Here's my fourth NPE Proposal and my third one from Sherlock Holmes. Two rather boring villains, but definitely worth a shot to propose.
What are the Works?
"The Boscombe Valley Mystery" and "The Engineer's Thumb" are two Sherlock Holmes short stories. I really like the Engineer's Thumb, and on rereading Boscombe Valley I like it better than I remembered.
Who Are They? What Have They Done?
Yes, before you ask, this is the only official image I could find for him.
Charles McCarthy is the posthumous overarching antagonist of Boscombe Valley. He was once a gold prospecter in Australia, who was robbed by a robber called John Turner. When Turner emigrated to England, McCarthy secretly followed him. Turner had by this point, completely repented from his old life as a robber and become a rich man, but McCarthy appeared and blackmailed him to take the keeping of him and his son.
For over a decade, McCarthy lived for free on John's best land, constantly demanding from him favours, money and property by holding the secret of his past life over his head. To make matters worse, he deliberately spent as much time with John as possible, constantly mocking him and reminding him of his past mistakes, psychologically torturing him, while all the time everyone else in the neighborhood thought that they were just really good friends.
McCarthy now seeing that Turner's health was really poor and he was going to die soon, started insisting on a marriage between Turner's daughter and his son, being so greedy that he now wanted the entire property of Turner. One day he met with his son in the woods, where he demanded him to marry Turner's daughter without the slightest care for what he or her might think of it.
Unbeknownst to him, Turner was nearby, and upon hearing his daughter talked about in such a dehumanising and misogynistic way, he beat McCarthy to death (McCarthy's son had actually left the area when this happened, but he came running back when he heard the sound of the murder, which caused him to get implicated in it).
To make a long story short, Holmes deduced that it was Turner who was the murderer. They met in private, and when John explained his whole backstory, Holmes told him that he had sympathy for him and decided not to turn him into the police. Turner died a few months later of his illness and McCarthy's son was acquitted.
Definitely a better image.
Colonel Lysander Stark (real name Fritz) is the main antagonist of the Engineer's Thumb. Together with his wife Elise and his partner Mr. Ferguson, he ran a large scale coining operation in a isolated house in the countryside, turning out false half-crowns by the thousands. However, eventually his hydraulic press would run into an error, so he lured engineers to the house so that they could repair it.
He did this first to an engineer called Mr. Jeremiah Hayling, and it seems Mr. Hayling started to get suspicious, so he murdered him. He then promised Elise that he wouldn't do such a thing again. A year later, his machine broke down again, so he lured an engineer called Mr. Hatherley to the machine.
When Mr. Hatherley became suspicious, he immediately tried to gruesomely murder him by trapping him inside the hydraulic press and turning it on, which in a matter of moments would crush Mr. Hatherley to a pulp. Luckily, Elise came to his rescue and set him free from the press, but the Colonel then chased after him to murder him with a butcher's cleaver and even succeeded in chopping off his thumb.
Elise begged the colonel to let Mr. Hatherley go, asking him to remember his promise after "the last time" (the fact that she used this wording implies that this has actually happened several times before) all to no avail. However, Mr. Hatherley actually did escape and brought the police back with him, only to find that the villains had escaped because their house had been set on fire by his broken lantern.
Heinous Standards
McCarthy
Now this may be surprising to you, but blackmail is actually considered to be an especially disgusting crime in the Holmes Canon, Sherlock Holmes at one point openly says that he considered it worse than murder. As such, I think McCarthy easily stands out for continuously committing it for over a decade and psychologically torturing his victim with pure sadism.
Lysander Stark
Now, the average amount of murders to pass the Heinous Standards of Sherlock Holmes are (according to my brief investigations) three. Colonel Lysander Stark has a confirmed kill of 1 and another attempted one, but there's definitely an implication that he's killed more than that, and his gruesome murder attempt of trying to crush someone with a hydraulic press and then kill them with a butcher's cleaver also helps him pass.
Mitigating Factors?
McCarthy
While it is true that he was robbed by Turner and left in poverty, the sheer amount of sadism with which he proceeded to blackmail him invalidates this tragedy. He was also said to have already looked evil and spiteful even back then, so overall his tragedy is completely invalid. He probably had no love for his wife, considering that he was described as a raving misogynist by Turner. He had no friends and was described as a cold and forbidding man with a very violent temper.
Lysander Stark
Just because he would pay the engineers a high fee for doing work for him isn't preventing, he was just trying to prevent them from speaking to anyone else about what they saw at the house. He also didn't like killing anyone and just did it so they wouldn't expose his operations, but the fact that he was so vicious and bloodthirsty in his methods of murder helps balance it out overall. Despite working with Mr. Ferguson, he never shows any close relationship with him. He was also overall extremely uncharismatic and unfriendly.
What Prevents Them From Being Pure Evil?
McCarthy
Although he was said to be an unfriendly man and a somewhat abusive father, it seems he did care about his son to some extent. When he first met Turner, he demanded him to take care of both him and his son, who was just a little boy at the time, he and his son both enjoyed horse-racing, and his son also mentioned that the Australian cry of "Cooee" was a popular signal between him and his father.
Now Holmes does say that if Charles had known that his son had secretly married and had a wife, he would have immediately disowned him, but this is just what Holmes thinks, and besides, we have different standards of what parental love is nowadays compared to people at the time this story was written. So I would say that he does care for his son, although in a very minor way.
Colonel Lysander Stark
He relies greatly on Fridge Horror and Offscreen Villainy to pass the standards, as we don't get to see his murder(s) of the previous engineer(s). However his vicious methods of trying to murder Mr. Hatherley do contribute quite a bit to his heinousness, so overall I would say he still qualifies as an NPE.
However, he also has another prevention, which is care for his wife. He promised her that he wouldn't kill any more engineers, even if he ended up breaking the promise. And when she helped Mr. Hatherley escape, he mentioned how he expected the colonel would abuse her for daring to help him escape, but he only begged her to get aside and pushed her aside when she wouldn't.
Verdict
A strong yes to McCarthy, an average yes to Mr. Stark.