The Cliddesden Questions

Editor’s Note: As mentioned in the Foreword of Sherlock Holmes and The Eye of Heka, I was fortunate to stumble across a vast cache of Watsonian Manuscripts while in London my second Holmes Pilgrimage, having boldly knocked on the door of Watson’s former Queen Anne Street lodgings and finding a distant descendant living within. This person, assured of my sincerity by my deerstalker hat and knowledge of Watson’s life, has since given me access to these various accounts – of which I’ve only scratched the surface. Among those papers were a number of Holmes’s documents as well, and presented here are several selected letters from April 1891, just weeks before Holmes would encounter Professor Moriarty atop the dreadful Reichenbach Falls… – D.M.

***

5 April, 1891

Dear Holmes,

I hope that this finds you well. I was quite surprised to learn this morning that you were out of the country. But more of that in a moment.

I’m writing for advice regarding a curious matter that’s fallen my way. This morning (being Sunday), I arose with no definite professional expectations before me, other than to check on a nearby patient who has been pestered with a chronic cough – possibly from the typical London springtime weather, or more likely from living too near to some of the Paddington air vents.

In any case, I left Mary asleep – you’ll be happy to hear that her health seems to be on the mend – and slipped downstairs. The servant girl was already away to church, and even though Mary insists on fixing our breakfast on Sundays, I preferred to go hungry rather than disturb her sleep. Having prepared my own tea and then excavating a hard roll, I was walking to my study when I perceived an approaching shadow through the frosted windows beside the front door.

Rather than let the bell ring, I jumped forward and had the door open in time to startle a young man who had just placed himself there. After a few seconds of confusion upon his part, I was able to explain in a soft voice who I was and why I’d opened the door so abruptly. Then, cautioning him to be quiet, I led him inside and to my consulting room.

He is a tall thin fellow in his mid-twenties, and his back is rather stooped, as if he’s already spent too much time bent over a book instead of walking or working upright. He is quite pale, and the nails at the ends of his long bony fingers are bitten to the quick. As I watched him during our conversation, the fingers of one hand constantly plucked at the other, doing so for quite a while before reversing, the picking hand now being picked, for no apparent reason except a nervous temperament.

He gave his name as Walter Pencombe and he said that he’d been directed to my door by one of the officials at Paddington – that same fellow whom I cured of the painful and lingering disease. (He never wearies of advertising my virtues, and he regularly sends to me every sufferer over whom he can gain any influence.) Naturally when the man’s name was mentioned, I thought that young Pencombe was at my door seeking medical assistance, but in fact there had been a misunderstanding. He’d recently arrived from somewhere near Basingstoke and had been securing a cab to take him to see Sherlock Holmes when my acquaintance interjected himself into the conversation, referring him to me and telling him how to locate my practice within walking distance, without properly conveying that you wouldn’t be found here.

After that was cleared up, I offered to provide him with tea but Pencombe declined, and then – after hearing his story – I decided to take him on to Baker Street to seek your counsel. Once there, I learned from Mrs. Hudson that you’re out of the country, and she didn’t know when you would be back. She wrote down the address to which I’m sending this, with the assurance that you’re settled there for at least the next week or so, and thus there’s a good chance that Pencombe’s story will reach you.

It seems that he’s the younger son of an army major who was killed at Ali Masjid in 1878, when the boy was twelve. His older brother died a year or so after that from a fever, and he and his mother were destined for penury when the lady was hired for the household staff at Pellington House, in Cliddesden. Without going into great detail, Pencombe explained that Lord Barnesbury, the master there, was a lonely widower who found himself quite taken by this comely lady now living with her son in his great house. Over the course of the next year or so, this admiration grew and he paid court to her, and was eventually his affection was returned. About ten years ago they married.

Of course, this rather scandalized the household, and there were several months where certain members of the staff were purged before things settled out. Some who had previously befriended Pencombe’s mother were happy for her, while others of the servants were resentful, and a peace of sorts only returned only when these latter were finally gone. However, the situation was never idyllic, especially due to Lord Barnesbury’s other step-children.

It seems that his previous wife had also been a widow when he met and married her, and she had brought with her a couple of children by her earlier husband, who had been some sort of banker in the City. Pencombe didn’t know the details, but he believed that the fellow, named Selborne, had come under something of a cloud in the mid-1870’s and blown his brains out rather than face prosecution and certain incarceration. In any case, the two children from that marriage, Jeffrey and Estelle, were both quite resentful of their step-father’s new bride, and also her surviving son.

While Pencombe’s mother had lived, there was an uneasy truce amongst them, and she tried to serve as a mother to the other children as well as her own son, but after her death the previous year, Jeffrey and Estelle seemed to believe that all requirements in terms of polite behavior toward my visitor had been lifted. However, Pencombe didn’t really care, as his Oxford education had been financed by Lord Barnesbury, and he had left Cliddesden and eventually followed a calling into the ministry.

“I’d always had a fascination for it,” he explained, “but little did I realize that my focus was misguided. I’ve found that I’m not cut out for it at all, really. Scholarly pursuits – that’s what interests me, in the way that some doctors are better suited for research in a laboratory than seeing living and breathing patients. The study of the ancient texts is my calling, and the history of religion, and its effect on the people of the world – and how these people in turn use religion to achieve their own ends.

