The parcel sent to Susan Cushing in “The Adventure of the Cardboard Box” contains two severed ears.
The story was first published in 1893 and later included in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Susan Cushing receives a small cardboard box addressed to her in Croydon. Inside are two human ears preserved in salt, creating one of the most immediately startling openings in the Holmes canon.
Holmes studies the parcel, the address, and the physical characteristics of the ears to determine that the delivery was not random. The investigation leads to a family tragedy involving Susan’s sisters and a sailor. Doyle uses the gruesome object as a clue to relationships, jealousy, and mistaken identity rather than as mere sensational decoration.
The story has had a complicated publication history. It was omitted from some early American editions of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, but it remains part of Doyle’s original Holmes stories. The title refers to the container, not the crime itself.