The Riddle of Foxwood Grange

by Denis O. Smith

  As we drew nearer, I saw the youth say something to his sister, and they made as if to cross to the other side of the street. Blake evidently saw this, too, for he quickened his pace.

  “Good morning, Giles!” he called in a loud, clear tone. “Good morning, Miss Ashton!”

  “Good morning, Mr Blake,” they returned.

  “It is a very fine morning, is it not?” Blake observed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “School finished for the summer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is Dr Watson, who is staying with me for a few days.”

  “Good morning, sir,” said the youth to me.

  “Well, well,” Blake continued. “Give my regards to your father. He is well, I trust?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Perhaps we shall see you at the village pageant,” Blake remarked as we parted.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Trying to engage those youngsters in conversation is like trying to open a clam-shell,” remarked Blake to me as we continued along the high street.

  I laughed. “Don’t be too hard on them,” I responded. “I think I was not so very different myself at their age. You know a lot of facts that you have learned at school, but you do not have the experience to judge what is most important or relevant in any given situation; you therefore find the best rule is usually to keep your mouth tightly closed. At least Ashton’s children are very polite!”

  “That is true. I know, from remarks he has made, that Ashton has very strong views on politeness, propriety and that sort of thing. I wonder where they are going. They hardly ever deign to set foot in the village.”

  “The girl was carrying a small posy,” I remarked. “Perhaps they are visiting their mother’s grave, in the churchyard.”

  “Of course!” cried Blake. “That must be it. This is perhaps their first opportunity to do so since returning from school. It was observant of you to notice that, Watson, and I’m sure your inference is correct. I thought it was only Mr Holmes who observed such small details!”

  “Perhaps his skill is beginning to rub off a little on me,” I remarked. I laughed as I said it, but, all the same, I felt rather pleased that Blake had been impressed by my observation and deduction, which Holmes never seemed to be.

  Upon our return to the Grange, Blake found that a telegram had been delivered. He tore it open and scanned the contents.

  “This is a nuisance!” he said in a tone of annoyance. “It’s from The Popular Railway Magazine. I was due to do an article for them next week on the rival braking-systems used on modern trains, but they say they have been let down by another author and must have my article by Thursday at the latest.”

  “That is very short notice,” I remarked.

  Blake nodded his head with a sigh. “I have all the material to hand, but I haven’t even looked at it yet. It means I shall have to devote myself to it today and tomorrow, and even then it will be touch and go whether I manage to get it finished or not. I will never catch the post tomorrow, so I shall have to take it up in person on Thursday. I’m sorry, Watson, but I’m afraid I shall have to postpone our visit to Needham.”

  “I understand perfectly,” I returned. “If there is anything I can do to assist you, just let me know.”

  After lunch, with further apologies from Blake, and further protestations from me that no apology was necessary, my host disappeared into his study with his secretary and I was once more left to my own devices.

  For a while, as I had done the day before, I sat in a shady corner of the garden and watched the birds flitting this way and that and the butterflies and other little insects fluttering about the flower-beds. It was warm, peaceful and quiet, and I felt drowsy after my lunch, so it was not surprising that I drifted off to sleep.

  I awoke abruptly. What the immediate cause was, I did not know. It may have been the buzz of a large bumble-bee which I could see on the flowers to the side of where I was sitting, but it may also have been my own thoughts. For, even in the instant of awakening, I found myself pondering the mysterious events which seemed to surround Farringdon Blake and Foxwood Grange. Who had hurled that large stone at us the night before? If Mrs Booth was right, and her husband had not visited Foxwood in the last eighteen months, then all our assumptions about the matter must be wrong. But if Booth was not responsible for sending the warning message which had been attached to the stone, then who was? And what conceivable purpose could this other person have?

  I filled my pipe and put a match to it, and as I did so, I reconsidered the whole matter afresh. When Holmes had suggested that it might be Booth who had sent that warning, it had seemed to explain everything so satisfactorily. No other explanation made any sense, as far as I could see. I therefore considered if there were any way in which Holmes’s theory might be reconciled with Mrs Booth’s testimony. I was aware, of course, that by the canons of scientific research a single conflicting piece of evidence was sufficient to disprove a hypothesis. That was certainly the theory, anyway, the principle under which all scientific research was conducted. In practice, however, matters were not always so clear-cut, and it was always worthwhile examining the apparently conflicting evidence to see if it really did contradict the hypothesis. In laboratory experiments dealing simply with combinations of chemicals, there was generally little room for doubt. But in other spheres, the apparently conflicting evidence was often open to different interpretations, some of which might not be so fatal to the hypothesis. Could that be so in this case?

