"THE ABBEY GRANGE" "Barna." "Come, Watson, come." "The game is afoot." "Get your clothes and come." "Well I think we have thawed sufficiently Holmes." "Splendid." "Abbey Grange, Marsham, Kent, 3:30 a.m." "My Dear Mr. Holmes" "I should be very glad of your immediate assistance in what promises to be a most remarkable case." "There's something quite in your line." "Except for releasing the lady" "I will see that everything is kept exactly as I have found it, but I beg you not to lose an instant, as it is difficult to leave Sir Eustace there." "Yours faithfully." "Stanley Hopkins." "Inspector Hopkins." "He's called you in seven times, on each occasion his summons has been entirely justified." "I fancy that every one of his cases has found its way into your collection, and I must admit, Watson, you do have some power of selection." "Thank you." "Which atones for much of which I deplore about your narratives." "Your fatal habit of looking at everything from the point of view of a story instead of as a scientific exercise has ruined what might have been an instructive and even classical series of demonstrations." "Why did you not write them yourself?" "I will, my dear Watson, I will, in my declining years." "So our present research appears to be one of murder." "Does it?" "'E." "B.' monogram, coat-of-arms, with an address which harks back to the dissolution of the [unintelligible]." "They're moving in high-life." "Brackenstall." "Sir Eustace Brackenstall." "You've heard of him?" "He was quoted in The Chronicle the other day as being one of the richest men in Kent." "Watson, you are a treasury of knowledge." "And you think him dead?" "I think him murdered, Watson." "Hopkins is not an emotional man." "The writing shows a certain agitation." "It is surely urgent." "You think the body left there for our own inspection?" "I think that we shall find the Brackenstall line is now extinct." "Very good of you to come, Mr. Holmes." "And you, Doctor." "Inspector." "I hope you forgive me, Mr. Holmes." "Forgive what, Hopkins?" "I should not have troubled you sir." "But since the lady has come to herself, she has given me so clear an account of the affair that well there's not much left for us to do." "You remember the Lewisham gang?" "The ring of three Randalls?" "Exactly sir the father and two sons." "It's their work." "Not a doubt." "But they did a job at Sydenham a fortnight ago" "They did, they were seen and described." "Well it's cool and I agree to do another so soon and so near, but it is they, and a hanging matter this time." "Brackenstall is dead, then?" "Awe yes, Doctor." "In the dining room, his head was knocked in with his own poker." "And the lady?" "Have they been in the dining room yet?" "Not yet, my lady." "I shall be glad when you can arrange matters." "What is that?" "You have other injuries, madam!" "It's nothing." "It has no connection with this hideous business." "Please sit down." "I think it would be best to inform you of something gentlemen regarding Sir Eustace." "You'll no doubt hear a rumor of it otherwise from idle tongues who'll distort the truth of it." "It would pain me to think of his memory tarnished in that way." "Sir Eustace drank" "I'm afraid." "Not regularly, inconsistently." "Not in a way to hurt our marriage." "Nor did it interfere with the exercise of his public duties." "Nevertheless, the vice was a private shame to him." "He was very sensible of my dislike of it." "When he felt the obsession to keenly he took himself off until the poison had exhausted him." "It distressed me of course that it should happen but he was proud and sensitive enough never to allow me to witness it." "I felt deep gratitude for that and not a little pity." "Can you understand that gentlemen?" "I have never heard a like case talked of with such illuminating compassion, madam." "I must, however, ask you to believe something further." "I was in some measure grateful for this vice of my husband's." "How could that be?" "I spent most of my life in South Australia, in the wine growing country near Adelaide." "As a very young woman" "I lived alone with my father." "My mother was dead." "If I had a mother it was my loyal Theresa." "It was a very free life." "I found it extremely difficult to adapt to the proprieties of England being mistress of such a place as this." "So I felt if I would just show a decent understanding of my husband's weakness he would, in turn, forgive me for some of my unsuitable behavior." "And so it proved." "I see." "I'll tell you about last night." "Eustace retired about half-past ten." "The servants had already gone to their quarters." "Which are where?" "In the east wing." "Only my husband, Theresa and myself sleep in the central block." "The servants would have heard nothing." "Had you retired by then?" "I was in my room." "I never retire until I've seen madam to bed." "Thank you." "I sat up, this room in fact." "It is my custom to walk around to see that the house is secure because for obvious reasons," "Sir Eustace is not always to be relied upon in that respect." "I went into the gun-room, the kitchen," "the butler's