Victorian Villainy

by Michael Kurland

  “Curious,” I said.

  “Really?” Holmes replied. “How so?”

  The question was not destined to be answered, at least not then. At that moment the front door banged open and a police sergeant of immense girth, a round, red face, and a majestic handlebar mustache stomped down the hall and into the room. “Here now,” he boomed. “What are you gentlemen doing in here, if I might ask?”

  “Sergeant Meeks,” Holmes said. “You’ve returned to the scene of the crime. Perhaps you are going to take my suggestion after all.”

  Meeks looked at Holmes with an air of benevolent curiosity. “And what suggestion might that be, young man?”

  “I mentioned to you that it might be a good idea to post a constable here to keep the curiosity-seekers from wandering about. It was when you were escorting Professor Maples into the carriage to take him away.”

  “Why so it was, Mr., ah,—”

  “Holmes. And this is Mr. Moriarty.”

  Meeks gave me a perfunctory nod, and turned his attention back to Holmes. “Yes, Mr. Holmes. So it was, and so you did. We of the regular constabulary are always grateful for any hints or suggestions as we might get from young gentlemen such as yourself. You also said something about preserving the foot-marks along the lane out back, as I remember.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well I went to look at them foot-marks of yours, Mr. Holmes, lifting up a couple of them boards you put down and peering under. They was just what you said they was—foot-marks; and I thanks you kindly.”

  “From your attitude I can see that you don’t attach much importance to the imprints,” Holmes commented, not allowing himself to be annoyed by the sergeant’s words or his sneering tone.

  “We always try to plot a straight and true course when we’re investigating a case,” the sergeant explained. “There are always facts and circumstances around that don’t seem to fit in. And that’s because, if you’ll excuse my saying so, they have nothing to do with the case.”

  “But perhaps there are times when some of these facts that you ignore actually present a clearer explanation of what really happened,” Holmes suggested. “For example, Sergeant, I’m sure you noticed that the footsteps were all made by a woman. Not a single imprint of a man’s foot on that path.”

  “If you say so, Mr. Holmes. I can’t say that I examined them all that closely.”

  Holmes nodded. “If what I say is true,” he said, “doesn’t that suggest anything to you?”

  Sergeant Meeks sighed a patient sigh. “It would indicate that the accused did not walk on the path. Perhaps he went by the road. Perhaps he flew. It don’t really matter how he got to the cottage, it only matters what he did after he arrived.”

  “Did you notice the imprint of the walking stick next to the woman’s footsteps?” Holmes asked. “Does that tell you nothing?”

  “Nothing,” the sergeant agreed. “She may have had another walking stick, or perhaps the branch from a tree.”

  Holmes shrugged. “I give up,” he said.

  “You’d be better off leaving the detecting to the professionals, young man,” Meeks said. “We’ve done some investigating on our own already, don’t think we haven’t. And what we’ve heard pretty well wraps up the case against Professor Maples. I’m sorry, but there you have it.”

  “What have you heard?” Holmes demanded.

  “Never you mind. That will all come out at the inquest, and that’s soon enough. Now you’d best be getting out of here, the pair of you. I am taking your advice to the extent of locking the cottage up and having that broken window boarded over. We don’t want curiosity seekers walking away with the furniture.”

  We retrieved our hats and coats and the bag with Professor Maples’ fresh clothing and left the cottage. The rain had stopped, but dusk was approaching and a cold wind gusted through the trees. Holmes and I walked silently back to the college, each immersed in our own thoughts: Holmes presumably wondering what new facts had come to light, and trying to decide how to get his information before the authorities; I musing on the morality of revealing to Holmes, or to others, what I had discerned, and from that what I had surmised, or letting matters proceed without my intervention.

  Holmes left me at the college to continue on to the police station, and I returned to my rooms.

  The inquest was held two days later in the chapel of, let me call it, St. Elmo’s College, one of our sister colleges making up the university. The chapel, a large gothic structure with pews that would seat several hundred worshipers, had been borrowed for this more secular purpose in expectation of a rather large turnout of spectators; in which expectation the coroner was not disappointed.

  The coroner, a local squire named Sir George Quick, was called upon to perform this function two or three times a year. But usually it was for an unfortunate who had drowned in the canal or fallen off a roof. Murders were quite rare in the area; or perhaps most murderers were more subtle than whoever had done in Andrea Maples.

  Holmes and I sat in the audience and watched the examination proceed. Holmes had gone to the coroner before the jury was seated and asked if he could give evidence. When he explained what he wanted to say, Sir George sent him back to his seat. What he had to offer was not evidence, Sir George explained to him, but his interpretation of the evidence. “It is for the jury to interpret the evidence offered,” Sir George told him, “not for you or I.” Holmes’s face was red with anger and mortification, and he glowered at the courtroom and everyone in it. I did my best not to notice.

