The Mammoth Book of the New Chronicles of Sherlock Holmes

The Adventure of the XYZ Club

‘It is a singular fact,’ said Sherlock Holmes to me one morning, as we sat either side of the fire after breakfast, ‘that although mankind advances in the sphere of material accomplishments with almost every day that passes, his progress in the moral sphere is somewhat less marked.’

‘At least we are less likely nowadays to be attacked in the street by someone wielding a battle-axe,’ I responded in some amusement.

‘No doubt,’ said my friend, ‘but I often suspect that that is only because of the increased likelihood of apprehension and punishment. If it were not for the forces of law and order, we should probably have battle-axe-wielding villains bursting in upon us two or three times a week. Our modern life may seem one of civility and relative peace, but it often strikes me as but a fragile shell, beneath which the urge to evil-doing is as strong as ever.’

‘But, as you yourself have frequently observed, Holmes, human nature is much the same from one age to another and there is nothing any of us can do about that. Besides, the material advancement to which you refer, while it would no doubt have seemed like magic to our distant ancestors, often consists, when one examines it closely, of simply putting substance “A” on top of substance “B”, rather than the other way about, and discovering to our very great surprise that the result is more effective or agreeable in some way.’

Holmes chuckled. ‘That is certainly true,’ said he. ‘Nothing changes in its essential nature. We simply arrange things in different patterns and produce different results. These patterns are then recorded and the details passed on to our successors. No one trained in a scientific discipline can fail to see the worth of such records. On moral questions, however, there is no such agreement.’

‘You are too pessimistic,’ I returned. ‘The vast majority of our fellow citizens would, I am sure, agree upon most moral questions and that in itself is progress. The fact that your profession brings you into frequent contact with those who do not share the moral beliefs of the majority has surely influenced your opinion adversely.’

‘Perhaps you are right, Watson, and I am becoming a little cynical. Still, the true cynics are those – however small their number – who seek to take advantage of the moral behaviour of the majority to achieve their own selfish and immoral ends.’

It was a bright Saturday in the early spring of 1886, the sort of day that can feel as warm as summer when the sun is out, and as cold as winter when it is hidden by clouds. Our discussion was interrupted by a sharp peal at the front-door bell, and a moment later a young man in a blazer with a bright striped muffler wrapped round his neck was shown into the room, and introduced himself as Julian Ashby.

‘Excuse my bursting in upon you without prior warning,’ said he in a breathless voice. ‘You must think me very rude, but I have little time. My train only arrived about eight minutes ago, and I have run like the wind to get here!’

‘Not at all,’ said Holmes in an affable tone, pulling forward a chair for the young man. ‘Pray let us know how we can be of assistance. You have, I perceive, just arrived from somewhere up the Thames valley, but not, I think, from Oxford on this occasion, although you are of course an undergraduate there, where you spend a fair amount of time on the water. How are the daffodils by the river this year?’

Our visitor looked surprised. ‘You appear to know half of what I was going to tell you before I have even opened my mouth,’ said he.

‘It is not so amazing,’ said Holmes. ‘The only railway station from which you could reach here in less than ten minutes, however wind-like your progress, is the Great Western terminus at Paddington. All the trains arriving at Paddington have come down the Thames valley, but those from Oxford are run to a fairly regular timetable and do not reach London at the time your train must have arrived, hence you have come from elsewhere. Your blazer and muffler give you the cut of an undergraduate and that you spend some time on the river is suggested by the little enamel badge on your lapel, which displays the crossed oars of a college rowing club.’

‘Oh, I see!’ said Ashby. ‘How very observant of you! Although I suppose it is all fairly obvious!’

‘Everything is obvious when someone has explained it to you,’ returned Holmes with some asperity. ‘But, come! What has brought you to consult us on this bright Saturday morning?’

‘I am, as you say, a member of the rowing club at my college,’ replied Ashby after a moment. ‘The college is All Saints and the rowing club is Pegasus. I am also a member of several other clubs and societies. There are, of course, innumerable societies at Oxford, catering for every possible interest. One of these at All Saints is a rather stuffy organisation, the Independent Language Society, the members of which seem to place an inordinate amount of emphasis on punctuation and the minutiae of grammar, and which has thus come to be known to outsiders, somewhat disparagingly, as “The ABC Club”. Inspired by that, some of my fellow undergraduates at All Saints proposed setting up a new society, devoid of all pretensions to learning and scholarship, and devoted only to trivial enjoyment, to be known as “The XYZ Club”. I joined last autumn, largely because the other fellows on my stair did. Altogether there were about a dozen of us, and at first it was very democratic, but it has since come to be dominated by one particular member.’

‘Who is that?’

‘Charles Churchfield. His family are very wealthy, I understand.’

‘The bankers?’

