The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual

Background

Unusually, Holmes himself is the main narrator: after an introduction by Watson he goes through his old records and recounts one of his earliest cases, a frame tale that shows off his problem-solving skills. The story shares elements with two tales by Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold-Bug and The Cask of Amontillado.

Reginald Musgrave, an old university acquaintance, consults Holmes about strange events at Hurlstone, his family's ancient manor, where each eldest son memorises a strange poem on coming of age. Musgrave had caught his butler Brunton secretly studying the ritual and ordered him to leave; days later Brunton vanished, and the maid Rachel Howells, whom Brunton had spurned, escaped after throwing a satchel of twisted metal and coloured stones into the lake.

Like Brunton, Holmes realises that the seemingly meaningless ritual was likely instructions to a valuable object's hiding place. Using the height of the biggest oak tree and the location of a former giant elm, he repeats Brunton's actions, which lead into an abandoned wing of the house. In its cellar a heavy stone hides a deep hole with Brunton's asphyxiated body lying across an ancient wooden chest. He deduces that Rachel helped Brunton lift the stone and that the slab fell shut on him, by accident or on purpose.

The metal and stones prove to be the remains of St Edward's Crown, which belonged to Charles I. Holmes concludes that Sir Ralph Musgrave, a Cavalier close to Charles II, was given the crown for safekeeping, hid it under the stone and created the ritual as a clue to its location.