Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets Read Online Free PDF Page B

The item drew Holmes’s attention immediately.
    “What have you got there, my girl?” he said, crouching. She eyed him, lips pulled back in a snarl and then, having made her point, let him take it from her mouth.
    “Is that a horseshoe?” Watson asked.
    “It is indeed. French, by the looks of it.” Holmes wiped away the dog spittle, dirt and grasses. “Made for hard riding. It’s well- worn, but you can see here how the heel was much thicker than is preferred in England. One of the calkins has broken off, but this was quality work. Expensive, too, I should think. It could have been repaired and used a while yet.” He turned the thing over and over in his hands. “The rider must have been travelling fast, and either didn’t notice the loss—which is highly unlikely—or dare not return to search for it.”
    Tully’s son, a youth of twelve, overheard the exchange and said excitedly, “Could belong to the fellow that robbed Bill Tucker’s coach in May—” The rest of his speculation was forestalled by his father’s hand on the back of his head.
    Holmes put the horseshoe into the pocket of his coat.
    There were no further incidents, and by noon they had arrived at the bustling little town of Stourbridge.
    “A LAS , J OHN ,” THE Reverend Lilly began with a wistful smile, “since the good Mrs. Mills passed a year ago, the secret of her dumplings has sadly passed with her. Alice tries, the dear, but she hasn’t her mother’s deft hand. She may—that is, I had hoped she would acquire the knack. I only took her on as cook three months ago. She was working the dairy farms before that.”
    Watson remembered Alice Mills as a round-faced, sturdy little thing chasing chickens around the yard, black curls flying, dark eyes gleaming mischief. Full of laughter and endless questions, she’d been. Full of the Devil, some had said, though not in earnest, he was certain. She’d the sort of high spirits and bright disposition that made people fond and forgiving, not resentful. Her father had died a soldier in the battle of Worchester, though rumour had it he’d been a gypsy, not a soldier at all, and the soldier-tale mere invention of Mrs. Mills. Apparently this bit of gossip had calcified into a ‘fact’ used to explain Alice’s dark eyes and her apparent penchant for murder by witchcraft.
    Watson drank to the memory of Mrs. Mill’s and to her dumplings, then filled the hollow of his stomach with the perfectly serviceable bread and cheese provided. His associate was somewhat more measured in taking his repast.
    Holmes had gone out immediately upon arriving at the reverend’s house, the horseshoe weighing heavy in the pocket of his coat. When he’d returned, a quarter hour ago, the horseshoe had not returned with him.
    Both refreshed by food and drink, they could now give full attention to the reason for their visit.
    “Who has accused the girl of murder?” Holmes asked. It was not the question Watson assumed he would have asked first.
    Rev. Lilly adjusted a wig that didn’t need adjusting, a telling habit indicative of the effort the old man was making not to pass judgement. “The dead boy’s mother, Margaret Bowen, and his employer, Wenzel Ternac. According to them, Jimmy had spurned her love and she’d set about exacting revenge. Jimmy and Alice had been overheard arguing some days before his death.”
    “About what?”
    “That he was going to London with Mr Ternac and she... was not.”
    “And this conversation was overheard by whom?”
    “By Ternac. He claims she threatened the boy with a ‘hexen,’ as he called it.” At Holmes’s expression, Rev. Lilly sighed. “I know it must seem ridiculous in this new age of science. But Alice is like many country girls, in that she knows the lore of the love charm, a few medicinal herbs, some tinctures and talismans and the like. Nothing more sinister, though, I’m certain of it. She was sweet on the boy, it’s true—and perhaps he didn’t return her