The Case of the Cedar Cove Prowler

0:00 Rain on Baker Street

0:04 Watson: It was the wet autumn of nineteen fifty-seven, and London had rained since Sunday. Our Baker Street sitting room smelled of coal smoke, and the wireless murmured the Light Programme. Holmes had been idle a fortnight, which meant chemistry. That Monday evening, the last of December, I was reading Mrs Hudson's account of our carpet aloud.

0:25 Watson: "Item: one burn, the size of a crown, by the coal scuttle. Cause, acid." Holmes: Nitric acid. Be precise, Watson, or Mrs Hudson will exaggerate.

0:37 Watson: "Item: a scorched oval before the hearth. Cause, a dropped pipe." Holmes: While I solved the Bermondsey forgery. An honourable burn.

0:48 Watson: She wants a new carpet before winter, Holmes. I'll pay half. Holmes: Then pay all of it. I'll keep the old one for reference.

0:56 Watson: You'd rather keep a map of your accidents. Holmes: Experiments. Accidents are what other people have.

1:04 Holmes: The bell, in this weather. Someone who won't wait for morning. Mrs Hudson: A lady for you, Mr Holmes. She won't part with her coat.

1:13 Rosamund: Which of you is Mr Holmes? No, I'll stand; I've been sitting since New York. Holmes: I am. This is Dr Watson. And you are?

1:23 Rosamund: Rosamund Ferris, of Fifth Avenue. I flew all night to say one thing. Watson: Then say it.

1:31 Rosamund: My son Maddox died in his own house at Cedar Cove yesterday. Watson: Good God, Mrs Ferris. Rosamund: And I've left him unburied to bring you back with me tonight. Tonight, before they—

1:44 Holmes: Madam, grief can cross an ocean overnight. Evidence can't. Rosamund: I didn't come for sympathy.

1:51 Holmes: Nor shall you have it. Cedar Cove has its own police. I'd arrive a foreigner, with no standing, to a cold trail.

1:59 Watson: Look at her. She's crossed an ocean and left her son unburied to do it. Holmes: Sentiment, Watson.

2:07 Watson: Sense. No mother does that unless she— unless she can't accept what she's been told. Rosamund: The doctor understands me. Do you?

2:17 Holmes: Mrs Hudson, our coats. Order your carpet; the doctor is paying. Mrs Hudson: The whole bill, sir?

2:25 Watson: It seems I'm the one who pays for his experiments. Holmes: Every penny. Your hat, Watson.

2:32 Past the Newsmen's Cameras

2:36 Watson: Noon found us at an iron gate on the Cedar Cove road, Rosamund rigid between Holmes and me, while her son's chauffeur nosed the long car through a crowd of newsmen. Rosamund: Don't slow down for them, O'Neill. Straight through.

2:50 O'Neill: I'd not slow for that lot if they lay down in the road, ma'am. Holmes: Three papers and a newsreel camera, Watson. The story is written already.

2:59 Watson: Then they'll want a new chapter when they see who's in the car. O'Neill: That's the missus on the step, ma'am. In her black.

3:07 Rosamund: Lorna. You might have met my plane yourself. Lorna: I sent O'Neill, Rosamund. I see you've brought company.

3:15 Rosamund: Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, from London. Holmes: Your shutters are closed on the drive side, madam, and nowhere else. Against the cameras, I think.

3:26 Lorna: Against everybody, Mr Holmes. Against the whole of Long Island. Watson: You've not slept since Sunday, I'd say. I could give you something.

3:36 Lorna: My doctor's given me plenty. And the police have been through every room twice, and the papers would give their— Rosamund: He goes upstairs, Lorna. Every room. I'll have nothing less.

3:47 Lorna: Look wherever you like, Mr Holmes. It won't bring Maddox back...

3:52 The Hall Between Two Doors

3:56 Watson: Upstairs, a broad hall lay between two bedroom doors that faced one another, and a heavy man from the county police stood between them with a paper. Tedesco: Tedesco, Nassau County Police. You're the London fella. Ma'am, you shouldn't be—

4:10 Rosamund: I'll stand where my son fell, Inspector. Read him her statement. Tedesco: Signed Sunday, nine in the morning. I'll give you the meat of it. "Home from the dinner for the Countess about one. Maddox to his room, me to mine, across the hall."

