The Riddle of Foxwood Grange Page 4

  “He sounds a bad lot,” I remarked.

  “Undoubtedly,” said Holmes. “From what Lestrade tells me, they were very glad to be rid of him. Now he makes a living by small-scale enquiry work. A lot of it, I understand, is people simply wanting to know the whereabouts of those who owe them money, or wives and husbands spying on each other - sordid work, Watson. And now, it seems, someone has engaged Baines to spy on Farringdon Blake.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Nor I, at the moment. But perhaps when we learn more details of his circumstances tomorrow we shall be able to form some sort of hypothesis.”

  The following day dawned bright and sunny. Sherlock Holmes was in the very best of spirits, no doubt pleased at the prospect of an interesting and challenging case. I had observed many times before that whereas inaction had an almost morbidly soporific effect on my friend, an intellectual challenge of any kind acted like a stimulating tonic upon him, invigorating his whole being. For myself, I confess that I could not imagine how he would set about the matter. Something was afoot - that much seemed certain - but what? All we knew - or thought we knew - was that someone had employed this man Wilson Baines to spy on Holmes’s client on his weekly visit to London, and that someone in north Oxfordshire had spied upon him through a telescope. It seemed very little to go on, and I found myself wondering if the whole business might not earn a place in Holmes’s records only as a failure, a completely impenetrable mystery.

  From my own point of view, although I would naturally be disappointed if my friend failed to make any progress in the matter, the outcome of the investigation was not my immediate concern. I had had sufficient experience of Holmes’s profound inner resources to know that if anyone could get to the bottom of a problem and solve the apparently unsolvable, it was Sherlock Holmes. I could therefore leave all the anxiety about the case to him. For myself, I was simply delighted at the prospect of getting away from London for a few days. The weather had been good, and it was certainly more enjoyable to have sunshine rather than fog or rain, but the streets of London had become somewhat stifling in recent days, as they nearly always did in the summer, and I thought it likely that the air in the wooded hills of north Oxfordshire might perhaps be a little fresher.

  Holmes had sent a telegram to say that we would catch a train at Paddington in the early afternoon and arrive at Rushfield station at about half past five. Our plans were, however, destined to be altered. Some time after breakfast, when we had unhurriedly packed our travelling bags and were sitting reading the morning papers, there came a ring at the bell. A moment later, the maid showed a middle-aged man into the room, and I was surprised to see that it was Mr Coleford, our railway friend of the previous day, who appeared extremely agitated about something.

  “What can we do for you today?” asked Holmes, as he showed the visitor to a chair.

  “Something very strange has happened, Mr Holmes,” Coleford began. “As I was leaving the station this morning, I was approached by a tall, middle-aged man-”

  “-wearing a light overcoat and bowler hat, and with a grey moustache?”

  “That’s exactly right,” said Coleford in surprise. “He said to me ‘You took a letter from a gentleman yesterday morning.’

  “‘What if I did?’ I asked.

  “‘You must tell me the address you took it to,’ said he. ‘It is most important.’

  “‘Who are you to tell people what to do?’ I demanded, as there was something in his manner I didn’t care for.

  “‘I’m a plain-clothes police-officer,’ he said. He pulled some sort of card from his pocket and held it in front of my nose, but so quickly that I had no chance to read it. That’s not the way of an honest man, so I decided I wouldn’t tell him anything.

  “‘I didn’t notice the address,’ I said. ‘I just put it in a post-box for him.’

  “‘You’re lying,’ he said. ‘He could have put it in a post-box himself. You delivered it by hand.’

  “‘He didn’t have a stamp,’ I said. ‘He gave me some money to pay for one.’

  “‘You listen to me, my man,’ he said, fair shouting now. ‘You’ll find yourself in serious trouble, withholding information from an appointed officer of the law!’

  “I didn’t believe he really was a policeman, so I just walked off and left him, but I thought you ought to know about it. I didn’t come earlier because I thought he might be following me.”

  “You have done well,” said Holmes. “I think I know who that fellow is, and he’s no more a policeman than you are. You did right not to tell him what he has no business asking about, and I am very grateful for your letting us know about it.”

  When Coleford had left us, Holmes sat for some time with his brows knitted in thought. “I am wondering,” said he at length, “if we can turn this incident to our advantage. I’ve a mind to go and see Wilson Baines now. Of course, he won’t tell me anything, but I might be able to put the wind up him a little. It is, after all, a criminal offence to impersonate a police officer. If I can shake him a little over this matter, then he might just let something slip. I really think I should take advantage of this chance to learn something about what is otherwise a somewhat opaque case, and postpone our visit to Oxfordshire until tomorrow. If you would be so good as to wire Farringdon Blake to that effect, I should be obliged.”

  Holmes was back in little more than an hour, but there was no expression of satisfaction on his face. “Baines is out somewhere,” said he. “There is a cardboard notice pinned to his office door, stating that he will be back at seven o’clock, and will then be there until nine. What I therefore suggest, Watson, as Mrs Hudson is already under the impression that we shall not be here for supper this evening, is that the two of us stroll over to Long Acre later and find somewhere to eat. We can then call on Baines between half past seven and eight.”

