Holmes lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair.

“Let us hear about it,” said he.

“I’ve got my facts pretty clear,” said Stanley Hopkins.  “All I want now is to know what they all mean.  The story, so far as I can make it out, is like this.  Some years ago this country house, Yoxley Old Place, was taken by an elderly man, who gave the name of Professor Coram.  He was an invalid, keeping his bed half the time, and the other half hobbling round the house with a stick or being pushed about the grounds by the gardener in a Bath chair.  He was well liked by the few neighbours who called upon him, and he has the reputation down there of being a very learned man.  His household used to consist of an elderly housekeeper, Mrs. Marker, and of a maid, Susan Tarlton.  These have both been with him since his arrival, and they seem to be women of excellent character.  The professor is writing a learned book, and he found it necessary, about a year ago, to engage a secretary.  The first two that he tried were not successes, but the third, Mr. Willoughby Smith, a very young man straight from the university, seems to have been just what his employer wanted.  His work consisted in writing all the morning to the professor’s dictation, and he usually spent the evening in hunting up references and passages which bore upon the next day’s work.  This Willoughby Smith has nothing against him, either as a boy at Uppingham or as a young man at Cambridge.  I have seen his testimonials, and from the first he was a decent, quiet, hard-working fellow, with no weak spot in him at all.  And yet this is the lad who has met his death this morning in the professor’s study under circumstances which can point only to murder.”

The wind howled and screamed at the windows.  Holmes and I drew closer to the fire, while the young inspector slowly and point by point developed his singular narrative.

“If you were to search all England,” said he, “I don’t suppose you could find a household more self-contained or freer from outside influences.  Whole weeks would pass, and not one of them go past the garden gate.  The professor was buried in his work and existed for nothing else.  Young Smith knew nobody in the neighbourhood, and lived very much as his employer did.  The two women had nothing to take them from the house.  Mortimer, the gardener, who wheels the Bath chair, is an army pensioner—­an old Crimean man of excellent character.  He does not live in the house, but in a three-roomed cottage at the other end of the garden.  Those are the only people that you would find within the grounds of Yoxley Old Place.  At the same time, the gate of the garden is a hundred yards from the main London to Chatham road.  It opens with a latch, and there is nothing to prevent anyone from walking in.