  After several minutes’ reflection, it occurred to me that the fact that Mrs Booth had not seen her husband for eighteen months did not conclusively prove that he had not been to Foxwood more recently than that, simply that she was not aware that he had. He might, for instance, have come in some sort of disguise, such as a false beard and tinted glasses, have stayed at the village inn, and made sure that he did not run across his wife. As he had only visited the village once before, and that eighteen months ago, it would be unlikely that anyone other than his wife would recognize him. He might even have visited the district several times in this way, and managed to spy on his estranged wife’s comings and goings. In this way he could have learnt of her friendship with Farringdon Blake. This, it seemed to me, was a perfectly valid sub-hypothesis which might yet save the main hypothesis. It would, of course, itself need to be put to the test. Clearly, we should need to ask at the inn if anyone had stayed there recently whom we could possibly identify as Booth. Even if that enquiry proved fruitless, there might be other possibilities. For instance, there might, for all I knew, be an inn in the village of Thuxton at which a visitor could stay. According to Holmes, whoever had flung the stones at us had run off in the general direction of Thuxton, so that certainly could not be ruled out.

  For several minutes I sat there feeling pleased with myself, and considered how we should phrase our enquiries to the inn-keeper at the Royal Oak. Had Blake not been so preoccupied with his article on railway braking systems, I should have gone straight away to tell him of my new theory, which, it seemed to me, might solve all our difficulties. And yet, all the time, there was something nagging at the back of my mind which I could not quite bring into focus. I was just on the point of abandoning my reflections altogether, and taking myself off for a walk, when I realized what it was that was troubling me. It was not that there was anything specifically wrong with my own new theory. What it was that bothered me was just as much a problem for the whole notion that Mrs Booth’s husband was the root cause of the recent puzzling events. It concerned the telescope on the viewing-platform up the tree: if Booth was determined to discover what his wife did with herself in and around Foxwood, then it made sense that he should spy on her wherever she went, including her visits to the Grange. But why on earth should he spy on Blake in his study or in the cobbled yard behind the house? What could he possibly hope to le
arn from that? It seemed unlikely to me that Mrs Booth ever went into Blake’s study or the back yard; more probable, I thought, was that he entertained her in the drawing-room, which was not visible from the viewing-platform, or, on fine days, in the garden. I wondered, as my mind went back and forth over this problem without reaching any conclusion, if this particular difficulty had occurred to Holmes, and I wished he were there, so I could put the point to him. However, he was not, so I should have to decide matters for myself, and act on my own initiative.

  Having nothing else to do, and thinking that I was unlikely to see Blake and Whitemoor again that afternoon, I resolved at length to walk down to the village once more and put my enquiries to the landlord of the Royal Oak. Having walked that way with Blake in the morning, I had a feeling of familiarity with each bend in the lane, each tree and bush that I passed. It is always surprising how quickly such a feeling takes hold of one, and as I turned into the road to the village, I was recalling the way I walked to the very first school I ever attended, in which I quickly became familiar with almost every paving-stone and door-step along the way.

  There were no customers in the Royal Oak, and the landlord was sitting on a stool behind the bar, reading one of the sporting newspapers. He greeted me cordially, and asked me what I would like, so I asked for a glass of beer.

  “I was wondering,” I said in a casual tone, as I paid him for the beer, “if a friend of mine has stayed here recently.”

  “What’s his name?”

  I had prepared a detailed story to explain my query, but for some reason I had not anticipated this most elementary of questions, and I hesitated over my reply. “Henderson,” I responded at length, that being the first name that entered my head.

  “No, he ain’t.”

  “He may not have been using that name,” I remarked after a moment. “He sometimes uses a different one.”

  “Oh? Man of mystery, is he?”

  “No, not exactly. But he sometimes uses his mother’s maiden surname for some reason, and I can’t remember what that is.”

  “You don’t seem to know much about him, considering that he’s a friend of yours.”

  “Not so much a friend as an acquaintance,” I returned. “Our connection is really just a business one. The fact is,” I continued, seeing an opportunity to get my prepared story into the conversation, “that I’ve just heard from him. He says that he thought he would look me up while he was in these parts, but he couldn’t remember the address I was staying at, so he put up at an inn.”

  “You’ve just heard from him?”

  “Yes, he sent me a letter.”

  “How could he send you a letter if he didn’t know your address?”

  I paused. I could have kicked myself for my stupidity in including such an obvious inconsistency in my story. I decided to meet the difficulty head on. “Yes, that puzzled me, too,” I said. “It’s a bit of a mystery. I suppose he must have asked someone when he got back to London.”

  “A Londoner, is he?”

  “No, not really,” I replied, thinking that from what I had heard of Booth, he might well have a Midlands accent. “He’s actually from near Birmingham.”

  “That’s another mystery, then, isn’t it, why he went back to London?” observed the landlord.

  “His business obliges him to divide his time between the two cities,” I responded. “I believe he stays with his sister.”

  “What, a sister in London, or a sister in Birmingham?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, feeling I was getting into deeper water than I had intended. “I don’t really know him very well at all.”

  “No, well, the only man who’s stayed here in the last month was a commercial traveller from Bristol, and that was nearly two weeks ago.”

  “I don’t think that can have been my acquaintance,” I said. “Was he a short to medium man, perhaps with a beard or spectacles?”

