Reginald Musgrave was an old fellow-student of Holmes. He was a scion of one of the very oldest families in the kingdom. Brunton, his butler, was with extraordinary gifts but he was a bit of a Don Juan. That night, Reginald Musgrave couldn’t fall asleep so he went to the billiard-room to get his book. He found Brunton in the library reading our family documents. He criticized him and Brunton went away without a word. What Brunton read just now was not important paper but the Musgrave Ritual, a sort of ceremony peculiar to Reginald Musgrave’s family. Reginald Musgrave let Brunton leave in a week. Brunton asked for more, but failed. One day, Brunton was gone. Rachel Howells, the maid had been suffered an illness, was gone, too. They found her trail by the lake. The police found nothing from the lake but a a linen bag. Rachel once loved Brunton but then she hated him.
Through calculation according to the questions and answers in Musgrave Ritual, Holmes found an old cellar and in it was a small chamber. In the chamber was Brunton’s dead body. Holmes deduced that Brunton asked Rachel to help him to move the stone together and he was left in the chamber covered with the stone by Rachel.
The bag which was found in the lake was a crown, a relic of intrinsic value.
To arouse Holmes from his nervous prostrain, I asked him to spend a week in my old friend, Colonel Hayter’s place. Colonel Hayter was an old soldier, so Holmes and he had much in common. Old Acton had his house broken into but no great damage done. Cunningham’s coachman William was killed by the burglar. It was said by the J.P. and his son.
Acton’s and Cunningham’s are the largest and richest in the place.
The inspector told that he got a fragment torn of a larger sheet from the dead body. He presumed that William was in league with the thief. We got to the Cunningham’s. before arriving, Holmes told us it was the key to find out the rest of that sheet. While talking with Cunningham, the inspector almost slipped his tongue. Holmes accomplished to cheat Mr. Cunningham’s hand writing. While examine J.P.’s room, Holmes deliberately knocked the things over and took the blame on me. We began to pick up the things. Suddenly we found Holmes disappeared. J.P. and his son went to look for him, and then we heard Holmes’ help. He was almost killed by J.P. and his son in the dressing room. He said J.P. and his son were the murders and they were taken away. Because he found the rest of the sheet in the pocket. He said the paper was written by a young man and an old man, from a family. Also, before, he deduced he two had lied from the wound on the dead body and no trace in the place where the murder ran away.
James Barclay, who commanded the Royal Munsters, lived in a villa out of barracks with his wife Miss Nancy Devoy. The couple was harmonious in others’ eyes. However, for days on end, he was sunk in the deepest gloom and dislike to being left alone.
Mrs. Barclay and Miss Morrison went to a meeting in the Guild of St. George and returned after 40 minutes. She went to the morning-room which was seldom used in the evening. Mr. Barclay joined her but was never seen again alive.
The maids heard their dispute but the door was locked inside. Then they heard a sudden dreadful cry in the man’s voice with a crash and a scream from the woman. The coachman rushed to force the door but failed. When he got into the man was dead and the woman was stretched insensible upon a couch. The key couldn’t be found. A club was lying beside the body.
Miss Morrison said on the way back home they met a crooked man and Mrs. Barclay had a talk with him. Holmes found the deformed man. He said Nancy was loved by him and Mr. Barclay but she loved him. So during a war, Barclay betrayed him into the hands of the enemy. They thought he was dead. Nancy and Barclay got married.
After meeting Nancy, Henry, the man followed her and when he broke into the room, Mr. Barclay fell over with his head on the fender and died. Nancy was faint and Henry ran away.
Dr. Percy Trevelyan was a London University man. After graduating, he occupied a minor position in king’s College Hospital and he kept researching the monograph on nervous lesios and won the Bruce Pinkerton prize. Lack of money, he put up his plate by using ten years.
One day, Mr. Blessington visited him and he decided to start him in practice in Brook Street and then they negotiated. He himself lived in the character of a resident patient. His heart was weak and needed constant medical supervision. He was frightened with the burglary in the West End.
A Russian nobleman and his son went to Dr. Percy Trevelyan. The first day they left strangely. the next day, they came again and when Mr. Blessington went back to his room from regular walking outside, he cried that someone had been in his room. And he asked Dr,Percy to ask Holmes for help.
We went to the physician’s house and Mr, Blessington didn’t tell the truth and we left. The next day, we got the news that Mr. Blessington had died. After examinating the house, Holmes inferred that was not suicide but a planned murder.
The great Worthingdon bank business mentioned five men—the four and a fifth was murdered. Of the three, Mr. Blessington’s evidence, the fifth was hanged and the other three got fifteen years apiece. The three were the nobleman, the son and the new boy in the clinic.