“Then we shall breakfast early and take the very first in the morning,”
said Holmes. “Our presence is most urgently needed. Ah! here is our
expected cablegram. One moment, Mrs. Hudson; there may be an answer. No,
that is quite as I expected. This message makes it even more essential
that we should not lose an hour in letting Hilton Cubitt know how
matters stand, for it is a singular and a dangerous web in which our
simple Norfolk squire is entangled.”
So, indeed, it proved, and as I come to the dark conclusion of a story
which had seemed to me to be only childish and bizarre I experience once
again the dismay and horror with which I was filled. Would that I had
some brighter ending to communicate to my readers, but these are the
chronicles of fact, and I must follow to their dark crisis the strange
chain of events which for some days made Ridling Thorpe Manor a
household word through the length and breadth of England.
We had hardly alighted at North Walsham, and mentioned the name of our
destination, when the station-master hurried towards us. “I suppose that
you are the detectives from London?” said he.
A look of annoyance passed over Holmes's face.
“What makes you think such a thing?”
“Because Inspector Martin from Norwich has just passed through. But
maybe you are the surgeons. She's not dead--or wasn't by last accounts.
You may be in time to save her yet--though it be for the gallows.”
Holmes's brow was dark with anxiety.
“We are going to Ridling Thorpe Manor,” said he, “but we have heard
nothing of what has passed there.”
“It's a terrible business,” said the station-master. “They are shot,
both Mr. Hilton Cubitt and his wife. She shot him and then herself--so
the servants say. He's dead and her life is despaired of. Dear, dear,
one of the oldest families in the County of Norfolk, and one of the most
honoured.”
Without a word Holmes hurried to a carriage, and during the long seven
miles' drive he never opened his mouth. Seldom have I seen him so
utterly despondent. He had been uneasy during all our journey from
town, and I had observed that he had turned over the morning papers with
anxious attention; but now this sudden realization of his worst fears
left him in a blank melancholy. He leaned back in his seat, lost in
gloomy speculation. Yet there was much around to interest us, for we
were passing through as singular a country-side as any in England, where
a few scattered cottages represented the population of to-day, while on
every hand enormous square-towered churches bristled up from the flat,
green landscape and told of the glory and prosperity of old East Anglia.
At last the violet rim of the German Ocean appeared over the green edge
of the Norfolk coast, and the driver pointed with his whip to two old
brick and timber gables which projected from a grove of trees. “That's
Ridling Thorpe Manor,” said he.
As we drove up to the porticoed front door I observed in front of
it, beside the tennis lawn, the black tool-house and the pedestalled
sun-dial with which we had such strange associations. A dapper little
man, with a quick, alert manner and a waxed moustache, had just
descended from a high dog-cart. He introduced himself as Inspector
Martin, of the Norfolk Constabulary, and he was considerably astonished
when he heard the name of my companion.
“Why, Mr. Holmes, the crime was only committed at three this morning.
How could you hear of it in London and get to the spot as soon as I?”
“I anticipated it. I came in the hope of preventing it.”
“Then you must have important evidence of which we are ignorant, for
they were said to be a most united couple.”
“I have only the evidence of the dancing men,” said Holmes. “I will
explain the matter to you later. Meanwhile, since it is too late to
prevent this tragedy, I am very anxious that I should use the knowledge
which I possess in order to ensure that justice be done. Will you
associate me in your investigation, or will you prefer that I should act
independently?”
“I should be proud to feel that we were acting together, Mr. Holmes,”
said the inspector, earnestly.
“In that case I should be glad to hear the evidence and to examine the
premises without an instant of unnecessary delay.”
Inspector Martin had the good sense to allow my friend to do things
in his own fashion, and contented himself with carefully noting the
results. The local surgeon, an old, white-haired man, had just come down
from Mrs. Hilton Cubitt's room, and he reported that her injuries were
serious, but not necessarily fatal. The bullet had passed through the
front of her brain, and it would probably be some time before she could
regain consciousness. On the question of whether she had been shot or
had shot herself he would not venture to express any decided opinion.
Certainly the bullet had been discharged at very close quarters. There
was only the one pistol found in the room, two barrels of which had
been emptied. Mr. Hilton Cubitt had been shot through the heart. It was
equally conceivable that he had shot her and then himself, or that
she had been the criminal, for the revolver lay upon the floor midway
between them.
