[Comprehensive Classics] Detective Mary

It turned out to be a letter from Mr. Holmes!

The word surprise can no longer describe Mary's mood at this time.

Although Sherlock Holmes agreed to her request for correspondence at the time of parting, Mary didn't know where the detective was at this time, and she didn't want to disturb his investigation, so she put it aside temporarily and prepared to wait for Jane's wedding. Later, I will ask Mr. Bingley, who should be my brother-in-law now, about the progress of the case.

Unexpectedly, before Mary wrote the letter, Mr. Holmes came to the news first.

This made Mary inevitably jump up, great!Even Lydia, who was looking gloomy, couldn't affect her good mood.

After returning to Longbourn, news from Mary was much slower than in London, and it took a lot of trouble to post letters and parcels.So before leaving, Mary entrusted the editor-in-chief Hall to send the magazine to Mr. Holmes.

After all, he is a friend of Mr. Bingley, and the editor-in-chief also knows a thing or two about the case Holmes is investigating at this time. When he heard Mary's request, he agreed without thinking.

I'm afraid he had contacted the detective beforehand.

Thinking of this, Mary has already guessed most of the content of Holmes' letter.

She opened the letter, and the detective's sharp and decisive handwriting appeared on the paper.As expected by Mary, the letter from Sherlock Holmes did not contain any extra words. He greeted Mary briefly as a gesture of politeness, and then went directly to the topic.

The current detectives are in Paris and have already found the traces of James Moriarty's French agent.

With the help of Mr. Bingley and Mr. Thornton during the investigation in London, and his close relationship with the workers in the slums, it was easy to find out the whereabouts of Captain Carter.

But it's different in Paris, which is a foreign country after all.

"With the assistance of our Government," wrote Mr. Holmes, "I have made a breakthrough. It is expected that when the letter reaches you, the list of mill owners who have accepted Moriarty's contract will be available."

It's that government official again.

When Sherlock Holmes left, he said that in addition to Mr. Bingley, he had also been asked by a "government person" to go abroad to pursue leads.

The detective has always been contemptuous of the police and other government systems, which he has always found useless.But now this government official has really provided a lot of help, and Mr. Holmes also expressed his approval for him between the lines.

Mary felt that, even if the detective hadn't mentioned who the government agent was, she'd probably guessed who he was.

But even so, the progress of the case was as slow as she imagined.

I hope I can help him, Mary muttered in her heart, now it depends on whether the information that Mr. Hamp concealed is valuable, and she doesn't want to make a trip for nothing.

The narration of the case ended here. Sherlock Holmes outlined his adventures in Paris in a few words, and then changed his style of writing and opened the second topic with great efficiency.

"I read the new issue of Seaside Magazine," he wrote.

really.

The letter was sent to the editor-in-chief Hall, which proved that the editor-in-chief Hall had indeed contacted Mr. Holmes, and naturally, according to Mary's wish, he mailed the new issue of "Seaside Magazine" to him.

Mary suddenly cheered up three times, and read down.

"The definition of a serial killer is indeed not as accurate as that of a serial killer," said Holmes's handwriting in a fluttering manner. "They commit crimes according to the same motive and similar methods, in order to satisfy their own specific psychology. It is really unreasonable to call this type of criminal a 'serial killer'." Couldn't be more apt. I'm amazed, Miss Mary, that in a few months of thinking in your study you've done what countless London policemen have failed to do in their entire lives - that is, to define criminals. You've opened up an unprecedented field."

This kind of praise made Mary blush again, taking credit for the future founder of bsu. In Mary's opinion, this is actually a bit immoral.

In comparison, Mr. Holmes is still a bit more powerful.Mary just threw out the word "sequence", and he has already connected the mathematical concept to the word "serial killer" in the title, thus comprehending Edmund Campbell's motivation and criminal psychology.

A genius is a genius, and Mary still has a long way to go to truly become like Sherlock Holmes.

"It's easy to foresee how readers will react when you explain the term serial killer clearly," the detective affirmed Mary without hesitation, "It's a good thing, miss, it's really a good thing! Detectives will be aware of the existence of such killers, and you have given me a lot of inspiration, but—”

Seeing the "but", Mary raised her lips.

