04x04 - Wisteria Lodge

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Mr. Scott Eccles.

Oh, Mr. Garcia.

I'm sorry I did not recognize you at once.

Please allow me to carry your case.

That's very civil of you.

Thank you very much.

I'm sorry if the weather has been unkind for your visit.

Ah, well unkind for you perhaps, but we British, you know, we're hardy souls.

The county of Surrey is particularly interesting as far as maps are concerned.

I'm looking forward to showing you my entire collection of old Surrey maps.

I mean, there's Moore and Ogelby.

I got one or two here I can show you.

He used to draw one or two...

Ah, this is your house is it?

Yes. Please. You're welcome.

It's very nice. Very nice.

I suppose, Watson, we must look upon you as a man of letters.

How do you define the word 'grotesque'?

Grotesque.

Oh, strange, remarkable.

No, no, no, no.

Surely, there's more to it than that.

Some underlying suggestion of the tragic, the terrible.

If you cast your mind back to those narratives with which you've inflicted a long-suffering public, you will see how often the word 'grotesque' has deepened the criminal.

I suppose the affair of the redheaded men was grotesque enough at the outset.

Or, that most grotesque affair of the five orange pips.

Yes, which led straight to a murderous conspiracy.

No, the word puts me on the alert.

Have it you there?

"I've just had the most incredible and grotesque experience.

May I consult you? Scott Eccles."

Post-Office, Charring Cross.

Is it a man or woman?

A man.

No woman would send a reply-paid telegram.

She would have come.

Will you see him?

Oh, my dear Watson, you know how bored I've been since we locked up Colonel Carruthers.

Life is commonplace.

The newspapers are sterile audacity and romance seem to have passed forever from the criminal world.

Of course I'll see him.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is our client.

Mr. Holmes? Thank you, Mrs. Hudson.

Well, are you Mr. Holmes? Certainly.

Yes, Mr. Holmes, I have just had a most singular and unpleasant experience. Really?

Never in my life have I been subject to... to such embarrassment and been placed in such a position.

Please sit down, Mr. Scott Eccles, my friend and colleague Doctor Watson.

In the first place, may I ask, why you have come to me at all?

Well, sir, it didn't appear to be a matter which concerned the police, yet, when you've heard the facts, you must admit I couldn't just leave it where it was.

Now the private detectives they are a class with whom I'm absolutely, I have no sympathy.

Sit, Mr. Scott Eccles.

Nonetheless, having heard your name...

Watson! I decided...

Now, in the second place, why did you not come to me at once?

What do you mean?

Well it is now a quarter-past two.

Your telegram was dispatched about one.

No one could glance at your toilet and attire without seeing that your disturbance dates from the moment of your waking.

But you're right, Mr. Holmes.

Yet, I never gave a thought to my toilet.

I was only too glad to get out of such a house.

Oh no, no thank you.

You see but I have been running round making inquiries before I came here.

I called the house agents, you know, oh yes, yes, and they said... they said that Mr. Garcia's rent was paid up all right and that everything was in order in Wisteria Lodge.

No, no. Come, come, Sir Eccles.

You know you're like my friend, Watson, who has the bad habit of telling his stories wrong end foremost.

Now please, please arrange your thoughts and let me know, in their due sequence, exactly what those events are, which have sent you out unbrushed and unkempt, with your dress boots and waistcoat buttoned awry, in search of advice and assistance.

Well, I'm a bachelor and being of a sociable turn I cultivate a large number of friends.

At the table of one of them recently, I met a young fellow named Garcia, a pleasant chap of Spanish decent, connected in some way with the Embassy.

We discovered a common interest in cartography or so I thought.

That's the study of old maps.

The plan was to retrace Surrey as Thomas Mould engraved it some fifty years ago.

Well as soon as I arrived yesterday evening, I knew something was wrong.

The atmosphere of the place, the house was tumbledown, depressing.

Garcia told me he had a wonderful cook, a half breed he had picked up on his travels but the dinner, well it was so ill-prepared and served with such bad grace that it was barely edible.

I can assure you that there were many times in the course of the evening I wished I could have invented some excuse to leave.

What did you say?

Well, the rooms are fascinating, John Rogglbe.

Across the heath then?

Ah. No, it wasn't just the heath lad, it was all over the county.

I say, are you feeling all right?

Yes...

Sorry.

Reese, Reese.

