The Adventure of the Murdered Midwife

by Liese Sherwood-Fabre

  “Of course, Mr. Holmes.”

  After the two men had ascended the servants’ staircase, I stepped next to her. Her back was straight and her face set, but I knew she had to be reeling from the backhanded reprimand. As much as I wanted to console her, her posture told me to keep to myself. I opened my mouth to share my concern, but she hushed me by raising her hand. I understood her effort to silence me a moment later.

  The narrow corridor leading to all the house’s levels made for a perfect sound conduit, and we could hear the men’s conversation perfectly.

  “I assure you,” my father was saying, “should the man regain consciousness and enough strength to become a flight risk, we will gladly turn him over to you. But at the moment, additional movement would probably eliminate him as either a prisoner or a witness.”

  The constable snorted again. “I have no need of him as a witness.”

  “An assault was committed against him,” Father said. “He is the only one at present who can tell us how he was stabbed and left to die in the woods.”

  “Probably got into it with one of the others at the tavern. Not the nicest drunk you’d ever meet, I can tell you that. The assault was most likely justified.”

  The footfalls faded slightly, and I knew they had reached the third floor. A moment later, a single set of footsteps announced someone’s descent. Constance emerged from the stairwell. Her eyes were puffy but wide. “Mrs. Holmes, you aren’t going to let him take my papa?”

  She shook her head. “He’s too sick to move. I think the constable will agree to that. Has your father said anything?”

  “Nothin’ that make no sense,” she said, blinking her eyes. “I can hardly make out his words.”

  “Still feverish?”

  A nod.

  “Please ask Cook to prepare a kettle of water and give you a pot of honey. I’ll check his dressing after the constable leaves.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said, and followed Constance to the kitchen.

  Along the way, she stopped and grabbed my arm, saying in a harsh whisper, “He said he was arrestin’ Papa. What am I going to do if he does?”

  “He’s not going to arrest him,” I placed my hand over hers. As much as I wanted to tell her about how we were working on the identity of her father’s attacker, I wasn’t certain my mother would want that known. I also found it hard to concentrate on anything but the warmth of her hand on my arm. With great effort, I managed to assure her with, “My parents won’t let him. But we do need to make sure he recovers. Come along.”

  By the time we returned to the servants’ stairs, my mother had disappeared—either to hide from the constable or to check on Mr. Straton. After a short discussion, Constance and I decided we would check in the man’s room first.

  As expected, Mother was there, already seated at his side, the man’s shirt raised to expose his bandaged side. When we arranged the water, linen for bandages, and honey on the table next to him, Mother frowned. “Is that all the honey there is?”

  “That’s what Cook said.”

  “It’s enough for this treatment, but we’ll need more.” She sighed. “I suppose I could send someone to fetch it for me, but I would prefer to get it myself. That way I can also share what we’ve learned with Mr. Brown.”

  Before I could ask if I could join her, Mycroft threw back the door to the room, waving a heavy book over his head. “I found it. I know what stabbed Mr. Straton.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The three of us turned to the door in response to Mycroft’s entrance.

  He grinned at us, pointing to an image in one of the pages. “A chisel. I’m sure it fits the wound perfectly.”

  Mother was the first to recover. But before she responded to my brother, she glanced at Constance. I did the same and realized the girl had paled at the news.

  “Let’s discuss this outside,” Mother said and led Constance to a seat next to her father’s cot. “I’ll be right back. Please keep an eye on him until then.”

  Once in the hallway, Mother shut the door behind us and indicated Mycroft should move farther down the hallway. When we were out of earshot, she said, “What’s this about a chisel?”

  Still with a broad grin on his face, Mycroft held out the book and pointed to a drawing on the page. “See this one? It’s flattened on the end, but is thicker in the middle, and the blade”—he raised his chin to stress the next point—“is two inches wide.”

