by David Marcum
At this provocative moment, the waiter arrived with our dinners. Savoury though the bill of fare was, I must report that not even the fine cuisine of the Langham could distract us from Holmes’s compelling narrative. My friend did pause to butter some bread - a dramatic bit of theatre, perhaps, since once he had fully lathered it he set the slice down uneaten.
He did, however, allow himself a moment to sample the chicken. After a few bites and an approving nod, he resumed his tale. “I met Mr. Mott as soon as I was established in my hotel in New Brunswick. A distinguished-looking jurist in his sixties with iron-grey hair, he seemed just the man to set matters straight. And indeed, he wasted no time before filling me in on the general background of the case.
“‘On Saturday, the 16th of September,’ he told me, ‘a young New Brunswick couple went out for a morning stroll. Their walk took them through the ankle-deep grass of a field just outside of town - part of an abandoned farm where lovers are wont to amble, especially at night - that is, at least, before these murders took place.’”
“I’ve studied the area,” Fitzgerald interjected. “It’s just south of a park called ‘Buccleuch’. I like the name. In fact, I’m using it as an ancestral patronymic for the narrator of my novel.”
“Quite so,” responded Holmes, clearly uninterested in the development of the writer’s fiction.
“The couple’s excursion,” Holmes went on, “turned out to be far different from the idyllic walk the two had been expecting. It was they, you see, who stumbled across the pair of bodies lying amongst a scattering of trees. In fact, the feet of the corpses were pointing towards a nearby crab-apple tree.”
“I assume that’s important,” said I, thinking of the pips he had had shown me earlier.
Holmes held up his hand “In due time,” said he with a quick smile.
“The dead were a Reverend Edward Wheeler Hall, the rector of New Brunswick’s Protestant Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist, and a Mrs. Emily Mills, a member of the church choir. Hall, husband of the wealthy Frances Noel Hall, was in his early forties. Mrs. Mills, wife to James Mills, the janitor and sextant of Reverend Hall’s church, in her mid-thirties. Mott admitted that the causes of death were so obvious - the reverend had been shot in the head and Mrs. Mills in the face - that the authorities had accepted the morticians’ reports without requiring any official examinations of the bodies. In point of fact, formal autopsies were dispensed with. As a result, the precise extent of the wounds wasn’t discovered for weeks.”
“No autopsies?” the doctor in me exclaimed. “Unforgiveable.”
“I said much the same, old fellow. One can only assume that, upon their arrival at the murder scene, the investigators had been overly distracted by the gruesome tableau meticulously set out before them. You see, gentlemen, as Mr. Mott described it, ‘Laid out in the grass on their backs as the bodies were, Mrs. Mills’ head rested on one of the Reverend’s outstretched arms, her hand lay on his upper leg, and his white Panama hat covered his face - with his glasses, we would soon discover, carefully mounted on his nose. Their clothing was neatly arranged on their persons, and their feet pointed towards the crab-apple tree. The police also found the Reverend’s calling card - his name printed in Gothic lettering - placed upright against the bottom of one of his shoes, and love letters to the Reverend - written with pencil on cheap paper in the handwriting of Mrs. Mills - had been scattered round the bodies.’ I should add, gentlemen, it was common gossip that, though both were married to others, the two were romantically involved with each other. ”
“A vicar?” I gasped.
Fitzgerald smiled at my naiveté. “It is this illicit love affair that interests me,” said he. “It’s what I seek to explore in my novel - lovers who betray the people they are attached to.”
Again Holmes failed to respond to the literary diversion.
“I trust the authorities came round to conducting regular autopsies,” said I.
“Ah, Watson, ever the medical man. That is precisely what they did. A prosecutor from Middlesex was made responsible for the body of Mr. Hall; a prosecutor from Somerset, for that of Mrs. Mills. The same doctors performed both procedures.”
