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A Case of Identity

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Brief overview

Holmes proves that Mary Sutherland's vanished fiancé Hosmer Angel was her stepfather in disguise.

  1. The stepfather invented the fiancé to keep the incomeMary's marriage would have cost the household the hundred a year she handed over while living at home.
  2. A typewriter is as individual as handwritingSlurred E's, a tailless R and fourteen other defects tied Windebank's note to Hosmer Angel's four letters.
  3. Small details decide the case, not impressionsSleeve marks, the dint of a pince-nez, odd half-buttoned boots and violet ink on a torn glove told Holmes everything before she spoke.
Executive Summary AI
  • Sitting by the fire in his Baker Street lodgings, Sherlock Holmes argues to Watson that life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind of man could invent, and wins the point with the Dundas separation case, where a teetotal husband ended every meal by hurling his false teeth at his wife.
  • Miss Mary Sutherland, a short-sighted typewritist living at 31 Lyon Place, Camberwell, comes to Baker Street with a hundred a year of her own from two thousand five hundred pounds of New Zealand stock paying four and a half percent, and offers all of it to learn what became of Mr. Hosmer Angel.
  • She describes a shy, whispering, tinted-spectacled suitor she met at the gas-fitter's ball while her stepfather Mr. Windebank was in France, who wrote only typewritten letters to the Leadenhall Street post-office and then vanished from a four-wheeler on the way to St. Saviour's church on the Friday of their wedding.
  • The next evening Holmes confronts James Windebank and lays out the chain of events: a man who married a woman much older than himself for her money, who stood to lose a hundred a year if the daughter married, and who therefore disguised himself as Hosmer Angel to keep off other suitors and bind her with vows.
  • Holmes says no law can touch the scoundrel, and after Windebank sneers and runs from the house, he explains the proof: the two men were never together, the whiskers, glasses and voice all hinted at disguise, the typewriter's slurred E's and tailless R's matched both sets of letters, and Westhouse and Marbank confirmed the description fitted their employee James Windebank.
Key Quote
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.”
— Sherlock Holmes
Key Quote
“Depend upon it. There is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace.”
— Sherlock Holmes
Key Quote
“I would give it all to know what has become of Mr. Hosmer Angel.”
— Miss Mary Sutherland

Transcript

0:00 THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOMES Ontario, October, 2006.
0:31 The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Adventure No. 3 A Case of Identity
0:36 My dear fellow, said Sherlock Holmes, as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker
0:44 Street, life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street.
0:50 Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
0:55 We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence.
0:59 If we could fly out of that window hand in hand,
1:03 hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs,
1:07 and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events
1:14 working through generations, and leading to the most ultra results, it would make all fiction,
1:21 with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions, most stale and unprofitable.
1:29 And yet I am not convinced of it, I answered. The cases which come to light in the papers are,
1:36 as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough. We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet the result is,
1:48 it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic.
1:53 A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect,
1:59 remarked Holmes. This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of
2:06 the magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole
2:12 matter. Depend upon it. There is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace. I smiled and shook
2:20 my head. I can quite understand your thinking so, I said. Of course, in your position
2:28 of unofficial advisor and helper to everybody who is absolutely puzzled, throughout three continents
2:35 you are brought in contact with all that is strange and bizarre. But here, I picked up the
2:42 morning paper from the ground. Let us put it to a practical test.
2:47 Here is the first heading upon which I come.
2:50 A Husband's Cruelty to His Wife
2:53 There is half a column of print, but I know, without reading it, that it is all perfectly
2:59 familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise,
3:06 "'the sympathetic sister or landlady.
3:09 "'The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude.'
3:14 "'Indeed, your example is an unfortunate one for your argument,' said Holmes,
3:19 "'taking the paper and glancing his eye down it.
3:22 "'This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was
3:27 engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler,
3:33 and there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the
3:39 habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife which you will allow is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller
3:52 take a pinch of snuff doctor and acknowledge that i have scored over you in your example he held out his snuff-box of old gold with a great amethyst in the centre of the lid. Its splendour was in such
4:07 contrast to his homely ways and simple life that I could not help commenting upon it.
4:13 "'Ah,' said he, "'I forgot that I had not seen you for some weeks. It is a little souvenir from
4:19 the King of Bohemia, in return for my assistance in the case of the Irene Adler papers.
4:26 "'And the ring?' I asked, glancing at a remarkable brilliant which sparkled upon his finger.
4:32 "'It was from the reigning family of Holland, though the matter in which I served them was

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