Dust and Shadow (10 page)

“By the way, Mr. Holmes, how came you to suspect something was amiss?”

“Watson did not tell you? A pony on the street reared up and refused to approach the passage.”

“Many ponies are skittish and dislike entering new territory if it is dark.”

“Yes, but this pony was going home. Its master’s reins lay slack in his lap; therefore, the pony stopped upon seeing something unusual which it did not like.”

“I see,” said the constable, somewhat dubiously, I thought with irritation. “And the murderer—would you describe him?”

Holmes closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. “The damnable luck is that I never once caught a glimpse of his face. He had wrapped himself about the neck and mouth and ran with his head down. He wore an overcoat, British cut, dark material, heavy shoes, and a worn cloth hat. He was clutching a parcel wrapped in newspaper, not heavy, under his left arm. Did you see him clearly, Watson?”

I somberly indicated I had not.

“So, Mr. Holmes, you and your friend here maintain that, although you confronted this fellow on two separate occasions this very night, you would be unable to identify him? I mean to say, it seems very unlikely, does it not?”

“Well, Officer,” my friend replied, crushing the remainder of his cigarette underfoot, “I suppose I must ask whether you find it likely that a man would take up tearing apart street women as a hobby. We appear to have quit the realm of likelihood, have we not? Come, we are losing time. Where strength has failed us, let us see what we can accomplish through reason alone.”

It must have been well past two by the time we approached the grimy passageway where the body remained. Holmes looked ghastly but frenziedly determined. The constable frequently attempted to catch my eye, I suspected with the idea of removing Holmes from the scene, but he met with a stony and unflinching profile.

“Has anything been touched?”

“We have searched the surroundings for accomplices. The scene remains as it was when the Yard took possession.”

It is perhaps irrelevant, however pressing it seemed to me at the time, to say I had developed a headache the likes of which I had never before experienced. In my dazed state, I failed to observe my companion’s machinations with any exactitude until he approached the constable with fiery resolve in his slate grey eyes.

“The deceased is between forty and forty-five years old, though hard living has made her age more difficult to ascertain. She is a smoker, she went with her killer willingly into this byway, she makes occasional use of a padlock, she is not an absolute drunkard, she had experienced more than her share of violence before this event, and she consumed a bunch of grapes with the man who killed her. He, by the by, is right-handed, five foot seven, intimately acquainted with the district, and an Englishman.”

Constable Lamb blinked once and then narrowed his eyes. “In the absence of my superiors, I must record the evidence behind your…assertions, sir.” He rested his case, seemingly pleased by his own propriety.

“Must you indeed?” Holmes said lightly. “She is a smoker, because she retains in her hand a packet of cachous.
*
She went with her killer willingly because she would have dropped them had she fled. In addition, I happen to have seen this woman some little time ago at a pub, and she was not then wearing a red rose with white maidenhair fern pinned to her jacket. The killer courted her briefly—you may observe the grape stalk yourself just beside the body—and led her into this alleyway. She or someone she knows must own a padlock, for what other lock could possibly fit the key I have discovered upon her? She once before was the victim of a violent individual who tore an earring from her lobe, and were she an utter drunk, she would doubtless by now have pawned one of her two combs.”

“I don’t see what’s so dashed clever about any of that,” muttered Constable Lamb, jotting down notes as quickly as he was able.

“Yes, I would be very much surprised to learn you could see anything at all.”

“Er…,” faltered the constable. “Yes, Mr. Holmes. If you would just wait for my superiors—”

“I should be all too gratified if you had any, but I fear—”

“They are approaching, I think, sir.”

Constable Lamb was correct. A very distraught Inspector Lestrade bore down upon us, nearly at a run. Behind him stood a hansom cab as well as a police carriage emitting further reinforcements from the Yard.

“Sherlock Holmes himself!” the trim inspector snarled, clearly delighted at the opportunity to vent his fury. “I have no reason to question why you are here. I am grateful—indeed, deeply grateful.
For if you were not here, how would I go about explaining two murders in one night? Two murders, all within the space of a half mile!

Who could explain such a thing if not Sherlock Holmes, the crack private theorist?”

“Two murders certainly demands an explanation,” my friend replied, but I would be guilty of perjury were I not to report that he started visibly at the news, while I inhaled an unabashed gasp of amazement.

“What the devil has happened to your arm?”

“Return, if you will, Lestrade, to the scintillating topic of double murder,” Holmes shot back bitingly, his deeply rooted nonchalance shattering beneath the force of his alarm.