Well, Mary admits, that's the "but" she was expecting.

"In a small town where neighbors know each other and understand each other, for a whole year, no one suspected the whereabouts of the murderer's mother, and no one dug up the bones. This is incredible."

Praises are all praises, and Holmes who criticized was also merciless: "You grew up in a village with limited traffic, Miss Mary, you know the social structure of a small town very well. The motives for committing crimes, the methods of detecting crimes, and even the living conditions of the workers are described, but you cannot reasonably arrange the rural and town scenes. Such low-level mistakes are really unbearable.”

Even if Mary is just reading the letter, she can clearly feel his emotions from the last word in the detective's handwriting.

If he had spoken face to face, I am afraid Mr. Holmes himself would have danced and danced, repeating the words "low-level" and "low-level people can't be lower-level" like a big child.

Mary laughed at the thought.

"This is his first crime," the detective emphasized repeatedly. "According to your description of the crime, the murderer killed his mother in an extremely unfamiliar way, leaving a lot of evidence—so no one suspected him? You have omitted how to deal with the bloodstains and how to carry the corpse. This omission of clues can certainly bring out the murderer’s sophisticated modus operandi and please readers, but it is greatly unreasonable.”

Mary couldn't help but shook her head.

Mr. Holmes, who is desperate to complain, is very cute, but his advice is also very meaningful.

It can only be said that it is worthy of being a detective.Even leaving aside the IQ gap, in terms of experience alone, the gap between Holmes and Mary is far from what she can catch up in three or two days.

She was indeed a clue omitted on purpose for no other reason. In reality, Edmund Campbell committed the crime for the first time, and the person who killed him was not his mother.

Instead, his mother was the last of all to die.

Edmund Campbell killed his grandparents when he was 15, and he ended up in a mental institution.After regaining his freedom, he killed five innocent girls one after another, until finally, he killed his own mother.

The devil in reality has a growth trajectory. He walks into the abyss step by step, and each step has logic.

However, Mary reversed the order of the crimes and erased Edmond's previous convictions, thus disrupting the logic of the development of the facts.She omits clues, precisely to cover up the loopholes caused by adjusting the background and character development.

The genre of detective novels has just begun to develop in the nineteenth century.Just as Conan Doyle's basic deduction method appears weak in real cases from the perspective of today's professional criminal investigation, readers are limited by the technology and vision of the times, and the requirements for story logic are not so rigorous.

So Mary's method is enough to deal with ordinary readers, but it cannot escape the experienced Sherlock Holmes himself... let alone Sherlock Holmes, experienced policemen will also read the problem.

In the final analysis, I am not rigorous enough.

"The first time you write, you can still forgive it," the detective concluded, "but don't make such low-level mistakes again."

The requirements are too high... Mary is ashamed.

But it does point out Mary's shortcomings, and she's glad to have an unabashedly professional opinion—something writers in the 21st century can't ask for.After all, not all writers of suspense novels, like Thomas Harris who wrote "The Silence of the Lambs", can draw materials from BSU founder John E. Douglas himself.

The detective's letters probably ended there.

He said a few perfunctory greetings at the end: "If you need to contact me, you can send the letter to Editor-in-Chief Hall, he knows who to send the letter to. And if you can, please feel free to go to Milton, according to the situation in Paris Look, Hamp definitely has more information than he says."

The letter ended here, and it was only after signing that Mr. Holmes added as if suddenly remembering: "By the way, congratulations to your sister for marrying Mr. Bingley."

It was really Sherlock Holmes's style to write a whole letter before thinking of congratulating him at the end.

Mary didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but felt relieved inexplicably.

Still concerned about the "trivia" of Mr. Bingley's marriage, it seems that progress is slow in Paris, but Holmes himself is safe.

Mr. Detective took the initiative to write a letter and welcomed her to write a reply, which moved Mary very much.It's just that she thought about it and found that she had nothing to write in the reply letter.