pantry," "the billiard-room, the drawing-room," "and finally the dining-room where the curtains were drawn." "It's difficult to tell you much of what happened next." "I took a step towards the curtain and I found myself face-to-face with an intruder." "A big man, quite elderly." "For a moment we just stared at each other." "Then two other men came in behind him and he came for me." "I must have been unconscious for some minutes." "It was then that my unfortunate husband entered the room." "They dealt with him as you shall see." "I believe I fainted again, I'm not sure." "The exact events are difficult..." "I drifted in and out of consciousness, you understand?" "I do know that they cleared the room of its silver and they must have drawn themselves a bottle of port, some of which I saw them drink." "The man who struck me was elderly with a beard." "The others younger, smooth faced." "Yes." "Finally they checked that I was securely bound and left taking the silver with them." "How was the alarm raised?" "Madam had not come upstairs." "Early she said she would follow me shortly so at midnight I went down in case she had fallen asleep over her book." "A thing I hate to do." "And there I found her, poor lamb, just as she says and him on the floor, his blood and brains all over the room." "Enough to drive a woman out of her wits." "And her gagged and bound and her very dress spotted with him." "She never wanted courage, did Miss Mary Fraser of Adelaide, and Lady Brackenstall of Abbey Grange has learned new ways." "You've questioned her long enough, gentlemen." "When did the lady and the maid come from Australia?" "About eighteen months ago, sir." "Her father sent her to get her experience of Europe." "That is to a find a husband?" "Poor woman must have seen the bruited match." "It's a mess sir." "Constable." "A mess indeed." "They've touched nothing sir." "What do you make of it, Doctor?" "Should I?" "Please proceed my dear fellow." "Why it's a blow." "Of savage velocity." "A single blow?" "I believe so." "It is a straightforward enough wound, you see it begins thus below the ear and then crosses both spheres of the parietal bone at such an angle." "That this side is smashed as far as the cranial suture." "I've never seen anything like it." "A powerful man, this elder Randall." "Half his trade is violence sir." "He certainly left his trademark." "What beats me is how Randall could do so mad a thing, knowing that the lady could describe them, and that we could not fail to recognize the description." "The criminal mind has its quirks of consciousness scruples." "In that respect, it is as individual and curious as any other." "A noted miser, Lady, secretly charitable so this violent Randall may draw the line at the murder of an unconscious woman." "Or he may well believe that she did not see him." "Well how is that sir?" "She testifies that they stared at each other." "Yes but it was she who held the light." "What Randall may have seen was mostly flickering candle flame." "The face behind it, a distorted mask." "He may be not imaginative enough to have thought that she saw anymore than he did." "He knocked her unconscious at the next instance, thus for his purposes solving his problem..." "Watson?" "May I impose upon you to search the Turkey rug?" "What for Holmes?" "Candle wax, Watson, candle wax." "Now this bell presents a mystery, does it not Inspector?" "Sir." "When this was pulled down the bell in the kitchen must have rung loudly." "No one would hear it the way the kitchen is placed." "How did the burglar know that?" "Exactly, Mr. Holmes, exactly." "For the very question I've put myself." "Now either he has known the house or he may have dealings with one of the servants." "One of my men is going over the record of service at the station with the butler, at this very moment sir." "Inspector, you seem to have thought of everything." "Thank you, Mr. Holmes." "Holmes?" "What is it Watson?" "There." "A scattering of wax and a very light scorching." "Invisible, but leaving it's characteristic scent." "The lady would have fallen here." "Randall would have snatched up the candelabra immediately." "I suppose that is where they took their refreshment." "To steady their nerves, yes." "Port wine, sir." "Did Lady Brackenstall say that the butler's corkscrew was used?" "No sir." "She was senseless at the moment the bottle was opened." "Quite so." "It was opened with a pocket screw, probably contained in a knife." "If you examine the top of the cork you will observe that the screw was driven in three times before the cork was extracted." "This long screw would have transfixed it and drawn it with a single pull." "When you catch this fellow, it is likely that you will find that he has a multiplex knife in his possession." "Excellent, Mr. Holmes." "These three glasses do puzzle me," "I must confess." "Did Lady Brackenstall say that she actually saw the three men drinking?" "Awe yes, she was clear about that, sir." "Well then there is an end of it." "What more is to be said?" "Perhaps, Inspector, when a man has special powers and special knowledge, like