The Adventure of the Empty House
It was in the spring of the year 1894 that all London wasinterested, and the fashionable world dismayed, by the murder ofthe Honourable Ronald Adair under most unusual and inexplicablecircumstances. The public has already learned those particularsof the crime which came out in the police investigation, but agood deal was suppressed upon that occasion, since the case forthe prosecution was so overwhelmingly strong that it was notnecessary to bring forward all the facts. Only now, at the endof nearly ten years, am I allowed to supply those missing linkswhich make up the whole of that remarkable chain. The crimewas of interest in itself, but that interest was as nothing to mecompared to the inconceivable sequel, which afforded me thegreatest shock and surprise of any event in my adventurous life.
Even now, after this long interval, I find myself thrilling as I thinkof it, and feeling once more that sudden flood of joy, amazement,and incredulity which utterly submerged my mind. Let me sayto that public, which has shown some interest in those glimpseswhich I have occasionally given them of the thoughts and actionsof a very remarkable man, that they are not to blame me if I havenot shared my knowledge with them, for I should have consideredit my first duty to do so, had I not been barred by a positiveprohibition from his own lips, which was only withdrawn uponthe third of last month.
It can be imagined that my close intimacy with SherlockHolmes had interested me deeply in crime, and that after hisdisappearance I never failed to read with care the various problemswhich came before the public. And I even attempted, more thanonce, for my own private satisfaction, to employ his methods intheir solution, though with indifferent success. There was none,however, which appealed to me like this tragedy of Ronald Adair.
As I read the evidence at the inquest, which led up to a verdict ofwillful murder against some person or persons unknown, I realizedmore clearly than I had ever done the loss which the communityhad sustained by the death of Sherlock Holmes. There werepoints about this strange business which would, I was sure, havespecially appealed to him, and the efforts of the police would havebeen supplemented, or more probably anticipated, by the trainedobservation and the alert mind of the first criminal agent inEurope. All day, as I drove upon my round, I turned over the casein my mind and found no explanation which appeared to me to beadequate. At the risk of telling a twice-told tale, I will recapitulatethe facts as they were known to the public at the conclusion of theinquest.
The Honourable Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl ofMaynooth, at that time governor of one of the Australian colonies.
Adair’s mother had returned from Australia to undergo theoperation for cataract, and she, her son Ronald, and her daughterHilda were living together at 427 Park Lane. The youth moved inthe best society—had, so far as was known, no enemies and noparticular vices. He had been engaged to Miss Edith Woodley,of Carstairs, but the engagement had been broken off by mutualconsent some months before, and there was no sign that it hadleft any very profound feeling behind it. For the rest {sic} the man’slife moved in a narrow and conventional circle, for his habits werequiet and his nature unemotional. Yet it was upon this easy-goingyoung aristocrat that death came, in most strange and unexpectedform, between the hours of ten and eleven-twenty on the night ofMarch 30, 1894.
Ronald Adair was fond of cards—playing continually, but neverfor such stakes as would hurt him. He was a member of the Baldwin,the Cavendish, and the Bagatelle card clubs. It was shown that,after dinner on the day of his death, he had played a rubber ofwhist at the latter club. He had also played there in the afternoon.
The evidence of those who had played with him—Mr. Murray,Sir John Hardy, and Colonel Moran—showed that the game waswhist, and that there was a fairly equal fall of the cards. Adairmight have lost five pounds, but not more. His fortune was aconsiderable one, and such a loss could not in any way affect him.
He had played nearly every day at one club or other, but he was acautious player, and usually rose a winner. It came out in evidencethat, in partnership with Colonel Moran, he had actually won asmuch as four hundred and twenty pounds in a sitting, some weeksbefore, from Godfrey Milner and Lord Balmoral. So much for hisrecent history as it came out at the inquest.
On the evening of the crime, he returned from the club exactlyat ten. His mother and sister were out spending the evening witha relation. The servant deposed that she heard him enter the frontroom on the second floor, generally used as his sitting-room. Shehad lit a fire there, and as it smoked she had opened the window.
No sound was heard from the room until eleven-twenty, the hourof the return of Lady Maynooth and her daughter. Desiring tosay good-night, she attempted to enter her son’s room. The doorwas locked on the inside, and no answer could be got to theircries and knocking. Help was obtained, and the door forced. Theunfortunate young man was found lying near the table. His headhad been horribly mutilated by an expanding revolver bullet, butno weapon of any sort was to be found in the room. On the tablelay two banknotes for ten pounds each and seventeen pounds tenin silver and gold, the money arranged in little piles of varyingamount. There were some figures also upon a sheet of paper, withthe names of some club friends opposite to them, from whichit was conjectured that before his death he was endeavouring tomake out his losses or winnings at cards.