“Oh, it is of considerable interest, without a doubt,” sneered Lestrade. “Two murders certainly, to the minds of the official force, grow in consideration if they are committed within an hour of each other, not to mention a bloody twenty minutes’ walk!”

“Oh, yes?” was all my friend managed to stake upon a reply.

“You may ‘oh, yes’ all you like, Mr. Holmes, but you must know perfectly well that the murder you are presently investigating is neither the more revolting nor the more pressing of the two.”

Doubting my companion’s capacity for speech, I interjected, “We discovered this crime in progress. What has the killer done since we interrupted him?”

Lestrade looked as if he were about to swallow his own head, such was his confidence in Sherlock Holmes’s omniscience. “Don’t set yourselves against my nerves,” he snapped. “You mean to tell me you’ve heard nothing of the second victim this evening? Nothing of the evisceration, nor the cutting of her face, not to mention the intestines smeared all over her,” he continued, with ominous calm, “nor the other atrocities visited upon her person, which so help me God I will wrest from you the truth of if it is the last thing I do!”

“Lestrade,” my friend protested, “I promise you I know nothing of which you speak, but I will immediately place myself in a cab in the hopes of assisting you. Where did this second event take place?”

“Holmes, I cannot allow—” I began, but at that very instant, as my friend set off toward the vehicle, his iron strength at last failed him and he clutched at the window of the cab for support.

“We are taking you to hospital, and I will not hear another word on the subject,” I swore.

“Hospital! Confound it all, what has happened to him?” begged Lestrade.

“He pursued the killer and was the victim of a murderous attack. I do not like to think what will happen if he exerts himself an instant longer. Driver, you are to proceed to London Hospital!”

“I believe that Baker Street would be preferable, driver,” Holmes called out, as I half lifted him into Lestrade’s hansom. I made as if to join him.

“You are forbidden to accompany me.”

“Why on earth should I be?” I demanded, wounded to the quick.

“You are going to the site of the second killing. You are taking Miss Monk, whose eyes are invaluable. The two of you will record everything you see, and you will tell me of it when we meet again. See that Miss Monk comes to no harm.” During these instructions, he paused intermittently to gather the fortitude to speak, which did nothing to calm my fears.

“I am to safeguard Miss Monk while you may be—”

“Of course not. You are to lead a murder investigation whilst I am recovering. All caution, Watson. Drive on!” he cried, and I stood there as the hansom cantered off into the darkness, leaving only myself, a hysterical inspector, various constables, and the intrepid Miss Monk, who had just emerged from the men’s club composed and resolute.

“Is that Mr. Holmes?” she asked as his cab pulled away.

“Yes,” I said shortly. “He is not well. There has been another murder.”

Her hand flew to her mouth, but she immediately recovered her self-possession. “Then you and I had best leg it over or there’ll be hell to pay.”

As distraught as I was, I had no doubt that Miss Monk was in the right. “Lestrade, where is the other crime scene?”

“Just west of here in Mitre Square,” Lestrade replied, still gazing with an expression of ill-disguised panic at the point where Holmes’s hansom had disappeared. “Inspector Thomas has arrived, so I can take you there myself. I must warn you, however, the Yard has no jurisdiction. The murder was committed within the City of London.”

The central pivot of the eastern metropolis, mirrored by the City of Westminster in the West-end, the City of London was limited to a single square mile of ground, safeguarded not by Scotland Yard but by their own small company of police under the authority of the Corporation of the City of London. However many individuals within that force Holmes had dealings with, I knew not a soul, and I gratefully accepted Lestrade’s offered escort.

“Let us be off,” said I, with the roughness that is born of deep apprehension. “We cannot lose any more time.”

“One moment,” replied Lestrade with a wondering glance toward Miss Monk. “Who the devil is this young person? Do you live in these buildings?”

“My name is Mary Ann Monk, sir,” she stated. “I am in the employ of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

The inspector raised his eyes heavenward and shook his head, but to his credit he did no more. “No doubt you are, miss. No doubt you are. But I warn you, Doctor—this young lady is to be presented as an associate of Mr. Holmes, not of Scotland Yard, if she’s presented at all. My head would be in a basket by morning. Very well, into the carriage all, and back to Mitre Square. I hope you’ve the stomach for it, Doctor: there’s a level of hell made especially for this bastard, or there’s no justice in Creation. Of that, at least, I’m sure.”

We drove westward along Commercial Road and then down Whitechapel High Street to the ancient core of Her Majesty’s wide realm. No one
spoke a word, for Holmes’s absence had cast a greater pall even than the news of the second murder. Setting aside my severe anxiety for my friend, the Whitechapel killer had proven himself to be the most fearsome menace ever to strike terror into the hearts of the populace. What powers could we expect to set against him without Holmes? I had never in my life been placed in such a false position, but I set my teeth and determined to do my utmost, whatever was required.

