Holmes took great delight in guessing that I had been at my club
because, despite the showers, I had returned immaculate still, and I
had nowhere else to go. He himself had been in Devonshire, in spirit,
while his body had consumed two large pots of coffee & an incredible
amount of tobacco while he pondered over a large-scale Ordinance Survey
map of Dartmoor, which he had obtained from Stamfords's.
He pointed out Baskerville Hall & the hamlet of Grimpen & a few scattered
dwellings - Lafter Hall, two moorland farmhouses, High Tor & Foulmire,
then far away the great convict prison of Princetown. Before we fell back
on Mortimer's hypothesis of the supernatural, said Holmes, we should
exhaust all other hypotheses, * and decide whether any crime had been
committed and if so, what crime, and how was it committed.
He asked me to shut the window to help him think.