Some more wine for our guest.

Yes.

Are we expecting company?

I would like a drink of that if it's possible.

And he made no remark as to the contents of the note?

None.

But for that moment he gave up all pretense at conversation.

He just sat there smoking these endless cigarettes.

About eleven I was glad to go to bed.

Two hours later he looked in at my door.

Did you ring?

Did I ring?

Ah, please don't wake up it's nearly one o'clock.

Please go back to sleep.

Good night.

And now I come to the amazing part of my tale.

When I woke it was broad daylight, nearly nine.

I had particularly asked to be called at eight, so I was very much astonished at this forgetfulness.

I say, is anybody here?

I'd like some hot water.

I rang for the servant.

There was no response.

Somebody?

I say, is there a servant available.

This is damnable.

I went from room to room, all were deserted.

Even my host's room, the bed had never been slept in.

Foreign host, foreign footman, foreign cook, all vanished in the night.

Your experience is, so far as I know, perfectly unique.

Now, what else can you tell me?

Well, I was furious.

I packed my bags and I banged the front door behind me and I set out for Esher.

Then, I called at Allan Brothers', the land agents, and found it was from them that the villa had been rented.

Rented?

Well, you see, I couldn't believe that they had gone simply to make a fool of me.

I thought, you know, it must be the rent but I was wrong.

See, the agent thanked me for my warning but said that the rent had been paid in advance.

By the Spanish Embassy I imagine?

I called at the Spanish Embassy.

The man is unknown to them.

I also asked my friend who introduced us and he seemed to know less about Garcia than I did.

Now, this house,

Wisteria Lodge, I wonder if it's still as you left it.

What's troubling you, Watson?

Well I fear some mundane explanation of the events may await us upon our arrival.

It's possible. We can thank our lucky fate, which will rescue us for a few hours from the insufferable fatigues of idleness.

This gentleman recommends The Bull in the village, that's if we're to stay overnight.

I asked him if he knew Garcia or his servants.

Did he?

No.

Nothing unusual about the outside.

Let's see what the interior holds for us.

I don't suppose we could be charged with housebreaking, can we?

Who on earth could leave such a mess?

Yes, who indeed.

Take a glance around the house, Watson.

Mr. Holmes?

Welcome to Wisteria Lodge, Mr. Holmes.

Inspector Baynes of the Surrey Constabulary.

This is Constable Downing.

And you are Mr. John Scott Eccles of Popham House Lee?

I am.

Mr. Scott Eccles we've been following you about all the morning.

You traced him through his telegram, I presume?

Exactly, Mr. Holmes.

We picked up the scent at Charring Cross Post-Office.

But what'd you want?

And why did you follow me?

We wish a statement, Mr. Scott Eccles, as to the events which led up to the death of Mr. Aloysius Garcia, of Wisteria Lodge, near Esher.

Dead did you say?

Oh yes sir, he is dead. Yes.

But how? An accident?

m*rder, sir, if ever there was one on earth.

Good God!

This is awful!

You don't mean that I'm suspected?

Well, sir, your note was found on the dead man's body and from it we learned that you had planned to stay here in this house last night.

So I did.

Oh, you did, did you?

Ah. Wait.

Baynes, I mean surely all you need is a simple statement.

Yes, Mr. Holmes, but it is my duty to warn Mr. Scott Eccles that it may be used against him.

Ah, this is my fellow colleague, Dr. Watson, Inspector Baynes. Yes of course.

Doctor, your attention.

Mr. Scott Eccles you look as if you could do with a drink.

I found some brandy in the library if you think...

Thank you.

Well, I can assure you, Inspector that, you know, every word I've said it is the truth.

I'm bound to say, Mr. Scott Eccles, that everything you've said does agree with the facts as they've come to our notice.

For example, the note that arrived during dinner.

Mr. Scott Eccles what became of the note?

Well, Garcia rolled it up and threw it in the fire.

What do you say to that, Baynes?

It was a dog-grate, Mr. Holmes, he over pitched it.

I found this unburned of the back.

You must have made a very careful examination of the house to find a single pellet of paper.

Oh, I did, Mr. Holmes, I did.

It's my way.

The note is written on ordinary cream-laid paper with a watermark.

It's a quarter-sheet.

The paper's cut off in two snips with a short-bladed scissors.

It's been folded twice and sealed with scarlet wax.

