The Murder of Mary Russell

by Laurie R. King

“No,” Holmes said, without hesitation.

  “Which leaves another question. Which of us has to let her know we won’t be here for dinner?”

  It was a long drive, eighty miles across the lower end of England, most of it in the black of night. Mrs Hudson had raised mighty objections to their setting out without eating her roast and the scrubbed potatoes, but when Billy pointed out that Mr Holmes planned to leave with or without him, she subsided, tight-lipped, to fix a pile of sandwiches and a thermos flask of powerful coffee.

  The two men waited until Patrick came, carrying his favourite shot-gun over his arm. While they waited, Holmes spoke to the constable outside their door, then talked with Mrs Hudson about what to do in case of a ransom demand. He did not tell her where they were going. Nor did he enlighten her during any of the telephone calls he placed to Sussex from call-boxes along the way.

  Holmes pored over the file on Samuel McKenna until the light failed, then smoked two pipes, occasionally switching on the little map-reading torch mounted on the dashboard to check on some fact or other. Billy could think of nothing to say, since any comment on Samuel Hudson would be a comment on the danger to Mary Russell. He simply drove on. He expected to be told that they would sleep in the motorcar beside the Fordingham green, but to his bleary-eyed relief, as they neared Southampton, Holmes told him to watch for a travellers’ hotel. The beds they took were not a great deal more comfortable than the seats of the motor would have been, and certainly not as quiet, but it did make for a change of position.

  Holmes had a bed, but did not occupy it, any more than he had slept during the drive. He walked the dark streets. Every two hours, he returned to the hotel, flipping impatiently through old newspapers as he waited for his telephone call to go through. When he had spoken to his housekeeper, and listened to her lack of news, he resumed his pacing of the streets.

  He let Billy sleep until dawn before dragging him to the breakfast room for a half gallon of coffee, and they got back on the road again.

  Fordingham had changed in four and a half decades: the only thing Billy recognised was the White Hart. The small green across from it had been carved up to make room for a pair of converging roads. The village shops now boasted broad windows and garish signs, and houses with the occasional pebbledash front dared to raise their modern façades.

  As they passed through the village, only a tea room showed any activity. The White Hart appeared to be following the 1921 Licensing Act as to its hours, and was shut tight. Billy circled the remains of the green and headed for the road beside the pub’s spruced-up exterior.

  The 1870s village had spread somewhat, but once away from the new houses, the countryside was little changed since that night an excited little boy and a young man in ill-fitting clothes had crept silently through the dusk behind Clarissa Hudson.

  Both men now peered through the wind-screen, searching for landmarks. The lane was wider, its surface metalled. The rock wall remained, although it had been rebuilt and made taller. The copse of trees off in the distance had been plucked to a vestige of its former self, and the drive down which Holmes and Billy had walked that night, rather than beat their way along Clarissa Hudson’s rough pathway, led not to the gamekeeper’s cottage but to an expanse of construction materials dotted by buildings in various stages, from bare foundations to snug slate roofs. A few early work-men were preparing for the day.

  The cottage had vanished, along with most of the trees. “You want to take a look around?” Billy asked.

  “Little point, I should think,” Holmes replied. “Let us try the village tea room. It should be a lively source of gossip.”

  A couple of the labourers watched the motor turn around. A lorry laden with hessian bags paused to let them escape, and twice, Billy pulled into the narrow verge to let other lorries inch past. As they went by the restored wall, he said, “I can’t believe you talked me into going with you, that night.”

  “I resorted to bribery. Once I’d got my pocket watch back.”

  “And that pretty little pen-knife. I’d forgot about the bribe. Ah, penny dreadfuls. That was the first Jack Harkaway I ever owned. Funny, my son discovered my collection of Boys of England just the other week.”

  “Beware of his taking Mr Harkaway’s chivalrous lessons to heart. You came because I suggested your presence would offer her protection.”

  “You always were a sly one,” Billy agreed.

