“Then the screaming ended, and it became silent. After waiting until darkness had fallen, I came out of hiding and found the mutilated bodies of my father, mother and little brother. I walked to the neighbor’s home and asked for help. They were good people who had been friends for many years and they immediately took me in. With the best of loving intentions, they arranged to have me adopted by relatives living in America in the vain hope that a new life would help me get over my tragedy. I was sent to live in Texas. I was given an American name. It did not help. Every night of my life I see the same sight and hear the same screams as I saw that evening seventeen years ago.
“Every morning, I would rise up early and walk around the corner to the church for the early mass. I would kneel and receive the sacraments and hope that the pain would go away. But on my thirteenth birthday, I stayed behind and prayed to St. Michael, just as Joan of Arc had done when she was that age. As the church bells started ringing, I saw a bright light surrounding the saint and a voice spoke to me. It was Saint Michael, who I saw before my eyes; he was not alone but was accompanied by many angels from Heaven. I saw them with my bodily eyes, as well as I am seeing you. At first, it appeared that his sword had left his hand and was floating down toward me. Then the sword became smaller and smaller until it was only a small dagger. And then came the voice.
“It said, ‘Jeanne d’Arc, you are an instrument of divine justice and will bring God’s wrath upon evil men.’ In the days and weeks that followed, as I prayed for guidance, the voices came again and again, telling me that I had been called by God, just as had my namesake, to be His instrument and to be the divine executioner of those men who had done great evil but had escaped the punishment that the courts should have given them. The voices also told me that God had given me great physical beauty so that I could use it as a weapon against evil men. I kept all of these things in my heart until I was sixteen years of age and then the instruction from my voices became explicit.
“A man in Houston, where we lived, had been arrested for the murder of his wife. Everyone knew he was guilty, but he was a very rich man and managed to bribe the jury and was declared innocent. St. Michael spoke to me and told me that I was to be the instrument of justice when human justice had failed. Again, the dagger that I had seen when I was thirteen appeared before me and then vanished. But I knew what I had to do. I procured a small dagger and gave my life over to the cause of justice, believing, like Queen Esther, that if I perish, I perish.
“The murderer was known to be a lecher and fond of dishonorable acts with attractive young women. I arranged to meet him, and he immediately took me to his home, where he attempted to seduce me. When he was in a fit of passion, I executed him and sent him off to hell to be punished for his evil life. No one suspected me and the police did not try very hard to solve the case, as they were quite happy to see justice done even if it were not by the courts.
“I waited before God for my next divine mission. It came a few months later. The newspapers reported that a man in Galveston had been arrested for smuggling young Mexican men and women into Texas to work on the farms. But he treated them as slaves and on the boat from Tampico these men and women had been held in the hold for two weeks. Six of them had died. But because their deaths could not be proven to have taken place in America, he was not charged. St. Michael, spoke to me and told me that this man was guilty of murder and since human justice had failed, he must be executed. I was given this mission by the voice of the saint, so at the age of seventeen, I took the train the short distance to Galveston one Saturday morning. I was back home with my adopted family by the late afternoon, and the murderer had been dispatched to hell.
“In obedience to the voices of the saints, I carried out several more missions in Texas, but when I turned eighteen, they told me that my mission was now to the world and so I departed from my home and my loving adopted family and since that day have had no home. When I hear of a great failure of justice, I ask St. Michael for the verdict of God and if it is ‘guilty’ I make contact through secret means with the families of the victims of the crime and inquire if they are interested in seeking justice and if they are willing to pay for it. Usually, they are. They never see my face, but they have, every one of them, compensated me for my work on behalf of divine justice.
“My greatest mission, as you may have deduced, has been the visiting of justice upon those men who murdered my family. The evil commander of the troops in Saint-Avold was Colonel Kellerman. They did great evil to many of the people of Saint-Avold and not just to my family. So, the local lodge of the Masonic Order was very receptive to my offer to deliver justice and agreed to compensate me most generously for my services. I will, however, have to forego a portion of my fee since it was not I who dispatched father and son Kellerman, but some other person. I am determined to discover who this man or woman is so that together we might devote ourselves to the cause of divine justice and rid the earth of those evil men who have been able to elude the police and the courts. And that, sir, is why I have called upon you and have joined you on your quest in Surrey this afternoon.”
She smiled yet again, and Holmes gave a forced smile in return.
“I assure you, Mr. Holmes, that what I have told you this afternoon is the truth. I have not lied to you.”
“I have no doubt, Miss, that you believe that everything you have told me is the truth. You will forgive me if I am selective in what I choose to believe.”
I also had no doubt that this young woman believed that she was speaking truthfully to us. It struck me that it was quite possible that her mind had come undone from the terrible events that happened when she was a child. It also occurred to me that everything she believed might be no more than an illusion and that she was merely a deluded American, born and raised in Texas, who quite sincerely believed herself to be someone entirely different than who she was—a latter-day Saint Joan of Arc. I was not sure if she should be committed to Broadmoor, or sent to the gallows, or considered for future beatification.
