The Riddle of Foxwood Grange

by Denis O. Smith

  “Your dog is a somewhat aggressive beast,” I said, none too pleased.

  “What do you expect?” the man retorted. “If you go skulking around on other people’s property, it’s hardly a surprise if one of the dogs goes for you. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Who are you, anyway, and what are you doing on my land?”

  I did not feel much like discussing the matter with him, but I explained that I was a guest of Farringdon Blake’s at the Grange, and had been under the impression that no-one would mind if I took a walk in the woods. His manner towards me changed then, although he seemed reluctant to admit that he or his dog were at all at fault in their aggressive behaviour.

  “A friend of Blake’s, eh? Well, why didn’t you say so?”

  “I didn’t have much opportunity,” I said. “Anyway, I’m telling you now.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, I’m sure, if Duke’s upset you,” said he in a gruff tone, as if it cost him an enormous effort to apologize, even though it was only on behalf of his dog. “No lasting harm done, I hope?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Pearson,” he said in a loud voice, stepping forward and thrusting out his hand. He was one of those people who seem to have been constructed on an altogether larger scale than most of their fellow-men, with large, prominent ears and a large nose and chin, and the hand that he offered me was suitably enormous. I took it and shook it simply out of politeness, but with little enthusiasm. “Watson,” I said.

  “Well, Mr Watson,” said he. “Any friend of Mr Blake’s is a friend of mine. I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. Can I offer you tea? I’m sure my wife would be pleased to meet you. She doesn’t get out much these days and is always glad when somebody calls by, whether they’ve got anything interesting to say or not.”

  I was about to decline this somewhat graceless invitation, but it occurred to me that if I saw something of Pearson’s household at Lower Cropley farmhouse it would give me something else to put in my report to Holmes. I therefore accepted the invitation, and we set off together, the dog generally running backwards and forwards ahead of us, save when it barged past us on the narrow path and nearly sent me flying.

  As we walked along, Pearson explained to me that he had been doing a grand circuit of the boundary of his property, as he occasionally did, so he said, to ensure that all was as it should be.

  “It is always good to keep an eye on things,” I observed. To myself, though, I reflected that his statement did not tally with his previous remark to Blake that he had only set foot in the ash spinney a couple of times in the last twenty years. Whether there was any significance to this discrepancy, however, I had no idea.

  Our way took us by the disused quarry where old Brookfield’s lifeless body had been found. As we passed it, I asked Pearson if he had known Brookfield.

  “Everybody knew Jacob Brookfield,” he returned. “He’d been a fixture in this parish since before anyone can remember. It’s not everybody as liked him, though. He drank a lot and didn’t always pay his way, if you know what I mean; a bit of a trouble-causer.”

  As we passed over the brow of the hill by the quarry, the chimneys of Lower Cropley came into view, thrusting up through a clump of trees. A few moments later, we arrived at the gate. Set behind a small, scrubby garden was a broad, spreading old house, half covered in ivy, which appeared to be several centuries old, built of the local brownish-grey stone, no doubt excavated from the nearby quarry.

  Inside, the house was dark and cool, and had a faint musty, damp smell, even on that warm summer’s day. Pearson conducted me down a dark passage and into a large cluttered room which I took to be some kind of parlour, where a middle-aged woman with faded brown hair sat reading a magazine in an armchair. This, Pearson informed me, was his wife.

  “Mother,” he said, addressing her, “this is Mr Watson, who is staying with Mr Blake at the Grange. We ran across each other in the old ash spinney. At least, he and Duke ran across each other first, before we’d been properly introduced.”

  The woman laughed, so much so that her whole body shook. “Yes,” she said, “he can be a bit forward in his greetings, can Duke, but he’s very friendly.” I murmured some non-committal response to this observation, privately reflecting that if Duke were their idea of a friendly dog, I should certainly not want to meet one that they considered unfriendly.

  Mrs Pearson rang a bell, and, when the maid appeared a moment later, ordered a pot of tea. While we waited for the tea to arrive, Mrs Pearson asked me how I came to know Farringdon Blake. I told her we both contributed articles to magazines, implying without specifically stating it that that is how we had met.

  “What name shall I look out for, then?” she asked, holding up the magazine she had been reading. “Is it ‘Mr Watson’, or do you use a nom-de-plume?”

  “I use my own name, but it’s Doctor Watson, rather than Mister.”

  “You’re a doctor?”

  “Yes, but I’m not in practice at the moment. I used to be an Army surgeon.”

  “Ever been overseas?” asked Pearson.

  “Yes, I was in Afghanistan a few years ago.”

  “Seen any action?”

  “More than I could have imagined - or wished for.”

  “Then that’s what you should write about!” cried Pearson thumping his right fist into his left palm. “That’s what people want to read about: military exploits, leading through adversity to triumph!”

  “It’s not as straightforward as that,” I returned. “For a start, I was wounded twice, nearly died twice, and then spent weeks and weeks in a hospital bed. I didn’t have much triumph!”

  “But we won through in the end!”

  “No thanks to me, I’m afraid. Besides, people have written about the Afghan campaign already; publishers aren’t interested in any more accounts at the moment, so I have been told.”