  The village tea room was open. This suggested an establishment that offered actual meals rather than afternoon social entertainments—and indeed, as the entry bell rang over their heads, all the smells of breakfast seized their senses. Billy thanked the stars, and turned to consult Holmes on a choice of table.

  But his companion had changed. The man who climbed out of the motor two minutes earlier had been a tall, intense figure, vigorous beneath his haggard expression; this person who blinked beneath the tea room’s lights was a vague, amiable, and absent-minded sort with narrow shoulders stooped by his years. The old dear smiled his encouragement at the waitress who bustled forward, and tottered forward with an uncertainty that made Billy’s hand come out, until he caught himself.

  They sat, a fiddly operation involving coats and adjustments and spectacles, then ordered—a full breakfast for Billy, milked coffee with toast for the old geezer across the table. By the time they were left to themselves, Billy, despite their reason here, was not far from a grin.

  “As many times I’ve seen you do that, it still sets me back on my heels.”

  Holmes blinked, goggle-eyed through the magnifying spectacles. When their drinks came, he spilled the sugar (Sherlock Holmes did not take sugar) then dropped his table napkin (nor did he drop things) and apologised to the waitress half a dozen times in the space of two minutes (much less did he apologise) before explaining to her that he was an amateur archaeologist and someone had told him—was it in Salisbury, William? Or Wells? There was a cathedral, surely, or perhaps it was that abbey in Bath? “I am a retired vicar, you see, and my dear nephew here takes me about the countryside on his free days to look at old bones. And someone, somewhere—Little Malvern, was it?—told me that you had some bones down here. On the Beddoes Estate, it was. Do you know anything about those, my dear?”

  She did, and she was happy to tell him what she knew, which was pretty much nothing. Although she was fairly certain the bones weren’t all that old, not like fossils and such, since the man’s suit—it had been a man, and he’d been wearing tweeds—his suit was almost intact, although there was nothing in his pockets beyond odds and ends. No, nothing that would identify him. Still, the skeleton was definitely not Beddoes himself—and did the vicar know about their other local mystery from the previous century, the disappearance of Mr Beddoes? No? Well…

  Only the arrival of another set of customers kept them from hearing the entire adventure and thirteen sets of alternate explanations, but she told them enough to ensure that there were no secrets to be had here.

  As they were paying—Holmes counting out coins from a little purse—she expressed regret that she hadn’t been able to finish telling them all the details.

  “It really was ever so interesting, the press came down from London, even, asking about. Mr Rathers, across the green—the White Hart, you know?—had quite a week of it, everyone wanting to come and see what he had. Even offered to buy some of the bits and bobs off him, but he figured he’d make more off selling beer to those who came to see them.”

  “Bits and bobs?” Holmes enquired, rather more sharply than a vicar might.

  “Oh, Mr Rathers has some of what Constable Mackey found in the poor fellow’s tweed rags. I wouldn’t have them in my place, of course, disgusting things, but the White Hart patrons, well, they’re not quite so particular, are they?”

  Back out on the street, the two men eyed the public house, still resolutely shut. “William,” said Holmes, “how long before opening time does a publican arrive to sweep the floor and polish his glasses?”

 
Billy had a hard time convincing Holmes that a wait would be worth it: fitting pick-locks to the back door might gain them access to the White Hart’s trophies, but it was sure to hinder any investigation of what the publican might know about them.

  Fortunately, only two cigarettes passed before the man himself appeared with the keys. He looked surprised at the early customers, and delivered the formal protest that opening time was at 11:00, but the click of a coin on the bar had him agreeing that a responsible publican needed to test his taps thoroughly, and in any event, the front door was still locked if the constable wandered past.

  Holmes-the-vicar had given way to Holmes-the-rogue: loosened tie, hat on the back of his head, and nary a spectacle in sight. Five minutes of conversation on the Salisbury races established him as a betting man; two minutes of wrangling with Billy made it clear that he generally backed the losing side; another two minutes and the topic was local history, with the old man offering the publican a wager that nothing of interest ever happened in this little backwater. That he’d never seen its name in the newspapers, not even once.

