The Wooden Hand

The Wooden Hand by Fergus Hume

Eva Strode awaits the return of her estranged father, Robert Strode, to Misery Castle, the cottage of her devoted but gloomily superstitious old nurse, Mrs. Merry, near the village of Wargrove. Robert Strode, last of an old family that once owned the local manor, has spent years in South Africa trying to recoup the fortune his father squandered, leaving his wife Lady Jane (now dead) and daughter to be raised largely by Mrs. Merry. Eva is engaged to Allen Hill, son of the wealthy, eccentric Mr. Hill and his quiet, watchful wife; Strode has written forbidding the match. On the eve of his expected arrival, Eva dreams vividly of her father lying dead, face down, by the spring in the Red Deeps, his gloved wooden hand visible, and hears five knocks at the door. Allen, half-believing, walks toward the Red Deeps to check on Strode but sprains his ankle on Chilvers Common and never arrives; a telegram comes announcing Strode has postponed his trip to the next day. That night, at midnight, five knocks sound at the cottage door: laborers have found Strode's body near the Red Deeps spring exactly as Eva dreamed, shot through the heart, apparently the previous evening despite the telegram's later date. Mrs. Merry's wayward son Cain, newly returned and working as a groom for Stag's Circus, behaves oddly, and a strange one-eyed London boy called Butsey — who delivered the misleading telegram and knocked five times — vanishes without trace. Overnight, Strode's artificial hand, always kept gloved, is mysteriously stolen from the body. At the inquest, evidence emerges that Strode's solicitor, Mr. Mask, once heard him say he might send his wooden hand as a token authorizing release of money left in Mask's keeping — money that was never actually deposited. The jury returns a verdict of murder by persons unknown. Left without inheritance, Eva refuses to marry Allen until her father's killer is found, and the two agree Allen will investigate, with a year's deadline before Eva marries him regardless. Eva becomes paid companion to the kindly, socially ambitious young widow Mrs. Palmer, who reveals she has been approached by Eva's cousin, Lord Saltars, heir to the Earl of Ipsen. Saltars tells Eva that her father had promised him forty thousand pounds if Saltars married her, money Strode claimed to have brought from Africa — possibly in diamonds — but which cannot be found among his effects. Saltars is secretly entangled with Bell Lorry, the circus's celebrated "Queen of the Arena," who presses him about his intentions toward Eva and about the missing fortune, and who reveals she knew Strode years earlier through a circus performer called Signor Antonio. Meanwhile Allen pursues clues: he learns from Wasp, the self-important village policeman, that Butsey may have arrived with a London charity excursion, and secretly compares the fatal bullet to his own revolver (which had gone missing) at Wasp's house, finding it does not match and clearing his father of firing the shot. A mysterious parcel containing a crude cross of sticks, addressed to "Lawrence Hill" — Mr. Hill's rarely used middle name — is delivered via Cain and Jane Wasp; on opening it, Mr. Hill faints and abruptly departs for London without explanation. Pressed by Allen, Mrs. Hill reveals a long-hidden history: as a penniless governess in the Earl of Ipsen's household, she was falsely accused of stealing a valuable necklace; Strode and Hill had both loved Lady Jane Delham, but when Lady Jane chose Strode, Hill defied his own father to marry the disgraced, penniless Mrs. Hill, sacrificing his inheritance for a time. Out of enduring gratitude, not love, she has always deferred to her husband's whims and now insists he cannot be guilty of murder, though his flight and evident terror at the cross remain unexplained. Mrs. Merry identifies the parcel's handwriting as that of her long-vanished, brutal husband Giles Merry, apparently now back in contact with Cain and possibly with Mr. Hill, all three men having been companions in youth. The narrative closes with Cain confronting the circus strongman "Signor Antonio," who is revealed to be his estranged father, Giles Merry, operating under a false identity and clearly implicated in secret dealings connected to Strode's death, the missing fortune, and the stolen wooden hand — a thread left unresolved as the available text ends.

By Fergus Hume · First published 1899 · Genre: Gothic Fiction, Mystery, Drama · 24 chapters · 104,364 words

First lines

"Ah well, Miss Eva, I 'spose your pa'ull come home to spile things as he allays have done. It ain't no wonder, I ses, as you sits moping by the winder, looking double your age, and you only twenty, as has no right to look forty, whatever you may say, though I took my dying alfred-david on its blessed truth."

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The Wooden Hand is listed on Textopian as a novel by Fergus Hume, dated 1899 CE.

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Mystery · Thriller · Suspense · Crime Fiction · Detective Novel · Victorian Era · London Setting · Murder Mystery · Whodunit · Gothic Elements · Dark Atmosphere · Supernatural Themes

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More by Fergus Hume