continued: “This is my first exposure to a killing, Mr Holmes, and I am afraid that I must admit I am at a total loss as to how to proceed. If only the victim, James Harley Carroll, could talk, I wouldn’t be here to trouble you. But he can’t talk for two reasons, the first being that he is dead, of course, and the second because he has lost his head. Mr Carroll, one of our most prosperous grain farmers, was decapitated when his body washed up on the shore of the River Douglas to the east of the village.”
“Without a face to recognise,” Holmes interrupted, “how did you come to learn the identity of the remains?”
“As I said, Mr Carroll had been reported missing two weeks prior to the torso washing ashore,” Roddy answered, “and our town doctor who examined it noticed a fresh surgical scar on the abdomen. He reported that the incision had been made by him when he operated on Mr Carroll to repair a hernia just two months before. In addition, the clothing on the body was identified as what Mr Carroll was wearing when he was last seen.”
“Last seen by whom?” Holmes wanted to know.
“By the stable boy at Mr Carroll’s farm, a lad eighteen years of age—the person who filed the missing person information.”
“Pray tell,” Holmes went on, “what have you learned of Mr Carroll’s history?”
“He had led an interesting life, Mr Holmes,” said Roddy, “and only a fraction of it in Tarleton. Mr Carroll was raised there as an only child. His parents died of the plague when he was in his early twenties, and they bequeathed to him the expansive farm of nearly five hundred hectares. He left it in the care of a neighbour, who treated it as his own, while Mr Carroll went off to America to seek his fortune. He prospected in the western state of Utah and located a rich silver deposit, becoming the owner of a mine and a man of wealth.
“Mr Carroll bought cattle ranches in the Wyoming territory and eventually retired a millionaire, returning to his estate in Tarleton to spend the last of his years as a country gentleman.
“When Dr Brem performed the autopsy, Mr Carroll’s signature leather wallet, made from the hide of one of his steers and engraved with his initials, was not in his pocket, nor was there on his hand a gaudy silver ring with the letter C on the top. I have been working on the theory that the motive for this homicide was robbery, but I have no suspects. In a nutshell, that is where the case stands. Needless to say, I am experiencing severe pressure from community leaders and my superiors in the county police force to make an arrest, which is why I am turning to you, Mr Holmes.”
“Your dilemma,” Holmes informed the special constable, “arouses considerable curiosity in me. But before I agree to assist you in your probe, please answer some basic questions. One, did Mr Carroll have any enemies or feuds with anyone in the village?”
Roddy paused to think, then: “No enemies, for certain, Mr Holmes, but he was on the outs with Mr McNaughton, the local grain merchant, over the amount Mr McNaughton paid Mr Carroll for ten wagon-loads of oats.”
Holmes asked if Mr Carroll had associated with others in the village.
“He was friendly with everyone, but he was particularly close to his neighbour, Sir Ethan Tarleton, a boyhood friend whose ancestors founded the village. Mr Tarleton is in extremely poor health and Mr Carroll would visit with him frequently to cheer him up. It was Mr Tarleton who acted as caretaker of Mr Carroll’s farm while he was in the United States. Mr Tarleton has a son who lives with him and cares for his needs, along with a sister who lives in the village. The son, Zachary, is very protective of the family heritage and has held the family farm together ever since Sir Ethan’s health failed.”
“Did Dr Brem establish the cause of death to be anything prior to the beheading?” Holmes asked.
“There were no other fatal wounds or marks on the torso,” Roddy responded, “but without the head the autopsy was rendered incomplete.”
Holmes enquired if Mr Carroll left any heirs or a last will and testament.
“He was a man alone in this world, Mr Holmes, with no descendants or kin. I personally searched thoroughly his home and effects, but found nothing to indicate who would inherit Mr Carroll’s farm and his money. I suppose it’s a matter for the lawyers to haggle over as to who will benefit from Mr Carroll’s demise.”
Holmes concluded the interrogation with this question: “Was the neck wound jagged, as if the head had been hacked off with an axe, or was it a single, clean cut, such as what might be dealt by a sharp instrument, a knife or a wire perhaps?”
“Mr Holmes, it was as if he had been executed with a guillotine,” Roddy revealed.
“This puzzle beckons me to find the missing pieces,” Holmes said. “You are welcome to have dinner with Dr Watson and me, rest here tonight, and accompany us on the train tomorrow.”
Roddy politely declined the invitation, saying he had been away long enough and that he would board a train leaving Clapham Junction that evening.
“I had best be on my way if I am to be on time—and thank you both for your attention to my problem,” he said, adding as he departed: “You won’t find a hotel in Tarleton, but you may take up lodging in Mr Carroll’s empty house, because it is still in my custody. I shall leave the key in the postman’s box.”
Afterwards, Holmes said little. He was deep in thought. Once, he blurted: “As I have said before, Watson, there is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.”
And later, during supper at Simpson’s: “As in the case of the killer Jefferson Hope, what is out of the common is usually a guide rather than a hindrance. In solving a difficulty like Constable Roddy’s, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward.”
That night we packed our luggage while Holmes studied the train schedule aloud. “The train for Birmingham leaves at ten o’clock in the morning, and if it is not late arriving there, we can make a connection to Stoke-on-Trent, then Manchester, and finally to Southport, near Tarleton, a trip of five hours total duration. We shall likely find it necessary to hire a drag to take us from Southport to Mr Carroll’s former home.”
* * * *
It was late afternoon the following day when the horse-drawn cart turned onto the long, winding drive to the low Tudor-style house that had belonged to Mr Carroll. Our route had taken us through the centre of the village, with its two-story brick dwellings and shops, a pub, a post office, and grain storage facilities all built close together, as if in a city. Outside the town limits, the countryside exploded into vast crops of wheat, oats, corn, green vegetables, and a variety of flowers growing in black soil rich with peat. We could glimpse only the peaked rooftops of farmhouses scattered among the fields.
Holmes unlocked the door, which opened into a foyer with a slate floor and walls decorated with landscape paintings depicting scenes from the American West. Beyond the foyer was a large sitting-room with an immense fireplace, above which hung the antlers of an elk, plus the horns of a steer and a mountain goat. Bookshelves lined one side of the room, each packed with volumes on American law, the classics, history, as well as fiction and nonfiction that told stories of Western heroes and outlaws. The opposite end of the room was a veritable museum of Western artefacts, with a well-worn, silver-studded riding saddle on a wooden rack, a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots beside it, and a small table holding a bulky chunk of silver. Horse tack, a lasso, and fancy spurs covered the wall.
“I daresay the man was obsessed with his life abroad,” I remarked to Holmes, who was seated at a desk, rummaging