  Lucinda was in the front row, dressed in black. Her face wooden, she stared straight ahead through the half-veil that covered her eyes, and did not seem to be following anything that was happening around her. Crisboy sat next to her, wearing a black armband and a downcast expression. Professor Maples was sitting to one side, with a bulky constable sitting next to him and another sitting behind him. He had a bemused expression on his face, as though he couldn’t really take any of this seriously.

  Sir George informed the assemblage that he was going to proceed in an orderly manner, and that he would tolerate no fiddle-faddle and then called his first witness. It turned out to be the young bicyclist with the sticky fingers. “I could see that it was blood,” he said, “and that it had come from beneath the door—from inside the house.”

  Then he described how he and his companions broke a window to gain entrance, and found Andrea Maples’ body sprawled on the floor by the front door.

  “And how was she dressed?” the coroner asked.

  “She was not dressed, sir,” came the answer.

  A murmur arose in the audience, and the young man blushed and corrected himself. “That is to say, she was not completely dressed. She had on her, ah, undergarments, but not her dress.”

  “Shoes?” the coroner asked, with the bland air of one who is called upon to discuss semi-naked ladies every day.

  “I don’t believe so, sir.”

  “That will be all,” the coroner told him, “unless the jury have any questions?” he added, looking over at the six townsmen in the improvised jury box.

  The foreman of the jury, an elderly man with a well-developed set of mutton-chop whiskers, nodded and gazed out at the witness. “Could you tell us,” he asked slowly, “what color were these undergarments?”

  “White,” the young man said.

  “Now then,” Sir George said, staring severely at the foreman, “that will be enough of that!”

  Sergeant Meeks was called next. He sat in the improvised witness box hat in hand, his uniform and his face having both been buffed to a high shine, the very model of English propriety. The coroner led him through having been called, and arriving at the scene with his two constables, and examining the body.

  “And then what did you do, sergeant?”

  “After sending Constable Gough off to Beachamshire to notify the police surgeon, I thoroughly examined the premises to see whether I could ascertain what had occurred on the, ah, pre
mises.”

  “And what were your conclusions?”

  “The deceased was identified to me as Mrs. Andrea Maples, wife of Professor Maples, who lived in the main house on the same property. She was dressed—”

  “Yes, yes, sergeant,” Sir George interrupted. “We’ve heard how she was dressed. Please go on.”

  “Very good, sir. She had been dead for some time when I examined her. I would put her death at between seven and ten hours previous, based on my experience. Which placed the time of her death at sometime around midnight.”

  “And on what do you base that conclusion?”

  “The blood around the body was pretty well congealed, but not completely in the deeper pools, and the body appeared to be fairly well along into rigor mortis at that time.

  “Very observant, sergeant. And what else did you notice?”

  “The murder weapon was lying near the body. It was a hard wood walking stick with a ducks-head handle. It had some of the victim’s blood on it, and a clump of the victim’s hair was affixed to the duck’s head in the beak area. The stick was identified by one of the bicyclists who was still present as being the property of Professor Maples, husband of the victim.”

  “And what did you do then?”

  “I proceeded over to the main house to question Professor Maples, who was just sitting down to breakfast when I arrived. I told him of his wife’s death, and he affected to be quite disturbed at the news. I then asked him to produce his walking stick, and he spend some time affecting to look for it. I then placed him under arrest and sent Constable Parfry for a carriage to take the professor to the station house.”

  “Here, now!” a short, squat juror with a walrus moustache that covered his face from below his nose to below his chin, shifted in his seat and leaned belligerently forward. “What made you arrest the professor at that there moment? It seems to me that whoever the Maples woman was having an assigerna....—was meeting at this here cottage in the middle of the night was more likely to have done her in.”

  “Now, now, we’ll get to that,” the coroner said, fixing the fractious juror with a stern eye. “I’m trying to lay out the facts of the case in an orderly manner. We’ll get to that soon enough.”

  The next witness was the police surgeon, who testified that the decedent had met her death as a result of multiple blunt-force blows to the head and shoulders. He couldn’t say just which blow killed her, any one of several could have. And, yes, the duck-headed cane presented in evidence could have been the murder weapon.

  Sir George nodded. So much for those who wanted information out of its proper order. Now....

  Professor Maples was called next. The audience looked expectant. He testified that he had last seen his wife at about nine o’clock on the night she was killed. After which he had gone to bed, and, as he had been asleep, had not been aware of her absence.

  “You did not note that she was missing when you awoke, or when you went down to breakfast?” Sir George asked.

  “I assumed she had gone out early,” Maples replied. “She went out early on occasion. I certainly didn’t consider foul play. One doesn’t, you know.”

  Professor Maples was excused, and the audience looked disappointed.

  An acne-laden young man named Cramper was called up next. He was, he explained, employed at the local public house, the Red Garter, as a sort of general assistant. On the night of the murder he had been worked unusually late, shifting barrels of ale from one side of the cellar to the other. “It were on account of the rats,” he explained.

  Sir George, wisely, did not pursue that answer any further. “What time was it when you started for home?” he asked.

  “Must have been going on for midnight, one side or ‘nother.”

  Sir George stared expectantly at Cramper, and Cramper stared back complacently at Sir George.

