Dust and Shadow (15 page)

“They are far more likely to encounter me in Whitechapel with greater and greater frequency, until such time as one or all of us put a stop to this Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror,” replied my fellow lodger, leaning defiantly against his doorframe.

I imagined our colleague would take umbrage with my compan
ion’s declaration. However, once more I had underestimated Inspector Lestrade, and to my regret, for I realized suddenly that Holmes had no better friend in all Scotland Yard. Far from appearing surprised, he only smiled with wearied satisfaction.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt of that, Mr. Holmes. Not a doubt in the world. But I was bound to tell you, wasn’t I? Mend well. Good day to you, Dr. Watson.”

Holmes remained in his room for some time after Lestrade had made his way out. The sun had set entirely when he emerged, asking, “Care to pay a call guaranteed to be more civil than your earlier endeavour?”

“I am at your service, Holmes.”

“Then help me into my coat and we shall settle a problem that has been plaguing my mind.”

“Certainly. Where are we going?”

“To consult a specialist.”

“A specialist?” I repeated in surprise. “But you are the world’s foremost specialist in crime detection.”

“I do not dispute it,” he replied smoothly. “We shall consult a specialist in another field entirely.”

“But are you strong enough for a journey tonight?”

Holmes tucked one of his commonplace books under his good arm with a slightly puckish smile. “I appreciate your solicitude, Doctor. However, in this instance, I fear it is misplaced.”

Once out of doors in the bracing cold, Holmes turned and proceeded down Baker Street. He had passed two houses when he stopped abruptly. “If you wouldn’t mind ringing the bell, Watson. You are better acquainted with the fellow than I, I’m afraid.”

Suppressing a smile, I did as he asked. We had not long to wait before the door flew open to reveal Dr. Moore Agar with a pair of not unbecoming spectacles perched on his nose.

“Oh, I say!” he exclaimed delightedly. “I thought you a client, but this is even more gratifying.”

He escorted us into a cheerful, well-appointed chamber with a striped Venetian carpet on the floor, an economical fire in the grate, and more bookshelves than there were bare walls. Dr. Agar insisted that Holmes take the entire settee, deposited me graciously in an armchair, then stood before the fireplace in unabashed pleasure.

“Your uncle is a kind gentleman to have set you up in practice,” said Holmes.

“Is he, now!” Our host laughed, clapping his hands silently in approval. “I had hardly ventured to hope for a demonstration. If I were a less thoughtful man, I might have guessed that I mentioned my Uncle Augustus to you on Saturday night—or was it Sunday morning? But I did no such thing, and you must trot out your reasoning before a devoted admirer.”

Holmes smiled ruefully. “You may be amused to learn that I cannot recall the smallest detail of your visit.”

“My apologies, Mr. Holmes. Dr. Moore Agar, at your service,” he replied, extending his left hand to shake my friend’s unharmed limb. “Now, how did you deduce that Uncle Augustus financed this operation?”

“Certain indications suggest that you are forced to employ economy in your practice. However, your library is extensive, a few of your books quite rare, and your rooms well appointed. You have a benefactor, but not one from whom you receive regular sustenance. A single endowment, then, from a party whose fortunes do not permit more frequent aid. In my experience, the only folk in this world who donate large sums without fortunes to back them are close relatives. The box photograph on the mantel clearly depicts your own parents, who are dressed very simply. An unlikely source, then, for setting a
young doctor up in practice. However, I observe a framed document behind your desk certifying one Dr. Augustus Agar a licensed physician. Your uncle, upon his retirement from practice, made you a gift of monies and, I daresay, a significant portion of his library. His medical license you retain as a keepsake.”

“It is marvelous! But how did you know Augustus Agar was my uncle and not my grandfather?”

“The date on the certificate, not to mention the typeface and the colour of the paper, rather precludes that notion.”

Dr. Agar shot me an appreciative glance. “I admit that I wondered whether your account of Mr. Holmes had embellished his powers, but I am now prepared to believe Mr. Holmes a genius, and yourself a man of unimpeachable honesty.”

“It is merely a matter of drawing inferences based on the visible data,” Holmes demurred with his usual withdrawn composure, but I could see he was flattered by the young doctor’s approval.

“Tush! There is nothing ‘mere’ about it. You are a pioneer in your field, a characteristic I wholeheartedly admire. I am also guilty of a unique course of study, which you have noted has not yet made my fortune.”

