“Well then, what changed?”
“That day at the pool, Charles told James what he’d just found out: that weaselly little barmaid was already married. And—seeing as she’s not allowed more than one—James had never been quite so spoken for as he’d thought. So now the joke was back on me again! James is not such a bad fellow, I guess. But he’s his father’s son! That’s enough! I’d never let that man’s foul blood mingle with my own! I had to do something!”
“You could have simply said no.”
“But that’s just it! I couldn’t! Don’t you see? Charles McCarthy had been blackmailing me for years!”
“Which explains why he lived rent free,” I said with a nod.
“On my best land!”
“And, unless I miss my guess, because of something that happened in Ballarat, Australia.”
“Yes,” Turner breathed. “I’ve no idea how you guessed it, but… I was a bush ranger. Do you know what that is?”
I’ll admit that was a bit of a surprise. “Something like a highwayman, isn’t it?”
“Something very like a highwayman, yes. The Ballarat Gang, they called us. Used to hold up the stagecoaches from the gold field and take all they had. Wasn’t easy work, mind, as they always went guarded. Charles McCarthy was one of those guards. Oh, sometimes a rover and a robber, no doubt. There’s many of us who walked whichever side of the fence the money was on, one week to the next. But the day we met, he was on the right side of the law and I the wrong. The robbery went bad. We blew the surprise. They heard us, I think. There were six of us when we set out, and only five of them, but their first volley cleared half of us out of our saddles. We fired back—and we gave them right hell—but the odds were against us. Finally, there were none alive but McCarthy and me. There I was, shot through the leg and in the side, leaning up with my back against a great gray rock with no bullets left in my gun and no strength to drag myself to my dead friends to borrow more. And that’s when I heard him for the first time. The spirit in the gray stone…”
I think I must have made a bit of a face. Lestrade’s jaw dropped open another notch. Grogsson looked deeply puzzled. Holmes, it must be said, perked right up. “A fairy? A boggart?” he asked enthusiastically.
Turner nodded. “Bogh-Harrat—that’s what he called himself—the Bog-Hearted Boggart of Ballarat!”
“Yes! I love him!” Holmes cried.
“Said he’d a mind to cut a deal with me, so long as I’d deal with him,” Turner continued. “Said he’d get me out safe and sound and with all the gold, so long as I’d pledge my troth to him and give him a kidney.”
“A kidney?” said Holmes and I together; I with disgust and Holmes with unalloyed delight.
“He said it’d be all right, as a man may live without a kidney. And there I sat with no bullets and no choices. So, I gave it to him.”
“Did it hurt?” Holmes wanted to know.
“Not at all. He magicked it out, I guess. Never felt a thing. Next I knew the air was alive with flying stones. I never thought I’d see a thing like that! One of ’em dashed McCarthy on the head and down he went, senseless. I almost shot him as he lay there. By God, if only I had! But there’s a sympathy you feel when you know it should have been you that died that day. I let him go. But I took that gold! And it was a pretty share, too. Made my way clear of the country and bought up all this land out here. I even got a special dispensation from the Crown to name this place Boggart Valley, after Bogh-Harrat!”
“Oh, what did it used to be?” I wondered.
“Boscombe, of all stupid things. I thought the whole thing was behind me. But wouldn’t you know, that bastard McCarthy went back to the same site a few years later to figure out what happened. He put himself behind that same old rock and wondered aloud what had passed.”
“And Bogh-Harrat, the Bog-Hearted Boggart of Ballarat told him!” Holmes enthused.
“Backstabbing bastard fairy! Yes, he did! Six months later, McCarthy showed up here, talking about what a fine, law-abiding country England was, how there was always a constable on hand when one was needed. And he lived here on my land ever since!”
“Until you heard his son was free to marry your daughter,” I said. “Until you picked up a stone and dashed his head in! Oh, and you’re left-handed, aren’t you?”
“Well… sort of…” he muttered. “I mean, I am left-handed. Most fellows who can hear a fairy are, you know. But I don’t have the strength to go crushing any skulls, nowadays. I just squeezed my eyes shut real tight and thought, ‘Bogh-Harrat, you rotten sprite! This is all your fault! You told me you’d make things right, so why don’t you do it?’ And I heard a little whisper in my head. Even after all those years, he was still with me! Said he’d take care of McCarthy once and for all. And all he wanted…”
I put my brow down into my hand, shook my head, and finished Turner’s sentence for him. “…was your other kidney. Well, I suppose that explains the sudden downturn in your health.”
“What? No. There is no relation,” Turner protested. “A man may live without a kidney!”
“Yes. A kidney. One. But a man may not live without both kidneys.”
“Both?” he spluttered. “What do you mean, both? Are you trying to imply that a man has naught but two kidneys?”
“Well… yes.”
A worried look began to steal across John Turner’s face, but he tried to
