Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon

by James Lovegrove

  “All that remains is for our murderer to quit the room,” said Holmes, “which he does with understandable haste. His footprints leading back to the door are spaced further apart than any of the others. His stride is longer, therefore quicker. The grisly deed done, he wishes to leave the scene of the crime in a hurry, for fear that his victim’s scream should draw attention. Yes, Watson, every single step of this deadly pas de deux is delineated on the floor. I defy you to gainsay my interpretation.”

  “It would be foolish even to try. The obvious question is who is this killer?”

  “Ah, there you have me. We may eliminate Shadrach Allerthorpe from the list of suspects by simple virtue of the fact that the prints here belong to someone with size eight feet, and Shadrach, as we know from yesterday, is a size nine. However, that leaves plenty of other candidates. There are, by my estimate, some thirty adult males on the premises, counting both family members and servants. Since eight is the average shoe size for a man, the field remains wide open.”

  “The fellow was known to Goforth, though. That much is clear.”

  “Indeed. This has all the hallmarks of an assignation. He summoned her to this room. Were it the other way round, Goforth would have been waiting for him. The initiator of a rendezvous is invariably the first to arrive. Whether he meant to kill her all along, or it was a spur-of-the-moment decision, remains to be determined. I incline towards the latter view because he attacked her only after they had had a conversation. If he had wished Goforth dead from the outset, he would have lain in wait out of sight, perhaps behind the door, and sprung an ambush. I rather fancy that there was an attempt at negotiation here, which went awry.”

  “Nothing you have said so far invalidates the theory that the diamond necklace was the bone of contention between them.”

  “No,” said Holmes, “and I am glad you mentioned the necklace. I will let you in on a little secret. I have seen its like before at Fellscar.”

  “You mean you know to whom it properly belongs? Then we know whom Goforth stole it from.”

  “Pay attention. I said ‘seen its like’. By that I refer not to the necklace itself but to another item of matching jewellery. The diamonds on the necklace are of the particular cut known as a radiant cut, square in shape, trimmed at the corners. It is not a common style. Their setting is also distinctive, consisting of eight prongs per stone rather than the more customary four. At supper last night, one diner was wearing a bracelet made of radiant-cut diamonds in eight-prong settings.”

  “Who?”

  “She was seated next to me for most of the meal, as it happens. Kitty Danningbury Boyd. Now, I realise that Mrs Danningbury Boyd is not a man, nor does she take a size eight shoe, so she cannot be our murderer. I realise, too, that just because she owns a bracelet that would seem to be a partner to Goforth’s necklace, it does not automatically follow that the necklace is her property. Nevertheless it is she who I am most interested in talking to next.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  DIAMONDS BEFORE SWINE

  News of Goforth’s fatal fall brought a resurgence of the febrile atmosphere that had previously gripped the castle, and it is perhaps no surprise that this time the mood was more intense. Wherever one went, the scullery maid was all anybody was talking about. I could not help but note, with irony, that a girl about whom none of the Allerthorpes had given a fig while she was alive – who few of them would even have been aware existed – had become, in death, a pivotal topic of conversation. For a brief while Becky Goforth was elevated from the lowest tier on the household scale of importance to the highest.

  Even a death, however, was not enough to derail the Christmas festivities at the castle. All said and done, Goforth had still been just a scullery maid. Few would have noticed her absence, save certain members of the domestic staff who, already stretched thin by the demands of so many extra guests, were having to pick up the slack caused by her absence.

  Nor was anybody aware, aside from Holmes, me, and Thaddeus and Shadrach Allerthorpe – and, of course, her killer – that Goforth had died in sinister circumstances. Thaddeus insisted to everyone that she had met her end through misadventure. All seemed satisfied with that, and no one felt moved to leave Fellscar. Even the parents of small children, who might have been expected to show concern for their offspring’s tender sensibilities, chose to remain rather than go home. The youngsters, anyway, were not unduly distressed. Indeed, from what I saw, they were eager to learn the full gory details of Goforth’s demise, fascinated to the point of ghoulishness, and it was a disappointment to them that no adult was willing to satisfy their curiosity. Death is an alien concept to the juvenile mind, so far removed from its understanding as to be all but meaningless.

  Where Eve Allerthorpe was concerned, I myself was the one who informed her about Goforth. I broke it to her gently, at her bedside. I told her that the scullery maid had broken her neck in a fall but omitted to mention where the fall had taken place.

  All things considered, she took it well. “The poor girl,” she said. “We must notify her next of kin.”

  “Everything is in hand. Your father has charged Trebend with making the necessary arrangements. What you must concentrate on is yourself. Save your energies for Eve Allerthorpe, no one else.”

  “I am so tired, Doctor,” Eve said, yawning.

  “You are still groggy from the chloral hydrate. I recommend bed-rest for the remainder of the day.”

  “This place is cursed.” Her speech was slurring. She was dozing off again. “We are doomed never to be happy.”

  “Not in the least, Eve. Your family has had a run of bad luck, that is all. Now sleep.”

  Shortly thereafter, Holmes and I found ourselves in Fellscar’s main library, a room of truly gargantuan proportions, filled with enough books to keep any bibliophile occupied for years. Alongside novels and collections of plays and poetry there were atlases, encyclopaedias, almanacs, histories, bound volumes of magazines, and countless other works of reference, all sitting in rows, resplendent in their gilt and leather finery, like guardsmen on parade. It behoved me, as an author, to look for my own work amongst the multitude, but a cursory inspection turned up nothing. I consoled myself with the thought that my literary career was still in its infancy. The time would come, surely, when the name John Watson MD was a fixture on every bookshelf.

  Our purpose for being in the library was not books, however. Rather, it was to have a private audience with Kitty Danningbury Boyd, which Holmes had engineered by means of a politely phrased note, conveyed to her by a footman. When the lady arrived, she took her seat across from us with a sullen pout, as though she would prefer to be anywhere but here.

  “Mrs Danningbury Boyd,” said Holmes, “it is kind of you to spare us your time.”

  “I have no idea why you wish to speak to me,” replied she. “Nor why your note stipulated that I come alone, without my husband. Without my husband – you were quite specific about that.”

  “For good reason, as you shall see. First, let me assure you that everything we say in this room today is in the strictest confidence. Matters of some delicacy are involved, and they pertain, as you may well have inferred, to Mr Danningbury Boyd. Hence I requested that he not be present.”

  Kitty Danningbury Boyd bridled at that. “You are on dangerous ground, sir,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing to slits. “Take great care where you tread.”

  Her reaction was so disproportionately scathing that I wondered whether it was born of guilt. That was when it crossed my mind that this woman might, after all, be the one who murdered Goforth. She could have donned men’s shoes, padding them out so that they fit her feet, in order to give the impression that the culprit was male. But then would she have known that the footprints in the tower room would be so readily interpretable by Holmes? And was she sufficiently calculating to try and throw us off the scent through this deception? If so, it pointed to malice aforethought, and that did not tally with Holmes’s assertion that the crim
e was spontaneous rather than planned.

  Holmes maintained an air of purest suavity in the face of Mrs Danningbury Boyd’s ire. His smile did not falter in the slightest. “Your marriage is not a contented one,” he said.

  “How dare you.”

  “I do not think I am speaking out of turn. Watson and I witnessed the aftermath of your little row with Eve Allerthorpe the night before last. We know that you accused your cousin of flirting with your husband.”

  Mrs Danningbury Boyd made a token attempt at denying it, but Holmes forged on regardless. “Mr Danningbury Boyd seems to have a reputation as a ladies’ man. He is inarguably handsome. His eye wanders, he is free with his affections, and you have accommodated yourself to that, even if at times resentment gets the better of you. Yet in Eve’s case, I saw with my own eyes that she was not returning his attention. She was, at best, enduring it, and your allegations against her were unfounded and unjust.”

