Dust and Shadow (24 page)

“Perhaps he was determined to lighten his load.”

“That is possible. But there is something about it I do not like. Let us leave this wretched place.”

My friend’s expression was set and neutral as we retraced our steps, yet somehow it was as dejected as I had ever seen. But our time in that house would not end so quickly as we had imagined, for as we descended the last set of stairs, the outer door swung forward to
reveal a hollow-eyed woman, thin and spindly but with fiery red hair, accompanied by two children whose paper-thin complexions loudly declared their ill health.

Holmes, to his credit, held the lamp so that she could clearly see us and relapsed immediately into the charming seafarer whose identity he had laboured so long to establish.

“Oh, dear God!” the woman cried at seeing two strangers in what were, presumably, her rooms.

“Now, don’t take on so,” Holmes began in his most hypnotic tones. “We’ve come to see a friend, but we mean you no harm. He ain’t here, so we’re making our way back out again.”

“What on earth do y’ mean skulking about in here at night?”

“We made a poor job of it—please accept our apologies, ma’am. My name is Escott, and this here is Middleton.”

“Timothy, Rebecca, go along to the room, now,” she breathed in the lilting tones of the northern Irish native. “Take yer bundle, and eat yer share.” When the children had run off clutching a small rag, she returned her gaze to my friend. “What’s yer business, then?”

“We only wished to see your lodger.”

“He owes you money, does he?”

“Nothing of the sort, ma’am.”

She crossed her arms. “You truly are friends o’ his, then? Or are you kin?”

My friend smiled. “I promise you we neither of us would dream of breaking into your house meaning any harm. We wanted a word with him, and that’s the end of it.”

“Well, you won’t be having a word with him now.”

“So it seemed to us upstairs,” Holmes acknowledged, his eyes as sharp as knife points in the moonlight. “And why not?”

“Because,” she said flatly, “if your friend is Johnny Blackstone, there’s not a soul as can speak to him this side of the grave. Johnny Blackstone is dead.”

It was a great blessing for Holmes and me that we appeared in the character of Blackstone’s friends, for the stunned expression that flitted across both our faces thus required no explanation.

The woman’s thin lips parted sympathetically. “My name is Mrs. Quinn. I’ve naught to offer you for refreshment, as we’ve fallen lately upon some hard times. But if you’ve no objection to sitting a moment, I’ll make it all as clear to ye as I can.”

We thus found ourselves seated upon a pew in the well-kept but achingly bare room the Quinns shared. Similar pews lined the other three walls, scorched in places as if rescued from a fire, and a statue of the Virgin Mary whose cloak had half burned away sat majestically in a corner.

“Yer wondering at my furnishings,” Mrs. Quinn observed. “There was a great fire at one of the chapels hereabouts some years ago, when Mr. Quinn was still alive. Much of it was piled up for burning, but my Colin, he said the Lord would be grieved to see us wi’out so much as a stone to sit on, and here He’s provided us wi’ benches that would remind us of His goodness every day.

“Wi’out Mr. Quinn these five years, times has gotten steadily worse, and I’d taken the notion of bringing in extra lodgers. God forgive me for saying since his death this house has seemed as cursed as
any I’ve ever heard tell of back home. The first family lived happily enough upstairs before their eldest daughter took sick. The Connellys they were called, the six of ’em. Wasn’t long before Katie’d spread the pox to the others, and it was all I could do to keep ’em supplied with hot water and linens wi’out exposing our family to the sickness. After four of ’em had died, the other two just disappeared into the night. I’ve been wanting to rent the room again, for it’s months since they’ve gone, but the notion of cleaning it is a hard one, for I’ve more knowledge of how these things are passed than most, and I’ve a mortal terror of taking sick with Tim and Rebecca to think of.

“The other chamber was near enough destroyed when a kerosene lamp fell from a table, but I still had the attic room, and last August I rented it to yer friend, Johnny Blackstone, just after the Connellys all vanished. I think he liked this house, for it was so easy for him to be alone, and I hardly ever saw him from one day to the next. Whenever we did meet, often as not I’d have the little ones in tow, and he’d laugh at the sight of ’em. He’d leave treats for ’em at the foot of the stairs—harmless things, boats he’d made, and paper dolls and the like. But he always seemed in a hurry to be quit of us and would strike off for one of his dens, or run upstairs to smoke that foul pipe of his, and so it was that when he died last week, I never noticed for well-nigh three days’ time. God forgive me for it.”