Sherlock Holmes, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand." "You let us know when Randall is arrested." "Poor Holmes, you must feel like an abstruse." "A learned specialist calling for a case of measles" "Annoying." "We must return." "Three glasses." "Watson," "We have been dazzled out of observation by that lady's beauty, beauty may be truth but she does not necessarily speak it." "There was port in each glass but there was only crusting in one glass." "Last glass filled is the one most likely to contain the crusting." "I agree." "If the last pouring it had approached the bottom of the bottle but the bottle was half full and it had been agitated." "The crusting was present throughout the port." "Well what then do you suppose?" "That only two glasses were used and the drinks of both were poured into a third to give us the false impression that three people were there." "I don't understand." "If I'm right Watson then in an instant this case rises from the commonplace to the exceeding and remarkable." "That would be the Kent train." "That way." "How on earth did you hear it?" "I heard nothing Watson," "I observed." "Salutary thought after such a misspent morning." "Lady Brackenstall and her maid must have some very good reason for shielding the real criminal." "Well Watson, we shall just have to construct our case for ourselves without depth." "The Abbey Grange as fast as you can." "Watson." "Well it appears that Inspector Hopkins has gone to report to headquarters." "Splendid, then we can take possession." "How many frustrated episodes for the laboring men here could one reconstruct from this mechanical cemetery?" "What's this?" "Watson?" "Not entirely mechanical it seems." "Fudge." "I imagine it's a pet's gravestone." "It has been smashed." "Mended and smashed again with deliberate force." "The story it tells is of the immediate past." "Watson?" "The remnants of a dog's collar." "Fudge." "Hey you!" "Has any servant been dismissed from the house in the last month?" "No sir." "Then it's as I thought." "Fudge." "Lady Brackenstall's pet dog, let us imagine, dies." "It may not be too fanciful to suggest that the poor unfortunate creature was literally killed." "Killed?" "For what reason?" "Reason I suggest hardly entered into it." "It was done in a fit of insane rage." "By whom?" "By a drunkard, sadistic ruffian." "One of the murderers?" "No Watson." "The lady's husband." "The last of the Brackenstall's." "Brackenstall." "Consider it." "No one but a member of the household could vandalize a gravestone and then remain in place." "Why should Brackenstall entertain such an obsession about a pet animal that he would forbid any remembrance of it?" "You saw the marks of course on the lady's arm." "Yes I was surprised that it did not interest you more." "They were stab wounds made by a long needle or a hatpin." "This lady has been living in fear of her physical safety Watson." "Take care Holmes." "Watson?" "We have got our case." "Highly likely, the blunder of a lifetime." "But now the chain is almost complete." "You got your men?" "Man, Watson, man." "Only one, but a remarkable person." "Strong as a lion, active as a squirrel, dexterous with his fingers and finally, remarkably quick-witted." "Awe, Lady Brackenstall." "I do not wish to cause you any unnecessary trouble, my whole desire is to make things easier for you." "I am convinced that you are a much-tried woman." "If you will trust me and treat me as a friend, you may find that I will justify that trust." "What do you want me to do?" "To tell me the truth." "Mr. Holmes!" "No, no, no, no please, Lady Brackenstall, it is of no use." "You may have heard of a little reputation that I may possess," "I will stake it all on the fact that your story is a complete fabrication." "You're an impudent fellow." "You try to say that my mistress has told a lie?" "Have you nothing to tell me?" "I have told you everything." "Now think just once more, Lady Brackenstall." "Wouldn't it be better to be frank?" "I have told you all I know." "I am sorry." "The bell rope gave us the clue, which should have left us in no doubt." "How is that?" "If you were to pull down a bell rope, Watson, where would you expect it to break?" "Surely at the top where it is attached to the wire." "Not three inches from the top." "But the rope was frayed." "The rope, which held Lady Brackenstall, was frayed." "He was cunning enough to do that with his knife." "But the other end was not." "If you would have stood on the mantelpiece as I did you would have seen that it was cut through." "Stop." "Please driver." "Watson?" "That log has not moved since early this morning." "Well perhaps it's snagged on something." "Or anchored." "See that Inspector Hopkins gets this on his return, will you?" "Chilehurst station." "Where to now Holmes?" "The shipping office of the Southern Cross Line." "Yes, yes of course." "The Southern Cross Line is the principal passenger carrier between Adelaide and London." "Ah, I see." "In May of that year, only one of ours reached the home port, our flagship the Rock of Gibraltar." "I'll have