A Scandal in Bohemia (Easy English)

To Sherlock Holmes, she was always the woman. He did not love her. Holmes did not love anybody; his mind was too cold and too precise for that. But in all the years I knew him, only one person ever beat him, and it was a woman. Her name was Irene Adler.

It began on a night in March 1888. I had recently married and moved out of our old rooms at 221B Baker Street, but I was passing the house and saw Holmes's tall shadow walking up and down behind the curtains. I went up.

He did not say much, as usual. He pointed to a chair, threw me a cigar and looked at me carefully.

"Marriage suits you, Watson," he said. "You have put on seven and a half pounds. And you have been out in the rain recently, and you have a very careless servant girl."

"Holmes! How can you possibly know that?"

"It is simple. The inside of your left shoe is scratched in six places, as if somebody cleaned the mud off very badly with a knife. Someone who scrapes shoes like that is careless. You walked in the rain; she cleaned the shoes." He smiled. "I see, Watson. You also see, but you do not observe."

He handed me a letter that had come that afternoon. It had no signature. It said that a gentleman would visit at a quarter to eight to consult him on a matter "of the greatest importance to one of the royal houses of Europe". The visitor would wear a mask.

At exactly a quarter to eight, a carriage stopped outside. A very tall man came up the stairs. He wore expensive, rather too colourful clothes, a long cloak and a black mask over the top half of his face.