“But it was too late, I feared. My step-father was very proud that I’d entered the ministry, and he had funded my education, so that was that. I had an obligation that I couldn’t abandon, and I couldn’t ask him to do more, so I was rather stuck in the life I’d found. Or so I believed.”

Here, I thought, was the crux of the matter.

“My step-father died at the end of last month,” he continued, his hands worrying at one another, more frantically than before, as he dug little bits of cuticle and sometimes meat loose from around each nail, dropping them unknowingly (or uncaringly) upon my rug. You would find him a curious study. “I knew that I would receive a substantial inheritance – he’d promised my mother that it would be so – that would allow me to pursue my interests without disappointing him, or worrying about where my bread and cheese are to be found. But of course there is a snag.”

Here he paused and leaned forward. I took the opportunity to hand him a cloth to wrap around his now-bleeding fingertips. He thanked me in an embarrassed way and resumed.

“At the reading of the will last Friday, there was a… condition. The old family attorney, Mr. Gerald Hobbes – long a crony of my step-father – stated that there would be a series of clues for each of the three of us – for Jeffrey and Estelle are the other two heirs – to solve, and upon doing so, we would then each receive our shares. We were all quite puzzled, and then Hobbes handed each of us sealed envelopes and sent us on our way.

“Outside, my two step-siblings made cutting remarks toward me, essentially letting years of anger reveal itself. I let it roll off, having learned patience a long time ago. Instead of engaging with them, I simply removed myself back to Pellington House and made my way up to my old bedroom, where I examined the contents of the envelope.

“It was a series of typed questions, and all of a biblical nature. They were extremely complex and rather obscure, and I felt that I’d be quite challenged to answer them in the time allotted. I set the letter aside to consider it further later. As I hadn’t been back to Pellington House since beginning my ministerial service, there was something of a dinner affair planned for that night. Old Mr. Hobbes was set to join us, staying for the weekend, along with several more of my father’s friends. I seem to have drunk too much wine during the evening, and it was in the middle of the night – or rather early yesterday morning – that I awoke, back in my room and with no memory of having gone up to bed. It was then that I noticed that the letter with the Biblical questions, which I’d left on my desk, was missing. It had been there when I’d gone down to dinner, of that I’m sure, and as I had no memory of returning to my room, I didn’t know when it could have vanished. I never lock the door to my bedroom, so it would have been easy for someone – certainly Jeffrey or Estelle, or both of them – to have come in and taken it.

“Later that morning, I spoke to the family lawyer, Mr. Hobbes, and he was aghast. He stated that while there was no proof that one of the others had taken it, the conditions of the will are very strict: I must answer the questions, with my answers written on that particular sheet, and no other. Failure to do so means that my share of the inheritance will pass to Jeffrey or Estelle. Mr. Hobbes has no other copy of the text, and between us – for he briefly saw it when my step-father first delivered it to him several months ago – we couldn’t recall all of the questions. In any case, remembering and then answering the questions alone won’t help, for I still don’t have the sheet itself, which is one of the will’s requirements.

“I confronted Jeffrey and Estelle, but they angrily denied everything. Still, there was smugness about them that couldn’t be ignored as they realized that they might gain my share of the inheritance. There is a time limit – one month – and precious days have already been lost, for answering those questions will not be easy. After looking around the house rather ineffectually throughout yesterday, it finally occurred to me that I should speak to Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was of some service to a school chum of mine, Archer Kincaid, in that scandal two years ago involving the French gambler and the three wax heads.”

I vaguely recalled the affair, something that you handled not long after my marriage. Thinking that this affair would be of interest to you, we then journeyed to Baker Street, where I discovered that you were in France – possibly related to that matter earlier this year for the French Government. In any case, a few days from now I’m going to arrange for Anstruther to cover my practice and go down to Cliddesden and Pellington House to see what I might find. Of course I’ll have Mary forward any messages.

I hope that your ongoing work is successful, and let me know if I can be of assistance.

Best,

Watson

***

8 April, 1891

Cliddesden, Hampshire

Holmes,

It was good to hear from you, and glad that I could help in connection to your investigation in Narbonne – although ascertaining the color of Everett Tarbonnet’s sole waistcoat does seem to be a most curious piece of the puzzle. One day I’ll tell you about the risky ten minutes that I spent explaining to his laundress what I was about after I was caught, and I plan to hold you to your promise to tell me, when you’re back in London, why this single fact was so important.

In the meantime, I can fill you in on more recent events in connection to Walter Pencombe and the curious missing document related to his legacy.

I was unable to get down here on either on Monday or Tuesday. Per your suggestion, my first stop was to meet with Lawyer Hobbes. I found him to be a corpulent and rather unpleasant old fellow, but he did seem to know the law, if one believes that he’s read all of the old and worn law books filling his office. He has no clerk, and the desk where one would have sat is dark and dusty. I get the sense that his practice, while once successful, is winding down – not surprising, as he is advancing in years.

