Part six opens with this chapter.
Through the five parts before it, Holmes was the man who found out who had done a thing.
In this part he becomes the man who decides what follows.
A Hand on the Shoulder Before Dawn
It is a bitterly cold morning at the end of the winter of 1897.
Watson wakes to a hand shaking his shoulder and finds Holmes standing over him with a candle.
The game is afoot, he says. Into your clothes and come.
Ten minutes later they are in a cab on the way to Charing Cross. A winter dawn is beginning, and early workmen pass blurred and indistinct in the fog.
Not until they have drunk hot tea at the station and taken their seats in the Kentish train does Holmes begin to speak.
A Complaint About the Chronicler
He takes a note from his pocket and reads it out. Written at half past three in the morning at the Abbey Grange in Kent, Inspector Stanley Hopkins asking him to come at once.
Hopkins has called him in seven times, he says, and every one of those summonses was justified.
Then he says a word about Watson’s writing. The trouble is the habit of looking at everything as a story instead of as a scientific exercise.
Why not write them yourself, says Watson, with some bitterness.
He will, says Holmes. At present he is busy, but he means to devote his later years to a textbook that will focus the whole art of detection into one volume.
That exchange comes back at the end of the chapter, because a moment arrives when the chronicler and the man delivering judgement are sitting in the same room.
What He Knows Before Arriving
Sir Eustace is dead, he says.
Hopkins’s handwriting is agitated and he is not an emotional man. That the body has been left means it is not a simple suicide. That the lady had to be released means she was tied up while it happened.
The crime was committed before midnight, he adds.
How can he possibly tell, Watson asks.
By an inspection of the trains and by reckoning the time, he says. The local police had to be called, London had to be told, Hopkins had to go out, and he in turn had to send for Holmes. That is a night’s work.
The Lady’s Account
At the house Hopkins meets them at the door.
Since the lady came to herself she has given so clear an account that there is not much left to do, he says. It is the work of a gang of burglars they already know, and he has no doubt of it.
She is lying on a couch in the morning-room. Over one eye is a dark, plum-coloured swelling, and her maid is bathing it steadily with vinegar and water.
She tells them what happened.
She has been married a year, and she does not attempt to hide that it was not a happy marriage. Her husband was a confirmed drunkard, and to be with such a man for an hour is unpleasant. Can they imagine, she asks, what it is to be tied to him day and night.
Then comes that night. After eleven she went round the house and found the dining-room window open, and when she pulled the curtain aside a broad-shouldered elderly man had just stepped in. Two more were behind him. She was caught by the wrist and then the throat, and as she opened her mouth she was struck over the eye and felled.
When she came to, she was tied to the chair with the bell-rope and a handkerchief was round her mouth.
Then her husband came in. The elderly man picked the poker out of the grate and struck him as he passed, and he never moved again.
The three collected the silver and opened a bottle of wine, and each had a glass in his hand, she says.
The Things in the Room
The maid, Theresa, adds one thing. From her window she saw three men down by the gate, and more than an hour later she heard her mistress scream.
When the lady has gone, Holmes goes through to the dining-room.
Watson sees the interest leave his face. Where there is no mystery there is no case for this man.
The room is large and high. Beside the fireplace stands a heavy oaken chair with a red cord woven through it. The cord was slipped off the lady, but the knots are still there.
On the floor is the body. The head is badly broken and the poker lies beside it, bent by the blow.
Point by point, the burglary story and the objects in the room agree.
Three Glasses
Then Holmes stops at the sideboard.
There are three glasses and all three are tinged with wine. Only one of them holds any dregs.
The bottle stands two-thirds full with a long cork beside it.
He picks up the cork and studies it. The long corkscrew in that drawer did not draw this, he says. The screw went in three times, so it was drawn with the short screw of a pocket knife.
Hopkins cannot see what is remarkable about the glasses.
Holmes lets it go. It must be mere chance about the glasses, he says, and the case looks clear enough, and he had better be getting home.
Off the Train
On the journey back his face stays set.
As the train crawls out of a suburban station he springs onto the platform and pulls Watson out after him.
He is sorry, he says, but he cannot leave that case in this condition. Every instinct he has cries out against it.
