A study in bruises – Part 4

Sherlock:

"Well, as I told my wife only on our last case that on occasion little to go on can be just as telling as a whole lot of information, and it is certainly better than too much to go on, when one has to sift through what is important or not," I continued when the pudding had been brought in.

"That I can easily believe. I mean, how is one supposed to know what is important or not?" Bertram threw in, happily munching away on his trifle. "I have to say that nothing has changed much since we first met and I still wouldn't know where even to begin."

"Which is normal, I suppose," Harriet assured him, smiling. "As with many things it is a matter of experience. Now, look at us, we are here talking about things that most people would, and rightly so, hardly consider an appropriate conversation during dinner. Yet, with four doctors, one detective and two doctor's wives, no-one as yet has batted an eyelid. Why? Because we are used to it. I dare say, in the very beginning, none of us knew how to approach a problem, whether medical nor criminal and there isn't a single person who does not recoil at first at the sight of a severed limb or serious wound."

"Very true, Hattie. At this point in the story, I had, already a certain amount of experience, though as you will see later, not quite enough, and so, after I had gathered the few facts given to me and which you so aptly recalled, I did, what I still do, sit down, smoke a pipe or two..."

"Or twenty," Watson remarked dryly.

"Or twenty," I admitted grinning under the chuckles of the others. "So, I returned to my rooms, buying a substantial stash of tobacco on my way home, where I curled up on my bed for lack of a sofa to think things over. As Harriet said, all I had to go on was a dead boy with inconsistent bruises, who was unpopular amongst his peers, as it happens so often when one appears to be more intelligent than oneself at that age. However, as I already mentioned, and which puzzled me at the time, not only did the other pupils shun him, but so did the teachers. There could certainly be no jealousy due to any preference."

"What about the stepfather? Did he not, perhaps, put his own son under pressure at seeing that his stepson did so much better?"

"Ah, very good point and the answer to this question, dear Watson is, yes. Though pressure perhaps is too strong a word. But his son would certainly have felt humiliated, especially since he had been an only child, never needing to compete for his parent's attention. Still, was that enough to kill someone? Beat up, yes – which by the way, might have explained the bruises and their various stages, but kill?"

"Well, it is all a question of disposition, I dare say and could he not have killed his stepbrother accidentally and then, upon realising what he had done, thrown the body out of the window to hide his deed?"

"Of course. And admittedly that was exactly my line of thinking at first. It would be such a wonderfully simple conclusion and yet... - While many a solution is as simple as anything, there was something that didn't make it seem likely, but at this point I had to find out, what it was. It was nothing but a hunch, intuition, if you like, but there was nothing definitive."

"But could not the very same conclusion have led the inspector to not dig deeper?" my wife mused thoughtfully, leaning back in her chair as all of us had done by now after the ample meal.

"Yes."

"That is disturbing. Should an inspector not be a man interested in justice?" Mary Watson inquired.

"Of course. Are you alright, dear?"

Harriet's hand had flown to her stomach quite suddenly and a startled expression had crossed her face.

"Yes, I am fine. - You did serve a very fine dinner, Mrs Stanford, and I am afraid I have eaten a little too much considering that there isn't quite as much space left in me as there used to be."

"I am glad you enjoyed it," was the lady of the house's cheerful reply. "But I have to say, I am getting increasingly curious about this case."

"What, only now?" her husband laughed. "We've been on tenterhooks since at least the main course."

"Yes, well, me, too. But now I am getting impatient! So, what was it that made the simple solution an unlikely one?"

"At first nothing and I was almost tempted to go with it, when one tiny detail came to mind. - The spot the trellis had broken. Surely, if a body had been thrown out the window, and by that time I was fairly certain that the boy had died before he was pushed out, surely it would have broken further to the top, especially with the body lying a couple of feet from the wall. It's a matter of simple physics, isn't it? Of course, a fall in itself should be perfectly vertical, however, if you take into consideration that a body had to be pushed, there also was a horizontal force, meaning that it must have fallen in a slight curve, and obviously not in a serpentine manner. One can easily calculate a fall, its curve, speed and so forth, but only if you got all the data. I didn't. There were unknowns, so an experiment it was," I explained, perhaps a bit too long-winded, for I could see the others getting impatient. "In a nick I was back on my way to the scene, trying to persuade the headmaster to be allowed to throw down a neatly stuffed sack of straw that though it didn't weigh as much as a thirteen-year-old, nor had arms and legs, would still show me roughly how a body would react when thrown out in this spot.I was in luck, the headmaster was out."

"That could hardly be called luck, could it? I mean after all, you wanted to persuade him to test your theory," Watson shook his head in some confusion.

