“Not that it matters. She’s long gone now. Alistair’s money paid for that. You’ll never find her.”
“Ah yes, Alistair’s money. Thank you for bringing that up, Miss Parr. I had feared I would have to tease from you the second bird you killed with your single stone, and I would be interested to know which motivation came first. Did you kill your former employer so that Mr. McLachlan would come into his inheritance and so be free to marry you, or did you do so in order to punish Watson for what you perceived as his offences against your family?”
In the past, observing Holmes in full flight had often been a pleasure, but on this occasion, for the first time, I recognised that it could be a painful experience too. The bare facts of the murder had been exposed, and my own innocence established, or so I thought. But now it seemed that I had in some way been responsible, if only as a motive.
I remembered Lucy Parr.
A few years previously we had taken on a case in which a wealthy banker had believed his son to have stolen a famous gem, the Beryl Coronet. The family, I now recalled, had employed a maid by the name of Lucy Parr, given to ill-advised romantic assignations. She was not an especially memorable person, though I had given her a small part in the version of the story published in The Strand. But I could not see why the girl’s sister should have any enmity towards me on account of the case. Lucy had not been involved in any criminality and besides, Holmes was the detective, not I.
While I had been thinking, McLachlan had pushed himself forward, and now stood alongside Mary Parr.
“Do not answer that, Mary,” he said in his soft voice. “My fiancée suffers from nerves and is prone to flights of fancy. She has nothing more to say until she has spoken to a lawyer.”
Mary Parr was not, however, a woman who was easily silenced, even by a man for whom she had killed.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Alistair dearest,” she said with a smile. “Involving that animal was a late addition to my plan, Mr. Holmes, but an inspired one, I think. Originally, all I wanted was for Alistair to be free of his brother and able to marry me, as we both desired. I see you looking at me doubtfully, Inspector. What would one of the gentry want with a mere maid, except a momentary dalliance, you’re thinking. But we were in love, and love knows nothing of class.”
As though to prove her assertion, McLachlan placed a hand on her shoulder, and she briefly pressed her cheek against it.
“Even after I was dismissed from service and Alistair warned to have nothing more to do with me, we continued to meet in secret. I might have been happy with that, but Alistair wanted more than a few snatched hours here and there.”
“I had had enough of the rake’s life,” McLachlan interrupted. “I had met the woman I wished to spend my life with, and I intended to do so, no matter what the cost to me socially and financially.”
“You see, Inspector? How could I not love a man like that? But for all his willingness to give up all he had, my Alistair was not built for the poverty that would ensue if he simply ignored the wishes of his family.
“It did not take me long to think of his aunt, who barely knew her own name, but who held the key to his freedom. If she were to die, everything would be as it should. I planned how best to do it, so that Alistair could not possibly be suspected, choosing a spot far from the house and a night when he was known to be at home. It was a risk using my grandmother’s, but she had long spoken of leaving London and going back home, and I knew that Alistair would well be able to afford to send her, if all went to plan.
“And then, as I turned out of Linhope Street one evening, wondering what night would be best to carry out the deed, who should I see but Dr. John Watson, the heartless brute who had so grievously wronged my sister. The rest, I have already told you.”
I had heard as much of this insinuation as I was willing to accept and so, before Holmes could say another word, I stepped forward, ignoring the gun entirely in my anger, and confronted Miss Parr.
“That is twice now you have described me in inhuman terms and I am at a loss to understand why. What have I done to you or your sister, that you feel such loathing for me, and wish me so much harm?”
Holmes answered before she could. “Because she blames you, and not I, for her sister’s death, of course. That is correct, is it not, Miss Parr?”
The look the girl turned on me was filled with a hatred so intense that I almost flinched. She began to speak, though not to answer either of our questions directly.
“My sister never worked again after she was dismissed by Mr. Holder. No reference, you see. Precious little chance of a decent marriage either. So she moved to the country, and hid away, waiting for time to pass. Waiting for people to forget what was only a few lines in a tale most of them hadn’t even read. That’s what she thought, anyway.
