The Markenmore Mystery by J.S. Fletcher

About half a mile to the north-east of Markenmore Court, flanked by a narrow, deep-set lane that ran up from the main road of the village to the overhanging downs, and backed by the woods and coverts which lay between the foot of those downs and the level lands beneath, stood a small, comfortable, picturesque old house called The Warren. It had been built in the middle of the eighteenth century by the fifth baronet, Sir Geoffrey Markenmore, as a residence for his steward, and had been occupied by successive stewards until recent years, when they were relegated to a more convenient house in the centre of the village. Since then The Warren had been let to tenants; its position, its fine outlook over park, meadows, and sea made it a desirable property for any man of quiet tastes. Its present occupant was Mr. Samuel Fransemmery, a middle-aged bachelor, by profession a barrister-at-law, who, once taking a holiday in these regions, had found The Warren to let and had immediately snapped it up on a twenty-one years' lease. It was, indeed, the very place for which Mr. Fransemmery had been looking for some time; barrister though he was (of the Middle Temple) he had scarcely ever held a brief in his life, and the law had no particular attraction for him. Nor was he in any way dependent upon it: he possessed very ample private means, which enabled him to gratify his particular tastes to the full. Those tastes were simple. Mr. Fransemmery's days were passed in collecting books and antiquities, doing a little flower-cultivation in his charming gardens, and taking long walks in the country. He was a bit of a botanist, and a bit of a geologist: what with one thing and another his time went pleasantly-and uneventfully.

In outward appearance, Mr. Fransemmery was a cheerful little person. Somewhat under medium height, he was inclined to portliness; like many little men, he carried himself very erect, and was proud of the fact that he was as straight of back and square of shoulder at fifty as he had been at twenty-five. His clean-shaven face was round and rosy; his eyes were bright behind his big gold-mounted spectacles; he had beautiful teeth and plentiful light-brown hair; scrupulous to a fault about his personal appearance, he always looked, said the village folk, as if he had just come out of a band-box, by which they meant that he was perfectly groomed. There was, indeed, an air of perpetual youth and freshness about Mr. Fransemmery: each spring seemed to find him younger than the last. People chaffed him about his juvenility; if he ever troubled himself to explain it, he did so by solemnly repeating the old saying-"Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. " Mr. Fransemmery, since his arrival at The Warren, and his beginning of a truly rural existence, had always gone to bed at half-past nine o'clock and risen with the lark.