  “No, he wasn’t. He was a good six foot tall, with a bald head and a ginger moustache.”

  “That’s not him,” I said, and, with a great sense of relief, took my glass of beer off to a table in the corner of the room. I hope my readers will appreciate my honesty in including this unfortunate and somewhat chastening episode in this narrative. I am sure that many authors would have suppressed the episode altogether to save embarrassment and preserve their dignity, but I thought I would include it to illustrate how difficult it can be for one who has no training or experience to make real progress with enquiries in the sort of mystery in which we were involved. It also shines a light indirectly on the skill with which Sherlock Holmes conducted his enquiries. I am sure that he would have adroitly avoided all the pitfalls into which I seemed to stumble, and would certainly never have found himself answering more questions than he was asking, as I did.

  At least, I thought, as I walked back to the Grange, I had established that Booth had not stayed at the Royal Oak recently. I should have to ask Farringdon Blake if it was possible to stay at Thuxton or anywhere else in the district. If it were not, then we were back at the point at which Holmes’s hypothesis concerning Booth might have to be rejected altogether. In that case, we should have no idea at all who had sent the warning and thrown the stones at us.

  When I reached the Grange, I decided not to linger there, but passed straight through the garden and by the side gate into the field beyond. There was no-one about, and, save the ever-present bird-song, it was very quiet. I had no particular aim in mind, but thought I would stroll up to the ash spinney, look about, and see if any fresh thoughts struck me. I knew from odd remarks Holmes had made to me in the years we had lodged together that this was his method on those occasions when he was at a loss in a case and was unsure what to do next. As I ambled up the hill and through the ash spinney, however, I found that absolutely nothing whatever occurred to me. Eventually, for want of anything better to do, I climbed up the rungs in the ash tree and stood surveying the countryside round about from the old wooden platform.

  Not a breath of wind disturbed the leaves on the trees, and, as far as I could see through the thick foliage which surrounded me, not a soul was about in any of the neighbouring fields. I glanced down at Farringdon Blake’s study window in the Grange, but I could not make anything out. I sat down on the platform, leaning my back on the trunk of the tree behind me. It seemed very strange to me that I was now in the very place in which Farringdon Blake’s mysterious enemy had stood just a week or two ago, and yet I had no idea who he was or what he wanted. I placed the palms of my hands on the wooden boards of the platform with an utterly illogical but overwhelming feeling that, by getting as closely in touch with this spot as I could, and concentrating all my thoughts upon it, I might yet learn who had been here, and for what purpose.

  And then, an odd thing occurred. I had closed my eyes, to help concentrate my thoughts, but a brief moment later they were wide open again. For my ear had caught a sound that broke the silence of the wood. It sounded like footsteps, and someone brushing against the low undergrowth from the far end of the wood. I sat perfectly still and listened. Yes, it was definitely someone approaching, drawing ever closer. Then, abruptly, these light sounds ceased. As far as I could tell, whoever it was had stopped right beside the tree up which I was sitting. A moment later, I thought I heard the scrape of a boot on one of the iron rungs attached to the trunk of the tree, and then another. I held my breath. Whoever it was, he was evidently climbing up to the platform upon which I was sitting. Every muscle in my body tensed, as I waited to see who it would be. My mind raced. Would I discover who Farringdon Blake’s mysterious enemy was? Did he know I had climbed the tree? Had he been watching me? If not, he was likely to be as startled as I was when he saw me there, which might give me an advantage.

  All at once, the sound of his boots ascending the iron rungs stopped. For a moment, all was silent. I did not move a muscle, as I
waited to see what would happen next. As far as I could judge, he was about half-way between the ground and the platform. Then I heard the sound of a boot on one of the rungs again, but there was something different about it. He was climbing down! As I heard him reach the ground and begin to walk away, I scrambled forward as silently as I could and peered over the edge of the platform. He was already a little distance away, making his way towards the far end of the ash spinney, evidently returning the way he had come. He appeared to be a small man, and was clad in a brown suit and had a soft-brimmed brown hat on his head. It was certainly no-one I had ever seen before. Who was he, and why, at the last moment, had he changed his mind about climbing to the platform?

  As he disappeared from my sight, I determined to follow him at a distance, and try to see where he went to. I began to climb down the iron rungs, making as little noise as possible. I was only half-way down, however, when I heard another noise, but this time from the opposite direction, from the path towards the Grange. It sounded to me like an animal of some kind, padding through the wood, and brushing past the undergrowth.

  I had just reached the ground and turned, when the approaching sounds grew louder. Along the path, a very large, rough-haired dog came bounding. As he saw me, he let out a fierce growl and sprang at me. I put my arm up to protect myself, and he sank his teeth into my jacket-sleeve, the force of his attack knocking me clean off my feet and to the ground. At the same moment, a large man appeared in the clearing by the tree.

  “Duke!” he shouted in an angry voice. “Get down! Leave him!”

  Reluctantly, the dog released his grip on my arm, but remained close to me, growling menacingly. I stood up and knocked some of the dust and dirt off my clothes.