There is a mark of blood upon the window sill where someone seems to have entered.
The drawbridge was up at this time and Cecil claims that he lowered it in order to admit help. It appeared to have been fired at close range which caused the head to have been completely blown to pieces.Ĭecil Barker claims that he was upstairs in his room when he heard the shot and rushed downstairs. A man name Cecil Barker was staying at the house on the night the murder took place and was a regular guest of Mr and Mrs Douglas.Ī sawn off shotgun was found at the scene.
The house is an old manor with a moat and drawbridge.
John Douglas was murdered at around midnight and had been shot in the head. Holmes, Watson, and MacDonald travel to Birlstone village in Sussex. Holmes informs MacDonald that although the Professor's salary is seven hundred pounds a year he owns a painting worth over forty thousand pounds and the Inspector agrees that this is suspicious. MacDonald reminds Holmes that the professor is an educated and well respected man. Sherlock Holmes tells MacDonald that since he received an alert from Porlock it is probable that Professor Moriarty's influence exists in the matter.
Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard calls upon Holmes to ask for his help and informs him that Mr Douglas of Birlstone Manor House has been murdered that morning. Moriarty is blameless in the eyes of the law but Holmes knows him to be "the controlling brain of the underworld." Together Holmes and Watson decipher Porlock's message as indicating that a man named John Douglas residing at Birlstone is in danger. Porlock occasionally sends Holmes insider information. It was first published in serial form in the Strand Magazine from September 1914 to May 1915.Īt the outset of the novel Sherlock Holmes receives a message from Fred Porlock, an agent to Professor Moriarty. The Valley of Fear is a mystery novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and was the last of the four Sherlock Holmes novels written by the author.
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