The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes

'If you've a clear case, then what's this nonsense about a guide-book?'

Inspector Dawlish leaned forward while his voice sank almost to a whisper. 'You've read it?' he said. 'Then it may interest you to know that Lord Jocelyn Cope was put to death in his own ancestral guillotine.'

His words left us in a chilled silence.

'What motive can you suggest for that murder and for the barbarous method employed?' asked Sherlock Holmes at last.

'Probably a ferocious quarrel. Have I not told you already that Captain Jasper had a touch of the devil in him? But there's the castle, and a proper place it looks for deeds of violence and darkness.'

We had turned off the country road to enter a gloomy avenue that climbed between banked snow-drifts up a barren moorland slope. On the crest loomed a great building, its walls and turrets stark and grey against the night sky. A few minutes later, our carriage rumbled under the arch of the outer bailey and halted in a court­yard.

At Inspector Dawlish's knock, a tall, stooping man in butler's livery opened the massive oaken door and, holding a candle above his head, peered out at us, the light shining on his weary red-rimmed eyes and ill-nourished beard.

'What, four of you!' he cried querulously. 'It b'aint right her ladyship should be bothered thisways at such a time of grief to us all.'

'That will do, Stephen. Where is her ladyship?'

The candle flame trembled. 'Still with him,' came the reply, and there was something like a sob in the old voice. 'She hasn't moved. Still sitting there in the big chair and staring at him, as though she had fallen fast asleep with them wonderful eyes wide open.'

'You've touched nothing, of course?'

'Nothing. It's all as it was.'

'Then let us go first to the museum where the crime Was committed,' said Dawlish. 'It is on the other side of the courtyard.'

He was moving away towards a cleared path that ran across the cobble-stones when Holmes's hand closed upon his arm. 'How is this!' he cried imperiously. 'The museum is on the other side and yet you have allowed a carriage to drive across the courtyard and people to stampede over the ground like a herd of buffalo.'

'What then?'

Holmes flung up his arms appealingly to the moon. 'The snow, man, the snow! You have destroyed your best helpmate.'

'But I tell you the murder was committed in the museum. What has the snow to do with it?'

Holmes gave vent to a most dismal groan and then we all followed the local detective across the yard to an arched door-way.

I have seen many a grim spectacle during my associa­tion with Sherlock Holmes, but I can recall none to sur­pass in horror the sight that met our eyes within that grey Gothic chamber. It was a small room with a groined roof lit by clusters of tapers in iron sconces. The walls were hung with trophies of armour and mediaeval weapons and edged by glass-topped cases crammed with ancient parchments, thumb-rings, pieces of carved stonework and yawning man-traps. These details I noticed at a glance and then my whole attention was riveted to the object that occupied a low dais in the centre of the room.

It was a guillotine, painted a faded red and, save for its smaller size, exactly similar to those that I had seen depicted in woodcuts of the French Revolution. Sprawling between the two uprights lay the body of a tall, thin man clad in a velvet smoking-jacket. His hands were tied behind him and a white cloth, hideously besmirched, concealed his head, or rather the place where his head had been.

The light of the tapers, gleaming on a blood-spattered steel blade buried in the lunette, reached beyond to touch as with a halo the red-gold hair of the woman who sat beside that dreadful headless form. Regardless of our approach, she remained motionless in her high carved chair, her features an ivory mask from which two dark and brilliant eyes stared into the shadows with the unwinking fixity of a basilisk. In an experience of women covering three continents, I have never beheld a colder nor a more perfect face than that of the chatelaine of Castle Arns­ worth keeping vigil in that chamber of death.

Dawlish coughed.

'You had best retire, my lady,' he said bluntly. 'Rest assured that Inspector Gregson here and I will see that justice is done.'

For the first time, she looked at us, and so uncertain was the light of the tapers that for an instant it seemed to me that some swift emotion more akin to mockery than grief gleamed and died in those wonderful eyes.

'Stephen is not with you?' she asked incongruously. 'But, of course, he would be in the library. Faithful Stephen.'

'I fear that his lordship's death—'

She rose abruptly, her bosom heaving and one hand gripping the skirt of her black lace gown.

'His damnation!' she hissed, and then, with a gesture of despair, she turned and glided slowly from the room.

As the door closed, Sherlock Holmes dropped on one knee beside the guillotine and, raising the blood-soaked cloth, peered down at the terrible object beneath. 'Dear me,' he said quietly. 'A blow of this force must have sent the head rolling across the room.'

'Probably.'

'I fail to understand. Surely you know where you found it?'

'I didn't find it. There is no head.'

For a long moment, Holmes remained on his knee, staring up silently at the speaker. 'It seems to me that you are taking a great deal for granted,' he said at length, scrambling to his feet. 'Let me hear your ideas on this singular crime.'

'It's plain enough. Sometime last night, the two men quarrelled and eventually came to blows. The younger overpowered the elder and then killed him by means of this instrument. The evidence that Lord Cope was still alive when placed in the guillotine is shown by the fact that Captain Lothian had to lash his hands. The crime was discovered this morning by the butler, Stephen, and a groom fetched me from the village whereupon I took the usual steps to identify the body of his lordship and listed the personal belongings found upon him. If you'd like to know how the murderer escaped, I can tell you that too. On the mare that's missing from the stable.'

'Most instructive,' observed Holmes. 'As I under­stand your theory, the two men engaged in a ferocious combat, being careful not to disarrange any furniture or smash the glass cases that clutter up the room. Then, having disposed of his opponent, the murderer rides into the night, a suit-case under one arm and his victim's head under the other. A truly remarkable performance.'

An angry flush suffused Dawlish's face. 'It's easy enough to pick holes in other people's ideas, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,' he sneered. 'Perhaps you will give us your theory.'

'I have none. I am awaiting my facts. By the way, when was your last snowfall?'

'Yesterday afternoon.'

'Then there is hope yet. But let us see if this room will yield us any information.'

For some ten minutes, we stood and watched him, Gregson and I with interest and Dawlish with an ill- concealed look of contempt on his weather-beaten face, as Holmes crawled slowly about the room on his hands and knees muttering and mumbling to himself and looking like some gigantic dun-coloured insect. He had drawn his magnifying-glass from his cape pocket and I noticed that not only the floor but the contents of the occasional tables were subjected to the closest scrutiny. Then, rising to his feet, he stood wrapped in thought, his back to the candlelight and his gaunt shadow falling across the faded red guillotine.

'It won't do,' he said suddenly. 'The murder was pre­meditated.'

'How do you know?'

'The cranking-handle is freshly oiled, and the victim was senseless. A single jerk would have loosed his hands.'

'Then why were they tied?'

'Ah! There is no doubt, however, that the man was brought here unconscious with his hands already bound.'

'You're wrong there!' interposed Dawlish loudly. 'The design on the lashing proves that it is a sash from one of these window-curtains.'