The Adventure of Black Peter Trivia Quiz

Answer: A pig

Holmes had decided that driving the spear into the pig would be similar to driving the spear into a man, and he wanted to see how easy it would be to do so. He discovered that it wasn't, telling Watson that it would take a great deal of strength to do so. His reason for wanting to test this was because of his interest in the death of Peter Carey.

Answer: His dirty motorcycle

Peter Carey was a retired sea captain with dark features and a bushy dark beard who had worked as a sealer and a whaler. He had a wife and a daughter and two servants, but while they lived in the family house, he spent most of his time in a cabin he had built behind the house.

He was known to be violent, having once assaulted a vicar who came to talk with him about his behavior, and he was particularly mean when drunk. The local police inspector Stanley Hopkins reported that "I have not heard one single word of sorrow about his terrible end."

Answer: A sealskin tobacco pouch

The tobacco pouch was engraved with the initials "P.C." and had strong ship's tobacco in it, but no pipe was found in the cabin, and Peter Carey rarely smoked. Holmes asked Hopkins what he made of this clue, which surprised Hopkins since he believed it to be Peter Carey's pouch: "His initials were inside it. And it was of sealskin, and he was an old sealer." Holmes indicated that he would have made this clue the starting point in his investigation.

Answer: Rum

Sherlock Holmes asked Inspector Hopkins if there were other spirits available in the cabin, to which Hopkins replied that there were decanters of brandy and whisky. Hopkins did not believe this was important since the decanters were full and thus not used, but Holmes disagreed.

Answer: A list of stock exchange securities

Sherlock Holmes hadn't been aware of the notebook since it hadn't been brought forward at the inquest; he stated that he had a theory about the crime, but the notebook didn't fit in with it. Another annotation in the notebook was the initials J.H.N. which Inspector Hopkins believed were the initials of the stock broker, but he hadn't located anyone with those initials yet.

The notebook was stained with blood on its side so it had been dropped after the murder.

Answer: To find out what happened to his father

John Hopley Neligan asked if they had heard of the banking firm of Dawson and Neligan and stated that Neligan was his father. The firm had failed and his father had disappeared with stock securities. Young Neligan said that his father fled to Norway to have time to resolve the financial issues and had every intention of returning, but he was never heard from again. Young Neligan told them that he discovered that some of the securities had reappeared on the London market, and the seller had been Peter Carey. Since Carey's ship had been in the area where his father was sailing, he believed that Carey knew what happened to his father.

Answer: The size of Neligan

Sherlock Holmes listened to Inspector Hopkins' case against John Hopley Neligan and then told him that it was "intrinsically impossible". He told Hopkins that it takes a strong and experienced person to drive a harpoon through a body and that he knew that a frail man like Neligan did not have the capability to do so. Additionally, Holmes didn't believe that Neligan was the one who drank rum with Peter Carey or whose profile was seen by a witness walking near the cabin.

He told Hopkins that "it is another and more formidable person for whom we must seek".

Answer: He advertised for harpooners for an Arctic expedition.

Sherlock Holmes was convinced that the man who murdered Peter Carey was a seaman and probably someone who had served with Carey, given his ability with a harpoon. He asked a shipping agent to send him three men for an Arctic expedition and offered to pay good wages, suspecting that it would be an offer that the murderer couldn't pass up.

Answer: To blackmail him

Sherlock Holmes had determined that Patrick Cairns was the likely suspect when Holmes received a list of harpooners who had served with Peter Carey; they both had the same initials so the tobacco pouch could have belonged to Cairns rather than Carey, which made more sense to Holmes. Cairns told Holmes and Hopkins that Carey's ship had picked up Neligan the banker when his boat was foundering, and that he had seen Carey push Neligan overboard. Cairns needed money, so he wanted Carey to pay him to keep quiet.

Answer: Self defense

Patrick Cairns admitted to killing Peter Carey but stated that he didn't murder him. He said that Carey pulled out his knife, and, in self defense, he grabbed the only weapon he saw - the harpoon on the wall. He also stated that he saw young Neligan approaching the cabin as he was leaving and saw him run away after viewing the scene in the cabin.

Sherlock Holmes attributed his success in solving the case to getting the right clues from the beginning. He focused on the strength needed to commit the crime, the rum, and the tobacco pouch, all of which pointed to a fellow seaman being the culprit.