“A pinch of consistency, at any rate,” I observed
“Following the earlier problems, Mr. Mott was pleased to report the new facts that emerged from the autopsies. ‘We learned,’ he said, ‘that the .32 calibre bullet, which had entered Hall’s head near his right temple, had exited at the back of his neck on the left side. Since the missile had clearly travelled downward, it can be inferred that the poor man had been shot from above.’”
“Perhaps he was praying,” I suggested.
“Praying or otherwise,” said Holmes, “he’d been on his knees and executed.’”
Interestingly, Fitzgerald seemed to pay little mind to the forensic details. He went right on eating as Holmes described the bloody details.
“Actually,” said Holmes, “the remains of Mrs. Mills proved more revealing. It turns out that she had been shot in the face not once - as had first been reported - but three times, and the scarf that had been wrapped round her neck had actually concealed the fact that her throat had been slashed from ear to ear. So deep was the cut that her head had been nearly severed.”
“A veritable holocaust!” I cried. “And so many horrors missed! What sort of organisation do they run out there?”
“Quite so,” Holmes murmured again.
“And who do the authorities think was responsible for this mayhem?” I asked. “They must have some ideas about who committed these atrocities.”
“Yes,” said Fitzgerald, pencil now at the ready, “those are the people I’m most interested in hearing your opinions of.”
Holmes shook his head glumly. “Just the usual suspects, I’m afraid. As always, there were the wrong-headed possibilities - the young man who found the bodies, a vestryman who was in the area at the time. But the police reserved their hardest looks for the newly-widowed spouses.”
“The initial suspects,” I found myself pontificating, “whenever a husband or wife is killed.”
“And yet,” offered Fitzgerald as he sliced into another healthy portion of beef, “I’ve read that the husband, Jimmy Mills, is too dumb to have planned such a crime. In my Trimalchio, I say he’s so dumb that he doesn’t even know he’s alive.”
“Be careful,” cautioned Holmes. “Stupidity is one of the most effective guises a guilty person can don - though I must agree that in the case of the cuckolded Mills, I believe you have read him correctly. From all the reports, such a characterization credibly excuses the man. No, from the start, the prime suspect has always been the affluent widow - Mrs. Frances Noel Hall.”
“The wife did it then!” I exclaimed, waving my fork, “just as I said.”
Holmes placed his hand on my wrist to calm me down. “We have an alleged key witness,” said he, “to thank for the identification - a Mrs. Gibson, who claims to have been in the vicinity.”
“The pig woman,” offered Fitzgerald.
“You know of her then,” said Holmes.
“Oh, yes. They call her that because she raises pigs on her farm.”
“Well,” said Holmes, releasing my arm, “on the night in question, she thought someone had been stealing the corn from that farm, and she rode out to her field on a mule to have a look. She claimed that it was then that she had heard four shots and, thanks to the moonlight, seen a white-haired woman in a tan coat - a description of Mrs. Hall - and three other men. She went so far as to say that someone had called out ‘Henry’, which happens to be the name of Mrs. Hall’s brother. He, along with a cousin and another brother - an eccentric the townspeople call ‘Crazy Willie’ - are now also suspected.”
Fitzgerald shook his head. “But lots of people didn’t believe the ‘pig woman’.”
�
��That’s correct,” said Holmes. “There were too many discrepancies in her repetitions of the story. Mott counted five people in one of her scenarios, six in another. She also said that the vicar had fallen when he’d been shot - yet thanks to the autopsy, we know he was kneeling when he was killed. In short, some in authority believed her. Others did not.”
“What is the answer then?” I asked. “Whether this ‘pig woman’ was right or wrong, somebody killed those people. Who was responsible for committing such evil deeds?”
I knew I was sounding naïve once again, and Fitzgerald was quick to remind me.
“Surely, Dr. Watson,” said he, “a writer with your insights can detect the whiff of jealousy and revenge that hover over a pair of marriages gone sour. In Trimalchio, I attribute more than one death to those same perfidious motivations.”
