29. THE CASE OF THE PINT OF GIN

Sometimes the law of the land can be flawed, and mistakes made...

“That Flora is a little Minx, Holmes,” I said, half seriously and half amused. Mrs Hudson had decided to train a girl from the streets into the arts of serving more genteel people than the poor half-starved lass had ever been acquainted with previously, and the kindly act was showing signs of becoming a problem due mostly to the child’s lively personality.

“It’s because she’s never known any better, Watson,” said Holmes, peering into a microscope. “I’m about to start writing a treatise on how to determine the time of death from the evolution. of the maggot. Take a look at this and tell me what you think.”

I peered into the lens of his microscope at a frighteningly enlarged image of a wriggling monstrosity, and shuddered.

“I don’t see how you can judge much from a creepy-crawly like that, Holmes,” I said.

“Look Watson: the fly lays its eggs on a potential food supply, say dead and rotting meat, for its offspring before casting the future of those little mites to the four winds, so to speak, and once the eggs hatch and become grubs a skilled pathologist should be able to calculate how long the corpse has been putrefying and when life became death.”

“And how does that help when we’re giving chase to a killer?” I asked, though I already guessed the answer and had to grudgingly admit that it was a clever way of creating a time-line when a crime has been committed.

“It is another weapon in the eternal battle against the criminal mind,” Holmes pointed out.

He was about to elaborate on the various natural methods he was devising, mostly to do with the decay of flesh and the life-cycle of various creatures, a lecture I’d already heard twice that day, when Mrs Hudson burst in.

“There’s a police constable downstairs wanting to take our Flora away,” she said, her face troubled as if the arm of the law was actually reaching out for herself.

“He says she’s to hang,” sniffed Mrs Hudson, “he says as she’s the one as attacked old Ma Kinsley on her way home from the gin ship, and stole her pint of gin that was fresh from the barrel before battering her over the head and taking the life out of her!”

“Mrs Kinsley, the soak?” I asked, “the old woman who’s probably rotten inside due to the way she pours gin down her throat?”

“Now now, Watson, it’s not right to speak ill of the dead,” said Holmes shaking his head. “Tell me, Mrs Hudson, did she commit the crime? Watson was only saying a few moments ago that the girl can be a little wayward…?”

“I’d swear she didn’t,” declared Mrs Hudson, dabbing one eye with a a freshly laundered handkerchief. “The silly old soak, as you calls her, Doctor, was battered over the head ten nights ago in the early hours, and the constable’s so fed up with trying to find a killer to pin it on that he’s decided our Flora fits the bill, which she don’t.”

“If she’s innocent she’d got nothing to fear,” murmured Holmes.

Mrs Hudson stared at him in disbelief. “You know that’s not true, Mr Holmes,” she said firmly, “you know that more innocents go the gallows than guilty parties! And if the constable and that Lestrade inspector get set on blaming our Flora, then our Flora will swing for the offence and nobody will be able to stop it!”

“What makes you so sure of her innocence, Mrs Hudson?” I asked, “after all, she’s had a tough life on the streets and probably swallowed enough gin herself, to keep herself warm on cold nights.”

“She was here with me, and there can be no doubt!” declared Mrs Hudson in a voice that suggested she would brook no contradiction. “And anyways, I can tell a soak when I sees one and she’s no soak. But that reprobate of a fellow, Timmy Mangold with the glass eye and dirty old stick as he uses to tap-tap-tap his way along, he swears as he saw her actually swigging a whole pint of gin not half an hour after the old woman was battered.”

“And where’s Flora now?” asked Holmes, showing real interest for the first time.

“That constable’s taken her, and she’ll be before the beak and then hanged!” wept Mrs Hudson, “and she ain’t done it!”

“Come, Watson, Scotland Yard!” snapped Holmes. “After all, the girl is one of us and we must always look after our own!”

