“I believe, Mr Chastelnau, that you have been a martyr to scrofula, have you not?” I asked.
“I have heard it sometimes called that, sir. I do not quite know what it might be.”
“Your brother may have teased you unkindly?”
“He did sometimes, sir, but I would not kill a man for that-nor kill him for anything.”
Sherlock Holmes intervened.
“Dr Watson tells you that it is scrofula but have you sometimes heard it called the King’s Evil?”
“Mostly that, sir. I was taught how a king a thousand years ago, Edward the Confessor, was given power by the Pope to cure it. Afterwards a king or queen had only to touch a man or a woman. They might have such a curse as mine taken from them.
Ornaments blessed by a king might do it. There was King Edward III. He could cure poor people by giving them a gold coin with St Michael on one side and a ship on the other. An Angel, they called that coin.”
For the second time since our arrival in Suffolk, I heard a few lines of Shakespeare quoted, this time by Holmes.
“The King cured, did he not, what the Bard calls strangely-visited people? I daresay you are not familiar with the play of Macbeth.
The mere despair of surgery he cures,
Hanging a golden stamp about their necks,
Put on with holy prayers.”
“Who would look at me, as I am?” asked Abraham Chastelnau quietly.
“Because of the evil within you?”
“With the wickedness coming out through the sores, as I was taught, sir.”
I could not let this mumbo-jumbo go on.
“I had better tell you,” I said, “that what you have is not an evil curse but a chronic tubercular condition. It is not as grave as consumption but it will produce hard red swellings which commonly suppurate.”
“And what is all that, sir?”
“It is advice that you should seek a better diet, sunlight, exercise and bathing. All those together will take you a good long way.”
“And the Chester Cross?” Holmes inquired of Chastelnau, “If that is what it was.”
Light returned to the poor fellow’s eyes.
“I cannot tell, sir. It came from the oil-cake works in my father’s time. It had been thrown to one side, left in a drawer with the pebbles. I took them all when we came away. I cannot say where it was from. I heard it was bought with the pebbles as tinker’s magic for a shilling or two in my grandfather’s time. We never knew where the tinker had it from. But I hoped it might be the very one His Majesty King John had blessed all those years ago. For then surely its touch might cure me.”
Holmes led him to a chair and sat him down.
“Now, if you please, tell us the story of the sands.”
Abraham Chastelnau knew what was meant but looked up at us without a qualm.
“Roland and I never got on, sir, but the cross and the stones was the worst of it. Trumpery, he called them. When we first went to the Old Light he swore to throw them all into the sea.”
“And that was why you cut a gap in the ledge at the back of the clock case and slid the metal fragment in its place?” I suggested. Abraham Chastelnau nodded.
“And the pebbles I wrapped and pushed to the back of the table drawer. That Sunday night, I went to wind the mechanism of the clock and crank the chain of the lantern weight. It was just before eight o’clock. But when I opened the clock-case, I saw the metal piece had gone. I never bothered to wind anything but went to the table drawer. Four of the five pebbles had gone. He’d missed one of them because I always carried it with me for luck.”
“And the letter?” I asked, “Surely he would have taken that?”
Abraham Chastelnau shook his head.
“No, sir, for he was no hand at reading.”
“You heard the shot?”
“Just as I was looking in the drawer. I heard his gun and went straight down, not knowing what he might do. He always said I was a simpleton to believe such things. He’d throw them in the sea. It was dark and wet all round by then, no hard sand underfoot.”
“You fought him?”
“I went for him to get the piece of the cross and the pebbles back. He’d got them in his hands. As we struggled, I said where was the harm in them. I’m stronger than he was and he’d been drinking. He did sometimes. I got the better of him and threw him down but I thought the pebbles fell. He tried to sling the piece of the cross towards the sea but it never went far. When we broke away from each other, I went down on my knees to find the stones and the metal. Roland ran off, along the beach with the tide after him and the drink driving him on. I found no pebbles, after all. I still ran after him, not to do harm, but he turned and raised the gun. I was the stronger and he knew it but I daren’t get near his gun-not even to save him. He drew further off and further off.”
“Did he fire?” I asked.
“He kept making to. The distance between us seemed to grow. I tried to get closer, shouting at him to come back and not to be a damned fool, for he was in softer sand and almost to his knees in water. He might still have got back but then he fired in earnest. The sea was so far in I hardly heard the shot above the surf but I saw the flash. Something went wrong when he fired that seemed to knock him off his balance into the surf. The shot went well past me, but I jumped down and stayed down, for he might have reloaded the other barrel before this. When I looked up I couldn’t see him again, only the surf booming in. High tide and low tide there is miles apart. When it come in, that sea can move like an express train. With dark coming on, there was such water between us, all of a sudden, that I couldn’t get near him nor see him. Only the surf. And that was all.”
“Did you know that you were seen from the church tower?” I asked.
“I thought we must have been noticed when I heard the rook rifle. If they saw us fighting, not for the first time, and only one come back, they’d swear I’d choked him or chased him to his death. I’d never stand a chance. Better they should think we’d both gone into the sea, Roland in one of our fights and me on the way home. I went back to the Old Light, changed the shutters a little, wound up the chain, and then came away. I thought of everything, except the letter in the drawer.”
“And then you came here?” I Iolmes asked.
“I lived rough on the fens for several days. I know how to do that. When my sister came to you in London, she didn’t know I was alive. That’s true. I kept clear almost a week. Then I heard they’d found the body. After that I came to her, having nowhere else to go.”
From the settee, where she had been sitting with her face in her hands, Miss Chastelnau spoke at last.
“I do not own this house or much that is in it but I have a little money. I would give it all to him. I thought if he could get to Hull, with no one looking for him because he was believed drowned, he could find a crossing to Amsterdam and be safe there. It would take only a few hours.”
“But I could not do it,” Chastelnau said, “What was there for such as I in a place like that?”
“Admirable,” said Holmes sardonically, “Tell me Miss Chastelnau, how long would your little money last in Amsterdam? What would happen to your brother when it was gone? He does not speak Dutch nor does he know the people. He has no work. What is there then, except the danger that before long an inquisitive observer may put two and two together?”
There was a silence in the ornate little room with its view of the sunny garden and the gravel drive. Then Miss Chastelnau spoke again.
“If you do not propose to betray us, what would you have us do?”
My friend turned to the young man first.
“Because my name is Sherlock Holmes, there are people who believe I set myself above the law. On rare occasions that is true.
If I am to judge you now, I believe that what you have told us closely resembles the truth. I believe that you did not set out for the beach with murder in your heart. Your story of your brother having the pebbles appears to be true, for they were found in his pocket. Both barrels of the shotgun had been fired, though only one was reported as being used to summon you. He meant you harm but he drowned without injuring you. Perhaps the post-mortem will find that he was in drink. These facts are not conclusive evidence of your innocence but they are enough for belief. Yet even so they would be closely-fought.”