‘Yes, that is it. As far as I can make out, his whole life has been one of hedonistic pleasure, so why he should wish to institutionalise it by creating the XYZ Club, I’m sure I don’t know. It was because of his domination of the group, I think, that several members left. There are now just five of us: Churchfield, myself, Stavros Xantopoulos, Archibald Loxton and Philip Warnock. I, too, had had enough of it and intended to resign some time ago, but was dissuaded from doing so by some of the others. The trouble is that although I certainly have no objections to enjoying myself, Churchfield’s idea of pleasure strikes me as fairly unpleasant at the best of times and downright malicious at others. Sometimes it just seems like old-fashioned debauchery, and at other times he seems to derive his greatest pleasure from being offensive to perfectly ordinary and unexceptionable people, and going out of his way to humiliate those less wealthy or less well-connected than himself. Just recently we had an elaborate supper at a restaurant. By the end of the evening, Churchfield had managed to insult all the waiters, break several dishes, two wine bottles and a chair, and then complained to the manager about the service we had received. The others were drunk and did not care, but I felt so ashamed I did not know where to look.’

‘I think we understand the situation,’ said Holmes. ‘But what has brought you to consult us on this matter? My only advice would be for you to relinquish all connection with this unsavoury group of people and their immature and unpleasant activities.’

‘I quite agree,’ I said. ‘Do not let them persuade you to do anything you do not wish to do. People of that sort always need weak cronies about them, without whom they are nothing. Plough your own furrow, not someone else’s, and you will gain the respect of all decent-minded people, and, more importantly, you will retain your own self-respect.’

‘Yes, of course, you are right,’ said our visitor. ‘I had already practically decided to do as you suggest. But the difficulty is that I am rather stuck with them for the next day or two and I fear there is something odd afoot, something that I don’t understand.’

‘Pray, let us have the details,’ said Holmes.

‘It was decided that we would spend the end of this week at Churchfield’s family home, Challington House, which we have visited once before and which lies beside the Thames, not far from Bourne End. Don’t ask me how this was decided, or by whom, as I wasn’t present when the others were discussing it. The house is apparently closed up at the moment, as Churchfield’s family are travelling on the Continent, and Churchfield said we could have an entertaining time there, ‘‘untrammelled by social conventions and artificial restrictions’’ as he put it. The others all travelled down there yesterday afternoon, but I pleaded a prior engagement of having to visit a cousin of mine at Maidenhead and said I would join them later. In fact, this ‘‘engagement’’ was not such a definite one as I pretended. It was true enough that I had been meaning to visit my cousin for some time, but my main reason for absenting myself from Churchfield’s house for a few hours was to avoid the excessive drinking and gambling that I knew would be a prominent feature of Friday afternoon.

‘I paid a pleasant visit to my cousin and then, the day being a breezy one, had an idea. He is a keen rower and sailor, as I am, and has a small sailing dinghy in which we have passed many a pleasant hour on the river. I asked if I might borrow the dinghy, my idea being that I would sail it upriver and arrive at Churchfield’s house by water. Just before I was about to set off, however, there was a heavy and prolonged shower of rain which set me back about an hour, and by the time I left the day had become grey and overcast.

‘I had been making reasonable progress for some time when there came another heavy rain shower and I was drenched. I didn’t mind that too much, but as the rain cleared, the wind dropped and I found myself becalmed in the middle of the river. I unshipped the oars and rowed for a while, but the current was running strongly against me and my progress was very slow. Presently the wind got up again, but it was very uneven and gusting from almost every quarter but the south, which, of course, is where I would have liked it to be. I was thus obliged to tack back and forth across the stream, and progress was again very slow. All this time, the light was fading. However bright the day may be at this time of the year, it never lasts very long. Soon the light had gone altogether, when I was still some distance from Churchfield’s boathouse.

‘The moon was up, which was a help, but whenever it went behind a cloud, I couldn’t see a thing. Eventually, one brief burst of moonlight revealed that I was at last approaching the boathouse. It was fortunate that I knew where to find it, as it appeared now as little more than a vague, grey shape. I dropped the sail and took up the oars again. Next moment I ran slap-bang into a very large houseboat which was riding at anchor in midstream with no lights displayed. The collision almost threw me into the water and I very nearly lost my oars in the darkness. At least I was only rowing; had I been sailing I think the dinghy would probably have capsized. I was a bit shaken up by this, but recovered and rowed my way into the boathouse without further mishap. Of course, it was pitch black in there, and I couldn’t see a thing, but I knew there was a wooden walkway by the side wall and I felt my way along this with my hands, until, with a jolt, the dinghy hit something. I leaned over the prow and my hands touched what was clearly another small skiff. Returning my hands to the footway at the side, I located a mooring-ring, tied the boat up, picked up my bag and stepped out.