Left to ponder Fitzgerald’s fiction, we finished our meals, and the plates were removed. Both my dinner companions declined after-dinner sweets, but I could not resist the chocolate gateau.
III
Following the arrival of our coffee and my cake, Holmes began again. “I found myself at odds with Mott, who tended to believe the Pig Woman. I simply couldn’t believe that Mrs. Hall or members of her family were involved. Mott’s conclusion ignores the nettling role of the crab-apple tree. Why was it so important for the killer - or killers - to point the bodies in the direction of the tree? I had to see the area for myself, and I told Mott so.”
“‘No point,’ said he. ‘Not only has the weather been terrible - we’ve just had some December snow - but large numbers of people have tramped all over the place - hundreds of gawkers. Why, one weekend in October we had over three hundred cars! The police did their best to preserve the original scene, but souvenir hunters put their fingers all over Hall’s calling card and the scattered love-letters. They’ve even ripped off the bark from the crab-apple tree for souvenirs.’”
Whilst Fitzgerald scrawled something in his notebook - “Curious crowds searching for blood,” he murmured - I shook my head in disbelief. How could the police allow such confusion? We used to think the Yarders made mistakes! Why, not even Lestrade could have bungled a crime scene so badly.
“Regardless of the prosecutor’s caveats,” said Holmes, “I refused to be nay-sayed. The next day broke cold and bleak, but early that morning a black police motor-car conveyed Mott and me through New Brunswick along the Easton Avenue streetcar line - beyond the shops and offices, past a few stylish houses - to the fields and farmlands at the outskirts of the town. By the time we reached Buccleuch Park where the trolley rails ended, the already-thin traffic had become even thinner. Just past the stately columns fronting the Parker Home for the Aged, we turned left into De Russey’s Lane. There remained just a short drive to the dirt road next to which the bodies had been found.
“Fortunately, a number of uniformed policemen had kept the fields of the abandoned farm clear for us. Today, only a scattering of winter-thinned trees interrupted the barren landscape, their naked branches reaching skyward like brittle bones.
“It required but a single glance to confirm that Mott had accurately described the mess. The recent snow had saturated the area, and indiscriminate crowds had indeed stamped down the grass and marched over underbrush. Yet once Mott pointed out the celebrated crab-apple tree, I knew that - manhandled as it had already been - here stood an entity that bulked large in the solution to the case.”
“In what way?” Fitzgerald asked.
“Mind,” said Holmes, “what I am about to tell you both I also told Prosecutor Mott. Though to this day he has made nothing of my findings, I continue to believe that before long, the case will be re-opened, my view will prevail, and justice will be served.”
“And just what is your view, Mr. Holmes?” Fitzgerald persisted.
Sherlock Holmes placed his elbows on the white tablecloth and steepled his fingers together. It was a way he had when he wanted to draw attention to a meaningful observation. “As I have said before, the art of detection is merely ‘systematized common sense’. The feet of the deceased were pointing to the crab-apple tree. To unravel this tangle, that tree was the spot where one had to begin.
“Even though much of the brownish-red bark had been stripped away, a close examination with my glass revealed a small cross that had been carved chest-high into the narrow trunk. Given the obvious freshness of the cut, one could surmise the mark had been made at the time of the murders.”
“Do you think the killings were religious in nature then?” I asked. “After all, this Mr. Hall was a vicar.”
“Perhaps. But there was more. You know my methods, Watson. I employed my lens to examine the trampled grass where the bodies had been placed. In spite of the damage to the ground, it was easy to note the lack of blood. In fact, with the investigating chemist having discovered only .08 of a pint of blood in the grass, it was elementary to conclude that Mrs. Mills’ horrific neck-wound had been administered post-mortem.
“But it was at the spot where the feet of the dead had rested that I concentrated my greatest efforts. Remember that the vicar’s calling card had been found leaning against his shoes. It was in that area that I discovered what no else had seen: Mixed in with the scrambled dirt and grass, I counted five apple pips.”
