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    Deep Waters
    Deep Waters
    Deep Waters
    Ebook366 pages5 hours

    Deep Waters

    By Sourcebooks

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    Mystery crime fiction written in the Golden Age of Murder

    From picturesque canals to the swirling currents of the ocean, a world of secrets lies buried beneath the surface of the water. Dubious vessels crawl along riverbeds, while the murky depths conceal more than one gruesome murder.

    The stories in this collection will dredge up delight in crime fiction fans, as watery graves claim unintended dwellers and disembodied whispers penetrate the sleeping quarters of a ship's captain. How might a thief plot their escape from a floating crime scene? And what is to follow when murder victims, lost to the ocean floor, inevitably resurface?

    This British Library anthology uncovers the best mysteries set below the surface, including stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, William Hope Hodgson, and R. Austin Freeman.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSourcebooks
    Release dateSep 3, 2019
    ISBN9781464211782
    Deep Waters

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    Reviews for Deep Waters

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    • 4/5
      Martin Edwards has produced a solid anthology of Golden Age style crime fiction short stores, the theme of which is aptly expressed by the sub-title, "Murder on the Waves". The stories are set in, on or around a body of water. They come from from a variety of authors, including some well-known crime writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Edmund Crispin. Lesser known authors are also represented, e.g. Andrew Garve and Phyllis Bennett; some readers like me may not have heard of them before this book.As in any anthology, some stories stand out more than others. I enjoyed Doyle's "The Adventure of the 'Gloria Scott'", the first Sherlock Holmes investigation. "The Thimble River Mystery" introduced me to the writing of Josephine Bell and I hope to soon enjoy some of her other crime fiction. Overall, the stories are entertaining. They vary in length too which makes it easy to dip into the book when reading time is short; "The Seasprite" is over before you know it, with an ending some may feel is too abrupt. Reading tastes differ of course so what one person likes may not suit others. One of the appeals of a Martin Edwards crime fiction anthology is the variety of the selected stories. With sixteen stories there is plenty from which to choose. Edwards's Introduction to the collection serves as a useful guide to making your selections.I received my advance reader's review copy of this eBook from Poisoned Pen Press, via Netgalley. The comments about it are my own.
    • 4/5
      The British Library Crime Classics series (published and marketed in the US by Poisoned Pen Press) is growing into a veritable library spanning the “Golden Age” of crime fiction. Since 2012, the series has presented to the public forgotten gems of the genre.

      Martin Edwards, who is himself an award-winning crime writer and Chairperson of the Crime Writers’ Association, deserves much of the credit for the success of this venture. Besides acting as series consultant, he has also edited several of its “themed anthologies”. I must admit that although I enjoy some crime fiction now and then, it is not the genre I typically read. I guess that for persons like me, these multi-author anthologies are an ideal entry point to the Crime Classics series. Edwards is an erudite and intelligent editor, who knows how to keep a reader interested through the variety of the chosen stories.

      “Deep Waters”, the thirteenth anthology to appear in the series, is an excellent example. It features a total of sixteen stories which all bear some relation to water. Edwards casts his net wide, and the watery settings to the chosen tales range from cruise liners sailing the oceans, to river boats, canals and even ponds and swimming pools. The stories are spread over a century or so, starting in 1893 with the very first piece in the Sherlock Holmes canon (Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Gloria Scott”) and ending with “Death by Water” by Michael Innes (the pen-name of Edinburgh-born academic John Innes Mackintosh Stewart), first published in the 1975 collection “The Appleby File”.

      Along the way, we meet examples of works by leading representatives of the “Golden Age” crime fiction, such as E.W. Hornung and Edmund Crispin, alongside lesser-known authors such as Kem Bennett. Crime fiction is often dismissed as being too formulaic – this selection shows that nothing can be further from the truth and that the best authors find ingenious ways of presenting, reinterpreting and in some cases subverting the expectations of the genre. The protagonists range from professional to amateur or even ‘accidental’ investigators and there’s an appearance by E.W. Hornung’s amiable rogue ‘Raffles’. There are also some excellent examples of crime sub-genres such as the ‘locked-room mystery’ (as in “Bullion”, by William Hope Hodgson, possibly better-known as the author of creepy ghost stories) and the “inverted mystery”, where the solution to the mystery is presented to the reader at the outset and the pleasure lies in discovering how the puzzle will be unravelled.

