The Investigations of Sherlock Holmes

by John Heywood

  The inspector’s eyebrows shot up. “Quite right, Mr Holmes! You have him in one.”

  Holmes nodded and looked about him. He wandered slowly about under the trees, looking in all directions: he peered over to the far corners of the field, and beyond them, I thought, towards the distant rolling hills of the South Downs. He then turned his gaze inland towards Surrey, whence we had come, and then eastwards towards the Romney Marshes. He looked up; the uppermost branches of the trees danced lightly over our heads, and far above a few hazy clouds were scudding across the sky. For what seemed many minutes my friend stood thus absorbed in his surroundings. Had I not known him better, I should perhaps have thought him rapt in some bucolic reverie, but my long acquaintance with him suggested otherwise. I was sure that his dreamy, abstracted mien reflected his musings not on the beauties of the Sussex countryside, but on the violent death that had disgraced them. Suddenly, as was his way, he snapped out of his dreamy speculations and was again his masterful self, taut with nervous vigour.

  “Inspector Ellery, I should like a word with young Fairbrother; and also the use of a pair of field-glasses.”

  “There is a pocket-telescope at the cottage, sir, if that will serve,” - Holmes nodded his assent - “and Fairbrother has been told to remain close at hand, at his family’s place, just over the way. I shall send for him. The cottage is this way, gentlemen.”

  The cottage was a low, ill-favoured building. The constable standing on guard by the door was duly sent on his mission to fetch Fairbrother, and we three went in, all of us being obliged to lower our heads as we entered. Ellery and I sat down at the deal table, while Holmes ferreted about for anything that could give him information. He examined and measured two pairs of boots, peered into drawers and cupboards, read papers, and sniffed or tasted the contents of jars and bottles. Once satisfied that he had seen all that was to be seen downstairs, he continued his researches upstairs. For several minutes we heard his quick, light steps above our heads, and then he scurried down the stairs and out of the house, where he fell to examining the muddy grass and flags as he had examined the corner of the wheatfield. Eventually he pocketed his measure, lens and note-book, and joined us at the table. Ellery was eager to know, naturally, if he had he had as yet any idea as to what had happened, but he was to be disappointed, for before Holmes had time to answer him, the constable returned with the farm-hand Fairbrother.

  The young labourer stood before us, his hair the colour of straw, his skin burnt to a darker shade. He shifted his weight from one foot to another and picked at the straw hat in his hands.

  “This is Mr Holmes, the detective,” said Ellery. “He would like to ask you a few questions.”

  Holmes took a cigarette from his case and lit it. “Billy,” said he, “I want you to tell me what happened yesterday morning.”

  “When I got here, which it had not been daylight long, I went to the cottage first of all--”

  “One moment,” interrupted Holmes. “Before you reached the cottage, as you walked to Queeny’s place, did you see anything unusual? Did you see someone on Queeny’s land, for instance? Did you see someone leaving it?”

  “I didn’t see no-one, sir, no, but that don’t mean they weren’t there.”

  “Surely you would have seen anyone who was there?”

  “Not yesterday morning, sir. There was a mist that morning. When I looked over to Queeny’s place all I could see was clouds.”

  “I see. How long did the mist last?”

  “It was clear and bright by 7 o’clock, sir. Sea-mists don’t last long.”

  “It came in off the sea, you think?”

  “Oh yes, sir, I reckon so. That was a fierce wind, too, the night before last. An east wind, blowing in off the German Ocean and bringing a deal of the ocean with it.”

  “Tell us what happened once you reached the farm.”

  Billy Fairbrother continued his story of the morning’s events. I shall not weary the reader with all the details again, for the labourer’s account agreed in every respect with that of Lestrade given at the beginning of this record. One detail of Lestrade’s account in particular Fairbrother confirmed categorically, namely, that the body when he found it lay in untouched, standing wheat. He could suggest no answer to Holmes’s question as to how the body might have got there, but was none the less insistent that there were no trodden-down stalks; the body had lay in the midst of virgin wheat.