  We did as Holmes suggested and found a pleasant little restaurant in St Martin’s Lane. Unfortunately, they were very busy and there was some delay in preparing the food, with the result that we did not get to the office building in Long Acre until nearly half past eight. By then, the sun had been set for some time, night was closing in, and the street lamps were lit.

  The interior of the building presented an even gloomier appearance than the outside had suggested. A single lamp was lit in the hallway, the dim light of which illuminated just a few feet on either side of it and left the further reaches of the hall in deep shadow. The floor was covered with some hard, unyielding material, as were the stairs, and as we mounted the latter our footsteps rang out and echoed round the tiled stairwell. At the second floor, Holmes led the way along a narrow, shadowed corridor, but we had gone only a few yards when he abruptly stopped and put his finger to his lips.

  “What is it?” I asked in a low voice.

  “Footsteps,” he responded in a sibilant whisper. “Downstairs. Light and furtive, as if on tip-toe.”

  For a few moments we remained perfectly still, listening, but, as far as I could tell, the building was in complete silence. At length, my companion shook his head, and we resumed our progress along the corridor, passing several offices which I could see through their frosted glass panels were in darkness. Near the furthest end of the corridor, however, a dim light showed through one of these glass panels, and Holmes stopped at a door which bore the name “J Wilson Baines: Enquiry Agent”.

  “The card notice has been removed and a lamp is lit,” remarked Holmes in a low tone, “so he must have returned.”

  He rapped with his knuckles on the frosted glass panel of the door, but no answering sound came from within. Twice more he knocked, without drawing any response. After waiting a further moment, he put his hand on the door-knob, turned it and pushed open the door. Within was a sort of ante-room, in complete darkness. The light we had seen came from an inner office, the door of which s
tood slightly ajar. Holmes knocked on this and pushed it open.

  I do not think that either of us could have been prepared for what we saw in that inner office. The lamp on the wall was turned down very low, but its dim illumination was sufficient to reveal a dreadful scene. A large desk took up half the space of the small room, and in the chair behind this desk a grey-haired man was sitting, his head slumped forward onto the desk-top. The hair on the back of his head was matted with blood, and it was evident he had been struck a terrible blow there. All about his head, on the papers which littered the surface of the desk, was a thick dark pool of blood, and upon these papers lay a heavy-looking marble book-end, smeared with blood and evidently the murder weapon. For a moment, I was rooted to the spot with horror, as Holmes stepped forward and felt the man’s neck for a pulse. Then he turned the man’s head slightly, so I could see his face.

  “Is it Baines?” I asked.

  Holmes nodded. “He’ll not let anything slip now,” said he. “He’s dead.”

  4: Foxwood

  IT WAS LATE and the streets were deserted by the time we reached our lodgings again that night. After a brief examination of the horrific scene in Wilson Baines’s office, Holmes had suggested that I find a policeman while he remained on guard there. The constable I brought communicated with one of his colleagues, and the local station sent two more men and also notified Scotland Yard, from where a detective officer, Inspector Fellowes, arrived twenty minutes later. I was glad to see Fellowes, for he and Holmes were well acquainted and he was prepared to accept our account of how we had discovered the murdered man’s body, which the constables had been reluctant to do, eyeing us with the utmost suspicion.

  I let my companion do all the explaining, simply nodding my head in agreement with what he said. I could tell, from the answers he gave to the policemen’s questions, that he was keen to keep Farringdon Blake’s name out of the matter and, even more so, that of our railway friend, Mr Coleford. “Every detail may have to come out at the inquest,” said Holmes to me as we made our way back to Baker Street, “but for the moment I would rather neither of them was pestered by the police when we can be certain that neither of them has anything to do with this terrible crime.”

  Back at our lodgings, Holmes used the Bunsen burner on his chemical bench to heat up a little water and make two cups of cocoa, with a generous dash of whisky in each, then we lit our pipes and, sitting either side of the hearth, discussed the evening’s surprising and dreadful events.

  “I take it that when I went to find a policeman you took the opportunity to have a good look round in Baines’s office,” I remarked. “I have been wondering ever since if you managed to turn anything up there.”

  “Very little, in truth,” responded my companion with a shake of the head. “I looked through as many of Baines’s records as I dared in the little time available to me, shortening the task somewhat by ignoring anything that was more than a year old. The end result of this search, however, was that I found nothing whatever in his records that I could possibly connect with my client. In the fireplace, though, there was a small heap of blackened ashes, and it was apparent that someone had very recently burnt a number of papers there. Whoever it was had clearly been determined that no-one should see what was on those papers, for he had not only burnt them, but had then scattered the ashes with a poker. I sifted through this charred heap as carefully as I could, but it was practically impossible to make anything out. Then, just as I heard your footsteps on the stair outside, as you returned with the constable, and I was about to give it up, I found one tiny edge of paper which was not quite so burnt as the rest, on which I could make out part of a single word. That fragment of writing, Watson, was ‘-oxwood’.”

  “‘Foxwood’!” I cried. “Your client’s address!”