He was quite forthcoming in explaining to me the conditions of Lord Barnesbury’s curious will. It was full of the usual bequests to various charities and servants, leaving the bulk of the sizable estate to be distributed equally among his three step-children, each carefully identified by name so that there would be no confusion, and with the added requirement near the end of the document that each should pass a test related to their own abilities and knowledge within one month of his death. As he died on March 26th, time has already become somewhat pressing.

Upon being questioned, Hobbes explained that Pencombe’s test related to questions that were answered from any Bible, or other well-known and related scholarly works, while Jeffrey and Estelle Selborne’s questions were connected to their own hobbies and interests – opera, and matters of Royal lineage, respectively. Hobbes had his own opinion about the requirements necessary to certify the inheritances. “Poppycock!” he wheezed. “I told Steven so – ” (Steven being Lord Barnesbury.) “ – but he wouldn’t listen. He came in on the morning that the wills were to be signed, proudly showing me the little ‘tests’ that he’d contrived, and then sealed them in the envelope along with the signed will. Had some foolish idea that each of the three children would somehow come together with the ‘fun’ of solving his ‘little puzzles’ – as if the Selbornes might make friends with Walter after all these years in the same way that children playing at a church picnic overcome their differences and separations in the heat of a game. Steven always had a blind spot toward all of those children – especially the two from his first wife.”

I asked him to elaborate, also asking if was there something about Walter Pencombe, implied in his comment, that was also objectionable and had been overlooked by his step-father?

“No, not in any definite sense. But the lad was never really suited to working toward a goal. Walter settled on the ministry, but it has always been clear there is no real interest on his part in either the good God Divine or His children. Rather, he simply wants to study and read and ponder ideas and follow one rabbit trail to another, seeing how this thought leads to the next one. Oh, if he finds his fortune by way of this will, he’ll be happy for the rest of his life, and spend it all upon furthering his studies, but don’t expect these studies to accomplish anything useful for the rest of us poor sheep. He’ll simply keep digging through old texts, one after another, deeper and deeper, while his back grows more bent and his fingers more ragged. He’ll grow old and won’t even notice. He certainly won’t be finding a way to turn whatever thoughts he develops towards assisting his fellow man as the Lord requires – or using the money in that way either.”

This view of our client – if I may call him that – gives me added insight into the facets of Walter Pencombe, but in spite of the less-than-positive characterization, it’s no reason to withhold assistance, particularly when his rightful inheritance is being cheated away from him somehow by the loss of his document, quite possibly by the actions of the other two potential inheritors.

Hobbes stated that he’d already conducted research to determine if the will and its odd requirement can be broken, and it is the opinion of several of his most learned colleagues that it’s a very well-crafted document. “And so it should be,” he grumbled. “I wrote it myself. Not quite ethical to be asking around concerning how to undo the wishes of my own client, you know, but I advised Steven at the time not to handle things this way – even though neither he nor I could have imagined it working out quite along these lines.”

When asked if I could see the will, he frowned and then shuffled around on his desk, pulling out a document and handing it to me. “As I told you,” he said, “it’s all very straightforward.” It was a typewritten copy of the original, consisting of several sheets, and the first page confirmed what I’d heard about the various bequests, and also the condition that each heir must answer a set of specific questions. The answers to these were to be submitted in the heirs’ handwriting on the original question sheet, and if any of them failed to do so, his or her share would be divided amongst the others. If none of the three completely and correctly answered their questions, or if they failed to return them on the original sheet whatsoever, then the estate was to be liquidated and the funds distributed to charity. Before I could think about the will more closely, or look through all of the sheets, Hobbes spoke again.

“I think that Steven wrote the questions to show that he’d had an interest in their lives. He did love them, you know, and he thought that their filling out the sheets would indicate to them that he’d been paying attention to what they discussed with him over the years.” He slumped back a bit. “Or perhaps – and this has occurred to me over the last few days – he did it as a way for them to choose whether they actually want to receive the inheritance. Steven naively seemed to believe that all three are more altruistic than is actually the case. They could decline to answer and thus refuse the money – although Jeffrey and Estelle would never choose that path. Perhaps Steven thought that Walter might refuse it, believing that his interests were more selfless. I’m afraid that knowing Walter as I do, Steven would have been very disappointed indeed. Walter obviously wants that money quite as much as the others – your presence here, Doctor, shows as much.” He gave a sour grimace.

Realizing that I needed more time to study the document, I asked if I might borrow this copy long enough to make some notes. Hobbes frowned and harrumphed, but in the end he agreed. I folded it and placed it in my pocket, rising to depart. I thanked him, and he asked me my further plans, whereupon I explained that I intend to visit Pellington House tomorrow morning, having arrived too late to do so today. He confirmed that I’m staying at the nearby inn, and said that he might see me on the morrow, as he is a frequent visitor at the house.

I’m at the inn now, and I’ve had a chance to look more closely at the will. It seems to be in order. As I mentioned, it’s a typewritten copy, without signatures. The initial paragraphs of necessary legal jargon give way to very straightforward bequests to favored staff and friends. Only near the very end of the first page are the three step-children addressed, with a simple paragraph indicating that each will receive a document with questions related to their interests, which they are to complete and then return to Hobbes. Failure to do so by the defined date will mean forfeiture of their share of the inheritance.

