The poor girl nodded and prepared to depart when Holmes spoke to her one last time, as if suddenly remembering an item that had piqued his interest.
“Miss Edith, before you go, two more questions, if I may. You did not say anything about your husband’s visit to me in London on Monday. Did he not tell you he was going up to the city with his Uncle Rochester?”
The girl looked very perplexed. “No, sir. He said nothing about going up to London, sir.”
“No? Very well, then, my final question: you spoke briefly of Shaw’s brother Trevor. What did you think of him?”
“I liked him, sir. He was a nice man and was respectful to me. He was very much like my husband, sir. Very much like him.”
“In what way?”
“Well, to begin with, sir, they were twins. Even I could hardly tell them apart.”
Chapter Seven
A Beating Given in Return
MISS EDITH pulled on her coat and departed into the cold, dark November evening. She was no sooner out the door than Holmes turned to me.
“It’s a brisk winter evening, Watson. Fancy a bracing walk for a mile or two?”
“Can’t say as I do, Holmes. What in the world for?”
“To follow our young Mrs. Musgrave and see where she goes. If she walks directly to her family’s farm, then we shall turn around and come home. If elsewhere, then we will have some more sleuthing to do.”
“Oh, come, Holmes. Do you honestly believe that the poor girl was lying to you?”
“Of course not. She clearly believed every word she told us, but that does not mean it was the truth. It is not uncommon, Watson, for a young woman, or a woman of any age for that matter, to dream a story, convince herself that it truly happened, and then to go on believing that it actually took place. I am sure you have encountered that behavior before. Come, grab your coat and let us enjoy the night air.”
I was about to counter by saying that such behavior was every bit as true for men as for women, but Holmes was already pulling on his coat and moving toward the door. I checked the pocket of my coat to make sure that I had my service revolver with me. One never knows what uncouth characters or wild beasts one might encounter on a dark country road in late November.
There was a half-moon shining, and it gave us enough light to see the form of Miss Edith on the road a half a block in front of us. She had started walking west toward the center of the village, the direction of the Hailsham Road. Then, only a block past the inn, another figure appeared, walking between us and Miss Edith. It was clearly a man and he was walking quickly as if attempting to catch up with the girl. Holmes and I looked at each other and quickened our pace.
Another fifty yards down the road the man began running, caught up with Edith and violently pulled her off into the verge and bushes. We ran toward her, and I could hear her screaming in pain. From a few yards away, I heard a man’s voice shouting.
“No more about Shaw Musgrave, you hear me? No more. Another word about him to anybody and I’ll cut your pretty face all to ribbons.”
The man had Edith on the ground, flat on her back and was sitting on top of her and raining down blows to her face with his fists. She was screaming and trying to shield her face with her hands. I ran up behind him with my revolver drawn and, using a maneuver that had proven useful in the army and not wanting to have to treat a bullet wound, I held the gun an inch from his ear and fired a shot into the ground beside him.
He immediately lurched back and in obvious shock and pain, covered his ear with his hands, and fell to the ground beside the girl. I dropped my knee onto his chest and held the gun to his face. He responded with a string of curses and shouted at us.
“Be off, whoever you are and mind your own business. This is my wife, and I have to teach her a lesson.”
Miss Edith had recovered enough to blubber through her gasps and tears.
“He is Wilf Pike. He’s the town’s worst man. Ask any woman. He’s a brute and a monster.”
I was quite sure that Holmes was about to do something painful to the fellow when another voice broke through from the bushes.
“HALT! All of you. Scotland Yard here. Stand aside all of you. What’s going on here?”
Inspector Lestrade must have heard my gunshot and had come running.
“About time you took an appropriate interest in this young woman, Inspector,” said Holmes, his voice tinged with sarcasm. “As there was no policeman available we took it upon ourselves to save this young lady from a man who was beating her.”
Another voice came from the bushes. “Well, there is a policeman here now, Mr. Holmes.”
Constable Duncan had followed Lestrade down the road and entered the small clearing with a nightstick in hand.
“Get up, Pike,” he commanded the man who was still on the ground with his nose less than an inch from the muzzle of my revolver. I stood up and let the fellow rise to his feet.
“Mind telling me what this was about, Pike?” said the Constable. “You have no business with the Tucknott girl or her family.”
Pike, cursed the Constable and said, “It was a lover’s quarrel, that’s all.”
Constable Duncan spoke to Holmes and me and said, “I would appreciate it, gentlemen, if you would see Miss Tucknott home to her family. They’re not far down the road. And if you will drop by the police station on the way back I expect that Mr. Pike will provide whatever information you need.”
I offered my arm to the girl, and she took it and walked smartly down the road. After a twenty-minute hike, we reached the drive leading to her family’s farmhouse. There, she turned to us.
“Thank you. I am very grateful for your help. I will continue on my own from here. And please, sirs, find out what happened to my husband. That is all I ask. Good night, sirs.”
Holmes and I walked in silence back to the village and to the local police station. We entered and found Inspector Lestrade sitting at a desk in the front of the office, leaning back in a chair and reading a newspaper.
