"You told him you were not interested in inheriting the title?"
"I had no wish to inherit anything, sir." John Mackelworth rose to leave. "I merely enjoyed the correspondence. I became concerned when his letters grew increasingly more anxious and rambling and he began to speak of suicide."
"Yet still you suspect murder?"
"I do, sir. Put it down to an instinct for the truth – or an overwrought imagination. It is up to you!"
"I suspect it is the former, Mr Mackelsworth. I shall see you here again tomorrow evening. Until then, goodnight."
We shook hands.
"Goodnight, gentlemen. I shall sleep easy tonight, for the first time in months." And with that our Texan visitor departed.
"What do you make of it,Watson?" Holmes asked, as he reached for his long-stemmed clay pipe and filled it with tobacco from the slipper he had brought with him. "Do you think our Mr Mackelsworth is 'the real article' as his compatriots would say?"
"I was very favourably impressed, Holmes. But I do believe he has been duped into involving himself in an adventure which, if he obeyed his own honest instincts, he would never have considered. I do not believe that Sir Geoffrey was everything he claimed to be. Perhaps he was when you knew him, Holmes, but since then he has clearly degenerated. He keeps an octoroon mistress, gets heavily into debt and then plans to steal his own treasure in order to preserve it from creditors. He involves our decent Texan friend, conjuring up family ties and knowing how important such things are to Southerners. Then, I surmise, he conspires with his housekeeper to fake his own death."
"And gives his treasure up to his cousin"? Why would he do that, Watson?"
"He's using Mackelsworth to transport it to America, where he plans to sell it."
"Because he doesn't want to be identified with it, or caught with it. Whereas Mr Mackelsworth is so manifestly innocent he is the perfect one to carry the Silver to Galveston. Well, Watson, it's not a bad theory and I suspect much of it is relevant."
"But you know something else?"
"Just a feeling, really. 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 decided to continue with the 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 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 something worthy of it, 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 an 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 pony-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 tranquillity of a day whose silence was broken only by the sound of bird-song and the occasional lowing of a cow.
We drove through the hamlet, which was served by a Norman church and a 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 farm cottages with thatched roofs, which seemed to have been there since the beginning of time and were thickly covered with roses and honeysuckle, a rather vulgar modern house whose owner had made a number of hideous additions in the popular taste of the day, a farmhouse and outbuildings of the warm, local stone which seemed to have grown from out of the landscape as naturally as the spinney and orchard behind it, and then we had arrived at the locked gates of Cogges Old Manor which bore an air of neglect. It seemed to me that it had been many years since the place had been properly cared for.
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. He 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, largely on artists and their work. No doubt some of his many modern canvasses would become valuable, at least to someone, but at present the artists he had patronized had yet to realize any material value. I have the impression that half the denizens of the Café Royal depended on the Mackelsworth millions until they finally 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 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 painting. Within the cool shade of the shop, full of every possible item a local person might require, from books to boiled sweets, we were greeted by the proprietress whose name over her doorway we had already noted.
Mrs Beck was a plump, pink woman in plain prints and a starched pinafore, with humorous eyes and a slight pursing of the mouth which suggested a conflict between a natural warmth and a slightly censorious temperament. Indeed, this is exactly what we discovered. She had known both Sir Geoffrey and Mrs Gallibasta. She had been on good terms with a number of the servants, she said, although one by one they had left and had not been replaced.
"There was talk, gentlemen, that the poor gentleman was next to destitute and couldn't afford new servants. But he was never behind with the wages and those who worked for him were loyal enough. Especially his housekeeper. She had an odd, distant sort of air, but there's no question she looked after him well and since his prospects were already known, she didn't seem to be hanging around waiting for his money."