The subsequent sheets contained a list of various holdings and properties, and it seems that Lord Barnesbury was quite a wealthy man indeed. Also included with the will – to my surprise – was another typewritten sheet containing what appears to be the answers to the three sets of questions, although the questions themselves aren’t there. I suppose that Lord Barnesbury provided this to Hobbes so that he can check the tests that each of the step-children complete and submit. I’m sure that the questions could be determined from the answers, but without the original document, these answers won’t help Walter Pencombe at all. In any case, I’ll need to specifically return this sheet to Hobbes tomorrow, as he probably didn’t mean to give it to me when he loaned me the copy of the will.

I intend to go downstairs soon, walk around a bit, and mail this to you, and then I’ll find something to eat. I’m sure that I’ll have more to report tomorrow.

Watson

***

9 April, 1891

Cliddesden, Hampshire

Holmes,

With so much more to relate after my report of last night, I feel that I should have waited and sent a longer and more comprehensive letter, but I didn’t know then what was to occur at Pellington House today. Hopefully this letter will arrive after the other so that you can follow the events in proper sequence, but should they not, suffice it to say that yesterday afternoon, I visited the family lawyer, Hobbes, who loaned me a copy of the will, as well as inadvertently including the answers to the questions related to the inheritance. However, having them is useless without the original document to fulfill the will’s requirements.

Following my meeting with Hobbes, I retreated back to the local inn, a rather sprawling and dilapidated affair left over from the coaching days, with many wings and passages that have been added to and altered over the last few hundred years – thus one follows a narrow hall over rising and falling floors, creaking with age, before taking a short turn, and then going off in another direction. Only then does one (hopefully) find one’s room.

I mailed last night’s letter to you, ate dinner, and then wandered about the tiny but picturesque village for an hour or so. Upon returning to my room, I found that it had been burgled – and rather clumsily. The door had been forced – although in truth the lock and fittings were in very poor and aged condition – and my bags had been opened and rifled, although some attempt had been made to restore them in the hopes that I wouldn’t notice. As near as I could tell, nothing was missing.

It occurred to me, especially given the attention that was paid to the contents of my various notes and jottings, that someone may have been trying to find the answers to the will, although how they would have known that I had them was more than I could puzzle out. In any case, they were safely folded in my coat pocket, and to take them, the burglar would have had to physically attack me. I notified the management of the inn about what had occurred, and with many effusive apologies I was moved to another (better) room which could be safely locked. This morning, I received permission to have the documents received from Hobbes locked in the hotel safe, so that if I’m personally waylaid while in Cliddesden, before I can return them, the aggressor will receive nothing for his trouble but a view of my service revolver.

Upon arriving at Pellington House, I found the place in an uproar. It seems that there has been an intruder there in the night as well. Jeffrey Selborne was found in his room by a servant bringing his early-morning hot water, apparently hit over the head and unconscious. (I say “apparently” because we’ve seen this before – remember Ellicott in Filey who self-wounded himself so thoroughly while trying to deceive us that he permanently lost the hearing in his left ear?)

After I conveyed my name and purpose to the butler, I asked what had happened. Upon learning of the attack on Jeffrey Selborne, I offered my services, and was led up to his bedroom. He wasn’t what I expected, instead being pleasant enough, and down to earth.

As I checked over the wound on his head, still a sizeable lump on the back of his skull, he related to me that he’d stayed up late last night, reading in the library and sipping more brandy than he should have done. Then he’d made his way through the darkened house toward his bedroom along the rear of the first floor. He’d passed one of the hallways leading to another wing when he was aware of a nearby footstep – a creaking of the floor. There was a blow to his head, and then nothing until he was prodded awake earlier this morning, discovered lying on the floor of his own bedroom.

There is evidence on the old hallway carpet of where he was attacked and then dragged the short distance to his bedroom. (The backs of his heels also show evidence of dragging, as matched by the marks on the carpet and bare spots on the ancient wooden floor.) His room has been searched, and I was able to discover from the servant who found him that Jeffrey was lying tumbled on top of a number of disrupted papers scattered across the floor, indicating that he’d been deposited there after the rest of the room was ransacked.

“It didn’t do him any good to search the room beforehand,” said Jeffrey to me after I’d examined his wound, a painful lump with broken skin. “What he wanted was in my pocket – and he got it, blast him!”

He then explained that he’d been carrying his copy of his questions with him, glancing at them throughout the evening and trying to figure a way to start answering them. “I have no idea about some of them, or where to begin to find the answers.” Hearing that the questions were taken from him in this way, and assuming that he’s telling the truth, made me glad that I’d left those in my care securely locked in the hotel safe.