the passenger list sent up." "How on earth did Mr. Holmes know that?" "Awe, here we are." "Miss Mary Fraser of Adelaide, first class, accompanied by her maid." "Where is the Rock of Gibraltar now?" "I'll know today." "She was steaming west through the Arabian Gulf, Mr. Holmes, heading for Suez, I hope." "Is it your policy to transfer officers much between ship and ship?" "No not at all." "It is our policy not to." "Awe, I have you, Mr. Holmes." "You are asking the whereabouts of a member of the crew of the Rock who has been seen very recently but not on the ship." "Mr. Viviali, your precocity astonishes me." "I assure you it is only through study of the good doctor's masterly exposition of your work that I now have any small capacity to reason." "Really?" "You amaze me." "Watson are you taking notes?" "Also, you will be pleased to hear that I know exactly who the officer is." "Awe, excellent," "Mrs. Burbage, excellent." "Yes gentlemen, the only officer from that voyage of the Rock who is not aboard her now, is Jack Croker, a magnificent chap." "Am I not correct Mrs. Burbage?" "Croker has a defect." "A delightful fellow." "Handsome as a prince." "The crew worship him." "And we've promoted him to captain of our new vessel the Bass Rock." "No tea for me please." "Which is just fitting out." "He's the youngest captain we have but he'll be the best." "Not an officer in the fleet to touch him." "He is hot headed and excitable but loyal, honest and kind-hearted." "Sometimes in this life you meet people who are, what you might call, large-souled, who are a privilege to know." "Croker is one of those." "Once or twice in my career" "I feel I've done more real harm about my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime." "But I've learned caution now, and I'd rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience." "Captain Croker, sit down." "I've got your telegram, and I've come at the hour you said." "I heard you've been down to the office." "There's no getting away from you is there?" "Speak up, man." "You can't stand there and play cat and mouse with me!" "What do you know?" "Would you give him a cigar, Watson?" "Please." "Bite on that, Captain Croker, and try not to let your nerves run away with you." "I shall not sit here smoking with you if I thought you were a common criminal." "Tell me what did you use to secure the silver to the floating log?" "My guess it's was fishing gut from the gun-room but I was not present at its recovery." "Am I right?" "What do you want?" "Justice." "For whom?" "We are not partisan." "We just want to see justice done that is all." "Very well." "Was it fishing gut?" "No, twine." "It was a throw back to the days before the master as a youngster." "Even now I always carry a silver coin and length twine..." "And a multiplex knife?" "How in the devil do you know that?" "Who are you?" "Now, give me a true account of everything that happened at the Abbey Grange last night." "Be frank with me and we may do some good." "Play tricks with me and I'll crush you." "I'll chance it." "But one thing I'll say first," "I regret nothing," "I fear nothing and I'd do it all again if I had to and be proud of the job, damn the man!" "Well that's my side of things, only my side." "When I think of Mary, sweet Mary Fraser," "I think of getting her into this bloody business, it's that, that turns my soul to water." "I met her when I was first officer on my last ship." "Air." "Oh I need air, Mr. Croker." "I've never danced so much in my life." "You dance if you were born to Miss Fraser." "Neither born nor bred, I assure Mr. Croker." "Led to it, I think, by a better dancer than I am." "She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man." "We were never engaged." "I have no complaints." "But it was all love on my side and all-good comradeship and friendship on hers." "When we parted she was a free woman" "but I could never again be a free man." "Next time I came back from the sea" "I read of her marriage." "It seemed to be the sort of thing she was made for." "I didn't grieve." "I felt it to be right." "So I never thought to see her again." "At last voyage I was promoted, and the new boat was not yet launched, so I had to wait for a couple of months with my people in Kent." "I knew now where she was but stayed away." "Then I met Theresa Wright one day and she told me all about her, about the marriage, about the man's drunken cruelty, about everything." "Do you know this noble baron had burnt her pet dog and threatened as much to her?" "I tell you gentlemen, it nearly drove me mad." "I did meet Mary and I met her again." "At last, she would meet me no more." "I was then given notice that I would leave of my voyage within the week." "You're mad." "How could you come here?" "I'm to go away Mary." "I've been given a ship." "To go and not say farewell." "I thought I might never see you again." "You're going away?" "I do not relish it." "You'll make a fine captain." "You must not let anything spoil such an opportunity." "I feel for you." "You can do nothing." "However, it is which hurts most stunning." "I believe I should