My friend Sherlock Holmes has never been in a state of high concentration and health, both physically and mentally, as he was in 1895. As his reputation grew day by day, countless cases followed, and many very famous figures of the time also came to us.

The humble house in Baker Street. Sometimes I would be blamed for even hinting at the identity of one or two of them, and I would feel that I was not cautious enough. Holmes has always been like those great artists who only care about art and do not care about compensation.

He did not ask for high detective fees from the client because of his immeasurable achievements, but there was one exception, and that was the case of Duke Holdrith. He was so noble and willful, if it were not for the experience of the client,

In order to sympathize with him, I think that even if he has a huge fortune, Holmes will still turn him away. Sometimes for a very ordinary client, he can even spend several weeks studying the case intently, as long as the case is bizarre enough.

Enough for him to give full play to his endless wisdom.

In this unforgettable year of 1895, all that occupied his energy was a series of bizarre and very contradictory cases, including the later very famous investigation into the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca. This ingenious investigation was based on the Pope's

It was carried out under special instructions, and also included the arrest of the notorious canary-keeper named Wilson, which eradicated a big scourge in the East End of London. The above two strange cases had just ended, and what followed was

It was a tragedy that occurred at Woodman's Lee Manor, where Captain Peter Carey died mysteriously. If I did not tell this bizarre incident, Mr. Sherlock Holmes' numerous crime-solving records would not be perfect.

In the first week of July, my friend often left our house and stayed for a long time. It was obvious that he had a case waiting for him to deal with. During this period, I had received several vulgar people who asked for help.

I asked about Captain Basil, so I was able to find out that he was working somewhere under a pseudonym. He had to use many pseudonyms to conceal his formidable identity. He had at least five residences in London.

For him to live temporarily, these five residences correspond to different names and occupations. He usually doesn't tell me what he is investigating, and I don't have the habit of asking. But this time his investigation seems special to me.

He went out before breakfast, and when I was about to start breakfast, he strode in without taking off his hat, and holding a short, barbed spear under his arm that looked very much like an umbrella.

I shouted to him: "Oh my God! Holmes, you're not going to carry this thing around London with you, are you?"

"I ran to a butcher's shop with this thing and then came back." He answered noncommittally.

"Butcher shop?"

"Now I have a great appetite, dear friend, and it seems very necessary to exercise before breakfast. But can you guess what kind of exercise I do? I bet you can't guess it."

"I don't want to guess either."

He poured himself a cup of coffee and chuckled softly.

"If you had just come with me to Allardyce's butcher's shop, you would have seen a dead pig hanging precariously from the ceiling behind him, and there was also a gentleman in a starched shirt, and he put it in my hand

This weapon really jabbed the dead pig hard. Being the gentleman that I am, I was very pleased that I managed to pierce it without much effort. Would you be interested in giving it a try?"

"Absolutely not interested, why would you do this?"

"Because I guess this has something to do with a bizarre case that happened at Woodman Lee Manor." At this moment, the door opened and a man walked in, so he stepped forward and said, "Ah, Hopkin

, I received your telegram last night, I look forward to meeting you, let’s have breakfast together!”

The visitor looked very smart. He was about 30 years old. He was wearing a simple and elegant tweed jacket with a hint of the straightness and rigor that he was used to wearing in official uniforms. I recognized him immediately. He was a very young police chief.

His name was Stanley Hopkins. Holmes felt that he had a great future and was a promising young man, and he respected Sherlock Holmes, a famous detective who was good at scientific reasoning and detection, as a student would for his teacher.

And admiration. At this time, Hopkin looked a little depressed and sat down with a look on his face.

"Thank you very much, sir. I had already eaten before coming here. I came to the city yesterday to report and spent the night there."

"What did you report?"

"It's a failure, sir, a complete and utter failure." "Is there no progress at all?"

"no progress."

"Oh, I am somewhat interested in investigating this case."

"Mr. Holmes, I really hope you can participate. This is the first major case I have encountered so far that I can't do anything about. For the sake of God, you must help!"

"Okay, okay, I happened to have carefully studied all the materials I have so far, including the investigation report. I want to ask you by the way, what do you know about the tobacco bag found at the crime scene?

What do you think? Are there any clues related to this? "

Hopkin looked surprised when he heard this question.

"Sir, that's the man's own tobacco bag, a bag made of sealskin, with his initials embroidered on the inside, for he himself is an experienced sealer."

"But he doesn't have a pipe himself, does he?"

"No, sir, we didn't find any at the scene, and he rarely smokes, but he might light one for his friends who come to visit him."

"It is possible. The reason why I mentioned this tobacco bag first is because if I conduct an investigation, I personally prefer to start with this bag first. My friend Dr. Watson does not know this case yet. As for

As for me, I might as well hear the whole incident again, so I would like you to give us a brief account of the general situation of this case!"

Stanley Hopkins took a note from his pocket.

Here is a chronology listing the life of Captain Peter Carey. He was born in 1845 and is 50 years old this year. His best thing is catching seals and whales. He became a captain in 1883.

The captain of the sealing ship "Sea Unicorn" in Port Dickson, he maintained a record of good results every time he sailed. In the second year of his becoming captain, oh, that was 1884, he retired

After retiring, he spent several years traveling, and finally settled in Sussex. He bought a small place near the residential area of ​​Forrest, which was called Woodman Lee.

, where he lived for six years until he was found murdered last week.

This man has a very special character. He usually lives a strict Puritan life. In life, he doesn't like to talk and is a bit melancholic. He has a wife and a daughter. The daughter is already in her 20s. In addition, there are two maids at home.

.Because of the boring and reportedly unbearable environment at home, his family often changed maids. This man had a habit of drinking, and when he got drunk he became a drunken devil. Neighbors could hear it, and sometimes he

In the middle of the night, when he was drunk, he would drive his wife and daughter out and beat them with a belt or something, causing them to run around the garden and scream, and the whole village would be disturbed by the screams.

