Speaker 1: And now to return to the ghost of Hurlston matter,
Speaker 1: Doctor Watson, Hurlston say, wasn't that the ancient country home
Speaker 1: of the Musgraves where Holmes discovered the crown of the
Speaker 1: Stuart King?
Speaker 2: Correct, mister Harris, absolutely correct, that this is another story,
Speaker 2: and to begin at the beginning. Holmes, as you know,
Speaker 2: in his uh cerebral processes, was the neatest and most
Speaker 2: methodical individual, But in his personal habits he was the
Speaker 2: untidiest man that ever drove a fellow lodger to distraction.
Speaker 2: Not that I'm what you'd call painfully tide in myself.
Speaker 3: On now, doctor Watson, you're always need as a pen
Speaker 3: with clipper crafts.
Speaker 2: That's easy, But don't interrupt me.
Speaker 4: Where was I?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, yes, I'm certainly not what you'd call prissy.
Speaker 2: But when I find a man who keeps his cigars
Speaker 2: in the cold, scuttle his tobacco in the toll of
Speaker 2: the Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by jackknife
Speaker 2: in the very center of the mantelpiece, then I begin
Speaker 2: to give myself virtue of air. I don't doctor imagine
Speaker 2: then my surprise when on returning one afternoon from making
Speaker 2: my medical rounds, I found Homes in a stiff collar
Speaker 2: and wearing his Prince Albert. Furthermore, he was tidying up
Speaker 2: his chemical table and kicking his notebooks, papers and other
Speaker 2: impedimented out of sight under the sofa.
Speaker 3: Crime to be queen of the maid mother, For I'm
Speaker 3: to be queen of the may homes.
Speaker 2: What in Heaven's name is.
Speaker 3: The watson your overshoes kind of eave them outside? Can't
Speaker 3: have you tracking mud about holmes?
Speaker 2: Have you taken leave of your senses? Are you feeling well?
Speaker 3: Certainly I'm feeling well. Never felt better. But don't stand
Speaker 3: there with your mouth open like a ninny. Help me
Speaker 3: clear this litter off the sofa. But oh here take
Speaker 3: the scasogene in the morning papers, and here's the microscope
Speaker 3: and your top half. Oh good lord, there she is. Now,
Speaker 3: this is Reginald Musgrave. Of course she's coming to pay us.
Speaker 2: Call.
Speaker 3: Well, don't just stand there with that stuff. Rid away
Speaker 3: somewhere where for the lover behind the curtains of the door.
Speaker 3: Now wait, chuck it here in the umbrella.
Speaker 2: Stand hurry all right?
Speaker 4: All right there, ah.
Speaker 3: All neat and shipshape. Not a thing out of place
Speaker 3: except your back hair, Watson, do slap it down. There's
Speaker 3: a good chap.
Speaker 2: Oh, go to blazes.
Speaker 3: Well, well open the door for missus Musgrave. Opened the door?
Speaker 2: Whose you are the most exasprating man Mercy, How do.
Speaker 5: You do, Doc Watson?
Speaker 2: Won't you come in? Missus must Why it's not Missus
Speaker 2: Musgrave at all. It's the honorable Alice Adare, lady Maynooth's
Speaker 2: charming sister in law.
Speaker 6: I was Alisadair, doctor Watson until mister Holmes introduced me
Speaker 6: to his old castmate, Reginald Musgrave some months ago. It
Speaker 6: was one weekend last Scring when he escorted Lady Maynuth
Speaker 6: and myself down to Sussex to view the Stuart Crown.
Speaker 6: Right then and there I fell in love with Hurlstone
Speaker 6: and determined to become its mistress. Of course I had
Speaker 6: to marry Reggie to accomplish my purpose.
Speaker 3: Had him eeting out of her hand inside of twenty minutes,
Speaker 3: one flutter of our eyelid, and Reggie was a goner.
Speaker 2: And I never knew you even met the bladder, Sherlock.
Speaker 6: You mean you didn't tell him about the wedding now, really,
Speaker 6: that's too bad of you. Mister Holmes was best man,
Speaker 6: doctor Watson though. Oh, Reggie and I were married in
Speaker 6: a registry office. You know how skittery middle aged bachelors
Speaker 6: are about a big wedding.