  Mother took the book to study the image more closely. I also peeked over her arm to examine it as well. When she raised her head, she said, “It does appear to be a good candidate. Who might have access to such a tool?”

  “Stone masons?” His grin faded.

  “I suppose that would be the next step. Check with Ernest about his own research. See if he has been able to identify any other tools. Perhaps he, too, has tested the chisel? After I finish dressing Mr. Straton, I need to go to see Mr. Brown. We’ll review the results after that.”

  He nodded and headed down the stairs, the book under one arm.

  “Do you think that’s what stabbed Mr. Straton?” I asked after he had disappeared down the stairs.

  She stilled, as if considering different scenarios. “He’s right about the size and shape of the wound. I just wish it hinted at someone we knew had contact with Mr. Straton. A stone mason would be new….” She shuddered and turned toward the room again. “First things first. We need to ensure the poor man recovers so that he can tell us himself.”

  Constance and I assisted Mother in changing the dressing. The honey appeared to be working because the area wasn’t as red and swollen as the last time I saw it.

  As soon as she’d completed the task, she and I returned downstairs where she requested a trap be prepared to visit Mr. Brown’s farm.

  “Why don’t you come with me,” she said after sending the message to the stable. “I shouldn’t visit a gentleman alone at his home. Especially a widower.”

  The sun had passed its zenith, but the air was still warm. As we approached the Brown farm, a faint humming began and grew louder with each horse’s step. By the time we reached the house, the buzzing from thousands of bees fairly roared about us. Despite the incessant droning, Mr. Brown must have heard our cart approach because as we pulled into the yard, a man’s figure in a large straw hat with a net that dropped to the shoulders stepped from behind the house where various white wooden houses dotted the landscape. His heavy-gloved hands held a large, flat tray in one and a smoking pot in the other.

  “Mrs. Holmes,” Mr. Brown said through the netting, “you’ve brought news from your brother?”

  “Not in relation to your wife, I’m afraid,” she said, alighting from the carriage.

  I hesitated to follow her. The droning brought to mind the image of Mr. Harvingsham’s reaction, and I shuddered at the memory.

  “Mr. Straton, however, has been stabbed,” she said, stepping to him. “That’s why I’m here. For honey to treat his wound.”

  “Stabbed, you say? Who? Where?”

  “We aren’t certain of the perpetrator. The poor man lost a lot of blood and has remained unconscious since we found him. Or rather, Sherlock here did. Not far from the Straton cottage.”

  “Master Sherlock found him?” He turned his gaze to me, and I shifted on the trap bench. As proud as I was of the deed itself, I found the man’s attention somehow uncomfortable. “Good show, boy.”

  He then focused on my mother again. “He’s at Underbyrne, then? The constable hasn’t arrested him?”

  “Mr. Holmes arranged a house arrest. After all, he is a justice of the peace. And I can assure you, in his present state, the man isn’t going anywhere.”

  With a rather non-committal hmm, he turned and headed in the direction of an outbuilding. Over his shoulder, he said, “You can have the honey, but I don’t understand why you want to help my wife’s murderer.”

  “He didn’t do it,” I said, jumping down from my seat.

  The man spun aro
und. Even through the mesh covering his face, I could see the flash in his eyes. He shook the smoking can at me, and I took a step back and hit the carriage’s side. “He did do it. Do you hear me? Told me to my face my poor Emma killed his wife, and he would do the same to her. I even have witnesses.”

  I felt my mother’s presence behind me. She placed a hand on each of my shoulders, reassurance in her touch.

  “I know how strongly you believe in what occurred in the tavern, Mr. Brown, but you asked us to collect information surrounding your wife’s death. We’ve learned the man was drunk and could not possibly have injured your wife. That was the other purpose of our visit. To share this information with you.”

  The smoking can dropped to the man’s side, and he squinted at us through the webbing. “Your brother sent you to tell me that?”

  “Yes. That he is continuing to collect information on Straton’s attacker, which might lead us to your wife’s assailant. We won’t know until he regains consciousness.”

