The Musgrave Ritual

At around 3.30 a.m. this morning, on a whim, I dusted off an old, torn paperback, smattered with a cold tea stain on the first page that has been in my possession for at least eleven years. I flipped through the pages of this slender volume (from back to front, as I usually do) and suddenly stopped. The words “an anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes” caught my eye and I assumed my standard reading position - lying on my right side, head resting on my upturned right palm and wrist, the book supported by the fully spread four fingers of my left hand, with the little finger acting as a bookmark - and read on.

***  

“ ‘It is rather an absurd business, this ritual of ours,’ he answered. ‘But it has at least the saving grace of antiquity to excuse it. I have a copy of the questions and answers here if you care to run your eye over them.’

“He handed me the very paper which I have here, Watson, and this is the strange catechism to which each Musgrave had to submit when he came to man’s estate. I will read you the questions and answers as they stand.

“ ‘Whose was it?’

“ ‘His who is gone.’

“ ‘Who shall have it?’

“ ‘He who will come.’

“ ‘Where was the sun?’

“ ‘Over the oak.’

“ ‘Where was the shadow?’

“ ‘Under the elm.’

“ ‘How was it stepped?’

“ ‘North by ten and by ten, east by five and by five, south by two and by two, west by one and by one and so under.’

“ ‘What shall we give for it?’

“ ‘All that is ours.’

“ ‘Why should we give it?’

“ ‘For the sake of the trust…’ ” 

***

“That must have been difficult, Holmes, when the elm was no longer there.”

“Well, at least I knew that if Brunton could do it, I could also. Besides, there was no real difficulty. I went with Musgrave to his study and whittled myself this peg, to which I tied this long string with a knot at each yard. Then I took two lengths of a fishing-rod, which came to just six feet, and I went back with my client to where the elm had been. The sun was just grazing the top of the oak. I fastened the rod on end, marked out the direction of the shadow, and measured it. It was nine feet in length.

“Of course the calculation was now a simple one. If a rod of six feet threw a shadow of nine, a tree of sixty-four would throw one of ninety-six, and the line of the one would of course be the line of the other. I measured out the distance, which brought me almost to the wall of the house, and I thrust a peg into the spot. You can imagine my exultation, Watson, when within two inches of my peg I saw a conical depression in the ground. I knew that it was the mark made by Brunton in his measurements, and that I was still upon his trail…”  

***

In an instant, I was transported to the time I first read The Musgrave Ritual, the night before my Class X Maths Board exam. And, much as I did all those years ago, I found myself stopping at the end of each of these passages, suddenly very aware of my surroundings and able to sense a quickening of my heartbeat--those precise little signs that convinced me that I was reading something quite out of the ordinary.