Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth” is the Sherlock Holmes maxim Holly Gibney invokes when she asks Ralph Anderson to consider a supernatural explanation for the two Terrys. In their exchange, it is less a simple endorsement of the supernatural than a rule for facing evidence that ordinary explanations have failed to contain.

The Maxim in the Conversation

Holly recalls two earlier images: Bill Hodges’s story of footprints that simply stopped, and Ralph’s account of maggots appearing in a cantaloupe. She says both men had been speaking metaphorically, as Edgar Allan Poe’s story can be read as a metaphor for the divided self. But she presses beyond metaphor: stripped of symbolic meaning, what remains is the inexplicable. Her question is whether the riddle of the two Terrys has a supernatural answer.

Ralph’s Resistance

Ralph does not accept the conclusion. He says he does not believe in the supernatural, including ghosts, angels, or the divinity of Jesus Christ. His churchgoing is practical and habitual: he values the quiet as a place to listen to himself and acknowledges that attendance is expected. The contrast makes the maxim consequential: Holly offers it as a reason to keep an improbable explanation open, while Ralph’s skepticism marks the distance between recognizing an unsolved contradiction and believing in a supernatural cause.

Holly’s Reasoning

Holly’s appeal to Sherlock Holmes follows a broader account of what she is willing to believe. She says she would like to believe in God because she does not want existence to end, while also conceding the apparent logic of returning to the blackness from which life came. She places her confidence instead in the stars, the universe’s infinity, the possibility of many universes in a fistful of sand, and the unknown workings of consciousness and the unconscious. The maxim crystallizes this outlook: when the impossible has been eliminated, improbability alone is not grounds for dismissal.

The Maxim’s Narrative Function

The exchange turns a familiar detective’s precept into a bridge between rational investigation and supernatural possibility. Holmes’s method is invoked not to supply proof, but to challenge the assumption that an ordinary answer must exist. Ralph responds by asking whether Holmes was also the man who believed in fairies, a skeptical counterpoint that leaves their disagreement unresolved. Holly ends the conversation by inviting Ralph upstairs, shifting from the abstract riddle to the intimacy of their relationship without settling its explanation.