He led me snappily down the stairs and out of 221b, onto Baker Street. In moments he’d hailed a cab and we were on our way to Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan police.

“I don’t like this, Watson,” he muttered, “whether the girl Flora is innocent or guilty, the least she deserves in a decent chance to defend herself, and she won’t get that. And Mrs Hudson is quite right. Too many innocents are taken to the gallows, though things are not as bad as they were in the past by all accounts!”

“One innocent swinging for no good reason is one too many, Holmes,” I told him. “And I do know that Lestrade and his men don’t always get it right. They take one look at the accused and if they don’t like the look of what they see they find plenty of reasons to hang them!”

“Too true, Watson,” murmured Holmes. “Come: we are here!”

Lestrade was in his office and looked surprised to see us, for usually we put in an appearance when he sent for us to assist in any one of his more difficult cases.

“I hear you have our maid in custody,” snapped Holmes, “and I demand to know on what grounds!”

“The Flora witch?” asked Lestrade, amusement showing in his eyes, “I’m surprised you associate with lowlife like that piece of filth!” he added.

To Holmes that amounted to a personal insult. In his eyes the unbelievably trustworthy Mrs Hudson had selected Flora to be trained by herself for service, and if Mrs Hudson said the girl was alright then alright she was.

“It’s not good enough, Lestrade!” he grated, “Mrs Hudson swears by the child!”

“The constable says she’s as guilty as sin, so guilty as sin she is,” said Lestrade darkly. “There can be no doubt. We have a witness.”

“And what is your own opinion?” asked Holmes, seeing instantly a chink in Lestrade’s argument.

“Well, naturally I’m a busy man and can’t see to the details of every case,” he spluttered in reply, “but you can take it from me, the constable’s got his finger on the pulse. Yes, that’s where it is: on the pulse!”

“And which constable might that be?” asked Holmes, “after all, if I’m to defend young Flora I must see the accuser!”

“Constable? Which constable? I don’t know off-hand,” grumbled Lestrade. “Look, Holmes, this is becoming a nuisance. We’ve got our killer and that’s all there is to be said on the matter.”

“The name of the constable?” asked Holmes with that determined expression we knew so well.

“Constable Mangold, I believe, and no straighter officer is there in my force!”

“Ha!” almost shouted Holmes, “I see the potential for all sorts of wrongdoing here! I demand a full investigation! I need to know why your witness...”

“Reliable witness,” put in Lestrade,

“I want to know why it’s old Timmy Mangold who’s your reliable witness when it’s his own nephew, Constable Mangold, who’s solved the case for you using his own blind uncle’s testimony as evidence!”

“They’re not … he’s not …. stammered Lestrade.

“But they are and he is,” smirked Holmes. “And let me inform you, Inspector, that I have a considerably more reliable witness who is prepared to swear on a whole pile of Bibles if necessary that Flora was nowhere near the soa… Mrs Kinsley when she was killed!”

“You have? And who might that be?” sneered Lestrade.

“Mrs Hudson if you must know, and unless you release Flora here and now I can absolutely guarantee that she’ll not let you anywhere past the front door of 221b, not now and not until the end of time! And there will be an awful high-powered investigation, chaired, no doubt, at parliamentary level by my own brother Mycroft, into how an innocent young girl, a child even, can be tortured under the threat of the noose!”

“We don’t...” stammered Lestrade.

“The word noose is enough,” breathed Holmes. “Fetch the girl! Come, Watson, we’ll wait downstairs where the air is cleaner! And maybe you can see how the life-cycle of the dirty blue-bottle grub can help even Lestrade in detection.”

“Really, Holmes?” I stammered.

“Really, Watson. The dirty little grub told dirty little lies, but we, you and I, saw straight through them.”

“We did, Holmes?”

He laughed. “Ah. Here comes the girl. Come, Watson, let’s take her home to Mrs Hudson and her nice hot tea-pot!”

© Peter Rogerson 19.08.17