Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Greenbriar Ghost

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.