1836: I Became a Literary Giant in Great Britain

Chapter 78, "The Silver-Browed Horse" (Seeking first-day subscriptions!)

"A silver-browed horse?"

Dickens repeated it; the name itself carried a sense of mystery and poetry.

"Yes, Silver-browed Horse."

Michelle briefly recounted the plot of the story.

"The famous Wessex Cup horse race is held annually in Dartmoor, England."

"However, on the eve of the race, a champion racehorse named 'Silver Forehead' mysteriously disappeared."

"To make matters worse, its trainer was found in the wilderness with a severe blow to the head and died on the spot."

"This bizarre case dominated the headlines of London newspapers for several days in a row."

Michael and Dickens held their breath upon hearing this.

The story begins with suspense, immediately capturing their attention.

Moreover, the fate of this horse trainer is strikingly similar to the scene before us.

It made them feel very involved... almost like they were solving a crime on the spot.

"A local detective, a man named Gregory, quickly got involved in the investigation. He arrested a suspect named Simpson because Simpson had broken into the stables on the night of the incident. As for the murder weapon, it was the cane he was carrying."

After all, the cane is a gentleman's version of a holy sword of physics, combining practicality, aesthetics, and lethality...

"Of course, according to him, he was just a horse racing scout and did not commit any crimes."

It's all your fault for choosing this name; Simpson sounds like a murderer.

As Michelle spoke, she couldn't help but mentally complain.

"Holmes saw the news in the newspaper and thought it was a simple case. But the police couldn't find the silver horse. So he decided to take matters into his own hands and, with Watson, went to Dartmoor."

"Looks like this Simpson isn't the real killer."

Dickens asked impatiently.

He was completely immersed in the story, as if he were Watson himself, personally following Sherlock Holmes to solve the case.

Michelle did not give a direct answer.

Instead, he smiled slightly, enjoying the feeling of controlling the audience's emotions.

The fact that Dickens was so engrossed in it greatly satisfied his sense of accomplishment.

"Yes, because the dog didn't bark."

1

"what?"

Dickens was a bit confused when he heard this, completely failing to grasp the connection between whether a dog barks or not and whether Simpson was the killer.

"When Holmes arrived at the scene, the first thing he noticed was that the stable dog hadn't barked at all on the night of the incident."

This led him to an important conclusion: the killer must have been someone the dog knew.

"People the dog knows?"

Michael repeated it, though he wasn't a professional detective, his journalistic intuition told him that there was an unusual logic to it...

"That's right." Michelle nodded.

"Simpson is a stranger. If he sneaks into the stable, the guard dogs will bark incessantly."

"But the dog didn't bark, which means the killer was someone from the stable, or someone who frequently came and went from the stable."

This is precisely the most iconic contribution of Silver Horse and a classic paradigm in the history of detective fiction!

The abnormal "nothingness" is more valuable than the visible "somethingness".

The truth is often hidden in the details of "what should have happened but didn't".

A great detective doesn't discover more unknown information, but rather finds the missing or unusual clues within the existing ones!

Upon hearing this, Dickens and Michael both fell into deep thought.

I feel that Michelle's reasoning seems to have brought some more novel ideas.

"Next, Holmes found matchsticks and a scalpel at the crime scene, the blade stained with blood. The detective believed this was left during the struggle between the horse trainer and the murderer..."

'

"The reason the stable boy fell into a deep sleep that day was because his dinner had been laced with tincture of opium!"

Upon hearing the word "opium tincture," both Michael and Dickens were startled and simultaneously looked towards the still restless "Duke" in the distance.

The tragic reality and the ingenious overlap of the story resonated strongly at this moment.

"Could the murderer be the horse trainer's wife?" Dickens made a bold guess.

"No."

Michelle shook her head.

Ultimately, Holmes focused his attention on the horse trainer of the "Silver-browed Horse".

That's the one who died...

"But how could the horse trainer himself die? How could the murderer be the victim?" Michael pressed.

"Because this horse trainer was a gambler, he owed a huge gambling debt and was also keeping a mistress. To pay off his debts, he decided to use the 'Silver-fronted Horse' to stage a grand scam. His goal was to make the 'Silver-fronted Horse' lose unexpectedly; he had already placed a large bet and planned to profit from it."

