How Did She Die? What Sherlock Holmes Thinks
How Did She Die? is an article published in the Weekly Dispatch on 1 october 1905.
How Did She Die?
BALANCE OF EVIDENCE POINTS TO MURDER.
The railway companies hold to the opinion that the solution of the mystery of Miss Money's death is to he found in the theory that she committed suicide. Here are the arguments for and against murder:—
| For.
The gag in her mouth made of her veil. The wound to her palate and the injuries caused by human fingers on her wrists, ribs, and breast. Her missing purse, watch and chain. No known motive for committing suicide. Self-reliant woman, who had faced the world, and was not likely to jump out of a train because she had passed her destination |
Against.
No known motive for anyone murdering her. That she committed suicide. That she fell out of the train by accident. |
WHAT SHERLOCK HOLMES THINKS
Sir Conan Doyle, the famous creator of Sherlock Holmes, confesses that he has not made a close study of the tunnel mystery, but he raises one point which is decidedly important.
"I think any railway company which does not reserve at least one carriage for ladies on every train,"
he says, "ought to be held responsible and pay compensation where a woman is murdered.
"Why, only the other night I was in a carriage by myself at Waterloo, when, just as the train was starting, a burly man in a dangerous state of drunkenness was pitchforked into my carriage by the guard. As it happened, he was so far gone that he went to sleep.
"But supposing there had been a girl in my place? She would have been at his mercy for thirty minutes before the first stop, and there was no other carriage on the train in which she would not have been liable to a similar intrusion."
