His last bow Some later reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes
hedges and the catkins on the hazels once again. With a spud, a tin
box, and an elementary book on botany, there are instructive days to be
spent.” He prowled about with this equipment himself, but it was a poor
show of plants which he would bring back of an evening.
Occasionally in our rambles we came across Inspector Baynes. His fat,
red face wreathed itself in smiles and his small eyes glittered as he
greeted my companion. He said little about the case, but from that
little we gathered that he also was not dissatisfied at the course of
events. I must admit, however, that I was somewhat surprised when, some
five days after the crime, I opened my morning paper to find in large
letters:
THE OXSHOTT MYSTERY
A SOLUTION
ARREST OF SUPPOSED ASSASSIN
Holmes sprang in his chair as if he had been stung when I read the
headlines.
“By Jove!” he cried. “You don’t mean that Baynes has got him?”
“Apparently,” said I as I read the following report:
“Great excitement was caused in Esher and the neighbouring district
when it was learned late last night that an arrest had been effected in
connection with the Oxshott murder. It will be remembered that Mr.
Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, was found dead on Oxshott Common, his body
showing signs of extreme violence, and that on the same night his
servant and his cook fled, which appeared to show their participation
in the crime. It was suggested, but never proved, that the deceased
gentleman may have had valuables in the house, and that their
abstraction was the motive of the crime. Every effort was made by
Inspector Baynes, who has the case in hand, to ascertain the hiding
place of the fugitives, and he had good reason to believe that they had
not gone far but were lurking in some retreat which had been already
prepared. It was certain from the first, however, that they would
eventually be detected, as the cook, from the evidence of one or two
tradespeople who have caught a glimpse of him through the window, was a
man of most remarkable appearance—being a huge and hideous mulatto,
with yellowish features of a pronounced negroid type. This man has been
seen since the crime, for he was detected and pursued by Constable
Walters on the same evening, when he had the audacity to revisit
Wisteria Lodge. Inspector Baynes, considering that such a visit must
have some purpose in view and was likely, therefore, to be repeated,
abandoned the house but left an ambuscade in the shrubbery. The man
walked into the trap and was captured last night after a struggle in
which Constable Downing was badly bitten by the savage. We understand
that when the prisoner is brought before the magistrates a remand will
be applied for by the police, and that great developments are hoped
from his capture.”
“Really we must see Baynes at once,” cried Holmes, picking up his hat.
“We will just catch him before he starts.” We hurried down the village
street and found, as we had expected, that the inspector was just
leaving his lodgings.
“You’ve seen the paper, Mr. Holmes?” he asked, holding one out to us.
“Yes, Baynes, I’ve seen it. Pray don’t think it a liberty if I give you
a word of friendly warning.”
“Of warning, Mr. Holmes?”
“I have looked into this case with some care, and I am not convinced
that you are on the right lines. I don’t want you to commit yourself
too far unless you are sure.”
“You’re very kind, Mr. Holmes.”
“I assure you I speak for your good.”
It seemed to me that something like a wink quivered for an instant over
one of Mr. Baynes’s tiny eyes.
“We agreed to work on our own lines, Mr. Holmes. That’s what I am
doing.”
“Oh, very good,” said Holmes. “Don’t blame me.”
“No, sir; I believe you mean well by me. But we all have our own
systems, Mr. Holmes. You have yours, and maybe I have mine.”
“Let us say no more about it.”
“You’re welcome always to my news. This fellow is a perfect savage, as
strong as a cart-horse and as fierce as the devil. He chewed Downing’s
thumb nearly off before they could master him. He hardly speaks a word
of English, and we can get nothing out of him but grunts.”
“And you think you have evidence that he murdered his late master?”
“I didn’t say so, Mr. Holmes; I didn’t say so. We all have our little
ways. You try yours and I will try mine. That’s the agreement.”
Holmes shrugged his shoulders as we walked away together. “I can’t make
the man out. He seems to be riding for a fall. Well, as he says, we
must each try our own way and see what comes of it. But there’s
something in Inspector Baynes which I can’t quite understand.”
“Just sit down in that chair, Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes when we had
returned to our apartment at the Bull. “I want to put you in touch with
the situation, as I may need your help to-night. Let me show you the
evolution of this case so far as I have been able to follow it. Simple
as it has been in its leading features, it has none the less presented
surprising difficulties in the way of an arrest. There are gaps in that
direction which we have still to fill.
“We will go back to the note which was handed in to Garcia upon the
evening of his death. We may put aside this idea of Baynes’s that
Garcia’s servants were concerned in the matter. The proof of this lies
in the fact that it was _he_ who had arranged for the presence of Scott
Eccles, which could only have been done for the purpose of an alibi. It
was Garcia, then, who had an enterprise, and apparently a criminal
enterprise, in hand that night in the course of which he met his death.
I say ‘criminal’ because only a man with a criminal enterprise desires
to establish an alibi. Who, then, is most likely to have taken his
life? Surely the person against whom the criminal enterprise was
directed. So far it seems to me that we are on safe ground.
