A Study in Scarlet: Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

After the men leave Lauriston Gardens, Holmes mails out a telegram and they make their way to the home of the constable, John Rance. On the cab ride over, Watson is skeptical about Holmes’ confidence in the details he provided to the detectives. Holmes explains that he knew about the cab and the horse’s shoes based on the markings that the wheel and hoofprints made on the ground, that he deduced the murderer’s height and age from his stride length, his boot type from his footprints, his long fingernails from scratches on the wall, and the Trichonopoly from its ashes. Though he believes he was correct, Holmes confesses that the florid face was more of a guess, but he refuses to tell Watson how he came to this deduction.

Mystified by the case, Watson asks how the men ended up in the house, how the murderer could have forced Drebber to poison himself, where the blood and the ring came from, what the murderer wanted, and why he wrote “RACHE” on the wall. Holmes tells Watson that “RACHE” (written in Gothic script, which real Germans would use only for printed, not handwritten, text) was intended to be a red herring to lead the police toward Socialist secret societies. Holmes doesn’t tell Watson any more, though, because “a conjurer gets no credit once he has explained his trick; and if I show you too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all.” However, when Watson praises Holmes for bringing deduction to an exact science, Holmes is pleased, as Watson had known he would be, and reveals that the murderer and Drebber came in the same cab and walked into the house together.

The cab stops at John Rance’s house in Audley Court, a dingy place surrounded by dirty children and lines of dirty laundry. The constable seems unwilling to talk, but once Holmes takes out a gold coin Rance readily tells him about his night shift. At around one in the morning, Rance was talking with another policeman, and an hour or so later he decided to check Brixton Road, which was empty except for a cab or two. Rance knew part of Lauriston Gardens was supposed to be empty, and became suspicious when he saw a light in the window. Rance found the house empty, save for a lit candle on the mantelpiece and Drebber’s body on the floor. The constable then exited the house and sounded his whistle, attracting the attention of other policemen. At that time, the streets were empty, except for a tall, red-faced drunk man in a brown coat.

Holmes asks if the man was carrying a whip, but Rance says no, and Holmes mutters to himself that he must have left it elsewhere. Giving the constable the gold coin, Holmes declares that Rance will never be promoted, as he let the suspect, the apparently drunk man, walk free. On the cab ride back, Watson asks why the murderer would come back to the house. Holmes tells him that he came back for the ring, and that they can use the ring to draw out the murderer. He then thanks Watson for pushing him to take the case, as it is “the finest study [he] ever came across.” Calling it “a study in scarlet,” Holmes declares that it is their duty to “unravel” the “scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life.”