Event
The Death of Sir Charles
Some three months before the story opens, the wealthy and generous Sir Charles was found dead at the far end of his yew alley after his nightly walk. There were no marks of violence, and the inquest, borne out by the post-mortem, returned a verdict of heart failure. But Dr. Mortimer privately tells Holmes two things he withheld: that the footprints changed character past the moor-gate, and that some little distance from the body lay the fresh prints of a gigantic hound.
Chapter III. The Problem
Holmes reasons that Sir Charles did not walk on tiptoe but ran in terror down the alley until his heart burst, and that he had first stood waiting at the moor-gate for some five or ten minutes, as the twice-dropped cigar ash showed.
Chapter X. Extract from the Diary of Dr. Watson
A new light falls on it: Barrymore reveals that Sir Charles went to the gate that night to keep an appointment made by letter with a woman whose initials were L. L.
Chapter XI. The Man on the Tor
Laura Lyons admits that she wrote asking Sir Charles to meet her at that gate and hour, though she swears she never kept the appointment.
Chapter XII. Death on the Moor
Holmes concedes that they now know the old man died of sheer fright at the hound, yet cannot prove it to a jury, for a hound leaves no fang-mark on a body already dead.
Chapter XV. A Retrospection
The full account: the painted hound was loosed at the wicket-gate and sprang after Sir Charles down the alley, where he fell dead of terror and heart disease, the beast keeping to the grass so that only the man's prints showed.
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