"Mrs. Barclay was, it appears, a member of the Roman Cathol
ic Church,and had interested herself very much in the establishment of the Guildof St. George, which was formed in connection with the Watt StreetChapel for the purpose of supplying the poor with cast-off clothing.A meeting of the Guild had been held that evening at eight, and Mrs.Barclay had hurried over her dinner in order to be present at it. Whenleaving the house she was heard by the coachman to make some commonplaceremark to her husband, and to assure him that she would be back beforevery long. She then called for Miss Morrison, a young lady who livesin the next villa, and the two went off together to their meeting. Itlasted forty minutes, and at a quarter-past nine Mrs. Barclay returnedhome, having left Miss Morrison at her door as she passed.
"There is a room which is used as a morning-room at Lachine. This facesthe road and opens by a large glass folding-door on to the lawn. Thelawn is thirty yards across, and is only divided from the highway bya low wall with an iron rail above it. It was into this room that Mrs.Barclay went upon her return. The blinds were not down, for the room wasseldom used in the evening, but Mrs. Barclay herself lit the lamp andthen rang the bell, asking Jane Stewart, the house-maid, to bring hera cup of tea, which was quite contrary to her usual habits. The Colonelhad been sitting in the dining-room, but hearing that his wife hadreturned he joined her in the morning-room. The coachman saw him crossthe hall and enter it. He was never seen again alive.
"The tea which had been ordered was brought up at the end of tenminutes; but the maid, as she approached the door, was surprised tohear the voices of her master and mistress in furious altercation. Sheknocked without receiving any answer, and even turned the handle, butonly to find that the door was locked upon the inside. Naturally enoughshe ran down to tell the cook, and the two women with the coachman cameup into the hall and listened to the dispute which was still raging.They all agreed that only two voices were to be heard, those of Barclayand of his wife. Barclay's remarks were subdued and abrupt, so that noneof them were audible to the listeners. The lady's, on the other hand,were most bitter, and when she raised her voice could be plainly heard.'You coward!' she repeated over and over again. 'What can be done now?What can be done now? Give me back my life. I will never so much asbreathe the same air with you again! You coward! You coward!' Those werescraps of her conversation, ending in a sudden dreadful cry in the man'svoice, with a crash, and a piercing scream from the woman. Convincedthat some tragedy had occurred, the coachman rushed to the door andstrove to force it, while scream after scream issued from within. He wasunable, however, to make his way in, and the maids were too distractedwith fear to be of any assistance to him. A sudden thought struck him,however, and he ran through the hall door and round to the lawn uponwhich the long French windows open. One side of the window was open,which I understand was quite usual in the summer-time, and he passedwithout difficulty into the room. His mistress had ceased to scream andwas stretched insensible upon a couch, while with his feet tilted overthe side of an arm-chair, and his head upon the ground near the cornerof the fender, was lying the unfortunate soldier stone dead in a pool ofhis own blood.
"Naturally, the coachman's first thought, on finding that he could donothing for his master, was to open the door. But here an unexpected andsingular difficulty presented itself. The key was not in the inner sideof the door, nor could he find it anywhere in the room. He went outagain, therefore, through the window, and having obtained the help ofa policeman and of a medical man, he returned. The lady, against whomnaturally the strongest suspicion rested, was removed to her room, stillin a state of insensibility. The Colonel's body was then placed upon thesofa, and a careful examination made of the scene of the tragedy.
"The injury from which the unfortunate veteran was suffering was foundto be a jagged cut some two inches long at the back part of his head,which had evidently been caused by a violent blow from a blunt weapon.Nor was it difficult to guess what that weapon may have been. Upon thefloor, close to the body, was lying a singular club of hard carved woodwith a bone handle. The Colonel possessed a varied collection of weaponsbrought from the different countries in which he had fought, and itis conjectured by the police that his club was among his trophies. Theservants deny having seen it before, but among the numerous curiositiesin the house it is possible that it may have been overlooked. Nothingelse of importance was discovered in the room by the police, save theinexplicable fact that neither upon Mrs. Barclay's person nor upon thatof the victim nor in any part of the room was the missing key tobe found. The door had eventually to be opened by a locksmith fromAldershot.
"That was the state of things, Watson, when upon the Tuesday morning I,at the request of Major Murphy, went down to Aldershot to supplementthe efforts of the police. I think that you will acknowledge that theproblem was already one of interest, but my observations soon made merealize that it was in truth much more extraordinary than would at firstsight appear.
