The Riddle of Foxwood Grange

by Denis O. Smith

  “The other farmer who is a neighbour is Oliver Ashton, whose land immediately adjoins my own gardens. He is of a completely different character. His wife, sadly, died about five years ago, and his two children, a boy, Giles, and a girl, Fiona, aged about seventeen and fifteen, are away at school most of the year, so, apart from a married couple who are his only domestic servants, he has the house to himself. As a result of this, I suppose, he is a very great reader. This certainly makes his conversation more interesting than that of Thomas Pearson, but he is one of those people whose conversation tends to be dominated by whatever book he is currently reading. Thus, on one occasion when I passed an evening with him, almost the entire conversation was taken up with a discussion of King Alfred the Great, a biography of whom Ashton had just finished reading. As I knew little more about Alfred than that he had united some previously warring factions against the Danish invaders, and had absent-mindedly burnt some cakes, you will imagine that Ashton did most of the talking. On another occasion, he had been reading a book about Captain Cook’s voyages of exploration, and the evening’s conversation was dominated by the subject of Australia and New Zealand, about which I knew almost as little as I knew about Alfred the Great. I have always found Ashton agreeable enough, but as both he and his children are regarded as conducting themselves with a rather manifest air of superiority, they are not very popular in the district. We’ll drive past his farmhouse, Oldstone House, a little further on. I’ll point it out to you as we pass.

  “Then,” Blake continued after a moment’s thought, “there is Mr Matthias Needham of Abbeyfield House. He would certainly fit into your categories of ‘educated’ and ‘well off’, although he keeps himself to himself most of the time and I can’t think of the slightest reason he could have for spying on me. I know nothing whatever about his antecedents, so I can only describe him as I find him now. He is unmarried and lives alone at Abbeyfield House, which is even more isolated than my own house, where he spends his time in studying, so far as I can gather. Quite what subjects he studies, I cannot say, as he is, as I say, a very private man and speaks of himself only rarely. We have dined together, either at his house or mine, on a number of occasions, and the conversation has always been very lively, ranging over almost every abstract topic you could imagine, from politics, science, history and law to the possible existence of intelligent life on other planets.

  “He is congenial enough when he is in the mood, although his manner is never an open one. I cannot quite put my finger on it, but there seems something about him, even in his most expansive moments, that is opaque and calculating. And now that - in order to answer your questions - I reflect on our acquaintance in this way, I do recall a couple of odd things about him. I remember that he once asked me if I ever thought that I was being spied upon. I said not, and enquired as to what had made him ask the question, to which he answered that he had occasionally heard someone in his garden at twilight, and had once thought he had caught a glimpse of a face at the window. I suggested that it might have been some local boys looking to find some apples in his orchard, and we did not pursue the matter further.”

  “When was that?” Holmes asked.

  “Not recently - some time last autumn, I think. He has not mentioned the matter since. The other odd thing occurred one evening when Mr Needham was dining with me at the Grange. It was, I suppose, about two years ago. The conversation had drifted from one topic to another until it had alighted upon the subject of Foxwood Grange itself and its history. During the course of this, he mentioned that he had dined with my cousin, Mr Stannard, on numerous occasions in the past, but the latter had never showed him round the house. He said this in an odd tone, as if trying to imply that Mr Stannard had had some reason of his own for not doing so, which I felt sure was not true. There and then, I offered to remedy the deficiency and we set off for a tour of the old place. It was quite dark by then, however, so the tour was conducted by lamplight, and I’m not sure how satisfactory Mr Needham found it. I told him that if he ever wished to see any of it again in daylight, he had only to ask. It is, after all, a very historic place, and I can certainly understand anyone having an interest in it.”

  “Did he ever make such a request?”

  “Only once. About six months later, he asked if he might have another look in the library at the Grange, for, he said, it had been so dark on the previous occasion that he had been unable to make out the titles of many of the books there. I readily agreed, and we spent an enjoyable afternoon poring over the old volumes together, for there were, as you will imagine, many that I myself had never opened since I had lived there.”

