Real-life poisoning ‘inspiration for Sherlock’
A SINISTER real-life murder inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write the Sherlock Holmes stories, an author has claimed.
Christopher Sandford reveals the case of poisoner Eugene Chantrelle, a teacher at the school Doyle went to as a pupil aged seven.
Chantrelle was fired after pupil Elizabeth Dyer, fell pregnant. They married but she died 10 years later, apparently from a fire’s fumes.
But Frenchman Chantrelle was hanged for murder in 1878 after the case was taken up by forensic scientist Dr Joseph Bell, Doyle’s friend and one of the models for Holmes. Bell found opium in Elizabeth’s vomit and proved Chantrelle used it to kill her. In his book – The Man Who Would Be Sherlock – Mr Sandford, 60, from Seattle, links the case to Doyle’s work.
He said a poison plot was in the first story, A Study in Scarlet, and several others and he added: “Marital disharmony and poisoning are the two enduring links of the Chantrelle affair.”