"Before examining the room I cross-questioned the servants, but onlysucceeded in eliciting the facts which I have already stated. One otherdetail of interest was remembered by Jane Stewart, the housemaid. Youwill remember that on hearing the sound of the quarrel she descended andreturned with the other servants. On that first occasion, when she wasalone, she says that the voices of her master and mistress were sunkso low that she could hear hardly anything, and judged by their tonesrather than their words that they had fallen out. On my pressing her,however, she remembered that she heard the word David uttered twice bythe lady. The point is of the utmost importance as guiding us towardsthe reason of the sudden quarrel. The Colonel's name, you remember, wasJames.
"There was one thing in the case which had made the deepest impressionboth upon the servants and the police. This was the contortion of theColonel's face. It had set, according to their account, into the mostdreadful expression of fear and horror which a human countenance iscapable of assuming. More than one person fainted at the mere sightof him, so terrible was the effect. It was quite certain that he hadforeseen his fate, and that it had caused him the utmost horror. This,of course, fitted in well enough with the police theory, if the Colonelcould have seen his wife making a murderous attack upon him. Nor wasthe fact of the wound being on the back of his head a fatal objection tothis, as he might have turned to avoid the blow. No information couldbe got from the lady herself, who was temporarily insane from an acuteattack of brain-fever.
"From the police I learned that Miss Morrison, who you remember went outthat evening with Mrs. Barclay, denied having any knowledge of what itwas which had caused the ill-humor in which her companion had returned.
"Having gathered these facts, Watson, I smoked several pipes over them,trying to separate those which were crucial from others which weremerely incidental. There could be no question that the most distinctiveand suggestive point in the case was the singular disappearance of thedoor-key. A most careful search had failed to discover it in the room.Therefore it must have been taken from it. But neither the Colonelnor the Colonel's wife could have taken it. That was perfectly clear.Therefore a third person must have entered the room. And that thirdperson could only have come in through the window. It seemed to me thata careful examination of the room and the lawn might possibly revealsome traces of this mysterious individual. You know my methods, Watson.There was not one of them which I did not apply to the inquiry. And itended by my discovering traces, but very different ones from those whichI had expected. There had been a man in the room, and he had crossedthe lawn coming from the road. I was able to obtain five very clearimpressions of his foot-marks: one in the roadway itself, at the pointwhere he had climbed the low wall, two on the lawn, and two very faintones upon the stained boards near the window where he had entered.He had apparently rushed across the lawn, for his toe-marks were muchdeeper than his heels. But it was not the man who surprised me. It washis companion."
"His companion!"
Holmes pulled a large sheet of tissue-paper out of his pocket andcarefully unfolded it upon his knee.
"What do you make of that?" he asked.
The paper was covered with the tracings of the foot-marks of some smallanimal. It had five well-marked foot-pads, an indication of long nails,and the whole print might be nearly as large as a dessert-spoon.
"It's a dog," said I.
"Did you ever hear of a dog running up a curtain? I found distincttraces that this creature had done so."
"A monkey, then?"
"But it is not the print of a monkey."
"What can it be, then?"
"Neither dog nor cat nor monkey nor any creature that we are familiarwith. I have tried to reconstruct it from the measurements. Here arefour prints where the beast has been standing motionless. You see thatit is no less than fifteen inches from fore-foot to hind. Add to thatthe length of neck and head, and you get a creature not much less thantwo feet long--probably more if there is any tail. But now observe thisother measurement. The animal has been moving, and we have the lengthof its stride. In each case it is only about three inches. You have anindication, you see, of a long body with very short legs attached to it.It has not been considerate enough to leave any of its hair behind it.But its general shape must be what I have indicated, and it can run up acurtain, and it is carnivorous."
"How do you deduce that?"
"Because it ran up the curtain. A canary's cage was hanging in thewindow, and its aim seems to have been to get at the bird."
"Then what was the beast?"
"Ah, if I could give it a name it might go a long way towards solvingthe case. On the whole, it was probably some creature of the weasel andstoat tribe--and yet it is larger than any of these that I have seen."
"But what had it to do with the crime?"
"That, also, is still obscure. But we have learned a good deal, youperceive. We know that a man stood in the road looking at the quarrelbetween the Barclays--the blinds were up and the room lighted. We know,also, that he ran across the lawn, entered the room, accompanied by astrange animal, and that he either struck the Colonel or, as is equallypossible, that the Colonel fell down from sheer fright at the sight ofhim, and cut his head on the corner of the fender. Finally, we have thecurious fact that the intruder carried away the key with him when heleft."
"Your discoveries seem to have left the business more obscure that itwas before," said I.
"Quite so. They undoubtedly showed that the affair was much deeper thanwas at first conjectured. I thought the matter over, and I came tothe conclusion that I must approach the case from another aspect. Butreally, Watson, I am keeping you up, and I might just as well tell youall this on our way to Aldershot to-morrow."