"In this case it could, for there was reason to think that he would not permit me to execute my little experiment. It was lucky, because I chanced upon the mathematics master, a young man, in his early thirties who seems to have been one of the few people who, if not treat the boy with kindness, to at least treat him fairly. I approached him and though he suggested to calculate the boy's fall for me, which I refused, he eventually agreed, and following me up the stairs to the room in question, proved to be quite chatty as well."

"So the boy had at least one friend there, that is some consolation," Agatha Stanford sighed. "I did start to feel sorry for this chappie. He doesn't seem to have done anything to deserve this kind of treatment."

"No, but when politics are involved and even on the smallest scale, it can get dirty very easily. Just look at our own history, which pretty much boils down to a whole court of people all trying to either stay in power, gain power or, if it is neither to at least play games of power by trampling on those who are on a still lower rung of the social ladder."

"Sad but true, I would say. At least every now and then you've got a person standing up to these forces."

"And often with a high price to pay. But that, of course, was not the case in this instance – unless a dismissal would count as such, which in this case it didn't. He was a promising young man and as a matter of fact, he went on to teach at Cambridge for a time before he pursued another line of career, the foundations of which he had already laid even back then, though of course, I was not aware of that."

"And why should you be, Holmes?" Stanford inquired.

"Yes, why should I? But nonetheless, had I know at the time, I might have been able to stop one of the greatest criminal masterminds right there and then."

The baffled expression with which Watson stared at me told me that he had put two and two together.

"Yes, Watson, it was none other than James Moriarty who showed me to the room and let me conduct my experiment. An experiment, that, by the way, confirmed my theory, and was justified by the various variables that I had not known about - and though it proved me right in respect to something being off did little else. For indeed, the sack, which I had acquired at a stable near the school, brushed the upper part of the still fairly solid structure, but didn't break it, and once it had collided with the wall, it ever so slightly trundled and changed direction, now falling at a slight curve that had it land in roughly the same spot the body had ended up in. But as said, Moriarty was in a talkative mood, something that later would put me on my guard, but that then did little else than to rouse my curiosity. I was duly informed that the two brothers had fought that very day, and that it had been him who had broken them apart, sending the earl's son to finish his arithmetic problems while the other lad was sent to the very room from which window he had fallen. That was three hours before the body had been discovered laying outside."

"So he had been alive then and Moriarty had nothing to do with his pupil's death?" Watson asked at the same time my wife asked: "And was he seen alive after that?"

"The answer to your question, Hattie is: No! - The answer to yours, Watson is a bit more complex, I fear. Now we, of course, know that Moriarty is one of the most unscrupulous men ever to walk the earth and since one is always wiser in hindsight, the solution now is an obvious one. But believe me, back then it was not. The worst I could recall then was that while at school he was some daring rake and even that I only remembered because he asked after my brother with whom he went to school and how he and his wife were faring."

"Mycroft is married?" Harriet stuttered in unison with the Watson's.

"Widowed. He got married aged twenty-three and was widowed by the time he turned five and twenty. That is what I told Moriarty and with a sigh he began to speak of the dead boy's situation – how his father had died five years before, how he and his mother got themselves into financial difficulties and how consequently the lady married the earl."

"Which actually raises the question: What was in it for the earl? I mean, marriages in those realms have hardly anything to do with affection," my wife wondered, and rightly so.

"Well, the lady might have been in a quandary, but it was due to the inheritance excluding her as a woman to manage it. But when the earl married her, he adopted the son..."

"And with that gained access to the money she herself could not get at."

"Exactly."

"Did this mean he needed the money?"

"Yes. He had a couple of very expensive habits and naturally they needed funding. He had borrowed money from various people but to have a nice little fortune of his own without needing to rely where the money went was obviously more ideal."

"But that doesn't explain why the earl's stepson was murdered."

"It does, Bertram. He was a young boy who was intelligent and who might have found out what was happening to his inheritance, and as it seemed, did. That instead of managing it for him, his stepfather actually used it for his own pleasures."

"And all of this Moriarty told you?"

"No, of course not. What he told me was how he protected the boy the best he could without offending anyone, how he had spoken to him after sending him to his room and how the boy seemed distraught at the time, but nothing that was not easily explainable by the attack of his stepbrother. The hint was obvious, Moriarty wanted me to believe it had been suicide or an accident, just like Inspector Chipton, I just now remember his name, assumed. Both I couldn't believe in. And though I gave Moriarty the benefit of the doubt, as so many other criminals, he should have kept his mouth shut. He told me rather too much than too little – and Watson might tell you, how suspicious that should make one, just take Mr Stapleton, who wouldn't stop blubbering. It is one thing to be given information, but an over-abundance should make one wonder what is hidden beneath such a flurry of words. At long last, I had already returned back home and was shivering in the cold of my meagre chamber while I waited for the tiny iron stove to heat up, I realised that I had been manipulated and the very next morning I began to gather information about Moriarty with the help of a young journalist named Parker – another name that should sound familiar to you, Watson. To my utter astonishment I found, that there actually was a connection linking him to the earl. To make a long story short, for how one goes about digging through paperwork can hardly be considered as an interesting plot device, I will just tell you the conclusion, especially since my wife looks increasingly tired."