  “It’s a poser,” said Ellery, shaking his head, after the labourer had left us. “I’ve puzzled over it, Mr Holmes, again and again, but I can’t fathom it at all. What do you make of it?”

  “I make nothing of it as yet, Inspector.”

  At these words Ellery’s face fell. “Well, if it’s got England’s premier consulting detective flummoxed,” he said, “I don’t know what a country policeman can do.” We knew in what high regard the inspector regarded Holmes; it was natural that he should be sadly disenchanted to find that his idol had feet of clay.

  “Do you not have enough information, Mr Holmes?” asked Ellery. “We thought that there might be an answer to this case somewhere here, some vital clue that we had missed.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “We set our hopes too high, it seems. I guess we have overlooked nothing, after all. Perhaps we will never know just what happened last night.”

  “Perhaps so,” answered Holmes. “After all, success in these matters cannot be commanded, inspector, as you know. But to answer your question, I think that I do have enough information. In any event, no further information is likely to come to light now; we have garnered all we can. No, the problem now is not to gather more facts; it is to put together the facts we have and make sense of them. And that, gentlemen, requires uninterrupted thought.”

  So saying, he rose to his feet and, without another word to either of us, went out of the cottage into the yard and crossed to a dilapidated outhouse. There he climbed into the back of a broken cart, settled himself comfortably, and lit his pipe. Soon puffs of smoke were drifting up from his motionless figure as if in answer to the clouds drifting across the sky. The inspector and I exchanged a few words as we awaited Holmes’ return, but when after a good many minutes my friend showed no sign of returning, the inspector decided to ‘cut his losses’, as he phrased it to me, and went over to the wheatfield to confer with his constable. I whiled away the time by strolling around Queeny’s smallholding.

  On my return I found Holmes exactly as I had left him, sprawled in the back of the cart. A frown of concentration on his brow told me that the mystery remained unsolved. “An impasse, Watson. I cannot make headway. The question is, how did the body get into the field without the wheat being disturbed? Until that question is answered, everything else is mere speculation. That one circumstance is the key to the understanding of this case, would you not agree?” He frowned again and drew on his pipe. “How many times have I said that it is the bizarre cases that can be understood, and the commonplace ones that can have any number of solutions? Well, this case seems to be the exception to my rule. It looks as if friend Ellery is going to be disappointed,” he said with a shrug of resignation, leaning back against the boards. “I cannot delay my return to London any longer. The train leaving at half-past four this afternoon is the latest I can take if I am to keep my appointment with the Foreign Secretary. I had better have a word with Ellery, and then we shall be on our way back.”

  Holmes clambered out of the cart and brushed the dust and straw from his coat. We walked to the wheatfield, where we found Ellery still in conservation with his constable. The inspector strode up to us as we approached him. “Well, Mr Holmes, have you come to an opinion?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you, inspector, that I have not. I wish that I could spend more time looking into your very interesting case, but, alas, I cannot.”

  The inspector tried to hide his disappointment. “At least,” he said, �
�it is some consolation to know that where I failed, the great Sherlock Holmes failed too.”

  We drove with him in silence to the station, where we shook hands and parted. Holmes and I sat on the platform bench to wait for the train. Above us a few white clouds moved slowly in the blue sky, while around us floated thistledown, shining in the sunlight. To the constant murmuring of the doves was added an occasional distant shout from the labourers in the fields. It was indeed a perfect summer’s day; more the pity, I thought, that Holmes’ failure soured its sweetness for us. As this rueful reflection crossed my mind, I suddenly felt my companion stiffen next to me. In an instant he leapt to his feet and smote his brow with the flat of his hand. “How slow I have been!” he exclaimed. “The thistledown, Watson! The thistledown!”

  “Yes, I see some thistledown,” I answered, unable to share his sudden enthusiasm. “Perhaps you could tell me what bearing a few wisps--”

  Before I could finish my question Holmes was running down the platform. He hammered on the station-master’s door and without waiting for a reply flung it open and rushed in. I followed him and looked in at the door to see an open-mouthed railwayman handing him a telephone. Holmes grasped the instrument and demanded the police station.

