Two severed ears are delivered to an innocent old lady. What secret lies behind it?
A package arrives in the post for Miss Susan Cushing. Inside it contains two severed human ears packed within coarse salt. Lestrade suspects that is a prank played on her by three medical students whom Miss Cushing was forced to evict due to their unruly behaviour. On further investigation the parcel was sent from Belfast, the home city of one of her former boarders. Holmes though is convinced that it is evidence of a serious crime. He believes that a medical student would make more precise cuts than the roughly hacked off ears found in the box. The knot in the string that bound the package also suggests to Holmes that they are looking for someone with sailing experience…
What begins as a rather novel and gruesome story quickly becomes one of the more mundane cases for Sherlock to solve. Holmes unravels the case quickly and the eventual arrest of the suspect is even more straightforward. Once again we have a long backstory to the motive behind the crime that while shedding light on the case, doesn’t exactly capture the reader’s attention.
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Tomorrow it is The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge…