Hello and welcome to Episode 54. This time, we step into the world of international politics and diplomatic secrets in the Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ from December 1904.

Read the story here: ACD Encyclopaedia – The Adventure of the Second Stain.

Listen to an audiobook reading here: Magpie Audio – The Adventure of the Second Stain.

Read the show notes here: Episode 54 Show Notes.

Check out the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s Scrapbook on The Second Stain

The episode will be uploaded to our YouTube channel soon, where you can listen with closed captions. In the meantime, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle

Synopsis

On an Autumn morning, in an unspecified year, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s Baker Street rooms are graced by a visit from the Prime Minister, Lord Bellinger, and the Secretary for European Affairs, the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope. It transpires that a document of great moment – an intemperate letter written by an incautious foreign potentate – has gone missing from Hope’s dispatch box. It must be traced and returned if disastrous consequences are to be avoided. Holmes is rapidly on the scent and believes that one of only three conspiratorial agents – Eduardo Lucas, La Rothiere and Hugo Oberstein – could be involved. The investigative waters, however, are very soon muddied by an unexpected intervention from Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope and the brutal murder of Eduardo Lucas at his Westminster home – a case which falls on Inspector Lestrade, who calls Holmes’ attention to a curious discrepancy and a misplaced rug…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We look at Conan Doyle’s druidical mystery, ‘The Blood-Stone Tragedy’, published in Cassell’s Saturday Journal in 1884, which was, for a long time, lost to modern readers. You can read the story here: ACD Encyclopaedia – The Blood-Stone Tragedy.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.