The reader will very likely wonder what on earth could bring me to such a drastic resolution after what must seem like a comical encounter with a family more remarkable for its oddness than its viciousness. But the short time I had spent observing the Mundys had been enough to inform me of the real state of marital relations in the household. It was quite clear that Abel Mundy was a wife beater.
For a number of reasons, this would not have been apparent to most visitors to the house. The style of Mrs Mundy’s dress concealed all but her face and hands, and these were unmarked. The outward signs of the abuse were very few, though apparent enough to me.
I had noticed, when she was carrying dishes between the table and the kitchen, that, while she had the use of both arms, her left elbow was carried very close to her chest, and that she winced from the effort of lifting a heavy pile of plates. This disability would at least have occasioned comment in any normal house, but here it passed without remark. Secondly, though she was, I concluded, in some pain, it struck me forcibly that she was endeavouring to conceal it from me. It occurred to me that my presence was a kind of added torment for her — but whether this was her husband’s motive for inviting me there, I could not say. The show of fortitude was a necessary charade, and I could easily guess the consequences for her if she let it slip for a moment. There is no victim more cowed than the one who conspires with her persecutor.
The final proof was in the eyes of her children. Even the younger, the boy, displayed an anxious wariness that was entirely in advance of his years, and which increased whenever Mr Mundy gestured to his wife, or when, in response to a gesture, she had to gather or fetch articles from the kitchen, all the time in pain, and all the time concealing it.
My story would be a short one if this single evening were the whole extent of my involvement in the lives of the Mundys. Even a determined rescuer would have had a difficult time overcoming the double isolation that afflicted them on account of their deafness and the strictness of their keeper. They could not have been more isolated were Mr Mundy their gaoler in fact, as indeed he was in all other respects, or were they living in solitude on an island, like Crusoe, in the South Seas. But as it fell out, my curiosity pricked me on to discover more about their situation, and Providence — or whatever we may call it — had marked me down for their Friday, and the means of their deliverance.
I did not box the following week, and from this moment I date my inconsistent attendance and eventual abandonment of the regime. Instead, I took some pains in composing an invitation, ostensibly to reciprocate the hospitality the Mundys had shown me, which I delivered in person at the hour when I knew Abel Mundy would be occupied at Fernshaw’s school of arms.
I guessed, rightly as it fell out, that there was no chance of my invitation being accepted, but that was hardly my purpose in extending it. I wanted the opportunity to test my impressions of the household in Mr Mundy’s absence and, by passing on my name and address to the family, to offer Mrs Mundy my confidence. I gambled that the slim hope of deliverance might prompt her to communicate with me herself. My only misgiving was that her husband might hold her responsible in some way for my unexpected arrival and the consequence for her would be another beating.
This fear was confirmed by her behaviour on my return. My appearance seemed to cause her alarm at first, and it was a minute or two before I was able to convey to her the reason for my visit, and before she remembered her manners and gave me a cup of tea, brewed, as she indicated with gestures, in an Indian style with sugar and pods of cardamom.
The younger child having been set down for a nap, we were a party of three. Conversation on all sides was naturally limited, and though I consoled myself that I had accomplished my task simply by visiting, I knew that I would need to approach the subject more directly in order to assure her that I was an ally. Though I did not allude to it, it was immediately apparent that Mr Mundy had been less careful with his attentions since my previous visit, because his wife was marked with a black eye that was very noticeable in spite of her dark skin. It was a shocking detail, all the more so because I had seen what he was capable of in a boxing ring against a grown man his size and weight. I wondered then — I wonder still — that he had not blinded her.
Chance accomplished what my calculations had been unable to. The fire (much smaller in the absence of Mr Mundy) burning very low in the grate, the daughter was dispatched to the cellar to fill the scuttle. As soon as I heard her footsteps descending the stairs, I seized a pen and wrote on a piece of paper:
‘How came you by your injury?’
To this, Mrs Mundy responded, smiling, with a well-rehearsed mime of a domestic accident.
With my heart pounding in case we were discovered by the daughter, I decided then to take an approach that would give her some idea of how much I already suspected. I took up the pen again and wrote: ‘It is not right that your husband beats you.’
Mrs Mundy stared at it for a full minute without responding, until I was sure she found it illegible (my nerves had rendered the penmanship less clear than on the previous inscription). Then, surely anticipating her daughter’s return, she threw the note into the fire of a sudden and fled from the room. When she returned, she had composed herself for her daughter’s sake, but it was clear to me that she had shed tears in the interval. As, very often, a hardship that seems supportable during its infliction grieves us most painfully when someone aims to relieve it with tenderness, so I believe the mere thought of hope was enough to plunge her into fresh despair.
I took my leave of the Mundys shortly thereafter, with no very great expectation of seeing the mother and children again. I received by post Mr Mundy’s regrets that he was unable to accept my kind invitation.
The following week I boxed as usual. I had a slight trepidation of seeing Mr Mundy, and had prepared an elaborate explanation for my having delivered the letter myself, which involved several unexpected errands across the city that had taken me into the vicinity of his home. As it happened, my explanations were unnecessary. Mundy was curt but civil, beat hell out of his opponent, and then left the gymnasium to do the same to his wife.
I heard nothing more for weeks after that, by which time my zeal to help had faded into the vague hope that my interference had not made Mrs Mundy’s life worse than it was already. Then, on the two-month anniversary of my first meeting with Mrs Mundy, I received a letter from her. As she requested, I destroyed the original, but the substance of it remains with me, almost four decades later. ‘Dear Mr Holmes,’ it began.
‘You gave me hope to suppose that you understood what kind of a man I am married to. Of whatever you believe him capable, I assure you the truth is worse. That he does not love me, I always knew; that he beats me, I must accept; but that he has forced my daughter to submit to the vilest attentions, I cannot. How you may help me, I do not know; it is more for the sake of my children than my own that I write. I am too weak to act on my own behalf, but I am fearful for my little one. I pray you to burn this letter.’
This was not the communication I had foreseen — I did not imagine that Mundy was capable of raping his own daughter — but in the months that had passed since my visit to Fenchurch Street, I had brooded on a number of outcomes; I had anticipated one that required abrupt and forceful intervention and made preparations for it.