“I am Sherlock Holmes and I am here to find the truth.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she repeated. “Please leave.”
I took Kate’s hands in mine. “Kate, tell us the truth. Were you the daughter of the Queen’s assistant swan keeper? Was Cecil Gray your daughter’s father? Is that why you were forced to leave Her Majesty’s service?”
“You need to leave me alone,” she whispered but tears were starting to drip from those haunted blue eyes.
“Have you been killing Her Majesty’s swans to get even?” Sherlock pressed.
“Stop it, Sherlock,” I warned. I turned again to Kate. “Please, Kate. There is more to this than swans, isn’t there? You do know that Cecil Gray is dead. That someone killed him. You told me that you were assaulted because you saw something you shouldn’t. What did you see, Kate? Did you witness his demise?”
Sherlock piped up again. “You are in very serious trouble, Miss Dew, if you have slaughtered Her Majesty’s swans.”
“Sherlock!” I protested.
“But,” he added quickly, “We can protect you from that. You must tell us what you saw.”
She paced back and forth, wringing her hands and crying.
“The authorities will take away your daughter, Miss Dew,” Sherlock said.
“The authorities! My daughter will be killed if I say anything to anyone!”
I put my hand on her shoulders. “Kate, please. It’s time to tell the truth.”
Kate bid her friends good night and walked with us toward her lodgings but said not another word. Finally, just before we got to where she lived, she said, “All right. But you must promise me this. My daughter Mary will be taken care of, no matter what happens. Will you swear this to me? Dr. Stamford, if you swear, I shall believe you.”
Before I could respond, Sherlock intervened. “I promise you that nothing will happen to you or your daughter.”
She leaned against the brick wall next to the door and slid down until she collapsed on the pavement. I bent over. “Kate, please.”
Between sobs, she choked out the entire story.
Chapter 21
“What I told you about my father - that was all true. He was a Deputy Keeper of the Swans. Then he became ill. His heart, it was. And he injured his leg as well. Mum died when I was little and he was always worried about me. About what would become of me if something happened to him. That’s why he brought me to work with him, trained me to take his place. But it had to appear to everyone that I was a male. Ironic, isn’t it? Her Majesty, the most important person in the country, is a woman and yet a lowly swan keeper cannot be a woman.”
Sherlock said, “But the Queen is only in her position because there was no male heir. She is the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of King George III and both the Duke and the King died. When her father’s three brothers also died, leaving no surviving legitimate children, she was the only one left. So it-”
“Sherlock!” I shouted. “Stop it.”
He could be so confounding and in many ways, misogynistic. And usually at the least appropriate times. It was always exasperating.
“Go on, Kate,” I urged.
Kate tilted her head and, with the cuff of her blouse, wiped away tears that streamed down her cheek. “I continued on after Papa stopped tending to the swans,” she said. “I’d learned so much from him. I knew everything about the swans. And the head keeper is something of a dolt. Most of them are, in fact. Abnett, now he’s a good lad, but too young to supervise.”
“The name is familiar to me.”
“It is?”
“I spoke with him. He knew of no one who wished to harm Her Majesty’s swans. Except you, of course.”
“Oh,” she sighed and looked away. “Often Cecil - Sir Gray would come to visit the swans in the pond and just walk,” she went on. “He always looked forlorn. Sad. We would talk sometimes and somehow... I don’t know how it happened really... we became... close. We used to go to The Charring Cross or sometimes the Craven Family Hotel, down on Craven Street. He knew the proprietor. He would talk to me for hours. Sometime he would take me to Simpson’s for a meal.
“He had a daughter, a little girl about eight years old,” she whispered. “Her name was Alexandrina, named for the queen... for her real name, I mean. But she was, he said, a very strange child. She had fits and would fly into a rage and couldn’t seem to learn to speak or write. They tried to teach her at home but nothing would work. She would slam cupboards and pound her head against things. She had become quite violent, often beating her mother and attacking her father or anyone who came calling. Cecil - Sir Gray - was beside himself. He contacted an acquaintance. A professor at Oxford.”
“Danford Hopgood?” Sherlock asked.
Kate nodded. “Cecil told me that Hopgood studies the brain. Heads. How people’s faces are shaped and the like.”
“What else did he tell you? Sir Gray... did he hope to gain some understanding of his daughter’s malady then?” Sherlock asked. “And please be precise in the details, Miss Dew.”
“I shall make myself plain. He told me that he was financing this professor’s research. He’d been for years.”
“Wait,” Sherlock said. “He confided all of this to you? But why would he tell you all-”
Dear heavens, Sherlock could be daft! Obviously, Cecil felt he could tell Kate things that he could not share with his wife or anyone else. “Sherlock,” I cried. “Stop interrupting the poor girl.”
He looked perplexed but said, “Yes, of course. I am all attention. Pray, go on with your narrative.”
Kate turned to me then. “When he found out I was with child, he sent me away. As I told you, he couldn’t chance a scandal. He assured me that he was sending me to a safe place. He sent