  “This is Sherlock Holmes. I wish to speak to Inspector Ellery. No? Then please to give him this message. You have a pencil and paper? My compliments to the inspector, and I suggest that he search for a hot-air balloon station lying on a line east-north-east from here at a distance of at least 20 miles. That is all.”

  He passed the apparatus back to the open-mouthed official. “Thank you. Is that the London train I hear coming in?”

  Too astonished to speak, the man nodded his assent.

  “Come then, Watson!” Holmes turned on his heel, and brushed past me. I followed him out, and we climbed aboard the train.

  As we jolted back to London Holmes lay back in his seat and gazed out at the fields and hamlets of Sussex rolling past. “Not my finest moment, Watson. How can I have been so slow? After all, the case was fundamentally a simple one. It hinged upon a single question; how did the body arrive in an untouched cornfield? Ellery was quite right not to ignore that question. It was the key to the whole mystery. You noticed, I dare say, that I was careful to confirm that the wheat had indeed been undisturbed, and that the trampling we saw had been done only by Fairbrother and the police, and not by Queeny, the dead man, or anybody else. The dead man’s hands and belongings suggested a sea-faring background, but that simply added to the mystery; why would a sailor, of all people, end up dead in a Sussex corn-field fifteen miles from the coast? Then there was the matter of the weather; there had been a wind and a fog during the night. Was that connected somehow with the man’s death? Possibly, but I could not see how. I puzzled over it for hours, trying in vain to connect these different threads. It was only once I had given up the case as a bad job that those wisps of thistledown carried by the breeze told me the truth. The dead man had been carried by the wind himself, in a balloon, and fallen from it. That is why there were no tracks leading to his body, and why he suffered such crushing injuries.”

  “But that hardly explains - ah, but it does!” I exclaimed as the truth dawned on me. “The shoes, the watch - what seemed to be sailor’s gear was really balloonist’s gear.”

  “Precisely.”

  “A brilliant insight, Holmes! The whole mystery clears away like morning mist. But how did you know what instructions to give on the position of the balloonist’s station? I can’t follow you there, I’m afraid.”

  “Simple enough, Watson. The wind that blew in the fog and the balloon was an East-north-easterly. So the balloon had come from that direction. How far in that direction I am uncertain, but somewhere roughly along that line must lie the station from which the balloon set out.

  “Quite the deus ex machina, is it not? But you may have been somewhat hasty in your congratulations, Watson. Perhaps my explanation does have something in the way of ingenuity, but it is, after all, a speculation only. The most brilliant theory is of little value if it has not the merit of truth. What if no hot-air balloon station is to be found? What then? I shall have made a thorough-going fool of myself, and inspector Ellery’s estimation of me will fall even lower than it is at present. I could wish that I had the time to search for the balloon station myself, but alas! the matter is out of my hands. I dared not risk missing this train; foreign secretaries do not like to be kept waiting. I can only hope that my surmise will prove correct, after all, and that my reputation, such as it is, will be spared from ridicule.”

  Thus ended my friend’s involvement in the strange case of the body in the wheatfield. Like it or not, he was obliged by promises given and by his sense of public duty to leave the final details of this rural mystery to the local police, and to plunge himself instead into an autumn of extraordinary activity, some of which I have chronicled elsewhere. The story itself, however, did not end quite there. A week after Holmes and I had left the village of Birley the following paragraph appeared in the Daily Telegraph:

  DEATH IN THE SEA FOG.

  EXPERIENCED BALLOONIST IN FATAL ACCIDENT.

  Triumph of Local Constabulary.