  The owner of the White Hart proudly challenged the claim, and in thirty more seconds, was displaying the framed article from the Southampton Times, along with the grubby mementos taken from the pockets (what had once been pockets) of their local celebrity, The Skeleton from the Gamekeeper’s Cottage. Billy agreeably kept the fellow talking, about the problems of identifying the body. (“Wasn’t Mr Beddoes himself, he was a fine figure of a man with good teeth, we all knew that. And it waren’t the gamekeeper, neither, just a titch of a fellow. And—he’d a bullet in him! A titch of a bullet, for that matter, but big enough to do a man in. Obviously.”)

  But at this point, Billy was not listening to the man, either. Both he and Holmes fixed upon the noxious little blob the detective had unearthed in the publican’s collection: a two-inch-tall figurine, one leg ending in a tangle of greenish linen cord. Holmes had seen the thing itself; Billy had seen its like: a faded happiness bluebird was pinned to a board over his desk.

  “Funny,” the publican said. “The other fellow was interested in that, too.”

  The man was gratified at their return of attention, and happy to tell them all about the other fellow, who had come through the door one warm afternoon, just the previous week.

  Australian, he was, a tow-head with blue eyes. Yes, might be the man, he said, looking at Billy’s photo. Better-looking than you’d think from that picture. Had a good smile, professional-like. No, not like a toothpaste model. More like someone who has a car he thinks you’d just love.

  “Did he stay in the area?”

  “I don’t think so. Said he was just here for the day, had family that used to live around here. Funny, though, I can’t remember the name. He must’ve told me, wouldn’t you think? Anyway, some kind of family, but they moved away a long time ago, so I might not even know them. Nice fellow. Talkative once you got used to that accent of his. Wanted to know all about the place, and like I said, the gamekeeper’s skeleton struck his fancy. What he was wearing, what he had in his pockets. Seemed a little disappointed that this was all I had, but I pointed out the police kept anything that might give a clue about who he was. Told him he could talk with the village constable about it, if he was interested.”

  “And did he?”

  “I sort of got the idea he wasn’t keen on talking to policemen, you know what I mean? But I had to tell him, there wasn’t likely much the police knew that I hadn’t heard about—village this size, we all know each other’s business, and Constable Mackey isn’t exactly close-lipped. So I could be pretty sure there wasn’t anything in the skeleton’s pockets with a name on it. No driver’s license, no passport, no cheque-book. Not so much as a monogrammed handkerchief.”

  “Did that satisfy this Australian?” Billy asked.

  “Well, not satisfied, since there weren’t any answers, but he seemed happy enough to move on. Like I say, nice enough bloke, laughed like a drain when I told him about the robbery I once had here when the robber came and went in a taxi, of which we got two in the village.”

  Neither Holmes nor Billy corrected him to point out that this would make it a burglary, not a robbery, but merely gave him a dutiful laugh. Holmes then asked the publican for the thread figurine, by way of a souvenir.

  Interest having died down considerably since the glory days of the London press—apart from passing Australians—the man sold Holmes the grubby object with barely a quibble.

  Outside again, the two men looked at the object in Holmes’ hand.

  “I’m not what you might call fastidious,” Billy said, “but I don’t know that I want that thing rolling around my car.”

  Holmes not only allowed the younger man to bundle it away in a sheet of newspaper, he agreed that washing his hands might not be a bad idea.

  “So,” said Billy. “We’re looking for Samuel.”

  “He is certainly a person of interest,” Holmes agreed over a gush of water from the tap in the pub’s yard.

  “London, then?”

  Holmes turned off the handle, frowning as he dried his skin with a clean handkerchief. “No,” he said, putting the cloth in a pocket. “Let us see if we can find a working telephone.”

  This conversation with Mrs Hudson was slightly longer than the others, but no more rewarding. When Holmes had rung off, Billy peeled himself off the wall of the village shop. “A constable just went into the tea shop,” he said. “In case you want a word.”