“Has he been moved?” asked Holmes.
“We have moved nothing except the lady. We could not leave her lying
wounded upon the floor.”
“How long have you been here, doctor?”
“Since four o'clock.”
“Anyone else?”
“Yes, the constable here.”
“And you have touched nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“You have acted with great discretion. Who sent for you?”
“The housemaid, Saunders.”
“Was it she who gave the alarm?”
“She and Mrs. King, the cook.”
“Where are they now?”
“In the kitchen, I believe.”
“Then I think we had better hear their story at once.”
The old hall, oak-panelled and high-windowed, had been turned into a
court of investigation. Holmes sat in a great, old-fashioned chair, his
inexorable eyes gleaming out of his haggard face. I could read in them
a set purpose to devote his life to this quest until the client whom he
had failed to save should at last be avenged. The trim Inspector Martin,
the old, grey-headed country doctor, myself, and a stolid village
policeman made up the rest of that strange company.
The two women told their story clearly enough. They had been aroused
from their sleep by the sound of an explosion, which had been followed
a minute later by a second one. They slept in adjoining rooms, and Mrs.
King had rushed in to Saunders. Together they had descended the stairs.
The door of the study was open and a candle was burning upon the table.
Their master lay upon his face in the centre of the room. He was quite
dead. Near the window his wife was crouching, her head leaning against
the wall. She was horribly wounded, and the side of her face was red
with blood. She breathed heavily, but was incapable of saying anything.
The passage, as well as the room, was full of smoke and the smell of
powder. The window was certainly shut and fastened upon the inside. Both
women were positive upon the point. They had at once sent for the
doctor and for the constable. Then, with the aid of the groom and the
stable-boy, they had conveyed their injured mistress to her room. Both
she and her husband had occupied the bed. She was clad in her dress--he
in his dressing-gown, over his night clothes. Nothing had been moved in
the study. So far as they knew there had never been any quarrel between
husband and wife. They had always looked upon them as a very united
couple.
These were the main points of the servants' evidence. In answer to
Inspector Martin they were clear that every door was fastened upon the
inside, and that no one could have escaped from the house. In answer
to Holmes they both remembered that they were conscious of the smell
of powder from the moment that they ran out of their rooms upon the
top floor. “I commend that fact very carefully to your attention,” said
Holmes to his professional colleague. “And now I think that we are in a
position to undertake a thorough examination of the room.”
The study proved to be a small chamber, lined on three sides with books,
and with a writing-table facing an ordinary window, which looked out
upon the garden. Our first attention was given to the body of the
unfortunate squire, whose huge frame lay stretched across the room. His
disordered dress showed that he had been hastily aroused from sleep.
The bullet had been fired at him from the front, and had remained in
his body after penetrating the heart. His death had certainly been
instantaneous and painless. There was no powder-marking either upon his
dressing-gown or on his hands. According to the country surgeon the lady
had stains upon her face, but none upon her hand.
“The absence of the latter means nothing, though its presence may
mean everything,” said Holmes. “Unless the powder from a badly-fitting
cartridge happens to spurt backwards, one may fire many shots without
leaving a sign. I would suggest that Mr. Cubitt's body may now be
removed. I suppose, doctor, you have not recovered the bullet which
wounded the lady?”
“A serious operation will be necessary before that can be done. But
there are still four cartridges in the revolver. Two have been fired and
two wounds inflicted, so that each bullet can be accounted for.”
“So it would seem,” said Holmes. “Perhaps you can account also for the
bullet which has so obviously struck the edge of the window?”
He had turned suddenly, and his long, thin finger was pointing to a hole
which had been drilled right through the lower window-sash about an inch
above the bottom.
“By George!” cried the inspector. “How ever did you see that?”
“Because I looked for it.”
“Wonderful!” said the country doctor. “You are certainly right, sir.
Then a third shot has been fired, and therefore a third person must have
been present. But who could that have been and how could he have got
away?”
“That is the problem which we are now about to solve,” said Sherlock
Holmes. “You remember, Inspector Martin, when the servants said that on
leaving their room they were at once conscious of a smell of powder I
remarked that the point was an extremely important one?”
“Yes, sir; but I confess I did not quite follow you.”