“How did he die, Mrs. Quinn?”

“He hanged himself, Mr. Escott,” she replied, her round hazel eyes brimming with tears.

Holmes and I regarded her with unfeigned horror, but she swiftly recovered her self-possession.

“The parish men took his body and performed a pauper’s burial. I cast about a bit for any as knew him, but when none did, I came to think how he’d been behind in his rent, and the washing I take in hasn’t been near enough, and winter just beginning. I pawned the lot of his things today when I’d done delivering my washing, Mr. Escott. All but the blanket, for we need another one.”

“Mrs. Quinn, though I don’t like asking you to think on such things,
was there any sign of why a young fellow like Blackstone might have taken his own life? Something in the lot you pawned, for instance?”

“There was nothing like that save for a letter. I believe it’s for his sister. I’d have mailed it sooner, but I’ve only just gotten the postage from the goods I pawned.”

She brought the letter and placed it upon the table. Holmes did not so much as glance at it but regarded Mrs. Quinn with an admirable display of buried grief.

“Forgive me—Blackstone’s death has come as a powerful blow to us, you must understand. That he had fallen upon evil days I knew, but that he ever entertained the notion of taking his own life…well, my mate may be beyond help, Mrs. Quinn, but I can at least set his affairs in order. What did he owe you beyond what you took in from pawning his goods?”

“Three and sixpence, Mr. Escott.”

“Here is a crown, then, for his rent and the interest. As for his goods, you’ve saved us from dealing with them.” As we arose and shook hands with Mrs. Quinn, Holmes’s eyes at last fell upon the letter. “Might I have the honour of posting this, Mrs. Quinn? Surely all the proceeds from his kit ought to be your own.”

“I should be glad if you would do so. Thank you both for yer kindness. I am sure Mr. Blackstone sees it and is grateful.”

We took our leave of Mrs. Quinn’s ruinous house, the outside air tinged with spent powder and woodsmoke. My friend tucked the letter in his inner pocket, and we marched without a word exchanged between us back to Scarborough Street and up the precarious stairs to Holmes’s room.

Though I could see from the detective’s first glance at the address that something deeply troubled him, he proceeded with mechanical aplomb, carefully slitting it open only after he had exhausted the envelope. He glanced at the handwriting within, then promptly passed it to me and sat upon the orange crate with the tips of his fingers pressed before his nearly closed eyes.

“Read it.”

The message, written in a great, driving script on four one-sided sheets, went as follows:

We sat in silence for some time. I knew nothing of what Holmes was thinking, but my own mind was in a whirl. It was a terrible admission, a nightmare of guilt and self-recrimination, but knowing as much as Holmes and I did, also grossly inaccurate. Could Blackstone have fallen into such a murderous trance that he had forgotten stabbing Martha Tabram beyond all bounds of sanity? I reminded myself that his sister’s opinion was paramount to him, but it beggared belief that he would admit to a murder and then promptly obscure the manner of it.

And where, if his deranged mind even knew of them, was mention of the other killings? My friend had hinted at every opportunity that he thought this man Blackstone to be none other than Jack the Ripper. His insistence that the Tabram case was our starting point, his preoccupation with uniforms, his tolerance of Dunlevy’s spying, the very weeks he had spent in the East-end: all pointed irrevocably to Blackstone’s assumed guilt. But if he had been the culprit, were our troubles now at an end? If all five grisly murders were upon his shoulders, the confession I still held listlessly in my hand was nothing more than a monstrous lie, or else the ravings of a man so delusional that he had forgotten the bulk of his wrongdoing. So much was clear to me and yet allowed room for still one more intolerable scenario to present itself. Suppose that Sherlock Holmes had been wrong?

I stirred myself to regard my friend, who remained in the exact posture he had assumed when I began the letter. Relaxed and immo
bile, he could have remained perfectly still, perhaps for hours, outwardly catatonic while his mind grappled rarefied data into hard fact. Instead, he spoke.

