The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Affair of the Texan’s Honour
“He’s using Mackelsworth to transport it to America. The Texan will not be suspected and will get the Silver easily to Galveston—where Sir Geoffrey can take back the thing at his leisure. It’s monstrous, Holmes!”
“Well, Watson, it’s not a bad theory and I suspect much of it is relevant.”
“But you know something else?”
“I believe that Sir Geoffrey is dead. I read the coroner’s report. He blew his brains out, Watson. That was why there was so much blood on the suicide note. If he planned a crime, he did not live to complete it.”
“So the housekeeper, who was in his confidence, decided to continue with his plan?”
“There’s only one flaw there, Watson. Sir Geoffrey appears to have anticipated his own suicide and left instructions with her. Mr Mackelsworth identified the handwriting. I read the note myself. Mr Macklesworth has corresponded with Sir Geoffrey for years. He confirmed that the note was clearly Sir Geoffrey’s.”
“So the housekeeper is also innocent. We must look for a third party.”
“We must take an expedition into the countryside, Watson.” Holmes was already consulting his Bradshaw’s. “There’s a train from Paddington in the morning which will involve a change at Oxford and will get us to South Leigh before lunch. Can your patient resist the lure of motherhood for another day or so, Watson?”
“Happily there’s every indication that she is determined to enjoy an elephantine confinement.”
“Good, then tomorrow we shall please Mrs Hudson by sampling the fresh air and simple fare of the English countryside.”
And with that my friend, who was in high spirits at the prospect of setting that fine mind to a decent problem, sat back in his chair, took a deep draft of his pipe, and closed his eyes.
WE could not have picked a better day for our expedition. While still warm, the air had a balmy quality to it and even before we had reached Oxford we could smell the delicious richness of an early English autumn. Everywhere the corn had been harvested and the hedgerows were full of colour. Thatch and slate slid past our window which looked out to what was best in England whose people had built to the natural roll of the land and planted with an instinctive eye for beauty as well as practicality. This was what I had missed in Afghanistan and what Holmes had missed in Tibet, when he had learned so many things at the feet of the High Lama himself. Nothing ever compensated, in my opinion, for the wealth and variety of the typical English country landscape.
In no time we were at South Leigh station and able to hire a dog-cart with which to drive ourselves up the road to High Cogges. We made our way through winding lanes, between tall hedges, enjoying the sultry tranquility of a day whose silence was broken only by the sound of bird-song and the occasional lowing of a cow, the distant bark of a farm dog.
We drove through the hamlet, which was served by a Norman church, an Elizabethan public house and a Georgian grocer’s shop which also acted as the local post office. High Cogges itself was reached by a rough lane, little more than a farm track leading past some picturesque thatched cottages, which were thickly covered with roses and honeysuckle, and seemed to have been their since the Day of Creation; a rather vulgar modern house whose owner had made a number of hideous additions in the popular taste of the day, a Jacobean farmhouse and outbuildings of the warm, local stone which seemed to have grown as naturally from the landscape as the spinney and orchard behind it.Then we had arrived at the locked gates of a thoroughly neglected Cogges Old Manor. It had been many years since the place was properly managed.
True to form, my friend began exploring and had soon discovered a gap in a wall through which we could squeeze in order to explore the grounds. These were little more than a good-sized lawn, some shrubberies and dilapidated greenhouses, an abandoned stables, various other sheds and a workshop which was in surprisingly neat order. This, Holmes told me, was where Sir Geoffrey had died. It had been thoroughly cleaned. According to reports Holmes had read on the train, Sir Geoffrey had placed his gun in a vice and shot himself through the mouth. At the inquest, his housekeeper, who had clearly been devoted to him, had spoken of his money worries, his fears that he had dishonoured the family name. The scrawled note had been soaked in blood and only partially legible, but it was clearly his.
“There was no hint of foul play, you see, Watson. Everyone knew that Sir Geoffrey led the Bohemian life until he settled here. He had squandered the family fortune on what Wilde referred to as arsomania and no doubt his many modern canvasses would become valuable, at least to someone, but at present the artists he had patronised had yet to realise any material value. I have the impression that half the denizens of the Café Royal depended on the Mackelsworth millions until they dried up. I also believe that Sir Geoffrey was either distracted in his last years, or depressed. Possibly both. I think we must make an effort to interview the devoted Mrs Gallibasta. First, however, let’s visit the post office—the source of all wisdom in these little communities.”
The post office-general store was a converted thatched cottage, with a white picket fence and a display of early September flowers which would not have been out of place in a Constable. Within the cool shade of the shop, full of every possible item from books to boiled sweets, we were greeted by the proprietress whose name over her doorway we had already noted.