“It suggested that at the time of the firing the window as well as the
door of the room had been open. Otherwise the fumes of powder could not
have been blown so rapidly through the house. A draught in the room was
necessary for that. Both door and window were only open for a very short
time, however.”
“How do you prove that?”
“Because the candle has not guttered.”
“Capital!” cried the inspector. “Capital!”
“Feeling sure that the window had been open at the time of the tragedy
I conceived that there might have been a third person in the affair, who
stood outside this opening and fired through it. Any shot directed at
this person might hit the sash. I looked, and there, sure enough, was
the bullet mark!”
“But how came the window to be shut and fastened?”
“The woman's first instinct would be to shut and fasten the window. But,
halloa! what is this?”
It was a lady's hand-bag which stood upon the study table--a trim little
hand-bag of crocodile-skin and silver. Holmes opened it and turned
the contents out. There were twenty fifty-pound notes of the Bank of
England, held together by an india-rubber band--nothing else.
“This must be preserved, for it will figure in the trial,” said Holmes,
as he handed the bag with its contents to the inspector. “It is now
necessary that we should try to throw some light upon this third bullet,
which has clearly, from the splintering of the wood, been fired from
inside the room. I should like to see Mrs. King, the cook, again. You
said, Mrs. King, that you were awakened by a LOUD explosion. When you
said that, did you mean that it seemed to you to be louder than the
second one?”
“Well, sir, it wakened me from my sleep, and so it is hard to judge. But
it did seem very loud.”
“You don't think that it might have been two shots fired almost at the
same instant?”
“I am sure I couldn't say, sir.”
“I believe that it was undoubtedly so. I rather think, Inspector Martin,
that we have now exhausted all that this room can teach us. If you will
kindly step round with me, we shall see what fresh evidence the garden
has to offer.”
A flower-bed extended up to the study window, and we all broke into an
exclamation as we approached it. The flowers were trampled down, and the
soft soil was imprinted all over with footmarks. Large, masculine feet
they were, with peculiarly long, sharp toes. Holmes hunted about among
the grass and leaves like a retriever after a wounded bird. Then, with
a cry of satisfaction, he bent forward and picked up a little brazen
cylinder.
“I thought so,” said he; “the revolver had an ejector, and here is the
third cartridge. I really think, Inspector Martin, that our case is
almost complete.”
The country inspector's face had shown his intense amazement at the
rapid and masterful progress of Holmes's investigation. At first he
had shown some disposition to assert his own position; but now he was
overcome with admiration and ready to follow without question wherever
Holmes led.
“Whom do you suspect?” he asked.
“I'll go into that later. There are several points in this problem which
I have not been able to explain to you yet. Now that I have got so far
I had best proceed on my own lines, and then clear the whole matter up
once and for all.”
“Just as you wish, Mr. Holmes, so long as we get our man.”
“I have no desire to make mysteries, but it is impossible at the moment
of action to enter into long and complex explanations. I have the
threads of this affair all in my hand. Even if this lady should never
recover consciousness we can still reconstruct the events of last night
and ensure that justice be done. First of all I wish to know whether
there is any inn in this neighbourhood known as 'Elrige's'?”
The servants were cross-questioned, but none of them had heard of such a
place. The stable-boy threw a light upon the matter by remembering that
a farmer of that name lived some miles off in the direction of East
Ruston.
“Is it a lonely farm?”
“Very lonely, sir.”
“Perhaps they have not heard yet of all that happened here during the
night?”
“Maybe not, sir.”
Holmes thought for a little and then a curious smile played over his
face.
“Saddle a horse, my lad,” said he. “I shall wish you to take a note to
Elrige's Farm.”
He took from his pocket the various slips of the dancing men. With these
in front of him he worked for some time at the study-table. Finally he
handed a note to the boy, with directions to put it into the hands
of the person to whom it was addressed, and especially to answer no
questions of any sort which might be put to him. I saw the outside of
the note, addressed in straggling, irregular characters, very unlike
Holmes's usual precise hand. It was consigned to Mr. Abe Slaney,
Elrige's Farm, East Ruston, Norfolk.
“I think, inspector,” Holmes remarked, “that you would do well to
telegraph for an escort, as, if my calculations prove to be correct, you
may have a particularly dangerous prisoner to convey to the county gaol.
