Mr. Robert Ferguson, who comes to 221B Baker Street the next morning, has become convinced that his Peruvian second wife has been sucking their baby son's blood.

By his first wife, he has a 15-year-old son named Jack, who suffered an unfortunate accident as a child and now, although he can still walk, does not have full use of his legs.

He finds an agitated woman in the room upstairs – she speaks of all being destroyed, and of sacrificing herself rather than breaking her husband's heart.

It turns out that the culprit is Jack, Mr. Ferguson's elder son, who is extremely jealous of his young half-brother.

[4] It was included in the short story collection The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes,[4] which was published in the UK and the US in June 1927.

[5] The story was adapted by Edith Meiser as an episode of the American radio series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

The episode aired on 16 February 1931, with Richard Gordon as Sherlock Holmes and Leigh Lovell as Dr.

In the televised version, Holmes was called by the town vicar to investigate the death of the Ferguson baby, with the prime suspect being the newly arrived Mr. John Stockton, a man of eccentric behaviour descended from a local family rumoured to be vampires.

During this investigation, it is revealed that Jack Ferguson, driven to delusions by the childhood accident which cost him the full use of his legs, has come to believe himself to be a vampire because of the power and fear such a creature inspires.

[13] The 2018 Japanese television drama Miss Sherlock adapted "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" in season 1, episode 4 "The Wakasugi Family", setting it in modern-day Japan.