It's addressed to Mr. Garcia, Wisteria Lodge and it says:

"Our own colors, green and white.

Green open, white shut.

Main stairs, first corridor, seventh right, green baize.

Godspeed.

D. n It's in a woman's writing, done with a very sharp-pointed pen, but the address is either done with a different pen or by someone else because it's thicker and bolder, as you may see, Mr. Holmes.

It's a remarkable note.

I really must congratulate you on your attention to detail.

There are a few trifling points which might perhaps be added.

The seal is a sleeve-link what else is of such a shape?

The scissors were bent nail scissors.

Short as the two snips are, you can distinctly see the same slight curve in each.

I thought I had squeezed it dry, Mr. Holmes, but I see there was some still left over after all.

I'm bound to say that I make nothing of the note except that there's something's on hand, and a woman, as usual, is at the bottom of it.

I'm very glad you found the note, Inspector, because it corroborate's my story.

But, you know, I do beg to point out that I haven't yet heard what has happened to Mr. Garcia, or what has become of his household.

As for Mr. Garcia, that's easily answered.

He was found dead on Oxshott Common this morning.

His head had been beaten to a pulp by a sandbag or some such object, which had crushed rather than wounded.

Apparently, he'd been first struck down from behind, but his assailant went on b*ating him long after he was dead.

It was a very furious as*ault.

Ah, I mean this activity that we saw as we approached the house.

Were there any footsteps or clues as to the criminal?

None, as yet.

Had Garcia been robbed?

No.

No sign of robbery. No.

Well our tenants seem to have left little or nothing behind them.

Apart from the clothes, some pipes, a few novels, two of them in Spanish.

One of them is missing.

Yeah.

We might assume the 'G' stands for Garcia.

Family heirloom perhaps.

The other was not on the body nor has it been found in the vicinity though my men are still looking.

Do you wish to look around the house?

A brief look.

Holmes.

Holmes!

Holmes!

Watson!

What have you seen?

Could have been the devil for all I know.

Staring eyes at the window.

Negroid features, mulatto like.

He's got away across the field.

Maybe just as well, I don't think I could have laid hands on him.

Ah, look at this.

If he is all the same scale as his foot then he is certainly a giant.

Well whoever he was, whatever he wanted he's gone for the present, and we have more important things to attend to.

Downing, you stay here.

And you sir, shall come to the station with me.

Yes, sir.

And let me have a written statement.

Yes certainly, I'd come at once.

I hope you don't mind my collaborating with you, Inspector.

I'd be honored, Mr. Holmes.

I'd be honored.

Inspector, is there any clue as to the exact hour of the man's death?

One o'clock.

It rained about that time and the death certainly occurred before the rain.

No. No, no.

That's perfectly impossible, Mr. Baynes.

No, no, his voice is very unmistakable.

I could swear to it that it was he who addressed me in my room at that very hour.

Well he spoke to me, you know, in that funny accent of his.

He said he's it's nearly one o'clock.

Remarkable but we must not confuse the unlikely with the impossible.

What does he mean by that?

Certainly some strange people occupy that house, Mr. Holmes.

One of them is dead.

Did some of his companions follow him and m*rder him?

If so, we should have them for every port is watched but my views are different, Mr. Holmes.

Yes sir, my views are very different.

Do you have a theory?

And I'll work it myself, Mr. Holmes.

Your name is already made, I have yet to make mine and I shall like to be able to say afterwards, that I solved it without your help.

Then you do follow your path and I will follow mine.

Goodbye, Mr. Scott Eccles.

Goodbye, Mr. Holmes. Scott Eccles.

Let us consider this note.

Is there a woman involved? A jealous husband?

Godspeed.

Godspeed D, that must be our guide.

The man was a Spaniard.

I suggest that the 'D' stands for Delores.

It's a common female name in Spain.

A Spaniard would write to a Spaniard in Spanish, Watson.

Sit at the table.

Henderson, High Gable, George Ffolliott.

Mr. Holmes?

Look what I've found.

In a gorse bush.

Excellent.

I'm terribly sorry.

I've seemed to have...

Sir, you are trespassing.

I'm terribly sorry.

I've seemed to have lost my direction.

Is it your custom to wonder...

Ah, Doctor Rayfield, my friend and fellow cartographer.

Yes, indeed.

You were so engrossed in trying to chase the bridal path to a now vanished Hamlet of Obligor St Mary that we mislaid each other.

