The Adventure of the Yellow Face [short story]

At the beginning of his narrative, Dr. Watson describes this adventure as one of Holmes’s two failures. Holmes’s client is troubled by a secret his wife is keeping from him. She had been a widow when they married, her first husband having died in America. Their marriage has been a happy one until this secret came between them. The secret is somehow connected to the new tenant in a neighboring cottage in Norbury, whom the client describes as having a yellow face. Holmes is sure that he knows the new neighbor’s identity. Holmes and Watson accompany their client to the cottage, where they discover the tenant is not the person Holmes thought it was. As things turned out well for his client, Holmes is happy to have been wrong.

I have show more mixed feelings about this one. Doyle was ahead of many of his time in portraying a mixed race marriage, yet it’s disappointing that a Victorian woman who had the courage to marry an African American man would choose as her second husband a man that she didn’t think could accept her biracial child. She was wrong about her second husband, but what damage had she already done to her child by keeping her hidden for so long? show less

Another superb short story featuring Sherlock Holmes and his friend, Dr. Watson.
In this story, Sherlock Holmes, suffering from boredom due to a want of cases, returns home from a walk with Dr. Watson in the early spring of 1888 to find he has missed a visitor, but that the caller has left his pipe behind. From it, Holmes deduces that he was disturbed of mind (because he forgot the pipe); that he valued it highly (because he had repaired, rather than replaced it when it was broken); that he was muscular, left-handed, had excellent teeth, was careless in his habits and was well-off.
None of these deductions is particularly germane to the story: they are merely Holmesian logical exercises. When the visitor, Mr. Grant Munro (whose name show more Holmes observed from his hatband) returns, Holmes and Watson hear the story of Munro's deception by his wife Effie. She had been previously married in America, but her husband and child had died of yellow fever, whereupon she returned to England and met and married Munro. Their marriage had been blissful — "We have not had a difference, not one, in thought, or word, or deed," says Grant Munro — until she asked for a hundred pounds and begged him not to ask why. Two months later, Effie Munro was caught conducting secret liaisons with the occupants of a cottage near the Munro house in Norbury.
Grant Munro has seen a mysterious yellow-faced person in this cottage. Overcome with jealousy, he breaks in and finds the place empty. However, the room where he saw the mysterious figure is very comfortable and well-furnished, with a portrait of his wife on the mantelpiece.
Holmes, after sending Munro home with instructions to wire for him if the cottage was reoccupied, confides in Watson his belief that the mysterious figure is Effie Munro's first husband. He postulates that the husband, having been left in America, has come to England to blackmail her.
After Munro summons Holmes and Watson, the three enter the cottage, brushing aside the entreaties of Effie Munro. They find the strange yellow-faced character; Holmes peels that face away, showing it to be a mask and revealing a young black girl. Effie Munro's first husband was John Hebron, a black man; he did die in America, but the couple's daughter Lucy survived. Afraid that Grant Munro would repudiate his love for her if he knew she was mother to a mixed race child, she had endeavored to keep Lucy's existence hidden. Overcome with desire to see her child again, Effie Munro used the hundred pounds to bring Lucy and her nurse to England and installed them in the cottage near the Munro house.
Both Watson and Holmes are touched by Munro's response. Watson observes:
"...when [Munro's] answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door."
Holmes says:
"Watson, if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little overconfident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."
I recommend this book to the permanent library of any reader who appreciates a well written mystery involving Sherlock Holmes. show less

This is my favourite Sherlock Holmes story hands-down. Even though the mystery is not that complicated, the ending more than makes up for it and I wish that this story got more attention. More than any of the others, this is one that could be adapted for a more child-friendly audience and still work for adults.

I seem to be enjoying only those Sherlock books in which he is thrown off his high horse!

I seem to be enjoying only those Sherlock books in which he is thrown off his high horse!