Baron Adelbert Gruner
From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
Fictional character.
In the Sherlock Holmes stories
- Baron Adelbert Gruner was an Austrian baron living in England (at Vernon Lodge, near Kingston), presented as a highly refined, wealthy man with a violent criminal past (ILLU 41).
- Sir James Damery called him "no more dangerous man in Europe" (ILLU 34). Sherlock Holmes immediately identified him as "the Austrian murderer" (ILLU 41) and said he was sure Gruner killed his wife at the Splügen Pass (ILLU 49).
- He was "extraordinarily handsome" with "that air of romance and mystery" that gives him power over women (ILLU 84).
- He was cool as ice... silky voiced... and poisonous as a cobra, a real aristocrat of crime (ILLU 172).
- Kitty Winter said "this man collects women... as some men collect moths or butterflies," keeping a locked book with "Snapshot photographs, names, details" (ILLU 286).
- Gruner was horribly disfigured in an acid attack by Kitty Winter, and Sherlock Holmes used Gruner's own incriminating book to ensure the marriage to Violet de Merville was called off (ILLU 613).
