Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon

by James Lovegrove

  “A few months. Perhaps longer. I was eaten up inside with rage and jealousy. Eventually I could stand it no more, and so one morning – October, I think it was – I got Goforth alone and confronted her. I said, ‘Listen to me, my girl. I can see what you are up to.’

  “She, this little chit of a thing, had the nerve to play the innocent. ‘I don’t know what you can mean, ma’am.’ Spoken with an impertinent twitch of the lips, for she knew exactly. ‘Why ever are you in such a state, Mrs Danningbury Boyd? I have done nowt wrong.’

  “I don’t mind telling you, Mr Holmes, I nearly struck her. Only the fact that I am a gentlewoman, and she my inferior by some degree, prevented me. It would not have been seemly. I demanded that she stay away from my husband, to which she replied, obtusely, that she could not help it if their paths should happen to cross. ‘It is a big castle but not that big,’ she said, adding, ‘And who am I, a mere kitchen girl, to say where Mr Danningbury Boyd does and doesn’t go?’

  “Well, I called her all manner of names in response to that, the kindest of which was ‘saucy hussy’, and she maintained her air of blithe insolence throughout. I accused her of being a thief as well.”

  “A thief for stealing your husband?”

  “No. Not metaphorically. An actual thief. There have been some strange disappearances around the castle recently, you see. Things have been going missing. Small items, nothing too significant. I had a porcelain ring tree on my dressing table that vanished one day, a pretty little thing with a periwinkle pattern. There was no jewellery on it at the time. I scoured my bedroom, thinking the ring tree might have fallen behind some piece of furniture. I even looked further afield. However, in a building this large, finding something that’s lost, especially an object of no great size, is a futile task. I have heard servants remark that the odd item of silverware has gone astray, too. The assumption is that someone on the staff is pilfering. It happens in stately homes all the time, and it tends to be regarded as just the price you pay for employing menials. With regard to the ring tree, I decided Goforth was as likely a candidate for the crime as any, and said so to her. In hindsight this may seem petty, but it is a mark of how much I detested the creature.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “She vehemently denied the accusation, of course, and without proof, how could I pursue the matter further? Finally, as a weapon of last resort, I threatened her with the sack. Her answer to this was that even if she was no longer resident at Fellscar, she and my husband might easily find themselves in Yardley Cross at the same time, or Wold Newton, and who could prevent them from ever-so-unintentionally bumping into each other there? It was then, when I realised that neither insult nor intimidation was having any effect, that I decided upon another course.”

  “Bribery.”

  Mrs Danningbury Boyd nodded. “The carrot rather than the stick. ‘What would it take,’ I said to Goforth, ‘to make you break it off with Fitzhugh?’ At that, her eyes lit up and I knew I had found the key to solving my problem.

  “‘I am sure, ma’am,’ she said, ‘that you can make it worth my while.’

  “‘Name your price,’ I said.

  “She deliberated a moment and said, ‘I’ve seen that rather splendid diamond necklace you wear, Mrs Danningbury Boyd. The one that often forms part of your evening attire, with the bracelet to match. I’ve admired it greatly. It’s the kind of necklace that’d leave a lass feeling like a millionaire if she were wearing it.’

  “I was astounded. The avarice! The sheer effrontery! I had been thinking that a few pounds might do, but my necklace? I had bought it for myself at Asprey and Garrard, when I was last down in London. I was in a funk at the time – over Fitzhugh, what else? – and it cheered me. The necklace alone is worth a small fortune, never mind the accompanying bracelet, and I told Goforth I would not dream of parting with it; but she was adamant it was what she wanted. ‘The necklace and nowt else,’ said she.

  “What else could I do, gentlemen, but accede to her demands? ‘If I let you have it,’ I said, ‘will you give me your solemn vow that you will end your affair with Fitzhugh? You will never so much as look at him again?’

  “‘Upon my life, Mrs Danningbury Boyd,’ said she, crossing her heart.

  “‘And a further condition,’ I said. ‘You do not tell him about any of this.’ For if Fitzhugh were to find out how I had bought her off, I would never hear the end of it. He might even force Goforth to return the necklace to me and then would resume the affair as before.

