The Riddle of Foxwood Grange
Page 22
“Yet if it was Whitemoor who was intent on securing Samuel Harley’s hidden wealth, as I now believed, I still faced the question of his bizarre behaviour. Why, I asked myself again, should he spy on you in this covert fashion, when he spent most of the week in your company? The only plausible answer that suggested itself was that he did not trust you and did not believe you when you said you had had no success in solving Harley’s riddle. I speculated that he had, rather, convinced himself that you were secretly working on the problem when he was not there. If this were so, though, it suggested in turn that, despite his placid exterior, Whitemoor was of a very obsessed and unbalanced frame of mind, one of those odd people who get some fixed idea in their minds which no amount of evidence can ever remove. If he was of this type, that might also explain why he had hired the enquiry agent, Wilson Baines, to follow you about London. Of course, your activities there were perfectly innocent, and had no connection whatever with Harley’s puzzle, but Whitemoor may have suspected that while there you were consulting some kind of specialist in connection with it, such as an historian or an expert in the solution of puzzles. The irony is, of course, that you did indeed consult such a specialist eventually, but only as a result of Whitemoor’s perfectly fruitless spying upon you.
“But surely, I thought, Whitemoor could not have developed such an overpowering obsession in the relatively brief period of time he had been living here at the Grange. What seemed more likely was that he had already developed his obsession with Samuel Harley and his puzzle before ever he came here. In that case, his arrival here was very unlikely to have been the chance occurrence it appeared to be. In order to try to learn a little more about it, I wrote a letter before I left here on Tuesday to St Matthew’s College at Oxford, which I posted at Banbury station. In the letter I mentioned that a friend of mine, Mr Farringdon Blake, had taken on a graduate student as a research assistant, to help him in his work. This, I said, appeared to be very successful for all concerned, and I wondered if there might be any other such student who would be interested in assisting me in a similar capacity. On Thursday morning, I received a reply. Unfortunately, they said, there was no such student available, and nor was there likely to be in the near future. The arrangement between Mr Whitemoor and Mr Farringdon Blake was probably unique and had only come about because Mr Whitemoor had expressed a keen interest in Mr Blake’s work and, under the circumstances of his mother’s illness, had requested that his tutor approach Mr Blake on his behalf. From this reply, it was clear to me that the moving spirit behind the arrangement was not anyone at St Matthew’s College with whom you had had correspondence in the course of your work, and nor was it Whitemoor’s tutor. Rather, it was Whitemoor himself. My suspicions were thus amply confirmed. Whitemoor had deliberately contrived to stay here at Foxwood Grange, which suggested that his obsession with Samuel Harley and his hidden treasure was of much longer duration than the few months he had spent here.
“It only remained, then, for me to try to find the ultimate source of Whitemoor’s obsession. To this end, I spent most of Tuesday and all day on Wednesday, after the inquest, in the public records office in London. Yesterday I travelled down to Towcester and continued my researches in the town records office there. I stayed the night in Towcester, incidentally, which is why I arrived back earlier today than you had expected. Anyhow, the result of all this weary work in the record offices was the discovery that Whitemoor was, on his father’s side, a descendant of that cousin of Samuel Harley’s who received the letter which Harley was supposed to have sent from Italy. I also discovered, to my surprise, that Whitemoor’s mother had died some months ago.”
“I suppose he kept that fact to himself so that he could use his visits to her as an excuse to go off at the end of each week,” said Blake.
“No doubt,” returned Holmes. “Another very interesting discovery was that the mother’s maiden name had been Needham and that she was in fact a cousin of Matthias Needham of Abbeyfield House. As Needham seems to have had a long-standing interest in the history of Foxwood, and probably did steal that book as Mr Stannard suspected, I don’t think we need to look any further to find out who it was that filled the impressionable young man’s head with the grievance that he and his ancestors had been somehow cheated out of their inheritance.”
“As Needham clearly knows of the rungs up the tree, and the viewing platform,” I remarked, “it must have been he who told Whitemoor about it, and gave him the idea of using it to spy on the Grange.”