      Although the style of some of featured pieces feels rather dated, there is much enjoyment to be had from these watery tales. As a bonus, Martin Edwards provides a foreword to the anthology, as well as an introduction to each story, with biographical and bibliographical details.
    • 4/5
      A collection of sixteen stories all with a connection to water, published from the 1890s onwards. Displaying a vast range of different writing styles I did enjoy most of the stories, but the two I probably liked the most were Bullion and Seasprite.
      A NetGalley Book
    • 4/5
      This is a broad collection of mysteries with some connection to water -- high seas, coastal,ports rivers, even a swimming pool. It starts with a Sherlock Holmes story, The Gloria Scott, and goes down to the mid-twentieth century. Some of the stories are not my favorite type, as they are done from the murderer's point of view and/or are too grim, but there is one perfect eucatastrophe, as Tolkien would call it, in which, as the narrator says at the start, a difference of a few minutes in time prevented a murder and produced a perfectly happy ending.
    • 4/5
      Sixteen short stories all relating to water,be it rivers,seasides,estuaries, pools and so on. And ranging in style from classic murder mysteries to tales of the unexpected. Some are good,very good indeed,and some do not quite enchant me so much.But one of the great advantages and delights of these anthologies is the fact that you are introduced to different writers(some famous like Arthur Conan Doyle,C.S.Forester,Michael Innes and some now long forgotten) and their different approach to the "murder mystery". And notwithstanding the fact that some were written more than a century ago,they are still highly readable and are still a wonderfull source of bookish pleasure.

    Book preview

    Deep Waters - Sourcebooks

    Introduction and Notes © 2019 by Martin Edwards

    ‘The Turn of the Tide’ by C. S. Forester reprinted by permission of Cassette Productions Limited on behalf of the Estate of C. S. Forester.

    ‘A Question of Timing’ by Phyllis Bentley reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop on behalf of the Estate of Phyllis Bentley.

    ‘The Thimble River Mystery’ by Josephine Bell, reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Ltd, London on behalf of the Beneficiaries of the Estate of Josephine Bell. Copyright © Josephine Bell, 1950.

    ‘Man Overboard’ by Edmund Crispin reprinted by permission of Rights Limited on behalf of the Estate of Edmund Crispin.

    ‘The Queer Fish’ by Kem Bennett reproduced by permission of the Estate of Kem Bennett.

    ‘Seasprite’ [renamed for this anthology] reproduced by permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of the Beneficiaries of the Estate of Andrew Garve. Copyright © Andrew Garve 1963.

    ‘Death by Water’ from The Appleby File by Michael Innes reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop on behalf of the Estate of Michael Innes.

    Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be pleased to be notified of any corrections to be incorporated in reprints or future editions.

    Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks

    Cover image © NRM/Pictorial Collection/Science & Society Picture Library

    Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

    The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

    Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the British Library

    P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

    (630) 961-3900

    sourcebooks.com

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

    Contents

    Front Cover

    Title Page

    Copyright

    Introduction

    The Adventure of the ‘Gloria Scott’

    The Eight-Mile Lock

    The Gift of the Emperor

    Bullion!

    The Echo of a Mutiny

    The Pool of Secrets

    Four Friends and Death

    The Turn of the Tide

    The Swimming Pool

    A Question of Timing

    The Thimble River Mystery

    Man Overboard

    The Queer Fish

    The Man Who Was Drowned

    Seasprite

    Death by Water

    Back Cover

    Introduction

    Welcome to an anthology which plumbs the murky depths of murder and mystery. Readers are invited to dip into a collection of sixteen crime stories which are connected, in one way or another, with water. The contributors range from the legendary Arthur Conan Doyle, through once-famous names such as E. W. Hornung and R. Austin Freeman, and Golden Age doyens Michael Innes and Edmund Crispin, to those relatively unknown figures, James Pattinson (not to be confused with the American bestseller James Patterson) and Kem Bennett.