‘It was at that point that I felt I could do with a spot of light. I didn’t want to trip over something and break my neck, or fall into the water. I took out a box of matches and struck one. For half a second I was dazzled by the sudden light, then, with a shock so unexpected and alarming that I can scarcely describe it, I saw that there was someone else there in the boathouse, someone who was standing perfectly still and watching me. It was the face of a young lady, quite beautiful, staring rigidly at me in perfect silence. I think I cried out in surprise and took a step backwards. The match burnt my finger and I tossed it away as it went out. Then – I don’t quite know what happened – I think I struck my head on something hard behind me and can remember no more.

‘When I came to, I was lying on the lawn in the dark, with Churchfield leaning over me, holding a lantern, a look of concern on his face.

‘“Thank goodness!” said he as I stirred. “I thought you were never going to wake up!”

‘He turned and called out, and the others – Loxton, Xantopoulos and Warnock – appeared out of the darkness from somewhere behind him. They asked me what had happened to me and I said I didn’t know. ‘‘I must have banged my head on something,’’ I said.

‘“I was in the garden,” said Churchfield as he helped me to my feet, “when I heard a noise – a cry, I think – from the boathouse. I went in to have a look and found you laid out, unconscious, on the walkway. I carried you out here and went to tell the others. What on earth were you doing in there?”

‘“I came by sailing-boat,” I replied, gingerly feeling the back of my head, which was throbbing with pain.

‘“Yes, I could see that,” said Churchfield. “Your boat is in there.”

‘“Wait a moment,” I interrupted as the recent events came back to me. “There was someone else in there.”

‘“What!” cried Churchfield. “Burglars?”

‘I shook my head. “I don’t know who it was. I saw a girl – a young lady, I mean. She was just staring at me.”

‘Churchfield looked puzzled. “Did she say anything? No? Oh, wait a minute!” he cried all at once. “I think I know what it is.”

‘He led the way to the boathouse, and pushed open the back door. “My sister, Lavinia, had her portrait painted a few months ago, but when she saw the result, she hated it. She refused to have it in the house, and it ended up down here. That must be what you saw, Ashby.”

‘He held his lantern up to show me. Leaning against the wall on a broad work-bench at the back of the boathouse was a life-sized portrait of a handsome young lady. “There,” said he. “Isn’t that the face you saw?”

‘I frowned, trying to remember. “I suppose it must be,” I said, “although it doesn’t seem exactly the same.”

‘“But you saw it for only a moment,” said Churchfield. “It must be the same. I don’t blame you for being startled, Ashby. It’s enough to unnerve anyone, having that face staring at you out of the darkness!”

‘“Oh, I don’t know,” said Loxton, laughing. “I can think of worse faces to see! Come along, Ashby! Let’s get back to the house and I’ll mix you a restorative drink!”

‘Later that evening, when the others were playing cards, I went to get myself some bread and cheese from the kitchen, but mistakenly went through the wrong doorway and found myself in what appeared to be a dining-room. As I glanced about, holding up a lamp, my eye was drawn to a blank space on the wall at one end of the room. A large rectangular shape on the wallpaper was a slightly lighter shade than the rest of the wall, as if a picture that had hung there for some considerable time had recently been removed. I could not help wondering if the picture in question was the portrait of Churchfield’s sister, Lavinia.

‘I used my sore head as an excuse to retire early and, as I lay in bed, reconsidered the events of the evening. I had a strong suspicion that the picture that was now in the boathouse had only been placed there that evening, while I lay unconscious. There was something about the girl’s hair in the picture and the angle of her gaze that were not quite as I remembered them. Of course, I might have been mistaken, but I did not think I was. What it might mean, though, I could not imagine.

‘This morning I rose earlier than the others and told Churchfield, who was still in bed, that I had previously promised to visit my great-aunt today. She lives in Bayswater, just a stone’s throw from Paddington Station.

‘“Are you not coming with us to poke fun at the hopeless local football team?” asked Churchfield in a tone of disappointment. “You are becoming something of a part-time member of the XYZ Club, Ashby!”

‘I apologised for not telling him of my plans earlier, but insisted that I could not let my aged great-aunt down. “Don’t worry, Churchfield,” I said. “I shall be back this afternoon without fail.”

‘“If you get back before four,” he said, “don’t come here, but go directly to the football field. We’ll all be there.” With that, he closed his eyes, as if to go back to sleep. As I was leaving his bedroom, however, I happened to glance back and saw that his eyes were open and he was watching me. He closed his eyes quickly as I turned, but he had not been quite quick enough. This little incident left me with an unpleasant feeling, as I hurried off to the railway station.’

‘It is an entertaining story,’ said Holmes, when we had sat for some time in silence, ‘but I am not clear what it is you wish us to do.’

‘Possibly, nothing,’ replied Ashby. ‘It may be that my misgivings are groundless, and that today and tomorrow will pass off with nothing untoward occurring. But I cannot shake off the feeling that something odd is afoot, something of which I know nothing, and if so it will be a great support to me to know that I have related the matter to you. Would you be able to come, if I were to send for you?’

