Sherlock Holmes investigates a series of so-called "pajama suicides". He knows the female villain behind them is as cunning as Moriarty and as venomous as a spider. Based on "The Sign of Four" and the short stories "The Dying Detective", "The Final Problem", "The Speckled Band" and "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot".
When a nobleman is threatened by a family curse on his newly inherited estate, Sherlock Holmes is hired to investigate.
Sherlock Holmes is forced to confront his age and health condition as he struggles to solve the murder of a fellow detective.
Holmes receives a mysterious telegram from Cyril Overton, the captain of the Cambridge University rugby team. Overton later explains that one of the best players on his team, a young man named Godfrey Staunton, went missing while in London for an important game. Holmes follows a trail of clues back to Cambridge.
A gentleman is baffled when the childish drawings of little dancing men terrify his American wife. Sherlock Holmes soon discovers why.
Susan Cushing asks Holmes' help in solving the disappearance of her sister Mary Browner, but it doesn't seem Holmes' type of case until he is told of a Christmas present's grisly contents.
Hilton Soames, a lecturer in Greek at a university, notices that someone has gone into his study and looked at the text for an unseen translation exam that is due to take place the next day. Suspicion falls on the three students who live in the same building in which Soames lives and works, all of whom are entered for the exam.
Dr. John Watson treats a patient who has lost a thumb. The patient says that the loss of his thumb was not an accident but the result of an attack. However, he fears that the story behind the loss of his digit is so strange that the police will not believe it.
Holmes and Dr. Watson tackle the case of a curse on the Baskerville bloodline in this ABC Movie of the Week adaptation.