The lady’s account was complete, the maid corroborated it, the detail was fairly exact. What he has against all that is three wine-glasses.
But if he had approached the whole thing fresh, with no ready-made story to warp his mind, he says, he would surely have found something more definite.
A List of Unusual Things
On a bench he makes the list.
Those burglars made a large haul at Sydenham a fortnight ago and their descriptions were in the papers. Anyone inventing a burglary would naturally reach for that account.
Besides, men who have just done well are rarely in a hurry to run another risk. It is unusual to break in that early in the evening. It is unusual to strike a lady to stop her screaming, since that is the surest way to make her scream. It is unusual to kill a man when there are enough of you to hold him. It is unusual to be content with a little when much more is within reach.
And it is very unusual for such men to leave a bottle half empty.
Each of them is possible by itself, says Watson.
Then let us take the glasses, says Holmes.
Only Two Men Drank
If three men drank, why is there sediment in only one glass?
The last glass poured would hold it, says Watson.
Not at all, says Holmes. The bottle was full of it, and the first two glasses cannot have come out clear with only the third heavily charged.
So there is one explanation. Two glasses were used, and what remained in them was poured into a third to give the impression that three people had been there.
If that is right, the case changes its class. The lady and her maid have lied knowingly, which means they have a strong reason for covering the real man.
The Mark on the Bracket
They go back to the house. Hopkins has gone off to report.
Holmes locks the dining-room door on the inside and spends two hours on the room. The window, the curtains, the carpet, the chair, the rope, each in turn.
Then he climbs onto the mantelpiece. High above his head a few inches of the cord still hang from the wire.
To get nearer he rests his knee on a wooden bracket on the wall. But it is the bracket, not the cord, that holds his attention.
He springs down. They have their case, he says.
Why It Broke Three Inches Down
If you pulled a bell-rope down, he asks, where would you expect it to break? At the point where it is fastened to the wire.
This one broke three inches below the top.
Because it is frayed there, says Watson.
Exactly, says Holmes. The end they can examine is frayed. The man was cunning enough to do that with his knife.
But the other end is not frayed. From the mantelpiece you can see that it is cut clean off.
So the order comes out. The man needed the rope and would not tear it down, because that would ring the kitchen bell and rouse the house. So he sprang up on the mantelpiece, could not quite reach, put his knee on the bracket, and got his knife to the cord.
He himself was three inches short of the place, says Holmes. So the man is three inches taller than he is.
Blood on the Chair
Then he points at the chair. There is a mark on the seat.
Blood, says Watson.
Undoubtedly, says Holmes. This alone puts the lady’s story out of court.
If she had been sitting in that chair when the crime was done, the mark could not be there. She was placed in the chair after her husband’s death.
Then he goes to the maid.
What the Maid Tells Them
Theresa does not hide her hatred of her late employer.
It is true that he threw the decanter at her, she says. She had heard him call her mistress a name and told him he would not dare speak so if her brother were there.
The marks on her mistress’s arm came from him too, she says. Her mistress never even told her about those.
They came to England eighteen months ago, she says, met him the month after they arrived, and were married in January of last year.
Holmes writes the dates down. Then he goes to the shipping office.
The Man Who Came by Sea
On the line from Adelaide only one of their boats reached a home port that June. The passenger list carries the lady’s name and her maid’s.
The man who was first officer of that boat has since been made a captain, and he sails in two days. He is staying at Sydenham.
His record is magnificent. Reliable on duty, says the man at the office, but hot-headed and excitable off his ship, and loyal and honest and kind-hearted with it.
Holmes does not ask to see him. Instead he sends a telegram.
I Did Not Take Out a Warrant
Back at Baker Street he explains.
He could not do it. Once that warrant was made out, nothing on earth would save the man.
“Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime.” (The Abbey Grange)
“I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.” (The Abbey Grange)
In the evening Hopkins calls. They found the silver in the pond and the case is harder than ever, and the gang was arrested in New York that same morning.
Then the story that they committed a murder in Kent will not stand, says Holmes.
Asked for a hint, he offers only the word blind.
His Part and the Other Man’s
When Hopkins has gone, Watson looks a question at him.
Holmes sets out the difference.
What he knows is unofficial. What Hopkins knows is official.