  “Did Mr Needham appear interested in any book in particular?”

  “Not really. He was certainly more interested in the philosophical works than the others, as I recall - Bacon’s essays, an early edition of Locke, an eighteenth-century translation of Descartes and so on - but not in any one of them especially. He mentioned that he had many of them himself, in more modern editions. I did get the impression from some remark he made that he had hoped to find some esoterica there –books of hidden secrets, magic incantations and so on - but if so he must have been disappointed, for we didn’t come across anything like that.”

  “Very well. Pray continue.”

  All the time that Blake had been speaking, the pony had been proceeding at a slow trot along that quiet rural road. Now, with a pull on the reins, he drew the trap to a halt, and indicated the view to the left ahead of us, where a valley wound its way towards a series of gentle wooded hills in the distance.

  “I always think that the view from this spot must be one of the most beautiful in England,” said he. “Those hills you see are part of the Cotswold chain. When you look across from here, you see the hills and the woods, and very little else, so it is a little like looking back in time to some prehistoric age, before even ancient man had made any impression upon the landscape.”

  “It is certainly a lovely view,” I agreed.

  “While you sit here a moment and admire it,” said Holmes, “perhaps you could continue your survey of your neighbours.”

  “I think there is really only one more household to mention,” returned Blake, “but it is a decidedly odd one. Some distance on the far side of the ridge on which the ash spinney stands is another isolated house, Black Bank House. It was unoccupied when I first came to the district, but about eighteen months ago a singular group of people moved in there. I often saw them out walking when they were first here, but although I generally gave them a cheery ‘hello’ when our paths crossed, I received only a silent nod of the head in return. There are three of them, a man and a woman of middle age, and another man who appears somewhat older. I had seen them out walking several times before I had any idea who they were, and had formed the impression that the older man was the head of the household. He is a very learned-looking man and I had often seen him talking as they walked along, sometimes gesticulating as he did so, as if to emphasise some point or other. As the other man generally walked beside him or just behind, occasionally making some remark and often jotting things down in a note-book he carried, I had conjectured that he was perhaps the older man’s secretary or assistant. As to the woman, I could not say, but she seemed to act in an easy, familiar sort of way towards the older man, and I thought she might be his wife.

  “On one occasion, when I saw them in the distance, they had paused in their walk and the two men seemed to be having a heated discussion about something. Indeed, so heated did they appear that I thought they might almost come to blows over the issue, whatever it was, but the woman seemed to come between them, make some point to each of them in turn and eventually calm them down, whereupon they resumed their walk and discussion in the usual peaceful way.

  “Some time later, I heard - from Mrs Caxton, my cook, of all people, although I imagine the ultimate source of the information was probably someone at the village post office -
that the head of the household at Black Bank House was one Professor Crook. That probably meant nothing to most people in the parish, but it was a name I was familiar with, and I knew that Professor Crook had formerly held the chair of astronomical physics at Cambridge. When Mrs Caxton supplied me with the name, I at once recalled reading somewhere, a year or two earlier, that Professor Crook was about to retire from the post he had held with great distinction for so long. Although giving up his teaching duties, the report had said, he would continue his own work, and hoped to publish a comprehensive account of his theories in a few years’ time. This clarified the mystery of Black Bank House considerably, as far as I was concerned. Evidently, Professor Crook is one of those people who find it helpful to walk about when meditating on abstract problems, and the other man, who is undoubtedly his amanuensis and is probably highly qualified himself, keeps notes of all the professor’s thoughts.

  “Once I had discovered who it was I had as a neighbour, I made a point of calling round at Black Bank House at the earliest opportunity, thinking what a thrill it would be for a toiler in the foothills of science such as myself to meet so eminent a scientific scholar. When I did so, however, I was informed by his secretary, who introduced himself as Dr Taylor, and who seemed a very pleasant gentleman, that Professor Crook was resting and could not be disturbed. I asked if there might be any more suitable time for me to call, but he shook his head. ‘Pray do not be offended,’ said he. ‘Professor Crook is not as strong as he used to be, and tires very quickly. I am always concerned lest he over-tax himself, so we have made it a general rule not to entertain any visitors. If we meet when we are out on one of our walks, however, you may be sure I will introduce you.’

