A short story, with Holmes solving the mystery in a few minutes. A macabre story of jealousy and hatred.
A Miss Cushing receives a package by post, and inside there are two ears, human ears. Holmes sees that it was sealed with a sailor’s knot, then Miss Cushing’s ear is the same as the smaller, severed one, indicating one of the victims as one of her sisters.
Her sister Sarah used to live with her, so it’s probable the package was for her. She went to live with her sister Mary and her sailor husband, but they parted in no good terms.
Holmes is sure that the drunk sailor is the murderer, so he has Lestrade arrest him, and the man lets himself be arrested and confesses to everything, saying he’s already punished because he keeps seeing the faces in front of his eyes (the nerve of some people).
Basically, he and Mary were very much in love, then Sarah went to live with them and tried to hit on him but he didn’t reciprocate, so she started turning Mary against him and even introduced another man to her, and the husband became jealous.He forbade her to ever see him again, but when he came back much sooner than expected he saw her with him, talking and laughing, so he killed them both, his wife and that man, and sent the ears to Sarah as if to accuse her of what he had done. Case closed.
At the beginning, we have a bored Watson which had to postpone his holiday because he had no money. At the end, we have Holmes wondering out loud: “what is the meaning of it, Watson? What object is served by this cycle of misery and violence and fear?”
Unfortunately, the world still has no answer to that.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento