“I-I’m sorry. I forgot myself for a moment,” I said, and stared down at the rug on my bedroom floor. When I raised my head, she was still staring at me, her mouth open.
“My-my mother was…?”
Her turn to stop herself. She sucked in a breath and spun about. Her ragged breathing made her shoulders jerk up and down in time with her inhalations. I reached out and touched her arm. After a moment, she faced me, her cheeks wet and her eyes red-rimmed.
“I thought she just… Everyone knew she was poorly… How...? Who?”
Unsure of my words and fear of causing her additional pain, I raised my hands in surrender. When her eyes widened again, I feared her emotions had overcome her again and braced myself for an even stronger display. Instead, she grabbed my arm and spoke in a harsh whisper. “Do you think we might find something in her mending basket to show how she … passed? We could check it.”
“Now?” I glanced out the window. Only a partial moon shone through the glass. “Shouldn’t we wait until morning? Also, I think I should tell Father. As magistrate—”
“Not yet. I want to see what’s in that basket. The constable already thinks Papa kilt Mrs. Brown. I don’t want him thinkin’ he poisoned Mama too. I’s gots to see what’s in it first. You know more about that kind of thing. You might be able to tell. Come with me.”
I paused, knowing my mother had sent me to bed because of my injury. We’d managed to keep the truth from Father about our adventure in town, but if I were caught leaving the house, I was sure to incur the wrath of both parents. Three elements, however, weighed in favor of going with Constance. The first was the girl herself. The soft plea in her eyes pushed me to acquiesce. Also, social convention dictated I accompany her and not let her return to her home alone at this hour. Finally, I considered the worst consequences with respect to my parents. Most likely, it would involve returning to Eton. My father might consider it a reward and refuse my going back. All in all, I was likely safe from any severe consequences.
After a moment more during which Constance chewed her lip, a small gesture that raised my pulse to the point I wondered if it might be bad for my head, I nodded. “Wait for me in the greenhouse. It’s best we aren’t seen together.”
Her shoulders dropped and her lips rose in a smile. She gripped my shoulders and rose to her tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek. “Thank you. I know we’ll be able to show Papa’s innocent.”
After I checked to see if anyone was in the hall, I let her out of my room, and she was gone.
Almost.
I raised a hand to my cheek and fingered the spot where she’d kissed me. Although it had been brief and light, my skin retained the memory of that touch from her lips. Soft, tender, and slightly moist.
I might have continued in that frozen moment had I not remembered the kiss’s donor was waiting for me. Pushed into action, I changed into my heavy hunting jacket and boots in a flash. After wrapping a scarf about my neck and pulling my deerstalker hat onto my head, I made to join Constance. My dressing activities must have muffled the noise in the hallway because when I opened the door, I almost ran straight into Mycroft. Only his surprisingly agile jump backwards kept us from crashing into each other.
“Good lord, Sherlock, where do you think you’re going? And in such an all-blasted hurry?”
Chapter Eleven
I raised a finger to my lips and glanced over his shoulder to the back stairs. In a low voice, I said, “I have an…errand to do.”
“At this hour?” He studied my clothing, wrinkled his nose, and asked in a lower tone, “You’re obviously planning a trip through the woods. To the Straton cottage, I presume?”
“I know Mr. Straton didn’t murder Mrs. Brown. Constance told me.”
Another wrinkle of the nose. “Told you.” He glanced behind me and into my bedroom. “Is she in there?”
“No.”
He stared at me, and I knew he was assessing me and his next move. I’d seen the same expression when he played Mother in chess. “You’ll have hell to pay if they catch you out of your room.”
“I’ve considered the consequences and find nothing that would be worse than sending an innocent man to gaol.” After a weighted pause, I played to his weakness. “I’m doing this for you as much as anyone. Remember, the sooner we resolve these deaths, the sooner you return to Oxford.” His brows arched, and I knew I’d convinced him. “I could use some help in keeping everyone from my room until I return.”