  “I found this most disappointing, I must say. I have since seen them in the distance several times when I have been out walking, but our paths have never crossed, so I have never had the pleasure of shaking the great scholar’s hand. There,” added Blake in a tone of finality. “On that somewhat disappointing note, this survey of my neighbours is concluded!”

  “And is your cousin, Mr Stannard, still flourishing?” asked Holmes.

  “Very much so,” returned Blake. “He is very pleased with his little cottage, and pleased to be living in the centre of the village. I see him fairly frequently. Not so long ago, he was visited by his distant cousin, old Mr Betteridge from Nottingham, and as Mr Stannard’s cottage is rather small, I entertained them both at the Grange. Mr Betteridge had himself recently relinquished his very large house in favour of his son, and he and Mr Stannard spent much of the evening disparaging old, rambling houses and singing the praises of smaller properties, but they were very amusing about it, which made it an entertaining evening.”

  “Very well,” said Holmes, shutting up his note-book. “Let us now proceed!”

  Blake flicked the reins and the pony set off at a gentle trot. After about half a mile, we passed an old, stone-built farmhouse on our right, which Blake informed us was Mr Ashton’s house. A little further on, a side-road went off to the right, and as we turned that way, Blake pointed along the main road.

  “The village is that way,” said he. “The thatched roof you can see in the distance, above that hedge, is that of the village pub, the Royal Oak, where old Caxton goes every Friday evening, to play skittles and the like. He is a very sociable old fellow, and seems to know everyone there is to know in the parish. Speaking of the people of the parish, by the way,” he added after a moment, “I have let it be thought that you are personal friends of mine, fellow scribblers for the weekly periodicals, taking a few days’ holiday from London. I would rather that people did not know your real reason for being here.”

  “That is probably sensible,” returned Holmes. “It is best that our presence does not arouse too much curiosity. And as Dr Watson has been speaking for some time of getting away from London for a few days, I am sure he will have little difficulty in playing the part of a holiday-maker!”

  Our way took us, now rising a little, now falling a little, between high hedges and tall trees that met in a green arch above our heads. Presently the trap slowed again, and we turned to the right, in between two brick gateposts and onto a narrow, curving drive. We passed two or three large, spreading trees and a series of well-trimmed bushes, and came round a hedge to the front of what I thought the loveliest Elizabethan building I had ever seen, its dark red brickwork bathed in the late afternoon sunshine. It was not a large building, at least as to height, but it seemed to ramble off, to left and right, in an attractively haphazard fashion. Its sections of brickwork, some of it laid in that characteristically diagonal Tudor fashion, were separated at regular intervals by black wooden beams and broad lattice-paned windows, so typical of the Tudor period. The roof was covered with dark red, lichen-blotched tiles, above which rose several tall and highly ornate brick chimneys.

  As Blake reined in the pony before the house, the front door was opened and an elderly man emerged in the garb of a manservant. “Shall I put Henrietta away, sir?” he asked as we climbed down from the trap.

  “Yes,” replied Blake, “We shall not need her again this evening.”

  We were entering the front doorway, when Blake paused and looked after his servant, who was leading the pony and trap round the left-hand corner of the building. “There’s something wrong with old Caxton,” he remarked to us, a frown on his face. “He is not usually so morose and gloomy-looking as this.”

  As he spoke, a young man appeared in the doorway. “Ah, Whitemoor,” said Blake. “This is Mr Holmes and Dr Watson, the friends and fellow-scribblers I mentioned to you earlier. Would you mind showing them in and entertaining them for a minute? Do excuse me, gentlemen,” he continued, turning to us. “I just want to have a quick word with Caxton and see what the matter is.” With that he hurried off after the elderly servant, and we followed the young man into the house.