“Constable Duncan is in the back with that Pike fellow. He’s ready to talk to you.” He motioned with his head to a door on the back wall, and we entered through it.
I stopped in my tracks and gasped. In front of us was a small cell behind a wall of prison bars. Manacled to the back wall with his arms outstretched above his head and chained to rings above him was a man, facing the wall and stark naked. His entire backside was a canvas of screaming red welts. Sitting on a chair inside the cell was Constable Duncan, reading a book. He looked up at us as we entered.
“Mr. Pike needed a bit of coaxing to talk, but now he’s ready.”
“Good Lord,” I said, “Did you have to do all that to him to make him talk?”
“Not exactly, doctor. It only took a few whacks with a cane before he agreed to tell me what he was doing beating up on the Tucknott girl. The rest was his punishment.”
“Constable,” I said sternly, “torturing a prisoner like that is against the law. You must know that.”
“Must I, doctor? Well let me tell you what I know, doctor. I know that a village constable must take an oath before Almighty God to protect the folks in his village. I also know that when a man gives a beating to a woman, the woman most likely will never breathe a word about it or if she does and comes and tells us, and we take it to a magistrate then it is his word against hers. He will have found a couple of his pals to testify that he was with them playing cards or some such lie, and he will walk away and then go and do it again. So doctor, some of us constables, something of a brotherhood we are, decided a decade ago that the despicable beating of the women in our towns had to stop, and a thorough flogging is about the best way we know to stop it. Pike will recover in a fortnight, but he’ll remember for long after that. And if he ever comes in here again for the same reason then he will be facing me whilst I give him a flogging, and I don’t think he will like that at all. Will you, Mr. Pike?”
The body chained to the wall made no sound but shook
his head in silence.
“Good there, Pike. Glad we have an understanding on that matter. Now how about you tell Mr. Holmes here what was behind your actions? But hold on a minute, let me fetch the inspector. He’ll want to hear as well.”
He walked over to the door and called for Lestrade to come and join us. He did and gave a glance to the thrashed body before sitting down.
“Oh, dear. That poor fellow must have run into a thorn bush on his way to jail. Pity. So, good evening there, Holmes. What do you wish to know? I am sure that this Pike chap will be most willing to answer whatever you ask.”
Holmes gave Lestrade a sideward look and walked over to the prisoner.
“Who put you up to this, Mr. Pike?”
“Like I said, it was just a lovers’ quarrel.”
“Very well. Constable, would you mind?”
“All right, all right,” the prisoner muttered along with several choice profanities. “Three weeks back this woman comes into the pub asking for me. Says that she has been told that I will deliver unsavory services for hire.”
“What was her name?”
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. That’s the way blokes like me do their business.”
“Where was she from?”
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, but I would guess from somewhere in London by the sounds of her.”
“And what,” continued Holmes, “did she ask you to do for her?”
“She said that I was to go and scare the bejesus out of the Tucknott girl seeing as she was getting too friendly with Lord Billy’s boy. I was to let her know that she was to have nothing to do with him ever again, or she would be beat up and cut up. That was all she wanted.”
Holmes glanced over to the three of us with a very perplexed on his face.
“Shaw Musgrave was dead. He died last night. Did you not know that?”
“Of course, I knew it. Went and saw him hanging there myself. Everyone knew he was dead.”
“Then how, in heaven’s name, does it make sense to go and terrify the girl if the one who she is to keep away from is already dead?” asked Holmes.
“I had taken the lady’s money. She paid me five pounds to do the job, and I hadn’t done it. In my business, word goes around if a bloke takes on a bit of service, takes the customer’s money and then does not deliver the service promised. That’s how you lose your business. You got to be honest to stay in the business. Your reputation is all a man has.”
Holmes looked at us again, this time with a shrug and a smile.
“I believe you are quite right on that point, sir. And I thank you for reminding that there is honor among thieves.”
“Now look here, mister. I am no thief. You get that straight. Never taken a farthing I did not earn.”
“Of course, not, Mr. Pike. But do tell me then, what possible reason did this lady have for wanting Miss Tucknott to have no further intercourse with Shaw Musgrave? Did she give you any reason?”
“Oh, yes, she did. Now, I can’t say if she was telling the truth or not, and I suspect not. Those of us in this line of service have to be honest in our dealing with our customers, but they are more often than not dishonest with us, but they have the money, and we need it so there’s is nothing to be done about it. What she said was that she was young Shaw’s sister, and she didn’t want the estate going to some young trollop who had heated up the blood of her older brother. That’s what she said, mister. Course, that was news to me seeing as no one around here ever knew Shaw had a sister. So, like I say, maybe she was lying and maybe not. You’ll have to sort that one out. And, God’s truth, that’s all I know.”
Holmes stood silent for several seconds and then turned and came and sat down beside me, giving a word to the constable as he passed.
“You may as well release him and send him home, Constable. I do not believe that there is any more he can tell us.”
