My story would be a short one if this single evening were the whole extent of my involvement in the lives of the Mundys. Even a determined rescuer would have had a difficult time overcoming the double isolation that afflicted them on account of their deafness and the strictness of their keeper. They could not have been more isolated were Mr Mundy their gaoler in fact, as indeed he was in all other respects, or were they living in solitude on an island, like Crusoe, in the South Seas. But as it fell out, my curiosity pricked me on to discover more about their situation, and Providence – or whatever we may call it – had marked me down for their Friday, and the means of their deliverance.
I did not box the following week, and from this moment I date my inconsistent attendance and eventual abandonment of the regime. Instead, I took some pains in composing an invitation, ostensibly to reciprocate the hospitality the Mundys had shown me, which I delivered in person at the hour when I knew Abel Mundy would be occupied at Fernshaw’s school of arms.
I guessed, rightly as it fell out, that there was no chance of my invitation being accepted, but that was hardly my purpose in extending it. I wanted the opportunity to test my impressions of the household in Mr Mundy’s absence and, by passing on my name and address to the family, to offer Mrs Mundy my confidence. I gambled that the slim hope of deliverance might prompt her to communicate with me herself. My only misgiving was that her husband might hold her responsible in some way for my unexpected arrival and the consequence for her would be another beating.
This fear was confirmed by her behaviour on my return. My appearance seemed to cause her alarm at first, and it was a minute or two before I was able to convey to her the reason for my visit, and before she remembered her manners and gave me a cup of tea, brewed, as she indicated with gestures, in an Indian style with sugar and pods of cardamom.
The younger child having been set down for a nap, we were a party of three. Conversation on all sides was naturally limited, and though I consoled myself that I had accomplished my task simply by visiting, I knew that I would need to approach the subject more directly in order to assure her that I was an ally. Though I did not allude to it, it was immediately apparent that Mr Mundy had been less careful with his attentions since my previous visit, because his wife was marked with a black eye that was very noticeable in spite of her dark skin. It was a shocking detail, all the more so because I had seen what he was capable of in a boxing ring against a grown man his size and weight. I wondered then – I wonder still – that he had not blinded her.
Chance accomplished what my calculations had been unable to. The fire (much smaller in the absence of Mr Mundy) burning very low in the grate, the daughter was dispatched to the cellar to fill the scuttle. As soon as I heard her footsteps descending the stairs, I seized a pen and wrote on a piece of paper:
‘How came you by your injury?’
To this, Mrs Mundy responded, smiling, with a well-rehearsed mime of a domestic accident.
With my heart pounding in case we were discovered by the daughter, I decided then to take an approach that would give her some idea of how much I already suspected. I took up the pen again and wrote: ‘It is not right that your husband beats you.’
Mrs Mundy stared at it for a full minute without responding, until I was sure she found it illegible (my nerves had rendered the penmanship less clear than on the previous inscription). Then, surely anticipating her daughter’s return, she threw the note into the fire of a sudden and fled from the room. When she returned, she had composed herself for her daughter’s sake, but it was clear to me that she had shed tears in the interval. As, very often, a hardship that seems supportable during its infliction grieves us most painfully when someone aims to relieve it with tenderness, so I believe the mere thought of hope was enough to plunge her into fresh despair.
I took my leave of the Mundys shortly thereafter, with no very great expectation of seeing the mother and children again. I received by post Mr Mundy’s regrets that he was unable to accept my kind invitation.
The following week I boxed as usual. I had a slight trepidation of seeing Mr Mundy, and had prepared an elaborate explanation for my having delivered the letter myself, which involved several unexpected errands across the city that had taken me into the vicinity of his home. As it happened, my explanations were unnecessary. Mundy was curt but civil, beat hell out of his opponent, and then left the gymnasium to do the same to his wife.
I heard nothing more for weeks after that, by which time my zeal to help had faded into the vague hope that my interference had not made Mrs Mundy’s life worse than it was already. Then, on the two-month anniversary of my first meeting with Mrs Mundy, I received a letter from her. As she requested, I destroyed the original, but the substance of it remains with me, almost four decades later. ‘Dear Mr Holmes,’ it began.
