The Valley of Fear
the carpet slippers from the hall. As Ames had observed, the soles of
both were dark with blood.
“Strange!” murmured Holmes, as he stood in the light of the window and
examined them minutely. “Very strange indeed!”
Stooping with one of his quick feline pounces, he placed the slipper
upon the blood mark on the sill. It exactly corresponded. He smiled in
silence at his colleagues.
The inspector was transfigured with excitement. His native accent
rattled like a stick upon railings.
“Man,” he cried, “there’s not a doubt of it! Barker has just marked the
window himself. It’s a good deal broader than any bootmark. I mind that
you said it was a splay-foot, and here’s the explanation. But what’s
the game, Mr. Holmes—what’s the game?”
“Ay, what’s the game?” my friend repeated thoughtfully.
White Mason chuckled and rubbed his fat hands together in his
professional satisfaction. “I said it was a snorter!” he cried. “And a
real snorter it is!”
Chapter VI
A Dawning Light
The three detectives had many matters of detail into which to inquire;
so I returned alone to our modest quarters at the village inn. But
before doing so I took a stroll in the curious old-world garden which
flanked the house. Rows of very ancient yew trees cut into strange
designs girded it round. Inside was a beautiful stretch of lawn with an
old sundial in the middle, the whole effect so soothing and restful
that it was welcome to my somewhat jangled nerves.
In that deeply peaceful atmosphere one could forget, or remember only
as some fantastic nightmare, that darkened study with the sprawling,
bloodstained figure on the floor. And yet, as I strolled round it and
tried to steep my soul in its gentle balm, a strange incident occurred,
which brought me back to the tragedy and left a sinister impression in
my mind.
I have said that a decoration of yew trees circled the garden. At the
end farthest from the house they thickened into a continuous hedge. On
the other side of this hedge, concealed from the eyes of anyone
approaching from the direction of the house, there was a stone seat. As
I approached the spot I was aware of voices, some remark in the deep
tones of a man, answered by a little ripple of feminine laughter.
An instant later I had come round the end of the hedge and my eyes lit
upon Mrs. Douglas and the man Barker before they were aware of my
presence. Her appearance gave me a shock. In the dining-room she had
been demure and discreet. Now all pretense of grief had passed away
from her. Her eyes shone with the joy of living, and her face still
quivered with amusement at some remark of her companion. He sat
forward, his hands clasped and his forearms on his knees, with an
answering smile upon his bold, handsome face. In an instant—but it was
just one instant too late—they resumed their solemn masks as my figure
came into view. A hurried word or two passed between them, and then
Barker rose and came towards me.
“Excuse me, sir,” said he, “but am I addressing Dr. Watson?”
I bowed with a coldness which showed, I dare say, very plainly the
impression which had been produced upon my mind.
“We thought that it was probably you, as your friendship with Mr.
Sherlock Holmes is so well known. Would you mind coming over and
speaking to Mrs. Douglas for one instant?”
I followed him with a dour face. Very clearly I could see in my mind’s
eye that shattered figure on the floor. Here within a few hours of the
tragedy were his wife and his nearest friend laughing together behind a
bush in the garden which had been his. I greeted the lady with reserve.
I had grieved with her grief in the dining room. Now I met her
appealing gaze with an unresponsive eye.
“I fear that you think me callous and hard-hearted,” said she.
I shrugged my shoulders. “It is no business of mine,” said I.
“Perhaps some day you will do me justice. If you only realized—”
“There is no need why Dr. Watson should realize,” said Barker quickly.
“As he has himself said, it is no possible business of his.”
“Exactly,” said I, “and so I will beg leave to resume my walk.”
“One moment, Dr. Watson,” cried the woman in a pleading voice. “There
is one question which you can answer with more authority than anyone
else in the world, and it may make a very great difference to me. You
know Mr. Holmes and his relations with the police better than anyone
else can. Supposing that a matter were brought confidentially to his
knowledge, is it absolutely necessary that he should pass it on to the
detectives?”
“Yes, that’s it,” said Barker eagerly. “Is he on his own or is he
entirely in with them?”
“I really don’t know that I should be justified in discussing such a
point.”
“I beg—I implore that you will, Dr. Watson! I assure you that you will
be helping us—helping me greatly if you will guide us on that point.”
There was such a ring of sincerity in the woman’s voice that for the
instant I forgot all about her levity and was moved only to do her
will.
“Mr. Holmes is an independent investigator,” I said. “He is his own
master, and would act as his own judgment directed. At the same time,
he would naturally feel loyalty towards the officials who were working
on the same case, and he would not conceal from them anything which
would help them in bringing a criminal to justice. Beyond this I can
say nothing, and I would refer you to Mr. Holmes himself if you wanted
fuller information.”
So saying I raised my hat and went upon my way, leaving them still
seated behind that concealing hedge. I looked back as I rounded the far
end of it, and saw that they were still talking very earnestly
together, and, as they were gazing after me, it was clear that it was
our interview that was the subject of their debate.