Speaker 3: Well, my dear Alice, how are things at Helstone dreadful?
Speaker 6: I'm so annoyed with Reggie I'm hardly speaking to him.
Speaker 6: If he goes through with it, I shall divorce him,
Speaker 6: whether I have grounds or not. Goes through with what
Speaker 6: he's threatening to sell the estates.
Speaker 2: Oh good lord, no, Why the Musgraves have always lived.
Speaker 5: At Helstone, That's what I keep telling him.
Speaker 2: Besides, it's famous since the oldest inhabited building in the country.
Speaker 6: That's what he keeps telling me. He says it's too
Speaker 6: old to be inhabited any longer. He has absolutely no
Speaker 6: feeling for all those darling old mullioned windows and the
Speaker 6: beautiful old mantlepieces and paneling. Keeps on telling me it's
Speaker 6: damp and drafty. It's his rheumatism, of course, it makes
Speaker 6: him so unreasonable. That and that wretched Stuart Crown you
Speaker 6: discovered for him, Sherlock, did you have to do that?
Speaker 3: But my dear Alice, he was delighted when we found
Speaker 3: the Royal Diadem. If I'd handed him a million pounds,
Speaker 3: he couldn't be more excited.
Speaker 6: Well, it's turned out to be a regular Frankenstein's monster.
Speaker 6: People come from all over to see the stupid thing.
Speaker 6: They come in drones, by carriage, and cherubar and lorry
Speaker 6: they come and being their lunches.
Speaker 5: We haven't a moment's privacy.
Speaker 3: Why doesn't he send it off to a museum where
Speaker 3: it belongs, because that's.
Speaker 6: What the government wanted him to do in the first place.
Speaker 6: Where all things have been going from bad to worse.
Speaker 6: All those trippers tramping through the shrubbery were bad enough,
Speaker 6: But that dreadful boy yesterday afternoon, that's what really put
Speaker 6: the the petticoats on the queen.
Speaker 3: What boy are you referring to, Alice?
Speaker 6: That horrible little urchin we found in the tea garden
Speaker 6: pulling up ridges, prize petunia by the roots?
Speaker 7: Hell, here, I say, what's this? What's this?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 8: It's alpha Anette picking old flowers. He is I do
Speaker 8: love night, say, well, tell.
Speaker 9: Them to stop. Those are not wild flowers. Those are
Speaker 9: my best important French petunias.
Speaker 8: Frenchy, Well, what do you know that's enough, Alpie.
Speaker 3: That's up, posies.
Speaker 8: And now we'll go and see the pretty crown.
Speaker 5: And I want to see enough crown. Want to big
Speaker 5: posy stop it.
Speaker 7: I say, put that plump back where you found it.
Speaker 8: I do like the old man tells you, Alvi, and
Speaker 8: wipe your ill.
Speaker 9: Tell him to stop that infernal racket, or I shan't formit.
Speaker 9: You to see the crown at all?
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, hold on there. You can't refuse to an
Speaker 8: alpha set the crown. It's historic. He's got as might
Speaker 8: try to look at it as you have.
Speaker 10: That's sentenced. I'll sell the place and the grounds and
Speaker 10: the running crown as well. I'll sell it to Plunket,
Speaker 10: the pickle king. See if I don't, good, Lord, don't
Speaker 10: tell me. Old Plunketters offered to buy Hurston.
Speaker 5: So it seems Sherlock.
Speaker 6: I told Reggie if he even thought of it, I'd
Speaker 6: never speak to him again.
Speaker 5: But that only made him more determined. You have no
Speaker 5: idea how that he can be.
Speaker 7: A big headed? Is the word, my dear abbis.
Speaker 6: Yes, perhaps you are right. That's what comes of his
Speaker 6: staying a bachelor until he was pushing forty.
Speaker 3: Here that Watson, that it had be a lesson to you.
Speaker 2: He was probably waiting until you happened along, missus Musgrave.
Speaker 6: Right, doctor Watson, what a charming thing to say. He
Speaker 6: must make Sherlock bring you down for the weekend.
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 3: What weekend? I'm attending? No elegant weekend parties at Helstone.
Speaker 5: Oh, yes, you are.
Speaker 6: You are responsible for this brainstorm of bridges. If you
Speaker 6: hadn't discovered that wretched crown, he wouldn't want to sell
Speaker 6: the place. And if it weren't for the Crown, I'm
Speaker 6: sure Hennessip Plunkett wouldn't dream of buying it.
Speaker 2: Hurlstone in the possession of Hennis Hip Plunkett, the pickle King,
Speaker 2: it'd be sacrilege.
Speaker 6: He even talks about putting out a new brand Crown
Speaker 6: pickles with a picture of the Stuart Crown on.
Speaker 2: The bottle, or shocking that taste.
Speaker 6: I will not have that dreadful old vulgarian strutting around
Speaker 6: the property. He'd ruined it in no time, Sherlock, You
Speaker 6: and doctor Watson simply must come down and help me
Speaker 6: to save Hurlstone from that pickled pedler.
Speaker 5: Mister Plunkett. But how delightful to have you here for
Speaker 5: a visit.
Speaker 4: Never buy anything before try to sample of it, ma'am.
Speaker 4: Might not be able to sleep here. Get terrible insomnia
Speaker 4: sometimes in the country.
Speaker 5: Well, of course, the.
Speaker 6: Frogs and crickets around Helston are all the noisy ol
Speaker 6: rot divas.
Speaker 7: Take mister Plucket's things up to the blue room next
Speaker 7: to the box.
Speaker 4: Hold on there, Musgrave. Is that the room King Charles
Speaker 4: hit out in when he was beating it up north
Speaker 4: to Scotland.
Speaker 6: No, the steel room is in the old wing, mister Plunkett.
Speaker 6: You wouldn't want to sleep there. There's well, there's no
Speaker 6: plumbing in that part.
Speaker 5: Of the house.
Speaker 4: Look here, miss Musgrave. I was a grown man before
Speaker 4: I even know there was such a thing as indoor plumbing. Besides,
Speaker 4: what's good enough for King Charles? Good enough for me?
Speaker 5: Yes, But that is if you're a light sleeper, well
Speaker 5: the ghost might keep you awake.
Speaker 4: Ghost here, I was grave. You didn't tell me Hurlstone
Speaker 4: had a ghost. Why?
Speaker 5: Of course the Stewart room has always.
Speaker 9: Had a ghosts ridiculous. Charles didn't die there, Alice, he
Speaker 9: only hid there for a week or so.
Speaker 6: Pay no attention to reach mister Plunkett. He doesn't begin
Speaker 6: to know all the historical facts about this house. Now,
Speaker 6: since I came here, I've been reading up on all
Speaker 6: the old documents in the library. This house has had
Speaker 6: a frightening and gory history.
Speaker 5: Mister Plunkett, Oh Alice.
Speaker 4: Really, well, what do you know? I guess those Britishers
Speaker 4: were kind of rugged in the olden days. So the
Speaker 4: place has a ghost. He You know, I've always sort
Speaker 4: of had a hankering to me to spook. Don't have
Speaker 4: anywhere I come.
Speaker 5: From, really, no ghosts in Pittsville.
Speaker 4: Pittsburgh, That's where I hear from, Miss Musgrave. I was
Speaker 4: born a shack in Shannytown. Imagine if ire stand up
Speaker 4: sleeping in the bed King Charles slept in, he with
Speaker 4: a ghost.
Speaker 5: Besides, it's rather an unpleasant ghost.
Speaker 6: I'm afraid the ghost of Lady Daphney who shot her
Speaker 6: lover in the way.
Speaker 4: You don't say, tell me about it.
Speaker 6: Well, it seems that Lady Daphne's husband was always going
Speaker 6: off to the wars, leaving her behind with her housekeeping
Speaker 6: and her needlework. Now women didn't read in those days,
Speaker 6: you know, so she had no good books to divert
Speaker 6: her mind. Suddenly one morning, a young huntsman, all in green,
Speaker 6: drove up on a chestnuts stallion.
Speaker 8: Nice colorccommodation, my dear, don't interrupt, Reggie.