“But people didn’t forget. They didn’t get the chance to, not with Mr. Sherlock Holmes in all the papers, and Dr. Watson turning his adventures into entertainments. So one night she took herself into the woods round the back of the house she was staying in and cut her own throat. It was snowing so hard that even when she was missed it took them two days to find her under the drifts. I didn’t even hear about it for a fortnight, not until my next free Sunday. No point. I wouldn’t be given leave for a suicide. Nor a wanton woman, neither. Major McLachlan’s got views on that sort of thing.”
She spat out “views” as though it were the foulest profanity imaginable. But she was not finished.
“That is the third reason why you chose Miss McLachlan as your victim,” Holmes interrupted. “To damage Sir Campbell.”
She tilted her head to one side, considering the suggestion. “A little, perhaps,” she admitted. “Maybe there’s something in that. But mainly she was the one who could give Alistair his life back. Everything else followed from that.”
She stared at each of us in turn, daring us to speak.
“Does that answer your question, Doctor?” she asked. She gripped the shotgun stock so tightly that her knuckles stood out white against the redness of her skin as though bleached. “Maybe not,” she continued, “but I’ve got one of my own to ask you.”
Her mouth twitched as though she intended to smile then decided not to, but there was no warmth in her face, and she gave no other sign of relaxing her guard. When she spoke, her voice cracked and wavered, in an excess of pain.
“Would you have recalled my sister at all, if you hadn’t been reminded by your friend and I?”
I hesitated to reply, for I was unsure in my own mind whether I would have recollected Lucy Parr unaided. I hoped so, but had to admit to myself that what I mainly recollected, even now, was my own writing about the case, not the girl herself.
“Did you think my sister wanton, Dr. Watson?” Mary Parr broke into my thoughts. “Is that why you painted her as entirely fallen when she had simply been unwise? Is that why you destroyed her life for the crime of being foolish and gullible and believing herself to be in love?”
The accusation was as venomous as it was unexpected and I flinched inwardly as she spoke. But I could not deny there was a degree of truth in her assertion, once I had placed her sister in my mind. I had indeed exaggerated the girl’s nature, adding a little spice, as my editor put it. Readers loved Holmes’s deductions, he’d said with an ingratiating smile, but it was my own little artistic additions that set the stories apart – and besides, a scorned woman of low morals never went amiss. I should have said no, but he had just bought me a splendid lunch and in the glow of several glasses of excellent port his flattery seemed no more than credit given where it was due.
I knew, of course, that I could not offer that as excuse, nor did I want to. Two women were dead and at least one more would join them in due course. I had no excuses to offer.
“Miss Parr,” I began but I found I had no explanation beyond the bald truth, and wretched though I felt I had no stomach for that. The irony of the writer being bereft of words did not elude me.
Not that it matte
red. I had delayed my reply for too long.
With a snarl, Mary Parr took a single step forward and jammed the barrels of the shotgun into the flesh below my chin. Obviously, I could not see her finger tighten on the trigger, but I fancied I heard the smallest click as it was pulled back.
McLachlan staggered backwards in shock and from the corner of my eye I saw Lestrade raise his revolver, but I knew it was too late to do anything. Of the two police drivers who had gone around the back there was no sign. Only Holmes knew what to do.
“I am sorry, Miss Parr,” he said loudly, “but you are about to kill the wrong man.”
For less than a heartbeat, my life hung in the balance, and then I felt the shotgun barrels move imperceptibly away from my throat.
“Whatever his other faults, Miss Parr,” Holmes continued in a steady voice, “I have never known Watson deliberately do harm to any woman, nor do I believe he has done so now.” His voice was soft, almost sorrowful. The girl tried to speak but he held his two hands up, palms out. “Please, let me finish. It has been suggested to me recently that I give insufficient consideration to the impact my investigations have on those involved in them only at a remove.”