“So I should imagine,” said Holmes, nodding his head. “It seems, though, from what you reported to us earlier, Watson, that Needham had come to feel anxious about his young cousin’s intentions, and tried to dissuade him from any violent course of action, which is why Whitemoor had imprisoned him in his own house. In law, I doubt there is anything Needham can be charged with; in morality, however, I think he bears considerable responsibility for Whitemoor’s actions and thus for all the blood that has been spilt in this matter. Still, the knowledge of the monster he created, the trouble it has caused and the deaths that have resulted from it may be a harsher punishment than any court could impose.”
“What on earth was the relevance of that little slip of paper with the word ‘shrub’ on it that I found near the back door?” I asked after a moment. “I have never been so astonished in all my life as when you said that that was of great significance.”
Holmes had taken his pipe from his pocket and begun to fill it with tobacco, but now he paused, threw back his head and began to laugh, in that odd, silent way that was so characteristic of him. “You must excuse me,” he said at length, “but I really could not have expected such a perfect confirmation of all my theories as that little slip of paper represented. The word ‘shrub’ has a number of different meanings, but one you may not be aware of, which was current in the middle of the last century but seems to have quite passed out of use now, is ‘to reduce someone to poverty by winning his property at gaming’. You astutely recognized the hand that had written ‘shrub’ as that of Needham, Watson, and yet the paper was found here, in the Grange. How could that be? Surely only if Needham had written it and given it to Whitemoor, to stoke his sense of grievance. Thus, in a single word on that little slip of paper, there are connections to Needham, to Harley’s loss of this house in a game of chance, and to Whitemoor - my entire theory of the case condensed into one word on a scrap of paper no bigger than a man’s thumb.”
“That is certainly striking,” I said, “but how do you think it came to be by the back door?”
“There I can only speculate,” replied Holmes, “but what seems most likely to me is that you put it there yourself, Watson.”
“Whatever do you mean?” I cried in surprise.
“On the night you found it, you had stood for a few moments by the open window, where the matting was very wet. You then hurried upstairs and looked in the bedrooms for an intruder. I think that Whitemoor must have already accidentally dropped the slip of paper on the floor, either in his bedroom or on the landing, and that it stuck to the wet sole of your boot - you would not have noticed it in the dim light - and you brought it back downstairs with you, where it chanced to catch Blake’s eye.”
“Yes, that must be it,” I agreed.
Blake nodded his head. “What a dreadful business it has been,” said he. “Thank Heavens it is all over at last,” he added in a tone of relief. “I think it will be a long time before this household feels normal again - if it ever does.”
“Such upheavals can certainly have long-lasting repercussions,” I remarked. “I hope you do manage to put it behind you, Blake, and that it does not affect your admirable work.”
“I shall let you know how things go,” responded Blake with a weary attempt at a smile. “And now, gentlemen, do not feel you must leave at once, now the mystery is solved and, from your point of view, at least, the case is over. You are welcome to stay here as
long as you wish.”
“That is very kind of you,” said Holmes, putting a match to his pipe, “but, speaking for myself, at least, I really think I must get back to London tomorrow. Several letters arrived for me when I was at Baker Street, to which I was only able to give the most cursory attention, but what is clear is that my assistance is very urgently required in matters which are both fascinating and puzzling, and may have the most far-reaching consequences!”
About the Author
Denis O Smith’s first Sherlock Holmes story, The Adventure of the Purple Hand, was published in 1982, since which time he has revealed to the public many more previously unknown cases of the famous detective. Highly regarded, both for his great fidelity to the style and spirit of Conan Doyle’s original stories, and for the freshness and ingenuity of his own new stories, Mr Smith remains committed to satisfying the curiosity of a public keen to learn the details of all those adventures which Dr Watson had previously neglected to chronicle.
His most recent collections of short stories are The Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes and The Lost Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes, volume two (the latter published in the USA as The New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes).
In addition to being a long-time student of the life and career of Mr Sherlock Holmes, Mr Smith’s interests range very widely, from philosophical problems and historical mysteries of all kinds, to Victorian railways and society and the history of London.
Also Available