Speaker 6: Well, it seemed that he'd been gored by a deer
Speaker 6: or something, so Lady Dafne put him in the best
Speaker 6: guest room the.
Speaker 7: King Charles had made famous.
Speaker 6: Don't miss, stupid Reggie. This was back in the days
Speaker 6: of the Plantagenets. The Stuarts hadn't.
Speaker 5: Even been heard of.
Speaker 6: Lady Dafne nursed the huntsman back to health and fell
Speaker 6: in love with him. It created quite a scandal, I guess,
Speaker 6: because pretty soon even though Rod Musgrave heard about it
Speaker 6: and came sneaking back from the wars one dark night.
Speaker 4: Very unsporting of them.
Speaker 6: Rather yeah, well, of course you couldn't really sneak very
Speaker 6: successfully in the armor they wore in those days.
Speaker 5: So the Lady Daphne and her.
Speaker 6: Lover heard him tiptoing up the hall, and quick as
Speaker 6: a flash, Lady Daphne shoved her lover into a sort
Speaker 6: of cupboard in the wainscutting, and when Lord Musgrave came
Speaker 6: clattering in, she was back in bed, sound asleep.
Speaker 5: She looked so pretty there. He didn't have the heart
Speaker 5: to wake her.
Speaker 6: He just called a couple of his serving men, and
Speaker 6: they boarded up the closet with the lover inside.
Speaker 9: And the lady and her lover were so terrified they
Speaker 9: never said boom, and the poor chap just sat there
Speaker 9: and quietly suffocated to death.
Speaker 5: Hejie, I thought you didn't know that story.
Speaker 7: Yes, I fancy I've read that manuscript at some time
Speaker 7: or other.
Speaker 6: Well, finally, after several days, the Lady Daphne couldn't stand
Speaker 6: the strain any longer. She took out her husband's revolver
Speaker 6: and fired a shot through the wainscutting, and pretty soon
Speaker 6: a slow trickle of blood came out under the floor.
Speaker 7: That's a departure I hadn't read about.
Speaker 6: Lord Musgrave pretended not to notice, but went calmly back
Speaker 6: to the walls. The Lady Daphne's hair turned completely white,
Speaker 6: of course, and you can still see her one ring
Speaker 6: about the room, moaning and wringing her hands. So, dear
Speaker 6: mister Plunkett, I really don't think you should sleep in
Speaker 6: the Stewart room if you suffer from insomnia.
Speaker 4: Oh don't you worry, Miss Musgrave. If anyone's gonna be
Speaker 4: scared tonight, it'll be Lady Daphney, not.
Speaker 9: Me, Passir Dr Watson the pot Sherlock. That's a good fellow.
Speaker 9: His glass is empty. Oh oh, what's up, Reggie. Oh
Speaker 9: just a twinge in my left knee. Must be a
Speaker 9: storm coming up. That knee's a regular barometer.
Speaker 4: Hm dashed fine port you have, Musgrave must be old.
Speaker 7: My dear mister Pluckett. The port in this house was
Speaker 7: laid down by my great grandfather.
Speaker 4: Oh, we don't say the cellar goes to the house,
Speaker 4: of course.
Speaker 9: What remains of it? Only three bottles left beside this one.
Speaker 9: Fraid all my forebears have been heavy pot drinkers.
Speaker 2: Must Grave Port has always been famous, mister Plankett.
Speaker 7: Oh, yes, to Watson.
Speaker 9: Nothing could persuade be the pop of the place that
Speaker 9: we still had the cellar we had my grandfather's or
Speaker 9: even my father's day. Oh well, sick concert laureamum dip ah.
Speaker 7: Confound at me.
Speaker 2: It's a reliable weather profit at any rate, Here comes
Speaker 2: the storm.
Speaker 4: I can't say I like thunderstorms. Never have got some
Speaker 4: bad ones in the Alleghenies. When I was a boy,
Speaker 4: I've seen lightning bounce off of those mountains like it
Speaker 4: was the devil playing nine pins. All was crawled into
Speaker 4: my old man's feather bed when I heard it coming.
Speaker 4: Lightning can't get you if you're in a feather bed. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you wouldn't have a feather bed here at Urlstone.
