Updated Jan. 3, 2024 at 4:30 p.m.
REICHENBACH FALLS — A cowbell is clanging somewhere. We are in the north of Switzerland, somewhere in the middle of the triangle between Bern, Lucerne and Grindelwald, at the Reichenbach Falls. They are actually three waterfalls, where the Reichenbach tributary plunges into the valley and joins the Aare River. The upper falls are the most impressive part, at around 120 m high. After the snow has melted, and when the wind is blowing, the mist that rises off the falls there can be seen far and wide.
It is a popular site with visitors, and in 1899 a funicular was built.
Most people, however, do not come to see the mist, but because of Sherlock Holmes, as this is where he met his end. At least, that is what we read in the short story The Final Problem, which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published in 1893, six years before the funicular was built. In that story, Dr. Watson, the legendary detective’s sidekick, tells us how and why Holmes died so far from home.
A criminal mastermind
“It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr. Sherlock Holmes was distinguished… It was my intention… to have said nothing of that event which has created a void in my life which the lapse of two years has done little to fill. My hand has been forced, however, by the recent letters in which Colonel James Moriarty defends the memory of his brother, and I have no choice but to lay the facts before the public exactly as they occurred.”
James Moriarty was the brother of Professor Moriarty, a criminal mastermind who, along with his accomplices, had for many years struck fear into the hearts of Londoners. Holmes succeeded in apprehending all of his accomplices. But not Moriarty. Holmes called him “the Napoleon of crime”, telling Watson, “He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker.”
Holmes believed that ridding the world of Moriarty would be the greatest achievement of his life.
Fleeing to Switzerland
To avoid becoming Moriarty’s next victim, Holmes fled with his friend Watson through Europe, to Meiringen in Switzerland. He assumed that Moriarty was following them.
Watson writes that the two friends stayed in Meiringen, in the Hasli Valley, on 3 May 1891, at the Englischer Hof inn, likely based on the same site as the Parkhotel du Sauvage, which still exists today. The landlord “spoke excellent English… At his advice, on the afternoon of the 4th we set off together, with the intention of crossing the hills and spending the night at the hamlet of Rosenlaui. We had strict injunctions, however, on no account to pass the falls of Reichenbach, which are about halfway up the hill… It is, indeed, a fearful place. The torrent, swollen by the melting snow, plunges in a tremendous abyss, from which the spray rolls up like the smoke from a burning house.”
While Holmes and Watson are admiring the natural beauty of the site, so the story goes, a young lad comes running along with a letter in his hand from the innkeeper Peter Steiler, asking for the doctor to return quickly to look after an Englishwoman who has fallen ill at the Englischer Hof.
Watson turns back. Holmes stays. As Watson writes, “My friend would stay some little time at the fall, he said, and would then walk slowly over the hill to Rosenlaui, where I was to rejoin him in the evening. As I turned away I saw Holmes, with his back against a rock and his arms folded, gazing down at the rush of the waters. It was the last that I was ever destined to see of him in this world.”
Many mourned the famous detective
There is no sick Englishwoman at the Englischer Hof. And no one knows anything about a young lad sent with a letter to fetch Dr. Watson. Watson hurries back to the waterfall. There is no trace of Holmes, just his walking stick leaning against a rock.
We know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to end his Holmes series with this story.
Watson finds a letter addressed to him hidden in a crevice in that very rock. “My dear Watson [it said], I write these few lines through the courtesy of Mr. Moriarty… I am pleased to think that I shall be able to free society from any further effects of his presence, though I fear that it is at a cost which will give pain to my friends, and especially, my dear Watson, to you. I have already explained to you, however, that my career had in any case reached its crisis, and that no possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to me than this.”
With that, Watson is given to understand that Professor Moriarty has been vanquished. But the highest price of all has been paid: the selfless death of Sherlock Holmes, tumbling into the falls with Moriarty.
Sherlock Holmes is dead. Apparently he went to his death willingly. Now we know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to end his Holmes series with this story. He didn’t want to keep on coming up with more and more detective stories.
Not even the author’s mother, who was an avid Sherlock Holmes reader, could convince her son otherwise. Holmes’s great popularity lead to a show of public mourning for him. It is thought that people in London wore black armbands. And a number of disappointed readers of The Strand Magazine, where the stories regularly appeared, cancelled their subscriptions.
Fans making pilgrimages to the Reichenbach Falls
However, the Reichenbach Falls and the surrounding region in Switzerland saw a rise in popularity, with the funicular built to cater for increased visitor numbers following in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes. There is a plaque at the spot where the fight between Holmes and Moriarty is said to have taken place. It reads, in English, German and French: “At this fearful place, Sherlock Holmes vanquished Professor Moriarty, on 4 May 1891”. Anyone experiencing the breath-taking roar of the waterfalls understands why Conan Doyle chose to have his hero meet his end here: it is truly a worthy resting place.
Visitors can learn more about Holmes at the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Meiringen, which was opened around 30 years ago, on the hundredth anniversary of the hero’s death. It features a reconstruction of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson’s living room at 221B, Baker Street in London.
Tourists can also sample a Sherlock Holmes fondue and stay overnight in holiday apartments that are decorated in the style of Holmes’s era.
And we should not forget that the German Sherlock Holmes Society lays a wreath at the Reichenbach Falls every year on May 4, to commemorate the man who did not, in fact, die there around 130 years ago. Because in the story collection “The Return of Sherlock Holmes,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle revealed the, supposedly, true account of what happened at the waterfall.
According to that book, it was only the evil Moriarty who perished, not Holmes. After he had vanquished his nemesis, he remained in hiding for a while, so that many years later he could resume his detective work. According to the Meiringer Museum, he is believed to still be alive — certainly, the London Times has not yet published an obituary.
