38. THE CASE OF THE FLYING MACHINE

Holmes and Watson are in pursuit of a petty crook

“The Raven, when he flies, knows a darned sight more than us,” muttered Holmes as we struggled through skin-ripping, trouser-tearing brambles in our pursuit of young Ginger Grump, an ex-soldier who had joined the criminal classes and was gaining a reputation as a successful petty thief.

We’d been after him for days and although it would be untrue to say he had successfully evaded us, we were still in pursuit and in danger of slipping further behind. He was accused of a serious fire-arms crime in which an aviator had been shot at in his make-shift flying machine, and had died, the whole crime having been witnessed by a priest who happened to be on his rounds at the time.

“What’s that about ravens, Holmes?” I asked, batting away a ferocious thorn-laden stem that all-but took my eye out.

“The raven,” he said, “can fly, and we can’t.”

“That’s one thing the avian world has over us,” I agreed, “flying machines or no flying machines.”

“Look! There he is! Just bobbing over that rise!” hissed Holmes suddenly.

I saw the sprouting pate of red hair, and at the same time heard a howl of absolute agony.

“Something’s got the blighter,” I said.

“Get your revolver at the ready,” ordered Holmes grimly, “I believe this is the last lap. If I read things rightly he’s put his foot in one of Farmer Hickory’s traps and is probably begging for someone to come his way with surgical instruments, prepared to amputate that leg and thus reduce his pain!”

I thought that to be quite a leap from the evidence of an agonised bellow and a bobbing head, but said nothing. We fought our way onto the pathway that led towards where Grump was still shrieking, and from then on our way became so much easier I started to wonder what I had been worried about.

Holmes had been right, of course. The ginger-headed criminal had one leg firmly gripped in the jaws of a vicious looking man-trap and the more he tried to pull it free the greater the flow of blood that was already staining the ground around where he still danced as though dancing would help him rather than hinder him.

“You’ll lose that leg if you don’t keep still,” observed Holmes harshly. “Though when we get you to Scotland Yard I don’t doubt you’ll set in play a series events that will lead to you losing more than your leg when you find yourself dangling at the end of a rope!”

“I never done it, though!” wept Ginger Grump. “They’ll blame me, they always do, but it weren’t me!”

“What didn’t you do, Grump?” I asked him.

“Shoot that flying machine down! I never had a gun and I never shot it!”

“But the witness saw you, Grump,” Holmes told him, “the witness, a reliable man of the cloth saw you!”

“The priest? Reliable! He’s got some funny ideas, to be thought reliable! But it’s true as I was there. But I never done it. Get me out, sir, please get me out!”

“Watson!” ordered Holmes, not liking to take his eyes off a desperado but knowing he needed to be released. There was a simple but rusted catch and I released Grump from a trap that in my opinion should have never been made, it was so cruel with steel jaws that clamped firmly onto flesh, biting into it, forced by a powerful spring.

Meanwhile Holmes had produced a pair of handcuffs and was forcing the felon’s arms behind his back.

“He died, you know, the pilot,” he told Grump almost conversationally. “He wasn’t so high off the ground … the French have much better machines … but he landed awkwardly when the bullet stopped the engine, and it was all up for him, I’m afraid, and you’ll hang for killing him. And, no doubt, for setting back the British air effort by half a decade.”

“It was the priest,” growled the red headed crook, still weeping as a consequence of the pain the trap had put him through.

“What? A priest with a gun? I’ve never heard of such a thing!” I put in.

“Just a moment, Watson, more haste less speed,” murmured Holmes, “you say, Grump, that you actually saw the priest with a gun? You saw him take aim at the flying machine? You saw him fire at it?”

“And heard it,” muttered the bleeding crook, “now get me to the wise woman, if you don’t mind, she who lives on Swinger’s Corner down yon way,” he pointed down the rough track we were on, “she knows how to bandage wounds, and I can’t afford a doctor.”

“Let me get this straight,” growled Holmes, “here we have a well known petty thief who swears he saw a priest fire a gun at a newfangled flying machine when it was in the air, and at the same time we have the priest who swears on his sacred oath that he saw the aforementioned petty thief fire a gun at the same flying machine. Tell me, Watson, who are the gentlemen of Scotland Yard going to believe?”

“The priest, of course,” I said, convinced, “but let me look at that leg of the poor devil. It’s a bad wound, is that and I doubt any run of the mill wise woman would do a good job on it, and I’m a doctor who’s fixed up worse wounds than this.”

I ignored the man’s plea to be taken to his wise woman, though I have no doubt that she was one of the army of such ladies who have picked up great skill over the years, from helping with the delivering of babies to laying out the dead, and all medical tricks in between. Grump’s wound wasn’t actually as bad as it looked and I was able to tidy it up and bind it with a strip that I tore off my own shirt tail, grateful that I had been expecting to venture in rough terrain that morning when I had dressed and had consequently chosen in an old shirt that was already well past its best.

“If you reckon I’m due for the gallows, why have you treated me so fair,” asked Grump when I had finished.

“It’s what I do,” I told him. “We all have our tasks in life. You pick pockets, I mend broken flesh.”

“But I don’t shoot guns,” he said moodily, “I never shot a gun in my life ‘cept when I was in the army, fighting in wars and being shot at in return.”

“You were overseas?” I asked him.

“That I was, and then when I was conv … conv … convalesced out I had to do whatever I could to get some bread, and if that involved taking from those who could afford to have it taken then that’s what I did.”

In all truth that sounded reasonable to me. I have often worried about the tragic lives of those who serve the country with valour and honour and then fall on hard times when their fighting days are over. It has long been a problem that nobody has succeeded in solving, possibly because it would cost too much. That’s the trouble with out times: so much is down to cost, and humanity is lower down the list of what’s apparently important.

“And you saw the Priest with the gun?” asked Holmes, interrupting my train of thought.

He nodded. “That much I swear,” he said devoutly.

“And I believe you,” said Holmes to my huge surprise. “I will make sure your neck is kept safely away from the rope, Mr Grump, but there may be awkward times ahead for you. Meanwhile I will see the priest and challenge his story! One of the obstacles to true justice lies in a fellow’s station in life. Take an ex-soldier who has fought bravely and you call him a rogue and a rascal, take a priest who claims to be a doorkeeper to the hereafter and you call him an honest man who is incapable of doing wrong. But I know better than that.”

“Really, Holmes!” I mumbled.

“Your priest won’t hang, Watson,” said Holmes, “for that isn’t the way of things. We don’t hang priests or clergymen of any description. They are untouchable. But neither should we hang the destitute soldier, especially if he’s done little wrong. No, we will defend Mr Grump to the ends of the Earth. I can see no motive on his part, no cause for him to fire a weapon he doesn’t have and bring down a machine that is of little interest to him. But on the other hand the priest no doubt saw the aviator’s attempt to challenge his god by reaching towards the heavens in a machine, and wanted to put a stop to it. I know his views of old, and they are like that.”

“But shooting, Holmes? A priest?”

Holmes looked at me seriously. “A man of religion is capable of almost anything,” he said soberly, “and many times in the sad annals of humanity such believers have started wars. So why not try to stem the tide of progress and shoot down a flying machine as it ventures towards Heaven?”

“That’s what he did, sir, that’s what he did,” put in Ginger Grubb, and, you know, I believed him too.

© Peter Rogerson 29.08.17