4:26 Tedesco: "I woke to a noise on the roof. I took the shotgun from beside my bed." "From my door I saw a man in the hall. Tall, no hat, hunched forward. The man I'd been seeing."

4:39 Tedesco: "I fired both barrels. Then the light, and it was Maddox." Holmes: The shot is in his doorframe, chest high, not in the hall wall. He'd barely crossed his own threshold.

4:52 Tedesco: Or he stepped back when he saw the gun. Fifteen feet, in the dark. Watson: Both barrels at fifteen feet. He was dead before he reached the floor.

5:02 Tedesco: Medical examiner says the same, Doc. Rosamund: Eleven years she slept across this hall from him. And she couldn't tell him from a burglar? He'd have spoken, Inspector. He'd have said her name—

5:14 Tedesco: She says he never said a word. Rosamund: I carried him up these stairs when he was four. He'd come off his pony, and he wouldn't cry, he— He wouldn't cry. Not once. And now I can't stop.

5:30 Watson: Sit a moment, madam. Here, on the— Rosamund: I won't sit. A prowler! She talked of her prowler at every dinner table on the North Shore!

5:39 Tedesco: All Cedar Cove heard of her prowler, ma'am. A tragedy, not a crime.

5:46 The Chauffeur's Rooms Above

5:49 Watson: Across the yard, up a wooden stair that smelled of petrol and saddle soap, we found the chauffeur's trunk open on his bed. O'Neill: Mind the top step, gentlemen. It's rotten, like the rest of the place.

6:02 Holmes: You're packing, O'Neill, and your master is two days dead. You don't expect the widow to keep you on. O'Neill: She's not asked, and I'd not wait to be. I'm turned off after twenty years, on a month's notice.

6:17 Watson: Twenty years. You'll have driven him to school, I suppose. O'Neill: To school, to his wedding, to every racetrack from Saratoga to Hialeah. Then a letter on the seat of the Packard.

6:29 Watson: Good Lord. Holmes: And no reason given. O'Neill: A month's wages. That was the reason, sir.

6:36 Holmes: Your curtain is tacked back, and your window faces the house. From that bed you'd see the upstairs lights. O'Neill: Are you police now? I saw nothing. I was— I was asleep till the shots. Two bangs, one on the other.

6:50 O'Neill: I was across that yard in my bare feet before a light came on. Watson: You'll want a black band for the funeral, at least. People notice these things.

6:59 O'Neill: I'll not wear black for him, Doctor. Not for that man. Holmes: Ah.

7:06 One Lamp After Midnight

7:09 Watson: The village exchange kept one lamp lit after midnight, over a switchboard and a woman in a cardigan with her headset round her neck. Tedesco: Gert, these are the gentlemen from London. Show them the night log.

7:22 Gert: From London? You came a long way for my handwriting, sir. I write what they say, the clock stamps the time. Look here. Two minutes past two, a muffled voice, five minutes before the widow rang, says there's a man on the roof at the Ferris place. Then click.

7:40 Watson: Extraordinary. Holmes: Muffled. A handkerchief over the mouthpiece, then. Someone who expected you to know the voice.

7:48 Gert: Mister, I know half the North Shore by voice. Most of them I'd rather not. Tedesco: Or some neighbor who saw a man up there and won't be a witness. Gert put it straight through to the precinct.

7:59 Gert: Car was on the road before I'd pulled the plug. Watson: And the widow's call? Gert: Seven minutes past. Sobbing so I could— I could hardly make her out. "I've shot him, I thought it was the prowler." I got her the police and her doctor.

8:16 Holmes: Which line carried that first call? Your board would— Gert: The ticket shows it, sir. Not the board. I don't swear to lamps at two in the morning; I swear to tickets.

8:25 Gert: And the tickets went up to the company office in the morning pouch, same as every night. Holmes: Confound it. Tedesco: I've asked for them back. The phone company moves like a glacier.