We none of us had long to worry, for it was a mere five minutes’ journey. Stopping the carriage on Duke Street, we descended and passed the Great Synagogue, ducking into a small, covered opening. When we emerged in the wide square, we found a somber group of City Police surrounding the body, obscuring it from our immediate view. She lay in front of a row of empty cottages, with blank gaping windows and the creeping tendrils of weeds hastening their decay.

A tall, actively built man with sharp eyes and a military bearing, dressed in fashionably cut plain clothes, turned at the sound of our footsteps.

“This is a murder investigation,” he proclaimed. “You must step outside the square to avoid disturbing evidence.”

“I am Inspector Lestrade of the Metropolitan force.” Lestrade proffered his hand rather uncertainly. “Major Henry Smith, is it not? To tell the truth, sir, we are investigating another murder committed on Berner Street, with all signs of it having been the work of the same party.”

Major Smith emitted a low whistle. “By George, Inspector, you astonish me. And you are?” he asked, turning to me.

“Dr. John Watson. I was there when the event occurred.”

“Your name is known to me, Dr. Watson. You say you were there—you interrupted the murderer at his work?”

“That is correct.”

“Then the man is in custody?”

“We believe he escaped to commit the second atrocity you discovered in this square.”

“Your tale is quite fantastical, sir. Forgive me, but considering your own presence here, Dr. Watson—where, in this extraordinary array of characters, is Mr. Sherlock Holmes?”

I hesitated. “He met with the killer and suffered an attack on his own person. He has been taken to seek aid.” Gesturing to Miss Monk, I added, “This is an associate of Mr. Holmes and myself who has been helping with the investigation.”

“Mary Ann Monk, sir. Pleased to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine. Well, then, now that we are acquainted,” Major Smith continued, evidently not wishing to dwell upon the propriety of Miss Monk’s presence, “Police Constable Watkins discovered the deceased while on his beat. His full circuit takes him approximately thirteen minutes to traverse, and he assures me the body was not in the square when he looked in at one thirty. Constable Watkins immediately engaged the aid of the night watchman from yonder warehouse to send for reinforcements and has not left the body since. You are welcome to make your own observations, Dr. Watson, before this poor creature is taken to the morgue.”

“Miss Monk, if you would be so good as to look about the square for anything out of the ordinary,” I suggested with a significant glance.

As she did so, Lestrade and I advanced through the cluster of officials. The inspector, one hand poised to take notes, clapped the other to my shoulder and nodded his head. I knelt beside the victim.

“Her throat has been cut from ear to ear. There is serious damage from a knife to both eyelids, both cheeks, and the tip of the nose. Abdomen has been laid entirely open and her intestines drawn out of the body and draped over the right shoulder. Severe injury to the pancreas, the lining of the uterus, the colon…” I stopped to draw a deep breath. “We must wait for the postmortem to determine the full extent of it. I can tell you that the pattern of her blood suggests the mutilations occurred after the poor woman’s death.”

A short silence punctuated my speech. Lestrade tucked his notebook in his coat with a sigh. “It seems clear that after he met Mr. Hol
mes, the beast inflicted his filthy urges on the first candidate. I know the last murders were ugly, Doctor, but this—the monster was in a blind frenzy.”

I was pulled out of my dark reverie by a delicate hand on my shoulder.

“Her ear, Doctor.”

There was Miss Monk, peering down at the desecrated remains. Her high tone of voice gave the only clue as to the strain she was under. “You see her ear?”

“Yes. A small part of the right ear has been cut off.”

“You remember the letter?”

Miss Monk’s words brought it flooding back to me as if it were before my very eyes. “Of course!” I cried. “Just such a mutilation was mentioned. Do you recall the exact wording, Miss Monk?”

“‘The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you,’” she replied rapidly, under her breath.

“I think I should be most gratified to learn who received this letter,” said Major Smith evenly.

“It was sent to the Central News Agency last Thursday,” I replied. “The letter references clipping off the next victim’s ears, if possible, and sending them to the police, as Miss Monk has said.”

“Does it indeed! The missive has not been published, as I understand you?”

I shook my head. “Holmes returned it to the Central News. The letter was signed with the name ‘Jack the Ripper.’”

“It’s true,” Lestrade said through his teeth, “but we supposed it a hoax. Now it seems this lunatic is not merely running about ripping whores to shreds, he’s appointed himself a pen name and mailed his agenda to the national press.”