We had arrived at the Reigate Station, and we disembarked from the train. The air was brisk, and the sky was cloudless. I commented absently on the day, to which Holmes replied.
“The low temperature is fortunate. The local constable will have kept the windows of the bedrooms open so as to delay the decay of the bodies. That is always useful.”
There were several cabs waiting and Mademoiselle Jeanne d’Arc and I took one whilst Holmes and Lestrade took the other. The young woman had said nothing more to us, and neither Jeanne nor Annie spoke as we drove to the Kellerman estate, although from time to time I noticed her lips moving, as if she were carrying on a conversation with persons unknown.
A constable was posted at the gate of the Hills of Lorraine, and two more stood guard at the gate of the house. Lestrade and Holmes had preceded our cab and were waiting for us to arrive. We got out and started walking towards the door, with Mademoiselle Jeanne obviously accompanying me. The Inspector made it clear that he was having none of Holmes’s nonsense with a young mistress.
“Look here, Holmes,” he barked.
“My dear, Inspector,” said Holmes, interrupting him. “I assure you that my relationship with this young woman is entirely honorable, as is my relationship with any woman I have even known. I am not entirely certain who she is but have concluded that she may have some useful data and insights to offer to the investigation and that she has committed no crime on British soil. Pray, kindly indulge her presence. I will vouchsafe for her behavior.”
Lestrade looked directly at me, his face demanding that I confirm Holmes’s assertion. “As far as I know,” I said, not entirely confident in what I did or did not know, “you may rely on what Sherlock Holmes has told you.”
I gave a bit of an emphatic nod to buttress my claim, and the three of us followed the inspector into the house. For the next two hours, Holmes closely observed the courtyard, the entrance to the house, the bedrooms, and the bodies of the two victims. I follo
wed him, making notes on what I could observe, with Holmes making the occasional comments to me regarding whatever matter he was observing.
When the close inspection of the house and the scenes of the murders had been concluded, Lestrade gave orders to the local policemen to have an undertaker remove the body and allow the household staff to re-enter the premises. The group of us then gathered back downstairs in the library.
“Very well, Holmes,” said Lestrade. “Speak up. What have you deduced, as you like to call it?”
“The local police carefully followed your instructions and disturbed the site as little as possible. Kindly thank them for their diligence.”
“I will do that,” said Lestrade, “but I asked what you deduced, not what thank-you notes you wished to send.”
“Yes, of course,” said Holmes. “It was, however, most helpful that the soil in the courtyard had not been trampled. I observed several sets of footprints that were made by boots that are standard issue for policemen. There was, though, one set that was different from the rest. Earlier this morning, I insisted that the murderer was a woman, the same young woman who now sits in this room. I must now withdraw that accusation. It could not have been her. The length of the stride and the depth of the indentation indicate that it was a male of average height and weight. Somewhat shorter than I am, and somewhat taller than you, Inspector. About the size of Dr. Watson.”
“Well now, Holmes,” said Lestrade, “that is so very helpful. I’d say about half the men in the village fit that description, the vicar, the priest, the doctor and the postmaster included. In fact, so does Mr. William Kirwan, who, by the way, does not wear police footwear. Pray, continue.”
“The last victim I examined, in Strasbourg, was still wearing his evening clothes, or at least most of them, and his shoes. Both of these men were in their night clothes.”
“Which tells me,” said Lestrade, “that we are dealing with a patient Englishman rather than an impetuous Frenchman, or Italian, or whoever it was that did in your fellow in Alsace.”
Holmes ignored the jibe and carried on. “The murderer in Europe killed her victims with a single stab of a short dagger into the brain. These men had been stabbed multiple times, again and again in the eye with a longer dagger. That was obvious from the blood that emerged from the mouth, nostrils and the other eye socket. This murderer was not at all skilled or certain of his trade. Yet there was a savagery to his actions; a rage. This man was angry, but it is possible, indeed probable, that it was the first time he had killed a man in this manner.”
“You do realize,” said Lestrade, “that you are doing nothing at all to dissuade me from suspecting Kirwan. Right now, he fits your description to a T. He had access to the house, and the guards have sworn that they saw no one else on the grounds last night. I know you well enough, Holmes, to respect your instincts and your reasoning, but you’ll have to do a lot better that what you’ve done to keep Mr. Kirwan off the gallows. Now, if you have nothing else to tell me, I have a job to do. Good day.”
He rose and departed from the room, leaving Holmes, Miss Whoever-she-was, and me in the library. The moon-faced maid came, asked cheerfully if we wished tea, and departed. Holmes paced back and forth for several minutes and then found an appropriately styled chair that permitted him to draw his long legs up under his body, close his eyes, and contemplate. I made some notes about the case but admit that I had very grave doubts as to whether I would ever be able to put it on record as one that Holmes solved. Our young accomplice, with nothing else to do, wandered aimlessly around the library, nonchalantly examining random books and artifacts.
I knew enough not to disturb Holmes whilst he was in his state of concentration, and so silence reigned for some fifteen minutes. It was interrupted by a loud and distressful cry from Mademoiselle Jeanne. Holmes’s eyes popped open, and he glared at her, thoroughly annoyed. I stood and walked over to where she had collapsed into a large chair. She had buried her head in her hands and was visibly sobbing. In her lap was a photograph. I took the liberty of picking it up and looking at it.