8:38 Holmes: Then tell me the voice, Gert. Old? Young? A man?

8:41 Gert: Man or woman, sir? Through that muffle I couldn't swear...

8:47 The Inspector's Private Theory

8:50 Watson: Tedesco drove us on to Mineola, and in his office, stale with cold coffee, he locked the door behind us. Tedesco: Upstairs I gave the mother the official line. Here's mine. O'Neill.

9:03 Watson: The chauffeur? He swears he was asleep over the garage. Tedesco: Sacked, sore, and he knows every gutter on that house. If anybody was on the roof, it's—

9:13 Holmes: You knew of a man on that roof when you told the lady "a tragedy." Your car was already on the road. Tedesco: The mother talks, Mr Holmes. To lawyers, to columnists, to anybody with a pencil.

9:26 Watson: Then why take us to Gert at all? Tedesco: Because she brought you, and I'd rather have you inside my tent. Gert's sworn to silence. She told the widow nothing that night, and no paper has a line of it. I want it plain: nobody at the house was told. Somebody saw my roof man and rang. I want that somebody before O'Neill knows there's a witness.

9:48 Holmes: You don't trust that house, Inspector. Tedesco: I don't trust any house with seven million dollars in it. Holmes: Nor do I.

9:56 Tedesco: So you two keep your mouths shut. Not a word of that call reaches the house.

10:02 Up the Ladder to the Slates

10:06 Watson: A ladder bolted to the gable brought us onto the slates by mid-afternoon, with the chauffeur sullen at Tedesco's heels. O'Neill: You'll break your necks, the pack of you. I've told the Inspector twice.

10:18 Tedesco: Tell the gentleman, O'Neill. Third time's lucky. O'Neill: I never set foot on this roof, Mr Holmes. Never. When the gutters want clearing, I— I hire a lad from the village.

10:29 Holmes: Then the lad wears a path through your moss. Look, Watson: a clean track over the slates, from the ladder to the chimney. Watson: Worn smooth, too. Somebody comes up here often.

10:42 O'Neill: Squirrels. Or the Inspector's boys, tramping about on Sunday, or... Tedesco: My boys didn't go round the back of the stack.

10:51 Holmes: Oh? Tedesco: Well, would you look at that: rye wedged behind the chimney, corked tight, with a third left in her. Watson: Corked and rationed. Somebody takes a mouthful at a time and comes back for more.

11:05 O'Neill: That's no bottle of mine. Tedesco: No? Holmes: The bricks are black with soot, yet the glass is clean. It has been handled this week.

11:14 O'Neill: I've not been up a ladder since the war, I tell you, not since— Tedesco: You never come up. Fine. Then were you up here at two that morning?

11:23 The Dead Man's Room

11:27 Watson: The dead man's room faced his wife's across the hall. His mother unlocked it for us herself, then stood just inside the door. Holmes: Hold the end to the floor, Watson. Six feet one inch to the lintel.

11:40 Watson: That's low. Rosamund: It's the old wing. My husband's father built it, and he was a small man.

11:47 Holmes: The bed is turned down and never lain in. His racing paper is folded open at the entries, with the pen uncapped beside it. He was awake when it began, madam. Nobody woke him.

11:59 Rosamund: He never slept before two. He'd sit up picking winners he never backed. Watson: A tall man would crack his head on that lintel every night.

12:09 Rosamund: Maddox was six feet three. He stooped under every doorway in this house from the summer he turned fifteen. Watson: Ah.

12:18 Rosamund: I'd tell him to stand up straight. He'd say the house wouldn't let him... Everyone tells me how she fired. Nobody asks why a man picking his winners got up from his chair. Mr Holmes. Find out what brought him out that door.

12:37 A Cold Pipe at the Harbour Inn

12:40 Watson: The inn by the harbour gave us two rooms under its eaves, and by ten Holmes had both chairs and most of my tobacco. You've not spoken since supper. I'll say it for you: the chauffeur.

12:54 Holmes: Say it, then. I'll listen for the holes. Watson: Twenty years, and it ends with a note on a car seat. A man broods on a thing like that.

