If you’d like to see the happiest woman in the world, you should have seen me on the day when I emerged from the library carrying under my arm an enormous volume. “The Complete Sherlock Holmes” published in the USA in 1988 is one of the greatest treasures the library has, and since the day I discovered its existence I wanted nothing else. Alas, another reader took it from under my nose, so I had to wait two more months before it was finally in my hands.
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This book is so well known that I shouldn’t be afraid to mention the murderer by name: everyone knows who it is, I guess, if not because they have read the book then because they have seen one of the films. According to Wikipedia, as of 2006, there were at least 24 films based on the book, including one in the Russian language, which is still very popular in my country. So I needn’t go into the plot, but at the same time I don’t need to conceal the fact that the murderer’s name is Stapleton, that the hound in question is quite real and that the ghostly appearance of it is due to some tricky preparation of phosphorus having no smell.
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