Dr. Watson

Oh, it's typical Edinburgh weather, Mr. Bell.

Perhaps you've heard that there's no language richer in terms of reproach against the howling wind than the Scots, darling.

Snell, bligh, nearly, scowthering, to mention just a handful.

All of them words that carry a shiver with them.

Yes, as Stevenson so aptly puts it, Edinburgh pays cruelly for our high seat and commanding views in one of the vilest climates under heaven.

She's liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the highland hills.

The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright purgatory in the spring.

Oh, there you're entirely wrong, Mr. Bell.

Nowhere will you find such stark magnificence, such grim beauty.

Edinburgh.

the great granite sphinx of the North, crouching high on a towering rock, looking across the intervening plains to the waters of the Forth and to the North Sea.

Fascinating, regal, splendid, and cruel.

Yes, I think this is just the night to tell the story of the haunted bagpipes, one of the weirdest and most gruesome adventures that Holmes and I ever shared.

The setting was Edinburgh, and the motivating character...

Exactly.

Yes, and I think I can safely promise you that this is the most hair-raising of the lot.

In fact, it's so unbelievably macabre and gruesome that I've never told it to any but to my closest friends, those who know that I'm a truthful man.

In fact, sometimes...

In the same light of day, I doubt myself that this adventure really happened.

But a night like this brings it all back to me in all its horror.