    Deep Waters is the thirteenth themed anthology to appear in the British Library’s Crime Classics series; the books aim to illustrate the range of writing in the genre and the varied and often ingenious ways in which different authors tackle a particular subject or type of story. Here we have crime on the high seas, naturally, but there are also mysterious goings-on associated with a river, a canal, even the humble swimming pool.

    The first victim to be fished from a watery grave in a detective story was, to the best of my knowledge, Marie Roget in 1842. Her corpse was found in the River Seine in ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’, the second of three stories to feature that brilliant sleuth, Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin. Edgar Allan Poe based the story on a real life tragedy concerning the murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers, known as ‘the beautiful cigar girl’ whose remains were found in the Hudson River. The case remains officially unsolved, but Poe’s tale pioneered ‘armchair detection’ as well as the technique of basing a work of detective fiction on an actual crime.

    Since then, crime writers across the world have employed an infinite variety of approaches in producing mysteries with a water-related setting. British authors have been responsible for many notable examples, in novels as well as in short stories. Is it because the British are an island race that they have shown a particular enthusiasm for writing about crime on the ocean wave, as well as closer to home? Whatever the answer, several of the authors featured in this collection had a genuine passion for sailing and the sea. Conan Doyle and C. S. Forester are well-known examples from the past; others include two writers who lived into the twenty-first century, James Pattinson and Andrew Garve.

    Mystery writers have long made effective use of a maritime background for a crime scene. Take cruising, for instance. This was once exclusively a pastime of the rich, and stories set on cruises enabled readers to experience vicariously the glamour of shipboard life and exotic foreign destinations while puzzling over a murder mystery. One of the acknowledged masterpieces of Golden Age fiction is Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, in which Hercule Poirot solves the murder of wealthy Linnet Doyle. The novel appeared in 1937; four years earlier, Christie had published a short story with the same title, but featuring a different detective, Parker Pyne. Christie loved sailing, and in 1922 had embarked on a ten-month voyage around the world as part of a trade mission promoting the British Empire Exhibition; her letters and photographs from this remarkable journey were brought together ninety years later in The Grand Tour.

    Freeman Wills Crofts, her colleague in the Detection Club, was another Golden Age author whose love of travelling on cruise ships is reflected in his fiction. In Found Floating (1937), members of a family which has fallen victim to a mysterious poisoning set off on a cruise to the Greek Islands in search of peace and quiet; unfortunately, one of their number goes missing, and is found in the Straits of Gibraltar. In recent times, novels as diverse as L. C. Tyler’s humorous Herring on the Nile (2011) and Ruth Ware’s bestselling The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016) have illustrated the continuing possibilities of travel by cruise ship for inventive crime writers.

    Inventive use of settings on or by the water is made in innumerable British crime stories. A. P. Herbert’s The House by the River (1920) is a splendid early example of the psychological crime story strengthened by its setting on the Thames, as is the much more recent Tideline (2012) by Penny Hancock. Cyril Hare’s Death is No Sportsman (1938) is a Golden Age angling mystery set on the river Didder, a fictionalised version of the river Test. In Colin Dexter’s The Wench is Dead (1989), Inspector Morse, laid up in hospital, investigates an old murder case on the Oxford canal; as with the Marie Roget story, the fiction draws heavily on the facts of a real life crime. C. P. Snow’s enjoyable detective novel Death under Sail (1932) concerns the intrusion of murder into a boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads. Flooding in Fenland makes for a dramatic climax to one of Dorothy L. Sayers’ finest novels, The Nine Tailors (1934), and my own love of the Lake District is reflected in books such as The Frozen Shroud (2013), set around Ullswater, while the valley of the river Lune provides an evocative setting for several novels by E. C. R. Lorac, starting with Fell Murder (1944). Several authors have made use of the drying-up of lakes or reservoirs as a means of revealing evidence of long-ago crimes; especially accomplished examples include Reginald Hill’s On Beulah Height (1998) and Peter Robinson’s In a Dry Season (1999). The title of Paula Hawkins’s follow-up to The Girl on the Train (2015) speaks for itself: Into the Water (2017) concerns an unexplained death in the mysterious Drowning Pool.