  We can reveal the identity of the hitherto unknown man whose body was found in mysterious circumstances in the Sussex village of Birley, as reported in this journal two weeks ago. The dead man was Mr Warrington Maude, of Farrell, in Kent. Mr Maude, an engineer and farmer, was well known locally as an enthusiastic and devoted balloonist. He was the owner of a ballooning station which he ran with his younger brother Alfred. The Maude brothers, who made many flights for the entertainment of passengers, were equally assiduous in carrying out scientific investigations in their balloons, and for some weeks, we are informed, the elder Mr Maude had been engaged in a series of flights as part of his research into Aetherial Drift. On the morning of his untimely death, Mr Warrington Maude set out on such a flight just after dawn, as had become his custom. The weather at that hour was calm, and Mr Maude, it must be supposed, effected a rapid and easy ascent. On that morning, however, as ill-luck would have it, a strong east-north-easterly wind sprang up within an hour of sunrise, carrying with it a thick bank of sea-fog. Fog, we are informed, is the balloonist’s greatest enemy, as it is the mariner’s, for deprived of the power of observation, he must perforce remain unaware of even the most imminent danger. Mr Maude was blown twenty miles, unable to know where he was or whither he was going, until the top branches of an unusually high tree in a Sussex small-holding caught the carriage of his balloon. Precipitated from it, he fell to his immediate death, leaving the balloon to continue its journey unmanned.

  The astute reader may ask how the details given in the preceding paragraph came to be known, since the lamentable episode was unwitnessed. His answer lies in the keen detective power of Inspector Ellery, the officer in charge of the case. As was reported in these pages earlier, the small-holder on whose land the dead man was found, Mr John Queeny, was initially held on suspicion, but the enquiry, as it proceeded, revealed circumstances which mitigated strongly against Mr Queeny’s guilt. The appearance of the body in the midst of undamaged wheat indicated that it had arrived from above; “an extraordinary conclusion,” the inspector told your correspondent, “but the body could not have arrived by any other way; and when all other possibilities have been excluded, the remaining one, however improbable, must be the truth.” The inspector’s reasoning was vindicated, for a careful calculation of the wind’s direction and strength guided the investigation to the Maude station in Farrell, where the sad truth was discovered.

  Mr Warrington Maude, originally from Northallerton, was a well-known figure in local circles, and a respected contributor to several scientific and philosophical publications. He was a bachelor, and leaves as his closest kin his brother Alfred.

  The Black Bull

  ‘SHERLOCK HOLMES FAILS IN BANK THEFT,’ ran t
he headline. I flung down the paper and picked up another. It told the same story:

  ‘THEFT OF DIAMONDS FROM BANK VAULT

  ‘Leading Detective foiled by Thieves

  ‘A robbery was effected yesterday against the London branch of the Hanseatic bank. An unusually valuable consignment of diamonds, recently arrived from Amsterdam, was the target of this daring outrage, which succeeded despite the presence in the bank of both the police and the private detective Mr Sherlock Holmes. The official police and Mr Holmes, having been called in by the directors of the bank in response to intelligence received concerning a planned robbery, scrutinised the safe-box containing the diamonds as it entered the vault of the bank, and satisfied themselves that the contents were safely arrived: but in the afternoon, when the box was opened again, it was found to be empty. The directors have no idea how the theft was effected. Inspector Symons, who leads the police enquiry, assures us that although no explanation has been found to date, the crime is being investigated with the utmost zeal.

  The press of the previous few days had been carrying similar reports of Holmes’s activities. One paper told of a murder in Birmingham; a householder had been killed during the commission of a burglary, and Holmes had been called in by the murdered man’s business partner to assist the police enquiry. At the time of publication, the article had claimed, no arrest had been made. Another report described an escape from Bedford gaol. The escape was no extraordinary matter, and received but a brief mention; its sole point of interest, for me at least, being the presence of Sherlock Holmes. He had visited the gaol to speak with a prisoner on that day, and it was during some confusion occasioned by this interview that another prisoner in the same wing had broken free.

  What was I to make of these reports? For over a month I had seen neither hide nor hair of Holmes, nor even received so much as a note or telegram. Yet the length and breadth of the country he was busy investigating one crime after another, and, if these reports were to be believed, meeting with little success. I was quite at a loss to make sense of what was happening. The situation seemed as tangled and puzzling as any of Holmes’s cases.