And since we're late for Mr. Henderson, I thought, I'm so glad you found your way here.

I very much regret Well, I did me best-- that Mr. Henderson is too busy to see you today.

No Lucas, I will see them.

Gentlemen.

Um...

The purpose of our visit is to inquire into the history of High Gable, which we believe has an intriguing and blood-thursty past.

Since the days of the English civil wars.

I would have no knowledge of that.

I'm only a recent invader.

But there are local records in the library.

There are no records of any past found in this house.

I see.

Then I won't detain you no more.

Good day.

I thought you were in London.

For the morning only.

Well with your usual reluctance to confide your thoughts to me I exercised my own mind in the matter.

You'd circled two names on your list, Henderson and High Gable.

Well the others are, per say, respectable people.

Far aloof from romance but this man, Henderson, but he's a very singular creation.

Yes, indeed.

As you may have noticed... No tea for me...

The house is double winged.

One side the servants the other side the family.

There is one single connecting door for the Henderson family meals.

Surely, you couldn't have observed all that in the short time we there, Holmes.

There are noble instraments for gossip than discharged servants and I was lucky enough to find one who had been sacked by his imperious Master Henderson in a fit of violent temper.

Now, the Henderson girls, with whom you've encountered, have a governess.

A Miss Burnet, an English woman.

Here is the very singular fact.

She has not been seen since the night of the m*rder.

She has utterly vanished.

I've seen her.

Of course, I've seen her and she is alive.

I saw her at the window at High Gable.

My God a prisoner.

She slipped my mind.

The moment those awful gorgon's descended upon me.

She is alive, I've seen her.

That's the man I saw and chased.

Baynes has arrested the wrong man.

Come, Watson, quickly. We must stop him.

Is he the m*rder*r?

Did he k*ll a Spaniard on the property?

Where did you capture him?

This man is the m*rder*d man's cook who disappeared on the night of the crime.

We believe there were valuables left in the house and that there abstraction was the motive.

The man had been seen in the vicinity of the house once before.

The second time...

Subdue him, Higgins...

The second time we let a man escape for him we shall be applying for remand when the prisoner's brought before the magistrate.

That will be all for now, gentlemen.

Thank you very much.

Was it on the way? Where did you capture him?

Baynes?

I am not convinced that you're on the right line.

Mr. Holmes doesn't want you to commit yourself too far unless you're sure.

Oh, you're very kind gentlemen but we did agree to work on our own lines didn't we?

And that's what I'm doing.

You're welcome always to my news.

This fellow is as strong as a carthorse and fierce as the devil.

He nearly bit off Constable Downing's thumb before they managed to master him.

He speaks hardly any English and we can get nothing out of him but grunts.

And you think that you have evidence that he m*rder*d his late master?

I didn't say so, Mr. Holmes.

I didn't say so.

We all have our own little ways.

You will go yours and I will go mine.

That was the agreement.

So be it.

I think Baynes is riding for a fall.

I would have to agree with you there.

You appreciate our difficulty, Watson.

There's nothing upon which we can apply for a warrant.

And with our worthy Inspector making his arrests our theory would seem fantastic if laid before the magistrate.

Yet you think the lady's in danger of her life?

Yes.

I'm sure of it Watson, therefore we must take the law into our own hands.

Top left bay. Ah-ha.

We could reach it from that outhouse.

Ha.

They're making for the station.

The five o'clock to London.

Right.

Stop the train.

Stop the train.

Stop it. Stop.

Why, Mr. Holmes, you have given me the very evidence I wanted.

We were both on the same scent from the start.

Were you after Henderson too?

Quite so well, you first and then Doctor Watson here came crawling through the under growth at High Gable.

I was up a tree observing you both.

It was just a question of who got the evidence first.

Why did you arrest the mulatto?

Well, I was sure that Henderson, as he calls himself, felt he was suspected and he would make no move so long as he thought he was in danger so I arrested the wrong man.

You know, you will rise high in your profession, Inspector.

You have instinct and intuition.

Thank you, Mr. Holmes, but we can't arrest without Miss Burnet's evidence can we?

Oh, she'll be able to give you that in a moment but tell me who is this man Henderson?

He's Don Murillo, known as the Tiger of San Pedro.

One of the most dangerous men out of Central America.

Oh, indeed.