Speaker 7: Why, yes, we have some either down coverlets, I believe.
Speaker 7: But don't you need to be too warm? I mean
Speaker 7: he's still in the beginning of September.
Speaker 4: The blazers with the heat. You tell Devers to bring
Speaker 4: me a couple up to my room. I'm gonna get
Speaker 4: into bed right now, and you can light the fire
Speaker 4: in that fireplace, yes.
Speaker 8: Sir, but if you're going to retire, don't give.
Speaker 4: Me an argument. Lightning has a habit of coming down chimneys.
Speaker 4: It's not a kind of the draft and the cold air.
Speaker 4: But if there's a fire lit in his hot air
Speaker 4: going up, it can't get in.
Speaker 5: That was a close one, wasn't It sounded like it
Speaker 5: hit the old oak.
Speaker 11: Lightning is always hitting the old oak, but it doesn't
Speaker 11: seem to mind that was the oak mentioned in the ritual.
Speaker 8: You know, I've been here since the Norman invasion. They
Speaker 8: say light that fire.
Speaker 2: That blast hit a very good sir, very good.
Speaker 4: There you are, said, helped me off with my boots?
Speaker 8: Why you are shifting?
Speaker 2: So that's the fact.
Speaker 3: I can even hear your teeth chattering.
Speaker 4: Never mind my teeth hamming my night shirt.
Speaker 5: Should I bring you some water to wash and brush
Speaker 5: your teeth?
Speaker 4: I don't brush my teeth. I curt ot m I'm
Speaker 4: getting in the bed.
Speaker 8: Anything else, Just get out and leave me to get
Speaker 8: to sleep.
Speaker 4: Yes, if you.
Speaker 11: Should want anything, I'm afraid you'll just have to yell.
Speaker 11: So there's no bell in this part of the house.
Speaker 11: Yell good and louds and maybe someone will hear you.
Speaker 11: Else I'll blow out the candle. Huh h good ice pleasantry.
Speaker 4: H begs cold as an icebox. H storm has blown over,
Speaker 4: Thank heaven. That's that. Mhm, mice must be mice. Oh
Speaker 4: place probably full of mice. I have to clean him
Speaker 4: out if I buy the house. No, what would work?
Speaker 4: Creaking always does in old houses. Lord, it's quiet. I
Speaker 4: can even hear the storm.
Speaker 2: Was that.
Speaker 4: Sounds like a woman's skirts as a draft casement must
Speaker 4: have blown open. It's a curtain rustling. That's what it is.
Speaker 4: Old houses full of drafts, noises, and maybe I should
Speaker 4: think twice before I buy the place. Still Blunkets Crown
Speaker 4: pickles with the picture of the Stuart Crown, good advertising.
Speaker 4: It sounds just like a woman's petticoat. I'm founded that
Speaker 4: fire is dying down shadows, nothing but shadows. That is
Speaker 4: a woman's petticoat. But I can't see anyone. Oh, rubbish,
Speaker 4: Plunket's no such thing as ghosts. No such.
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 11: Uh?
Speaker 4: Wind coming up? Wind in the chimney? For yourself together, Plunket,
Speaker 4: h when the time it is a light match? Come
Speaker 4: a watch? Yeah, it's half a minute to midnight. Midnight
Speaker 4: and the ghosts and god balloons no match. Burn my
Speaker 4: fingers found that creaking. I'm beginning to imagine things for
Speaker 4: eh could swear there was some one else in this
Speaker 4: room with me. Oh, don't be an idiot, Blunket.
Speaker 7: Who could it be?
Speaker 4: Who could pass me.
Speaker 7: A shot? A gunshot right here in this room? Help
Speaker 7: help someone shooting at me?
Speaker 3: Help matches.
Speaker 4: I like the candle.
Speaker 2: You gotta get out of here.
Speaker 4: Floors, icy floors. Oh there's something wet and sticky. I
Speaker 4: stopped in it. Oh blasted, My hand's shaking, so I
Speaker 4: can't light the candle. Oh last, Now, let's have a look.
Speaker 4: There's something on the floor. It's red.
Speaker 7: It's blood.
