When I look at the three massive manuscript volumes which contain
our work for the year 1894, I confess that it is very difficult
for me, out of such a wealth of material, to select the cases
which are most interesting in themselves, and at the same time
most conducive to a display of those peculiar powers for which my
friend was famous. As I turn over the pages, I see my notes upon
the repulsive story of the red leech and the terrible death of
Crosby, the banker. Here also I find an account of the Addleton
tragedy, and the singular contents of the ancient British barrow.
The famous Smith-Mortimer succession case comes also within this
period, and so does the tracking and arrest of Huret, the
Boulevard assassin—an exploit which won for Holmes an autograph
letter of thanks from the French President and the Order of the
Legion of Honour. Each of these would furnish a narrative, but on
the whole I am of opinion that none of them unites so many
singular points of interest as the episode of Yoxley Old Place,
which includes not only the lamentable death of young Willoughby
Smith, but also those subsequent developments which threw so
curious a light upon the causes of the crime.
It was a wild, tempestuous night, towards the close of November.
Holmes and I sat together in silence all the evening, he engaged
with a powerful lens deciphering the remains of the original
inscription upon a palimpsest, I deep in a recent treatise upon
surgery. Outside the wind howled down Baker Street, while the
rain beat fiercely against the windows. It was strange there, in
the very depths of the town, with ten miles of man’s handiwork on
every side of us, to feel the iron grip of Nature, and to be
conscious that to the huge elemental forces all London was no
more than the molehills that dot the fields. I walked to the
window, and looked out on the deserted street. The occasional
lamps gleamed on the expanse of muddy road and shining pavement.
A single cab was splashing its way from the Oxford Street end.
“Well, Watson, it’s as well we have not to turn out to-night,”
said Holmes, laying aside his lens and rolling up the palimpsest.
“I’ve done enough for one sitting. It is trying work for the
eyes. So far as I can make out, it is nothing more exciting than
an Abbey’s accounts dating from the second half of the fifteenth
century. Halloa! halloa! halloa! What’s this?”
Amid the droning of the wind there had come the stamping of a
horse’s hoofs, and the long grind of a wheel as it rasped against
the curb. The cab which I had seen had pulled up at our door.
“What can he want?” I ejaculated, as a man stepped out of it.
“Want? He wants us. And we, my poor Watson, want overcoats and
cravats and goloshes, and every aid that man ever invented to
fight the weather. Wait a bit, though! There’s the cab off again!
There’s hope yet. He’d have kept it if he had wanted us to come.
Run down, my dear fellow, and open the door, for all virtuous
folk have been long in bed.”
When the light of the hall lamp fell upon our midnight visitor, I
had no difficulty in recognizing him. It was young Stanley
Hopkins, a promising detective, in whose career Holmes had
several times shown a very practical interest.
“Is he in?” he asked, eagerly.
“Come up, my dear sir,” said Holmes’s voice from above. “I hope
you have no designs upon us such a night as this.”
The detective mounted the stairs, and our lamp gleamed upon his
shining waterproof. I helped him out of it, while Holmes knocked
a blaze out of the logs in the grate.
“Now, my dear Hopkins, draw up and warm your toes,” said he.
“Here’s a cigar, and the doctor has a prescription containing hot
water and a lemon, which is good medicine on a night like this.
It must be something important which has brought you out in such
a gale.”
“It is indeed, Mr. Holmes. I’ve had a bustling afternoon, I
promise you. Did you see anything of the Yoxley case in the
latest editions?”
“I’ve seen nothing later than the fifteenth century to-day.”
“Well, it was only a paragraph, and all wrong at that, so you
have not missed anything. I haven’t let the grass grow under my
feet. It’s down in Kent, seven miles from Chatham and three from
the railway line. I was wired for at 3:15, reached Yoxley Old
Place at 5, conducted my investigation, was back at Charing Cross
by the last train, and straight to you by cab.”
“Which means, I suppose, that you are not quite clear about your
case?”
“It means that I can make neither head nor tail of it. So far as
I can see, it is just as tangled a business as ever I handled,
and yet at first it seemed so simple that one couldn’t go wrong.
There’s no motive, Mr. Holmes. That’s what bothers me—I can’t put
my hand on a motive. Here’s a man dead—there’s no denying
that—but, so far as I can see, no reason on earth why anyone
should wish him harm.”
Holmes lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair.
“Let us hear about it,” said he.
“I’ve got my facts pretty clear,” said Stanley Hopkins. “All I
want now is to know what they all mean. The story, so far as I
can make it out, is like this. Some years ago this country house,
Yoxley Old Place, was taken by an elderly man, who gave the name
of Professor Coram. He was an invalid, keeping his bed half the
time, and the other half hobbling round the house with a stick or
being pushed about the grounds by the gardener in a Bath chair.