As mentioned, Jeffrey Selborne actually doesn’t seem to be a bad sort of chap – quite unlike what I’d expected. I suppose that I’d expected him to be some sort of spoilt man-brat, but I found him, along with his sister, to be rather pleasant and well-spoken. It turns out that Jeffrey writes for the local Basingstoke newspaper, and his sister Estelle is a teacher. They both plan to continue in their positions after receiving their inheritance – as much as anyone, I suppose, can plan for that sort of thing before they actually have such potentially life-changing money in hand. Such a thing can’t help but alter a person. In any case, it seems now that Jeffrey too has lost his chance, with his original document having been stolen as well. I suspect that whomever has taken it has put it – along with the one taken from Walter – into the nearest fire.

That leaves Estelle as the sole heir, providing that she can answer her questions. It turns out that she and Jeffrey are twins – which was not mentioned to me! – but except for sharing a birth-date and similar rather pleasant dispositions – at least when not having been recently attacked – they are nothing alike in terms of appearance. Jeremy is dark and stocky, while Estelle is fair and fine-boned, with her blonde hair shaded red in certain light. I had a chance to talk with both of them at Jeffrey’s bedside, just the three of us, after the local constable and Lawyer Hobbes had been shooed out. (Walter, after initially offering his own concern, had quickly departed.)

The twins have a long-standing antipathy toward Walter Pencombe, seemingly and solely based upon his arrival in the house as a child, slightly younger than the two of them, more than a decade before. They are quite willing to believe that Walter is the one who attacked Jeffrey in the night after first unsuccessfully searching his room, taking his sheet and ruining his chances for a share of the step-father’s estate. They both insist that Walter’s own sheet isn’t really gone – that in fact he’s only establishing an alternate set of facts in order to seem innocent until the last minute when he submits his own answered test at the end of the month, as demanded in the will.

Estelle lowered her voice and said, “I’ve heard of you, Dr. Watson, and Mr. Holmes as well. I don’t believe that you will help Walter in whatever he plans – You are honorable men and will both do the right thing, wherever the facts lead. That’s why I don’t mind telling you – my room was searched as well!”

Jeffrey sat upright in involuntary shock before giving a gasp of pain. Then he sank back against his pillow while his sister fussed over him, and I asked her to explain further.

“When I returned to my room after dinner last night, I too found that my room had been overturned – just the way Jeffrey’s looks now. I was angry, and immediately set about straightening up. I quickly discovered that the intruder must have been after my own sheet of questions, for they were gone!”

“So,” I said, “all three of you are now eliminated from the inheritance, as no one can provide a completed document.”

“Walter still might,” growled Jeffrey.

I was about to respond when Estelle smiled in that way women have when they reveal the winning card. “Don’t count me out yet, Doctor. What the intruder stole was a copy. You see, I can use the typewriter – I keep a machine in my room, for preparing letters, and also for notes that I compile regarding a book that I’m writing regarding the history of the Plantagenets. In order to have a working copy of the questions, I had recopied them, in identical format, and safely hidden the original. When the thief found and took the sheet that was underneath some other papers on my desk, he didn’t realize that he wasn’t leaving with the real thing – he stole the copy!”

And she then removed from one of the pockets in her dress a folded sheet of paper. Handing it to me for examination, I saw that it was of a standard size and weight, covered with ten densely complex typewritten questions related to royal history.

“How difficult are these questions?” I asked.

“Very,” was her reply. “Extremely. And Jeffrey said the same about his opera-related questions.”

“Walter indicated that the Biblical questions were also going to require a great deal of thought and research,” I added. Jeffrey started to say something, probably questioning the veracity of anything that Walter Pencombe said, but before he could do so, I continued. “I have to ask – is there any way of verifying that this sheet in my hand is the actual original, and not the copy?”

Estelle’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose so, but I don’t know how. Perhaps Mr. Hobbes knows a way – he was given the originals by our step-father. In any case, what are you implying, Doctor?” She stood. “Are you trying to say that I hit my own brother and stole his paper, cutting him out of the inheritance, along with Walter?”

I raised my hands to placate her. “Nothing like that. I was simply wondering more about the document itself, rather than any motives you might have. As I said, I wonder how the document’s authenticity can be verified when the time comes. Whomever has stolen all three of them – two real and one false – now believes them to be out of play, and they are all likely destroyed. If I had gone to that trouble, that’s what I would have done. What will happen when in due time you reveal this one? Will this person – whomever it is – be forced to try and discredit it? Or does that person already know a way to verify that your copy that he stole last night is different from the other two – should he still have Walter and Jeffrey’s questions for comparison.

“There are defined ways, you know, to identify typewriting – from the shape of the letters and spacing and punctuation marks themselves, which vary between machines manufactured by different companies, to individual defects that show up on each letter, often becoming worse over time through normal wear. And even an individual’s typing style can be identified from the darkness of certain letters as related to strength in that corresponding finger when the key is pressed.”

I believe it was my knowledge of such, as well as my association with you and your reputation, Holmes, that helped me to convince Estelle to let me have her original sheet of questions so that I could keep it safely. Then I warned her. “Whomever searched your rooms and took the questions – both real and the copy – may notice that yours is a copy. I assume it’s well known that you can use a typewriter?” Estelle nodded. “Then if the copy is spotted, this person will know that you still have the real set, and may make a try for them again. I believe that we should make it known that I have them now, simply to remove any danger that might hang over your head and draw it to me.”