It was perfectly unremarkable. It was of seven men in military uniforms. Four were seated on a bench in a park, with three more standing behind them. The clarity of the picture was poor, but I could see that none was smiling. There was nothing else in the photo to distinguish it from the thousands that soldiers have taken of themselves whilst off-duty and enjoying an afternoon out with their comrades. Yet it had brought about an anguished response from the young woman.
Chapter Eight
Come,
the Game is Afoot
IT WAS MOST LIKELY not a good idea to extend a compassionate hand to her shoulder, but my years as a doctor made such an action an instinctive response.
“What is it, Miss?” I asked. “What is this photograph of?”
I watched her clench her fists until her knuckles whitened and she struggled to gain control of herself. She raised her head, her lovely face streaked with tears.
“They were in the park,” she said. “The park in Saint-Avold. The town park was behind our house; the house I grew up in as a child. You can see our home in the background, behind some of the trees.”
She took a deep breath and reached for the photograph. “Here,” she said, pointing at a small dark rectangle within the trees. “That is the window of my bedroom.”
She stopped speaking for a full minute, then took another deep breath and continued. “That is the room I hid in when my parents and brother were killed. I have never been back to the house since that day.”
The photograph was handed back to me as if it were too terrible to continue to look at. Holmes rose, came over and took it from me.
“And are these the men,” he asked, “who you say visited such evil upon your family?”
Without speaking or removing her head from her hands, she nodded. “Saint Michael has said that they are.”
Holmes took the photograph back to his chair, sat down, removed his glass from his pocket, and spent the next several minutes examining it. He then turned to the young woman.
“Get up!” he commanded. “If you are going to be useful to the cause of justice, you cannot indulge in whimpering and simpering.”
She lifted her head. Her face betraying the shock of Holmes’s rebuke. She nodded and stood.
“Come. We need to get into the village.”
I was used to abrupt changes in Holmes’s behavior. Inevitably it gave evidence of his having come to some insight in a case, but my curiosity could not be held back.
“Might I be so bold as to ask why?” I said.
“Because the murderer is most likely sitting in the pub enjoying his supper. With luck, Lestrade will be there as well.”
The cab that had brought us to the Cunningham’s estate was waiting for us and we quickly climbed in.
“The Bull’s Head,” shouted Holmes to the driver. “And quickly.”
The old pub on the High Street was somewhat crowded with men and the occasional woman having a pint before supper or already digging into their steak and kidney pies. As I surveyed the patrons, I observed several of the chaps we had already met during our visits to Reigate as well as a couple of the recently hired German guards who would soon, I surmised, have to seek alternative employment given that they supremely failed in the job of protecting the squires.
I could see that Holmes was also looking around the room and his eyes settled on the far corner.
“Come, time to corner the prey,” he said, and walked quickly toward a table at which only one man was sitting.
“Would you mind awfully, Mr. Sheridan, if we joined you at your table? This place is getting rather busy, is it not?”
Percy Sheridan looked up at Sherlock Holmes and smiled. His glance then went to me and then to Mademoiselle Jeanne. She gave him one of her radiant smiles and sat down.
“You have not met our young assistant,” said Holmes. “Permit me to introduce our assistant, Mademoiselle Jeanne d’Arc Bast
ien-Lepage.”
It was only a passing second, but a look of surprise mixed with fear passed over Sheridan’s countenance as he observed her. He quickly recovered.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” said Sheridan.
“Enchantée, monsieur,” came the reply.
Mr. Sheridan called the waiter over and asked for two beers for the gentlemen and a shandy for the lady.
“I assume,” he said, “that you have returned to Reigate to investigate the murder of the squires. Nasty business, that, eh what?”
“Yes,” said Holmes, “really quite shocking. Very confusing, wouldn’t you say? I hardly know where to start. So, I have no choice but to ask questions of everyone and try to put some sort of theory together.”
“I suppose,” said Sheridan, “that is what detectives must do.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. And seeing as we are sitting here, would you mind awfully if I were to start with you?”
“Me? Well, no, not at all. I fear I may not be of much use to you, but seeing as you are sitting here anyway, then you may as well get me out of the way and off the list. What would you like to know?”
“Nothing too complicated to start with,” said Holmes. “Perhaps you could explain to me how it was that you managed to get past the guards, enter the house, stab two men to death and leave again without being detected. Would you mind?”
Sheridan’s face went blank. For several seconds he glared at Holmes, and then his glance traveled around the room, and finally he gazed up at the ceiling. He gave a very small nod.
“Jolly well done, Mr. Holmes. Your reputation is no doubt well-deserved. But I will only respond to your question if you agree to respond to mine. How did you come to your conclusion? I would be interested in knowing.”
“I will give a full answer to your question,” said Holmes. “But first, how did you get past the guards?”
Sherlock Holmes Never Dies - Collection Five: New Sherlock Holmes Mysteries - Second Edition Page 31