  “You will let me know if Straton wakes? What he says?”

  “Of course,” Mother said with a smile. “A great help in his recovery will be the honey we came to fetch.”

  He stared at us, as if considering additional arguments. After a moment, he appeared to think better of it, picked up the smoking can, and turned toward the outbuilding.

  “Right. Follow me to my extracting room.” He returned to the path toward the building. As he moved, he continued conversing. “I’ve been preparing them for the winter. Moving the hives about and such.”

  The humming grew even louder and several of his subjects flew about us. After the episode with Mr. Harvingsham’s reaction the other day, I was acutely aware of the insects and had no desire to determine if I had a similar allergy. I swatted at a particularly persistent one buzzing about my head.

  Mother stayed my hand. “You don’t want to do that. An aggressive action like that can call more to you.”

  “That’s why I’ve got the smoke. It quiets them down. Of course, I’ve been stung hundreds of times. Not so bad. Unless you’re like Mr. Harvingsham.”

  “You knew he was allergic?” Mother asked.

  “Won’t ever come out here. Always insisted on Emma visiting him, if she needed to have him consult on a woman. He always had the honey delivered.”

  We arrived at the outbuilding to the left of his house and in front of the field dotted with the white beehives. He pulled the door open and motioned for us to enter. Once the door closed, the humming dropped to a more tolerable level, and Mr. Brown removed his hat. With the bees securely shut out, I relaxed enough to glance about.

  The building consisted of a single room with a rather odd cylindrical device on the left, a long work table on the opposite wall filled with various jars (some with honey, some empty), and beeswax candles stacked in a pyramid in the center. To my right, a series of tools hung from nails pounded into the wall.

  “You came at a good time. I was just harvesting what I can before they hibernate. I can give you a very fresh pot.”

  He held up the tray he was carrying. Now up-close, I could see the tiny wax cells created by the bees and watched a bit of the honey drip to the ground. It was then I noticed the sticky mess on the wooden floorboards. His boots made tiny ripping noises with each step he took as he went about his business.

  “Let me get this tray into the separator, and then we’ll see to your pot.”

  He went to the cylindrical machine, pulled off the top, and raised a center rod to which a tray similar to the one in his hand was attached. “This one’s already empty,” he said and replaced it with the new one. After placing a flat pan underneath the tray, he pulled a long metal tool off his belt. The item had one flat side, and the other side had a sort of hook.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “This,” he said, holding up the metal bar’s hooked end, “is what I use to pull the trays out of the hive. They tend to stick together. I use the other side like this.”

  He ran the flat end of the tool along the honeycomb’s cells to scrape off the beeswax sealing them. Long curls of wax soon gathered in the pan at the bottom of the tray. Once both sides had been cleaned, he lowered the tray into the extractor, and turned a handle on its side.

  “You spin the honey out?” I asked. “Ingenious.”

  “Here, you give it a go.”

  He stepped back and let me turn the handle. I found it a little stiffer than I expected and the handle itself quite sticky.

  While I turned the tray, he went to the work table and picked up a pot. He cut a large piece of cheesecloth from a bolt on the table and carried both back to where I stood. Placing the cheesecloth over the pot and positioning the jar below a spigot at the bottom of the extractor, he let the fresh honey flow through the cloth and into the pot. Soon, he’d filled the small jar.

  “That’s enough for now,” he said when he shut off the honey.

  Mother opened her purse to remove some coins. “How much do I owe you?”

  One piece fell to the floor.

  “I’ll get it,” I said and knelt to pick it up.

  In doing so, I noticed a good number of yew needles stuck about the floor along with the coin. I paused, stopping my efforts to pry the penny free from the honey. The needles appeared fresh compared to the other leaves and debris tracked into the room.

  When I rose and handed him the coin, he thanked me but scrutinized me for a moment as if he were sizing me up. I shifted on my feet and turned to Mother.

