The Riddle of Foxwood Grange

by Denis O. Smith

  “It is as I thought,” said he to Blake. “It is from our landlady, Mrs Hudson. I had instructed her to open my post and let me know at once if there was any news of the inquest on Wilson Baines. She informs me it is to be on Wednesday morning, and we have received a summons to appear.”

  “We shall have to return to London, then,” I said.

  “I shall, at least. As the inquest will probably begin fairly promptly on Wednesday morning, I shall have to travel tomorrow, to ensure I’m there in time. But I don’t think it’s necessary for you to attend, Watson. After all, your evidence would be identical to mine, and I would rather you stayed here for the moment.”

  I hesitated. “I shouldn’t want to get into trouble with the authorities,” I said.

  “I shall take full responsibility,” said Holmes. “I shall tell them that you are out of town, visiting someone in the country, and that your testimony would be the same as mine. Perhaps if you would sign a paper to that effect, giving me full authority to speak on your behalf, it would be a good idea. All they will be interested in at this stage are the immediate cause of death, the weapon employed, the approximate time of death, the names of those who discovered the death and the report of the first policeman on the scene. In any case, the police will probably request an adjournment, to give them more time to look into the matter, so I don’t think your absence from this first hearing will be crucial.”

  Blake brought writing materials to the drawing-room, where I wrote and signed a brief note as Holmes had suggested. I had just finished it when the maid brought in the tea. As he poured it out, Blake asked us if we had made any further discoveries that afternoon, but Holmes shook his head.

  “I spent most of my time in the ash spinney, looking at footprints,” said he, “but it was largely a hopeless task. There are so many different footprints around the bottom of the tree with the rungs that it could scarcely be any more difficult if a herd of buffalo had passed that way on their annual migration. I think that Dr Watson had a somewhat more interesting afternoon than I did!”

  I told Blake then what I had seen of Professor Crook’s household. Whitemoor came in to take tea with us as I was speaking, and was fascinated by my account.

  “I have never actually spoken to any of them,” said he, “but I have often seen them in the distance, and they always seem to be the same: Professor Crook striding out in front, gesticulating to emphasise the points he is making, the other man just behind him, taking notes, and the wife, apparently silent, bringing up the rear. She never seems to be paying much attention to what they are saying, and I have sometimes wondered what, if anything, she gets out of their discussion.”

  “She gets fresh air and exercise, anyway,” suggested Blake with a chuckle. “It may be that the technical discussion is of no interest to her, but she probably enjoys getting out of the house for a while, rather than staying indoors all day.”

  Thus the conversation meandered about for a while, from the local countryside and its curious inhabitants, via a detour into Pythagoras’s Theorem, to a consideration of the balmy weather. At the back of my mind all the time throughout this enjoyable discourse was a vague sensation of strangeness, which I could not quite put into words, even to myself. It was, perhaps, the contrast between our conversation, which was that of leisured holiday-makers, and the air of hidden mystery and menace which surrounded our presence in that remote, rural corner of the country. Holmes had been silent throughout most of this conversation, but at length, when the tea-pot was empty, he rose to his feet and said he would like to make a copy on paper of the array of tiles in the orangery.

  “It will give me something different to think about on the train-journey to London,” said he, “should the scenery from the carriage-window begin to pall.”

  I offered to help him, and Blake went to bring more writing-materials from the study.

  In the orangery, Holmes seated himself at one of the tables, and, with the aid of a ruler, began to draw a large network of squares on one of the sheets of paper.

  “Let me see,” said he, murmuring to himself. “There are thirteen rows and thirteen columns in the array, which means that there are one hundred and sixty-nine squares altogether. If you will call out the letter on each block, Watson, followed by the little number in the corner, it will save me having to look up and down repeatedly from the paper to the wall and losing my place each time I do so.”

  I laughed. “Certainly,” I said. “Just let me know when you are ready.”

  I began with the top left-hand tile and in a few minutes my friend had filled in the whole of the array.

  “Now,” said he, “I think I shall also make a copy of that intriguing little poem in the library.”

  “Do you think the two could be related in some way?” I asked as I followed him into the house.

  “It is possible,” he returned. “After all, according to the information we have, Samuel Harley composed both of them at the same time, in that brief interval between losing the house in a game of chance and being obliged to leave it for the very last time. But, of course, even if there really is some connection between the puzzle in the orangery and the poem in the library, we can have no idea at present what that connection might be. It might be a very close and direct one, or a subtle, indirect one. It may be that the tract is simply what it appears to be - a moral reflection on life, inspired by the writer’s own sorry experiences - or it may in reality be something quite different, a puzzle which must be solved just as much as the puzzle in the orangery.”

  We had reached the library as my companion had been speaking. Now I stood and gazed at Samuel Harley’s last testament, where it hung on the chimney-breast.

  “I can’t really see anything cryptic about it,” I remarked after a moment. “It appears perfectly straightforward.”

  “So it does,” returned my friend, as he seated himself at the table and began to copy the poem onto one of his sheets of foolscap, “but we can take nothing for granted, Watson. We have heard that Samuel Harley had a great taste for puzzles and riddles of all sorts. We must therefore bear that in mind when examining anything that is the product of his evidently unusual brain.”

