"Professor Leacock! What brings you here?"
"I have bad news for you, lad. Franz Faber was murdered the night before you left Montreal. The police want to question you about it."
At his words the screen door behind him opened and a lovely red-haired girl in a blue shift appeared. She had a dimple in her chin and a smile to charm any man. "Ralph was with me all the time," she told us. "He couldn't have killed anyone."
Holmes inserted himself into the conversation. "Would this be the missing Miss Starr?" he asked.
"Who are you?" Norton demanded.
"Sherlock Holmes. I am an old friend of your mother, who summoned me from England to find you."
He shook his head. "I didn't kill anyone, and I'm not going back to see the police. We're staying right here." His glance shifted to me. "Who is this man?"
"My associate, Dr. Watson," Holmes responded.
He studied me more closely. "A medical doctor?"
"Of course," I told him.
"And you know Rob, my assistant," Leacock said.
Ralph smiled slightly. "We see each other at the pub."
Leacock glanced around. "We only have three bedrooms. Is there room for us all overnight?"
"Sure," Ralph conceded. "Follow me, Mr. Holmes. We'll get everyone settled and have a bit of supper. You must be hungry after that long train ride."
Holmes and I drew a small bedroom at the rear of the cottage. When we were alone I asked, "Why was he so interested that I was a doctor?"
"You must try to be more observant, Watson. We now know why she didn't spend the summer at home with her parents. Even wearing that large shift I could detect a bit of a bulge. I believe Monica Starr to be at least six months pregnant."
3. The Capture
Seeing her seated at the dinner table later that evening, I had to agree with Holmes's diagnosis. The girl was certainly pregnant, probably entering her third trimester. It appeared that Ralph was planning to remain here with her rather than return to McGill. I wondered if Leacock and Gentry were aware of her condition. After we ate, there was still enough light for us to walk along Old Brewery Bay. It was a small arm of the lake, with Leacock's house at the innermost part. I could see that Irene's son and Monica Starr were supremely happy, even with these unexpected guests. They played catch with a red rubber ball, occasionally tossing it to Leacock or Gentry as well. At one point, Ralph ran ahead and shouted to her. "North! Catch!"
"North?" Holmes questioned after she'd caught the ball and tossed it on to Gentry.
"I'm from up north, so naturally the guys started calling me North Starr, or just North."
"Do you like it at McGill?"
"Sure, what's not to like? That's where I met Ralph. We'll be getting married soon, after we break the news to our folks."
"I wish you all the happiness you deserve," Holmes said.
Leacock had been standing close enough to overhear the conversation, and he commented to me, "Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl."
"You do not approve?" I asked, addressing him for the first time since our journey began.
"It is not for me to say. Life, as we often learn too late, is in the living."
As the evening wore on, I found myself forced into further conversation with Leacock. "Did you have an opportunity to read my little piece on the Defective Detective, Dr. Watson?"
"I did, sir. It seems to me you could devote your talents to more important matters."
"Ah, but you see, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole of the Encyclopedia Britannica."
I had no answer for that.
Holmes and I both slept well that night. The water was still, and a big change from our Atlantic crossing. In the morning, over breakfast, the talk turned serious. It was Leacock who brought matters to a head. "You have to come back with us, Ralph. If you don't, I must tell the police where you are."
But it was Monica who rose to his defense. "Why do you have to tell them? He's done nothing wrong."
Leacock turned appealingly toward Holmes, who said quietly, "Franz Faber named Ralph as he was dying. He told a police officer it was Norton."
"But that's impossible! I was with him all that night."
"No, you weren't, Monica," Ralph told her. "This was Thursday, the night before we left. Remember, I had to pick up some things from home. I was gone for over an hour."
"You couldn't kill anyone, Ralph," she said with a sigh. "Franz might not have seen his killer. You two'd had a fight, so your name was the one he spoke."
"He was stabbed in the chest," Holmes told her. "It's most likely he did see his killer." Then he turned back to Ralph. "What had you and Faber fought about?"
He gave a snort. "We fought over Monica. It felt like I was still a kid in high school."
"Is that true?" he asked her.
"I guess so. I went out with Franz for a while and he didn't want to give me up."
If we were to be back in Montreal that night we had to be leaving soon. Rob Gentry had gathered up the material Leacock wanted to bring back, but there was still no agreement from Ralph. "I'm not going to ride all day on the train just to tell some ignorant detective I'm innocent."
"I can stay here alone for one night," Monica told him. "Or you can come back with him," Professor Leacock suggested. "That might be best."
She shook her head. "No. I came here to get away from people-"
Holmes spoke softly. "Dr. Watson could examine you if you are concerned about your condition."
"It's not that. I just don't want to go back there."
"And neither do I," Ralph decided.
Leacock tried to reason with them. "Sooner or later the Montreal police will learn where you are, Ralph. You'll be arrested and taken back there in handcuffs. That's hardly something you'd want your mother to see."
"There's no evidence that I killed him."
"You fought, and he named you as his killer," Holmes said.
"Our fight was several days earlier. There was no reason to renew it or stab him. Monica was coming with me. I asked you about this cottage and you gave me the key a full day before Faber was killed."
"You make a good case for your innocence," Holmes agreed. "But the police want a killer and you're the only suspect they have."
It was then that Monica Starr spoke. "They have another," she said quietly. "I killed Franz Faber."
"Monica!" Ralph shouted. "Don't ever say that again! Someone might believe it."
I stared at Leacock and Gentry, seeing the disbelief in their faces. But than I glanced at Holmes and saw something quite different, something like satisfaction. "Of course she killed him. I've known it since last night. But I had to hear it from her own lips."
"How could you have known?" Ralph asked. "What happened last night?"
"You called her by a nickname, 'North.' When Franz Faber lay dying, he reverted to his native language. The officer asked who stabbed him and he didn't say Norton but Norden, the German word for north. He was saying you stabbed him, Monica. Do you want to tell us why you did it?"
She stared down at the floor, unable to look any of us in the eye. Finally she answered. "I love Ralph, I love him so much. My brief time with Franz was a big mistake, but when I became pregnant he threatened to tell Ralph the baby was his and not Ralph's. I couldn't let him do that. I begged him not to, but he wouldn't listen. I'd brought a knife along to threaten him, but when he saw it he just laughed. That was when I stabbed him."