Stanley Hopkins drew a slip of paper from his pocket.
“I have a few dates here which will give you the career of thedead man, Captain Peter Carey. He was born in ‘45—fifty yearsof age. He was a most daring and successful seal and whale fisher.
In 1883 he commanded the steam sealer SEA UNICORN, ofDundee. He had then had several successful voyages in succession,and in the following year, 1884, he retired. After that he travelledfor some years, and finally he bought a small place calledWoodman’s Lee, near Forest Row, in Sussex. There he has lived forsix years, and there he died just a week ago to-day.
“There were some most singular points about the man. Inordinary life, he was a strict Puritan—a silent, gloomy fellow. Hishousehold consisted of his wife, his daughter, aged twenty, andtwo female servants. These last were continually changing, for itwas never a very cheery situation, and sometimes it became pastall bearing. The man was an intermittent drunkard, and when he952 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
had the fit on him he was a perfect fiend. He has been known todrive his wife and daughter out of doors in the middle of the nightand flog them through the park until the whole village outside thegates was aroused by their screams.
“He was summoned once for a savage assault upon the oldvicar, who had called upon him to remonstrate with him uponhis conduct. In short, Mr. Holmes, you would go far before youfound a more dangerous man than Peter Carey, and I have heardthat he bore the same character when he commanded his ship. Hewas known in the trade as Black Peter, and the name was givenhim, not only on account of his swarthy features and the colourof his huge beard, but for the humours which were the terror ofall around him. I need not say that he was loathed and avoided byevery one of his neighbours, and that I have not heard one singleword of sorrow about his terrible end.
“You must have read in the account of the inquest about theman’s cabin, Mr. Holmes, but perhaps your friend here has notheard of it. He had built himself a wooden outhouse—he alwayscalled it the ‘cabin’—a few hundred yards from his house, and itwas here that he slept every night. It was a little, single-roomedhut, sixteen feet by ten. He kept the key in his pocket, made hisown bed, cleaned it himself, and allowed no other foot to crossthe threshold. There are small windows on each side, which werecovered by curtains and never opened. One of these windows wasturned towards the high road, and when the light burned in it atnight the folk used to point it out to each other and wonder whatBlack Peter was doing in there. That’s the window, Mr. Holmes,which gave us one of the few bits of positive evidence that cameout at the inquest.
“You remember that a stonemason, named Slater, walking fromForest Row about one o’clock in the morning—two days beforethe murder—stopped as he passed the grounds and looked at thesquare of light still shining among the trees. He swears that theshadow of a man’s head turned sideways was clearly visible onthe blind, and that this shadow was certainly not that of PeterCarey, whom he knew well. It was that of a bearded man, but thebeard was short and bristled forward in a way very different fromthat of the captain. So he says, but he had been two hours in thepublic-house, and it is some distance from the road to the window.
Besides, this refers to the Monday, and the crime was done uponthe Wednesday.
“On the Tuesday, Peter Carey was in one of his blackest moods,flushed with drink and as savage as a dangerous wild beast. Heroamed about the house, and the women ran for it when theyheard him coming. Late in the evening, he went down to his ownThe Return of Sherlock Holmes 953
hut. About two o’clock the following morning, his daughter, whoslept with her window open, heard a most fearful yell from thatdirection, but it was no unusual thing for him to bawl and shoutwhen he was in drink, so no notice was taken. On rising at seven,one of the maids noticed that the door of the hut was open, butso great was the terror which the man caused that it was middaybefore anyone would venture down to see what had become ofhim. Peeping into the open door, they saw a sight which sent themflying, with white faces, into the village. Within an hour, I was onthe spot and had taken over the case.
“Well, I have fairly steady nerves, as you know, Mr. Holmes,but I give you my word, that I got a shake when I put my headinto that little house. It was droning like a harmonium with theflies and bluebottles, and the floor and walls were like a slaughterhouse.
He had called it a cabin, and a cabin it was, sure enough,for you would have thought that you were in a ship. There wasa bunk at one end, a sea-chest, maps and charts, a picture of theSEA UNICORN, a line of logbooks on a shelf, all exactly as onewould expect to find it in a captain’s room. And there, in themiddle of it, was the man himself—his face twisted like a lost soulin torment, and his great brindled beard stuck upward in his agony.
Right through his broad breast a steel harpoon had been driven,and it had sunk deep into the wood of the wall behind him. Hewas pinned like a beetle on a card. Of course, he was quite dead,and had been so from the instant that he had uttered that last yellof agony.
“I know your methods, sir, and I applied them. Before Ipermitted anything to be moved, I examined most carefully theground outside, and also the floor of the room. There were nofootmarks.”
“Meaning that you saw none?”
“I assure you, sir, that there were none.”
“My good Hopkins, I have investigated many crimes, but I havenever yet seen one which was committed by a flying creature. Aslong as the criminal remains upon two legs so long must therebe some indentation, some abrasion, some trifling displacementwhich can be detected by the scientific searcher. It is incrediblethat this blood-bespattered room contained no trace which couldhave aided us. I understand, however, from the inquest that therewere some objects which you failed to overlook?”