  We were sitting in an oak-panelled drawing-room, having a cup of tea and discussing our journalistic activities, when Blake returned. The expression on his face was a sombre one.

  “What is it?” asked Holmes.

  “A local tragedy,” returned Blake. “An old fellow, Jacob Brookfield, who is a crony of Caxton’s from the Royal Oak, has not been seen for about two weeks. Everyone just assumed he had gone to visit his sister in Banbury, which he had been talking of doing for a while. Earlier today, however, his body was found by some village boys at the bottom of a disused quarry. Apparently, it looks as if the body has been there for some time, perhaps as long as two weeks.”

  “Where is this quarry?” asked Holmes.

  “Not far from here, as a matter of fact. Brookfield lived with his married daughter, whose house is out this way, on the road to Thuxton. He would have passed the old quarry, which is not very well fenced off, every night he walked home from the pub. The quarry comes very close to the road-edge at one point. It seems that he was quite intoxicated on the last evening that anyone saw him, so it is thought he must have wandered off the road and slipped over the edge of the quarry before he knew what was happening.”

  “Did his daughter not wonder what had become of him?” I asked.

  “Apparently they had had a bit of a quarrel earlier in the day, and he’d declared that he would go to his sister’s if he wasn’t wanted here, so that’s where the daughter thought he had gone. He was well known for being a bit of an eccentric, coming and going unpredictably, without ever letting anyone know what he was doing.”

  “What an unfortunate business,” I remarked, shaking my head. I glanced at Holmes, who was sitting in silence. The expression on his face was an impassive one, revealing nothing of his inner thoughts, but I, who knew him well, could see from a thoughtful look in his eyes that he was weighing this new information carefully along with everything else we had been told by Farringdon Blake. Quite what my friend would make of it, I could not imagine. It did not, on the face of it, appear to bear a
ny relation to the business that had brought us to Foxwood, and seemed, as Blake had described it, simply a local tragedy. Whether Holmes could see any greater significance in it, I could not tell. For myself, I can only confess that all the recent shocking events had left me in a state of utter mystification.

  5: The Grange

  THERE WAS, UNDERSTANDABLY, a somewhat subdued air in the drawing-room, and for some time we sat drinking tea and smoking our pipes in silence. A young and pretty dark-haired girl in a maid’s uniform came in to ask if we required anything else, but Blake said not. Eventually, Whitemoor got to his feet and said that, if no-one minded, he would return to his room to carry on with the work he had been doing earlier.

  “I suppose we all ought to carry on,” Blake remarked in a flat tone when Whitemoor had left us. “It’s just that I’ve felt a little knocked back by all this grim news - first that man in London, and now old Brookfield.” He shook his head. “Still,” he continued, rising to his feet, “I’ll give you a little tour of the house as I intended, before the daylight goes.”

  We followed our host from the drawing-room into the very broad entrance hall, where the dark oak panelling gleamed in the low rays of the late afternoon sun and a stately staircase ascended to the upper floors, then along a short corridor at the side of the staircase until we came to a door on the right. “This is my study,” said he, pushing open the door.

  It was a medium-sized room, its walls oak panelled like those of the drawing-room, save where tall bookshelves lined the walls. At the far end was a large bay with windows on all sides, and in this bay was a wide desk. Holmes squeezed past the side of the desk and gazed out of the window. “This is what was visible from up in the tree, presumably,” he said, to which Blake nodded his head. “It doesn’t appear that there would be much for the spy to see,” Holmes continued. “He could certainly see whether you were at your desk or not, and perhaps whether you were working from books or simply had papers on your desk, but I doubt if he could have made out in any detail what any of them were. Hum! We shall have to take a look from the other end - from the viewing-platform - tomorrow. At present, I confess, this spying seems fairly pointless to me - as pointless, in fact, as the spying on you in London!”