  “So you say. You know nothing. I have seen secret looks pass between them before now. Whatever act Eve may have been putting on for your benefit, in the past she has led Fitzhugh on. He is the victim here, not she. Can he help it if he is so irresistible to the opposite sex? If they fawn over him?”

  I have seldom seen someone exhibit such a blatant disregard for the obvious facts. Kitty Danningbury Boyd was hardly fooling herself. She was definitely not fooling Holmes and me.

  “It strikes me,” said Holmes, “that in the area of looks, you and he are somewhat mismatched. Mr Danningbury Boyd could have married any of the world’s great beauties. Instead he settled for you, a lady of, to be blunt, modest attractions. But I daresay your maiden name Allerthorpe, with its connotations of wealth, enabled him to overcome any qualms he might have had.”

  At that, Kitty Danningbury Boyd leapt to her feet, her eyes flashing. “Now you go too far!” she shrieked. “I have never been so insulted in my life!”

  I must say I had to agree with her. Holmes had overstepped the bounds of civility.

  “Calm down, madam,” he said coolly, “and sit down. These displays of outrage are all very well, but you and I both know I am telling the truth.”

  Stiffly, her face still puce with rage, Mrs Danningbury Boyd resumed her seat. “If it isn’t to cause offence, what, pray, are you hoping to achieve with these insinuations?”

  “Firstly, to establish to both our satisfaction that I am in full possession of the facts regarding your relationship with Mr Danningbury Boyd. Secondly, to extend my sympathies. It cannot be easy being married to a man who is unfaithful in thought if not also in actuality. Every day you are on your guard. Every one of your female peers is a potential threat. You live in fear that one day he will commit adultery, or do so again if he has already, and you as the cheated-on wife will become an object of scorn and derision.”

  Emotions warred in Mrs Danningbury Boyd’s face. She was furious with Holmes, but his abrupt switch to compassion had touched a vulnerable spot in her. I realised, now, that he was manipulating her. His initial cruelty was designed to make her more receptive to the blandishments that followed, whereupon she would be more pliable.

  “It would drive even the saintliest woman to distraction,” he went on. “She would be apt to do something, anything, to keep her husband from straying. Something desperate. Something drastic, even.”

  Again it occurred to me that Kitty Danningbury Boyd was Goforth’s murderer. Holmes seemed to be hinting as much. But again I rejected the idea. Apart from anything else, it wasn’t plausible that a woman who was not much larger than Goforth could have overwhelmed the scullery maid and ejected her from the window. Moreover, in a straight fight between the two of them, the younger and wirier Goforth, toughened by a life of hard graft, less pampered than Mrs Danningbury Boyd, was far more likely to have been the victor.

  “Now tell me,” Holmes said, “is that why you gave Becky Goforth your diamond necklace? The companion piece to the bracelet you wore last night?”

  Kitty Danningbury Boyd looked astonished, then aghast. “That is not… How can you…?”

  All at once, she crumpled. Covering her face, she fell to sobbing, a picture of utter dejection.

  “You cannot possibly understand,” she wailed. “You cannot know what it is like. The humiliation I must undergo every time Fitzhugh and I go out. Every dinner party and ball we attend. The hunt meet. The theatre. Bridge evenings. He does it right in front of me, blatantly, as if I am not there. Women are drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet, and he not only encourages it, he revels in it. I knew what he was like even before we were wed, of course. My every instinct was telling me ours could never be a happy union. But when he turned his gaze upon me… And he was so zealous in his pursuit. So insistent. How flattering it was to be courted by Fitzhugh Danningbury Boyd, the handsomest man in all Yorkshire. How thrilled I was when, scarcely a month into our courtship, he proposed. I could not have said no even if I had wanted to.”

  “He has no money, of course.”

  “None to speak of. A modest annuity from a trust fund set up by his grandfather was enough to keep the wolf from the door in his bachelor days, but still he counted on the charity of friends and lovers.”

  “Marriage brought an end to his relative penury, but no alteration to his Lothario ways.”