Another glance into the bedroom. “Sometimes you are truly a twit. Do you think anyone will believe you’re in your room when your bed is still made?”
“I was in a hurry, and I—”
He waved a hand at me, as if shooing me toward the servant stairs. “Go. Before Father and Mother decide to retire. I know what to do. I used to sneak out of my bedroom at night in Eton. When I wanted to be alone with my thoughts, I would make my bed to appear I was in it and then go to a storage room in the attic. I made it up into quite a nice sitting area from some discarded pieces. Over time, I even allowed a few of the other boys to join me.”
“The Diogenes Society.”
“You know about it?”
“It’s still there. One of the boys from the upper forms invited me because I was your brother. I can understand its appeal to you. They had a rule about no talking. I found it rather…stifling.”
He tucked his chin and studied me for a moment. “I can see that for you. You’ve always been a rather restless soul. Always running about wanting to do things. Like now. You’d best get going.”
“Thanks. For helping me.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for me.”
He spun on his heel and stepped into my room, shutting the door behind him.
Leaving him to his subterfuge, I headed toward the stairs, listening for any sounds signaling movement on either the main or servants’ stairs. Hearing none, I descended to join the girl.
Constance and I stepped from the greenhouse (She was right. The door was unlocked), and I moved toward my uncle’s workshop.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a harsh whisper. “The woods are this way.”
“I know, but I want a lantern. It’s going to be dark under the trees, and we’ll travel more quickly with a light.”
At Ernest’s workshop, I paused before entering. When I heard no noise, I decided he was either asleep or still in the main house and let myself in. I retrieved a lantern from a bench just inside the door and headed toward the edge of the woods with Constance.
A slight mist blanketed the ground, strips of white floating about our feet. It grew heavier the further inside we progressed. About ten to fifteen minutes after passing onto the trail, I heard a rustling in the underbrush and jerked my head in the direction of the sound. Chances were the rustling belonged to a deer or similar creature, but even then, some animals would attack if provoked or frightened. Constance, however, continued to trudge ahead, oblivious to the noise. All the same, while I kept pace with her, I found myself listening for any indication of other creatures possibly crossing our path.
As we entered the deepest part of the woods, I found myself clutching the lantern’s handle harder as noises seemed to pop up all around me. Despite my heightened vigilance, I might not have heard the sound if we hadn’t slowed to climb over a fallen log. Straddling the log, I paused when a low moaning emanated from my right. I turned to Constance to ask if she had heard the same sound, but she stood frozen, her finger to her lips to silence me. We both waited for the noise to come again. Barely breathing, I listened, searching for the groaning until my ears rang.
Then a faint sighing floated on the breeze. I glanced in the direction of the Straton’s cottage, feeling the pull to accomplish my mission, and I would have continued on that path had I not caught a word in the next sigh.
“Help.”
Constance turned and moved with such speed I could barely keep her within the lantern’s glow. I almost ran into her back when
she halted at the edge of a small clearing among a stand of yew trees. A dark hump lay almost at her feet. When I raised the light higher to get a better view of the fallen figure, Constance shrieked and dropped to her knees.
“Papa!”
I knelt beside her to help turn him onto his back. Mr. Straton’s features twisted in pain, and the only word he muttered was, “Help.”
“Papa,” she repeated and grabbed his shoulders. “What happened?”
He winced at her movement and groaned, but said no more.
The shadows cast by the lantern made it difficult to make out his injuries. With great effort, I pulled her away from her father, removed my gloves, and ran my hands over the man to see if I could tell where he’d been hurt. When I touched wetness above his abdomen, I pulled my hand back to check it in the light. She cried out again when she saw the red stains on my fingers.
“We have to help him,” she said, almost babbling. “Get him to a doctor. He can’t die…can’t die.”
“Constance.” I gripped her shoulders and forced her to meet my gaze. “We can’t carry him, but he does need help. One of us has to stay. The other must run back to Underbyrne and fetch others.”
