Sherlock Holmes

by Lyn McConchie

  “Then too, she is a liar. When I have caught her out, each time she managed to wriggle out of punishment, but it does not make her feel kindly towards me. And when this thing came about, she was angry with me anyway. She borrowed a scarf that was mine without asking, and on her day out she lost it. I treasured the scarf, which had been given me by my father’s commanding officer’s wife when I was a small child.”

  “Colonel Denham?” I asked.

  “Yes. It was silk, and his wife gave it to me for my eighth birthday. I loved it and I took great care of it. For Janet to take it when she knew how I valued it, and then to lose it… I lost my temper, as I know I should not, but I called her a thief and said I would complain to the police and have her dismissed, and she said—” She broke off.

  “She said…” Holmes struck in.

  The girl blushed. “She said that if I complained she would say I met secretly with Michael and I would be dismissed.”

  “And was that true?”

  “It was not. We were friends. It might initially have been more, but he explained to me that he must support a family member and could never marry.”

  “But you liked him?” I said gently.

  Her gaze met mine. “I liked him, Dr. Watson. If it had been possible some years ago and he had asked, I might have married him, but then I met Jack and him I love. Michael was glad for me, he is not mean-spirited. We are still good friends, and it is beyond my understanding why he did not come to speak for me. They say he has vanished, that he was given leave to go away and no one knows where he is. Find him, sirs, and all may yet be explained.”

  I nodded. “We shall do our best.”

  6

  Holmes captured Miss Mary’s gaze in turn. “Now tell me of Jonathan Turner. You say he dislikes you. Why? Or should I hazard a guess?” To which she flushed and said nothing.

  “Come, come,” Holmes said. “Did I not say I know? What I require are your own words. Tell me. He made advances and you repulsed him, did you not? Or can it be that you accepted?”

  At which she burst into angry speech. “Him, a mere boy, and when I love Jack? Never. He seized me one evening when I was going to my room, thrust me before him into a corner on the landing, and rained kisses upon me saying he loved me and that he must have me or die. I said if he did not release me at once I would scream, and he said if I did so he would say I had invited him. It came to me that he could not say so if I left some mark upon him to show myself unwilling, so I bit his hand. It bled and he released me, holding it and howling. I said what willing girl leaves such an injury. And with that I hit him as hard as I could in the eye.”

  I leaned back in my chair, laughing heartily. “Good girl, good lass. And what did he do after that?”

  “He went away cursing and saying I would be sorry.” She looked down, tracing a fingertip around a stain on the table. “I knew what he had meant by that when he gave evidence at my trial. He swore I had taken paper from the cabinet to light a fire in the office and he lied. I never did so, and well he knew it.”

  Holmes considered her angry face. “Tell me, Jonathan left you alone after you fought him off, but did he then spend time with other girls?”

  “Not that I saw.” Mary appeared slightly surprised. “They have little free time, for the articles of apprenticeship keep an apprentice busy. They have no time to be taking girls out or money to buy them gifts. It’s true that a time or two when he was wanted he was not to be found, but he is lazy. I doubt not that he was sleeping in some corner, or hiding away in hopes Michael would be given any onerous task waiting.”

  “No doubt,” was all Holmes said, and after a few more questions we bade the girl to keep a high heart and left those forbidding cells and grim stone walls behind us.

  On the way home I questioned him. “It seems to me, Holmes, that ignoring the matter of her guilt or innocence, Miss Mary should not have been convicted. Look at what we know. Mrs. Addleton has proven herself to be a poor judge of truth if it is not laid out plainly before her, something that in the past cost her and her husband a large sum. Janet Pierce has a number of good reasons to bear false witness against Miss Mary, and Jonathan Turner was a would-be lover, enraged and threatening against her. And it was their evidence that was the most damning.”

  “There are yet other aspects you have not considered, Watson. I do think the girl innocent—of a murderous attempt on three lives. But what if it was intended as a prank?”

  I gaped at him. “What?”

  “Have you not considered another possibility? Miss Mary was slandered and threatened with dismissal by Mrs. Addleton. How if, furious at her treatment after seven years hard work, she decided to pay them back? What if she obtained a quantity of something she knew would make them sick? It would be unpleasant, humiliating, leaving them wretched, as Mrs. Addleton had done to her! People, Watson, do not always think before they act, and a young girl is unlikely to know exactly how much poison to use for the desired effect.”

  “She ate a dumpling herself, Holmes! Would she have done so if she had poisoned them?”

  “If she knew how ill it would make her, no, Watson. But she may also have believed that this action would exonerate her, since others would argue as you have. If she had not meant them to be quite so ill, she may well have done so.”

  I accepted that as reasonable and thought of another objection. “Also, Holmes, it was three weeks since the incident and her threatened dismissal occurred. Would she not have acted earlier if so?”

  “How if either the wife or husband had made, a day or two before the episode, some slighting reference to the girl and her partiality for young men?”

  I paused to think about that and it made a disturbing sense. “Do you really think so, Holmes?”

  “I think that we must consider all possibilities. For instance, there is also young Turner. He could have easily taken the arsenic. He is only eighteen, and Miss Mary humiliated him with her spirited defense of her person, inflicting injuries upon him.”

  “Then why poison the Addletons and not the girl?” I said, with stout common sense.

  “Ah. Listen, Watson. You have a high-spirited lad, seething with bitterness over his recent rejection. For weeks he has listened as Miss Mary attempts to persuade her employer to allow her to cook a special dish. This girl, who regards him as nothing, boasts of how well she can cook, of how light her hand is with these expensive dumplings. She spends her own money to cook such a dish and it is everything she says. And as he eats he seethes with fury against her. How, he thinks, would his employers react if the dish she is now permitted to cook for them were not so sweet? How would they then regard this woman who rejected him?”

  “I see,” I said thoughtfully. “Yes, and lads of his age are given to practical jokes.”

  “And,” Holmes continued, “if he uses too much of the poison and the three that ingest it are far sicker than expected, if the police are called, and Miss Mary is taken up as a would-be murderer, would he rush to confess, to exonerate her, this woman who repulsed him with harsh words—and more?”

  There was only one reply I could make. “No, he would not. He would see it as her just deserts.”

  “You see, Watson, there are possibilities we have not yet investigated. Yet you are right, the trial was deeply flawed, and we must be sure that no action is taken against the girl until we can be sure it was she who carried out the attack.”

  “Yes, yes, but what can be done? Is there anything that will halt the process?”

  My friend nodded. “I have already set certain actions in train.”

  “Holmes, that is excellent. What have you done?”

  “I have talked to a certain gentleman. I have privately told him much of what we have learned and he has agreed that Miss Mary will continue to be held, but no further action will be taken until there is a greater certainty of her guilt. There are others who have protested, not all of them commoners, and yet for my representation and for the growing public outcry, he has a
greed to hold his hand.” We alighted from the cab and entered 221 Baker Street, Holmes going at once to stand before the fire while I poured myself a drink and slumped into my accustomed chair.

  Holmes looked at me. “I also considered something to which no attention was paid, Watson. The bowl in which the dough was mixed.”

  I looked up at him. “What of it?”

  “Watson, Watson, think!” he besought me. “If you had poisoned your employers in earnest, would you allow the bowl and its contents to be found? What, leave easily discovered poison in a kitchen item you have used and which might betray you? Even had you done so out of spite and not honestly intended them to be so ill, would you not have washed that out at once?”

  “Oh, I see what you mean, Holmes. But the bowl was not washed.”

  “It was not—”

  I broke in excitedly. “It was not Miss Mary, Holmes. If she poisoned the family intending murder she would have washed the bowl even before they sat down to the meal. If it were an unpleasant joke in revenge for something one of them said, then she would still have washed out the bowl as soon as she saw them taken so ill.”

  Holmes looked at me approvingly. “Quite so, Watson. Even if she had already begun to suffer from the left-over dumpling she had eaten, she would have seen what would happen, the suspicion that would fall on her, and she would have washed out the bowl and likely most of the other items used in her cooking. It goes some way towards showing she knew nothing, that she not only ate the dumpling, but that she also made no attempt to cleanse the items that might indicate her guilt.”

  I beamed in satisfaction. “It may not be proof of her innocence, Holmes, yet does it not go some way towards that?”

  “It does, at least for us, Watson. Yet we must discover more. I intend to approach young Master Turner tomorrow. We must move more quickly. I have persuaded those in power not to act precipitately, for if the girl were to be proven innocent after she is hanged, the public outcry would be immense. They stay their hands—for now. We have some time, but not a great deal of it.”

  I went to my bed that night in a somber frame of mind. Holmes was up before me, and he had breakfasted and left before I woke fully. I hoped that he would have good fortune in his questioning of Jonathan Turner. For myself I planned to talk to those who had spent some time with Michael Bishop. I found them at the Methodist mission hall on the day when many workmen have a half-day off and where they come to play chess, chequers, and other board games of skill.

  I was greeted rather roughly at first, as they took me to be another reporter. I was jostled, growled at, and threatened until I began to fear for my safety, and it was some minutes before I could make them understand I was no reporter, and indeed held most of those so-called ‘gentlemen of the press’ in distain. They became more affable, but although they tried, they could tell me nothing much of import.

  “Nay, sir, he never talked about hisself.”

  “He did once mention he knew Harlow,” another suggested. “Mebbe if you asked thereabouts?”

  “Aye,” the first man agreed. “That’s so, he said he had family there.”

  I questioned them again and again, but for all the cudgeling of their memories they could add nothing, and they were becoming irked again. I returned to our rooms to eat a cold collation and my mood was similarly cold. Yes, I could scrape up one minor piece of information to offer Holmes. None of the men to whom I had spoken were of dubious quality. They were apprentices in their final year, some were lads who aided their fathers in their small businesses, others were men who had passed their apprentice exams and continued to work where they had trained. They were in gainful employment, decent man, several were walking out with girls, and almost half wore the Temperance Ribbon in a lapel. If that was the caliber of Michael Bishop’s friends, it said something for his good character.

  Holmes returned before dark. Mrs. Hudson bustled in immediately after and laid the table for our dinner. Holmes wasted no time in joining me and we set to with good appetites. Once done I moved to an armchair, while Holmes lit his pipe and studied me.