Speaker 4: It's triggering out of the winds, got him beside the fireplace.
Speaker 7: Help help hit me out of here, Hit me out, yes.
Speaker 4: Shot must grave. You heard the shots. That ghost came
Speaker 4: in here and shot at me.
Speaker 7: Oh nonsense, Alice only made up that story.
Speaker 4: They couldn't. Oh no, you don't. I know what I've
Speaker 4: been shot at. You couldn't give me this house? Now,
Speaker 4: where's my pants?
Speaker 12: Don't be an ass plunket. No one could have shot
Speaker 12: at you. There was no one in this room but yourself,
Speaker 12: maybe no living person. But look over there next to
Speaker 12: the fireplace. Someone shot that hole in the woodwork.
Speaker 7: Oh rubbish, that's anothole, just a loothole.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and what is that stuff trickling out under
Speaker 4: the floor?
Speaker 5: Great heavens, Reggie, it's blood.
Speaker 4: Of course it's blood. Where's my coat and shoes?
Speaker 8: Just can't be blood. No one could be behind the paneling.
Speaker 7: But this is too fantastic. I'm going to rip open
Speaker 7: the woodwork.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't advise it, my dear Reggie. Not one of
Speaker 3: the plunkets here. He doesn't look as if he could
Speaker 3: stand another shock. Better not reveal the muskrave hordor before strangers.
Speaker 4: Don't you know right, mister Holmes, I don't want no
Speaker 4: truck with family skeletons. I've had enough. I'm getting out.
Speaker 4: I don't ever want to see any part of her
Speaker 4: start again.
Speaker 6: Wait, mister Blunkett, you can't go like that the prayers
Speaker 6: as I can't, but you've forgotten your teeth.
Speaker 1: And now, before Sherlock Holmes and Vaginal Musgrave discover what
Speaker 1: lies behind the wainscoting, may I give you a suggestion.
Speaker 1: Take an expert like your wife or your best girl
Speaker 1: along with you when you go to choose your new
Speaker 1: clipper Craft suit her overcoat. See her amazement when she
Speaker 1: sees the beautiful tailoring, the clean cut, smartness, and the firm,
Speaker 1: long wearing fabrics that are yours at such modest prices.
Speaker 1: She'll say, how do they do it? Just as everyone
Speaker 1: else does when they're face to face for the first
Speaker 1: time with Clippercraft. Forty and forty five dollars for clipper
Speaker 1: Craft suits, eighty dollars for top coats and overcoats, and
Speaker 1: twenty six fifty for sport jackets are low. Prices that
Speaker 1: are the result of the famous clipper Craft Plan. They'd
Speaker 1: be impossible without this wonderful idea that concentrates the buying
Speaker 1: power of ten hundred thirty six stores across the nation. Yes,
Speaker 1: selling expensive clothes at inexpensive low prices at the nation's
Speaker 1: finest independent stores is the great, big idea behind the
Speaker 1: clipper Craft Plan. That's why men who know insist on
Speaker 1: clipper Craft clothes. So be sure to visit the clipper
Speaker 1: Craft store in your city.
Speaker 13: These leading stores in the metropolitan area are proud to
Speaker 13: add their names to Clippercraft and your Suit top cod
Speaker 13: and Overcoat. In Manhattan Sacks thirty fourth Broadway at thirty fourth,
Speaker 13: John Wannamaker's Men's Stores Broadway at eighth and sixty seven
Speaker 13: Liberty Street. In Brooklyn, Abraham and Strauss in Newark, New Jersey,
Speaker 13: Boulevard Men's Shop Cresky, Newick, And in Jamaica the B
Speaker 13: and B Clothes Shop, one sixty four oh eight Jamai Avenue.
Speaker 1: And now to return to Hurlston, Manor, where Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: and Reginald Muskrave are ripping away the wainscutting and the
Speaker 1: storic room.
Speaker 8: Oh dear, I do.
Speaker 5: Wish you wouldn't open up that paneling.
Speaker 6: Reggie better let sleeping dogs lie and all that. I
Speaker 6: had no idea that ghost story I made up would
Speaker 6: turn out to be true.
Speaker 7: Stop litterly Gallison had me that chisel.