13:03 Holmes: A man who sacks an old servant by note can't face him. Ashamed, not cruel. Watson: Then there's the roof. He swears he never climbs, and his whisky sits at the end of a worn path—

13:17 Holmes: His whisky? Nobody has yet shown whose hand put it there. Two facts, Watson, side by side. A grudge wants a deed. A bottle wants only a thirst.

13:30 Watson: Still. A man with both, on a roof at two in the morning... Holmes: Tomorrow we ask the widow what she thinks of her chauffeur.

13:39 The Widow Receives Callers

13:42 Watson: Next morning Lorna received us among the funeral lilies, while Rosamund kept apart by the cold grate. Holmes: Your chauffeur keeps a bottle of rye on your roof, madam. Behind the chimney.

13:54 Lorna: Does he. Well... I can't say I'm surprised. He'd vanish for half an hour and come back smelling of it. Maddox covered for him for years.

14:05 Holmes: Until your husband put his notice in the Packard. Lorna: Until then. After that he'd nothing left to lose, had he?

14:12 Rosamund: Nor anything to gain. My son's death doesn't put one nickel in O'Neill's— Lorna: Who said money, Rosamund? Spite. Plain spite.

14:22 Lorna: Everybody knew how I'd been. The gun by my bed, the lamps left burning. He had only to walk on that roof. He knew Maddox would— he knew Maddox would go to look, and he knew I'd shoot.

14:36 Watson: A man his age, on wet slates, in the dark? Holmes: A man who's worn a path to that chimney knows his footing blind. I think you're right about the roof, madam. The Inspector will have him before the day is out.

14:49 Lorna: Then it's true. Some neighbor rang the operator before the shots. Somebody saw him up there. Didn't they?

14:57 Rosamund: Neighbors! Prowlers, chauffeurs, neighbors. Anybody but the woman who held the gun. I came out from Fifth Avenue for this? Good day, Mr Holmes.

15:10 Hosing Down the Packard

15:14 Watson: Tedesco came for his man at noon, Holmes and I at his back and two patrolmen in the car, and found him in the garage yard hosing down the Packard. Tedesco: Shut that off, O'Neill. Hands on the fender.

15:25 O'Neill: What's this, then? Tedesco: You're under arrest. There's slate grit in the welts of those boots, and you never climb.

15:32 O'Neill: Arrest? Me? So a man turned off after twenty years is a murderer now, is that—

15:40 Tedesco: A man on my roof at two o'clock is. O'Neill: I was in my bed! Ask the dog, if you'll not ask me.

15:47 Watson: The dog? O'Neill: Chained by day, loose in this yard all night. After the shots he tore off— straight to the lane gate, and barked the roof man down the lane. Nine years that dog has known me. Never once barked at me. Not once...

16:04 Watson: He's licking your hands, man, cuffs and all. Holmes: There's fresh scoring low on the lane gate, Inspector, and the splinters are still pale. Something went at it hard, and lately.

16:15 Tedesco: Something did. A cat. A delivery boy. Tuesday.

16:20 O'Neill: I lifted that man out of this car at Saratoga when he couldn't stand. I'd have died for him once. Once, God help me. And you—

16:29 Tedesco: A dog's no alibi. He sleeps in Mineola tonight.

16:33 Past Eleven at the Switchboard

16:37 Watson: Past eleven Tedesco brought us back to Gert's lamp, where a brown company envelope lay torn open on her board. Holmes: One question tonight, Gert. Who rang you at two minutes past two?

16:50 Tedesco: Say the mutt barked the roof man down the lane, like O'Neill swears. Then somebody watched a stranger up there. I want that—

16:57 Gert: The glacier moved, Inspector. The tickets came back on the evening pouch. Tedesco: About time.

17:03 Gert: Two-oh-two, the muffle. Cedar Cove six, two-two-nine-oh. That's the Ferris place.

17:10 Tedesco: The hall telephone? Then anybody in that house could— Gert: Not the hall. That's the private line, the one that rings in the widow's bedroom. The hall's another number.

17:19 Gert: And here's seven past, the crying one. Same number. That's both calls on her bedroom line.