"When I had my little ones I was always tired," Mrs Stanford sighed flashing a comforting smile at Harriet. "Men will never know what a strain it is to carry a child!"

"And carrying two," Mrs Watson added, "must be ultimately worse."

Again! Two...

Harriet only nodded, making me wonder whether she agreed to the statement in general or to the additional strain of carrying twins in particular. Ultimately I lost my thread and glanced rather haplessly around myself.

"The conclusion?" Bertram at last prompted.

"The conclusion is a simple one. Since I already told you that the earl made free use of his stepson's money, and that the boy had found out about it, angry at being treated badly on top of all else, had threatened to reveal everything to the press – a much more substantial threat than going to the police. It could well mean the ruin of the boy's stepfather. As I have said, Moriarty had already laid foundation to his later occupation as a criminal mastermind, and it was how he met the earl, by lending out money he had gotten by committing, or supporting crimes – usually the latter - and the plot to kill the boy was forged and eventually, some time later, when the first storm had been over and the most damning evidence of the earl's doings had been covered, the lad was killed," I finished my tale, with admittedly little skill in regards to story-telling, since by then, my mind had wandered to other things, more important to me at present.

A little flatly I closed: "But, as it was, though there was a lot of circumstantial evidence, nothing could be proven definitively, and that was that. So this was not a case crowned with glory. However, I shared what I had found with Lestrade, and though he couldn't persuade his superior either, to perhaps dig just a little deeper, he agreed with my findings and we've been working together ever since."

"And what about the broken trellis?"

"I never really found out, but I am pretty certain that it had either been smashed deliberately to give the impression the boy had tried to climb down and fallen, and with the police it most certainly worked. It was just at a height where one could reach with a spade or shovel. In the end, the death was ruled an accident, rather than a suicide, and the boy could be buried honourably in consecrated ground. - Are you sure you are alright, dear?"

Again my wife looked somewhat alarmed, conscious even, one hand still resting on her swollen middle.

"Yes perfectly so, Sherlock."

"I do have to say, you do indeed look tired, Harriet," Mary interjected before I could say anything. "And also slightly uncomfortable."

"As said, I think I might have eaten too much and usually, at this time of day, I am ashamed to admit it, I'm ready to fall into bed," she sighed, reaching for my hand.

"Then I would say, we make our way home, my dear."

We did, with the kind assurances of the Stanfords and Mrs Stanford in particular, that they very well knew what my wife was talking about and as it was, it was well past eleven already, and with that, a perfectly acceptable time to go home anyway. Watson and his wife seemed to agree for they, too, took their leave as did Dr Bertram, but not before we had agreed to meet for another dinner some time soon either at my friend's house or our's.

"Now, Hattie, will you please enlighten me what is going on?" I asked, as soon as we had dropped off Dr and Mrs Watson, with whom we had shared a four-wheeler in order to accommodate Mary Watson's wheelchair.

"What do you mean?" she asked, looking honestly confused.

"Your tenseness during dinner, dear."

"I wasn't tense, I am really just tired... - Oh, that you mean! Well, give me your hand, will you? And then let's see what happens."

Carefully she placed it on her stomach and pressed down a little and as if on cue I could feel the slightest of movements beneath.

"I felt them before, but it has never been this distinct."

"Them?"

"The movements..."

"Not possibly 'them' referring to 'babies' instead of baby?" I dug deeper, dreading the answer though unsure whether it was the 'yes' or 'no' I feared.

"Eh, I am not as yet sure, but it is getting increasingly likely," she stammered and then grinned at me sheepishly. "I actually wanted to make sure first before telling you, but yes, I have suspected for some time now, that we might be having twins. But it will be another couple of weeks before I might be able to say for certain. - Are you alright,Sherlock? You look pale all of a sudden."

"I'm scared. - Double double toil and trouble and all that."

"Hm," was my wife's grinning reply, "see it that way, they, if there are indeed two and there might not be, will have each other to play with instead of needing to seek other means of entertainment."

Good point. Very good point! Now I only needed to repeat it to myself whenever panic started to overwhelm me and perhaps, in time, I would even believe it.

A.N.: Sorry for the long wait. But whenever I think all is back to normal the next thing comes up keeping me from writing...