  The grey eyes concentrated on the frilly paint of the little shop as if attempting to drill a hole through its lace curtains.

  When he made no move, Billy added, “You’re Sherlock Holmes. He’d be flattered if you took an interest in his bones. He’s not about to ask for your whereabouts that night.”

  Holmes nodded, and they went across to the tea shop, confusing the waitress somewhat with the transformation of her absent-minded vicar. One question led to a dozen more, and one police station led to another. Before the end of the day, they were shown the complete collection of materials found on or around the gamekeeper’s skeleton. At the end of it, they knew little more than they had when they left the Fordingham pub.

  The sun was low in the sky when they returned to Billy’s motorcar, standing beside the Portsmouth police centre.

  Holmes had telephoned to Sussex every two hours, all that long day. Billy was tired, but not unhappy at the lengthy drive before them: without the monotony of travel to encourage sleep, the older man might drop in his tracks.

  “London, then?” he asked as he pulled onto the main road.

  “No.”

  “But aren’t we looking for Samuel?”

  “To hell with Samuel Hudson—we need Russell. I was wrong to wait for a ransom demand. We should have set out looking for her from hour one. We’ve wasted an entire day.”

  “It wasn’t a waste,” Billy protested. “Unless you think it was a coincidence that Samuel Hudson shows up in Sussex a few months after his grandfather is found.”

  Holmes did not dignify that with a reply. “Samuel Hudson would not have taken Russell to a Paddington hotel. We must look closer to home.”

  He did not need to add, We need to turn Sussex upside-down. Billy could hear it in his voice.

  Despite the purr of the engine and the hypnotic unwinding of tarmac, Holmes did not fall asleep. Darkness gathered, but he stared on through the wind-screen, his clouds of tobacco smoke streaming out from Billy’s half-open window.

  After an hour, the driver gave up: if the detective wasn’t going to sleep, he might as well talk.

  “You buried her father that night. You and her.”

  Holmes turned his attention to his pipe. “Mr Mudd, I gave my word that I would not speak of Mrs Hudson’s past, ever again.”

  “You really think this is a time for niceties? And anyway, this is me. I was there.”

  The passenger sighed. “Yes. Burying him seemed the only way forward. Considering our resources at t
he time.”

  “What about Beddoes? Why didn’t he ever return?”

  “That was my doing. No,” he said, feeling Billy’s alarmed gaze, “I merely drove him away. After I escorted you and Mrs Hudson back to London, I took the train to Portsmouth and hunted him down. He was in the second hotel I tried—not that there are many first-rate hotels in the town, even now, and the man liked his little luxuries. He’d been a forger, once, by name of Evans. Another transportee on the Gloria Scott.”

  “That’s the ship her father was on, that sank? I remember the story, but not the details.”

  “It was before she was born. Hudson had got into some trouble and signed on board the Gloria Scott to get out of England. It was a prison transport ship. I learned about it twenty-four years later, when a University friend by name of Trevor invited me to visit his home. His father, it later transpired, had been a transportee to Australia, along with Beddoes and thirty-six others. One of those was a fellow named Jack Prendergast who had defrauded a collection of City men out of an astounding sum of money. Prendergast seems to have bribed key officers and sailors into mutiny, which went bad when a cask of powder in the ship’s hold blew up. Hudson, Beddoes, and Trevor were among the handful of survivors. They were rescued and taken to Australia. Beddoes and Trevor returned to England after a few years, rich—or so they claimed—from the gold fields.

  “Trevor certainly spent time at hard labour, one could see it in his hands. However, when it came to Beddoes, the forger, I thought it likely that his return was less a matter of making money in the gold fields than making money, full stop. When I found him, he was spooked and poised to run, trunks packed and passport ready. According to Hudson, he’d told Beddoes some days earlier that the police knew all. The man’s reaction, to flee England, seemed extreme to me. As if he were anticipating arrest, not merely humiliation before his neighbours.”

  “If he’d escaped before serving his seven years, wouldn’t that be cause for arrest? To say nothing of whatever he might have done in the mutiny.”