Mr Holmes said, “You speak with much conviction, Miss Stoner. Might I ask how you arrived at this certainty?”
I replied, “I should like to recount all the events that led to this conclusion, Mr Holmes. Owing to your recent involvement in my situation, I thought you would want to know of the even stranger happenings that have followed in the wake of the former. I am beyond curious to know what you will think of certain elements of these occurrences, which are so uncanny that I fear you will ultimately scoff at them.”
Mr Holmes sat up straighter in his chair and said, “It is a rare thing indeed for one of the cases I have undertaken and thought to be thoroughly resolved to not be concluded after all. You have my keenest interest, Miss Stoner. I will withhold my judgement until I have heard all. Please proceed, and leave out no detail of your account.”
“Thank you; to the best of my ability I shan’t.” Here I drew in a long breath to bolster myself. “As you will no doubt recall, Mr Holmes, you and your good friend Dr Watson here kindly saw me into the care of my maiden aunt, Miss Honoria Westphail, directly after the dreadful events that culminated in my stepfather’s death. However, in the absence of any other heir, and though I was not his blood relation, it fell upon me to address matters pertaining to his estate of Stoke Moran, and so I was obliged to return there.
“The coroner had removed my stepfather’s body quickly enough, of course, but there remained the business of the snake trapped in the heavy safe. The animal would presumably not suffocate, as my stepfather had kept it in the safe all along, so apparently it was getting sufficient air somehow. The hope was that the snake would starve to death, but then how long would that take? When would it be prudent to open the safe, using the key that stood in the lock, to ascertain whether the snake still posed a threat? These concerns were expressed to me by the police who followed up the business after your involvement.
“Before my return to Stoke Moran I gave my consent to have the safe removed from the house and for the police to deal with it as they would. Upon my arrival back at the old manor house I was visited by one of the constables who had been present when the safe was opened, and I was informed of the result.
“It seems the men who unlocked the safe had improvised weapons at hand, meaning to thrust a sod cutter’s spade into the aperture as soon as the door came open and crush the beast immediately, but they were prepared in case it should slip past this blade. Another man had a long, makeshift torch ready, to thrust in the same if need be. A third constable turned the key and at a signal cracked the door open, but before the man with the spade could attack, the man with the torch – who had glimpsed the interior by the light of his fire – begged the other to hold off. A moment later, though the three constables remained tense with caution, the door was hauled fully open.
“The snake that had killed both my sister and stepfather was gone. Or, at least, what remained was less than a carcass. The constable described to me a coil of colourless, dry matter, that when stirred with the spade proved to be comprised of a fluffy white material that broke up like ash. So unsubstantial was this matter that even the merest probing caused it to disintegrate, the ashy remnants so fine that there was ultimately left not even a residue within the safe.”
Mr Holmes interrupted, “Were they certain the snake did not slip out through the bottom of the aperture once the door was cracked open, while the men were distracted and confounded by the sight of this pale coil? The glare of the torch itself may have shielded this action. My suspicion is that the dry matter was nothing more than the serpent’s molted skin.”
“That was my own initial reaction to this account, Mr Holmes, and I suggested the same to this constable, who was in fact he who had wielded the spade. He assured me that with three sets of eyes on the safe the snake could not possibly have slipped past them. And there was no other means of escape from the safe, for, had there been, surely the snake would have made use of it before. Also, he swore he could tell this was not merely a shed skin, for he had found and handled such in his youth. He and the other two could only conclude that the snake had died and become strangely desiccated or mummified due to some property of the sealed safe.”
“Unless, of course, another had entered the mansion in your absence and removed the snake, the key, as you say, still slotted in its hole.”
“One might readily wonder that, but further events I am to relate will shed a different light on that consideration.”
Mr Holmes said, “Forgive my interruption, then. Please continue.”
“Well, mysterious though this situation was, I soon turned my attention to the matter that had brought me back to Stoke Moran. My fiancé, Percy Armitage, was dear enough to already be investigating for me a means by which I might sell the estate, as I have no sentimental attachment to it. The house itself, being in such ill repair as you will recall, with the roof of the east wing even having partly collapsed, we thought might best be demolished, but we proposed to leave that decision to whomever proved interested in acquiring the property.
“Meanwhile, with the aid of my stepfather’s former housekeeper, Mrs Littledale, I intended to set about packing up the remainder of my belongings to transport back to my aunt’s home, along with whatever had belonged to my sister that I might care to retain. As for my stepfather’s possessions, I had no desire to own any of it, so poisonous had his memory become to me.
“Mr Armitage had come to meet me upon my return to Stoke Moran, to ensure that I was capable of re-entering the scene of so much horror, but once I had thoroughly reassured him he returned to his home, near Reading, where his occupation made demands on him. I planned to stay only a matter of days at the manor house, but I would be sleeping in my old room, despite the minor repairs that had been begun on it as a ruse to force me to stay in my sister’s old room and thereby make me vulnerable to my stepfather’s dangerous pet. Mrs Littledale consented to sleep in Julia’s room during my stay so that I would not be in the house alone. Though the place repulsed me, rationally I knew the threat had passed. The police had even, at my request, warned off from the property those gypsies whom my stepfather had strangely, given his violent temperament and reclusive nature, permitted and even encouraged to set up their tents on our grounds.
“There was one unresolved and perplexing matter, however, that still caused me a good deal of nervousness, so that I slept at night locked in my room and never ventured from the house after dark. You will remember that in addition to his snake, my stepfather was also in possession of a baboon and a cheetah, which rather than being penned or chained up he allowed to roam freely within the broken-down stone wall surrounding the property, doubtlessly to intimidate and ward off any curious village folk.”
Dr Watson spoke up, “Yes, you told us that a correspondent of Dr Roylott’s had sent these animals and the snake over from India. Holmes and I, much to our unpleasant surprise, crossed paths with the baboon the night we came to investigate your situation, and once we had hidden ourselves in your room we heard the cheetah sniffing around at the shuttered window.”