They understood the logic of this, and Estelle assured me that she was now familiar enough with the questions that she could continue to work without the actual sheet in hand. The upshot of our discussion was that we went downstairs, where I called together Walter, Mr. Hobbes (who was sipping a brandy, despite the early hour), and most of the staff, explaining what had happened in the night in the thinnest of detail. Then I elaborated, indicating that the letter stolen from Estelle’s room had been a typewritten copy, and that I now had the original in my pocket, with intentions to return to London and keep it safe there. After the servants were dismissed, I had a few further words with Walter and Hobbes. The former was rather concerned that his step-siblings believed him to be responsible for Jeffrey’s injury and the search of their rooms – I hadn’t told him this, he’d just perceived it based on their past history. Then, with a promise to keep them informed as to further developments, I departed, leaving the young man and the lawyer in quiet conversation.

Although I had intended to return the copy of the will and the answers to the questions to Hobbes sooner rather than later, I decided to keep them for a while longer, in case they might prove useful. Retrieving my bags and then the documents from the hotel safe, I walked safely to the nearby station. I was soon back home in Paddington.

Since then, I’ve looked at the documents – Estelle’s set of questions, and the answers for all three sets – and I’m left with a numb sense of ignorance. I don’t know the questions from Walter and Jeffrey’s sheets, but from studying the answers in hand, indications are that they too must have been terribly obscure and difficult. What was Lord Barnesbury thinking?

While I doubt that any attempt will be made to retrieve Estelle’s questions now that I have them safely in London, I’ve arranged to have them safely protected, and Mary and I are being more cautious than usual – which is always considerable in any case – to maintain the security of our home.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Watson

***

13 April, 1891

Dear Holmes,

Your suggestions as to the truth proved to be correct, and the events of today certainly ended in a dramatic fashion. I’ll relate them now, while they’re still fresh in my mind.

After returning to London last week, I was rather at a loss in terms of which way to turn. The next day, I was visited in the late evening by Walter Pencombe, who seemed quite as perplexed as I was. He accepted my offer of a whisky and settled in to speculate for the next three-quarters-of-an-hour about who might have done what. The gist of his thoughts ran along the lines of suspecting that Jeffrey and Estelle Selborne are up to something in an attempt to cheat him out of his inheritance – the same belief, of course, that they have about him. I let him ramble, trying to get his measure, and in the end decided that Hobbes had described him correctly. I had to agree with Walter’s own initial self-assessment that he didn’t belong in a ministerial position, for he has a bitter streak of misanthropy that reveals itself with certain comments. Whatever the resolution of this affair, I don’t see him and his step-siblings ever finding a common bond of fealty and friendship.

The next day (Saturday), I received your letter, but found that the man you’d instructed me to consult was away for the weekend, and therefore I was unable to visit him until today.

I’m constantly amazed that you – who describes yourself as essentially friendless (myself exempted) – has so many friends scattered around the capital – nay, the country, and the Continent as well – who think so highly of you. You really do yourself a disservice, Holmes, by believing that you are a solitary creature. But that is a discussion for another day. This morning found me knocking on Aaron Kincaid’s door in King’s Bench Walk, as you advised, and he couldn’t sing your praises any higher. I am now in possession of the entire facts related to the Limping Verger and his Objectionable Tool, as well as the Singular Affair of the Thrice-Antagonized Delincuente. I suspect that he would have told me about several others if I hadn’t reined him in – in spite of my inclinations to hear more! – and asked about the documents.

It was only a matter of minutes for him to examine them and provide his conclusion. You were correct – the copy of the will provided by Hobbes, the set of answers to all three tests, and the original sheet of questions given to me by Estelle Selborne were all composed on the same typewriting machine.

With a dim understanding of what this meant, my next stop was Scotland Yard. Gregson and Lestrade were both away, but Lanner was there, and in fine fettle, and still in a grateful mood for when you pulled his chestnuts from the fire last February in regard to that lecherous xylographer. I explained the situation, and he thought that a day in and around the Basingstoke countryside wouldn’t be too objectionable.

Although we didn’t know where to begin, there aren’t that many lawyers in that part of the country, and even less in Cliddesden. We were discrete, and it didn’t take long to determine that none of them had been consulted regarding breaking Lord Barnesbury’s will, and that doing so might not have been a problem anyway.

Our next stop was Pellington House, where Walter Pencombe, as well as Jeffrey and Estelle Selborne, were waiting to meet with us. I explained how Hobbes had given me a copy of the will, along with accidentally providing a copy of the answers, and how at your suggestion, I’d had them – along with Estelle’s set of questions – examined by a typewriting expert who determined that all three were produced on the same machine. They were quick to understand the significance, and I could see that there was some sort of thaw between Walter and the others, as they all realized how they had been duped in the same way. I doubt that they will ever be close, but perhaps this will be enough.

Walter produced a routine typewritten letter from Hobbes, and even with our amateur status and abilities we could all agree that it matched the three documents related to the inheritance.

