A Study in Scarlet - Chapter 01 - B1-B2 Sample Page
Mr Sherlock Holmes
Welcome to 221B Baker Street. Please, come in and sit down.
My name is Doctor John Watson. I will be with you through this whole case. I keep the Casebook, this book here. I write down everything you find and everything you prove. If you forget a fact, or you want your notes read back to you, come to me. I record what happens. I do not solve the case for you. Remember that difference. It matters.
The other man in this room is Mr Sherlock Holmes. He is the finest detective in London, and he has agreed to take you on as his Apprentice Detectives. In a moment, he will give you your case. But first, I must tell you what kind of man he is. Let me tell you how I met him.
I am an army doctor. I was a surgeon in the war in Afghanistan. At a battle called Maiwand, a bullet hit my shoulder and broke the bone. I nearly died. The army sent me home to London, thin, weak, and with very little money. I needed cheap rooms to live in.
One day, an old friend named Stamford told me about another man who also wanted to share rooms. That man was Sherlock Holmes. Stamford took me to meet him in a laboratory full of bottles and chemicals.
We had never met before. Holmes knew nothing about me. And yet, the moment he took my hand, he looked at me and said:
You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.
I was astonished. How could he know? I had not said one word about the war, or the East, or my life. But he was right.
I asked him how he knew. He would not tell me. My friend only smiled and said: “You will find he learns more about you than you about him.”
That is the man who will examine you today.
Understand this clearly. He has already solved this case. That was never in doubt. He does not need your help. The only question in this room is whether you can follow the same path he did, and prove it, out loud.
He will not answer your questions. He will answer them with better questions.
So watch him closely. Notice everything. Because he is already noticing everything about you.
Chapter One · delivery and cautions
- Delivery. Read aloud as Watson, or print onto the opening Casebook page.
- Narrative only. No challenge, no Scarlet Threads. Its job is to introduce Watson and Holmes and to seat the group as Apprentice Detectives.
- Do not explain the Afghanistan deduction. How Holmes knew is deliberately withheld. That reveal is the tutorial in Chapter Two (The Science of Deduction), where it becomes the group's first Scarlet Thread. Leave the question hanging.
- Canon note (Golden Rule 1). Every fact here is from Doyle's text: the wound at Maiwand, the return to London, the meeting via Stamford, the laboratory, and the exact line “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” That quotation is fixed and must not be simplified or reworded in any tier.
A Study in Scarlet - Chapter 01 - B2-C1 Sample Page
Mr Sherlock Holmes
Welcome to 221B Baker Street. Come in, and sit where you can.
I am Dr John Watson, late of the Army Medical Department, and I shall be at your side throughout this case. I keep the Casebook: whatever you observe, whatever you prove, is written down here in my own hand. If your reasoning grows tangled, come to me and I will read your notes back to you. But mark the distinction. I record; I do not solve. It will matter more than you expect.
The other man in this room is Mr Sherlock Holmes, and he has consented to take you on as his Apprentice Detectives. Before he sets you your case, you had best understand the sort of mind that is about to examine you. Let me tell you how I came to know him.
I am an army surgeon by training. I served in the second Afghan war, and at the battle of Maiwand a Jezail bullet shattered my shoulder and very nearly finished me. I was invalided home to London, thin as a lath, brown as a nut, and with a wound that had drained both my health and my purse. I came to this city, as so many broken men do, and set about the dull problem of finding rooms I could afford.
It was pure chance that spared me a lonely life. An old acquaintance, young Stamford, mentioned that another man was hunting for someone to share lodgings, a singular fellow, forever at work in a hospital laboratory among his retorts and test-tubes. Stamford took me to him. We had never met; he knew nothing whatever of my history.
And yet, the instant he grasped my hand, before I had spoken a single word about myself, he looked at me and remarked, quite simply:
You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.
I could scarcely believe it. I had said nothing, not of the army, not of the East, not of the war. How could the man possibly know? I pressed him for an answer; he gave none. Stamford only smiled his enigmatical smile and warned me: “You’ll find he learns more about you than you about him.”
That is the man who will set you your case today.
Understand it plainly: he has already solved it. That was never in doubt, and he does not require your assistance. What is in doubt, the only thing in doubt in this room, is whether you can walk the same road he walked, and account for every step of it aloud. He will not answer your questions. He will answer them with sharper ones of his own.
So observe him. Observe everything. For I promise you, he has already begun to observe you.
And that riddle I could never solve, namely how he knew of Afghanistan in a single glance, is the very first thing he means to teach you. But not yet.
Chapter One · delivery and cautions
- Delivery. Read aloud as Watson, or print onto the opening Casebook page.
- Narrative only. No challenge, no Scarlet Threads. Its job is to introduce Watson and Holmes and to seat the group as Apprentice Detectives.
- Do not explain the Afghanistan deduction. How Holmes knew is deliberately withheld. That reveal is the tutorial in Chapter Two (The Science of Deduction), where it becomes the group's first Scarlet Thread. Leave the question hanging.
- Canon note (Golden Rule 1). Every fact here is from Doyle's text: the wound at Maiwand, the return to London, the meeting via Stamford, the laboratory, and the exact line “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.” That quotation is fixed and must not be simplified or reworded in any tier.