You can't write Lydia's confession as a failure.In the southern countryside, this is already a matter of breaking the sky, but it is nothing in the eyes of London and Sherlock Holmes.

Mary put away the letter solemnly, and turned her head to look out the train window.She decided to wait until she had found any useful clues before writing to Mr. Holmes.

The train went all the way north, carrying the three Bennet sisters, and finally arrived in Milton.

Although Mary declined the kindness of Mr. Thornton's personal reception, but because she came here to investigate the case, the upright factory owner still sent a carriage over as a landlord.

When Mary and the others got off the bus, the driver had already been waiting at the train station.He quickly took the luggage of the three ladies and guided them out of the train station.

"Is this the first time for the three ladies to come to the north?" Seeing Mary's curious expression, the coachman asked.

"Yes."

As Mary spoke, she looked around the town of Milton.

Unlike the warm and lively Meryton, everything in Milton looks gray, which is the same as London, and because it is a small town, it is much more desolate than London.

But Milton's industry is developed, but there are many people coming and going at the station.Mary followed the coachman out of the station, and before she could see where the carriage was, she heard a loud noise in the street.

——A bullock cart full of goods fell down and just hit the unloading worker next to it.

Catherine screamed immediately when she saw this scene.The wailing of the unloading workers attracted countless passers-by, and the coachman hurried forward when he saw this. Several strong men grabbed the cart and lifted the goods.

"Pull him out quickly!"

Mary hurried forward with her skirt in her hand, and ordered a man who looked quite powerful to pull the unloader out from under the cargo.

Fortunately, it only hit the left leg and did not hurt any vital parts, but it was serious enough.When the unloading worker pulled out his left leg, his eyes were bright red. The tip of the cargo was inserted into the flesh, and blood gushed out almost immediately.

The sight took Mary's breath away.

She squatted down without hesitation, and her actions brought the remaining two Miss Bennet back to their senses. Even Lydia, who had been depressed, was stunned, and subconsciously wanted to step forward to help.

"do not come!"

Mary shouted, causing the two younger sisters to stand still.

Don't let them come over and make trouble, this kind of bloody scene must give them nightmares.

Seeing the amount of bleeding... Mary was startled, she looked up at the coachman without saying a word, "Bring me your belt!"

The coachman was stunned: "Belt?"

Mary: "Give it to me, he needs to stop the bleeding!"

Seeing her determined expression, the coachman no longer dared to ask, but untied her waist rope.

Mary immediately tied the waist rope near the heart above the unloader's wound, pulled it hard, and the blood flow decreased a lot.

"A doctor is needed here," she continued, pressing the unloader's wound. "Who knows a doctor?"

"--I am."

A pair of strong palms stretched over Mary's shoulders.

Mary looked up in astonishment, and saw a young but serious gentleman squeezed through the crowd. He didn't mind the blood and dirt on the ground at all, and squatted beside the unloader, holding his wound instead of Mary.

"I'm a doctor," he quickly checked the unloader's wound, and then asked, "Is there a clean place here?"

"There is."

The coachman reacted immediately: "I can take you there."

The gentleman nodded.

He took over Mary's job, and after helping the unloader to stop the bleeding urgently, he ordered a few kind-hearted people to lift the unloader.The young man also stood up, and he turned to look at Mary: "Miss, you...?"

Mary: "Leave us alone, it's okay!"

"Well."

The young man who claimed to be a doctor didn't hesitate anymore. He took off his hat and said politely: "You handled it very well, miss. You and I are both foreigners, but fortunately I am a doctor. Next, please teach me. "

Thank goodness.

Mary breathed a sigh of relief.

"Then how do I contact you, sir?"

She asked: "Now I have to take my two younger sisters to visit relatives. When I have time, I will contact you to understand the worker's injury."

"You can find me at the local doctor's house," he answered. "If you need anything, please come to John Watson."

"..."

Watson?

Doctor Watson? ? !

He was in Milton?

The author has something to say: Mary: I actually knew Watson one step earlier than the detective. Can I arrange for them to rent together and investigate the case together...

Watson:? ? ? ?

Mrs. Watson: ? ? ? ? ?