17:26 Tedesco: Well, well. Holmes: Your pencil is firm on the first ticket, Gert, and it wanders on the second. Gert: The muffle gave me the creeps, mister. The crying I believed.

17:38 Watson: Then there was no neighbor. Good Lord. It came from upstairs in that house.

17:44 Gert: Don't ask me whose hand held the receiver. I've the ticket, and that's all I've got. Tedesco: O'Neill goes free at first light. Then we'll see.

17:55 Foghorn Before Dawn

17:58 Watson: Some while before four I saw lamplight under the door between our rooms, and found Holmes at the dormer window, still dressed, his pipe long dead. You've not been to bed. That pipe's stone cold.

18:12 Holmes: Not since the exchange. The foghorn and I've kept each other company. Watson: Gert's tickets, then.

18:19 Holmes: Older than the tickets. Two sentences, Watson, spoken in two different rooms. In Mineola the Inspector turned his key before he said a word. A man who locks his door has told no one else.

18:32 Watson: He swore us both to it. Not a syllable to the house. Holmes: And later, among the lilies, the widow spoke of a neighbor who telephoned before the gun went off.

18:43 Watson: Grief picks up rumours like a coat picks up burrs. I've heard widows at a bedside quote things nobody ever said. Holmes: Very likely. She may have dreamed it. She may have overheard a patrolman on the stair.

18:57 Watson: You don't believe a word of that. Holmes: I believe nothing before breakfast. At first light Tedesco opens O'Neill's cell, and I mean to be there.

19:07 Watson: Then who was this neighbor of hers?

19:10 First Light at the Cells

19:14 Watson: Mineola's cells smelled of carbolic and a long night, and Tedesco had the chauffeur's door open before the sun cleared the courthouse roof. Tedesco: On your feet, O'Neill. You're going home.

19:25 O'Neill: Home, is it? A packed trunk and a month to run. That's not home.

19:30 Tedesco: Before you go. That rye wedged behind the chimney, whose is it? O'Neill: It's— Mine. God forgive me, it's mine. I lied to your face about it.

19:43 O'Neill: Every afternoon, while the house slept off its lunch, I'd go up for one nip and the look of the Sound. Never after dark. Holmes: The widow knew your habit, O'Neill. Half an hour gone, she told us, and back smelling of it.

19:58 O'Neill: Did she now. She never said a word of it to me. Watson: And at two that morning?

20:03 O'Neill: Asleep over the garage, Doctor, as I told you. A man doesn't climb wet slates in the dark for a mouthful he can have at four. Tedesco: Go on. The Packard's in the yard. And you say nothing at that house. Understand me?

20:17 O'Neill: I've been saying nothing at that house for twenty years, Inspector. Tedesco: Now. Her statement, signed Sunday at nine. Listen to it again. Woke, she says. Woke to the noise overhead, then the gun, the door, both—

20:33 Holmes: And not one word of a telephone until after the light came on. Tedesco: Gert's tickets put both calls on her bedroom line. Two minutes past and seven past. She owns the second. The first, nothing.

20:46 Watson: She'd give you every sob of the call that made her a widow, and forget the one before it? Tedesco: She left out her own first call, Mr Holmes.

20:56 Gathering on the Upper Landing

20:59 Watson: By noon we were back on the upper landing, Lorna framed in her own doorway, Rosamund at the head of the stairs, Tedesco between them with his hat in his hand. Lorna: Inspector, O'Neill is in the yard washing the car as if nothing in the world had happened. Tedesco: He's let go, ma'am. The dog vouches for him, and so do I.

21:19 Lorna: A dog! Mr Holmes, you told me yourself— you sat in my drawing room and told me he was the man on the roof. Holmes: I agreed that someone stood up there, madam. So did you. You told us a neighbor rang the operator before the shots.

21:35 Lorna: Well? Somebody saw him. Somebody must have...

21:40 Holmes: Your telephone sits on the table by your bed, an arm's length from where the shotgun stood. Who told you of that call? Lorna: The Inspector did. Sunday, on the stairs, while his men were—

21:50 Tedesco: No, ma'am. I locked that call in a drawer. Nobody at the house was told — not you, not the servants, not the lady here.