Constable Duncan nodded and unshackled Wilf Pike and handed him his clothes.
“Go on home, Pike,” said the constable. “Your backside will heal, and the pain will soon be gone. But if I ever even suspect you of bringing harm and fear to a young girl of this village again you will be crawling back home and clutching the crown jewels for a month. You follow me, don’t you Pike?”
The brute growled something and sullenly pulled his clothes on and departed. We bade good evening to Lestrade and the constable and Holmes and I returned to the inn.
Chapter Eight
What the Innkeeper Knew
“MY DEAR, DOCTOR. This case becomes increasingly complex, and thus steadily more interesting. There is one chap, however, that I believe we need to speak to, and fortunately, he is close at hand.”
“And who might that be?”
“Our innkeeper. He also serves as the village postmaster. I suspect that he will be a font of knowledge on the past lives of the dear people we are dealing with.”
The innkeeper, a friendly chap named John Previtt, was happy to oblige and, upon our ordering another round of brandies including one for him, sat down with us and responded to Holmes’s questions about the Musgrave family.
“Well now, Mr. Holmes. There was a lot of speculation, as you might imagine, when the Lord and his Lady, Billy and Melody as we all called them, separated and divorced. Something powerful nasty must have taken place for a very wealthy woman to walk away, with just her clothes, leaving one of her sons and a fortune behind. Some of the folks in town, mostly the women, saluted her, saying that Billy must have been something of a monster for her to run away like that. Of course, most of the men in the village sided with him, seeing as it became known that she had a lover in London and went straight away and lived with him; lived in sin they did until the divorce came through and then, we heard that they got properly married. But even that is not known for sure.”
“I have been told recently,” said Holmes, “that the two boys were twins. Is that so?”
“Aye, so much so that we could never tell who was who. And they seemed to like it that way. Boys will be boys, of course, and they thought it quite fun to wear the same clothes and comb their hair the same way, and they always seemed to get along. Never saw the one without the other.”
“I have also just been told that they had a sister. Is that so, Mr. Previtt?”
“A sister? No. Never heard tell of any sister. There was just the two boys, that was all.”
Here he stopped and gave his chin a rub.
“Mind you, I suppose that there is a possibility, not much of one but a possibility all the same, that Melody was expecting child when she departed. It had been twelve years since she had given birth to the boys, and she and Billy weren’t getting along very well, so, like I say, it is highly unlikely, but always possible.”
“Where is the mother now? Did she come to visit ever? Did she keep in contact with her other son?”
“No, Mr. Holmes, she never came back here. As postmaster, I saw letters from her come once a week addressed to Shaw. But then one day, the butler, Mr. Sinden, comes and hands me a stack of letters all unopened and says they are to be returned to the sender. They were all the letters the mother had sent to her son. I assumed that Billy had them held by the staff and never let the lad see them. Then the letters stopped. I hear most of what goes on in the village, sir, but I never heard of any visit by Melody back to Herstmonceux, nor of Master Shaw making a trip to London to see his mum.”
“I also heard,” said Holmes, “that the brother from London came here recently and visited. Do you know anything about that?”
“Funny you should mention that. Yes, back in the fall a couple of folks said they saw Shaw Musgrave with a man that was identical to him, walking along some of the lanes of the estate, and they said that the Tucknott girl was with them. Now it so happened that the folks who claimed to have seen them were the same local folks who are always reporting sighting of King Charles riding around in the moonlight with his head tucked underneath his arm. So, no one gave much credence
to what they said. But yes, sir, now that you mention it, yes, I did hear that.”
“And what of the mother, this Melody woman, what became of her?”
“I’m sorry I cannot be more helpful on that one, Mr. Holmes. When the letters came for Shaw I remember that some of them bore the return address of a school where I am guessing that she might have been a teacher. She had a very fine education herself so she would have no trouble finding work as a teacher.”
“Do you remember the name of the school?”
The innkeeper sat for a moment looking into his snifter of brandy, then he looked up at Holmes.
“The Queen’s Gate. Yes, that was it. I remember thinking that it was an easy one to remember since the address was Queen’s Gate and the name of the school was the same. I think it’s in Kensington, but you would know that better than I would, Mr. Holmes.”
“Your memory, sir, is excellent. Queen’s Gate is indeed in Kensington and the school by the same name is exactly where you recalled. And another question to tax your memory: have you ever seen a ghost of a headless king riding around and frightening people half to death?”
The innkeeper gave a hearty laugh.
“No, sir. Cannot help you with that one at all. Mind you, as I said, there are other folks who have seen the old boy more than once. I must not have enough blue blood in me to be worth his bother. But I will warn you, sir, you could put yourself in far greater mortal danger by walking into the pub and saying that the king’s ghost is a silly fairy tale than you would if you ran into the fellow himself.” He laughed again, and we joined it.
Holmes asked the gregarious chap several more questions, but no more pertinent information was forthcoming. We thanked him for his assistance and with two generous brandies already having been consumed, we settled for a late evening cup of tea by the fire.
Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection Five: New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - Second Edition Page 22