He was well liked by the few neighbours who called upon him, and
he has the reputation down there of being a very learned man. His
household used to consist of an elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Marker,
and of a maid, Susan Tarlton. These have both been with him since
his arrival, and they seem to be women of excellent character.
The professor is writing a learned book, and he found it
necessary, about a year ago, to engage a secretary. The first two
that he tried were not successes, but the third, Mr. Willoughby
Smith, a very young man straight from the university, seems to
have been just what his employer wanted. His work consisted in
writing all the morning to the professor’s dictation, and he
usually spent the evening in hunting up references and passages
which bore upon the next day’s work. This Willoughby Smith has
nothing against him, either as a boy at Uppingham or as a young
man at Cambridge. I have seen his testimonials, and from the
first he was a decent, quiet, hard-working fellow, with no weak
spot in him at all. And yet this is the lad who has met his death
this morning in the professor’s study under circumstances which
can point only to murder.”
The wind howled and screamed at the windows. Holmes and I drew
closer to the fire, while the young inspector slowly and point by
point developed his singular narrative.
“If you were to search all England,” said he, “I don’t suppose
you could find a household more self-contained or freer from
outside influences. Whole weeks would pass, and not one of them
go past the garden gate. The professor was buried in his work and
existed for nothing else. Young Smith knew nobody in the
neighbourhood, and lived very much as his employer did. The two
women had nothing to take them from the house. Mortimer, the
gardener, who wheels the Bath chair, is an army pensioner—an old
Crimean man of excellent character. He does not live in the
house, but in a three-roomed cottage at the other end of the
garden. Those are the only people that you would find within the
grounds of Yoxley Old Place. At the same time, the gate of the
garden is a hundred yards from the main London to Chatham road.
It opens with a latch, and there is nothing to prevent anyone
from walking in.
“Now I will give you the evidence of Susan Tarlton, who is the
only person who can say anything positive about the matter. It
was in the forenoon, between eleven and twelve. She was engaged
at the moment in hanging some curtains in the upstairs front
bedroom. Professor Coram was still in bed, for when the weather
is bad he seldom rises before midday. The housekeeper was busied
with some work in the back of the house. Willoughby Smith had
been in his bedroom, which he uses as a sitting-room, but the
maid heard him at that moment pass along the passage and descend
to the study immediately below her. She did not see him, but she
says that she could not be mistaken in his quick, firm tread. She
did not hear the study door close, but a minute or so later there
was a dreadful cry in the room below. It was a wild, hoarse
scream, so strange and unnatural that it might have come either
from a man or a woman. At the same instant there was a heavy
thud, which shook the old house, and then all was silence. The
maid stood petrified for a moment, and then, recovering her
courage, she ran downstairs. The study door was shut and she
opened it. Inside, young Mr. Willoughby Smith was stretched upon
the floor. At first she could see no injury, but as she tried to
raise him she saw that blood was pouring from the underside of
his neck. It was pierced by a very small but very deep wound,
which had divided the carotid artery. The instrument with which
the injury had been inflicted lay upon the carpet beside him. It
was one of those small sealing-wax knives to be found on
old-fashioned writing-tables, with an ivory handle and a stiff
blade. It was part of the fittings of the professor’s own desk.
“At first the maid thought that young Smith was already dead, but
on pouring some water from the carafe over his forehead he opened
his eyes for an instant. ‘The professor,’ he murmured—‘it was
she.’ The maid is prepared to swear that those were the exact
words. He tried desperately to say something else, and he held
his right hand up in the air. Then he fell back dead.
“In the meantime the housekeeper had also arrived upon the scene,
but she was just too late to catch the young man’s dying words.
Leaving Susan with the body, she hurried to the professor’s room.
He was sitting up in bed, horribly agitated, for he had heard
enough to convince him that something terrible had occurred. Mrs.
Marker is prepared to swear that the professor was still in his
night-clothes, and indeed it was impossible for him to dress
without the help of Mortimer, whose orders were to come at twelve
o’clock. The professor declares that he heard the distant cry,
but that he knows nothing more. He can give no explanation of the
young man’s last words, ‘The professor—it was she,’ but imagines
that they were the outcome of delirium. He believes that
Willoughby Smith had not an enemy in the world, and can give no
reason for the crime. His first action was to send Mortimer, the
gardener, for the local police. A little later the chief
constable sent for me. Nothing was moved before I got there, and
strict orders were given that no one should walk upon the paths
leading to the house. It was a splendid chance of putting your
theories into practice, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. There was really
nothing wanting.”
“Except Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” said my companion, with a somewhat
bitter smile. “Well, let us hear about it. What sort of a job did
you make of it?”
“I must ask you first, Mr. Holmes, to glance at this rough plan,
which will give you a general idea of the position of the
professor’s study and the various points of the case. It will
help you in following my investigation.”
He unfolded the rough chart, which I here reproduce, and he laid
it across Holmes’s knee. I rose and, standing behind Holmes,
studied it over his shoulder.