“You are engaged in an unusual branch of medicine, then?” I queried.

“And not a very popular one, I am afraid,” he smiled. “We tend to run the gamut from pathological anatomy to mesmerism, with all manner of phrenology, craniometry, and neurology thrown in. I am a psychologist.”

“Are you indeed?” I exclaimed.

“I studied in Paris for a year under Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital.
*
If Uncle Augustus had possessed the funds, he would certainly
have set me up in Cavendish Square, and my expertise would thus be certified geographically. I am afraid Baker Street is the revered locus of criminal detection, not of the cure of mental disease. At present I subsist on referrals: the nervous, the hypochondriacal, and the merely sick. And of course, the occasional stabbing comes my way.”

“Yes, well,” coughed Holmes, “as it happens that is just the matter in which I require your assistance.”

“That is wonderful news!” Dr. Agar grinned. “I was burning with curiosity, but as a gentleman, I could hardly ask. What sort of assistance may I render?”

“Dr. Watson’s Medical Directory informed me you were a specialist in nervous disorders, and a glance at your shelves tells me you may be just the expert I require.
Textbook of Brain Disorders, Mental Pathology and Therapeutics, Psychopathia Sexualis
*
—if you are the doctor your library proclaims, you could be of the greatest use.”

Holmes related briefly the circumstances which led to his grisly introduction to Dr. Agar. When he finished, the doctor nodded with an expression of deepest interest.

“I have, of course, followed the Ripper’s crimes very closely. I had an inkling from the press reports that it was his work I stitched up the other night. But let me understand you, sir—do you seek aid that is in some way psychological?”

“I do,” confirmed Holmes. “I am a consulting detective, Dr. Agar, and as such many branches of study come within my sphere, the majority of which deal with gathering and interpreting hard evidence. However, I believe the Ripper may be a variety of criminal I have never before pursued, and one against whom hard evidence is of alarmingly little use. My practice is based upon the fact that, although a given crime may appear unique, to the connoisseur of criminal history, it nearly always follows an established pattern. In this case, the
template was so very rare that it took me some time to identify it. But since the events of the thirtieth, I begin to know this fellow better. The double murder eroded his mask in a profound fashion. It appears we must understand that slaying these women is a pleasure second only to afterwards ripping them to pieces.”

I felt a growing revulsion at the conversation, but Dr. Agar appeared profoundly intrigued. “He seeks out women who have wronged him and enacts these terrible crimes out of sheer hatred?” I questioned.

Holmes shook his head. “I do not believe he knows them. It is my working hypothesis that this man kills perfect strangers. In fact, I have been led to believe that we are on the trail of a complete madman who is for all appearances an ordinary person.”

I stared at him aghast. “I could well believe that the fiend is mad,” I protested, “but what you suggest is impossible. There must be another motive behind the deaths of these women. The mad do not walk among the sane unremarked.”

“Do they not?” he queried, one brow tilted toward the ceiling.

“No,” I insisted irritably. “The merely eccentric are as sane as you or I, but as for a man who butchers the most pitiable of our populace without reason or foreknowledge—can you seriously believe such malice could go about the business of day-to-day life without exciting alarm?”

“Do not ask me. That is what I wish to inquire of Dr. Agar,” Holmes replied, turning the force of his steely gaze upon the psychologist standing before the dwindling fire. “Is it possible, in your professional opinion, for a madman to enact a faultless pretense of rational humanity?”

Dr. Agar moved to his bookshelf and selected a slim volume. “I begin to guess at your meaning, Mr. Holmes. You refer to the London Monster.”

Holmes swiftly indicated a passage from his commonplace book. “I refer not only to the London Monster, although he plays a telling role. Nearly a century ago—April seventeen eighty-eight, London: first appearance of the London ‘Monster.’ Approximately fifty women knifed
on the streets between the years of eighty-eight and ninety. Suspect never caught. Mark that, Watson. Moving to the Continent; Innsbruck, eighteen twenty-eight: multiple women approached and stabbed with a common pocketknife. Case never closed. Bremen, eighteen eighty: a hairdresser slashed the breasts of no fewer than thirty-five women in broad daylight before he was apprehended. All are examples of what I believe could be termed a deeply morbid erotic mania.”

“Your chain of reasoning is rather terrifying, sir,” said Dr. Agar.

“What chain of reasoning, Holmes?” I questioned apprehensively.