    In putting this book together, I’ve benefited from the help of a number of friends and fellow detective fiction enthusiasts. Jamie Sturgeon tracked down for me the obscure stories by Kem Bennett, Phyllis Bentley, and Andrew Garve, while Nigel Moss and John Cooper again provided invaluable advice and support. I would also like to express my continuing appreciation for the support of the team in the Publishing Department of the British Library: my thanks go to John Lee, Abbie Day, Maria Vassilopoulos, and Jonny Davidson, as well as to my former editor Rob Davies, who originally commissioned this book.

    Deep Waters offers an eclectic mix of stories. There are cases for classic detective characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Thorndyke; a diverse mix of literary styles, from the careless gusto of Gwyn Evans to the meticulously scientific R. Austin Freeman; and a scattering of long-forgotten mysteries, including one which was turned into a film. This collection has been a pleasure to put together, and I hope readers enjoy immersing themselves in it. Go on now: it’s time to take the plunge…

    Martin Edwards

    martinedwardsbooks.com

    The Adventure of the ‘Gloria Scott’

    Arthur Conan Doyle

    Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) loved the sea. At the age of twenty, after completing the third year of his medical studies, he signed on as ship’s surgeon on the Greenland whaler Hope. His duties as a doctor were undemanding, and he had the time to try his hand at whaling, becoming so proficient that the captain offered him handsome terms if he would act as doctor and harpoonist on the ship’s next voyage. Doyle declined, but after graduating he served as ship’s surgeon on board the SS Mayumba, travelling to the coast of West Africa. In later life, he remained an enthusiastic sailor, and even played cricket on the deck of the RMS Dunottar Castle.

    The sea plays a recurrent part in Doyle’s fiction. ‘The Adventure of the Gloria Scott,’ a striking example, was first published in The Strand Magazine in April 1893. This story recounts Sherlock Holmes’s very first case and, together with ‘The Musgrave Ritual,’ is the major source of information for Holmesians about the consulting detective’s early life. Victor Trevor, a central character in the story, is one of only three people in the canon whom Holmes acknowledged as his friend. They met at college, and Holmes’s failure to identify that college has fuelled endless speculation as to where he studied.

    ‘I have some papers here,’ said my friend, Sherlock Holmes, as we sat one winter’s night on either side of the fire, ‘which I really think, Watson, it would be worth your while to glance over. These are the documents in the extraordinary case of the Gloria Scott, and this is the message which struck Justice of the Peace Trevor dead with horror when he read it.

    He had picked from a drawer a little tarnished cylinder, and, undoing the tape, he handed me a short note scrawled upon a half-sheet of slate-grey paper.

    ‘The supply of game for London is going steadily up,’ it ran. ‘Head-keeper Hudson, we believe, has been now told to receive all orders for fly-paper, and for preservation of your hen pheasant’s life.’

    As I glanced up from reading this enigmatical message I saw Holmes chuckling at the expression upon my face.

    ‘You look a little bewildered,’ said he.

    ‘I cannot see how such a message as this could inspire horror. It seems to me to be rather grotesque than otherwise.

    ‘Very likely. Yet the fact remains that the reader, who was a fine, robust old man, was knocked clean down by it, as if it had been the butt-end of a pistol.’

    ‘You arouse my curiosity,’ said I. ‘But why did you say just now that there were very particular reasons why I should study this case?’

    ‘Because it was the first in which I was ever engaged.’

    I had often endeavoured to elicit from my companion what had first turned his mind in the direction of criminal research, but I had never caught him before in a communicative humour. Now he sat forward in his armchair and spread out the documents upon his knees. Then he lit his pipe and sat for some time smoking and turning them over.

    ‘You never heard me talk of Victor Trevor?’ he asked. ‘He was the only friend I made during the two years that I was at college. I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year. Bar fencing and boxing I had few athletic tastes, and then my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all. Trevor was the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull-terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.

    ‘It was a prosaic way of forming a friendship, but it was effective. I was laid by the heels for ten days, and Trevor used to come in to inquire after me. At first it was only a minute’s chat, but soon his visits lengthened, and before the end of the term we were close friends. He was a hearty, full-blooded fellow, full of spirit and energy, the very opposite to me in most respects; but we found we had some subjects in common, and it was a bond of union when I learned that he was as friendless as I. Finally, he invited me down to his father’s place at Donnithorpe, in Norfolk, and I accepted his hospitality for a month of the long vacation.

