Ottermole was a "ruthless mass murderer" who killed many people in London. The murders were considered mysterious at the time, as the culprit would always manage to disappear before the police could arrive. It eventually transpired that this was because the killer was a senior member of the police called Ottermole. He was eventually caught, convicted, and executed.
Ottermole "look-alike"?[]
- Main article: The Return of the Great Departed Soul
The killer's so-called "look-alike".
One year after the Ottermole murders, one of the exhibits of a "ruthless mass-murderer" at the Madame Tusspells Museum of Waxworks was "abducted", and a policeman arrived at the scene to investigate, only to fall asleep. While attempting to deduce the goings on at the museum, Herlock Sholmes mistook the sleeping policeman for a wax statue of Ottermole, and deduced it to be the missing waxwork.
The policeman would go on to be picked as a juror for the trial of Albert Harebrayne the following day. During the trial, Ryunosuke Naruhodo accidentally referred to him as Ottermole, only for the furious juror to state they look nothing alike.
Name[]
- "Ottermole" comes from Thomas Burke's 1931 novella, "The Hands of Mr. Ottermole". The story is set in early twentieth-century London, where a murderer has been strangling people to death in the fog and outwitting the police investigation, led by Sgt. Ottermole. A reporter suspects that the culprit has to be someone taken for granted by the public, but falls victim to the killer in turn: Sgt. Ottermole himself, who claims that the reason for his crimes was because "ideas came into his hands".