2 Birlstone Manor

Chapter 2 Birlstone Manor White Mason met us at Birlstone Station and drove with us to our rooms at the local inn. We gathered in the inn's front room, and he sketched out the background of the case. "John Douglas, the victim, was around fifty years old. From what I've heard, he spent part of his life in America and made his fortune from California gold. He bought Birlstone Manor in Sussex around five years ago and quickly became a popular figure in the village. His wife, an Englishwoman, is some twenty years younger. "Last night, they had a guest staying, a fellow named Cecil Barker. He's a tall, handsome, easygoing fellow and a good friend of the Douglases. It was Barker who discovered the body. He came into the village police station at 11:45 p.m. to report it, then returned with me to the house at a little after midnight.

"The victim was in his study, lying sprawled on his back. A shotgun had been laid across his chest—presumably the murder weapon. He had received the blast directly in his face. "Barker told me he'd heard the gunshot from his bedroom and rushed downstairs. He showed me a bloody footprint on the sill where the murderer must have stood as he made his escape. The house is surrounded by a moat and the drawbridge had been raised, as it was every evening, so the killer would have had to wade across the moat.

"I asked Barker how he didn't see him making his escape if he arrived within seconds of the murder. He replied that the curtain was closed and he was busy keeping the servants and Mrs. Douglas out of the room to spare them the sight of Mr. Douglas. "After questioning the servants, I discovered that the drawbridge had been raised at six o'clock the previous evening. From this, I deduced that the intruder must have entered the house before six and hidden in the room—probably behind the curtain—waiting for Douglas to enter.

"There was one other odd item in the room: on the floor next to the body was a card reading V. V. "Turning to the body, I saw a strange brown design—a triangle inside a circle—on Douglas's forearm. It wasn't a tattoo but a burn scar, as if the man had been branded.

"Then the elderly butler, Ames, cried out: 'They've taken his wedding ring! The master always wore it on the little finger of his left hand, below that twisted snake ring. Now it's gone.' "So the murderer must have removed the snake ring to take the wedding ring, then put the snake ring back," said Mason. "If you ask me, Mr. Holmes, this wasn't a burglary. The ring business and that odd card suggests it was a planned murder. What I don't understand is why the murderer chose a noisy shotgun for a weapon, when it was bound to alert everyone in the house, making an escape across the moat highly risky." "That, indeed, is a mystery," agreed Holmes. We left the inn and walked through the village to Birlstone Manor. It was a beautiful, seventeenth-century house with red-brick walls, gabled roofs, and diamond-paned windows. Built on the site of a castle, the house was surrounded by a moat—a shallow, forty-footwide ring of water—and the only approach was by a drawbridge.

Ahead of us, the tranquil moat shone like quicksilver in the winter sunshine. Mason pointed out a window on the immediate right of the drawbridge. "That's the window of the study —open as it was last night." Holmes examined the stone edge of the moat and the grass border beyond. "I took a good look earlier, Mr. Holmes," said Mason. "There are no footprints." On the far side of the drawbridge, we were greeted by Ames the butler, who escorted us to the scene of the murder. Holmes knelt beside the body. The injury to his head was, indeed, terrible.