    ‘Old Trevor was evidently a man of some wealth and consideration, a J.P. and a landed proprietor. Donnithorpe is a little hamlet just to the north of Langmere, in the country of the Broads. The house was an old-fashioned, wide-spread, oak-beamed, brick building, with a fine lime-lined avenue leading up to it. There was excellent wild duck shooting in the fens, remarkably good fishing, a small but select library, taken over, as I understood, from a former occupant, and a tolerable cook, so that it would be a fastidious man who could not put in a pleasant month there.

    ‘Trevor senior was a widower, and my friend was his only son. There had been a daughter, I heard, but she had died of diphtheria while on a visit to Birmingham. The father interested me extremely. He was a man of little culture, but with a considerable amount of rude strength both physically and mentally. He knew hardly any books, but he had travelled far, had seen much of the world, and had remembered all that he had learned. In person he was a thick-set, burly man with a shock of grizzled hair, a brown, weather-beaten face, and blue eyes which were keen to the verge of fierceness. Yet he had a reputation for kindness and charity on the countryside and was noted for the leniency of his sentences from the bench.

    ‘One evening, shortly after my arrival, we were sitting over a glass of port after dinner when young Trevor began to talk about those habits of observation and inference which I had already formed into a system, although I had not yet appreciated the part which they were to play in my life. The old man evidently thought that his son was exaggerating in his description of one or two trivial feats which I had performed.

    ‘Come now, Mr Holmes, said he, laughing good-humouredly, I’m an excellent subject, if you can deduce anything from me.

    ‘I fear there is not very much, I answered. I might suggest that you have gone about in fear of some personal attack within the last twelve months.

    ‘The laugh faded from his lips, and he stared at me in great surprise.

    ‘Well, that’s true enough, said he. You know, Victor, turning to his son, when we broke up that poaching gang, they swore to knife us; and Sir Edward Hoby has actually been attacked. I’ve always been on my guard since then, though I have no idea how you know it.

    ‘You have a very handsome stick, I answered. By the inscription, I observed that you had not had it more than a year. But you have taken some pains to bore the head of it and pour melted lead into the hole, so as to make it a formidable weapon. I argued that you would not take such precautions unless you had some danger to fear.

    ‘Anything else? he asked, smiling.

    ‘You have boxed a good deal in your youth.

    ‘Right again. How did you know it? Is my nose knocked a little out of the straight?

    ‘No, said I. It is your ears. They have the peculiar flattening and thickening which marks the boxing man.

    ‘Anything else?

    ‘You have done a great deal of digging, by your callosities.

    ‘Made all my money at the gold-fields.

    ‘You have been in New Zealand.

    ‘Right again.

    ‘You have visited Japan.

    ‘Quite true.

    ‘And you have been most intimately associated with someone whose initials were J. A., and whom you afterwards were eager to entirely forget.

    ‘Mr Trevor stood slowly up, fixed his large blue eyes on me with a strange, wild stare, and then pitched forward on his face among the nutshells which strewed the cloth, in a dead faint.

    ‘You can imagine, Watson, how shocked both his son and I were. His attack did not last long, however, for when we undid his collar and sprinkled the water from one of the finger glasses over his face, he gave a gasp or two and sat up.

    ‘Ah, boys! said he, forcing a smile. I hope I haven’t frightened you. Strong as I look, there is a weak place in my heart, and it does not take much to knock me over. I don’t know how you manage this, Mr Holmes, but it seems to me that all the detectives of fact and of fancy would be children in your hands. That’s your line of life, sir, and you may take the word of a man who has seen something of the world.

    ‘And that recommendation, with the exaggerated estimate of my ability with which he prefaced it, was, if you will believe me, Watson, the very first thing which ever made me feel that a profession might be made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby. At the moment, however, I was too much concerned at the sudden illness of my host to think of anything else.

    ‘I hope that I have said nothing to pain you, said I.