Most lude and blood thirsty tyrant.

Who imposed his earliest vices upon a caring people for almost twelve years.

Was it the San Pedro colors green and white that first put you onto it?

That and my visit to London to the Spanish embassy in the foreign office.

Now please this is your case, Inspector.

Five years ago, there was a rising against the tyrant but it was an empty palace they stormed on Murillo, his secretary, two children and all the wealth had escaped by ship and from that moment they disappeared from the face of the earth.

His identity has been a subject of constant comment in the European press.

We discovered him a year ago.

Miss Burnet?

How came you into this matter, Miss Burnet?

An English lady in such a murderous affair.

Because there is no other way in the world by which justice can be gained.

What does the law of England care about the rivers of blood shed so many years ago in San Pedro or the shipload of treasure that this man has stolen from us?

To you they're like crimes committed on some other planet.

We know.

My real name is Signora Victor Durando.

My husband was the minister of San Pedro in London.

He met and married me there.

A nobler man never lived upon the earth.

Unhappily, Murillo heard of his exodus and recalled him on some pretext and sh*t him.

By a stroke of...of premonition, my husband had refused to take me with him.

Then came the downfall of the monster.

He escaped as you have described.

But the many whose lives he had ruined, whose loved ones had suffered t*rture and death at his hands, would not let the matter rest.

We banded ourselves into a society, which should never be dissolved until the work was done.

It was my part to attach myself to his household and keep the others in touch with his movements.

I secured the position as governess.

He little knew that the woman who faced him at every meal was the woman whose husband he had hurried to eternity.

I smiled on him, did my duty to his children, and bided my time.

An attempt was made in Paris and failed.

We zigzagged here and there swiftly over Europe to throw off our pursuers and finally returned to High Gable.

Garcia had been waiting there for nearly a year with two trusted companions, all fired with the same reasons for revenge.

Who was Garcia?

The son of Fernando Garcia.

One of the former highest dignitaries of San Pedro who was m*rder*d like your husband.

This note you sent, you say it was intercepted.

During the day Murillo took every precaution and never went outside, save with his satellite Lucas.

Even at night the man was forever on the alert and continually changed his room.

We had arranged that I would send Garcia final instructions.

The doors would be opened and the signal of a green or white light in a window, which faced the drive, was to give notice if all was safe or if the attempt had better be postponed.

To whom are you writing this letter?

Which describes the room in which I intend to sleep tonight.

Who is your confederate?

Who is your confederate?

What is your real name, Miss Burnet?

My name is Durando.

Durando's widow.

In my house, looking after my children.

No, Mr. Garza no one must discover or they'll be consequences.

You can k*ll me now. What is my life worth?

You have destroyed everything that I love.

Who are you writing to?

Tell me, Signora Durando. Who?

It's a name you fear. He's waiting for you.

It's Garcia, eh?

It's Garcia.

Garcia.

Wisteria Lodge, he is waiting to dispatch you to hell.

You fiend.

I knew the boy well.

His father was once my dearest friend.

You m*rder*d him!

He betrayed me and so did your husband.

And now they send the wives and sons.

Will you never learn?

I am indestructible.

At first they were of a mind to let him into the house and k*ll him as a detected burglar but they feared the inquiry might publicly expose them.

Garcia, some day justice will come.

That is as certain as the rise of tomorrow's sun.

I have no doubt that my life too hung in the balance.

Most of the time I was confined to my room.

Terrorized by the most horrible threats to break my spirit.

Occasionally, I was allowed out but only when they had first drugged my food and it was at this state that you found me at the station.

And thanks to this good man I am beyond their power forever.

Well Inspector, our police work is done but our legal work begins.

Exactly, Mr. Holmes, yes.

Garcia's death in the hands of a plausible lawyer could look like an act of self-defense.

But I think better of the law than that.

Self-defense is one thing, but to entice a man in cold-blood with the object of murdering him is another, whatever danger you fear from him.

I think we shall see justice done at the next Guildford excises Of course, you have released the mulatto.

Yes sir, he's a free man again.

And your man is with the fugitives on the train?

He is, sir, yes, and I've wired Scotland Yard to have their men at Waterloo Station to receive them, yes.

You know I really must congratulate, Inspector.

Your powers, if I may so, without offense, are superior to your opportunities.

Your right, Mr. Holmes.

In the provinces we stagnate a case like this gives a man a chance.