‘Certainly, if you considered the circumstances warranted our presence. Is there anything else you can think of that has increased your misgivings?’

‘It is difficult to put my finger on anything definite, but there seems something at Challington House that is not quite right. More than once yesterday evening, I had the impression that one or more of the others was watching me and, in the case of Churchfield, it was always with a calculating expression in his eyes.’

‘Very well,’ said Holmes, taking out his note-book. ‘If you could give me a little more detail about your fellow-members of the XYZ Club, it would be helpful.’

‘There’s not much I can tell you, I’m afraid. These men are friends of mine in college, but I don’t know a great deal about them outside of that. Loxton’s family come from Warwickshire, their claim to fame being that some forebear invented the Loxton Steam Regulator, which, I understand, had a great vogue in the early days of steam locomotion, although it has now been superseded. Xantopoulos is from Greece, as you would guess from his name, where his father apparently owns a great number of olive-groves and fishing-boats. Warnock’s father is vicar of some rural parish near Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. Churchfield, as I mentioned earlier, is from the banking family of that name. Churchfield’s Bank is, I believe, one of the very oldest in the City of London.’

‘Thank you,’ said Holmes. ‘That will do for the moment. I shall see if I can discover anything today which might be relevant, but I shall do nothing more unless I hear from you. If you do wish us to come, a telegram any hour of the day or night will bring us. If the situation meets your worst fears, do not attempt to explain it in your telegram. Simply use a code-word.’

Ashby nodded. ‘I understand. In that case I shall use the name of my rowing-club – “Pegasus” – but hope I shall not have to do so. Now I shall leave the matter in your hands, Mr Holmes, and pay my belated respects to Great-Aunt Caroline!’

Holmes went out shortly after Ashby had left us and did not return until late in the afternoon. He had, I knew, numerous sources of information scattered about London and I looked forward to hearing the results of his enquiries. When he returned, however, he was unforthcoming. I asked him if he had learnt anything of significance, but he shook his head.

‘There are several possibilities,’ he replied, and no more than that would he say.

As I retired to my bed that night, I wondered when – if ever – we should hear from Julian Ashby again. I could not have imagined then quite how soon it would be.

I was awakened abruptly the following morning to find Holmes drawing back my bedroom curtains.

‘What is it?’ I asked in momentary confusion. ‘What is the time?’

‘Just before eight. We have had a message from young Ashby.’ He held up a telegram. ‘It’s “Pegasus”, Watson. Mrs Hudson was woken up earlier by the messenger and was none too pleased, but her temper is now soothed and she is making us a pot of coffee. You will have to hurry, though, old fellow. The train to Bourne End leaves Paddington at eight-forty.’

The streets were still almost deserted and very quiet when we left the house, a lone church bell ringing somewhere in the distance. At Paddington station, however, which we reached with just a few minutes to spare, there was already quite a crowd, and a general air of bustle. We had bought our tickets and were looking for our train when I observed a familiar figure hurrying on to the platform ahead of us.

‘Surely that is Inspector Lestrade,’ I said.

‘It certainly is,’ said Holmes. ‘Lestrade!’ he called, and the policeman turned in surprise.

‘Why, Mr Holmes and Dr Watson!’ he said. ‘I can’t stop to talk, I’m afraid. My train leaves in less than a minute.’

‘Where are you bound?’ asked Holmes.

‘Somewhere called Bourne End,’ replied Lestrade, resuming his hurried progress along the platform. ‘And you?’

‘Bourne End,’ said Holmes. ‘We can travel down together and see if our business bears any relation to yours. Here is a suitable compartment!’

In a moment we had climbed aboard. A few seconds later the guard blew his whistle and, with a hiss of steam, the train pulled slowly out of the station.

‘Now,’ said Holmes, as we picked up speed and were rattling along through the western suburbs, ‘this train doesn’t stop until Maidenhead, so we have plenty of time in which to compare notes.’ He gave Lestrade a sketch of what Julian Ashby had told us the previous day. ‘Are your inquiries related to any of that?’ he asked the policeman as he finished.

‘I’m not sure if they are or not,’ replied Lestrade with a frown. ‘What you’ve told me all seems fairly inconsequential, if I may say so. My own business is considerably more substantial. It’s a suspicious death,’ he continued, in answer to Holmes’s query, ‘probably murder.’

‘Murder?’

Lestrade nodded. ‘I don’t know the name of the victim, but it’s evidently not your client if he’s been able to send you a telegram. I was on early duty at Scotland Yard this morning when a message came through from the Buckinghamshire Constabulary, asking us to send a detective inspector as soon as possible to this Bourne End place. Apparently there’s been a bad fire there, but whether that’s connected to the murder or not, I have no idea. And that, I’m afraid, is all I know.’

