Mrs Hudson Goes to Ireland , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Susan Knight

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120 pages

English

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Sherlock Holmes has been missing and presumed dead for some time, and his grief stricken landlady, Mrs Hudson, is anxious for a distraction. However, she is in for a culture shock when she travels to Ireland with her friend Kitty Melrose, to try and stop a forced marriage. What she finds is a countryside steeped in superstition and beliefs in the old ways, a place of fairy forts and holy wells, of changelings and banshees. A place moreover where an impoverished peasantry remains under the heel of oppressive English landlords, but not for much longer. Times at last are changing. A brutal murder followed by the arrest of someone Mrs Hudson is determined to prove innocent, leads her into mortal danger. At the same time, she is amused to find herself courted by an elderly widower with a roving eye...

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	08 septembre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781787056282
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Mrs Hudson Goes to Ireland
Susan Knight

First published in 2020 by
MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor
Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.com
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright © 2020 Susan Knight
The right of Susan Knight to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover design Brian Belanger

To Phyl Herbert, for her constant support and encouragement

Chapter One
If I could have foreseen what was awaiting me across the Irish Sea, I am not sure I should ever have agreed to set out. However, hindsight, as they say, is a wonderful thing, and Kitty Melrose was in such a state I felt it would be unchristian of me not to support her as much as I was able.
I had no particular duties in Baker Street at that time, the events I am about to narrate having taken place during the sad period when we all believed that Mr. H had fallen to his death at the Reichenbach Falls. To tell the truth, I was finding myself somewhat at a loose end and was rather down in spirits, so that when my neighbour, Mrs. Melrose, flew in the door in great distress, I am afraid I rather welcomed the distraction. Her problems proving so much greater than my own – hers having a solid foundation while mine were simply comprised of a combination of enforced idleness and sorrow – that I soon reproved myself for indulging in self-pity.
I should perhaps start by telling my readers a little about my neighbour. Kitty Melrose, a widow woman of my own age – that is to say fast approaching the half-century – was born Kathleen O’Kelly in Ireland in County Wexford. A neat little woman with the pinkish, freckled complexion and curls still burnished with red typical of her race. Her grey-green eyes peer rather, due to short-sightedness and a touch of vanity that makes her reluctant to wear the eyeglasses that would fix the problem. Despite her marriage to an Englishman and despite having spent long years in London raising her family, she has retained her soft Irish brogue. In addition, she is of the Roman Catholic faith and, in past times, liked often to inform me that if I did not renounce my Protestantism, I was bound straight to hell when I died. To which I would reply, quite sharply that I was willing to take the risk, since I did not consider God to be so small-minded if one’s motives were pure, and that, moreover, I should never dream of consigning her to the same fate, despite the many superstitions of her faith. After all, did Jesus Christ himself not say, “In my father’s house there are many mansions?” Kitty Melrose is perfectly entitled to believe whatever she pleases, and take up residence in her Romish mansion, but I hope and pray, as I have told her, that she would grant the same tolerance to me in my Church of England one. I am glad to say that, as we became closer friends, our disputes on the subject became less frequent. However, even lately I have sometimes caught her looking at me with sad eyes, as if envisaging my horrible destiny on the Day of Judgement.
On this occasion, however, religion was not on her mind, except insofar as it concerned the holy state of matrimony. Once she had done sobbing and once Clara, my faithful maidservant, had brought up a tray of hot tea and some crisp cinnamon biscuits that I had cooked up that morning, Kitty thrust a letter at me, adding that it would explain all.
Clearly she had a somewhat exaggerated view of my powers of deduction. Even though I pride myself on having learnt much from my distinguished tenant – lessons that have stood me in good stead on a number of occasions, as I have recounted elsewhere – this time, failing to make sense of the ill-scribbled note, I was entirely at sea and told her so.
“It is from my god-daughter, Lily,” she explained. “She is to be married.”