  “‘As you wish,’ said Goforth.

  “I went straight to my room and fetched the necklace. Handing it to her, I said, ‘Should you break your promise, I will see to it that you are fired from your position and you will never work in any respectable household again.’

  “‘On what grounds might you have me fired?’

  “‘I will claim that you have stolen that very necklace.’

  “‘Like I stole your ring tree, you mean?’

  “Yes, but in this instance it will be demonstrably true. Then where will you be? Not only jobless but jailed too, most likely.’

  “‘Well, you need have no worry on that account, Mrs Danningbury Boyd. I wouldn’t do owt that’d part me from this beauty.’

  “So saying, Goforth proceeded to drape the necklace around her neck. I had to show her how to work the clasp. Can you imagine? The girl had never worn anything like it before. Pearls before swine, as the saying goes. Or rather, diamonds.

  “‘I shall keep it on me at all times,’ she said to me. ‘Hidden, so that no one can see it, but I will know it is there, and so will you.’

  “‘Then let it be a constant reminder of our agreement, Goforth,’ I said, ‘and be sure that you do not go back on your word.’

  “She, fingering the necklace lovingly, once again assured me that she would not, and as far as I am aware she kept to that promise. I do not know how she broke it to Fitzhugh that their little dalliance was over. I do know that he did not take it well. He was irritable for days. Women do not jilt Fitzhugh Danningbury Boyd, you understand. He jilts them. He even began muttering to Uncle Thaddeus about Goforth, intimating that she was no good at her job and should be got rid of. But Thaddeus was having no truck with that. Fitzhugh could give him no specific reason why she should go. He was just being vindictive, and Thaddeus seemed to sense it, even if he had no idea what inspired the vindictiveness. I, anyway, sang Goforth’s praises to my uncle, and he listens to me more than he does to Fitzhugh. Frankly, I don’t think he has much time for Fitzhugh. So Goforth stayed.”

  “Why would you want that?” I asked. “You must have loathed the girl.”

  “True, but I did not loathe how her continued presence made my husband feel. It would remind him every day of this thing he could no longer have. Whenever he looked at her he would see one of his rare failures, a woman who had deserted him rather than the other way round. You may think me petty, but it was a satisfying victory. Worth every penny, in fact, of the necklace’s value.”

  “Would I be right in thinking,” said Holmes, “that Goforth made her assertion about encountering a ghost in the east wing not long after she and your husband began their clandestine liaisons?”

  “That is so, Mr Holmes.”

  “You do not see a connection?”

  “No.”

  “I do. I would suggest that their trysts took place in the self-same east wing. I would suggest, furthermore, that Goforth invented the ghost as a means of ensuring the two of them had complete privacy.”

  “My God.” Mrs Danningbury Boyd’s hand flew to her mouth. “I never thought of that, but it fits. The devious little madam. You know, I almost admire her.”

  “Yes, it is quite a cunning ploy,” Holmes said. “The east wing already had bad associations, thanks to Mrs Allerthorpe’s death. Few would go there as a matter of course. Around July, after Goforth and your husband had been consorting with each other for perhaps two months or so, the girl decided to put the s
eal on it by spinning a yarn about ghostly happenings. Now it was guaranteed that no one would venture into the east wing after dark, leaving the way clear for her and Mr Danningbury Boyd. Superstition and credulity would keep potential interlopers at bay, and the lovers were even less likely to be discovered.”

  “And Mrs Trebend inadvertently helped,” I said, “with her own sighting of the ghost subsequent to Goforth’s.”

  “Mrs Trebend certainly carried on the good work,” Holmes said.

  “Even though there was never any ghost, only a scullery maid’s scaremongering.”

  “Have we not already established that Mrs Trebend fell prey to her own suggestibility?”

  “She still does not strike me as the suggestible sort.”

  “I agree.”

  I expected Holmes to expound further on this statement, but he did not. Instead, he turned back to Mrs Danningbury Boyd, saying, “You must realise that all of this casts your husband in a very dim light.”

  “You do not mean his infidelity. You mean regarding what has happened to Goforth this morning.”