The boy who takes this note could no doubt forward your telegram. If
there is an afternoon train to town, Watson, I think we should do well
to take it, as I have a chemical analysis of some interest to finish,
and this investigation draws rapidly to a close.”
When the youth had been dispatched with the note, Sherlock Holmes gave
his instructions to the servants. If any visitor were to call asking for
Mrs. Hilton Cubitt no information should be given as to her condition,
but he was to be shown at once into the drawing-room. He impressed these
points upon them with the utmost earnestness. Finally he led the way
into the drawing-room with the remark that the business was now out of
our hands, and that we must while away the time as best we might until
we could see what was in store for us. The doctor had departed to his
patients, and only the inspector and myself remained.
“I think that I can help you to pass an hour in an interesting and
profitable manner,” said Holmes, drawing his chair up to the table
and spreading out in front of him the various papers upon which were
recorded the antics of the dancing men. “As to you, friend Watson, I owe
you every atonement for having allowed your natural curiosity to remain
so long unsatisfied. To you, inspector, the whole incident may appeal
as a remarkable professional study. I must tell you first of all the
interesting circumstances connected with the previous consultations
which Mr. Hilton Cubitt has had with me in Baker Street.” He then
shortly recapitulated the facts which have already been recorded. “I
have here in front of me these singular productions, at which one
might smile had they not proved themselves to be the fore-runners of
so terrible a tragedy. I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret
writings, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the
subject, in which I analyze one hundred and sixty separate ciphers;
but I confess that this is entirely new to me. The object of those who
invented the system has apparently been to conceal that these characters
convey a message, and to give the idea that they are the mere random
sketches of children.
“Having once recognised, however, that the symbols stood for letters,
and having applied the rules which guide us in all forms of secret
writings, the solution was easy enough. The first message submitted to
me was so short that it was impossible for me to do more than to say
with some confidence that the symbol XXX stood for E. As you are aware,
E is the most common letter in the English alphabet, and it predominates
to so marked an extent that even in a short sentence one would expect
to find it most often. Out of fifteen symbols in the first message four
were the same, so it was reasonable to set this down as E. It is true
that in some cases the figure was bearing a flag and in some cases not,
but it was probable from the way in which the flags were distributed
that they were used to break the sentence up into words. I accepted this
as a hypothesis, and noted that E was represented by XXX.
“But now came the real difficulty of the inquiry. The order of
the English letters after E is by no means well marked, and any
preponderance which may be shown in an average of a printed sheet may be
reversed in a single short sentence. Speaking roughly, T, A, O, I, N, S,
H, R, D, and L are the numerical order in which letters occur; but T,
A, O, and I are very nearly abreast of each other, and it would be an
endless task to try each combination until a meaning was arrived at. I,
therefore, waited for fresh material. In my second interview with Mr.
Hilton Cubitt he was able to give me two other short sentences and one
message, which appeared--since there was no flag--to be a single word.
Here are the symbols. Now, in the single word I have already got the
two E's coming second and fourth in a word of five letters. It might
be 'sever,' or 'lever,' or 'never.' There can be no question that
the latter as a reply to an appeal is far the most probable, and
the circumstances pointed to its being a reply written by the lady.
Accepting it as correct, we are now able to say that the symbols XXX
stand respectively for N, V, and R.
“Even now I was in considerable difficulty, but a happy thought put me
in possession of several other letters. It occurred to me that if these
appeals came, as I expected, from someone who had been intimate with the
lady in her early life, a combination which contained two E's with
three letters between might very well stand for the name 'ELSIE.' On
examination I found that such a combination formed the termination of
the message which was three times repeated. It was certainly some appeal
to 'Elsie.' In this way I had got my L, S, and I. But what appeal could
it be? There were only four letters in the word which preceded 'Elsie,'
and it ended in E. Surely the word must be 'COME.' I tried all other
four letters ending in E, but could find none to fit the case. So now I
was in possession of C, O, and M, and I was in a position to attack the
first message once more, dividing it into words and putting dots for
each symbol which was still unknown. So treated it worked out in this
fashion:--
.M .ERE ..E SL.NE.
“Now the first letter CAN only be A, which is a most useful discovery,
since it occurs no fewer than three times in this short sentence, and
the H is also apparent in the second word. Now it becomes:--