A Scandal in Bohemia

*A Scandal in Bohemia* is a short story written by Arthur Conan Doyle. Released in 1891, it is the first short story featuring recurring protagonist Sherlock Holmes and tells of him being involved in a royal scandal.

## Characters

* Sherlock Holmes
* Dr. John Watson
* Irene Adler
* The King of Bohemia
* Mary Morstan

rest to be added

## Synopsis

After his wedding, Dr John Watson sees his good friend, Sherlock Holmes, not nearly as often as he used to. Whilst Watson builds a happy life with his wife, Mary Morstan, Holmes remains, as peculiar as ever at 221b Baker Street, flirting with criminal cases and cocaine. One day on the way home from his practice, Dr Watson passes by his old haunt and drops in to see Holmes, but as they share witty banter together a mysterious man walks in and quickly identifies himself to be the hereditary King of Bohemia.

He presents Holmes with a most intriguing problem: He is due to wed the daughter of the King of Scandinavia, but a photo exists of the King of Bohemia and another woman, who he had a heated affair with before his engagement to his intended. Calling on Holmes's intuition and famous detective prowess, the King of Bohemia requests that Holmes recovers the incriminating photograph.

## Plot

The story starts off with Watson, who has recently married and moved out of his lodgings at 221B Baker Street, strolling past there, and deciding to enter. Holmes seems happy to see him (at least by Holmes' standards) and quickly deduces multiple things about his friend. He then gives Watson a letter to read aloud that he claims might interest him. It states that, at quarter to eight in the night on that day, a man wishes to consult Holmes, due to him being trustworthy and brilliant, and he should not be surprised if the visitor happens to wear a mask. Holmes shortly finds out that the note paper that the letter was written on was made in Bohemia, and the writer of it must be German. Nearly instantly after that, the visitor shows up in a horse-drawn carriage.

He first asks Holmes and Watson to swear to never tell anybody about the case, as it could very well ''have an influence on European history''. It turns out that he is not the Count Von Kramm he introduced himself as, but the hereditary King of Bohemia and Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein. He states that roughly five years ago, while on a visit to Warsaw, he met Irene Adler, a ''well-known adventuress''. Holmes goes on to figure out that the king ''became entangled with [Irene Adler], wrote her some compromising letters, and is now desirous of getting those letters back''. Problematically, Adler does not wish to sell the letters back, and the five attempts to steal them haven't been successful.

Additionally, she has a photograph of her with the king, which she intends to use as blackmail in order to stop him from marrying Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen, a Scandinavian noblewoman. Luckily for the king, Adler has not yet sent the letter, as she claimed to only do so in three days, when the betrothal would be publicly proclaimed. Holmes quickly asks how much money the case will bring him, where the lady lives, and whether or not the photograph was a cabinet (a style of photograph which was widely used for photographic portraiture after 1870, consisting of a thin photograph mounted on a card typically measuring 108 by 165 mm (four and a quarter by six and a half inches)), the answer to the last question being yes. Then, Holmes says good night to the king and, shorty after, the same to Watson, adding that he would be glad if his friend came over tomorrow afternoon to discuss the matter.

The next day, Watson arrives punctually at Baker Street, but Holmes is nowhere to be seen. The doctor waits for his friend to appear for nearly an hour, when all of a sudden, an ill-kempt man in disreputable clothes enters the room. It is Holmes in disguise, who quickly disappears into his bedroom, from which he soon emerges, looking as he usually does. He tells Watson that he first spent his morning watching the house of Irene Adler. After this, he wandered along the street and soon found a couple of people he could help in cleaning their horses, for which he received some money, a drink, some tobacco, and a great deal of information about Adler. Apparently, she was extremely attractive, pretty much always left the house and returned to it at the same time, sung at concerts, and had one male visitor, Mr. Godfrey Norton, a lawyer, whom the workers knew all about. Holmes wonders if Irene was Norton's client, friend, or his wife/girlfriend.

As the private eye was standing in the neighbourhood, thinking, a man who must've been Norton jumped out of a cab right next to him. He was in a hurry, shouted at the cabman to wait, and ran into the house, in which he was for about half an hour, where Holmes could occasionally see him through the windows, talking excitedly and waving his arms, but couldn't catch a glimpse of Adler. After the rough half an hour had ended, Norton rushed out of the house, instructed to cab driver to ''drive like the devil'', first to a shop that is presumably a jeweller, then to a church. Holmes was wondering whether or not to follow the lawyer when a carriage whose coachman looked like he was in quite a hurry to get dressed showed up, and Irene Adler practically flung herself into it.

She instructed him to ride to the same church as Norton had named as fast as possible. After that, Holmes took up the chase by jumping into another cab and telling the driver to get him to the church that Adler and Norton had named, preferably in under twenty minutes. It was twenty-five minutes to twelve, and it was ''clear enough what was in the wind'' -- the two had a hurried wedding with Holmes ''vouching for things of which [he] knew nothing, and generally assisting in the secure tying up of Irene Adler, spinster, to Godfrey Norton, bachelor''. After this, the couple drove off in different directions, Adler saying to her husband that she ''shall drive out in the park at five as usual''. Holmes also left for some food at his house.