  “Much though I hoped it might. For a while I turned a blind eye. I put up with his unexplained absences from home, periods for which he would offer no excuse other than that he had been ‘busy’ elsewhere. Two, three days without sign of him, without word, not so much as a telegram. ‘Busy’! Then he would come back and he would tell me he loved me, and I would believe him and would persuade myself that all was well. But the longer I let him get away with it, the bolder he became, until at last…”

  Mrs Danningbury Boyd’s hands tightened into fists.

  “Until at last…?” Holmes prompted.

  “Under this very roof,” she said, her knuckles whitening. “Right under my nose.”

  “You are speaking of Eve?” I said.

  “No, Doctor. Fitzhugh regards Eve as… practice, I suppose you could call it. He would never dream of actively wooing her. She is pretty, a convenient toy for him to sport with when no one more suitable is around. I lied just now when I spoke of them sharing looks. They do not. In that respect Eve is in no way culpable, and it was quite wrong of me to chastise her the other day. My temper got the better of me. I scolded her instead of the person I should have scolded.”

  “Then if not Eve, who…?”

  “Come, Watson,” said Holmes. “Try not to be so dense. Mrs Danningbury Boyd is clearly talking about Goforth.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Ah!” Suddenly, albeit belatedly, things were starting to make sense.

  “That – that little trollop,” Kitty Danningbury Boyd said. “No better than she ought to be. Flashing those cow eyes at him. Leading him on. No,” she corrected herself. “Again, I am being unfair. I have developed the habit of blaming the woman when really it is my husband who is at fault. I do it to protect my own dignity. The moment Goforth joined the kitchen staff – it was in March, as I recall – I could see she had taken Fitzhugh’s fancy. She was good-looking, in a coarse country way. He had taken her fancy, too, but then that is hardly surprising. He kept finding excuses to visit the kitchen. He might return a dish to Mrs Trebend, asking if she could cook the meat a little more, doing this personally rather than have one of the staff do it for him, or he might simply say he wished to pay his compliments to her on her latest culinary masterpiece; but I knew he was angling for a chance to peer in through the door to the scullery and speak to the room’s occupant. One time, I caught him in the scullery itself, conversing with Goforth. She had her arms up to the elbows in suds, scrubbing away. He was leaning over her, closer to her than propriety normally permits, and he was using his special smile, the one he reserves solely for his conquests. The one he used to use on me. When I caught him at it, all he did was shrug, as if to say there was no law that forb
ade a gentleman from talking to a scullery maid. And of course there is none, save the law of decorum.”

  The corners of her mouth turned down as though there was a sour taste on her tongue.

  “I am being far too candid,” she said. “I know full well where your line of enquiry, Mr Holmes, is leading. I had an inkling, when I received your note, that you would be asking me about Fitzhugh and Goforth. To be honest, it is something of a relief to get this out in the open. It feels like lancing a boil, painful but necessary. The thing was, Goforth was doing little to discourage Fitzhugh, and I could see it all unfurling. He would chase her. There would be more of these ‘chance’ encounters between them. He would perhaps think that nothing would come of it and it was just a bit of harmless fun. Then, though, the moment would arrive. The inevitable would happen.

  “And so it did. I cannot say precisely when the fling began, but sometime around the end of April, early May, Fitzhugh took to staying up late, much later than normal. I would retire, and he would promise to follow soon, but he would not come to our room for at least another hour or two afterward. That was when I knew.”

  “He even used my aunt’s death as an excuse for the change in his routine. ‘I am grieving for dear Perdita,’ he said to me once. ‘I miss her very much. You go up to bed, Kitty. I shall have a last glass of sherry and sit alone with my sad thoughts for a while, if I may.’

  “In hindsight, I should have worked it out sooner than I did. A part of me simply did not want to believe that he would stoop so low. A scullery maid! Before then, Fitzhugh had at least had the decency to confine himself to women from his own station in life. Now he was carrying on with a member of staff? It felt like a slap in the face. It showed just how little he thought of me and of our conjugal vows.”

  “How long did it go on for before you took action?” said Holmes.