“We can now see a reason for the disappearance of Garcia’s household.
They were _all_ confederates in the same unknown crime. If it came off
when Garcia returned, any possible suspicion would be warded off by the
Englishman’s evidence, and all would be well. But the attempt was a
dangerous one, and if Garcia did _not_ return by a certain hour it was
probable that his own life had been sacrificed. It had been arranged,
therefore, that in such a case his two subordinates were to make for
some prearranged spot where they could escape investigation and be in a
position afterwards to renew their attempt. That would fully explain
the facts, would it not?”
The whole inexplicable tangle seemed to straighten out before me. I
wondered, as I always did, how it had not been obvious to me before.
“But why should one servant return?”
“We can imagine that in the confusion of flight something precious,
something which he could not bear to part with, had been left behind.
That would explain his persistence, would it not?”
“Well, what is the next step?”
“The next step is the note received by Garcia at the dinner. It
indicates a confederate at the other end. Now, where was the other end?
I have already shown you that it could only lie in some large house,
and that the number of large houses is limited. My first days in this
village were devoted to a series of walks in which in the intervals of
my botanical researches I made a reconnaissance of all the large houses
and an examination of the family history of the occupants. One house,
and only one, riveted my attention. It is the famous old Jacobean
grange of High Gable, one mile on the farther side of Oxshott, and less
than half a mile from the scene of the tragedy. The other mansions
belonged to prosaic and respectable people who live far aloof from
romance. But Mr. Henderson, of High Gable, was by all accounts a
curious man to whom curious adventures might befall. I concentrated my
attention, therefore, upon him and his household.
“A singular set of people, Watson—the man himself the most singular of
them all. I managed to see him on a plausible pretext, but I seemed to
read in his dark, deep-set, brooding eyes that he was perfectly aware
of my true business. He is a man of fifty, strong, active, with
iron-grey hair, great bunched black eyebrows, the step of a deer and
the air of an emperor—a fierce, masterful man, with a red-hot spirit
behind his parchment face. He is either a foreigner or has lived long
in the tropics, for he is yellow and sapless, but tough as whipcord.
His friend and secretary, Mr. Lucas, is undoubtedly a foreigner,
chocolate brown, wily, suave, and catlike, with a poisonous gentleness
of speech. You see, Watson, we have come already upon two sets of
foreigners—one at Wisteria Lodge and one at High Gable—so our gaps are
beginning to close.
“These two men, close and confidential friends, are the centre of the
household; but there is one other person who for our immediate purpose
may be even more important. Henderson has two children—girls of eleven
and thirteen. Their governess is a Miss Burnet, an Englishwoman of
forty or thereabouts. There is also one confidential manservant. This
little group forms the real family, for they travel about together, and
Henderson is a great traveller, always on the move. It is only within
the last weeks that he has returned, after a year’s absence, to High
Gable. I may add that he is enormously rich, and whatever his whims may
be he can very easily satisfy them. For the rest, his house is full of
butlers, footmen, maidservants, and the usual overfed, underworked
staff of a large English country house.
“So much I learned partly from village gossip and partly from my own
observation. There are no better instruments than discharged servants
with a grievance, and I was lucky enough to find one. I call it luck,
but it would not have come my way had I not been looking out for it. As
Baynes remarks, we all have our systems. It was my system which enabled
me to find John Warner, late gardener of High Gable, sacked in a moment
of temper by his imperious employer. He in turn had friends among the
indoor servants who unite in their fear and dislike of their master. So
I had my key to the secrets of the establishment.
“Curious people, Watson! I don’t pretend to understand it all yet, but
very curious people anyway. It’s a double-winged house, and the
servants live on one side, the family on the other. There’s no link
between the two save for Henderson’s own servant, who serves the
family’s meals. Everything is carried to a certain door, which forms
the one connection. Governess and children hardly go out at all, except
into the garden. Henderson never by any chance walks alone. His dark
secretary is like his shadow. The gossip among the servants is that
their master is terribly afraid of something. ‘Sold his soul to the
devil in exchange for money,’ says Warner, ‘and expects his creditor to
come up and claim his own.’ Where they came from, or who they are,
nobody has an idea. They are very violent. Twice Henderson has lashed
at folk with his dog-whip, and only his long purse and heavy
compensation have kept him out of the courts.
“Well, now, Watson, let us judge the situation by this new information.
We may take it that the letter came out of this strange household and
was an invitation to Garcia to carry out some attempt which had already
been planned. Who wrote the note? It was someone within the citadel,
and it was a woman. Who then but Miss Burnet, the governess? All our
reasoning seems to point that way. At any rate, we may take it as a
hypothesis and see what consequences it would entail. I may add that
Miss Burnet’s age and character make it certain that my first idea that
there might be a love interest in our story is out of the question.
“If she wrote the note she was presumably the friend and confederate of
Garcia. What, then, might she be expected to do if she heard of his