6: The Ash Spinney
AFTER BREAKFAST the following day, Blake took us up to the ash spinney. It was a fine, bright morning, and I was glad to be out of doors in such weather and to hear the birds singing gaily as they flitted from tree to tree. As we passed through the side-gate from the garden into the sunlit, hilly field beyond, all speckled over with the bright colours of wild flowers, I confess it was hard for me to remember what our real purpose was, that we were seeking answers to Farringdon Blake’s odd mystery. Sherlock Holmes, however, was silent, and I could see from the intent look upon his features that he was quite oblivious to the beauties of nature, and had thoughts only for the problem to be solved.
“Is this field one of Mr Ashton’s?” I asked our guide.
“Yes,” returned Blake. “As you see, it is lying fallow this year. Last year he just had a few sheep in it. Next year, I believe he is going to grow a crop in it. What crop, exactly, I don’t know, but I know that he intends to plough it this autumn. He seems to follow a system of crop rotation which is different from that of anyone else.”
“Perhaps he is following a system recommended in one of those books he is always reading,” I suggested with a chuckle.
“Perhaps he is,” agreed Blake. “That wouldn’t surprise me. Not all his reading is on obscure or ‘far-away’ topics. As a matter of fact, when I was first here he showed me a slim volume written by a local historian about fifty years ago which detailed the history of Foxwood parish and of the Grange in particular. It was from that book that I learnt some of the details of what I was telling you yesterday about Samuel Harley.”
“Do you not have a copy of that book in your own library?” asked Holmes.
Blake shook his head. “Surprisingly not,” he replied. “You would think that Mr Stannard’s father or grandfather or whoever was here at the time would have bought a copy, but if there is one there somewhere, I have never been able to find it. I borrowed Ashton’s copy for a couple of weeks, and after I’d returned it to him I asked a bookseller in Banbury to try to get me a copy. I’ve never heard from him since, though, so I presume he couldn’t find one.”
It took us only a few minutes to reach the ash spinney, at the top end of the field. It appeared, as far as I could see, to be the highest point for some distance around. I had brought my field-glasses with me, and I turned and surveyed the countryside below us, back the way we had come, towards a row of low, undulating hills far in the distance. Down in the valley I could see chimneys and part of a roof peeping out from a small clump of trees, which Blake informed me was Ashton’s farmhouse, Oldstone House.
Holmes, meanwhile, had passed through the narrow belt of trees and was gazing across the landscape to the north. The field immediately beyond the ash spinney sloped gently down until it met a narrow road, which Blake informed us was the road to Thuxton. Beyond the road lay a dense-looking wood.
“Where does the quarry lie in which the body of the old man, Brookfield, was found?” Holmes asked Blake.
“Over to the left there,” replied Blake, indicating a spot to the left of the wood. “The narrow lane which passes the Grange, up which we drove yesterday, continues on until it meets that road at a crossroads. The quarry is just to the west of that.”
“And Pearson’s house - Lower Cropley, I think you called it - where is that?”
“A short distance on the other side of the crossroads. You can’t see it from here, as it’s just over the brow of the next hill. Somewhere else you can’t see is Black Bank House, where Professor Crook lives. That lies to the right, on the other side of that wood. The track to the house goes off the road you can see, and passes through the wood, but it’s difficult to make out from here.”
“Very well,” said Holmes. “Now we have got our bearings, let us have a look at the viewing-platform up the tree.”
We turned to the side and followed the path along the ridge through the ash spinney. Presently, Blake stopped at the foot of a huge ash tree.
“This is the one,” said he, slapping the broad trunk of the tree with the flat of his hand. “As you can see, there is no sign of anything out of the ordinary on this side of the tree, so you will appreciate how one could pass along this path many times without knowing that there was anything unusual about it.”
He led us round to the other side of the tree, which faced towards the sloping field down which we had just been gazing, and there were the stout iron rungs which he had described to us in London.
Holmes looked up at the wooden platform, high above our heads. “How much space is there on the platform?” he asked.
“I’m not sure it would take the three of us,” returned Blake, “so if you and Dr Watson would care to climb up, I’ll wait down here.”
I handed Holmes my field-glasses and he led the way up that strange steep stairway. The climb was surprisingly hard work, and, when we reached the top, the ground seemed a very long way beneath us. On the platform, although it was not at all a windy day, I was very conscious of the gusts blowing this way and that, and held on to an overhead branch for support.
“Some of these small branches have been broken off and some removed with a pair of clippers,” said Holmes as he examined the foliage around the viewing-platform. “Let us see what that permits us to observe. I can see the desk and chair in Mr Blake’s study clearly enough,” he said after a moment, as he peered through the field-glasses, “but I can’t really see any further into the room than that. I can’t see into the drawing-room at all, as there’s a bush in the way. If I swing the glasses round to the right, however,” he continued after a moment, “I can see a large open area behind the house, which appears to be cobbled. To the right of that is another building, facing the back of the house. It appears to have been built against the hill which rises behind the house, and looks somewhat more architecturally distinguished than the usual row of outhouses. What is that, I wonder? Here, Watson, take a look,” he added, handing the glasses to me.