  The woman was looking more shrewdly confident now, more like her usual self. She had got a great deal off her chest over the past ten minutes. Her storm of passion had scoured her clean and she was better for it.

  “Yes,” she continued, “I am minded to think that there is more to Goforth’s so-called ‘accident’ than Uncle Thaddeus let on. Why else would you have been asking me about the necklace and about her and Fitzhugh? You are of the opinion that her death was a consequence of villainy and that my husband may have been responsible.”

  “It is not hard to find a possible motivation for murder in Goforth’s rejection of him,” Holmes said. “In the weeks since, he may have stewed over it. A blemish on his heretofore pristine record where women are concerned. Perhaps he could no longer bear the thought of the girl continuing to live in the castle after subjecting him to such ignominious treatment, and if he could not persuade your uncle to fire her, he would have to take matters into his own hands. He demanded that they meet and entreated Goforth to hand in her notice. She refused. Driven into an uncontrollable frenzy of thwarted rage, your husband killed her. Either that or he wished to convince the girl to change her mind and become his mistress again, and when she declined, the red mist likewise descended, with the same result.”

  “That is all very well, Mr Holmes, but I know for a fact that Fitzhugh cannot be her killer.”

  Holmes canted his head to one side. “Really? You do not think that any man may resort to murder, with the right provocation?”

  “Whether I think that or not is irrelevant. The simple fact is that I am my husband’s alibi. He was in bed beside me the entire night.”

  “You are quite certain?”

  “I would know if he had got up during the small hours and left the room. I would have awoken.”

  “Can you honestly say, Mrs Danningbury Boyd, hand on heart, that Mr Danningbury Boyd, practising the utmost stealth, could not have slipped out from between the sheets, gone to the east wing, and come back and resumed his place beside you without your knowledge?”

  The lady nodded but seemed markedly less sure of herself now. “I grant you it is possible. I am usually a light sleeper. Last night, however, I did have a bit to drink. We all did, didn’t we? My goodness. How appalling. Would he – can he have committed cold-blooded murder? Fitzhugh? Is it possible?”

  At that moment, the library door burst open and who should step in but the man himself. Fitzhugh Danningbury Boyd did not look best pleased.

  “Kitty,” he growled. “It was rumoured that you were meeting Mr Holmes here. What is going on? Why, Mr Holmes, are you talking to my wife? And why without me to chaperone her? Kitty has nothing to say to you that she cannot say in front of me.”

  Mrs Danningbury Boyd answered before Holmes could.

  “Fitzhugh,” she said. There was iron in her voice. “Look me in the eye. Tell me you did not kill Becky Goforth.”

  Danningbury Boyd’s face paled. He cast a panic-stricken look at the three of us.

  Then, all at once, he turned and fled.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A GOOD ARM AND A GOOD EYE

  Holmes and I leapt up and gave chase.

  Danningbury Boyd had a head start on us, however, and was fleet of foot. More to the point, he knew the layout of Fellscar Keep better than we did, its twists and turns, its shortcuts. Sherlock Holmes was fast, and I had a decent level of stamina, attributable to my regular rugby playing. All the same, we soon lost sight of him.

  “Let us split up,” Holmes said. “I shall hunt through the castle. You, Watson, make for the front gate. If he attempts to leave the premises, you can waylay him. Whatever you do, keep hold of him. He must not escape.”

  I hastened towards the main courtyard, pausing only to enquire of anyone I passed whether they had seen Danningbury Boyd. No one had.

  Then, just as I arrived in the central hallway, I spied the man from a window. He had scavenged a bicycle from somewhere and was pedalling furiously across the courtyard.

  A bicycle might seem wholly unsuited to the wintry conditions. However, the numerous ruts left by the comings and goings of coaches created channels of hard-packed snow which a cyclist could follow with his wheels, like a train along tracks. Somebody wishing to effect a speedy departure from Fellscar could do worse than use this mode of transportation.

  Danningbury Boyd was already closing in on the gate, which stood wide open. Uttering a cry of dismay I dashed outside. As I emerged onto the courtyard, my dismay turned to elation, for Holmes was there. My friend, having arrived in the courtyard from a different entry point than me, was on course to intercept our quarry.