I could see that Holmes was disappointed at this lack of information, but as there was nothing we could do about it, the conversation passed on to other subjects. The day had started brightly, but by the time we reached Maidenhead, heavy clouds were rolling in from the south-west and, as we alighted at our destination, the sky was overcast and grey. We were met outside the station by a uniformed police officer who introduced himself as Inspector Welch. Lestrade explained the reason for our presence, and Welch nodded his head.

‘Yes,’ said he. ‘It’s Challington House where it’s all happened. There were five young men staying there alone. They had been drinking, and we think that one of them must have left a candle burning downstairs, for a fire broke out after they’d all retired to bed. By a stroke of good fortune, the local constable was passing on his beat at that time, saw smoke pouring out of a window and at once took charge of the situation. After making sure that everyone was out of the house, he summoned the fire-brigade, but by the time they got there the house was a raging inferno and they haven’t been able to save it. It’s little more than a burnt-out shell now.’

‘How does the suspicious death fit into all this?’ asked Lestrade.

‘It’s not clear,’ said Welch. ‘The facts of the matter are a bit muddled at the moment. I think it best if you hear an account of it from the young men themselves. They’re all in the Black Bull at present.’

He led the way along the road to a large old inn. As we entered, a group of young men sitting round a table turned to look, their features expressing tiredness and anxiety. One stood up as he saw us, whom I recognised as Julian Ashby.

‘Mr Holmes,’ he cried, coming forward to meet us. ‘Thank the Lord you have come! The past twelve hours have been like a nightmare!’

At Holmes’s request he introduced us to his companions, Warnock, Xantopoulos and Loxton.

‘And Churchfield?’ queried Holmes. ‘Is he not here?’

‘I very much fear that he may have perished in the blaze,’ replied Ashby in a distraught tone. ‘He was going to rouse the fire-brigade, but said that there was something he wanted to save from the house first and that was the last time I saw him. He never reached the fire-station, and the constable, who arrived only a few minutes after Churchfield had spoken to me, said he had seen no one on the road.’

Holmes nodded. ‘Perhaps you had best start at the beginning. Tell us, as briefly as you can, all that has happened since you left us yesterday morning. I have given Inspector Lestrade a sketch of what you told us then, and I am sure he is as keen as we are to know what has happened.’

‘After leaving your chambers,’ said Ashby, ‘I went straight to my great-aunt’s house and was there nearly two hours. I then caught the next train from Paddington and got back here in the middle of the afternoon. I went directly to the football field, as Churchfield had suggested, where my friends were watching the local team play. When that finished, we returned to the house, lit a fire and made something to eat. Our evening passed pleasantly enough, in drinking, eating, playing skittles and cards and so on. We were all so tired in the end that we were not particularly late in retiring and were all in bed before midnight.

‘I suppose I had been in bed about an hour, but had probably only been asleep for half an hour, when I was awakened by the sudden opening of the door. Churchfield was standing in the doorway fully dressed, with a candle in his hand.

‘“Ashby!” he cried. “Get up, man! Quickly! There’s a fire! Throw your clothes on and wake the others, then get out of the house! Quickly now!” he repeated. “I’m going for the fire-brigade, but first there’s something I must try to save!”

‘With that he was gone. I sprang from my bed, flung on my dressing-gown and slippers, and went to wake the others. I remembered that the door to Warnock’s room was opposite mine, but was not sure where anyone else was sleeping. It’s a very big house, with an enormous lot of bedrooms, some of them off odd branches of the upstairs corridor, and I really wasn’t familiar with it. I woke Warnock first and gave him the alarm, then, after looking into an empty room next to his, found Xantopoulos’s room and shook him awake. I looked into another empty room and then tried the door of the room next to mine. The door was locked, so I felt sure it was Loxton’s room, although why he should have bothered to lock it, I couldn’t imagine. I banged on the door several times, but got no answer.

‘“Loxton!” I called. “Loxton! Wake up, you idiot!” Again I banged on the door without eliciting any response.

‘“Break the door down,” called Warnock from his bedroom. “You’ll never wake him otherwise!”

‘I threw all my weight against the door, but it did no good. I then kicked violently at the lock and, on the third attempt, with a splintering of wood, the door burst open. I dashed into the room, shouting as I did so. I could feel heat rising from the bare wooden floor.

‘“Loxton!” I cried. “Loxton! Wake up!”

‘I had bent to the figure on the bed and started to shake him by the shoulder when there came a loud voice from behind me.

‘“What the devil is all this racket, Ashby? And why are you bellowing my name over and over?”

‘I turned in astonishment. Loxton was standing in the doorway. “What is all this?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

‘“But if you’re there,” I said, “who on earth is this?” I pulled back the bed-cover and stepped back in horror at what was revealed: an older man, his mouth agape, his sightless eyes staring at the wall. “This man is dead,” I cried.