I peered through the glasses, and confirmed all that he had said. A few moments later we descended to where Blake was awaiting us, at the foot of the tree, and Holmes looked about him once more.
“If we continued along this path through the wood, where would we come to?” he asked Blake.
“The path meanders along the ridge for some distance,” replied Blake. “At the end of the spinney, it crosses the top of a field and comes to a narrow lane - little more than a farm-track, really - which leads to Abbeyfield House, Mr Needham’s place.”
“Does he ever come this way?”
“I don’t know. He might, I suppose, if he were on foot, but when he has visited me, he has always driven himself over, via the Thuxton road.”
As we made our way back to the house, down the hilly field, Holmes described to his client the broken and clipped branches he had observed on one side of the wooden platform.
“It makes it certain that you and your household are the focus of the spy’s interest,” said he.
“I never doubted it,” returned Blake.
“Perhaps not, but it was always possible that the Grange was just one among a number of things that he wished to spy on. The fact that no branches on the other side have been removed rules out that possibility, as the foliage makes it impossible to see in any direction other than that of the Grange.”
“I see what you mean. I am impressed by your scientific thoroughness in testing for other possibilities,” remarked Blake.
“Thoroughness is one of the most important aspects of detective-work,” said Holmes. “If you are not thorough you will miss some little detail or other, and the little detail you miss will invariably turn out to be the key to the whole problem. Incidentally, I observed that branches had been removed to enable a clear view not only of your study, but also of a large open area at the back of the house where there is another building, small but archit
ecturally elaborate, which has been constructed against the hill behind the house.”
“That,” replied Blake with a chuckle, “is what has always been known, somewhat optimistically, as ‘the orangery’. It was built in the first half of the eighteenth century, about a hundred and fifty years ago. I very much doubt that any oranges have ever been grown there, but as you perhaps observed, it does at least face in the right direction to catch the sun all day. It’s just a glorified greenhouse, really. We use it to raise a few bedding plants and so on for the garden. At least, old Caxton does. I’ve been too busy to give much thought to that sort of thing, but as Caxton seems to like pottering about in there, I give him free rein to grow whatever he thinks best. I’ll extend your ‘guided tour’ to the orangery when we get back to the house. It’s not without interest in itself, as there is another little mystery in there, something else connected with Samuel Harley.”
When we reached the garden of the Grange we followed our guide round the side of the house, past the French windows of the drawing-room and the bay window of the study, into the large cobbled yard behind. On our right was the “orangery”, an elaborate single-storey structure, the front wall of which was topped with numerous ornamental gables and pinnacles above a row of large windows. Blake opened the door and we followed him in. It was a large chamber, perhaps twenty feet wide and fifteen feet deep, devoid of all furniture save a few old wooden tables and benches, so that our voices rang and echoed around the bare walls. What immediately seized my attention, however, was the rear wall of this chamber. Unlike the other sides, which were bare red brick below the large windows, the rear wall had been plastered and decorated along its whole length with an elaborate fresco. Depicted in this were vines and fruit-laden branches, and in between this twining, luxuriant foliage were numerous female figures in a classical style, each holding a cornucopia overflowing with fruits, flowers and other natural produce. Incongruously, in the very centre of this fresco was a large square panel, about six feet high and six feet wide, composed of a great number of square tiles, each bearing a single capital letter. These appeared to be placed in a perfectly random order, forming no recognizable words. As I examined the tiles more closely, I realised that they were in fact wooden blocks, each incised very neatly with a letter of the alphabet in the centre and a small number in the bottom right-hand corner.
“What is the meaning of this curious panel?” asked Holmes, frowning as he studied it.
“It is, apparently, more of Samuel Harley’s work,” replied Blake. “There is no record of its having been here before he owned the house. George Darcy made some disparaging remarks in a letter about what he termed ‘another of Harley’s idiotic follies’, which is probably a reference to this, and all the subsequent owners of the house referred to it without ever being able to understand it, or suggest what the purpose of it might be. It has generally been regarded as some kind of puzzle devised by Harley, but if it is, no-one has ever been able to solve it, or work out what it might mean.”
“I’m surprised he ever had the time to make up puzzles,” I remarked with a chuckle. “By all we have heard of him, he seems to have been either drunk or otherwise occupied most of the time.”
“I think he made up such things when he’d got rid of all his rowdy visitors and was all alone here. There are several accounts that mention that Harley’s puzzles and riddles were an important and perhaps unique part of the riotous gatherings that took place here. According to one source, he would hide something somewhere in the house and present a clue to its whereabouts in the form of a riddle. Then, for each room they entered without finding anything, each of the participants would have to pay a forfeit.”