  He made a grab for Danningbury Boyd, attempting to unseat him. The other fended him off, and Holmes lost his footing in the snow and stumbled to his knees. Danningbury Boyd continued onward, wobbling somewhat on the bicycle but swiftly regaining equilibrium.

  I hastened to my friend’s side to help him up.

  “Not me, Watson!” Holmes said, batting my hand away. “I am fine. Get after Danningbury Boyd!”

  The fellow was through the gateway by now and onto the causeway. I scurried off in hot pursuit. At a sprint, I thought I might just be able to catch up with him and force him to dismount, as Holmes had been attempting to do.

  It was no good. Danningbury Boyd threw a glance over his shoulder and pedalled all the harder, gaining speed. The gap between us widened, and by the time I was halfway across the causeway, he had gained the far end.

  Then, from behind, I heard Holmes call out, “Watson! Duck!”

  Without thinking twice, I crouched down.

  Holmes was back on his feet and poised just inside the castle entrance, his right arm drawn back, his left extended forward, much in the manner of a spear thrower. With a mighty effort he launched an object from his right hand. It sailed the length of the causeway in a smooth, low parabola, and I gasped in bemusement.

  It was a snowball.

  I watched the snowball begin its arc of descent, on a perfect collision course with Danningbury Boyd. It struck the fleeing felon on the back of the head with a hearty smack and a small explosion of snow. He toppled from the bicycle to the ground, limp as a mannequin. The riderless conveyance rolled onward for a few yards before it, too, keeled over.

  I expected Danningbury Boyd to get up again. It was, after all, only a snowball that had hit him. Yet, oddly, he did not stir.

  “Come along.” Holmes strode up beside me, brushing off his palms. “The fellow looks to be out for the count. He will need a doctor.”

  “A splendid throw, Holmes,” I said, as we fell in step together, crossing the causeway towards Danningbury Boyd’s inert form. “A bullseye at forty yards.”

  “At school, I captained the cricketing first eleven two years in a row. You knew that, didn’t you? I had a good arm then, and a good eye. I am glad to learn that neither faculty has diminished since.” />
  “But how could a mere snowball have such an impact?”

  “I took the liberty of inserting a stone into the middle of it,” came the reply, accompanied by a sly chuckle. “The snow packed around that projectile will have cushioned its force, rendering the blow a stunning one rather than a potentially lethal one.”

  And so it proved. Fitzhugh Danningbury Boyd was out cold. I gently palpated the back of his skull and found that a swelling had formed over the occipital bone. There did not appear to be any cranial fracture. His breathing was shallow but even. He had suffered a concussion but there would be no lasting damage.

  Holmes took his arms, I his legs, and between us we carted him indoors. Thaddeus and Shadrach Allerthorpe were in the central hallway as we entered.

  “What is all this commotion?” Thaddeus barked. “People haring around the castle. General mayhem. You had better have a damned good explanation, Mr Holmes.”

  “Is that Fitzhugh?” said Shadrach. “Is he all right?”

  “Gentlemen,” said Holmes, “please tell me there is somewhere we can put Mr Danningbury Boyd where he will be confined but comfortable.”

  “Confined?”

  “You see before you,” I said, “the murderer of Becky Goforth. We have apprehended him.”

  Thaddeus gaped. “The…?”

  “A room with only one way in or out,” Holmes went on. “Ideally on an upper floor. The door lockable from without, of course. Come along. Hurry. He is not getting any lighter.”

  After some further chivvying by Holmes, the brothers led us to a third-floor bedroom, one of the very few in the castle still unoccupied. It was a narrow, mean little chamber. The bed upon which we laid out the unconscious Danningbury Boyd was hardly more than a cot. The window was the merest slit. Overall, the place had a monastic feel and something of the gaol cell about it too, both of which aspects were, I thought, ironically apposite.

  “Yes, this will do nicely,” said Holmes. “Slim though Danningbury Boyd is, even he cannot fit through that window; and anyway, the forty-foot drop to the ground ought to deter him from trying.”