  “We need to be going. I promised to help Father…with…something.”

  She paused for a moment, then spoke in an even tone. “Of course. I remember you telling me before we left you needed to return shortly. Thank you so much for the honey, Mr. Brown.”

  She turned to leave and I followed behind her, our footsteps making tearing sounds as we left. Mr. Brown trailed behind us, but I feared to glance back and find out how close he was. My heart gathered speed in response to my growing anxiety to leave the property.

  Despite my worries, the man only assisted my mother into the carriage.

  “Thank you for the information, Mrs. Holmes,” he said after she seated herself. “I do appreciate your sharing it with me.”

  “Of course, Mr. Brown. Please have a good day.” She clucked at the horse and pulled away.

  When we reached the main road, she turned the trap toward Underbyrne. Once we were a good distance from the home, she asked, “What did you see on the floor?”

  “Yew needles,” I said. “They were stuck in the honey. When I found Mr. Straton, he was in a grove of yew trees. I’m certain Mr. Brown knows I saw them too. But more important was—”

  “The tool he used to scrape the wax from the honey comb.” A smile parted her face when I turned to her. “I noticed it, too, but was able to better mask it than you.”

  “How ever did you develop such proficiency in hiding your true thoughts?”

  “All part of my training in being a proper lady. I developed the ability to appear interested in the prattle most people consider ‘polite conversation’ to the point of asking questions to continue the inane discussion while my thoughts were elsewhere. But a more difficult task was learning to ignore the glares men give you when you sit in on a medical lecture.”

  That brought to mind again Father’s description of his first encounter with my mother. As much as I wanted to learn her version of the event, a more pressing matter had to be addressed first.

  “Are you going to tell Father? About what we saw at Mr. Brown’s?”

  “Of course. We have just found our murderer.”

  The moment Mother entered the house, she called for Father. Barely had “Mr. Holmes,” left her lips when he stepped from the library.

  “We’ve just come from Mr. Brown’s,” she said, holding up the honey pot, “and have come to the conclusion—”

  She stopped when Father held up a red ledger. I swallowed past a lump forming in my throat. Had he fou
nd the true one?

  “I believe you recognize this. If you recall Constable Gibbons mentioned he returned it when he came to check on Straton.”

  That inscrutable face of hers showed no emotion when she said, “Yes. I’d forgotten it. I’ll take it back to the greenhouse.”

  She reached for it, but he jerked his hand high, keeping her from retrieving it. His voice was low, but he ground out his words. “What in God’s name have you been up to?”

  My heart thrummed against my chest. In the past few weeks, I had seen my father nearly choke a man when my mother was released from jail, bluster at Mycroft for his insistence at returning to school, and stand up to the constable. But never had I seen the eerily quiet rage he seemed intent on containing at the moment. And certainly not directed at his wife.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he raised his other hand. With the book still over his head, he called out. “Mycroft.”

  My brother stepped from the library, head down. Continuing to stare at the floor, he said, “I’m sorry, Mother. He recognized my handwriting. I told him you weren’t involved. That Sherlock and I—”

  “He’s right,” I said. “We were afraid if Constable Gibbons found out what was in it—”

  “You see,” Father said, still in that low tone. “Your actions have made our sons forgers, thieves. The constable told me of a rather odd incident involving the expert he’d commissioned for the translation. The first night in town, he was called down to the lobby floor to retrieve a message from Gibbons. Only the constable never sent a message. When he was returning to his room, a young boy fell down the stairs. His father, however, came in and took him away before Mr. Harvingsham could arrive.”

  Father’s gaze fell on me. My face burned under his scrutiny. All the same, I had to admire the constable’s ability to fit the many pieces of our recent actions together indicated a more logical mind than I had estimated.

  “I can explain everything, Siger. Please, if you let me. But I must tell you about Mr. Brown. He’s the one who stabbed Straton, and I am certain was involved in the murders of—”