“He sounds an ingenious sort of person,” I said. “It is a pity his talents were not put to better use.”
“Precisely, Dr Watson. That is what I have often thought. He was, as I believe I mentioned before, a highly intelligent man. Perhaps that is why his fall was so catastrophic. Perhaps only someone truly brilliant could contrive such a disaster for himself. Most of his acquaintances were distinctly mediocre, both in character and in intellect, and, as mediocre people tend to, they all had a strong instinct for what you might call self-preservation, whereas Samuel Harley seems to have had none at all. The mediocre life had no appeal for him: for Harley, life would bring either dazzling success or abject failure. With Harley it was all or nothing; for a time it seemed he had all that life could offer; in the end he had nothing.”
“Are there any instructions anywhere in the house relating to this puzzle, or any indication as to what its purpose might be?” asked Holmes, who had been studying the panel intently.
Blake shook his head. “No, nothing at all. It is therefore not simply a single puzzle, but, in a sense, a double puzzle, for it may well be that it is impossible to solve it until one has worked out quite what the point of it is, and what one is supposed to do with it. That has not stopped many people - including me, I confess - trying to make some kind of sense of it. Interestingly, it is not mentioned in the memoirs or correspondence of anyone who visited the house during Harley’s time here. The general belief, therefore, is that he created it during that three-month period of grace that Darcy allowed him before he had to leave the house for the last time, as a sort of final farewell challenge. Of course, those who thought that Harley had hidden some ‘treasure’ somewhere in the house believed that this puzzle held the secret to its whereabouts. That may be so, but, as I mentioned yesterday, I was always somewhat sceptical about the ‘hidden treasure’ theory. Still, it has provided an added motive for those who have tried to solve the puzzle, but, despite that, no-one has yet been successful. Anyway, I can tell you one thing about it which may not be instantly obvious: the blocks of wood can all be moved.”
He picked up a small gardening fork which lay on one of the wooden benches and pushed the tips of it in between two of the wooden blocks. Then, using the fork as a lever, he prised out one of the blocks. Behind where the block had been, in the black-painted wooden back wall, were five small holes, arranged symmetrically, like the spots on a dice.
“It is the same behind each of the blocks,” said Blake: “five holes, as in this case. But some of the holes are dummies, and have no depth.” He took a pencil from his pocket and inserted it into each of the little holes in turn. In the first three it went in to a depth of two inches or so, but in the last two it went in only about a quarter of an inch. It was clear those holes were blocked, but it was difficult to see, as all was painted black. “On the back of all the blocks are protruding wooden dowels, like prongs, which fit into the holes in the back wall,” he continued, turning over the block in his hand. “This one, as you see, has two such prongs, but the number varies from block to block. Some have five prongs, some four, some three and some, like this one, have just two.”
“So that some of the blocks will probably fit in most positions,” said Holmes, “but some will not, depending on which of the holes in the back wall are blocked and which are not.”
“Exactly, Mr Holmes. And as this array is thirteen by thirteen, giving a total of one hundred and sixty-nine blocks, the different possibilities of arrangement are absolutely astronomical. There may well be some correct positioning of the blocks, but, if so, it would, practically speaking, be virtually impossible for anyone to discover it simply by trial and error. The possibilities are simply too great.”
“Yes, I can see that,” said Holmes in a thoughtful tone. “And yet, as the letters are movable, then it must be by moving them that one solves the riddle. I wonder,” he continued, “what the purpose may be of the little numbers in the corner of each square.”
“I can see that this puzzle has caught your imagination, Mr Holmes,” remarked Blake with a chuckle.
“Well, well,” returned Holmes. “It is certainly a challenge, and I enjoy a challenge. But you need have no fears that I shall neglect your case, Mr Blake. I can assu
re you that it has my undivided attention. But just as someone wrestling with a difficult mathematical problem may open a book of verse in the evening, to give himself a few minutes’ diversion before sleep, so I may free my mind for a few moments from the riddle of the murderous stranger who has been spying on you by considering this much older riddle. Sometimes such a diversion is beneficial: one returns to the main problem with one’s mental energy refreshed and renewed.”
Over lunch we discussed our morning’s expedition further. Young Whitemoor asked Holmes if we had made any more discoveries in the ash spinney to rival “the stairway up the tree”, as he put it.
“Not really,” replied Holmes, shaking his head. “We did discover that a few small branches had been cut away near the viewing platform to give an uninterrupted view of this house, but that was much as one might expect.”
“No more indications, then, as to what it might all mean?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Holmes with a chuckle.
“Mr Blake also showed us the letter-puzzle in the orangery,” I remarked, “although I don’t think any of us could make anything of it.”
The Riddle of Foxwood Grange Page 7