“I wish none of their confidences,” said Holmes, when I reported to him
what had occurred. He had spent the whole afternoon at the Manor House
in consultation with his two colleagues, and returned about five with a
ravenous appetite for a high tea which I had ordered for him. “No
confidences, Watson; for they are mighty awkward if it comes to an
arrest for conspiracy and murder.”
“You think it will come to that?”
He was in his most cheerful and debonair humour. “My dear Watson, when
I have exterminated that fourth egg I shall be ready to put you in
touch with the whole situation. I don’t say that we have fathomed
it—far from it—but when we have traced the missing dumb-bell—”
“The dumb-bell!”
“Dear me, Watson, is it possible that you have not penetrated the fact
that the case hangs upon the missing dumb-bell? Well, well, you need
not be downcast; for between ourselves I don’t think that either
Inspector Mac or the excellent local practitioner has grasped the
overwhelming importance of this incident. One dumb-bell, Watson!
Consider an athlete with one dumb-bell! Picture to yourself the
unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature.
Shocking, Watson, shocking!”
He sat with his mouth full of toast and his eyes sparkling with
mischief, watching my intellectual entanglement. The mere sight of his
excellent appetite was an assurance of success; for I had very clear
recollections of days and nights without a thought of food, when his
baffled mind had chafed before some problem while his thin, eager
features became more attenuated with the asceticism of complete mental
concentration. Finally he lit his pipe, and sitting in the inglenook of
the old village inn he talked slowly and at random about his case,
rather as one who thinks aloud than as one who makes a considered
statement.
“A lie, Watson—a great, big, thumping, obtrusive, uncompromising
lie—that’s what meets us on the threshold! There is our starting point.
The whole story told by Barker is a lie. But Barker’s story is
corroborated by Mrs. Douglas. Therefore she is lying also. They are
both lying, and in a conspiracy. So now we have the clear problem. Why
are they lying, and what is the truth which they are trying so hard to
conceal? Let us try, Watson, you and I, if we can get behind the lie
and reconstruct the truth.
“How do I know that they are lying? Because it is a clumsy fabrication
which simply could not be true. Consider! According to the story given
to us, the assassin had less than a minute after the murder had been
committed to take that ring, which was under another ring, from the
dead man’s finger, to replace the other ring—a thing which he would
surely never have done—and to put that singular card beside his victim.
I say that this was obviously impossible.
“You may argue—but I have too much respect for your judgment, Watson,
to think that you will do so—that the ring may have been taken before
the man was killed. The fact that the candle had been lit only a short
time shows that there had been no lengthy interview. Was Douglas, from
what we hear of his fearless character, a man who would be likely to
give up his wedding ring at such short notice, or could we conceive of
his giving it up at all? No, no, Watson, the assassin was alone with
the dead man for some time with the lamp lit. Of that I have no doubt
at all.
“But the gunshot was apparently the cause of death. Therefore the shot
must have been fired some time earlier than we are told. But there
could be no mistake about such a matter as that. We are in the
presence, therefore, of a deliberate conspiracy upon the part of the
two people who heard the gunshot—of the man Barker and of the woman
Douglas. When on the top of this I am able to show that the blood mark
on the windowsill was deliberately placed there by Barker, in order to
give a false clue to the police, you will admit that the case grows
dark against him.
“Now we have to ask ourselves at what hour the murder actually did
occur. Up to half-past ten the servants were moving about the house; so
it was certainly not before that time. At a quarter to eleven they had
all gone to their rooms with the exception of Ames, who was in the
pantry. I have been trying some experiments after you left us this
afternoon, and I find that no noise which MacDonald can make in the
study can penetrate to me in the pantry when the doors are all shut.
“It is otherwise, however, from the housekeeper’s room. It is not so
far down the corridor, and from it I could vaguely hear a voice when it
was very loudly raised. The sound from a shotgun is to some extent
muffled when the discharge is at very close range, as it undoubtedly
was in this instance. It would not be very loud, and yet in the silence
of the night it should have easily penetrated to Mrs. Allen’s room. She
is, as she has told us, somewhat deaf; but none the less she mentioned
in her evidence that she did hear something like a door slamming half
an hour before the alarm was given. Half an hour before the alarm was
given would be a quarter to eleven. I have no doubt that what she heard
was the report of the gun, and that this was the real instant of the
murder.
“If this is so, we have now to determine what Barker and Mrs. Douglas,
presuming that they are not the actual murderers, could have been doing
from quarter to eleven, when the sound of the shot brought them down,
until quarter past eleven, when they rang the bell and summoned the
servants. What were they doing, and why did they not instantly give the
alarm? That is the question which faces us, and when it has been
answered we shall surely have gone some way to solve our problem.”
“I am convinced myself,” said I, “that there is an understanding
between those two people. She must be a heartless creature to sit
laughing at some jest within a few hours of her husband’s murder.”
“Exactly. She does not shine as a wife even in her own account of what
occurred. I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind, as you are