  “Well?” the coroner said finally.

  “Well? Oh, what happened whilst I walked home. Well, I saw someone emerging from the old Wilstone cottage.”

  “That’s the cottage where the murder took place?” Sir George prompted.

  “Aye, that’s the one aright. Used to be a gent named Wilstone lived there. Still comes back from time to time, I believe.”

  “Ah!” said Sir George. “And this person you saw coming from the, ah, old Wilstone cottage?”

  “Happens I know the gent. Name of Faulting. He teaches jumping and squatting, or some such, over by the college field building.”

  There was a murmur from the audience, which Sir George quashed with a look.

  “And you could see clearly who the gentleman was, even though it was the middle of the night?”

  “Ever so clearly. Aye, sir.”

  “And how was that?”

  “Well, there were lights on in the house, and his face were all lit up by them lights.”

  “Well,” Sir George said, looking first at the jury and then at the audience. “We will be calling Mr. Faulting next, to verify Mr. Cramper’s story. And he will, gentlemen and, er, ladies. He will. Now, what else did you see, Mr. Cramper?”

  “You mean in the house?”

  “That’s right. In the house.”

  “Well, I saw the lady in question—the lady who got herself killed.”

  “You saw Mrs. Maples in the house?”

  “Aye, that’s so. She were at the door, saying goodbye to this Faulting gent.”

  “So she was alive and well at that time?”

  “Aye. That she were.”

  The jury foreman leaned forward. “And how were she dressed?” he called out, and then stared defiantly at the coroner, who had turned to glare at him.

  “It were only for a few seconds that I saw her before she closed the door,” Cramper replied. “She were wearing something white, I didn’t much notice what.”

  “Yes, thank you,” you’re excused,” Sir George said.

  Mr. Faulting was called next, and he crept up to the witness chair like a man who knew he was having a bad dream, but didn’t know how to get out of it. He admitted having been Andrea Maples’ night visitor. He was not very happy about it, and most of his answers were mumbles, despite Sir George’s constant admonitions to speak up. Andrea had, he informed the coroner’s court, invited him to meet her in the cottage at ten o’clock.

  “What about her husband?” the coroner demanded.

  “I asked her that,” Faulting said. “She laughed. She told me that he wouldn’t object; that I was free to ask him if I liked. I, uh, I didn’t speak with him.”

  “No,” the coroner said, “I don’t imagine you did.”

  Faulting was the last witness. The coroner reminded the jury that they were not to accuse any person of a crime, even if they thought there had been a crime; that was a job for the criminal courts. They were merely to determine cause of death. After a brief consultation, the jury returned a verdict of unlawful death.

  “Thank you,” Sir George said. “You have done your duty. I assume,” he said, looking over at Sergeant Meeks, “that there is no need for me to suggest a course of action to the police.”

  “No, sir,” Meeks told him. “Professor Maples will be bound over for trial at the assizes.”

  Sir George nodded. “Quite right,” he said.

  “Bah!” Holmes said to me in an undertone.

  “You disagree?” I asked.

  “I can think of a dozen ways Faulting could have pulled that trick,” he said. “That young man—Cramper—didn’t see Andrea Maples in the doorway, he saw a flash of something white.”

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “Bah!” Holmes repeated.

  When we left the building Miss Lucy came over to Holmes and pulled him away, talking to him in an earnest undertone. I walked slowly back to my rooms, trying to decide what to do. I disliked interfering with the authorities in their attempted search for justice, and I probably couldn’t prove what I knew to be true, but could I stand by and allow an innocent man to be convicted of murder? And Maples wou
ld surely be convicted if he came to trial. There was no real evidence against him, but he had the appearance of guilt, and that’s enough to convince nine juries out of ten.

  About two hours later Holmes came over, his eyes shining. “Miss Lucy is a fine woman,” he told me.

  “Really?” I said.

  “We talked for a while about her sister. That is, she tried to talk about Andrea, but she kept breaking down and crying before she could finish a thought.”

  “Not surprising,” I said.

  “She asked me if I thought Professor Maples was guilty,” Holmes told me. “I said I was convinced he was not. She asked me if I thought he would be convicted if he came to trial. I thought I’d better be honest. I told her it seemed likely.”

  “You told her true,” I commented.

  “She is convinced of his innocence, even though it is her own sister who was killed. Many—most—people would allow emotion to override logic. And she wants to help him. She said, ‘Then I know what I must do,’ and she went off to see about hiring a lawyer.”

  “She said that?” I asked.

  “She did.”

  “Holmes, think carefully. Did she say she was going to hire a lawyer?”

  Holmes was momentarily startled at my question. “Well, let’s see. She said she knew what she must do, and I said he’s going to need the best lawyer and the best barrister around to clear himself of this, for all that we know he is not guilty.”

  “And?”

  “And then she said she would not allow him to be convicted. And she—well—she kissed me on the cheek, and she said, “Goodbye, Mr. Holmes, you have been a good friend.’ And she hurried off.”

  “How long ago did she leave you?”