  “More fool them, then,” said Pearson in an indignant tone and seemed about to give me the benefit of his opinions on the book trade, when there came a loud and rowdy interruption from just outside the room.

  “It sounds as if someone has fallen downstairs,” I remarked.

  “That’ll just be James or Anthony larking about,” responded Mrs Pearson dismissively. “I’ve told them they’ll break their necks one day, but do they listen?”

  She was interrupted by a terrific crash, as the door burst open and two very large young men, who were apparently having a wrestling match, came tumbling into the room and continued their grappling on the carpet beside my chair.

  “Damn and blast!” cried Pearson in a loud voice. “You’ll break that damned door one of these days!”

  I glanced round. In fact, they had succeeded already, for the wood was splintered and the lock was hanging out at an odd angle. The young men had stopped their wrestling, but began talking very loudly, both at the same time.

  “Boys! Boys!” said Mrs Pearson, in a tone of mild remonstrance. “Where are your manners? Have you not noticed we have a visitor?”

  “In other words,” shouted Pearson in a fierce tone, “shut your infernal racket, and say hello to Mr Watson here.”

  The young men rose to their feet and bade me a “good afternoon”, almost in unison.

  “He’s staying at the Grange. We met at the top of the hill, in the old ash spinney.”

  “Do you mean,” said the older of the two young men, “near where there are those rungs going up a tree like a ladder?”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” said Pearson.

  “Yes you do, Pa,” said the other young man. “I remember you said it would be a good place to spy on old Stannard from. Then you could see if he ever found that ancient treasure that’s hidden at the Grange.”

  “I never said any such thing!” cried Pearson fiercely, “and don’t you tell such damned l
ying stories!”

  “Well, someone did,” the young man persisted.

  “It must have been James, then,” said his father, “and I told him not to be so stupid.”

  “It wasn’t me,” said the other young man. “I’ve never had any interest in the Grange. Not like Anthony, who, as we all know, is very interested.”

  At this, Anthony took the magazine from his mother, rolled it up and hit his brother on the head with it. “No I am not!” he said, emphasizing each word with a blow.

  “Oh, yes you are,” said James, snatching the magazine from his brother’s hand with a laugh, and returning the blows. “Do you remember, Ma,” he said after a moment, “how we used to play up there in the ash spinney when we were little?”

  His mother shook her head. “I never knew where you used to get to,” she replied. “You’d go off somewhere and not come back for hours, and I’d have no idea where you’d been or what you’d been up to - and it’s just the same now!”

  At that moment, the maid brought in a tray of tea-things, and set it down on a little round table.

  “Where’s my cup?” asked one of the young men.

  “If you want a cup, you’ll have to go and get one yourself,” said Mrs Pearson, and the two young men left the room almost as noisily as they had entered it. “They can be a bit rowdy,” she said to me, as she poured out the tea, “but they’re good boys, really.”

  “I’m sure they are,” I said, as I accepted the cup she passed me. It was certainly a relief to the ears that the young men had left the room, but I had gone off the idea of engaging the older Pearsons in conversation; I could not see that I was likely to learn anything of interest there. I therefore finished my tea as quickly as I could, and said I had best be getting back to the Grange. Shortly afterwards, with a great sense of relief at having escaped that noisy and chaotic household, and revelling in my peaceful solitude, I made my way in the warm afternoon sunshine over the hills towards the Grange.

  It took me some time to clear my head of the idiotic racket which had filled it at Lower Cropley, but gradually my brain began to function normally once more and I found myself reflecting on the afternoon’s events. When I was about half-way back to the Grange, I happened to pass an old tree-stump at the side of the road so I decided to sit down for a while, smoke my pipe and concentrate my thoughts on what had happened.

  Concerning the Pearsons, I did not really know what to think. On the one hand their thought-processes appeared too shallow and unimaginative for them to have had anything to do with Farringdon Blake’s mystery, but on the other hand it was odd that Mr Pearson had claimed to have hardly ever been in the ash spinney in the last twenty years when that was precisely where he and I had met. It was also odd that he should claim to know nothing about the rungs in the tree when even his own family disagreed with him on that point. I shook my head in puzzlement. Perhaps, after all, Pearson simply had a bad memory, or was one of those people who tend to disagree with what anyone else says as a matter of course.

  But if I was inclined to dismiss the Pearsons from consideration, what of the other man I had seen in the wood? Presumably what had happened was that, as he was ascending the rungs, he had seen Pearson approaching, and that was why he had changed his mind and hurried away. But who was he? Why was he climbing the tree? And what would he have done if Pearson had not turned up when he did?

  10: The Inquest

  THAT EVENING, at supper, I recounted to Blake and Whitemoor my experiences of the afternoon. They were interested in my enquiries at the village inn, which seemed to establish that Mrs Booth’s husband had not stayed in Foxwood recently.

  “I’m afraid I have no idea if it is possible to stay at the inn in Thuxton,” said Blake in answer to my query. “We’ll have to find out. If it isn’t, then we’ll just have to rule out Booth as a possibility for the stone-thrower, and try to think who else it could have been.”