She glanced back at her father. “He can’t die…he can’t die.”
For the first time since I’d known her, the girl seemed lost, unable to think or respond to the situation. As much as I wanted to shake her, I turned her face to mine and forced myself instead to speak in a low, even tone.
“You have to go get help. Go back to Underbyrne and bring my parents. I’ll take care of him while you’re gone.” I glanced at the man lying still on the ground and said, “I won’t let him die.”
She focused on me, and for the first time, I could tell she comprehended what I was saying. “Promise?”
I nodded, unwilling to verbalize again what I feared might be an empty vow.
We both rose to our feet, and I accompanied her back to the trail. Before she turned herself in the direction of my home, I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and tied it to a branch of a bush at the side of the path. “This way you’ll know where to turn to find your father. Can you find your way without the lamp? I need it so that I can dress the wound.”
“Remember your promise,” she said, and rushed away from me.
After she had disappeared into the woods’ gloom, I turned to retrace my steps. While the lantern did provide some help in identifying the broken branches and trampled plants Constance and I had created in our search for Mr. Straton, I realized if I marked the whole trail the others would be able to find their way to the injured man faster. I ripped the handkerchief into strips and tied them at various intervals to lead to the yew clearing.
When I reached Constance’s father, I sucked in my breath. Even in the yellow light, Mr. Straton’s grimy face was pale. How much blood had he lost? A crimson circle covered the right side of his shirt and jacket and soaked the yew needles underneath him. Only the slow rise and fall of his chest let me know he was still breathing.
Kneeling at his side, I now worked quickly to see how I might tend to him until help arrived. I pulled back the shirt and jacket and found the source of the bleeding. It seeped from a slit between two ribs. The image of the dead workman in Mr. Harvingsham’s office rose unbidden to my mind, and bile surged into my throat.
I pushed both the image and the rising nausea away, willing myself to return to the job at hand. With shaking fingers, I unwound the scarf from my neck and pressed it against the wound. He moaned, but didn’t open his eyes. His skin was cool to the touch. Fearing he might catch a chill, I removed my jacket and covered him as much as possible. Once I completed these tasks, I rested as best I could next to him. All my strength seemed to drain from me. Perhaps I’d pushed myself too far too soon after my fall, or it was the effects of the cool night, but I found my thoughts drifting. I forced myself to keep pressure on Mr. Straton’s wound. At some point, my eyelids began to droop.
I must have dozed off but woke with a start when I heard voices coming toward me. I jerked to attention and shouted in their direction. “Over here.”
Father and Benson the gamekeeper were the first to break into the clearing and the lantern light. Mother and Constance followed, with Ernest, Mycroft, and Mr. Simpson the last to arrive. The steward carried a length of canvas attached to two poles. I recognized it as the stretcher Benson used to carry a deer or other animal carcass to the butchering shed.
Everyone held back as Mother knelt next to Mr. Straton. She turned back my coat and, after adjusting the light, checked the wound under the scarf. My makeshift bandage had adhered to the skin, and she had to peel it off. After studying it a moment, she must have recognized it as mine because she passed it to me, and I stuffed it into my trouser pocket without thinking. She pulled a jar of honey out of a small black bag she had brought and quickly applied a thick layer of it to the cut and applied a clean bandage to it.
“That will have to do for the moment,” she said, sitting back on her heels. “Once back home, I can determine how deep the cut is. Let’s get him there as soon as possible.”
The adults exchanged glances, but it was Father who said aloud what I knew the others were thinking. “Mrs. Holmes, you’re not suggesting we take him back to Underbyrne? Surely he would be better at the village hospital?”
We had all assumed he would be transported to the low building near the surgeon’s home. While Mother and others of our social stature might take care of ill or injured family members at home, the poorer classes would be cared for at the hospital for the surgeon’s convenience.
“The trip into town would be dangerous for him. I even fear the travel to our home, but I can care for him better there.”
