On December 10th…

We continue with the dating of the events of MISS in December (rather than February – as explained in a previous entry) and take today’s event from A Day by Day Chronology of Mr. Sherlock Holmes according to Zeisler and Christ, compiled by William S Dorn, BSI, DWNP.

Illustration by Sidney Paget for The Strand Magazine (August, 1904)

December 10, 1896: Godfrey Stanton’s wife died. [MISS]

A woman, young and beautiful, was lying dead upon the bed. Her calm, pale face, with dim, wide-opened blue eyes, looked upwards from amid a great tangle of golden hair. At the foot of the bed, half sitting, half kneeling, his face buried in the clothes, was a young man, whose frame was racked by his sobs. So absorbed was he by his bitter grief that he never looked up until Holmes’s hand was on his shoulder.

‘Are you Mr. Godfrey Staunton?’

‘Yes, yes; I am – but you are too late. She is dead.’

Chips writes: This story always struck me as so sad. The passion for position and appearance should lead to conviction and punishment for murder, but the Golden Rule of how we should live our lives is so agreed to on a Sunday but ignored in behavior in the rest of life.