Awake.

We learned that once a priest from the local parish came to his home and accused him of bad behavior. He was summoned by the local authorities for swearing at the old priest. In short, it is very simple to say that Mr. Holmes is difficult to see.

There is no one more arrogant and unreasonable than him. In addition, I also learned that he was not much better when he was a captain. The sailors gave him a nickname called "Black Peter". This is not only because of his dark hair.

His face and dark beard, and his violent bad temper made people around him afraid to approach. There is no doubt that he was not very popular with his neighbors, and people tried their best to avoid him. When the tragic news of his death spread around

Word spread that no one around him expressed regret for his death.

Mr. Holmes, I believe you must have learned from that investigative report that he owned a small cabin. Perhaps your friend did not know anything about it. He built a wooden cabin and named it '

Cabin', this cabin is just outside his house about a few hundred meters away from his home. He spends every night in this cabin. This cabin is 16 feet long and 10 feet wide. It is a single room. He

He kept the keys and tidied the room himself, including cleaning the items in the room. He never allowed anyone to step into his house. There were small windows on all sides of the house. The windows were never opened, and the curtains were hung on them all year round.

A window facing the road. Whenever night falls, the cabin will be illuminated by lights. People often talk about this cabin and wonder what he is doing inside. Mr. Holmes, what we can know

As a result, this is all that the cabin's windows provide.

Do you still remember that two days before the accident, at about 1 o'clock in the morning, there was a local stonemason named Slater. He passed by this house in the Forest Residential Area and stopped.

He saw the light coming from the window shining on several trees next to him. The stonemason swore: 'I can clearly see a head swinging from side to side through the curtains. The important thing is that this swinging shadow is definitely not Peter Kay's.

He is very familiar with Kaili. This swinging head can be seen to be covered with beard, but it is different from the captain's thick beard. This man's beard is short and forward. This is the origin of the stonemason.

He spent two hours in a small hotel next to the road, which was still some distance from the window of the wooden house. According to him, he saw it on Monday and the murder happened on Wednesday of that week.

On Tuesday, Peter Carey was again drunken and rowdy, as violent and rude as a beast that wants to eat people. He stayed around his house, and his wife and daughter heard him coming back and ran out until late at night.

He just returned to the hut. At about 2 o'clock in the morning the next day, his daughter heard a frightening scream coming from the direction of the hut. The sound sounded very scary (his daughter always slept with the window open)

). Since he usually yelled when he was drunk, he did not attract anyone's attention at the time. One of his maids got up at about 7 o'clock and found that the door of the hut was open, but because Black Peter was usually too lethargic

People were timid, so no one approached the open room, and no one dared to go in until noon. People crowded around the open door, looking in, and the scene inside the room made them pale with fright.

I ran home quickly. Within an hour, I arrived at the scene.

Mr. Holmes, you know that I am usually quite calm, but listen to me, when I looked over and saw the scene in the room, I was also frightened. The room was filled with a large group of mung bean flies.

, the whole room is like a noisy slaughterhouse. As soon as you enter this room, you will understand why it is called a cabin. When you enter the room, you will feel like you are standing on a boat. At one end of the room is a

There is a bed with a storage box next to it with maps and some charts on it. An oil painting of the "Unicorn of the Sea" hangs on the wall. A row of logbooks are neatly placed on a shelf in the room.

The situation was the same as being in the captain's cabin. He was lying across the room, his face had become extremely distorted by pain, the beard at the corners of his mouth was gray, and it was upturned due to fright. A fishing steel fork

It stabbed straight into his chest and stuck into the wooden wall behind his back, just like a small insect nailed to a cardboard shell. When people heard the extremely painful roar, it was obvious that at that moment he had already

died.

Sir, I understand your usual principles for handling cases and abide by these principles. I only allowed others to enter the scene after carefully checking the ground inside and outside the house, but no footprints were found on the scene.

"You mean no footprints were found?"

"Yes, sir, no traces were found."

"My good brother Hopkin, among the many cases I have experienced, I have never experienced a flying animal committing a crime. As long as the criminal has two legs, there must be footprints left behind, and even if there are not, there will be footprints.

Traces of having visited a certain object, or traces of something being moved in an unnoticeable manner. As long as we use scientific methods to investigate, these things can be discovered by us. A whole room, a room splattered with blood,

Can't we find any traces that allow us to find clues? Through the investigation you just described, I found that there are some things that you accidentally missed."

Hearing my friend's sarcasm, the young police chief shrugged with a little embarrassment.

"Mr. Holmes, I was extremely foolish not to invite you to survey the scene, but it is an irreversible established fact that there are other items in that room that should attract our attention. One is the one that impaled him.

That murder weapon, that harpoon. There was a tool shelf on the wall at that time, and the murderer grabbed the harpoon on the shelf. There are still two hanging there, with an empty space next to it. The wooden handle of this harpoon is carved

There were the words 'SS, Sea Unicorn, Dandy'. From these I concluded that the murder occurred in an extremely angry environment, and I speculated that the suspect had casually grabbed the harpoon and committed the murder. The incident occurred at about 2 o'clock in the morning.

When it happened, Peter Carey was already dressed, which undoubtedly showed that he and the murderer had had a date before. In addition, a bottle of Roma and two used glasses found on the table also proved that

at this point."

Holmes asked: "Your two inferences are reasonable. In addition to Roma wine, is there any other wine in the house?"

"Well, there is a small wine cabinet above the storage box. There is brandy and whiskey in it, but it seems to have nothing to do with our investigation of the case, because it seems that the wine bottles in the cabinet are full of wine and have not been touched at all.

.”
To be continued...