“If I can discover a link connecting the victims—shared knowledge of a secret is an excellent example—the hypothesis will, blessedly, shatter,” he returned. “But I have repeated to myself
Cui bono
? until I can feel the words burned upon my brain, and the only answer is
No one.
For now, it is clear that any man committing so many
motiveless
crimes must necessarily be mad. And yet, in order to continue freely committing them…”

“The culprit cannot have appeared to be mad,” finished Dr. Agar.

“So I put it to you, Dr. Agar,” Holmes concluded grimly. “Is such a thing possible?”

“It is a very difficult question to answer with any degree of assurance,” he replied carefully. “After all, is mental illness a sickness of the soul, degeneracy of stock, or a defect of the brain? What you propose is an entirely new form of madness—a monomania lurking beneath a rational mind, aiding itself and disguising itself. Your idea comes closer to the classical definition of pure malevolence than any maniac who lashes out with a frenzied knife. You speak of a complete moral degeneracy, assisted by an affable exterior and a shrewd intelligence.”

“Precisely,” said Sherlock Holmes.

“I’m afraid I think it entirely possible,” Dr. Agar replied.

“Then there is nothing for it,” said my friend. “My thanks for your assistance. If you will excuse me, I have a deal of work ahead of me. Payment for your past services is there, on the table.”

Dr. Agar quickly attempted to return the notes. “Mr. Holmes, as your neighbour, I would not dream of exacting payment over an emergency.”

“Then consider it a consulting fee,” my friend smiled. “This way, Watson. We’ll not intrude further upon Dr. Agar’s time.”

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” said the affable young fellow at the door. “If you should feel the need to intrude again, I beg that you will not hesitate! I treated three patients this afternoon—two for insomnia, and one for an ill-disguised preoccupation with opiates. Your visit has quite redeemed the day.”
*

We waved to Dr. Agar and strolled the few steps back to our own door.

“You appear disturbed, Dr. Watson,” Holmes remarked.

“I cannot readily believe such men exist outside the realm of fiction designed to horrify the reader,” I admitted, casting about for my key.

“It is difficult to fathom, I know, for I required weeks to even consider such a nightmare possible.”

“And you are sure our man is of a kind?” I persisted as we made our way up the stairs.

“I have no doubt of it.”

“I cannot begin to think what steps you will take. It is a monster you describe, Holmes.”

“He is neither a monster nor a beast, but something far more dangerous. I fear that men, when possessed of both utter depravity and absolute conviction, are far more deadly than either. And I begin to fear that such men are nearly impossible to find. But I’ll do it, Watson. I shall have him. I swear to you it shall be done.” Holmes nodded a good night and then, without another word, vanished into the confines of his room.

The following morning, I descended from my bedroom to discover Holmes had already finished his breakfast. He had then, I gathered, occupied himself by amassing all our cushions, piling them beneath the settee, supplying himself with an unholy reserve of cigarettes, and then draping himself on the floor with all the incense-shrouded dignity of a heathen god. My greeting went unanswered, so between the hours of eight and nine I devoured an egg and several rashers of bacon over a slow perusal of the
Times
and
Pall Mall.

“A word with you, Watson, if you can spare the time,” Holmes called out as he discarded the stub of a cigarette in a teacup situated within easy reach.

“Certainly, Holmes.” I quit the breakfast table and, selecting a cigar from the coal scuttle, settled myself in my armchair.

“I shan’t tax your patience for longer than is necessary, but it is the curse of the solo investigator that he has no confederate to bend an ear when a problem grows too unwieldy for private conjecture. You have surely realized that our case proceeds upon three lines. The primary—and may I say least fruitful—investigation is that surrounding the Ripper’s actual crimes, which have afforded us shockingly little physical evidence. Although our conference with Dr. Agar last night aids us in a general sense, our quarry still has allowed us no details
which could possibly lead to a residence, name, or arrest. The next line of inquiry concerns the proposition that Jack the Ripper, whoever he may be, takes a deal of pleasure in tormenting us. This idea is based on the letter I had in February of last year. It seems he takes nearly as much pleasure in penning taunting notes as he does in committing horrific murders; however, this thirst for correspondence may well prove very dangerous for him, for the slightest physical clue could point to a place of origin and thus prove his ultimate undoing. Am I clear thus far?”

“Perfectly.”

“Finally there is the matter of the Martha Tabram murder.”

“You still believe it to have been the work of the Ripper.”