  I turned as the library door was pushed open and Blake entered.

  “Ah, there you are!” said he. “I had been wondering where you had got to! More reading material for your train-journey?” he queried with a chuckle, leaning over to see what Holmes was writing.

  “Holmes believes there may be some connection between this odd little composition and the puzzle-square in the orangery,” I said.

  My friend laughed. “I only said it was possible,” said he, as he finished his writing. “We were discussing the question just a moment ago,” he said to Blake.

  “I don’t mean to sound discouraging,” responded Blake, “but I should perhaps inform you that you are not the first to consider that possibility, Mr Holmes. Mr Stannard’s grandfather, for one, tried to solve the puzzle by linking it in some way to this moral exhortation. He put all his thoughts on the matter in a small note-book which is in this library somewhere - although I’ve looked for it several times without managing to find it.”

  “I take it he didn’t reach any conclusions.”

  “No. His idea, according to Mr Stannard, was to re-arrange the letters in the puzzle-square so that they spelt out this poem. That sounds straightforward enough, although it is difficult to see how that could tell one anything, or identify the location of any hidden treasure. But there is in any case one major stumbling-block to any such theory, which is that the number of letters in the puzzle-square and the number of letters in this document are not the same, this being appreciably longer.”

  “I am aware of that fact,” said Holmes. “It was one of the first points I noted.”

  “I should have known you would be thorough,” said Blake, sounding a little abashed
, “but I thought I had better mention it, all the same. I can’t really see how this poem could shed any light on anything, anyway - other than Harley’s view of life - unless the references to rocks and mud have some hidden significance, which I can’t really believe.”

  “Well, well. We shall see,” said Holmes, as he gathered his papers together.

  It had been the most pleasant of summer days, and, even after the sun had declined in a blaze of golden glory and slipped below the horizon, the air remained warm. Outside the French window of the drawing-room was a small paved terrace on which an old table and several chairs were set out. When our meal was finished, Blake suggested we repair to this terrace and enjoy the soft evening air. He brought out a jug of wine, glasses and an oil-lamp from the drawing-room, and there we sat, drinking wine, smoking our pipes and making light-hearted conversation beneath the stars. All about us, the silence and stillness of the countryside was broken only by the soft hum of insects and the occasional distant bleat of a sleepy sheep.

  “This must seem very different from your previous life in London,” I remarked to our host, and asked him if he had always lived in London before moving to Foxwood.

  He shook his head. “I was born and raised in London, near Bow,” he said. “My father had a clerical position with the Royal Navy, and spent all his time in an odd little office just a stone’s throw from the Tower of London. But when I was about eight years old, he was promoted to a more senior position, which brought him a little more income, and he and my mother decided to move. Bow had, I believe, been a quiet and pleasant place when they had first set up house there, but was becoming dirtier and smokier with every year that passed. At length, they decided to move out of London altogether, and we decamped to Brentwood, in Essex. It meant that my father had a fairly long railway journey every morning and evening, but he didn’t seem to mind that, and Brentwood was certainly a much healthier place to live than Bow. It was still fairly rural in those days, and I spent much of my boyhood there rambling about the nearby woods and fields. Later, my mother and father revealed a previously unseen taste for sport and became founder members of the Brentwood Lawn Tennis Club.”

  “And now,” I said, “after a period back in London, you are again out in the country, in an even more rural spot, and having to travel up to London regularly, as your father did.”

  “That is true, but I foresee the day when even places like this are connected by telephone to London and other cities. It may not come in my lifetime, but if it did I should not need to travel up to town so much. Sometimes, of course, a personal visit is necessary, but at other times I could just telephone the newspaper offices and read out my latest article to them, and someone at the other end of the line could take it all down in shorthand.”

  I laughed. “That sounds a somewhat fanciful notion,” I said. “One might even call it fantastic. Just think of all the equipment that would be required - the exchanges, switchboards, cables and so on - not to mention all the people who would have to be employed to work it all - to make a telephone connection between London and a little place like Foxwood! Surely, it could never be worth anyone’s while to do it.”

  “So you might think, but that is what many people said about the railways when they were first proposed, that we should never need more than about half a dozen lines in the whole country. The idea that the railways might reach small country towns was regarded by some as ridiculous. But now one can travel from almost anywhere in Britain to almost anywhere else with just a couple of changes, and without once leaving railway premises.”

  “I doubt whether the telephone will ever reach Towcester,” interjected Whitemoor. “Even the main railway line ignored Towcester, and passed us by, just a few miles away. Our only connection to the rest of the railways now is by a local company which always seems to be standing on the brink of bankruptcy. My father invested a fair amount of money in the local line when it was promoted, but I don’t think he ever saw much of a return on his investment.”

  “If it’s any consolation to you, Whitemoor,” Blake remarked, “your father was not alone in his misfortune. My cousin, Mr Stannard also sank money in that particular railway which he has never seen since.”