    ‘Well, you certainly touched upon rather a tender point. Might I ask how you know and how much you know? He spoke now in a half-jesting fashion, but a look of terror still lurked at the back of his eyes.

    ‘It is simplicity itself, said I. When you bared your arm to draw that fish into the boat, I saw that ‘J. A.’ had been tattooed in the bend of the elbow. The letters were still legible, but it was perfectly clear from their blurred appearance, and from the staining of the skin round them, that efforts had been made to obliterate them. It was obvious, then, that those initials had once been very familiar to you, and that you had afterwards wished to forget them.

    ‘What an eye you have! he cried, with a sigh of relief. It is just as you say. But we won’t talk of it. Of all ghosts the ghosts of our old loves are the worst. Come into the billiard-room and have a quiet cigar.

    ‘From that day, amid all his cordiality, there was always a touch of suspicion in Mr Trevor’s manner towards me. Even his son remarked it. You’ve given the governor such a turn, said he, that he’ll never be sure again of what you know and what you don’t know. He did not mean to show it, I am sure, but it was so strongly in his mind that it peeped out at every action. At last I became so convinced that I was causing him uneasiness that I drew my visit to a close. On the very day, however, before I left, an incident occurred which proved in the sequel to be of importance.

    ‘We were sitting out upon the lawn on garden chairs, the three of us, basking in the sun and admiring the view across the Broads, when the maid came out to say that there was a man at the door who wanted to see Mr Trevor.

    ‘What is his name? asked my host.

    ‘He would not give any.

    ‘What does he want, then?

    ‘He says that you know him, and that he only wants a moment’s conversation.

    ‘Show him round here. An instant afterwards there appeared a little weazened fellow, with a cringing manner and a shambling style of walking. He wore an open jacket, with a splotch of tar on the sleeve, a red and black check shirt, dungaree trousers, and heavy boots badly worn. His face was thin and brown and crafty, with a perpetual smile upon it, which showed an irregular line of yellow teeth, and his crinkled hands were half closed in a way that is distinctive of sailors. As he came slouching across the lawn I heard Mr Trevor make a sort of hiccoughing noise in his throat, and, jumping out of his chair, he ran into the house. He was back in a moment, and I smelt a strong reek of brandy as he passed me.

    ‘Well, my man, said he, what can I do for you?

    ‘The sailor stood looking at him with puckered eyes, and with the same loose-lipped smile upon his face.

    ‘You don’t know me? he asked.

    ‘Why, dear me, it is surely Hudson! said Mr Trevor, in a tone of surprise.

    ‘Hudson it is, sir, said the seaman. Why, it’s thirty year and more since I saw you last. Here you are in your house, and me still picking my salt meat out of the harness cask.

    ‘Tut, you will find that I have not forgotten old times, cried Mr Trevor, and, walking towards the sailor, he said something in a low voice. Go into the kitchen, he continued out loud, and you will get food and drink. I have no doubt that I shall find you a situation.

    ‘Thank you, sir, said the seaman, touching his forelock. I’m just off a two-yearer in an eight-knot tramp, short handed at that, and I wants a rest. I thought I’d get it either with Mr Beddoes or with you.

    ‘Ah! cried Mr Trevor, you know where Mr Beddoes is?

    ‘Bless you, sir, I know where all my old friends are, said the fellow, with a sinister smile, and slouched off after the maid to the kitchen. Mr Trevor mumbled something to us about having been shipmates with the man when he was going back to the diggings, and then, leaving us on the lawn, he went indoors. An hour later, when we entered the house we found him stretched dead drunk upon the dining-room sofa. The whole incident left a most ugly impression upon my mind, and I was not sorry next day to leave Donnithorpe behind me, for I felt that my presence must be a source of embarrassment to my friend.

    ‘All this occurred during the first month of the long vacation. I went up to my London rooms, where I spent seven weeks working out a few experiments in organic chemistry. One day, however, when the autumn was far advanced and the vacation drawing to a close, I received a telegram from my friend imploring me to return to Donnithorpe, and saying that he was in great need of my advice and assistance. Of course I dropped everything and set out for the north once more.

    ‘He met me with the dog-cart at the station, and I saw at a glance that the last two months had been very trying ones for him. He had grown thin and careworn, and had lost the loud, cheery manner for which he had been remarkable.