  “You found something, Watson. You have the look of a terrier that catches a faint scent or the stirring of a rat in straw.”

  I was delighted. Holmes in one of his rare jocular moods is a Holmes who has discovered a puzzle piece. “You go first, my dear fellow. I’m sure you have more to relate than I,” I offered.

  “No, no, my news is of a negative aspect. Tell me, Watson, what did you discover from Bishop’s friends?”

  I was briefly cast down. “Nothing, Holmes.” I brightened. “However, they convinced me of something.” He looked the question. “That if they are those with whom Bishop spent his time when he was not with Miss Mary, then he is both a good judge of character and himself a decent man.” I expanded and at length Holmes nodded.

  “A fair conclusion. Well, it is said that birds of a feather flock together.”

  “Lie down with dogs, rise up with fleas,” I added.

  The corners of his mouth turned up briefly. “Yes, and if all Bishop’s friends are such worthy individuals we may consider him as in no need of flea powder. Why then has he disappeared? That is the question that must be answered. It is likely it was for some reason peculiar to himself and nothing to do with this affair, but we must know.”

  I brooded on that for a moment but could come to no conclusion. “Holmes, you said you had information?”

  “Of a negative nature,” he corrected me. “Yes, I found Jonathan Turner where I was assured he spends much of his free time, in a public house around the corner from Loughton Hall. As is the nature of such places in small country towns, it is no real den of vice, although not of any high reputation. Master Turner was—not yet drunk, but somewhat merry. I bought him three strong drinks, and once they took effect I walked him outside before he knew what I was about. There I questioned him.” He fell silent and sat down, staring into the fire.

  I was imagining the scene. I know such places, cramped, often quite dark and dingy, with a strong smell of beer, and many of the men in such a place are prone to minor violence. If you appear to have any sort of legal business with one of their fellows and he protests, you can find yourself attacked by his comrades, as I could have been earlier in a far more respectable establishment. It was well done that Holmes had managed to get the lad away from them before questioning him. Nor can it have been pleasant to persuade a drunken fool away from his friends and the source of drink, to talk in the cold and dark of such a night.

  “He is a young fool,” Holmes said thoughtfully. “He must have been drinking faster than I allowed for, since once I got him outside he was violently ill and said little, save for an admission that he lied, and that under some pressure.”

  “Lied? Pressure?” I asked sharply.

  “He said in court that Miss Mary often took paper from the cabinet to light the office fire. He admitted to me that he lied. At the time he was still angry at her rejection of him. ‘She laughed at me,’ he said. ‘Reckoned I was only a boy. I showed her, now she lies in a cell and they’ll hang her. She should not have spoken so to me.’ Then he fell to crying and saying that he hadn’t meant her to die. That he couldn’t take back what he’d sworn or it would be he who was in the cell and that he couldn’t bear. Yet nor could he bear that she might be hanged on his oath—which had been false.”

  “The scoundrel,” I snapped. “What then?”

  “I questioned him more harshly, asking if it had not been he who had poisoned the family to make Miss Mary pay for her rejection of him. At that he swore he had not and, Watson, I think him to be telling the truth in that. Yet I swear he knows something. There was guilt in his eyes, and he shrank back each time he bethought him of some secret. However, you know what lads can be. It may be nothing to do with the case, merely some folly of his own.”

  “Well enough, but he said that he was pressured to swear her life away?”

  “So he said, at which point as I questioned him
further, and he became sick again. He babbled that he had only done as he was told was right. That he had meant no real harm. That he spoke to agree with one to whom he owed respect and his employment.” I jolted upright in my chair. “Exactly so, Watson. He can only have meant the Addletons.”

  “Mr. Addleton Senior,” I stated. “If the police were to look harder at his family it might come out who his father was and the circumstances. There could be, as you said, a case to see if the son were the true heir. It would be a scandal that would continue for a long time and would not be easily forgotten. It could conceivably cost him his business without any advantage. Can you not pressure this boy further so that he says who had him lie?”

  Holmes shook his head slowly. “I do not think that it was quite as that seems, Watson. I believe that the pressure was subtle, hints rather than orders, suggestions rather than demands. I feel that if the boy were to be forced to make a statement there would be nothing in that susceptible of legal action. He is a lad of cunning but of no great intelligence. If he had been so swayed, he would not explain how he had been wrought upon, and any statement suggesting that would be worthless. I would have pressed him further but he turned obstinate and would say no more. It would tip our hand to bring real force to bear. If we would know more we must work in the dark until we have proof or witnesses we can bring forward.” His face hardened. “I do think there is information he has which might be useful, but for now we must let that lie.”

  “Then where do we go now, Holmes?”

  “To Miss Mary’s earlier days. I want to know how much truth there is in some of the tales that currently circulate against her.”

  “What tales?”

  “There are claims that she previously attempted to poison her father, and also that she introduced a snake into the bedroom of the wife of Colonel Denham, that she attacked a schoolmate so savagely that the girl was taken to hospital.” His voice became harsher. “It is also suggested that she killed her brother.”