“Surely a cause for rejoicing,” I remarked.
“I fear not.” Kitty nibbled a corner of her biscuit. “I suspect that she is being forced against her will.”
“In this day and age!” I exclaimed. “Surely we have passed from the dark ages by now. And yet…” I considered what little I knew of Ireland, considered by many an uncivilised place beyond the Pale, its denizens, as depicted by Mr. Punch, tending to the ape-like.
“Lily’s mother, Nora, was my dearest friend,” Kitty continued. “We grew up on neighbouring farms and attended the same school. She was married very young to a man who turned out… well, I never knew the details for, by then, I was living here about to be married to dear Edward,” (her late husband), “but William Cullen turned out a rough sort of person, and the three sons she bore him were patterned after their father. Only Lily, the youngest, inherited the gentle and yielding nature of my friend.”
Here Kitty collapsed into tears again. “I fear her sweetness will be the undoing of the poor girl as it was of her mother.”
“What happened to Nora?” I asked.
“I cannot say for certain. Only that her husband, when he had drink taken, was liable to raise his fists against her. He was not ashamed in front of me, and I witnessed as much on the few occasions I stayed with the family, once for Lily’s christening, then again for her First Communion and for her Confirmation at the age of twelve.” She shook her head.
“How horrible for her and for you,” I said. Violence against women by those who are supposed to cherish them is truly shocking but, I am sorry to say, all too common even here in England, even among so-called respectable people, where it is often a hidden crime.
“Yes,” she went on. “It was horrid indeed. And I have to say I was never made welcome by the menfolk in that family. Not threatened as such, but I felt most uncomfortable in their presence, and only remained on for Nora’s sake. On that last occasion, indeed, I could tell that she was sickly, and shortly after my return home, I received a terse note from William to say that she had passed away. Not a telegram, mind, but a letter which took several days to arrive. It seems she was already buried. In Ireland, Martha, the funeral takes place very soon after death, just one or two days later. Even so, I thought it brutal of him to so say in so many words no need to come over, as I otherwise might have hastened to do.” She was deeply moved and I reached out and took her hand “Since then,” she said, “as I understand from reading between the lines of Lily’s rare letters to me, and from those of my sister-in-law, Annie – she is wedded, do you see, to my brother Peter – that the poor girl has become a general dogsbody for the men in the household, as was her mother before her. And now this…” She took up the letter again, which I had lain on the table.
“I am afraid,” I said, “that you will have to read it to me, since I cannot decipher Lily’s script.” Clearly any schooling the girl had received had not included the fine art of calligraphy.
Kitty held the letter quite a distance from her face – as usual she was come without her eye-glasses.
“Dearest Godmother ,” she read, “ I trust you and your family are well, as we are here. It will no doubt surprise you as much as myself to learn that I am to be married in two short weeks. It would greatly comfort me if you could attend in the place of my dear mamma …”
“You know, Martha,” Kitty said, breaking off her reading. “I begged William to permit Lily to come to live with me after Nora died. I felt it was not a healthy atmosphere for a young girl to be alone with men who cared little for her. He did not even bother to reply.”
“Not if you put it to him that way.”
“I did not, of course not. I told him that as one who only has sons, I would dearly love a daughter, and should intend that Lily, as the offspring of my beloved friend, would fill that space in my heart.”
As someone who only has daughters, I well understood the sentiment, even though my two lovely girls mean everything to me. Still, I should have liked to have borne a boy. At least I have my little grandsons. They are so loving, even though I see them infrequently, their mother, Judy, living in far off Edinburgh. Eleanor, who lives nearer, in the county of Kent, has yet to bear me a grandchild, but I live in hope.
“So will you go to the wedding?” I asked.
“I have to. I have to stop it, I think.”
I stared at her.
“Stop it! Goodness gracious, Kitty! Whatever do you mean?”
“Just listen.”
She resumed her reading.
“My husband to be is Francis Kinsella. You may remember the Kinsellas who have land that adjoins ours … I remember that tribe only too well, Martha, and for no good reason. As for Francis, he is an absolute horror.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“A nasty cruel boy, a bully who takes pleasure in inflicting pain on innocent creatures. Cockfighting, hare-coursing, bull-baiting, you name it. Francie will be at the centre of all.”
“Surely that is all against the laws of the land. Do the police not interve