When Holmes finishes telling Watson the story, he asks him if he wouldn't mind breaking the law or running a chance of arrest, to which the doctor answers that he *wouldn't* mind, so long as the cause were good, to which Holmes assures him that it were ''excellent''. The detective goes on to state that they must be on the scene of action it two hours, at seven in the afternoon -- they must be at Adler's house when she returns from her drive to meet her. He adds that Watson may not interfere in the happenings. According to Holmes, there was going to be ''some small unpleasantness'' that would end with him being brought into the house.

Shortly afterwards, a certain window would open, where Watson should stand in order to close it. The doctor should also watch his friend and throw an ordinary plumber's self-lighting smoke-rocket into the room and raise the cry of fire when Holmes gave him a signal to do so. After that, he could walk to the end of the street, where the private eye would soon join him. As Holmes finishes explaining the plan, he goes to his room to change into some other clothes that make him appear to be an ''amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman''.

The partners show up at Adler's house at ten to seven o'clock, where the detective remarks that the marriage simplified the matters -- Adler wishes for her husband to see the photograph as little as the king wishes for the princess to do the same. He also explains to his companion why the picture with Adler and the king would most likely be in Adler's own house, and the burglars who attempted to steal it simply didn't know where to look, and neither should he -- he would get her to show it to him. As Watson tells his friend that she would refuse, and Holmes responds by saying that she would be able to, Adler's carriage approaches. A fight breaks out in front of the lady's carriage as she tries to exit it, and the detective as rushes to protect her, he gets hit and falls, to which the fighters run away.

Quickly, people come to help Adler and Holmes, who is brought into the house due to his injuries. Watson observes Holmes lying on the couch and takes out the smoke-rocket after a while. A maid opens the window at the request of the hurt man, and the doctor throws the rocket into the room and shouts ''Fire!''. The crowd assembled in the house rushes around in a panicked manner until Holmes assures them that it was a false alarm. Watson hurries to the end of the street, where his friend soon joins him, praising him for his actions.

Holmes then explains to his comrade how he knows where the photograph now is -- at first, he faked the bleeding on his head that lead people to thinking he was in such drastic need of help with some moist red paint, then, as the fire supposedly broke out, Adler, as the detective had predicted, looked over to the photograph, her most valuable possession, and took it out of its hiding place, but quickly returned it, thus revealing its location to Holmes, who decided that he would rather not steal it on the spot, as the risk was too great, and simply left the house. When Watson asked what they were to do now, Holmes replied by saying that their quest was pretty much finished, and he would call the king tomorrow in the morning, when Adler would not be awake yet, so they would have a clear field. He added that he must wire the king without delay, and that they would be shown into a sitting-room to wait for the lady, but, when she would come, she might not find either Holmes and Watson nor the photograph -- it could be ''a satisfaction to [the king] to regain it with his own hands''. When the two arrived at Baker Street, a passerby wished ''Mister Sherlock Holmes'' a good night. The man appeared to be a ''slim youth'', and the detective states that he'd heard the voice before, but he wonders who it could've been.

That night, Watson slept at Baker Street, and while he eats breakfast with his friend, the King of Bohemia rushes into the room. He asks Holmes if has the photograph, to which he answered by stating that he doesn't have it yet, but he was hopes. The king quickly brings them down to his carriage parked in the street, with which they would drive to Adler's house. Holmes remarks that the lady got married yesterday to an English lawyer, which he hopes she loves, because it would spare the king of ''all fear of future annoyance'' -- if she loved her husband, she wouldn't love the king, which would mean that she wouldn't have any reason to interfere with the nobleman's plan. The king admits that Holmes must be right.

As the three arrive at Adler's house, they find the door to be open and an elderly woman standing upon the steps. She informs the men that Adler left the country with her husband that very morning, which greatly surprises Holmes. He pushes past the woman and runs into the house, where he quickly finds a photograph of Irene Adler in an evening dress and a letter from Adler for Holmes, which asked to be ''left till called for''. Holmes tears open the letter and reads it with the king and Watson. It states that Holmes tricked Adler very well into revealing the location of the photograph, but she found out how she betrayed herself, she began to think. She claimed to have been heavily warned about the detective and had initially, when he was just a wounded man to her eyes, thought he were just a ''dear, kind old clergyman'', but realised that it was Holmes after all. So, she had sent the coachman to watch him, quickly changed into more practical clothing, and came down just as Holmes had left. After this, she followed him to his house, where she had wished him good-night, and then went off to see her husband. Adler and Norton both believed that it would be best to flee.

As to the photograph, the letter states that ''the king may do what he will without hindrance from the one whom has cruelly wronged'' and she shall keep, as it was a ''weapon which will always secure [Adler] from any steps which [the king] might take in the future''. Additionally, Adler wrote that she had left behind a photograph which her former lover ''might care to posses''. The King of Bohemia marvels at the lady's intelligence and wishes she would've been his queen. Holmes apologises for not having been able to end the nobleman's case more successfully, but he thanks him, saying that ''the photograph is now as safe as if it were in the fire'', and attempts to pay the detective with a valuable ring. However, he declines, stating that he only wishes the photograph of Irene Adler, which the king is glad to hand over.

The story ends by stating that Holmes used to make fun of women's cleverness, but he hadn't done it anymore since the events recounted in the tale. Additionally, Holmes now always speaks of Irene Adler under the honourable title of ''*the* woman''.

## Sources

* Amazon
* Sparknotes