“I do indeed, but there is another puzzle tied to Tabram’s stabbing, and that is this abstruse tale of Stephen Dunlevy and Johnny Blackstone. Miss Monk had barely been in our employ a week when a strange man approached her claiming to know all about Tabram’s death. Granted, Whitechapel is not a large district, although it is densely populated, and thus it is perfectly possible that she should have instantly met a man connected to the Ripper. But is it probable?”

“How do you mean?”

“Is it not odd that within a few days of our forging an association, Miss Monk should discover a colossal lead quite by accident? The circumstance grows even more inexplicable when one takes into account the source, Mr. Dunlevy himself. I must confess to you that our glimpse of him in the pub that terrible night was not the first time I laid eyes on the man, but it has taken me days to place where I’d seen him before. I saw him the very day we met Miss Monk, as we exited Lambeth Workhouse.”

My mouth fell open at this revelation. “You are certain?”

“Entirely. Yet another reason, you see, for Miss Monk to keep a close watch on the fellow.”

Though I had often noted the peculiarly scientific way in which Holmes at times directed people like pieces on a chessboard, custom
had not inured me to it. I shrugged coldly, exasperated by his glibness. “Perhaps Dunlevy and Miss Monk are engaged in a conspiracy against you.”

My friend only smiled. “You imagine I had not considered that alternative. Rest assured, Miss Monk is not in his employ, or she was not when I engaged her assistance.”

“Barring any personal bias from the question, how can you be sure?”

“Because of the scuffed new boots which caused such a fracas last night.”

“I do not understand.”

“Her old men’s boots had two small symmetrical holes just in the instep where the foot breaks the arch, an almost unbearable condition at this time of year when the wet and the cold are conjoined against one. And yet she did not, for two weeks after I had been paying her, purchase new boots. No, she presumed I was joking when I took her on as a colleague, and she clearly had no competing source of income from Dunlevy. She imagined if I came to my senses and cut off her payments, she would still be ahead by a pound or two, which is enough to keep out of the workhouse.”

At that moment we detected a slow, lumbering tread upon the staircase. The door swung open to admit the enormous personage of Mycroft Holmes, the elder brother of the great detective, whose high position in government office was as unknown to the public as it was vital to the realm. While his formidable acumen could hardly be exaggerated, neither could his martial adherence to habit, which made sightings of him outside the vicinity of Whitehall, his own lodgings in Pall Mall, or the Diogenes Club exceptional indeed. I at once offered him a chair, but he stood peering down at his brother upon the floor from his own formidable height with profound concern and displeasure mixed in his cutting grey eyes.

“I was most unpleasantly alarmed about you Sunday when a circulatory from the highest levels was posted directly to my home,”
Mycroft Holmes announced. “I trust he will come to no lasting harm?” The latter query was addressed to me, and I shook my head. “Well then, Sherlock, what the devil have you been playing at? You have been pursuing the Whitechapel killer in an egregiously foolhardy manner.”

“Do sit down, brother Mycroft, you’ll exhaust yourself. You are already exhausting me,” my friend replied, both amused and annoyed by his sibling. “As it happens, we came upon the murder scene entirely by accident.”

Mycroft Holmes accepted the chair grudgingly, his eyes focused as always upon some vacant middle ground, a gaze which in both men looked like distraction and was in fact the most powerful concentration of thought. “I had wondered. Clever of you to pursue him unarmed, in the dark. I suppose you continued the chase even after the first time you collapsed.”

I must have looked confused at this remark, for Holmes, with a satirical flourish, pushed up his cuff and further exposed the opposite wrist, which, I had not even noticed, had been more than once bruised and scraped in a fall. “I thought to limit his future activities, but as you can see, rather the opposite has occurred,” he said to his brother.

“My dear boy, you must take this matter more seriously, really you must.”

Holmes’s mouth twitched impatiently. “Mycroft, if you imply that I consider the gruesome murders of five helpless women a frivolous concern—”

“You deliberately misunderstand me.” Mycroft’s expression was as fond as his tone was dry. “It is of immense practical interest, not to mention of course immense sentimental interest to your only sibling, that you leave off rushing single-handedly after dangerous madmen. More is at stake here than has been made clear to you. Whitechapel is a very minor fraction of a vast metropolis, but the effect these crimes are having on the entire nation…Sherlock, surely you see the consequences of failure?”

