The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird (learn to read books txt) 📕

doll on the Jesus Lock bridge, hoping she would see it. The next I saw it, it was in the lock with the arm missing.’

Holmes glowered at the boy. ‘Is this precisely true?’

‘Yes, sir. She did offer me one thing, Father. May I share this with Mr Holmes?’ begged the deacon. ‘I fear for the young lady, I really do.’

Lamb sighed. ‘Use your judgement, my son. She has been found safe, remember?’

‘Share, young man, and be quick about it,’ said Holmes. ‘You have wasted my time enormously.’

Peregrine Buttons continued to struggle. The moral dilemma of this young clergyman seemed the height of hypocrisy even to me. He had lied to Holmes and gone to great trouble to create a false alarm that caused anguish to at least the girl’s mother, even as it set Holmes on the case. Surely that in itself was some kind of sin.

‘She said she was feeling a great deal of pressure to become engaged. That the pressure had put her near breaking point.’

‘It appears you know this young lady quite well, Mr Buttons,’ said my friend. ‘Then you must also know how she may strike out when she feels cornered. You worry about her, don’t you?’

Buttons was silent. He looked down at his feet. I noticed that Father Lamb was staring at his young disciple unhappily.

Holmes turned to go, then suddenly turned back.

‘What did the writing on the doll say?’

The boy looked embarrassed. ‘I don’t know it by heart. But …’ He reached into a pocket and removed a small folded paper ‘It was a stanza by someone or other. Something about a lock.’’

He handed it to Holmes, who glanced at it, ‘The Rape of the Lock. Pope.’ Holmes snorted. ‘Pope’s poem is a parody. A classicist would recognize it. The lock. Your humour eludes me. What of this missing arm?’

‘I did not pull off the arm. Or throw the doll into the lock. I just sat her there on the footbridge. Dillie walks there most mornings. But I did not throw it in.’

‘Peregrine, my boy,’ said Father Lamb, ‘perhaps Dillie herself threw it in, rejecting the message upon it. Consider that, my son.’

And even though the girl hadn’t mentioned such an act, it seemed to fit.

Holmes’s eyes bored into the young man. ‘Deacon Buttons, I think it is time for you to think carefully about your commitments, your promises, and perhaps your own sense of what is right and proper. This is certainly a question for each man to ask himself. Gentlemen, you have your work cut out for you. Good day.’

Holmes exited the room. Father Lamb followed us out. At the gate leading from the rose garden to the street, Holmes paused and faced the priest. ‘Good luck with the re-establishment of your church, Father Lamb,’ he said.

Without further comment, he strode out into the lane and down the road. As I followed, I glanced back at Father Lamb, standing forlornly at the entrance to the garden.

While not a religious man myself, I nevertheless felt a pang of sympathy for him. And I rather liked Buttons, for reasons I could not explain. Despite the younger man’s subterfuge, I wished them both well.

CHAPTER 19

Those Men! Those Women!

I convinced Holmes shortly after to stop at a café for a sandwich and lemonade. The temperature remained oppressive, but the bright sun was now occluded by dark thunderclouds. I was sweating even in my linen suit. We sat at an outdoor table amongst a small crowd of animated students, who were arguing philosophical problems which were so much gibberish to me. I ordered a ham sandwich and lemonade, but Holmes abstained. He sat reading the paper from Buttons, then handed it to me. I read:

Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel

A well-bred Lord t’ assault a gentle Belle?

O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor’ d,

Could make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?

In tasks so bold, can little men engage,

And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty Rage?

I gave him back the page. ‘“A gentle Belle reject a Lord.” What does this mean, Holmes?’

‘A general warning, no doubt. Note the reference to rage,’ said he. ‘But the deacon penned this note, and he has a vested interest in warning Dillie off her two rival beaus. My worry is about those threatening letters one of them might have sent.’

‘Might have sent?’

‘The deacon has lied to us before. And who tore off the arm? Someone in a rage or wishing to threaten. My instincts tell me that the deacon was telling the truth, at least about that.’

‘What about this line here, Holmes: “A well-bred Lord t’ assault a gentle Belle”? Isn’t one of her beaus in line for a dukedom?’

Holmes nodded. ‘Yes. I am not yet ready to leave that irritating young lady on her own. Watson, we must visit the two young suitors so that I may take the measure of each. Finish your sandwich.’

The aristocrat Freddie Eden-Summers was to be first. His Great Court lodging at Trinity was the perfect picture-postcard subject of romantic Cambridge. Three storeys high, with ancient stone arches, gargoyles and mullioned windows with leaded glass, the student lodgings were designed to face a spacious green of great beauty. After a brief chat with the porter, in which Holmes mentioned the revered Professor Wyndham’s name, implying that we were in service of that august person, the porter informed us that Freddie Eden-Summers was playing tennis at that moment with friends some ten minutes’ walk away.

We came upon the courts, and were pointed to a tall, pink-cheeked lad with a luxurious mop of golden-brown curls, who was in the midst of smoothly annihilating his opponent. His movements were elegant and graceful, his expensive sports clothes, teasing manner and natural charm giving the impression of a privileged and self-confident young gentleman of leisure.

The game finished a minute or two later, and Holmes seized the moment to approach the boy.

‘Mr Frederick Eden-Summers,’ he called out cheerfully. ‘May I have a word, please? My name is Sherlock