“You know what it means, don’t you?” he asked, his tone still reflecting the distant, incisive diction of the pure reasoner.

“I can hardly make head or tail of it. It complicates things immensely.”

“On the contrary, it simplifies them a thousand times over.”

“But my dear Holmes, how can that be possible?”

“Because now we know,” he said softly, “that someone is lying.”

I could think of nothing to say. Holmes fell back into thought, drumming his long fingers against one another until a startled expression darted across his features.

“A killing stab with a bayonet, and thirty-eight more wounds with a common pocketknife. Dear God, it is as clear as day. Where is Miss Monk?”

“I do not know. Dunlevy escorted her home yesterday. He is more taken with her than ever.”

“Is she likely to be with Dunlevy still?”

“I could not tell you. Her loathing of the fellow certainly seems to have lessened somewhat. But Holmes—”

Holmes, already in his coat, his muffler a whirl of red as he made for the door, made no reply. His haste sent a sharp sliver of unease shooting down my spine as I scrambled after him.

We set off at a rapid pace down the street, dappled everywhere with the orange light of exultant bonfires, but whether we made for Stephen Dunlevy’s abode or Miss Monk’s rooms I could not say. As we walked, Holmes stared unseeingly with his head sunk upon his chest whilst I fought to prevent myself picturing Miss Monk lying cold and open-eyed in an alleyway. Within a few minutes, we passed the now familiar sight of the Leman Street police station, its stoic lights casting icy blue shafts through their casements of marine-coloured glass. Excepting the Bow Street station, which Her Majesty considered too
close to the opera house to broadcast its existence so palpably, each Metropolitan outpost proclaimed itself a haven by its shimmering cobalt lamps.

“When one considers the police presence in the East-end, it is positively unthinkable that so many lives have been lost to this madman.”

To my utmost surprise, for I had hardly noted my muttered remark had been made aloud, Holmes stopped dead in his tracks.

“What do you mean, Watson?”

“Well,” I faltered, “the security in Whitechapel must be at its most stringent in history. Every available man has been diverted to guard the area. There ought to be dozens of them at any given time—though of course I’ve no notion of how they organize their beats.”

“Beats are between one and one-and-one-half miles long, generally requiring a minimum of ten and a maximum of fifteen minutes to traverse, barring any time-consuming incident. They do not overlap, though their routes do bring them into contact at their perimeters with other constables. Stopping for any reason other than suspicion a crime has been committed is expressly forbidden, though many officers keep a flask of tea warming at a gas lamp somewhere along their path.”

He began to pace slowly beside the police station, one hand lightly beating against the adjacent brick wall. “Watson, a deranged man kills five separate women, all in the same small area of London. Instead of fleeing the scene, he remains with the corpses in a state of perfect calm and goes about the business of cutting them open. Once finished with his task, he makes his way to safety as invisibly as a ghost…No, no, no. As I have stated it, it is impossible. Fool that I am!” he cried. “Why did I not see at once that it is impossible? The alleys, the byways, the holes in the fences, the cat’s meat and the blood-strewn butcheries and the wretched light, all these factors seemed to have allowed this madman to work with impunity. And yet the acts he has committed cannot have been enabled simply by his environment. Once or twice, perhaps, luck may have been on his side, but his suc
cess at this late date beggars belief. He is cunning and ruthless. Why would he risk everything to chance?”

He was off again, at a run this time. Boarded shop windows blurred into one another as we rushed headlong up tapering corridors, finally emerging into the pulsating spectacle of Whitechapel Road on the night of the fifth of November.

Dodging past hawkers waving crude effigies labeled with the names of Guy Fawkes and Jack the Ripper, we plunged into traffic, narrowly skirting the drays, hansoms, and carts which choked the thoroughfare. Just when I began to despair of maintaining the breakneck pace my friend had set, he turned sharply left and I recognized the wooden door of the chambers Miss Monk had taken. Holmes strode to the entrance, his brow etched with disquiet.

“We face two possibilities. One is very nearly proven, and the other almost untenable. However, as it should be exorbitantly clear now even to you, my dear Watson, I have been wrong before.”