The shadows cast by the lantern light only accentuated the furrows in Father’s brow. “As a justice of the peace, I’m not certain we should harbor a fugitive in our home.”
“It won’t be harboring if we inform the constable where he is. I can tell you now, there is no need to worry he will run off.” She glanced at Constance and shifted her tone slightly. “I’ll take personal responsibility for him.”
“Please, sir,” Constance said. “He didn’t kilt no one. Master Holmes was going with me to see if we could prove it.”
Father shook his head, but said, “He can stay at least until he’s healed enough to make his own defense.” He turned to me. “You, boy, have no reprieve. We’ll discuss your impertinence after the man has been settled in one of the empty servant rooms.”
“Yes, sir,” I said with a drop of my head.
Over the next half hour, the men loaded the unconscious farmer onto the stretcher, covered him with blankets, and with one on each of the four corners, carried him out of the woods to a waiting wagon. As we tramped behind the men, Mother turned to Constance and me.
“Constance said something about proof her father hadn’t killed Mrs. Brown. What did she mean?”
“The constable and Mr. Brown say he killed Mrs. Brown because she poisoned Mrs. Straton. Constance says her mother never took what Mrs. Brown gave her. Her father burned it when he found it in her mending basket. We were going to fetch the basket and see if any was left.”
Constance nodded in agreement but glanced down when Mother studied both of us.
“Why didn’t you simply tell me? Instead of running off into the woods like this? And you, Sherry, still recovering from a brain commotion.”
My shoulders slumped under my mother’s rebuke. As much as I wanted to defend my actions, a part of me knew she was right. I also knew that had Constance and I not done so, Mr. Straton would have bled to death in the woods, only ten minutes or so from his home. Mother must have come to the same conclusion because when she spoke next, her voice had lost the tinge of reprimand she’d had earlier.
“We probably should consider what might be in the mending basket. Constance, after we settle your father at Underbyrne, I’ll send you out with Mr. Simpson to your cottage to collect the basket and your b
rothers and sisters. We have enough extra beds in the servant’s attic for all of you. We’ll discuss a more permanent arrangement in the morning.”
She lifted her chin to that news. “Thank you, madam. I promise to help in any way I’s can.”
Despite my relief for Mr. Straton and my previous analysis of the consequences, I still dreaded what awaited me at home. I had not one, but both parents upset about my actions. No head injury in the world would save me a second time from their current disapproval. I did wonder, however, if finding and rescuing Constance’s father didn’t count for something.
Everyone else remained subdued and in their own thoughts on the ride back. Even poor Mr. Straton remained unconscious. I’d hoped he might be able to tell us who had stabbed him, but the most he did was moan when the wagon wheels hit a rough patch on the road.
Constance stayed at his side throughout, her small hand gripping his. She never glanced away from his face. I wanted to comfort her, assure her he would be all right, but feared to make a hollow assertion. I’d already promised her once and feared repeating it might only raise her hopes. She only let go of his hand when the men took him up the stairs to the servants’ rooms. When he was settled in bed, Father remained behind with me and the women.
Mother turned to Constance. “Go downstairs to Mr. Simpson. He’ll help you fetch the children along with the mending basket. I’ll have Mrs. Simpson prepare a room nearby for all of you.”
The girl bit her lip, showing no enthusiasm for leaving her father. At the door, she checked over her shoulder one more time before descending the stairs.
After we could no longer hear her footfalls on the stairs, Mother turned to me. I dipped my head, steadying myself for the reprimand I knew was coming. Instead, she said, “Go to the kitchen and ask Cook for a kettle of boiling water and a pan. Also more honey. We are going to have to act quickly if we are to avoid infection. Also, have Mycroft and Ernest join us.”
As I reached the door, I overheard Father speak in a low tone, “Violette, are you certain you can save him? Perhaps I should call Harvingsham? He does have experience with stitching cuts.”
The Adventure of the Murdered Midwife Page 19