The Adventure of the Greenbriar Ghost

“Well,” Preston said cautiously, “after all, her daughter’s ghost…?”

“You are not a believer?”

“I go to church,” Preston said but would venture no further.

“You have, I hope, had at least the courtesy to read the transcript of the case, including the remarks of the county coroner?”

“No sir...I confess that I did not take the case seriously enough to care to investigate further.”

“I do take it seriously,” said Holmes with asperity.

They sat there on opposite sides of Preston’s broad oak desk, and as I watched the prosecutor I realized that it was possible for a seated man to give the impression of coming to full attention and even saluting without so much as moving his hands.

“If you will do me the courtesy of coming back tomorrow at ten o’clock,” he said, “I will by then be fully familiar with this case.”

Holmes stood. “Then we have no more to talk about until then, Mr. Preston. Good day.” We left and outside Holmes gave me a wink. “I believe we have lit a fire there, Watson.”

Chapter 6

Preston was better than his word and not only read the case but officially re-opened it. At Holmes’ urging he sought approval from the judge to exhume the body of Zona Heaster-Shue. Holmes and I attended the autopsy, which was held in an empty schoolhouse, the children having been sent home for the day. It was the custom of West Virginia, perhaps of this part of America, for family members, witnesses and the accused to all be present during the post mortem. I found this deeply unsettling, but Holmes was delighted by the opportunity to study Trout Shue in person for we had not yet met the gentleman in question.

He entered with a pair of burly constables behind him but Shue was so massive a man that he dwarfed the policemen. He had the huge shoulders and knotted muscles of a blacksmith. His hair and eyes were dark, and there was a cruel sensuality to his mouth. His jaw was thrust forward in resentment and he made many a protestation of his innocence and expressed deep outrage at this unnecessary violation of his wife.

“I’ll see you all in court for this!” he bellowed as we gathered around the body that lay exposed and defenseless on the makeshift table.

“I hope you shall,” replied Holmes and the two men stared at each other for a long moment. I could feel electricity wash back and forth between them as if their spirits dueled with lightning bolts, parrying and thrusting on a metaphysical level while we watchers waited in the physical world.

Finally Shue curled his lip and turned away, the first to break eye-contact. He flapped an arm in apparent disgust. “Do what you must and be damned to you. You will never prove anything.”

I broke the ensuing silence by stepping to the coroner’s side. “I am entirely at your disposal,” I said. He nodded in evident relief, throwing worried looks at Shue.

We set about the dissection. Zona Heaster-Shue had been in the ground for weeks now but her body was not nearly as decomposed as I had expected in this temperate climate. The flesh yielded to our blades if the skin were yet infused with moisture. It was unnerving, and dare I say it—unnatural; but we plowed ahead.

We examined her all over but as we proceeded Holmes quietly said, “The throat, doctors. The throat.”

We cut through the tissue to examine the tendons, cartilage and bone. The coroner gasped, but when he dictated his findings to the clerk his voice was steady.

Chapter 7

“…the discovery was made that the neck was broken and the windpipe mashed,” said the coroner from the witness box in the courtroom. “On the throat were the marks of fingers indicating that she had been choked. The neck was dislocated between the first and second vertebrae. The ligaments were torn and ruptured. The windpipe had been crushed at a point in front of the neck.”

From the spectators’ gallery I watched as the findings struck home to each of the twelve jurors, and I saw several pairs of eyes flick toward Trout Shue, who sat behind the defense table, his face a study in cold contempt.

In was hot in the courtroom as a June sun beat down upon Lewisburg. Following the arrest of Trout Shue Holmes and I had returned to England, but a summons from Mr. Preston had entreated us to return and so we had. Despite the autopsy findings it was by no means a certain victory for the prosecution. Shue at no time recanted his claim of innocence and the burden of proof in American law is entirely on the prosecution to establish without reasonable doubt that the accused was the murderer. The evidence as it currently stood was largely circumstantial. Overwhelming, it seemed to me, but in the eyes of the law things stood upon a knife-edge.

During a break in the trial Mrs. Heaster accosted Mr. Preston. “You must let me testify,” she implored.

“To what end, madam? You were not a witness to the crime.”

“But my daughter—.”

Preston cut her off with some irritation, for in truth this was an argument they had revisited many times. “You claim your daughter came to you in a dream. A dream, madam.”