He kept mistresses, cheated in horse racing, fed opium, and was involved in all sorts of vices, including gambling, prostitution, and drugs.

Cherish life, stay away from pornography, gambling, and drugs!

To carry out his plan, the horse trainer bought a scalpel, intending to secretly sever the silver-browed horse's tendons, causing it to limp slightly. However, his act of striking a match startled the horse, causing it to kick and crush its head.

"Those wounds were inflicted by the horse trainer himself when he had convulsions."

"As for why the horse handler needs to be put to sleep, it's because the horse will neigh loudly when it's being cut, and he's afraid of waking the horse handler."

"The horse trainer even made preparations in advance; the lame sheep in his sheepfold were the result of his training..."

'

As for the whereabouts of the Silverhorn, Holmes eventually found it at a nearby horse stable. It was one of Sir Ross's "kind neighbors" who, during his early morning walk, had inadvertently discovered the Silverhorn and hidden it.

"Finally, the race proceeded smoothly. 'Silver-browed Horse' won the championship."

After Michelle finished telling her story, everyone fell silent.

Who would have thought that the final culprit would be this silver-browed horse?

Michael and Dickens remained motionless, as if under a spell.

They hadn't expected Michelle's talent to be so outrageous.

The tragedy that had just unfolded before their eyes—the "Duke" horse ravaged by drugs, the rider lying in a pool of blood...

All the pain and injustice were conceived by Michelle in a short period of time into such an ingenious and captivating detective story!

Although it's just a rough outline of the plot without any specific details, the story itself is captivating enough!

"My God!"

Dickens was the first to break the silence, his expression revealing deep admiration.

"Michelle, you...you're a monster! You managed to turn everything that just happened into such a fascinating story!"

Michael also came to his senses, and his eyes were filled with shock as he looked at Michelle.

He knew Michel was talented, but he didn't expect that talent to be so powerful, so powerful that it could instantly transform the cruelty of reality into the charm of literature.

"This... is simply unbelievable!" Michael muttered to himself.

He couldn't imagine how a person's brain could weave together such a complete and logical story from scattered clues and real-world stimuli in such a short time.

"This piece, 'Silver Horse'..."

""

Dickens paced back and forth in the living room excitedly, his mind completely absorbed by the story.

"It's not just a great detective story; it also exposes the dark side of the racetrack!"

As an excellent writer, Dickens saw the significance behind "The Silver Horse".

Although the silver-browed horse caused the trainer's death, it was his own greed that truly killed him.

Thinking deeper, this is also related to the rampant cheating in British horse racing.

Michael nodded emphatically, his eyes gleaming with the keen insight characteristic of a journalist.

"That's right! This isn't just a story! It will make all of London, no, all of Britain, re-examine the sport of horse racing!"

Seeing their excitement, Michelle also felt a strong creative urge welling up inside her.

In fact, "The Silver-browed Horse" is one of the best of Holmes' short stories.

The plot of this story is extremely ingenious, containing three plot twists in a short length!

The first twist is that the victim is also the perpetrator! After all, in conventional logic, victims often receive more sympathy, while the role they play in the whole incident is ignored. Like the horse trainer in this case.

The second twist is that the murder and the horse theft are not the same case, which is a major reason why the local detectives have been unsuccessful... But Holmes can see this, which is why he was able to break the deadlock so quickly.

The third twist is that the murderer wasn't human. Who would have thought that an animal could be the killer?

Actually, this plot was first created by Edgar Allan Poe, the father of detective fiction, in his 1841 story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"... where a red gorilla is the murderer.

Of course, this was first created by Sherlock Holmes!

Michelle combined the main plot of the story with her own experience today, removing the part in the original text where Holmes tricks the horse owner.

This is a bug in the original text, since modern British horse racing does not allow disguises for competition.

He knew that this story was not just about satisfying the reader's curiosity.

It is also for those nameless people struggling in the darkness, for those lives trampled by money and power.

If this work can make the world a little better, and horses, riders, and trainers can be treated with even a little kindness, then it will have been worthwhile.