Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual (Annotated)

The Adventures, Memoirs, Return of Sherlock Holmes, & His Last Bow (Annotated)

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All male members of the Musgrave family line were required to learn the verse from an early age. Howells herself then disappears, and the theory is that she had killed herself in the nearby mere. The mere is dredged, but no body is found, although the dredging does produce a sack containing some old metal and coloured stones.

Holmes then accompanies Reginald Musgrave down to the Hurlingstone estate and the old Musgrave manor house at its centre. Holmes realises that the Musgrave Ritual is a set of directions that have to be followed, and the detective also realises that Brunton must have also figured this out.

Luckily, it is a height that Reginald Musgrave actually knows, for it had once been a maths problem set by a tutor in his youth. Making use of the position of the elm tree and oak tree allows Holmes to follow the directions set down in the Musgrave Ritual, and soon the detective finds himself in a cellar beneath the old house.

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete & Definitive Collection of Adventures (Annotated)

There he finds a stone slab with an old iron ring embedded in it; and by looking at the ring it is evident that it has been used recently. Lifting up the stone slab even a few inches requires all of the strength of Holmes, and one of the local policemen. Beneath the stone slab is a small cavity, and within the cavity is the body of the suffocated Brunton. All is now clear to Holmes, and he explains all to Reginald Musgrave.

Brunton during his period of employment had discovered that the Musgrave Ritual was a treasure map, a map to something extremely valuable. Brunton was of course under the mistaken belief that the maid was still in love with him; although the very opposite was true. Brunton had got into the cavity and had passed the contents of it to Rachel Howells, but before the butler could exit the hole, the supports keeping the slab upright had given way, or had been kicked away by the maid. Holmes also has a theory about what was hidden in the cavity, and asks to see the sack and its contents, which had been dragged from the mere.

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Holmes cleans up the metal and stones, and reveals a gold crown, deducing that it had once been a crown of King Charles I, as the ritual dates from that period. It was likely that a Musgrave had been entrusted with the crown during the English Civil War, but had been killed before King Charles II had been crowned. Holmes also suggests that rather than kill herself, Rachel Howells had probably left the country to start a new life.

Holmes brings his recital of the case to a close by telling Watson that the crown is still on the Musgrave estate, although not on public display, but if the doctor wishes to see it, then it can probably be viewed as a favour to Holmes. Why does Rachel throw the bag containing treasure into the river in the story "The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual"? People tend to think that Rachel should have taken the treasure, but Rachel was not concerned about materialistic things but was intent on revenge on the man who had done her harm. Brunton was Musgrave's butler, but when Musgrave found Brunton rifling through a previously locked cabinet, Musgrave decided Brunton needed to be dismissed.

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Holmes Follows the Clues.

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He and a burly Sussex policeman managed to lift the slab off the little hole that it was covering, and inside, they found an empty, rotten chest, and Brunton, who had been dead for several days. There were no marks on him. He had likely suffocated. Holmes then put everything together for his rather shocked client. Brunton had deduced the ritual's meaning, at least insofar as it led to something valuable. He had determined the elm tree's height by asking his master, had paced out the instructions — and Holmes had later even found a peg hole in the lawn made by Brunton — had found the hiding place in the old cellar, but then had found it impossible to lift the stone slab himself.

So, he had been forced to draw someone else into his treasure hunt. He had unwisely chosen Rachel Howells, who hated him. The two of them could have lifted the slab up, but they would have needed to support it while Brunton climbed down to fetch the treasure. Based on Rachel's sudden flight and disappearance, Holmes wondered if she had deliberately kicked the supports away and left Brunton to die, or if the slab had fallen back into place by itself and caused her to panic. As to the relics found in the bag retrieved from the mere , Holmes examined them and found that the metal parts were gold and the stones were gems.

The ritual had been a guide to retrieving this important symbol, and Reginald confirms that one of his ancestors, Sir Ralph Musgrave, was a king's man. Holmes theorized that the original holder of the ritual had died before teaching his son about its significance. The story was originally published in the Strand Magazine in May , with illustrations by Sidney Paget. It was later collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. The Strand ' s text of the ritual did not specify the month in which the shadow of the oak should be measured the shadow would be longer in winter , but a couplet was added for the Memoirs identifying the month as the "sixth from the first".

Eliot stated that he adapted part of the Ritual in his verse play Murder in the Cathedral as a deliberate homage.

The episode is now lost. The episode deviated from the original by including Watson in the adventure; the story nods to the framing device of the original by having Holmes, not looking forward to the trip, remark that he intends to organise some of his old cases before he met Watson in order to keep himself occupied. In addition, the story features an actual oak tree, which Holmes describes as "a patriarch among oaks, one of the most magnificent trees that I have ever seen.

At the very end of the teleplay, Rachel's body is shown to have been found after having floated up from the mere. Further, the 12th line of the ritual is adapted to suit the scenery and the 5th and 6th lines are omitted. This house was the Musgrave home in the TV episode. Episodes 9 and 10 of the Russian TV series Sherlock Holmes are based on the story, although the storyline is quite different including some action scenes and Brunton being in fact a revenging member of a family of Musgraves' rivals.

Years later, with John Watson's life at stake as he is trapped in the same location where Eurus left her first victim, Sherlock deduces that the song relates to the unusual dates on various fake gravestones around the house, the resulting 'code' leading him to Eurus' old room to make an emotional appeal to his sister to spare John. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Archived from the original on Retrieved 12 December Retrieved from " https: Views Read Edit View history. In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikisource.

Publication of the Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual

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