“An ever-increasing number of ritually disemboweled prostitutes.”

“Your morbidity is misplaced,” the elder Holmes sniffed. “Did you see the report on the double murder in the
Star
?”

“I looked over it. They are calling for the dismissal of Sir Charles Warren.”

“Occasionally those zealots hit near to the mark of public opinion. Whitechapel will smash the Empire, they say—a hyperbolic slander, but one which worries us exceedingly. Though I know it doesn’t interest you in the slightest, my boy, the problem of Whitechapel is being amplified to symbolize the problems of an entire nation. Even as we pray for progress, we are beset by anarchists and agitators.”

“Surely a dilemma more worthy of your attentions than of mine,” my friend observed. “I do not pretend to be the incarnate central clearinghouse of the British government.”

Mycroft Holmes merely pursed his lips sternly. “You would be shocked, perhaps, to learn of the woes currently assailing Her Majesty from all sides. I am not at liberty to discuss such matters with you, but perhaps you will do me the honour of trusting me. It all looks very bad, Sherlock, and getting worse all the time. The question of Irish autonomy alone has so splintered Parliament that this madman at large among the destitute could plausibly fuel incendiary actions rather than incendiary words. And now I hear rumours that a provocative message was scrawled upon a wall directly implicating the Jews.”

“I heard the same rumour,” Holmes drawled. “Your Sir Charles erased it, you see.”

Mycroft sighed with an expression of sorely tried patience. “Can you imagine I do not appreciate your frustration? Perhaps you will be more disposed to consider the political side of this affair when I say that though I have been most anxious to call upon you, I was also asked to do so by an individual whose importance can hardly be exaggerated.”

Holmes’s eyes softened, but his brow lifted quizzically. “My dear brother, what do you wish me to say? I can offer you nothing but assurances.”

“On the contrary, you can answer key questions. Mr. George Lusk has sent a petition to Her Highness directly, asking that a reward be offered.”

“Yes, he has an excellent grasp of the concept of chain of command.”

“I should like to hear your thoughts.”

My friend shook his head decisively. “No. The game would hardly be worth the candle: to say nothing of the official force, who are already in it to their necks, I should be required to sift through great masses of useless detritus.”

“We are in agreement, then. No reward. What other forms of assistance would prove functional?”

Holmes drew a deep breath. “I need unquestioned access to the evidence held by the City Police and the Yard, no matter what the
London Chronicle
is inclined to print about me.”

“I shall ensure the fact.”

“I need an increase in Whitechapel patrols and a guarantee that they will be manned by competent men.”

“I’d already anticipated that requirement. The new men were diverted from other districts yesterday. You’ve glanced into the history of the London Monster, I imagine?”

“My dear Mycroft, what a very novel idea.”

“Have you any further needs?”

Holmes looked suddenly very weary. “I need time. If that is all, Mycroft, I wish you good afternoon. I must resume my threads of inquiry.”

My friend’s elder brother heaved his considerable frame out of our chair. “Sherlock, I know very well that our respective fortes are at cross-purposes. You revel in the minutiae, and I, the macrocosm. You reason backward from the smallest details, while I predict the great
events which arise from the soil of the trivial. I rely now entirely upon your own specialty; be active, Sherlock. Come to me immediately if you find yourself in need of aid.”

“You may report back to that gracious personage that I will shirk at nothing to stop this man.”

“Indeed, Sherlock, well said. And nor will I. Once you have a case, I shall see to the rest. Mend quickly; I am pleased beyond words you aren’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“My thanks. I quite share your view on that point.”

“Farewell, then.”

I saw Mycroft Holmes out. As he stepped from our dwelling onto the street, he turned and grasped my arm with one of his sizeable hands. “Look out for him, Doctor,” he said. “I am dismayed to see my younger brother embroiled in this wretched business, but he can leave no stone unturned. He must act, and act quickly! We all of us depend upon it.”

As his portly yet erect frame lumbered its slow way down Baker Street toward the neighbouring Dorset Street cab stand, I stood for a moment to breathe in the crisp draughts of the autumn afternoon. Mycroft’s exhortation had lifted my spirits more than any false assurances could have done. My friend possessed remarkable powers of recovery when his mind was set upon it; the same man who had lain ill with nervous prostration for over a month following an arduous case would stop at nothing whilst in the midst of one. I silently vowed that when Sherlock Holmes set himself once more in the path of Jack the Ripper, I would be there beside him.