He took a step forward, and carefully moved the shotgun until it pointed it at his own chest. “If Watson embellished the role of your sister in one of his scribbles, then the fault lies not with him, but with me. It was I who involved him in my work and I who encouraged him to write down the circumstances of my cases. He has on occasion paid greater attention to the more sensational aspects of a case than I would have liked, but on some level I was content with the elevated role he created for me. And for the ‘genius’ Watson created truly to stand out, he needs must populate the background with lesser figures, with whom his readers can more fully identify. That they are, at least in part, fictional, he and I both know, but obviously that is not true of everyone.” He gave a tired sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose as though in pain. “I can only offer my most heartfelt apologies, of scant consolation though they may be, for allowing Watson to paint so false a picture of your sister, as a result of which she was so grievously harmed.”
For a long moment, everything was silent. The thin rain continued to fall and in the backlight from the farmhouse, Mary Parr’s figure seemed to waver in the mist like spray. One of her feet slipped backwards in the mud and the shotgun dipped slightly, but Holmes made no move to take it from her. Instead, he held out his hands in an oddly penitent manner, palms upwards, and she laid the heavy weapon into them. His long fingers closed round it, then he lowered it to the ground.
“If you will go with Inspector Lestrade,” he said quietly, “he will have further questions to put to you.”
Lestrade raised his head sharply, as though surprised to be mentioned, but quickly remembered his duty and pulled her round in order to place handcuffs on her. Alistair McLachlan hurried to take her hand before the inspector could do so, however. “I never wanted any of this, you know,” he said unhappily. “But once she’d done it, what could I do but try to protect her?”
He put his jacket around Mary Parr’s shoulders and I watched them trudge away into the darkness, Lestrade vigilant but unobtrusive at their side.
Holmes and I stood in the increasingly heavy rain, saying nothing, for some time, each alone with his thoughts. I should have felt a huge relief that it was all over, but in truth I felt only numbness and a great sadness for the Parr sisters – and shame for my part in their ruin.
Eventually, I felt the cold rain seep past my collar and run down my back. I turned to Holmes, barely visible in the dying light.
“Time to go home, Watson,” he said. “Mrs. Hudson will be waiting up, and I am in need of a pipe and a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow evening, we should invite Lestrade to Baker Street, and I shall provide the full explanation I know you desire.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next day, Lestrade visited Baker Street once again.
On this occasion, however, he arrived more sedately and accepted a whisky and a seat by the fire. At first, he seemed uncomfortable to be in Baker Street as a guest. He sat stiffly and silently in his chair, glass balanced on his knee and his bowler still gripped in one hand. It was Holmes, unexpectedly, who cajoled him to relax a little and gradually, and perhaps under the influence of a second whisky, he settled back and became more animated in his speech.
We talked for a short while of recent news, then Holmes stretched out his long legs, lit his pipe, and offered the explanation he had promised.
“Do you remember Potter saying that the urchins of the streets come and go and nobody can say where or when? That is not entirely true, as he would have known. It is true that we do not value them, but they do value themselves. Not a single street Arab disappears in this city, but his friends know it. I set Wiggins and his associates about the task of tracking down any of their kind who had vanished on the day after the murder of Miss McLachlan. They found no one for whom they could not account, but Wiggins did discover something connected to another matter I had placed before him.
“It seems that three days after the murder, a carriage drove into Linhope Street and picked up Mrs. Soames, the landlady who was so concerned for her elderly tenant’s safety. You will be interested to know that a young woman was observed already to be in the carriage. You will, I think, be even more interested to learn that on the doors of the carriage were emblazoned the twin horns of the roebuck.”
“Alistair McLachlan!”
“The very same,” Holmes confirmed. “Initially I had instructed Wiggins to take part in the search for the girl and had discounted the younger brother entirely. However, after hearing of your meeting with him, I asked Wiggins instead to watch out for any unusual activity at the McLachlan house. He rightly assumed that the family carriage leaving in the dead of night counted as such an activity.”