21:58 Rosamund: She said it to me too, Inspector. In the drawing room, among her lilies. Lorna: Then the operator. She— she must have said something when I rang.

22:09 Tedesco: Gert put you through to the police and your doctor. Not one word more. She's sworn to it.

22:16 Watson: Then three knew of that call, madam. Gert, the police, and whoever made it. Lorna: I was asleep. I woke, and there was a noise, and—

22:25 Holmes: Gert's tickets show your own number. The muffled voice came from the telephone beside your bed. Lorna: There was someone up there. There was. I heard him on the slates.

22:36 Rosamund: Did you. Lorna: All those months I'd made him up, and then there he was. Really there. Over my head...

22:44 Rosamund: And Maddox across the hall, picking his winners. Lorna: He was going to put me out. Eleven years, and nothing, because his mother... because you—

22:53 Rosamund: Say it to me, Lorna. Say what you did. Lorna: I didn't shout. I didn't need to. Fifteen feet is nothing. Fifteen feet, in the dark, is nothing at all.

23:06 Lorna: I only whispered. 'Maddox, someone is on the roof!' And he came.

23:12 Newsmen at the Gate

23:16 Watson: The Mineola car waited below the front step, and past the gate the newsmen had already scented what was coming. Rosamund: Hold her there, Inspector. I'll say this to her face.

23:27 Tedesco: Make it short, ma'am. Half the North Shore is at that gate. Rosamund: Tall, no hat, hunched forward. You read it to me upstairs, Inspector, and I never heard it. To every table on Long Island, Lorna, you described a man who stooped under every doorway. You never once said his name.

23:50 Lorna: I never told a lie about him. Not one. Watson: She taught the whole of Cedar Cove to see a burglar wherever her husband stood.

23:58 Holmes: Then she had it taken down. Gert's log holds a muffled voice, five minutes before the widow's tears: a fellow up on the roof, from her own bedroom, before any shot. She entered the mistake on the record while Maddox still sat over his racing paper. All that remained was to make it.

24:17 Tedesco: With a real thief on the slates to swear to it. She nearly had the lot of us. Rosamund: She'd only to whisper and he'd come. He always would. That was my son.

24:30 Tedesco: Lorna, I'm charging you with your husband's murder.

24:35 A Cable to Baker Street

24:39 Watson: The last page of that affair in my journal is a cable. It reached Baker Street three days after our new carpet went down, and found Holmes kneeling upon it with a pipette. Mrs Hudson: A cable from New York, Mr Holmes. And that had better not be acid, on a carpet three days old.

24:56 Holmes: Water, Mrs Hudson. I'm testing the dye. Read it, Watson.

25:01 Watson: "Lorna charged murder, held without bail. O'Neill driving again, for the mother. My thanks. Tedesco."

25:09 Holmes: Good man. Mrs Hudson: A chauffeur, sir? Is that good news or bad?

25:14 Watson: Good. They locked him up for one night on the strength of a bottle. He'll drive her to her son's grave now, I expect.

25:23 Mrs Hudson: Well, there's some justice in that. I'll fetch a cloth. Watson: Tell me one thing, Holmes. What first betrayed her?

25:32 Holmes: One sentence among the lilies. She spoke of a neighbor who telephoned before the shots. Yet behind his locked door, Tedesco had told us no soul in that house knew of any such call. Only Gert, the police, and the caller.

25:48 Watson: So when she said it, she'd as good as named who rang. Holmes: As good as. Gert's tickets made it fact: her bedroom line, both times.

25:59 Watson: And the prowler? She'd been describing him for months. Holmes: Tall, bareheaded, stooping. His mother gave us the stoop at his own doorway, beside a lintel six feet one inch high.

26:12 Watson: Seven million dollars, and that house. She'll not keep any of it. Holmes: Nor will Rosamund keep her son. The law can return a fortune, my dear Watson. It can't return the man.

26:25 Watson: The papers will still call her a frightened wife who saw a stranger. Holmes: She drew her prowler from life, Watson, and had only one sitter.