  “I don’t think it’s likely to be Pearson or any of his family,” I said. “In the first place, I can’t conceive of any motive they might have. In the second place, they don’t strike me as the sort of people to go creeping about in the dark, throwing stones at people. I think it more likely that if Pearson had any grievance against you, he would simply come round here in broad daylight - with or without his vicious dog - and have a violent quarrel with you.”

  “I quite agree,” returned Blake. “That is my experience of them, too. There’s not much subtlety at Lower Cropley. If Pearson wanted to attack me, he’d be more likely to confront me with a bludgeon in his hand than creep up behind me with a rapier. I think we’ll be on safe enough ground if we dismiss the Pearsons from our calculations, then. The other man you saw in the woods interests me, though, Watson. It’s a pity you didn’t get a better look at him.”

  I nodded my head. “I can’t really tell you anything about him, I’m afraid, except that he did not appear to be a very big man and he was wearing a brown suit and hat. It was certainly not anyone I’ve seen before, anyway.”

  “I wonder if it could have been Booth,” suggested Whitemoor. “A brown suit and hat does not sound so much like a countryman’s outfit as that of a town-dweller, such as Booth.”

  “That’s a fair point,” agreed Blake. “Also,” he continued in a thoughtful voice, “from your account of it, Watson, the fact that he made himself scarce when he saw Pearson approaching suggests that he did not wish to be seen there.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That seemed pretty clear. I feel certain now that he did not know that I was up the tree, because when I first heard him approaching he was still some distance off, too far away for him to have seen me climbing the tree.”

  “I wonder what he intended to do up the tree?” said Blake.

  “Could you see if he was carrying a telescope or field-glasses?” Whitemoor asked me.

  “No, I don’t think he was carrying anything.”

  “Then it is a mystery, unless, of course, he had been up there earlier and left something behind, and was, when you saw him, returning to retrieve it - whatever it was.”

  I shook my head. “It’s an ingenious thought,” I said, “but I was up there some time and saw nothing. There was certainly nothing on the platform, and I’m fairly certain there was nothing hanging on a branch, either. It is, as you say, a mystery.”

  Later that evening, in the quiet of my bedroom, I made a record of all that had happened that day and all that I had learnt, so that I should be able to give Sherlock Holmes a full account when he returned. As well as the afternoon’s events, I made detailed notes of our visits to Mrs Booth and Mr Stannard, and even included a mention of our encounter with Ashton’s children in the high street. There were two reasons why I was determined to be as thorough as I could possibly be: in the first place I did not want to give Holmes any reason to find fault with my reports, and in the second place, as the mystery surrounding Farringdon Blake was such a puzzling one, it seemed to me that it was impossible to say which of the many details I was noting down might be important and which might not, and thus the safest way of proceeding was to include everything I could recall, however trivial.

  By the time I had finished, the house was in complete silence, and had been for some time. As I blew out the lamp on my writing-table, yawned and climbed into bed, I wondered what the next day of this singular week might bring.

  I awoke to the light pitter-patter of raindrops against my bedroom window. It had evidently rained quite heavily in the night, for as I drew back the bedroom curtains I could see that the trees and shrubs in the garden were all wet and bedraggled, and there were little pools of rain-water on the paths.

  “This rain will freshen up the gardens a little,” said Blake as we sat down to breakfast together.

  “It must have been quite a heavy downpour,” said Whitemoor, “for it seems to have knocked the heads off some of the flowers, w
hich is a great shame.”

  Blake nodded. “But no doubt they’ll soon burst forth with renewed vigour. Speaking of renewed vigour, incidentally, Watson, I feel a bit like that myself this morning. I got on so well with railway braking systems yesterday that I don’t feel under so much pressure about it today, and I think I might go to the inquest this morning, at the Royal Oak. It’s something of a melancholy business, but I feel I perhaps ought to be there.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said. “I imagine it will be a fairly routine proceeding, but I should like to hear it nevertheless.”

  “What about you, Whitemoor?” asked Blake. “Would you like to see how an English coroner’s court proceeds?”

  The young man shook his head. “I don’t think I will,” he replied. “As Dr Watson says, it will probably be a routine matter, and I have a number of references to dig out for you from the back numbers of the Journal of Mechanical Engineering.”

  It had stopped raining by the time Blake and I left the house, and we reached the Royal Oak in good time. This was fortunate, for the tap room was already almost full. I had expected a large number of people to attend, Jacob Brookfield being a very well known local character, but the size of the crowd exceeded my expectations. Blake and I managed to find a seat near the back of the room, but those who came after us were obliged to stand. I wondered, as I waited for the proceedings to begin, if anyone would raise any of the objections to Brookfield’s death having been an accident which Sherlock Holmes had mentioned to me. In accordance with his wishes, I had not mentioned Holmes’s views on the matter to anyone, but those views were uppermost in my mind when the coroner took his seat, rapped his knuckles on his desk and opened the proceedings.

  After taking preliminary testimony from the local police constable and Brookfield’s daughter as to the identity of the deceased, the coroner called the surgeon who had examined the body. I made brief notes of all the evidence presented, from which I can reconstruct the following exchanges:

  Coroner: “Were you able to determine the cause of death?”