“I have the right to private judgment, but he has none.” (The Abbey Grange)
Hopkins must disclose everything or be a traitor to his service. So in a doubtful case Holmes will not put him in that position.
That sentence is the axis of the chapter. It is also the axis of the whole of part six.
The Sailor’s Account
There is a step on the stairs and the door opens on a very tall young man, burned dark by tropical suns.
Sit down, Captain Crocker, says Holmes. You got my telegram.
He sits and asks what they mean to do with him. Arrest him?
Bite on a cigar and give a true account, says Holmes. Go one inch off the straight and he will blow a police whistle from the window.
The sailor tells it.
He met her aboard, and from the first day of that voyage she was the only woman in the world to him. They were never engaged. She treated him as fairly as any woman ever treated a man, and it was all love on his side.
When they parted she was a free woman, and he could never be a free man again.
He heard of her marriage on his next voyage home, and he did not grieve over it. Title and money were things she was born for.
This time, promoted and waiting for a new ship at Sydenham, he met the old maid in a country lane and heard everything that had happened since.
That Night
He wanted to see her once before he sailed, he says.
The maid had told him the ways of the house, and that night he scratched at the window. At first she would not open to him, but she could not leave him standing in a frosty night.
They were standing inside the window talking when her husband rushed in like a madman, called her the vilest name a man can use to a woman, and struck her across the face with the stick in his hand.
So he sprang for the poker and they fought. He shows the place on his arm where the first blow fell.
Then it was his turn, he says.
Was he sorry? He was not. It was his life or mine, he says, and far more than that, it was his life or hers.
Who Did the Arranging
What comes next is the part this chapter passes over quietly.
The scream brought the old maid down. He opened the wine and put a little between the lady’s lips and took a drop himself.
Theresa was as cool as ice, he says, and the plot was as much hers as his.
They would make it appear that burglars had done it. While Theresa repeated the story to her mistress, he swarmed up and cut the bell-rope.
He lashed the lady in her chair and frayed the end of the rope, because otherwise people would wonder how a burglar got up there to cut it.
He gathered a few pieces of silver to carry out the idea, told them to give the alarm when he had a quarter of an hour’s start, and dropped the silver in the pond.
The Trial
Holmes smokes for a while, then crosses the room and shakes his hand.
Hardly a word of it, he says, was anything he did not already know.
Nobody but an acrobat or a sailor could have reached that rope from the bracket. Nobody but a sailor could have made those knots on the chair. And the lady had been among sailors on exactly one voyage.
That she was shielding him so hard meant he was someone of her own class, and that she loved him.
Then Holmes makes an offer. Disappear within twenty-four hours and nobody will hinder him.
And then it will all come out, says the sailor. Certainly it will, says Holmes.
The sailor flushes with anger. He knows enough law to understand that she would be held as an accomplice. Does Holmes think he would slink away and leave her to face it alone?
Holmes holds out his hand a second time. He was only testing him, and he rings true every time.
Then he arranges the room. The sailor is the prisoner. Watson is a British jury. He himself is the judge.
The jury finds him not guilty.
“Vox populi, vox Dei. You are acquitted, Captain Crocker.” (The Abbey Grange)
Come back to this lady in a year, he adds, and may her future and yours justify the judgement pronounced tonight.
Today, Taking the Seat of Judgement
The reasoning in this chapter is no different from the thirty-two before it.
It starts with sediment in one glass and arrives at one man. The method still works.
What is different is what he does next. He does not hand what he found to the police. He uses it himself.
And his ground for that is the sentence about private judgement. It is true as far as it goes. He holds no office, so he owes no report.
But having no obligation is not the same as having the standing.
The trial he convenes has one judge, one juror, and one prisoner. The juror has heard only the prisoner’s account and not the dead man’s. That is precisely the thing a bench of twelve was meant to prevent.
And yet the chapter does not make that trial look ridiculous. It sets down everything the lady went through, and what her husband did to her dog, and the decanter thrown at the maid.
So what the chapter asks is not whether he was right. It is who should decide, once the circumstances are this pitiable.
In chapter 31 he granted himself an exception. Here he builds that exception into the shape of an institution.
Have I ever delivered a verdict on somebody’s behalf?