Rest assured that this book is not on the Sherlock Holmes syllabus

"Santoro's body lay stiff on the floor, and I covered it with my coat.  He had been dead for several hours and the sound that had alerted us to his presence was, perhaps, an involuntary gasp." 

Because, as a general rule, corpses gasp voluntarily?

(Also, Holmes and Watson keep referring to each other as "old boy," which...no.)