A Study in Scarlet Women

The first installment in the Lady Sherlock series reimagines Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective as Charlotte Holmes, a brilliant young woman in Victorian England. The novel opens with Mr. Harrington Sackville, a reclusive gentleman on the Devon coast, contemplating his fear of death. The narrator notes that the investigation into Sackville's death will make the name Sherlock Holmes famous. By morning, Sackville is dead.

On the same day, a scandal erupts in London. Charlotte Holmes, the youngest daughter of the minor baronet Sir Henry Holmes, has been caught in a sexual encounter with Roger Shrewsbury, a married man. Charlotte arranged the liaison deliberately: Her father broke his promise to fund her education as a headmistress, so she destroyed her own marital eligibility by losing her virginity to a man who could not be compelled to marry her, intending to blackmail her parents into funding her schooling instead. But Shrewsbury drunkenly confessed to his wife, who rallied Roger's mother, Lady Shrewsbury, and a regiment of female relatives to catch the couple together.

An extended flashback traces Charlotte's extraordinary childhood. Silent until age four, she startled her family by correctly deciphering a rebus on the village noticeboard; the family had feared she might be like her older sister Bernadine, who has a condition that leaves her unreachable and unresponsive. Charlotte grew into a keen observer who deduced her father's extramarital affair and the family's secret financial ruin. Years before her first London Season, the annual social rounds where elite young women sought marriage matches, Charlotte struck a deal with Sir Henry: She would try the traditional path, but if by age 25 she did not wish to marry, he would fund her training. She delivered a clinical analysis of marriage to her older sister Livia, a sharp-tongued 27-year-old who had endured eight fruitless Seasons, comparing romantic love to perishable goods on which women stake their entire lifetimes. When Sir Henry reneged on his promise, Charlotte set her plan in motion.

Now ruined, Charlotte flees her parents' house that same night, telling only Livia. She takes a room at a London boarding home under a false name and searches for work. Her prospects are grim: She has no qualifications, no references, and no respectable woman will vouch for her. Meanwhile, Lord Ingram Ashburton, a longstanding intimate associate who harbors deep feelings for Charlotte, learns of her disgrace. Inspector Robert Treadles of the Metropolitan Police, who has consulted the mysterious "Sherlock Holmes" on past cases through Lord Ingram, is told only that Holmes has suffered something terrible. Treadles, who has never met Holmes, assumes the detective is a man.

Charlotte's situation deteriorates rapidly. A child beggar steals nearly forty percent of her remaining funds. When a visitor recognizes her at the boarding home, the proprietor confronts her, but Charlotte bargains for her rent money back by deducing the woman's secret affair. An employment agency grows suspicious of her forged references. But Charlotte notices a newspaper article about Sackville's death from a chloral overdose and, drawing on her encyclopedic knowledge of aristocratic connections, recognizes that Sackville, Lady Amelia Drummond, and Lady Shrewsbury all died within days of each other, linked by social ties. She writes to the coroner under the name Sherlock Holmes, urging investigation. She also learns that Sir Henry quarreled with Lady Amelia, his former fiancée who had once jilted him, the evening before Lady Amelia's death, casting suspicion on the Holmes family.

Lord Ingram recognizes the letter as Charlotte's work and asks Treadles to investigate. In Devon, Treadles interviews the staff at Curry House, Sackville's isolated residence, and learns that Sackville traveled to London twice monthly. Dr. Harris, the local physician, reveals he never dispensed enough chloral to be fatal. Charlotte advises Treadles to test the strychnine, the antidote to chloral poisoning, at both local dispensaries. The strychnine has been replaced with an inert substance, confirming premeditated murder.

Charlotte, nearly destitute, encounters a flamboyantly dressed older widow who calls herself Mrs. Jebediah. After Charlotte returns the woman's deliberately forgotten reticule and exposes a fraudster claiming to be her daughter, the woman reveals herself as Mrs. Watson, the widow of John Watson, a former stage performer. Mrs. Watson offers Charlotte a position as her companion, and Charlotte accepts.

Mrs. Watson proves an ideal partner. When she learns Charlotte is Sherlock Holmes, she helps establish a consulting practice. They stage a flat on Upper Baker Street as Holmes's residence, complete with a "sickroom" where the bedridden detective supposedly lies. Charlotte, posing as Holmes's sister, conducts consultations in the parlor, and when Treadles visits, she demonstrates Holmes's powers by analyzing the inspector's background from his accent, clothing, and repaired garments.

The investigation deepens when the chemical analyst finds arsenic in Sackville's tissue, indicating long-term poisoning. Suspicion falls on the cook, who is discovered to be a woman acquitted in a prior arsenic trial, but the poisoning predates her arrival. Hodges, the valet, confesses to the arsenic: He discovered that the London house Sackville visited was used for the sexual exploitation of children. Hodges poisoned Sackville's food to prevent his trips, hoping the police would act on his anonymous letters, but the letters contained the wrong address. He denies involvement with the chloral.

Meanwhile, Charlotte takes on a case from Mrs. Marbleton, a genteel woman whose husband has gone missing. Charlotte decodes cipher messages and traces the clues to a hotel suite, but Mrs. Marbleton warns her to stay away, declaring she knows who is responsible. Charlotte and Lord Ingram investigate and discover that Mrs. Marbleton's young companions, Stephen and Frances Marbleton, visited Devon days before Sackville's death, likely replacing the strychnine. Charlotte suspects Mrs. Marbleton is actually Sophia Lonsdale, a woman said to have been ruined by Lord Sheridan, Sackville's brother, a generation earlier.

Charlotte connects the final pieces. She deduces that Sackville, not Lord Sheridan, was the one who ruined Sophia, and that Sackville sexually abused his own niece Clara, the Sheridans' daughter. Clara died by suicide as a teenager using frozen carbon dioxide, the same method Holmes identified in an earlier case. A letter from Sophia Lonsdale confirms everything. Having recently obtained Clara's diary from a dying friend who had kept it for decades at Clara's request, Sophia confronted each guilty party: Sackville, Lady Amelia, and Lady Shrewsbury had known of the abuse and done nothing. She offered each a choice between public exposure and chloral; all three chose chloral. The Marbleton children replaced the strychnine, ensuring that even if the overdose were discovered, the antidote would fail. Lady Sheridan, Sackville's sister-in-law, had independently resolved to kill Sackville, which explains her secret solo trip to Devon, but Sophia's plan was already complete. A postscript reveals that Sophia has taken custody of the children from Sackville's London house.

In the closing scenes, Livia proposes publishing fictionalized accounts of Sherlock Holmes's cases, with herself as writer. Charlotte discovers that Lord Ingram orchestrated her rescue by sending Mrs. Watson, who is connected to the Ashburton family, to find her, though Mrs. Watson's decisions to take Charlotte in and launch the business were her own. Charlotte kisses Lord Ingram, who returns the kiss fiercely before stepping away; nothing has changed about his marriage or their impossible circumstances. A note arrives from Lord Ingram's brother, Lord Bancroft Ashburton, who manages matters of national security, requesting Sherlock Holmes's assistance on "a matter of great delicacy and importance." Charlotte accepts, and the story continues in subsequent volumes.