  Holmes nodded. “Perhaps; but there is another possibility. It is not just my client’s house that bears the name ‘Foxwood’, but the whole parish in which his house lies. The fragment I saw could thus just as well have been part of someone else’s address, the address of whoever it is that hired Wilson Baines to follow my client about London.”

  “Yes, I see you are right.”

  “In either case, whether the scrap of paper I saw refers to Farringdon Blake’s address or the address of whoever has been spying on him, the fact that the papers had clearly been burnt this evening must surely mean that this mysterious spy and the murderer of Wilson Baines are one and the same person.”

  “I agree. It must be so. But why on earth should Baines’s own client have attacked him so viciously?”

  “There is no way of telling. Perhaps Baines had demanded more money for what he was doing; perhaps, in the course of his enquiries, he had discovered something about his client that his client did not wish him to know, and, on the strength of that, was attempting to extort money from him.”

  “That certainly sounds possible, from what we have heard of Baines. But where does that leave us?”

  “It means that the trail in London has gone cold, at least for the moment, and we must now seek for answers at Foxwood. I think that I shall turn in now, Watson, and I advise you to do the same. It is best that we are as fresh as possible tomorrow, for I fancy that our task in north Oxfordshire will not be an easy one.”

  The following day being Sunday, the trains were few and far between, and although we made an early start, we were obliged to change twice, with a long wait each time, and did not reach Rushfield station until late in the afternoon. Farringdon Blake met us with a pony and trap, and we set off at a slow trot along a dusty country road. As we jogged along, Holmes described to his client the events of the last two days, from our parting at the Marble Arch on Friday to the discovery of Baines’s body the previous evening. At this latter news, a look of disbelief and horror came over Blake’s features, and for several minutes he did not speak.

  “That is terrible - dreadful,” he said at length. “Whatever this man Baines has done, I would not wish such a fate upon him. From what you have told me of his line of work, I imagine he must have made many bitter enemies - angry husbands, for instance, whose wives had hired Baines to spy on them - but such extreme violence seems incomprehensible, the act of a madman. I suppose, from my own point of view, there is one thing from which I can take solace,” he added after a moment: “at least this dreadful business can have nothing to do with my own little mystery.”

  “I am very much afraid it may have,” returned Holmes with a shake of the head. He described to his client the charred papers he had discovered in the hearth of Baines’s office. “Someone had clearly gone to great lengths to cover his tracks; but the one tiny clue he overlooked points directly and unequivocally to this district.”

  Again, an expression of horror mingled with astonishment passed over Blake’s face. “The matter seems to have passed from bad to worse,” he said at last with a shake of the head.

  “Do not be despondent,” returned Holmes in a brisk tone. “Things may look dark and incomprehensible at present, Mr Blake, but there is a stage in almost all investigations when that is so. There is no point in dwelling on things we cannot affect. I am confident of making some progress in the matter when I get a little more data. To begin with, I shall need the details of all your neighbours in and around Foxwood,” he continued, taking his note-book from his pocket, “especially those who are educated and moderately well off. Perhaps, if it is not too much trouble, you could give me such details now.”

  “My neighbours?” queried Blake. “But these are people with whom I am on terms of affable friendship. I cannot believe that any of them would stoop to spying on me! The very thought seems absurd!”

  “Nevertheless, all possibilities must be considered. You don’t know why you are being spied upon. Would you not agree?”

  “Absolutely. I have no idea.”

  “It follows, then, that you cannot know who it is that is
doing the spying, or what his purposes may be, and, thus, no-one can be ruled out. Now, there are, I think, two assumptions we are justified in making to begin with. If our investigation of the matter proves either of these assumptions to be false, then we can discard them. The assumptions are these: first, that only someone moderately well off could afford the sort of telescope you discovered up the tree in the ash spinney. Second, that with the possible exception of the farmer who owns the land on which the ash spinney stands - who, you mentioned to us, has denied all knowledge of the rungs in the tree - whoever has climbed those rungs to spy on you can only have discovered them by chance, and only then recognised the opportunity they presented. If so, then the person spying on you is most likely to be someone who lives in the district and takes walks in the fields and woods as you do.”

  “Very well,” responded Blake after a moment’s consideration. “I can see the point of your argument, even if I find the conclusion unpalatable. I don’t really have many neighbours, and fewer still who fall into the categories you mention. For what it’s worth, I can soon give you a list of them. First of all there is Thomas Pearson, the farmer on whose land the ash spinney stands. He could, I think - like many farmers - be described as ‘a man of few words’. He has, as I believe I mentioned to you, farmed the land there for about twenty years, and generally seems to have no interests apart from that work.”

  “His household?” queried Holmes as Blake paused.

  “He has a wife and two sons, James and Anthony, who are both in their early twenties, a couple of years apart. These two young men both have a reputation as madcaps, but in a fairly conventional way, and their interests, so far as I have been able to discover, are as narrowly circumscribed as those of their father. He keeps a couple of servants, local girls, one of whom, so rumour has it, may marry the older son in the not-too-distant future. That is, I think, the extent of my knowledge. I have taken tea with them a few times and found their company pleasant enough but their conversation somewhat limited.