Northumberland Hotel

The Northumberland Hotel is the London lodging associated with Sir Henry Baskerville’s arrival and with Stapleton’s preparations to track him. Though the hotel is only briefly described, it connects the pursuit in London to the later danger posed by the hound: a boot obtained there gave Stapleton a means of setting the animal on Sir Henry’s trail.

Sir Henry’s London Stay

After learning of the danger surrounding his inheritance, Sir Henry returned to his hotel and asked Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to meet him for lunch at two, so he could consider what he had been told before deciding what to do. The account identifies the Northumberland Hotel as the destination Stapleton followed him to in London. It therefore figures as Sir Henry’s temporary base during the interval before his journey to the family home, rather than as a location where the mystery is solved.

Stapleton’s Surveillance

Stapleton followed Dr. James Mortimer from Baker Street in London to the station and onward to the Northumberland Hotel. His pursuit made the hotel one point in a wider effort to keep track of Sir Henry and those around him. The narrative also links this London surveillance to Stapleton’s disguised pursuit of Dr. James Mortimer, while distinguishing the Northumberland from the Mexborough Private Hotel in Craven Street, where Stapleton and his wife lodged. Stapleton kept his wife confined in her room at their own lodging; the Northumberland Hotel was part of the route he watched, not their residence.

The Boot and the Hound

Stapleton needed an article of Sir Henry’s clothing so the hound could follow his scent. He arranged to obtain a boot through a hotel boot or chambermaid, whom Holmes suspects was bribed. The first boot secured was new and useless for the purpose, so it was returned and replaced with another. Holmes regarded this small transaction as decisive evidence that the pursuer was a real hound: the insistence on an old boot made sense as a means of tracking by scent, whereas the new one would not serve. In this way, an apparently minor hotel incident exposed the practical mechanism behind Stapleton’s monstrous-looking weapon.