Sherlock Holmes Investigates

 

We were lucky at Waterloo because we caught a train for Leatherhead. There we hired a carriage at the station hotel and drove for four or five miles through the lovely Surrey countryside. It was a perfect day, with a bright sun and a few white clouds in the sky. The trees and hedges on the side of the road had their first green leaves, and the air was full of the pleasant smell of wet earth.

To me there was a strange difference between the sweet promise of the spring and the dark investigation which we were doing. My friend sat in the front of the carriage, his arms folded, his hat pulled down over his eyes, and his chin on his chest, buried in very deep thought. Suddenly, however, he sat up, tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed over the fields.

"Look there!" he said.

A park with lots of trees went up in a gentle slope, with the trees getting thicker at the highest part. Among the branches you could see the high grey roof of a very old mansion.

"Stoke Moran."

Vocabulary:

Leatherhead: An English town in Surrey
Hired: Borrowed for money.
Carriage: Something pulled by a horse.
Hedge: A fence of bushes.
Folded: Wrapped around each other.
Tap: To hit gently with one finger or toe.
Slope: Higher at one side than on the other.
Mansion: A big house owned by someone rich.