Speaker 6: I wish i'd never thought up that ghost. I wish
Speaker 6: I'd never mentioned it to old Plunket. I never dripped
Speaker 6: there would be anything behind that paneling.
Speaker 3: Calm your southallis. It's not as bad as you think
Speaker 3: it is. As a matter of fact, I suspect that
Speaker 3: Reggie is in for a rather pleasant surprise.
Speaker 5: There was a shot, two shots.
Speaker 3: I heard them distinctly, two explosions, possibly shots. No, I
Speaker 3: rather imagine the heat of the fire caught them. Reggie,
Speaker 3: how long since you had a fire in that fireplace?
Speaker 4: Never?
Speaker 9: At least, god as what if I can remember? No
Speaker 9: one's used this part of the house in the other
Speaker 9: wing was built during the reign of William and Mary
Speaker 9: confound that this paneling won't But yeah, I finally got
Speaker 9: a wedge in here.
Speaker 7: Help me pry it loose.
Speaker 3: One two already I wish you wouldn't three.
Speaker 2: By Joe Holmes. There is a closet back of the paneling.
Speaker 2: But it's filled with bottles, Dozens and dozens of bottles,
Speaker 2: covered with dust and cobwebs.
Speaker 3: Yes, and two of the bottles have exploded from the heat.
Speaker 7: Of the fire. Here, let's have a look at one
Speaker 7: of them.
Speaker 3: It won't be necessary. I can tell you what's in them, Port,
Speaker 3: excellent Port. I rather suspect my original that your revered
Speaker 3: grandfather had a rather special hiding place in this room.
Speaker 3: But how do you know it's port by the aroma?
Speaker 3: My olfactory nerves are rather highly developed, you know. The
Speaker 3: moment I entered the room, I knew that the ruddy
Speaker 3: fluid mister Plunkett had stepped into wasn't blood, but something
Speaker 3: far more interesting, A superior and venerable vintage of port wine.
Speaker 9: Good Lord, And to think I nearly sold the place
Speaker 9: of that old Ruffian with all these bottles still in it,
Speaker 9: I've never forgiven myself.
Speaker 7: He never have appreciated them.
Speaker 6: Never, Oh Reggie, then you're not angry with me for
Speaker 6: spoiling our sale. I just couldn't bear to think of
Speaker 6: leaving Hurlstone.
Speaker 9: Oh there, my dear, I forgive you. And the next
Speaker 9: time you think up a ghost story, do try to
Speaker 9: be a bit more original. I read you, what do
Speaker 9: you mean Old Plunkett hadn't been a completely narramis, he'd
Speaker 9: have recognized the incident of the lover being bricked up
Speaker 9: in the woodwork. It's one of the most famous bits
Speaker 9: of French literature, you know.
Speaker 2: By Joe. Of course, no wonder I thought had sounded familiar.
Speaker 3: I don't so much mind your swiping your plots, my dear,
Speaker 3: arras the best storytellers, do you know, asked doctor Watson
Speaker 3: our Holmes. You must try to be a trifle more accurate,
Speaker 3: you know. Anachronisms are taboo, my dear, in the best
Speaker 3: literary circles.
Speaker 5: I shall not.
Speaker 3: What do you mean, No Cantagenet lady would go popping
Speaker 3: at her lover with a pistol?
Speaker 5: Why not?
Speaker 3: They hadn't been invented. Oh, I'd admit, gunpowder was not unknown.
Speaker 3: Cannon were undoubtedly used at Cressy and Poitier, but personal
Speaker 3: firearms for private homicide were quite unavailable.
Speaker 5: Oh dear, next time, I'll say she finished him off
Speaker 5: with a bow and arrow.
Speaker 9: Well, never mind the historical inaccuracies. This panel has been
Speaker 9: dusty work, and I'm parched. What do you say, we
Speaker 9: break out a bottle and see if the contents of
Speaker 9: grandfather's private vault is up to standard.
Speaker 3: An excellent idea, my dear Reggie.
Speaker 7: An excellent idea.
Speaker 5: Very well, But I warn you this is one time
Speaker 5: the ladies do not leave the table while the port
Speaker 5: goes round.