‘“Who is it?” cried the others, crowding into the room.

‘“I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen him before. We’ve got to get him out of here. This floor is hot. The fire must be directly beneath it.”

‘I flung on my clothes in a trice, as did the others, and between us we carried the dead man out on to the lawn behind the house. Warnock took a look into a couple of the downstairs rooms and told us it was hopeless; the fire was blazing like a furnace. I told them that Churchfield had gone to rouse the fire-brigade, and as we were standing there on the lawn, wondering what on earth we should do, the local constable arrived in a great hurry and took charge of the situation. The rest I imagine you know.’

‘Has anyone identified the dead man yet?’ Holmes asked Inspector Welch, who shook his head. ‘Any sign of Churchfield – dead or alive?’

Again the policeman shook his head. ‘No one knows what it was that Churchfield wanted to get out of the house, but I think, as Mr Ashby says, that the poor devil may have been overcome by the smoke and heat. Once fires like that catch hold they can spread like lightning, and the constable says that it was already a raging inferno when he got here.’

Welch then suggested that Lestrade view the body of the dead man, which was at the police station, just a short walk away. Holmes went with them while I stayed with the young men in the Black Bull. They returned about five minutes later and I asked Holmes if he had learnt anything.

‘Death was undoubtedly caused by a severe blow to the back of the head, some time in the past twenty-four hours,’ said he, ‘but of course it’s impossible to say if the blow was the result of an accident or a deliberate attack. There’s nothing in his pockets which might serve to identify him, but I found a small name-tag just below the collar inside his shirt, which bears the name “T. Wilkinson”. There is also the return half of a ticket from Paddington to Bourne End in a pocket of his waistcoat. Inspector Lestrade has therefore sent a message to all London divisions, enquiring if anyone by the name of Wilkinson has been reported as missing there. And now,’ he continued, addressing the policemen, ‘I should like to examine the scene of this drama, at Challington House.’

‘You’ll not learn anything there,’ said Inspector Welch in a dismissive tone, ‘except how quickly a large house can be utterly destroyed by fire.’

‘Well, well. Let us not prejudge the matter,’ returned Holmes, as we left the inn, accompanied by young Ashby.

A walk of seven or eight minutes brought us to the gateway of Challington House. A broad drive swept up to the front door of what must have been a very large house, but was now just a blackened shell. Smoke still drifted up from somewhere within this ruin, but it appeared that the fire had all but burnt itself out.

‘You see?’ said Welch. ‘The house is completely destroyed. There is nothing to be seen here.’

‘It was not the house I wished to inspect,’ returned Holmes, leading the way along the side of the smouldering ruin and into the large rear gardens, which sloped down gently towards the river. There, after a swift glance round, he made his way down to the boathouse at the end of the garden, pushed open the door and we followed him inside. It was a gloomy, shaded building. Most of it was taken up with space for mooring boats, but there was a broad flagged area at the back, upon which ropes, spars and general clutter were heaped. Against the rear wall was a work-bench on which a painting of a young lady stood, as Ashby had described. Along the side-wall was a footway made of wooden boards which extended to the front of the building.

‘This, I take it, is your cousin’s boat,’ said Holmes to Ashby, indicating a small sailing-dinghy, moored to a ring on the footway. ‘When you arrived on Friday evening, there was, you said, another small boat here, but now there is not.’

‘Yes, that is strange,’ remarked Ashby. ‘Where can it have gone?’

Holmes did not reply, but walked to the very end of the footway and looked out on to the river. ‘You also mentioned that there was a very large houseboat anchored in midstream with which you collided in the dark. That, too, is no longer present. Do you know if it was here on Saturday morning?’

‘Yes, it was. I put my head in here briefly before setting off to catch the train to London, to make sure that my boat was tied up properly, and I remember noticing then that the houseboat was still there.’

‘That is as I suspected. You know something of boats?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you believe that such a vessel as the houseboat might be able to venture out on to the high seas?’

‘I cannot be certain, but I think it might well be possible. It would depend on what sort of keel the boat has, and how rough the sea was, of course.’

‘When you clambered from your boat on Friday evening, you must have been standing about here,’ Holmes continued, ‘but there is nothing hanging up here on which you might have struck your head. What I believe happened is this: they probably heard you collide with the houseboat and the sound of your oars in the water. One of them walked to the end of this footway, to see what was happening. You would have passed him in the dark and had no idea he was there, so that when you tied up your boat and climbed out, he would have been standing behind you. When you struck the match and saw the young woman over there, near the back wall, the person behind you struck you on the head with something. It was probably this!’ Holmes added, as he bent down and picked up a short length of wood which was lying on the footway, by the wall.

‘But who were these people?’ asked Ashby in puzzlement.

‘The Churchfields. Surely that is apparent.’

‘The Churchfields? But they are travelling on the Continent.’