“All well and good, Holmes, and obviously in hindsight you were correct, but nothing that McLachlan said in our meeting struck me as suggestive of guilt. Quite the opposite, in fact. What did you see at second hand that I, who was actually present, did not?”
“I believe I remarked at the time that I had no faith in your ability to judge personality without supporting evidence. Any man may commit any crime, in my experience. As to Mr. McLachlan particularly, I was immediately struck by two things. First, the certainty with which he proclaimed your innocence. No man could possibly be so certain about a matter so important on so brief an acquaintance. The only explanation was that he either knew the identity of the real killer, or knew for a fact that it could not be you.”
“And the second thing?”
“McLachlan called the girl Mary. Not Parr, as one might expect from a notorious degenerate describing the poor girl he has ruined for his sport. No, he knew and used her Christian name instead. There is an intimacy there which spoke of strong feeling.”
“I see,” I said. “But news of this carriage journey came to you only some time later, long after the event?”
“It was. I had no way of ascertaining where the carriage had gone and, after our abrupt removal from Major McLachlan’s house, no way in which to find out. Of course, I went to the back door in the guise of a destitute man looking for work, hoping to obtain the information from a servant, but the door was slammed in my face. Clearly, the major, or Murray more likely, had warned the staff to be on their guard.
“I did, however, have one avenue open to me.”
“McLachlan’s address in Paris!” I exclaimed, recalling the card I had given Holmes.
“Quite correct, Watson. It was for that reason that I had to leave you so abruptly. I had no way of knowing how long McLachlan would stay in the same hotel, so I rushed to catch the first boat to France. As it happened, he had moved on by the time I arrived in Paris, and it took me several days to track him down to a small pension in the Rue Blomet.”
“What did he say? I assume that Mary Parr was not present?”
“She was not,
and McLachlan denied even knowing her name. He simply repeated that he was happy to write on your behalf to the courts, pleading for clemency and stating his own belief that you were innocent, but he could not help with my search for a missing maid.”
“Could you not have brought Lestrade along? He might have been able to convince the French police to arrest McLachlan.”
“On what charge? Besides, even if somehow he had been convicted of a crime, it would have brought us no nearer the real killer, and your exoneration. Better instead to wait, and hope that his murderous mistress would attempt to join him in Paris. It is to that hope which Lestrade and I have clung for this past year.”
“There has been a notice with her description posted at every port for twelve months now,” Lestrade added. “Mr. Holmes was sure that Mr. McLachlan had her hidden away somewhere, waiting for you to be hanged and any interest in the case to disappear.”
“I was not sure, Lestrade,” Holmes chided the inspector. “I merely hoped. It was for that reason that we could not tell you, Watson. Imagine the tension you would have felt, every day hoping for news and yet none arriving.”
I understood his reasoning, and was thankful to both of them for the pains they had taken to clear my name. But one question still nagged at the back of my mind.
“Why did you assume that the maid had killed Miss McLachlan? Why not Alistair McLachlan himself?”
“Do you have so little faith in me, Watson? It was obvious from very early on that the killer was a woman. Sarah McLachlan may have wandered somewhat in her wits, but she remained a lady, and would hardly have thought it proper to appear dressed for bed in front of a strange man. From there, the strong likelihood was that the girl who bade you treat her ailing grandmother and the murderer must be one and the same.” He stopped, and tilted his head in consideration. “I would have arrived at this conclusion earlier, had I not erroneously assumed that Potter acted in good faith. His insistence that you – or someone of similar stature – was to blame, caused me to wonder whether two people were involved, the girl to settle the victim and a man to carry out the deed. But if that was the case, why did Miss McLachlan not struggle? Of course, once I had the opportunity to examine the room in which she was killed, I was satisfied that only one person had been present, and confident that that person was female.”
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Improbable Prisoner Page 23