have gone mad these past few weeks if..." "If..." "Mary?" "If it had not been for the thought of you, my friend." "Alright." "Friend will do, Mary." "It is the measure of my love for you it's so strong it will live on crumbs." "Friend will do." "Jack don't even say it." "It won't make us any happier." "You know what I feel." "Do I?" "You know you do." "Then I shall go a happier man than when I came." "God Bless you sweet Mary Fraser." "That's enough for me." "You must not stay Jack." "Take this for my sake." "At last I have you madam." "[Unintelligible]." "Here's a key to your damn modesty." "You have a confession madam?" "A damn whore," "A gutter queen," "A filthy jade." "Yes sir." "Come sir." "Stand you there, sir, over the body of your bloody harlot." "She's all right." "Jack?" "Oh Jack." "Thank you." "Now drink this." "Oh... oh what happened?" "I killed him." "Are you certain?" "I know." "I felt it." "Oh dear God." "What are we going to do?" "Listen to your old Theresa." "You're marked with a blow that could have killed you, that shall be your salvation." "Theresa was as cool as ice." "It was her plot as much as mine." "We must make it appear the burglars had done the thing." "Theresa kept on repeating our story to her mistress, while I swarmed up and cut the rope of the bell." "I then lashed her in her chair, frayed out the end of the rope to make it look natural." "The silver ware you know about that." "I do, and the third glass of port to tie in with the Randalls?" "Yes." "And we dropped the candlestick by where Mary fell for the wax would splash on her." "I never thought the police could have seen through our dodge." "When I knew that savage fiend was dead and she was free of him" "I reckon I done the best nights work of my life." "I still do even if I swing for it." "That is the truth." "The whole truth, sir." "Dear God." "Yes." "Yes you have told me the truth." "And if the lady's maid had been less abstemious and accepted your glass of port, your ingenuity might have fooled me as you have certainly fooled the police." "Who put you onto me?" "How on earth did you find me?" "No one could have gone after that bell rope but an acrobat or sailor." "No one but a sailor could have made the knots with which the cord was fastened to the chair." "It was evident that the lady was shielding someone to do so under such circumstances meant that she must love the person." "Was that too wild a leap of the imagination to connect her with an officer of a ship, which brought her to this country?" "Croker." "You're expecting a visitor." "I am?" "My dearest, the gentleman knows everything." "There's no hiding from it." "I know." "His telegram brought me here." "What do you intend, Mr. Holmes?" "Well Captain Croker this is a very serious matter." "Yet I feel sure that on the basis of the story, which you have told us here tonight, a British court of law will understand that you acted in defense of your own life." "That, however, is for the jury to decide." "Meanwhile," "I have so much sympathy for you that if you choose to disappear within the next 24-hours" "I promise no one will hinder you." "Then it will all come out?" "Certainly it will come out." "What sort of proposal is that?" "Mary would be left to face the music." "Held as an accomplice maybe." "No sir, it will not do." "Jack you must go." "I shall not." "Calm yourself Captain." "I was only testing you." "Watson, this fellow rings true every time." "It is a great responsibility that I take upon myself but we will do it in due form of law." "Croker, you are the prisoner." "Watson?" "You are a British jury, and I never met any man more eminently fitted to represent one." "Now gentle man you have heard the evidence do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty." "Not guilty." "Vox populi, vox Dei." "You are acquitted, Captain Croker." "No." "No sir it will not do." "Captain?" "What if the police arrest some other poor devil, what then?" "Then I will use all my powers to persuade them of their mistake." "If they light on you then that is another matter." "However, I think that is unlikely." "Come back to this lady in a year's time, and may her future and yours justify us in the judgment that we have pronounced this night." "Oh thank you." "Madam, I'm intrigued, you gave such a compelling account of the man's sad addiction to drink and yet it is not as we now know portrayed as your husband but it was such a clear description I wondered." "My father." "My poor father, Doctor." "He's on his way England because of it." "His self-management was the reason" "I didn't fear the vice of my husband because I knew of it before we were married." "How foolish I was." "Thank you madam." "I felt sure that your story was true to reality." "Good luck to you." "It's almost as though you disapproved of the happiness we have fostered this day." "Oh no, I approve of that, of course I do." "But I'm uneasy that you took upon yourself the duties of advocate and judge." "You are too bound by forms, Watson." "Forms are society, Holmes." "Manners make a man, Holmes." "It's just as well you are unique."