福尔摩斯探案谁译得好 福尔摩斯探案经典:《恐怖谷》第3章Part3

福尔摩斯探案经典:《恐怖谷》第3章Part3  

"Then if you were in the room within half a minute of the crime
he must have been in the water at that very moment."
"I have not a doubt of it. I wish to heaven that I had rushed to the window! But the curtain screened it
as you can see
and so it never occurred to me. Then I heard the step of Mrs. Douglas
and I could not let her enter the room. It would have been too horrible."
"Horrible enough!" said the doctor
looking at the shattered head and the terrible marks which surrounded it. "I've never seen such injuries since the Birlstone railway smash."
"But
I say
" remarked the police sergeant
whose slow
bucolic mon sense was still pondering the open window. "It's all very well your saying that a man escaped by wading this moat
but what I ask you is
how did he ever get into the house at all if the bridge was up?"
"Ah
that's the question
" said Barker.
"At what o'clock was it raised?"
"It was nearly six o'clock
" said Ames
the butler.
"I've heard
" said the sergeant
"that it was usually raised at sunset. That would be nearer half-past four than six at this time of year."
"Mrs. Douglas had visitors to tea
" said Ames. "I couldn't raise it until they went. Then I wound it up myself."
"Then it es to this
" said the sergeant: "If anyone came from outside--IF they did--they must have got in across the bridge before six and been in hiding ever since
until Mr. Douglas came into the room after eleven."
"That is so! Mr. Douglas went round the house every night the last thing before he turned in to see that the lights were right. That brought him in here. The man was waiting and shot him. Then he got away through the window and left his gun behind him. That's how I read it; for nothing else will fit the facts."
The sergeant picked up a card which lay beside the dead man on the floor. The initials V.V. and under them the number 341 were rudely scrawled in ink upon it.
"What's this?" he asked
holding it up.
Barker looked at it with curiosity. "I never noticed it before
" he said. "The murderer must have left it behind him."
"V.V.--341. I can make no sense of that."
The sergeant kept turning it over in his big fingers. "What's V.V.? Somebody's initials
maybe. What have you got there
Dr. Wood?"
It was a good-sized hammer which had been lying on the rug in front of the fireplace--a substantial
workmanlike hammer. Cecil Barker pointed to a box of brass-headed nails upon the mantelpiece.
"Mr. Douglas was altering the pictures yesterday
" he said. "I saw him myself
standing upon that chair and fixing the big picture above it. That accounts for the hammer."