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The Empty House

It was the spring of 1894, and all of London was shocked by the terrible murder of Mr. Ronald Adair. I wished my late friend, Sherlock Holmes, was still here because this crime had a mystery to it that I knew he would have loved to solve.

Three years had passed since Holmes's death. He had died during a fight with his enemy, Professor James Moriarty, at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Both of them had fallen into the powerful water below. Now, all I had were my memories of Holmes and the many adventures we had shared together.

My time with Holmes had given me a deep interest in crime, and every day I read the newspapers to look for unsolved robberies and murders. Sometimes, I even tried to use Holmes's methods to solve them, though I wasn’t very successful.

The murder of Ronald Adair was especially interesting to me, and I carefully read all the evidence presented at the inquest. All day, as I visited my patients, I kept thinking about the case. However, I couldn’t figure out how the murder was committed, or who the killer was.

Ronald Adair was the second son of the Earl of Maynooth, who was the governor of an Australian colony. His mother came back to England from Australia in the summer of 1893 for an eye operation. She, Ronald, and his sister Hilda lived at 427 Park Lane in London. Ronald quickly became popular with the upper class of London society. He seemed like a well-liked young man who had no enemies. In the autumn of that year, he got engaged to Miss Edith Woodley, but they ended the engagement by Christmas. There were no bad feelings, and they stayed friends.

People who knew Ronald Adair said he was quiet, modest, and easy to get along with. There was nothing about his life or personality that made it seem like he would meet a violent end. However, he died in a strange and brutal way between 10:00 and 11:20 p.m. on the night of March 30, 1894.

Ronald Adair enjoyed playing card games. He was a member of three card clubs in London and played almost every day, but usually for small amounts of money. On the day he died, he played two rounds of whist at the Bagatelle Club, one in the afternoon and one after dinner. His fellow players—Mr. Henry Murray, Sir John Hardy, and Colonel Sebastian Moran—later said there were no big wins or losses that day. Adair might have lost five pounds, but that was a small amount for someone with his wealth. He was a careful player, though he did win big sometimes. For example, he once won £420 in a single round with Colonel Moran as his partner.

On the night he died, Ronald Adair came home from his club at exactly ten o'clock. His mother and sister were out visiting someone. The servant said she heard him go into his sitting room on the second floor. She had already lit a fire in the room and opened a window to let out the smoke.

No one heard any noise from that room until Lady Maynooth and Hilda came back home at eleven-twenty.