‘You gave me hope to suppose that you understood what kind of a man I am married to. Of whatever you believe him capable, I assure you the truth is worse. That he does not love me, I always knew; that he beats me, I must accept; but that he has forced my daughter to submit to the vilest attentions, I cannot. How you may help me, I do not know; it is more for the sake of my children than my own that I write. I am too weak to act on my own behalf, but I am fearful for my little one. I pray you to burn this letter.’
This was not the communication I had foreseen – I did not imagine that Mundy was capable of raping his own daughter – but in the months that had passed since my visit to Fenchurch Street, I had brooded on a number of outcomes; I had anticipated one that required abrupt and forceful intervention and made preparations for it.
I left my house immediately, going first to the home of the Mundys, where I found Mrs Mundy in much the state in which I had last seen her sans the black eye. Her expression was fearful but composed; I think the habit of terror was so strong with her that she never doubted but that she would spend her days in that hell until her husband killed her. She could not allow herself the possibility of hope. Her daughter made tea, but I could neither drink it, nor look her in the eye for thinking about the shame her father had inflicted on her.
I wrote quickly on a piece of paper to inquire what time her husband was expected home. She wrote down that he would not be back for some hours yet. In return, I counselled her that I would do what I could, but that, whether I succeeded or failed, she should never try to contact me again; and that, if her husband did not return home this evening, she should report his absence to the police.
‘I hope,’ she wrote in answer, ‘that I may never see him as long as I live‚’ emphasising the vehemence of the sentiment by striking herself over the heart.
Then we burned all evidence of our conversation and I left.
I remembered quite well the place where I had encountered Abel Mundy by chance those months before, and made my way there as quickly as possible in order to attempt a repetition of that encounter, this time by design. It was much past the hour when we had met before and there was still no sign of him. I began to worry that he had left earlier on some business, or perhaps been working in some other place that day, or that I had deceived myself as to the location of his office. I had a flask of brandy in the pocket of my coat, and took nips of it as I waited. Finally, after I had all but given up hope, the door opened and two men emerged: one, by his bulk and stoop-backed walk, Abel Mundy; the other a tall man whom I did not know.
The truth is that I was sick at the thought of what I was about to do. It is one thing to imagine killing a man, it is quite another when the living, breathing man stands before you. The two men parted, and Abel Mundy made his way along the slippery pavement towards me.
At that instant, I began walking in the opposite direction, giving no indication that I recognised him, until our shoulders bumped and he stopped and looked in my face. This was my first miscalculation, for two reasons. Firstly, I should have known better than to attempt to convince him that a second coincidence had caused our paths to cross. He was a suspicious man, and this put
him on guard for some mischief. I would have done better to concoct a reason for seeking him out in person, and indeed, many times when I had foreseen the meeting, this had been how I envisaged it. But somehow, at the crunch, my sense deserted me. The second mistake was to bump shoulders with him. I needed no reminder of the disparity between our strengths. I knew that in any fair encounter I would be the one to come off worse, and the thought of it put fear in me.
‘Holmes?’ said he.
‘Abel Mundy!’ I replied. The surprise in my voice sounded patently false to me. ‘Just the fellow I need! Are you in a hurry, Abel? Can you spare me a minute?’
‘I am somewhat pressed, Holmes,’ he said, and I knew he suspected a trick.
Although I was armed, confronting him seemed like desperate folly, like throwing myself against a statue or a mountainside. I saw him pounding me slowly senseless with his big fists, and the fear of it swallowed me up like quicksand. I staggered forward and threw up at his feet.
‘Christ, man, are you drunk?’ he said.
Too indisposed to speak, I nodded weakly at him, and vomited again.
He lifted me up by the collar of my coat like a kitten, knocking my hat off in the process.