  “Some railway schemes were certainly built on decidedly shaky ground,” I said, “especially some of these little local lines. Have you always lived in Towcester?”

  “Yes,” replied Whitemoor. “Both my mother and father were born there.”

  “And you, Dr Watson,” said Blake: “where were you raised? I usually consider myself quite good on the nuances of accents, but I can’t quite place yours.”

  I had opened my mouth to reply when Holmes, who had been silent throughout this discussion, as was his wont, abruptly raised his hand.

  “What was that?” he said in a sharp tone.

  “I heard nothing.” I replied.

  “It sounded like a pebble falling from somewhere,” said Whitemoor.

  “Perhaps a bit of mortar from the roof which some bird dislodged earlier,” suggested Blake. “Some of the mortar under the tiles is very old and is beginning to disintegrate.”

  “There is another one!” said Holmes, and this time I heard it, too.

  “It seemed to strike the wall of the house before falling to the ground,” I said.

  “I agree,” said Holmes, turning in his chair and looking behind him, at the tall hedge which separated the garden from the field beyond: “almost as if someone–”

  Even as he spoke I had the impression of some flash of movement in the air above us. I saw Holmes duck his head instinctively, as I myself turned quickly away. At almost the same instant there came an ear-splitting crash, as some heavy object struck the top of the table with tremendous force, smashing the lamp, the wine-jug and the glasses and sending the broken glass flying in all directions.

  “What the devil - !” shouted Blake, his voice hoarse with shock, as Whitemoor let out a cry of pain. Holmes was already on his feet and racing towards the hedge. I followed him as quickly as I could and we ran down beside the hedge in the darkness, until we came to the gate into the field. Holmes pulled it open and I followed him into the field. For a moment we stood perfectly still, listening for any sound that might reveal the whereabouts of whoever it was that had thrown something at us. My eyes had rapidly adjusted to the darkness and I could see some considerable distance across the field, but no sign of movement was visible.

  “Can you see anyone?” asked Blake in a breathless voice, as he and Whitemoor joined us.

  “No,” replied Holmes. “We can’t tell if he has got away or is in hiding nearby. And if he’s fled, we don’t know if he’s gone up the field or down.”

  “It’s a great pity we don’t keep a dog here,” said Blake with feeling. “A dog would soon get on his trail!”

  “We’ll have to do the best we can,” said Holmes. “Watson: you and Whitemoor go up the field. Keep to the edge, but watch for any movement further out in the field. Blake, you come with me. We’ll go down the field. Come on!”

  Whitemoor and I walked at a brisk pace to the very top of the field, near the ash spinney, but caught neither sight nor sound of anyone. We returned to the gate just as Holmes and Blake reached it. They had had no more luck than we had.

  “Let’s get back and see at least what was flung at us,” said Holmes in a tone of disappointment.

  When we reached the terrace, Blake brought out another lamp from the drawing-room, lit it and placed it on the table amid the litter of broken glass.

  “Would you mind having a look at my head, Doctor?” said Whitemoor to me. “I think I may have a cut.”

  I held the lamp up to his face. Above his left eye was a nasty gash, red with blood.

  “Thank goodness for eyebrows!” I said. “You must have been struck by a chunk of flying glass, but your eye has been saved from harm by the brow abov
e it. Come inside and I’ll clean you up a little.”

  “Mrs Caxton should still be in the kitchen,” said Blake. “She can show you where the medical box is.”

  We returned a few minutes later. Holmes was holding a large, rough-edged stone in his hand.

  “This was the missile,” said he. “We were fortunate it didn’t strike any of us, or we might have needed more assistance than Mr Blake’s medical box could provide. Evidently the two smaller stones the attacker threw just before were to give him his range.”

  “What a brutal, vicious act!” I cried. “What can be the meaning of it?”

  “There was a little note attached to this stone with twine,” returned Holmes. “It appears to be a warning or threat, presumably to our client, although that is not certain.”

  Blake handed me the slip of paper he had been examining. I held it next to the lamp and read the following, written in capital letters: “KEEP AWAY FROM PEOPLE AND PLACES THAT DON’T CONCERN YOU”.

  8: Social Calls

  AS THE WARNING MESSAGE had, in its dramatic fashion, been delivered, and as the messenger had apparently departed, it seemed unlikely that we would be assailed again that evening by flying stones. Still, we reasoned, there was no point in taking unnecessary risks, so we moved into the drawing-room and closed the French window. Both old Caxton and the maid appeared, to ask if they should attempt to clear up the broken glass and other debris from the terrace, but Blake told them to leave it until the morning when it would be easier to see what they were doing.

  “Now,” said Holmes, “we must, I think, assume that the warning message was meant for Mr Blake. Dr Watson and I have been here scarcely twenty-four hours, during which time I have met no-one other than the members of this household. Dr Watson did run across Professor Crook’s secretary, Dr Taylor, this afternoon, in the wood near Black Bank House, but it is difficult to see why that encounter should occasion such a warning, especially as Mr Blake has himself conversed with Dr Taylor in the past without anything of the sort ensuing. Mr Whitemoor, I imagine, is not very familiar with the people of the parish.”