‘I very much doubt that they were doing so before, but I believe that that is their aim now. Do you know if they have any property abroad?’

‘Yes. I believe they have a house in the south of France.’

‘Then that is where they are probably making for. Their intention is no doubt to cross the channel in the houseboat and enter the French canal system, getting as far south as they can that way and completing their journey by train if necessary.’

‘This is absurd!’ cried Inspector Welch. ‘You make it sound as if they are running away!’

‘That, I believe, is precisely what they are doing.’

‘But the Churchfield family is one of the most respected in the district, one of the pillars of South Buckinghamshire society. Sir Lionel Churchfield is a local Justice of the Peace, and has been spoken of as a future Lord Mayor of London!’

‘I cannot comment on the family’s reputation here or anywhere else,’ said Holmes, ‘but only on what I learn with my own eyes and ears.’

‘And what, precisely, have you learnt?’ asked Lestrade.

Holmes hesitated a moment. ‘Do any of you gentlemen have an account at Churchfield’s Bank?’ he asked at length. ‘No? That is fortunate. What I am going to tell you is in the very strictest confidence. You must not breathe a word of it until these people have been apprehended. I have one or two very good sources of information in the City of London, and yesterday, after Mr Ashby had consulted me, I made some very detailed enquiries. It is common knowledge there that Churchfield’s bank has been in difficulty in recent months over some very large loans they made last year in Brazil and Uruguay. They themselves have stated that there is no problem and have taken out loans from other financial institutions to cover any possible defaults. My source informs me, however, that these latter loans are all specifically short-term and the time for their repayment or renewal is this coming week, which is also the time that Churchfield’s are due to announce their annual financial results. What will happen then, no one knows, but there are strong rumours circulating in the City that the bank will not be able to honour these loans and may collapse altogether. This, I believe, is the background to the little drama that has been played out here in the past two days.’

‘I do not understand,’ said Inspector Welch in a tone of perplexity. ‘What can these financial rumours have to do with the fire here, or the dead man?’

‘They must be related,’ returned Holmes with emphasis. ‘Mr Ashby saw Churchfield’s sister in this boathouse on Friday evening – I don’t believe for a moment that he could really have mistaken an oil-painting for a live woman – which means that the story of the family’s travels on the Continent is a lie. But if they are not on the Continent, where are they? The fact that there has been a large houseboat moored here, which has vanished in the past twenty-four hours surely suggests the answer to that question.’

‘But why on earth should they hide in the houseboat?’ cried Lestrade in disbelief.

‘Because, I should say, they know the bank will collapse on Monday and thousands will lose every penny they possess. It is Sunday today, when every bank and business in the country is closed, which of course gives them their best chance of escape. I think that everything that has happened here has been planned with precision. Had it not been for Mr Ashby’s blundering into their meeting here on Friday evening, we should have had no idea what was afoot and they would probably have got clean away.’

‘What can they hope to achieve by running away?’ I asked.

‘A life of ease and luxury, in all probability, Watson. I imagine their intention is to drop completely out of sight, perhaps even change their names, and to be never heard of again.’

‘This all seems wild speculation,’ said Welch. ‘How does the dead man fit into your view of things? And what became of the Churchfield boy? Is he dead, too?’

‘I imagine he is on the boat with the rest of his family,’ said Holmes, shaking his head. ‘Something that struck me in my client’s account was that when Churchfield came to his room last night and asked him to give the alarm, Mr Ashby threw on his dressing-gown and hurried off to rouse the others, only returning to dress when he was sure they were all awake. He recognised instinctively, you see, that the preservation of life is far more important than being correctly dressed. But Mr Ashby said that when Churchfield appeared in his room he was fully dressed. This strongly suggests to me that Churchfield’s apparent air of alarm and urgency was completely false. If he had just discovered the fire as he said, would he really have stopped to get dressed and do up all his buttons before warning his friends? Of course not. In fact, I doubt if he ever got undressed at all last night. More likely, he just waited until he judged the others were all asleep, then set about making the fire, no doubt watching it carefully to make sure it had taken hold and was blazing strongly before going to wake Mr Ashby. Also, his talk of trying to save something from the house, and then going to fetch the fire-brigade, was, I’m sure, nothing but a tissue of lies. I strongly suspect that after he had spoken to Mr Ashby, he came straight down here to join his family. He would have expected the house to burn down and for the remains of the dead man – if they were ever found – to be taken for his own. It is significant that the centre of the fire seems to have been directly beneath the room in which the body of the dead man lay. Of course, Churchfield did not expect that anyone would break down the locked bedroom door. That was the second thing that went wrong with their plan, the first, of course, being my client’s surprise arrival in this boathouse on Friday evening. As to this poor fellow, Wilkinson, we cannot yet say who he is, but it would not surprise me if we learnt that he was an employee at Churchfield’s Bank – and probably a fairly senior one, too.’

