Building a trap in Norwood.
Contrary to what some people liked to think, Sherlock Holmes wrote up the case notes as records of every single case he was hired to solve by the various clients who came to Baker St. While Holmes had a prodigious memory and had excellent mental faculties, partly due to his talents and partially due to the extensive training he had put his mind under over the years, even he knew and understood the value of keeping a recording of his cases.
Some might say he would want these records to be perused by future generations, and Holmes could appreciate the logic behind the thought, Watson had the habit of saying the way he wrote was cold, that it lacked spirit.
Holmes cared for neither.
He cared solely for the facts. The idea of romanticising or giving his cases some kind of heroic appeal was irrelevant. He believed in keeping his notes simple, to the point and sharp. The process took some time, but Holmes used it for another reason; he enjoyed getting all the facts down so then he could think through them, and devise new puzzles for his mind to grapple with at a later date. It was a technique which had not only worked, but it had allowed him to keep his brain going for far longer.
As he wrote his case notes concerning the case at Norwood involving the now very fortunate Mr John Hector McFarlane from Blackheath, who had been exonerated after being charged with the murder of Mr Jonas Oldacre. Holmes had to admit that he could understand the reasoning behind the police's view McFarlane was guilty; as soon as they discovered the will Oldacre had had the young lawyer, it would have sealed their view he was guilty; it hadn't helped McFarlane the evidence was quite damning. The lawyer's stick was found in Oldacre's room, and there was a fire extinguished just outside where a pile of dry timber burnt to ashes, and there was the stench of burnt flesh.
Holmes had taken the case on not because he had believed McFarlane was guilty, nor did he take it on because the evidence was so overwhelming he had just wanted to spite the police, especially with how Lestrade was gloating every few moments. He had taken the case on because as soon as he had studied the appallingly written will, how it had three very different styles of writing which had informed Holmes it had been written on a train; the really bad writing indicated those areas of the will had been written out as the train had passed over the points, the bad writing had been when the train had been travelling along the rails, and the times where it was clear had been where the train had stopped at the stations.
Holmes had written notes on trains as well. He knew of the various effects which came from writing on a train, and so he had recognised it at once, but at the same time, he had been understandably curious as to why such an important document was written in such haphazard a fashion and in a hurry.
If one was writing an important legal document such as a will, they would have written it over a period of many hours in an office, going through their other legal documents; sometimes they would be spending hours drafting and redrafting such a will in order to determine what amount of money went there, who received that; it was such an inefficient waste of time and energy which could have taken place in a much more orderly manner.
Not Oldacre.
As soon as he had seen the hastily written document, Holmes had realised something was extremely wrong, and while it would have been good for McFarlane himself to have commented on it as odd, he could understand why the young lawyer hadn't said anything along those lines as such; McFarlane had been beside himself with terror and panic, and Holmes knew there had been many things on his mind. The only logical conclusion he'd come to was the document was, in the long run, worthless to Oldacre. He had deliberately written a very poor document in order for him to have the excuse to meet McFarlane.
Naturally, Holmes had no idea why, and he had decided to visit the young man's mother who was living in Blackheath still. He had arrived at the conclusion Oldacre had a history with the McFarlane family, and he had discovered that it was the case. McFarlane's mother as he had suspected had known Oldacre, and she had even been engaged to him once years before, and then she had left him when she had discovered how cruel he was after he had let a cat loose inside a bird sanctuary.
But it was when he and Watson ventured to Norwood and met the housekeeper, Holmes and Watson discovered there was more to the case than Lestrade had believed - there were times where Holmes wished the Inspector would not look at what was visible and would look at the different facts, but he could understand Lestrade's viewpoint, given the circumstances - not only were there a series of outgoing payments to a Mr Cornelius but while the discovery of the buttons of the trouser bottoms found in the remains of the fire didn't help McFarlane, Holmes' suspicions were raised even more when he'd deduced the housekeeper was hiding something purposefully and deliberately.
Holmes smiled to himself when he remembered the bloodied thumbprint; Lestrade had seen it as more guilt on McFarlane's part, but Holmes had known the moment he had seen it that the print had not been in the house when he had examined it before. And because he knew McFarlane had been sent straight to gaol shortly after his visit to Baker St, he knew this was a deception to further make it appear the young lawyer was truly guilty. But it wasn't until he had gone outside after he had noticed something wrong with the interior dimensions of the house, he had worked out something radical.
Oldacre had been a builder, and he had the knowledge and the experience needed to build a hidden little room within his own home, hidden behind a panel so nobody could find him or even suspect its existence, and with him living on his own with only his housekeeper for company, and no visitors besides McFarlane, Oldacre had felt quite secure.
The only way Holmes had been able to get him out of there and face justice as if he was smoked out, like a proverbial rat. With the help of some straw and a lighted match, and three of Lestrade's men shouting "FIRE!" Oldacre had appeared and his deception was revealed.
Oldacre had used an old veteran who was promised clothes and food by himself and his housekeeper as part of a revenge scheme against McFarlane's mother; Oldacre had tried to claim it was a joke which had gotten out of hand, but Holmes had then revealed who Mr Cornelius was; it was Oldacre himself, who had been siphoning off funds from his own account to a new one, so he could live a new life somewhere else.
Holmes hadn't been too concerned over the threat on his life that Oldacre had made against him; if he had only been capable of a revenge scheme like that on McFarlane's mother, it would take a lot more for a private consulting detective to get concerned.