Lanner and I then visited the local police station, where we obtained the assistance of a burly constable – the same fellow who had been out the morning of Jeremy’s attack. Hobbes’s office wasn’t far away, and I believe that I saw him framed in his window as we approached, although he wasn’t standing there when we arrived – if he had truly been there at all.

What followed was unpleasant, as the surly old man lost his temper, refusing to acknowledge the charge, and insisting that the documents that he’d given to me, as analyzed by the expert, had been somehow switched, and that I was attempting to destroy his reputation for reasons that he couldn’t explain, since I’d never heard of him before last week. Possibly, he ranted, I was in collusion with Walter Pencombe to steal the entire estate. At one point he was so angry that I feared for his health, expecting some sort of apoplectic seizure, but Lanner and the constable seemed less concerned, and the lawyer was taken into custody.

After Hobbes was removed, a search of the papers in his office revealed several of interest. First, in spite of my belief that he would have destroyed them, the very difficult questions, in their original form, stolen from both Walter Pencombe and Jeffrey Selborne, were found in an unmarked file – along with three very different sets of questions in what turned out to Lord Barnesbury’s handwriting, apparently those that were originally intended to be included with the will. They were much simpler, and contrived to convey the man’s affection for his step-children. For instance, one of those on the sheet intended for Walter asked, “What is Proverbs 23:24?” A search through a Bible ironically found on the criminal lawyer’s desk revealed the answer to be: “The father of a righteous child has great joy; a man who fathers a wise son rejoices in him.”

I suppose that Hobbes has that typical lawyerly fear of destroying documents – a similar trait seems to hang around your neck, Holmes! – and rather than burn the originals, along with those that he stole, he kept them, which will only add further evidence of his machinations to clumsily steal the estate.

I believe that I understand why Hobbes wrote the much more difficult questions – the will only said that questions must be answered, and that they must be on the original sheet, so he knew that he could substitute impossible questions and no one would realize what had occurred. If the heirs had received the actual questions contrived by Lord Barnesbury, they could have filled them out in five minutes and put them right back into Hobbes’s hands, so he came up with a much longer set of very difficult questions in an effort to prevent them from being answered quickly – or at all. Then, while they tried to sort through them, he would have time to steal the original required sheets at his leisure before the end of the one-month deadline. He had to type them, as he couldn’t duplicate Lord Barnesbury’s handwriting.

My only question is why did Hobbes go to the trouble of typing up a list of answers to the much harder questions in the first place? It seems very much a waste of time.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and I hope that your current endeavors conclude successfully.

Best,

Watson

***

16 April, 1891

Watson,

Many thanks for your timely report, and I’m glad that the matter was resolved satisfactorily. You really handled it very well, and I have no doubt that, given a little time to ponder it on your own, you would have reached the same conclusions regarding the significance of the typed documents – although you wouldn’t have known about the expert assistance that could be provided by Aaron Kincaid. Now that you’ve met him, he will be another resource at your disposal.

My suspicions were first alerted when you wrote that an attempt had been made to steal the copy of the will from you just hours after it was put into your hands by Hobbes. What would this accomplish? The will wasn’t a secret. Was it instead an attempt to get the answers to the questions that had also been given to you? As you pointed out, without the original question sheets, having the answers made no difference. But at that point, the Selborne twins still presumably had their question sheets, so it would benefit them to have the answers. And possibly Walter Pencombe had lied, as the twins later suspected, and still had his set too.

And yet, how could they have known that you had the answers, and so soon after you had received them? They had apparently been given to you inadvertently. Hobbes had no clerk who would know that you had either the copy of the will or the answers. Hobbes alone knew that you had the copy, and he may or may not have realized after you left that you also now had the answers. But why would he want to steal them from you? It might have been to get them back in case you subsequently offered provide the answers to one or more of the heirs, but he could have found you at the inn – where he knew you were staying – and simply asked you for the sheet, explaining that it had been provided to you by mistake.

It was your next letter, explaining that attempts had been made to steal the other sets of questions, that made me ponder a bit deeper. You had related how Hobbes stated that Lord Barnesbury briefly showed Hobbes the questions, and then sealed them in the envelope with the will. As you also stated, he had presumably provided the list of complex answers to Hobbes so that the lawyer could verify whether they were correct.

I considered again what you had told me of the reference in the will to the questions. It was vague, and gave no indication whether the questions would be easy or difficult. It occurred to me that this vagueness would serve to the advantage of someone who wanted to make answering the questions much more difficult than might have been originally intended – possibly to the point where they couldn’t be answered at all. But who would benefit from such a course of action?

The obvious answer was Hobbes, the man in control of the estate, and how it would be disbursed to the various charities if the questions weren’t answered correctly – if it was disbursed at all. And related to that, who would be the one man who would be able to swap more difficult questions for the easier versions, again making it nearly impossible for the conditions to be fulfilled? The answer was also Hobbes.

Possibly he originally intended to simply make the questions as difficult as he could, so that they couldn’t be answered. And yet, they would have to be legitimate questions, and if some challenge were made when the heirs read them, he, as the administrator of the dead man’s test, would be expected to have the answers.

