The Adventure of the Greenbriar Ghost
Page 3
“I screamed,” said Mrs. Heaster. “Of course I did. Who would not? Nothing in my life had prepared me for so ghastly a sight as this. After that first night I convinced myself that it had all been an hysterical dream, that such things as phantoms did not exist and that my Zona was not haunting me; but on that second night she returned. Once more she begged me to hear the truth about what happened, and once more she told me of the awful attack. I only thank God that I was not again subjected to the demonstration of the extent of damage to her poor, dear neck.” She paused and gave the jury a small, sad smile. “I pleaded with Mr. Preston to let me tell my tale during this trial and he refused. I fear he was afraid that my words would make you laugh at me. I believe Mr. Grimby placed me on the stand for those very reasons. And yet I hear no laughter, I see no smiles. Perhaps it is that you, like I, do not find the terrible and painful death of an innocent girl to be a source of merriment. In any case, I have had my say, and for that I thank Mr. Grimby and this court. At least now, no matter what you each decide, my daughter has been heard. For me that will have to be enough.”
She looked at Grimby, who in turn looked at the jury. He saw what I saw: twelve faces whose eyes were moist but whose mouths had become tight and bitter lines and whose outthrust jaws bespoke their fury.
Then the silence was shattered as Shue himself leapt to his feet and cried, “Tell whatever fairytales you want, woman, but you will never be able to prove that I did it!”
The guards shoved him down in his seat and Holmes leaned his head toward Preston and me. “Do you not find it an interesting choice of phrase that he said that we will never ‘prove’ that he did it? Does that sound like the plea of an innocent man or the challenge of a guilty one?” And though he said this quietly he pitched it just loud enough to be heard by everyone in that small and crowded room.
Chapter 9
That was very nearly the end of the Greenbriar affair and Holmes and I left West Virginia and America very shortly thereafter. Erasmus Stribbling Trout Shue was found guilty by the jury, which returned its verdict with astonishing swiftness. The judge, with fury and revulsion in his eyes, sentenced Shue to life imprisonment in the State Penitentiary in Moundsville, where Shue died some three years later of a disease that was never adequately diagnosed. Mr. Preston sent Holmes a newspaper account from Lewisburg after Shue’s death in which the reporter recounted a rumor that Shue complained that a ghost visited him nightly and as a result he was unable to sleep. His health deteriorated and when he died he was buried in an unmarked grave. No one that I knew of attended the burial or mourned his passing.
But before Holmes and I had even set out from Lewisburg, as we shared a late dinner in our rooms at the hotel, I said, “There is one thing that confounds me, Holmes.”
“Only one thing? And pray what is that?”
“How did Mr. Grimby know to ask Mrs. Heaster about her story? It was not commonly known as far as I could tell, especially not here in Lewisburg. Certainly neither she nor Mr. Preston shared that information.”
Holmes ate a bit of roast duck and washed it down with wine before he answered. “Does it matter how he found out? Perhaps he learned of it from a ghost in his dreams.”
I opened my mouth to reply that it surely did matter when an odd thought struck me dumb. I gaped accusingly at Holmes and set my knife and fork down with a crash.
“If it was someone on this physical plane who tipped him off then it was criminal to do so! The risk was abominable. What if she had raved?”
“We have not once seen Mrs. Heaster rave,” he observed calmly. “Rather the reverse.”
“What if the jury did not believe her? What if Grimby had managed her better on the stand? What if—?”
Holmes cut me off. “What if once in a while, Watson, justice was more important in a court of law than the law itself?” He sipped his wine.
Once more I opened my mouth to protest, but then a chill wind seemed to blow through the room, making the curtains dance and causing the candle flames to flicker, and in that moment I could feel the heat of my outrage and anger leak out of me. Holmes cut another slice of duck and ate it, his glittering dark eyes dancing with a strange humor. I followed the line of his gaze and saw that he was looking at the curtains, watching as they settled back into place; and then the chill of the room seemed to touch my chest like the cold hand of a dead child over my heart. Though the day had been a hot one the night had been cool, and the maid had shut the window against the breeze. The curtains hung now, as still as if they had never moved, for indeed they could not have.
When I turned back to Holmes he was looking at me now, half a smile on his mouth.
Was it a breeze that had found its way through the window frame, or perhaps through an unseen crack in the wall? Or had some voiceless mouth whispered thank you to Holmes in the language of the grave? I will not say what I think nor commit it to paper.
We said nothing for the rest of that evening, and in the morning we took ship for England, leaving Greenbriar and the ghosts of West Virginia far behind.
The End
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