‘On your feet, man,’ said Mundy. Over my protestations, he marched me up the street and into a doorway some fifty yards from where I had been taken ill. I protested weakly, feeling like a condemned man on the trap waiting for the ground to drop away from my feet and to hear the snap of my own neck. Roughly, he bundled me inside the warehouse and dropped me on to a chair; then he left me.
My wits had deserted me. I sat mute in the darkness, gradually conscious of the rough boards beneath my feet and the smells of spice and river water that contended in the air. I did not think to run away: I could not see where I had come in. My mouth tasted foul, and my hands shook. I felt as weak as a baby.
I do not know how much later it was when Mundy returned and handed me a cup. ‘It’s been standing a while,’ he said. I drank the water gratefully while he wandered over to the window and lit a cheroot. ‘Better?’ said he.
I nodded and wiped my mouth, even though he could not have seen me in the darkness.
‘You young fellows,’ he said with a laugh. ‘All piss and swagger.’ I saw sparks fly from the floor as he dropped his smoke and ground out the coal with a boot heel. ‘Well, if you’re convalescing, young Holmes, I need to be on my way. I would drink no more today, if I were you.’
‘I’m not drunk, Abel,’ I said.
‘And I’m not Abel Mundy, neither,’ said he. ‘I could smell the drink on you.’
‘I’m not drunk, Abel,’ I said. ‘I’m sick with fear.’ He said nothing. ‘I mean to kill a man,’ I said, ‘and the fear of it sickens me.’
‘That’s a queer way to talk,’ he said quietly.
We sat silently in the darkness. The only sounds were the river lapping beneath us, and the rats rustling among the sacks and barrels.
‘Who is this man?’ he said finally. ‘Who is he, Holmes? What in God’s name are you talking about? You’re full of drink and you’re babbling, man. You’re talking nothing but nonsense.’ I could see him pacing in front of the window.
‘I mean to kill you, Abel Mundy. Turn your face to that window, or by heaven, I’ll shoot you dead,’ I said, drawing a brace of pistols from my greatcoat.
‘You, Holmes? A eunuch? A half-man, fit for the harem, to cook chocolate and dress dancing girls? Why, stow your nonsense, or I’ll break you like a twig.’ He stood stock-still, weighing up the odds against him, deliberating whether to charge me or to wait.
‘I assure you, you will find threatening me a singularly unfruitful course of action,’ I told him. ‘Now do as I say.’
‘What the devil?’ was the mildest of the volley of imprecations he uttered, but he did as I commanded.
I told him that unless he agreed to leave the country immediately I would take his life on the spot.
He turned suddenly and sprang. The flash of the pistol lit the darkness. I felt the heat of it across my hand. In the panic, the other weapon fell to the ground. Mundy lay in the darkness groaning. I found the second pistol and placed the muzzle behind his ear. With a huge effort, I pulled the trigger, but my efforts were rewarded with a click. The mechanism had broken in the fall.
Mundy dragged himself upwards with a groan and I felt his huge hands close on my ankle. I took up the chair on which I had been seated and brought it crashing down on his skull. It felled him, but even then the man was so strong that he rose to his knees with a groan and grabbed at my hands. Again and again, I struck him with the chair with a kind of rising horror and pity, and a desperate wish that each blow would be the last of him. The chair by now having come apart, I was forced to belabour him with the parts of it, a chair leg, a spoke, whatever was left in my hands. He turned his face to me in the half-light as I struck savagely with the crude lumps of wood, black blood streaming from his nostrils and staining his teeth.
‘For Jesus’ sake, pity,’ he groaned.
‘Where was your pity, Abel Mundy? Where was your pity?’ And I beat him until he moved no longer, until I knew he was dead, and then for a while after, because of the terrible darkness inside me.
Afterwards, I fumbled through the pockets of his coat for his cheroots and matches. As I placed one between my lips, I tasted the blood on my fingers and a shiver went through me.
