The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier

The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier (1926) is one of 12 Sherlock Holmes short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes first published Strand Magazine October 1921 – April 1927. It is distinguished as one of the few stories in the Canon where Holmes is the narrator and Watson is not present. It is centred around the attempt by James Dodd, formerly of the Imperial Yeomanry, to contact his friend Godfrey Emsworth with whom he served in The Boer War and who resided with his parents Colonel and Mrs Emsworth at Tuxbury Old Park “near Bedford” but also “inaccessible- five miles away from anywhere.” The story is set in 1903

Bernard Davies, a previous Chairman of the Sherlock Holmes Society, by using contemporary railway timetables and clues in the story stated that the railway station which Dodd and Holmes used was Woburn Sands and that “Tuxbury Old Park” was Cranfield Court situated on the outskirts of the village of that name.