He probably began to doubt himself. What if one of the heirs did successfully answer the questions before the deadline? Perhaps the three heirs were more knowledgeable than Hobbes realized. What if the substitute questions that he’d researched and assembled, thinking them to be nearly impossible, were in fact mere child’s play – common knowledge to anyone that was an expert in his or her field: Religious texts, or opera, or Royal lineage.

So his doubts may have continued to gnaw at him, and when Hobbes had the chance on the very night that the will was read, I suspect that it occurred to him that he could avoid that matter entirely by acting sooner, rather than simply stealing the original sheets, which fortunately for him had been designated in Barnesbury’s will as being required to fulfill the conditions of the inheritance.

Walter Pencombe’s list was probably the easiest to steal. Hobbes simply went to his room and found it lying there. You indicated in your letter that Walter said he’d left it out before going to dinner. (You also indicated that Hobbes is a regular visitor to the house, so he would know his way around, and how to creep about unobtrusively. His presence would cause no comment.) Walter’s drunken unconsciousness and subsequent awakening in his own room the next morning may have had nothing to do with the theft at all.

But it would have been more difficult for Hobbes to get at the twins’ lists of questions, and Hobbes had certainly convinced himself by then that he needed to do so for the same reason that he’d taken Walter’s – what if they actually provided him with the correct answers?

When I understood that Hobbes was likely the one to take Walter’s list, I asked myself why he would need to also presumably steal back the documents that he had loaned to you – an attempt that occurred even before he took those belonging to the Selborne twins later that same night. What made it necessary for him to take the risk of entering that rambling old coaching inn and searching your room? That was dangerous, but possibly not as much as we might think – No doubt he knows the old building’s layout very well. Still, there was more peril doing that than when he stole the documents in Pellington House, where he was a frequent and expected visitor.

I decided that some factor related to the different documents in your possession must have been his motivation to do something that might reveal his actions. What could that be?

The documents you held that night were the copy of the will and the list of answers. Based on what I knew then, the copy might have been made by Hobbes after the original was opened and read. The answers could have been the original document provide by Lord Barnesbury, or it could have been a later typewritten copy, also prepared in Hobbes’s office. There is no reason that Hobbes shouldn’t have made working copies of both, with the originals safely put away. But if they were both copies that had made in Hobbes’s office, then they would have likely been typed on the same typewriting machine.

But recall that at that time, both twins still had their own original lists of questions. What, I asked, if Hobbes feared that somehow you would get a look at those when you went to Pellington House the next day, and realize – with your experience over the last decade in a number of criminal investigations – that they were all typed on the same typewriter – even the list of supposedly original (and very difficult) questions?

For if the “original” questions in the heirs’ possession were typed on the same typewriter as that in Hobbes’s office, then they wouldn’t be the “original” documents after all, even though they were supposed to have been written, delivered, and sealed by Lord Barnesbury with the will. And if they weren’t the original documents, then who could say if they were the original questions?

From there it was fairly easy, and that’s why I advised you to see Aaron Kincaid, who has made several notable studies upon evaluation of typed documents. By then you had in your possession the copy of the will (certainly typed in Hobbes’s office), the list of answers (which might or might not have been typed there), and Estelle’s supposedly “original” list of questions, which was supposed to have been prepared by Lord Barnesbury himself, before he arrived at Hobbes’s office, and placed almost immediately in the sealed envelope with the will, where it had supposedly remained until the will was read. As you no doubt saw, and as Kincaid confirmed, Estelle’s “original” list of complex questions was also typed on Hobbes’s office machine, with its own unique set of characteristics and defects, meaning that Hobbes had typed the document given to Estelle that he’d claimed was the one prepared by Lord Barnesbury.

It all fell into place. Hobbes hoped to remain in control of the estate – and it’s very doubtful that the charities named in the will would ever see a fraction of what they might expect otherwise. It’s an old story. To accomplish this, he created and substituted the list of very difficult questions. Then, upon uneasy reflection, he’d decided to commit assault and burglary to get his hands on the documents before they could be either examined or completed.

It was a pretty little problem, and shows how a man can quickly dig himself into a spot where he can’t properly see the right way out. It sounds from your description as if Hobbes doesn’t have too many more years left, and he could have likely continued to maintain an adequate living managing the estate and its affairs for the three heirs. Instead, he saw in Lord Barnesbury’s vague will, and its reference to questions, a chance to hijack the estate entirely. He somehow talked himself into thinking that the plan would work, and that no one would recognize that he alone had ended up the sole beneficiary, in control of the disbursal of the funds, by way of a dodgy will. When he became aggressive and tried to take back the sheets, he only accelerated his downfall.

I appreciate the distraction that this provided. I plan on moving on to Nimes in the next day or so, as this business seems to lead from one strand of the web to five others. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to return to London, but I hope to see you one way or another in just a few weeks. I’ll be glad when this whole problem is finally over – the Professor is a nimble opponent – and I think that when he’s finally locked away or hanged, I’ll be able to rest for two or three years, and look back upon a job well done.

Ah, but that’s wishful thinking, and as we both know, I would soon be hungry for another distraction.

My best wishes to you and Mary, and I remain,

Your friend,

Holmes