Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye Read Free Book Online Page A

disturbed by recent events.
    “Do be seated, Mr. Nichols, and accept our condolences regarding your wife’s death. I have no doubt but that, despite the earliness of the hour, Dr. Watson would be happy to prescribe you something fortifying. You have had a most trying ordeal.”
    I poured Mr. Nichols a brandy and led him to the settee. He drank slowly from it, then turned back to Holmes.
    “I’ve not tasted a drop in years,” he confessed, “for I knew the ill of it. Polly Walker was a sweet girl in her youth, and no one knows it better than I do. But as for her drinking, and her other vices…PollyNichols turned into a bad sort, gentlemen, make no mistake about that.”
    Holmes shot me a look and I located my notebook. “Mr. Nichols, if it would not be too terribly painful for you, I should like you to tell me all you can about your late wife.”
    He shrugged. “There’s nothing I can say as will do any good. I hadn’t seen the woman in over three years.”
    “Indeed? You were utterly estranged?”
    Mr. Nichols pursed his lips, considering his words. “I’m no angel, Mr. Holmes, and I’ve my own mistakes to pay for…There was another woman, and Polly took on about it to the point of packing up her things and running off. I’ll say as much only because you’re said to know things you oughtn’t. But it was good riddance, so far as I was concerned. Polly more often than not had a drop in, and when she did, the children and I suffered for it. We had five, Mr. Holmes, and I think sometimes it was a strain on her. She wasn’t the mothering kind. When she left for good, I supported her for a year, but I cut off her allowance when I learned what she’d become.”
    “I see. But what of the children?”
    “Oh, I’ve care of the little ones, Mr. Holmes. I’d not let her lay one filthy hand on them once she’d set her course in that direction.”
    “So you dissolved all contact with her, being yourself a man of unimpeachable moral character?”
    I worried lest Holmes’s dig might offend Nichols, but our visitor merely answered gruffly, “She contacted me, all right, Mr. Holmes. She tried to cozen the authorities into forcing her maintenance money out of me. But they saw I didn’t deserve the keeping of her, common baggage that she was. She went from man to man and workhouse to workhouse. None of them kept her long. I’m sorry to say it, Mr. Holmes, but her death was less of a shock than it should have been.”
    Holmes raised a single eyebrow coldly as he lifted the tongs and lit his pipe with an ember from the fire. “I should at least have thought the manner of her death would give pause to her kith and kin.”
    At this, Nichols paled slightly. “Yes, of course. I’ve seen her. I would not wish that end on anyone.”
    “I am very gratified to hear it.”
    “It’s a hard push for me, though. I daresay it will cost me for the funeral, her dad not being well off and she without a penny to her name.”
    “Yes, yes, I am sure it is a very trying time for you. You know of no enemies, nor of any further information which might aid us in our inquiries?”
    “Polly’s only enemy so far as I could see was gin, Mr. Holmes,” replied Nichols with a knowing look.
    “However, as I am sure you will agree, gin unfortunately was not responsible for her death,” returned Holmes with some asperity. “And now, Mr. Nichols, I must devote my entire energies toward my thoughts and my pipe, so you will forgive me if I bid you good morning.”
    After I had shut the door upon Mr. Nichols, my friend exclaimed, “A nice spouse, Watson. He has at least absolved himself as a suspect. Crimes of jealousy require a measure of regard for the victim.”
    “He seemed more shaken by the cost than by the death of his wife.”
    Holmes shook his head philosophically. “It is not difficult for me to envision Polly Nichols’s flight from his establishment. If she was everything he says she was, they must have made a charming