    ‘The governor is dying, were the first words he said.

    ‘Impossible! I cried. What is the matter?

    ‘Apoplexy. Nervous shock. He’s been on the verge all day. I doubt if we shall find him alive.

    ‘I was, as you may think, Watson, horrified at this unexpected news.

    ‘What has caused it? I said.

    ‘Ah, that is the point. Jump in, and we can talk it over while we drive. You remember that fellow who came upon the evening before you left us?

    ‘Perfectly.

    ‘Do you know who it was that we let into the house that day?

    ‘I have no idea.

    ‘It was the Devil, Holmes! he cried.

    ‘I stared at him in astonishment.

    ‘Yes; it was the Devil himself. We have not had a peaceful hour since—not one. The governor has never held up his head from that evening, and now the life has been crushed out of him, and his heart broken, all through this accursed Hudson.

    ‘What power had he, then?

    ‘Ah, that is what I would give so much to know. The kindly, charitable, good old governor! How could he have fallen into the clutches of such a ruffian? But I am so glad that you have come, Holmes. I trust very much to your judgment and discretion, and I know that you will advise me for the best.

    ‘We were dashing along the smooth, white country road, with the long stretch of Broads in front of us glimmering in the red light of the setting sun. From a grove upon our left I could already see the high chimneys and the flagstaff which marked the squire’s dwelling.

    ‘My father made the fellow gardener, said my companion, "and then, as that did not satisfy him, he was promoted to be butler. The house seemed to be at his mercy, and he wandered about and did what he chose in it. The maids complained of his drunken habits and his vile language. The dad raised their wages all round to recompense them for the annoyance. The fellow would take the boat and my father’s best gun and treat himself to little shooting parties. And all this with such a sneering, leering, insolent face, that I would have knocked him down twenty times over if he had been a man of my own age. I tell you, Holmes, I have had to keep a tight hold upon myself all this time, and now I am asking myself whether, if I had let myself go a little more, I might not have been a wiser man.

    ‘"Well, matters went from bad to worse with us, and this animal, Hudson, became more and more intrusive, until at last, on his making some insolent reply to my father in my presence one day, I took him by the shoulder and turned him out of the room. He slunk away with a livid face, and two venomous eyes which uttered more threats than his tongue could do. I don’t know what passed between the poor dad and him after that, but the dad came to me next day and asked me whether I would mind apologising to Hudson. I refused, as you can imagine, and asked my father how he could allow such a wretch to take such liberties with himself and his household.

    ‘Ah, my boy, said he, it is all very well to talk, but you don’t know how I am placed. But you shall know, Victor. I’ll see that you shall know, come what may! You wouldn’t believe harm of your poor old father, would you, lad? He was very much moved, and shut himself up in the study all day, where I could see through the window that he was writing busily.

    ‘"That evening there came what seemed to be a grand release, for Hudson told us that he was going to leave us. He walked into the dining-room as we sat after dinner and announced his intention in the thick voice of a half-drunken man.

    ‘I’ve had enough of Norfolk, said he, I’ll run down to Mr Beddoes, in Hampshire. He’ll be as glad to see me as you were, I dare say.

    ‘You’re not going away in an unkind spirit, Hudson, I hope? said my father, with a tameness which made my blood boil.

    ‘I’ve not had my ’pology, said he sulkily, glancing in my direction.

    ‘Victor, you will acknowledge that you have used this worthy fellow rather roughly? said the dad, turning to me.

    ‘On the contrary, I think that we have both shown extraordinary patience towards him, I answered.

    ‘Oh, you do, do you? he snarled. Very good, mate. We’ll see about that! He slouched out of the room, and half an hour afterwards left the house, leaving my father in a state of pitiable nervousness. Night after night I heard him pacing his room, and it was just as he was recovering his confidence that the blow did at last fall.

    ‘And how? I asked eagerly.

    ‘"In a most extraordinary fashion. A letter arrived for my father yesterday evening, bearing the Fordingbridge postmark. My father read it, clapped both his hands to his head, and began running round the room in little circles like a man who has been driven out of his senses. When I at last drew him down on to the sofa, his mouth

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