in the United States. I
have some recollection, Mr.Barker,
that you associated the coal districts with Mr. Douglas's first wife, and it
would surely not be too far-fetched an inference that the V. V. upon the card
by the dead body might stand for Vermissa Valley, or that this very valley
which sends forth emissaries of murder may be that Valley of Fear of which we
have heard. So much is fairly clear. And now, Mr. Barker, I seem to be standing
rather in the way of your explanation."
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"Malcolm Brown" who introduced me to the delights of Sherlock Holmes.
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