‘What makes you think that?’ I asked.

‘If the Churchfields were loitering here when they were supposed to be abroad – which seems to me a certainty – then there must have been some good reason for it. The likeliest explanation is that they were waiting here for something and the fact that they have now gone suggests that that something arrived yesterday. If so, who could have brought it but the unfortunate Mr Wilkinson? What I suspect is that at close of business at the bank – which is early, of course, on a Saturday – he brought sufficient funds here to keep the Churchfield family in comfort for the rest of their lives. That, of course, is why Mr Ashby was told to go directly to the football ground when he returned from London. Churchfield did not want to risk Ashby running across his family or Wilkinson.’

‘What exactly are you suggesting?’ queried Lestrade. ‘Do you think that Wilkinson came here with a satchel full of banknotes?’

‘I doubt it, especially considering the family’s probable destination. More likely it was internationally negotiable bonds, which the family could sell anywhere on the Continent, whenever they wished. If so, it is theft on a very grand scale: the money is not theirs, but belongs to their customers.’

‘I can scarcely credit what you are saying!’ said Inspector Welch in a tone of amazement. ‘Such upright and correct people! Such esteemed figures in the district! What about Wilkinson, though? He must have been in it with them, so why is he dead?’

Sherlock Holmes shook his head. ‘That we cannot say. Perhaps he had scruples about the whole business, or had only just realised what they were up to and threatened to make the matter public, or perhaps he had no scruples but demanded money from them to buy his silence. In any event, I imagine a quarrel blew up, blows were exchanged and one blow cost Wilkinson his life. Alternatively, they may have intended to murder him all along when he had served his purpose. They certainly intended to burn the house down. I can think of no other good reason why the members of the XYZ Club should have been invited here on this particular weekend, except to act as scapegoats and take the blame for the fire. Presumably there were things in the house – documents and so on – that the Churchfields wished to destroy. Wait a moment!’ said Holmes, abruptly breaking off.

He slipped past the policemen, bent down and pulled something out from the dusty jumble of litter beneath the work-bench by the back wall. As he stood up, I saw that it was a black silk hat, bent and crushed out of shape. ‘The name on the inside is “T. Wilkinson”,’ said Holmes. ‘He was right-handed and spent much of his time using a pen,’ he added, indicating a small inky stain on the front right edge of the rim. ‘There is also a trace of blood inside the hat, at the back. It was here in this boathouse that Wilkinson was probably murdered.’

‘That’s good enough for me!’ said Lestrade. ‘Let’s get back to the police station and see if we can’t find where that boat has gone!’

‘I can send a wire to Teddington Lock, to see if they’ve seen anything of it,’ said Welch as we left the grounds of Challington House and hurried down the road.

When we reached the police station, the sergeant on duty informed Lestrade that a reply had already been received to his earlier enquiry concerning Wilkinson. The police station at Norwood stated that a Mr Thomas Wilkinson had been reported missing the previous evening. He was, they said, deputy chief cashier at Churchfield’s Bank in the City, but had failed to return from work that afternoon as usual. A few moments later, Inspector Welch received a reply from Teddington Lock, stating that such a houseboat as he described had passed through the lock earlier in the morning.

‘Notify Scotland Yard, Deptford and all points east,’ said Lestrade. ‘Tell them that this boat must be stopped at all costs! I’m going back to town at once, Welch. You’d better come with me, Mr Ashby. You can help identify the boat and the Churchfield boy. Will you come, Mr Holmes?’

‘We’ll come with you as far as Paddington, at any rate,’ returned Holmes. ‘Then, I think, we’ll leave the matter in your capable hands, Lestrade!’

Everything that my friend had predicted came to pass exactly as he had foretold, as I learnt from the newspapers the following evening. According to the Echo, the Churchfields’ houseboat had eventually been stopped just off Greenwich Point, the whole family being taken into custody for questioning. They were subsequently charged with fraud, theft, arson and murder, although the last charge was later reduced to culpable homicide as it could not be proved that they had intended to murder Wilkinson when they struck him. Meanwhile, it was reported in the Pall Mall Gazette that Churchfield’s Bank had been in chaos, and had not opened its doors to the public all day, eventually announcing at three o’clock in the afternoon that it could no longer continue trading. The Globe, taking a different perspective on the affair, heaped praise on Inspector Lestrade, ‘without whose smart work and initiative’, it remarked, ‘a great crime might have gone undetected’.

‘They do not mention you at all,’ I said to my friend, as I finished reading these accounts of the case. ‘They seem to believe that Lestrade solved the whole business by himself!’

‘Thank goodness for that!’ returned Holmes with a chuckle. ‘I can assure you I had no desire to see my name linked with such a simple affair. Let Lestrade enjoy his moment of glory, Watson. One day we may need a favour from him. Meanwhile, let us hope that something a little more challenging turns up soon to exercise our intellects!’