Apple pips again...
“So what?” questioned Fitzgerald. “What’s so strange about apple seeds being found near an apple tree?”
“True enough, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Holmes smiled, “except these were seeds from the Malus pumila, the common apple tree, not from the Malus coronaria, the specific crab-apple tree near where the bodies had lain.”
“Do you mean to say that you can actually tell the difference?” the writer asked.
“Oh, yes, with the aid of a magnifying lens. The seeds of the common apple tree are small, brown, flattened ovoids. Those of the crab-apple tree are smaller, redder, and more shiny.”
Fitzgerald shook his head in amazement. “But what makes this so important?”
Holmes’s eyes flashed as they always did when he revealed a significant conclusion. “I believe that the apple seeds were transported to the scene by the killer - or killers - for distribution. This discovery, along with the cross carved into the tree, was enough for me. I told Mott that I was ready to return to my hotel.
“You see, there was a witness named Frank Csister that I wanted to question. I had read the account that he had furnished the authorities, and I wanted to interrogate him myself. A chauffeur by trade, he happened to be out on the road near the scene of the murders that night. Since his testimony involved none of the major suspects, it was ignored by the police. To me, however, it was exactly the sort of story I wanted to hear more of. The police file informed me that Csister worked in a garage. Apparently, when he was not driving passengers about, he was repairing motor-cars.”
“Lots to do with automobiles in this case, eh, Holmes?” I observed. “Chauffeurs, motor-ways, garages.”
“It’s America we’re talking about, Dr. Watson,” said Fitzgerald. “My Trimalchio drives a ‘circus wagon’. If the story took place in England, I’m sure I would have been writing about trains.”
“Indeed,” Holmes muttered and continued his narrative. “Mott said he had heard all he needed to from Csister and declined to join me. So once the police deposited me at my hotel in New Brunswick, I hired a taxi for the drive to Bound Brook, the borough some ten miles to the northwest where Frank Csister worked.”
IV
“I found the fellow in a small garage,” said Holmes. “A ginger-haired man with inquisitive eyes and a full, red beard. He was adjusting the steering of an old Dodge touring model. He wore grease-covered overalls and a soiled flat cap.
“‘Again?’ he said when I told him that I wanted to ask him about the Hall-Mills murders. ‘I’ve already talked to the cops. They don’t think much of
what I have to say.’
“None-the-less, he agreed to spend a few minutes with me and recommended coffee at the café next door.”
“In Trimalchio,” Fitzgerald cut in, “I put a Greek joint next to the garage.”
Holmes would not be distracted. “Csister and I seated ourselves at a small wooden table with our coffees between us.
“‘What did you see that night, Mr. Csister,’ I asked, “‘the night of the murders?’
“He put two cubes of sugar into his coffee and stirred. ‘Like I told the cops,’ he said after administering to his drink, ‘a friend of mine and me was driving to Red Bank. We was on our way to the volunteer fireman’s ball. It was getting dark out there, but around 8:30 or so we saw a small, dust-covered car - maybe a Ford or a Dodge - parked by the side of the road. It wasn’t too far from where them bodies was found. It didn’t have no license plate, and only one tail-light was on.’
“‘I’m sure you’ve seen many a car by the side of the road. What was so curious about this one?’
“‘Ha!’ he laughed, ‘take your choice - the tire that came flying out of one of the windows or the three Negroes who poured out after it. They were yelling and throwing their arms around. Well, we didn’t want no trouble so we speeded up and got out of there.’
“The thought of disguises immediately crossed my mind. ‘Were these men truly Negroes,’ I asked, ‘or might they have been white men wearing black face-paint?’
“Csister shook his head. ‘I tell you, Mr. Holmes, me and my partner didn’t hang around long enough to find out. We didn’t want to get robbed or nothing.’