All my preparations had come to this. I had planned to offer him exile, but I had beaten him to death with a trick and his blood was all over me. And yet, until I said the words aloud I did not believe them myself: I mean to kill you, Abel Mundy. From that moment, all the fear left me and I knew I would succeed, because, for all his strength, my will was stronger.
About the warehouse were several empty barrels into one of which, with much effort, I forced Abel Mundy’s body. I had no means of sealing the barrel, and the corpse’s hand continually dropped out as I rolled it along the floor, until I no longer bothered to push it back inside, so that it lashed the dirty ground with every revolution of the cask. I was some time wondering how I could make the barrel sink, and I further knew that the gas building up inside the dead man would tend to raise him, barrel and all, to the surface, unless there were a counterweight sufficient to keep him down. I was fortunate, indeed, to find a great stack of lead blocks each marked for half a hundredweight and used for weighing cargo.
I rolled the barrel into a skiff that was among several kept by on the wharf, and placed the blocks in after, as many as I could safely put in it, then fastened all with lengths of rope.
Fog had obscured the opposite bank and was closing fast, lessening my danger of being observed, but rendering my navigation more perilous. I took up the oars and rowed my cargo out to where I could see neither bank; here buoys were fixed in the deepest part of the river.
My ballast was so heavy that there was barely freeboard between the gunwales and the water, and I shipped a little water with each stroke. When I had reached what I took to be the centre of the river, I stove in the bottom of the skiff with a hatchet, until the river boiled up through it, sucking down the little boat and the barrel. The water was icy and dank, and all the harder to negotiate because of my heavy clothes and shoes. Having reached the farther bank, I struggled through the mud up to the nearest stairs, and as I reached out to steady myself on the stone, I saw my hands had been washed clean of blood, and with the darkening effect of the water on my clothes, it was impossible say which liquid was the Thames and which Abel Mundy.
I made my way home by back streets, and was helped by the weather, which had turned to rain and rendered my sodden attire less conspicuous.
Abel Mundy’s body was never found. Suspicion fell upon Mrs Mundy, but she claimed, with justification, that her husband’s disappearance was as much a mystery to her as to anyone else. By a circuitous coincidence, several months later my brother was employed by Abel Mundy’s insurers to ascertain whether or not the man was indeed dead. Thi
s was a kind of loss-adjusting work well suited to deductive reasoning which he frequently undertook, but which was of more significance to his finances than to his hagiographers.
I had continued at Fernshaw’s for a short while after, but found that I had lost the taste for combat. I grew lethargic and, after a while, ran to fat. An acquaintance from school had set me down for membership of the Diogenes Club, and I began to pass my evenings there, in the panelled silence of its library. It was here that I was summoned one evening to receive two visitors in the only room of the club where talking was permitted.
My brother was there, along with his lumpen sidekick. He had come, it turned out, to seek my advice about the Mundy case.
‘I knew the fellow,’ I said, before he had gone beyond the details of the disappearance. ‘Boxed with him for a year or more.’
‘You … boxed?’ cried Watson, unable to conceal his surprise. I had, as I mentioned, run somewhat to fat.
‘Took a Blue, old boy. Don’t do it nowadays of course.’
‘A Blue! As did your brother.’ He made a note on a piece of paper which he had taken from his pocket.
‘My brother boxed, Mr Watson, but he did not take a Blue.’
My brother looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘What sort of a fellow was he?’
‘You should be able to tell me that yourself.’
‘Well, yes, of course. I merely meant to ask you for your opinion. Did he strike you as the type of chap who’d pull a jape like this? Disappearing into thin air.’
‘The police found blood and traces of a struggle, did they not?’ I said.
‘Blood, yes. But whose blood? The blood of what? He wouldn’t be foolish enough to disappear without an alibi. A clever criminal could have disposed of him without a trace of blood.’
‘If I understand you rightly, brother, the absence of blood you take as evidence of a murder. The presence of blood you take as proof that no murder happened. If your reasoning is correct, we must be witnesses to a massacre. Why, look at my hands!’ And I held up my fingers to him in the lamplight.
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