The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle: plot summary, themes and quiz for GCSE English Literature

The second Sherlock Holmes novel opens with a young governess and a mystery: every year since her father vanished, she has received a single pearl. Narrated by Dr Watson, the case leads from a locked room in Norwood to a chase down the Thames and a story of stolen treasure in India.

Prove you’ve read it

The set text at a glance

Author
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
Date
1890
Form
Novel, detective story
Exam component
The 19th-century novel
Set by
AQA (8702)
How it is examined
AQA Paper 1 Section B: one question that starts from an extract and widens to the whole novel, in a closed-book exam.
Copyright
Public domain: Conan Doyle died in 1930.

Plot summary, part by part

Miss Morstan’s mystery

Bored and turning to cocaine, Holmes welcomes a visit from Mary Morstan. Her father, an army officer, disappeared ten years earlier; since then she has received a pearl each year, and now a letter invites her to a meeting. Holmes and Watson go with her.

The Norwood murder

They meet Thaddeus Sholto, son of a fellow officer of Mary’s father, who explains that a hidden treasure belongs partly to her. At Pondicherry Lodge they find his brother Bartholomew dead in a locked room, killed by a poisoned thorn, the treasure gone and a paper marked with the sign of the four.

The chase

Holmes tracks the culprits with the dog Toby and the Baker Street Irregulars to the launch Aurora. After a night pursuit on the Thames, the islander Tonga is shot and the one-legged Jonathan Small is captured, but the treasure chest turns out to be empty: Small has scattered it in the river.

Jonathan Small’s story

Small explains how, during the 1857 uprising in India, he and three Sikh soldiers took the treasure from a murdered merchant, and how Major Sholto and Captain Morstan betrayed them. Watson, who has fallen in love with Mary, is relieved the fortune is lost and proposes to her.

This summary is a map, not a substitute: exam questions and Vread checkpoints are about the detail of the text.

Key themes

  • Reason and deduction: Holmes solves the case by observation and logic rather than luck.
  • Greed: the Agra treasure corrupts everyone who touches it.
  • Empire: the crime begins in British India, and the novel reflects the prejudices of its time about colonised peoples.
  • Love and loyalty: Watson and Mary’s romance contrasts with the betrayals among the treasure’s owners.
  • Order and disorder: Victorian London looks respectable but hides crime, addiction and violence.

Key characters

  • Sherlock Holmes: the consulting detective, brilliant at deduction but restless without a case.
  • Dr John Watson: the narrator, Holmes’s loyal friend, who falls in love with Mary Morstan.
  • Mary Morstan: a composed young governess whose missing father starts the case.
  • Thaddeus Sholto: a nervous, eccentric man who tries to make amends to Mary.
  • Jonathan Small: the former soldier who took the treasure and seeks it back after years of imprisonment.
  • Athelney Jones: a boastful Scotland Yard inspector, a comic contrast to Holmes.

Sample Vread questions on The Sign of Four

Here are 5 of the questions Vread asks while you read. No answers here: they are in the text.

  1. What weapon does Sherlock Holmes take from his drawer and slip into his pocket before the night expedition with Miss Morstan?
  2. What object does Sherlock Holmes find driven into the dead man's scalp, and hands to Watson to examine in the lantern light?
  3. Who is the landlady who confides to Watson that she fears for Sherlock Holmes's health after hearing him pace all day?
  4. In which fortified city does the narrator take refuge after fleeing the burning plantation during the mutiny?
  5. What is the name of the little Andaman Islander whom the narrator nurses back to health and who helps him escape by boat?

On Vread, the text is split into 5 sections, each ending with one question. Sections follow the catalogue edition, so your page numbers may differ.

Book page on Vread (in French): page count, reading time and checkpoints

Prove you’ve read it

Parents: has your teenager actually read The Sign of Four?

Summaries and revision notes are everywhere and take minutes to skim. What a parent cannot easily tell is whether the book was read. GCSE English Literature is closed book, and questions start from an extract: knowing the whole text is what makes the difference.

  • One question per section. Each checkpoint asks about a specific detail of the section just read, not a general idea a summary would give away.
  • Visible progress. Your child sees which sections are validated and what is left, at their own pace.
  • No copy of the book. Vread does not supply the text: your child reads the school’s edition, on paper or on an e-reader.

A correct answer shows a section was read, not that it was analysed: it complements, never replaces, the work done in class.

Other 19th-century novel set texts

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Vread is an independent app. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR or any other exam board. Boards are named only to show which texts they set.