The Doctor's Case

"The Doctor's Case" is a short story by American author Stephen King, originally published in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a 1987 centennial collection, and reprinted in his collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. This story is King's foray into Sherlockiana, a non-canonical Sherlock Holmes story, using Arthur Conan Doyle's characters. Like his story "Crouch End", inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, "The Doctor's Case" is an example of a pastiche. Plot summary Dr. Watson narrates a heretofore unreleased case in which he and Holmes are called by Inspector Lestrade on an unexpectedly rainy day to investigate the murder of the sadistic Lord Hull. Each member of Hull's family - his wife and three sons - has reason to murder him; his wife and bowlegged son suffered from constant abuse, while another son was doomed to never receive more than a pittance due to his placement in the family line. Furthermore, while Hull's family had endured his treatment in the hopes that he would leave his considerable wealth to them, they had recently learned that Hull had rewritten his will so that none of them received a thing. Despite these motives, the family have effectively given each other alibis and the murder itself is effectively a locked room mystery; there is no place in Hull's study for anyone to hide without being seen, and all the doors and windows were locked by the lord himself. Holmes is eager to solve this mystery but is allergic to Hull's numerous cats. Watson, however, notices that a certain table in the locked study casts odd shadows on the rug. When he goes to check the table, he discovers an illusion and demonstrates that the table has been rigged. The bookshelf's lowest shelf is, in fact, a photorealistic painting. The murderer, Hull's artist son Jory, had perfectly rendered the bottom shelf, then pasted the results against the back table-legs. When his father announced the new will, Jory entered the study, crouched behind the table, and sprang out to stab his father at an opportune moment. A cursory glance would not betray the illusion on an overcast day, but on a sunny one, the lack of shadows cast by the table-legs would have been noticeable. To help make the illusion perfect, Jory had prepared shadows out of black felt and laid them down at roughly the place where shadows should be. Unfortunately, he was "caught by shadows on a day when there should be none".