Dust and Shadow (3 page)

“If that is the case, she was prostrate before the wound to her neck was administered. Where is she now, Lestrade?”

“At the morgue. Name of Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols, identified by a friend from Lambeth Workhouse who calls herself Mary Ann Monk. Mark of the workhouse was on the petticoats, which led us to seek identification there. Shabby clothing, black bonnet, and she had on her person a comb, pocket handkerchief, and a piece of mirror. More than likely it’s all she had to her name.”

“What do you imagine the time of death to have been, Dr. Llewellyn?”

“I arrived at three fifty a.m. She could not have been dead more than ten minutes.”

“And the gruesome discovery was made by whom?”

“One Charles Cross, a carman on his way to work,” said Lestrade as he consulted his notes. “In my opinion, he’s merely a passerby. Poor chap was terrified. Constable Neil arrived on the scene shortly after and sent for Dr. Llewellyn here, hoping to save her. It was too late by that time, of course.”

We sat silent as the wind picked up. I wondered briefly whether Polly Nichols’s family knew of her hideous fate, and then whether she had any family to tell.

“Lestrade,” Holmes said finally, “has the force had any luck in clearing up the murder of Martha Tabram early this month?”

Lestrade shook his head perplexedly. “The inquest has just been reopened. I was not myself working on the case, but we’re all of the mind it was a tryst gone terribly wrong. Good Lord, Mr. Holmes, you don’t think these events could have been connected in any way?”

“No, certainly not. I’ve merely the professional certainty that two such outrageous crimes committed ten minutes’ walk apart from each other is remarkable enough to note.”

Dr. Llewellyn rose and reached for his hat. “I am very sorry I have not more to tell you gentlemen. I’m afraid I must return to my practice, as my patients will be wondering what has become of me.”

“Be so good as to leave your card, Dr. Llewellyn,” said Holmes, shaking his hand absently.

“Of course. The best of luck to all of you. Do let me know if I can be of any further assistance.”

After Dr. Llewellyn’s departure, Lestrade turned a grave face to Holmes.

“I don’t like your harping on Martha Tabram one bit, Mr. Holmes. Surely the same man couldn’t have fallen out with both these women? More likely Polly Nichols was killed by a jealous lover, or a gang, or one of her clients who’d fallen into a drunken rage.”

“You are probably right. However, I beg that you will humour me far enough to fill me in on the details of both crimes.”

Lestrade shrugged. “If Tabram is of interest to you, of course I’ve
no objection. It shouldn’t be difficult for me to gather up the papers. I can have them for you this afternoon.”

“I shall cast an eye over the evidence immediately.”

“You have full access, Mr. Holmes—just mention my name at the morgue or at the crime scene. I shall see you both at the Yard.” The inspector nodded and made his way out.

My friend crossed to the mantelpiece, shook a cigar out of an empty bud vase, and commenced smoking with the deepest absorption. “This Tabram murder is a very curious affair,” he commented.

“You mean the Nichols murder?”

“I mean precisely what I say.”

“You thought little enough of it before, Holmes.”

“I expected every morning to read that they’d solved it. Men do not often stab helpless females thirty-nine times and then disappear into the ether. The motive behind such an outrageous act would necessarily be sensational.”

“And such women necessarily have a great many associates, most of them untraceable,” I pointed out.

“That is obvious,” he retorted. “It is also obvious that the district of Whitechapel offers a great many natural advantages to the predator. Once the sun has fallen, you can hardly see your hand before your face, and the slaughterhouses allow blood-spattered men to pass without remark. What is less obvious is whether we have anything to fear from the proximity, in place and in time, of the two deaths.”

“It is certainly a distressing coincidence.”

Holmes shook his head and reached for his walking stick.

“One viciously maimed corpse is distressing. Two is something else entirely. I fear we have not a moment to lose.”

The body of Polly Nichols clearly demanded our immediate attention, so we at once made our way by cab to the mortuary shed at Old Montague Street Workhouse Infirmary. As we clattered roughly toward the East-end of London, the buildings grew steadily smaller, their façades coated with decades of sooty atmosphere. When we reached Whitechapel Road, however, I was struck as always by the headlong commotion of the place. A preacher stood shouting at a knot of jeering locals, fighting to wrest their attention from a gin palace on the one side and an equally vociferous peddler of men’s work shirts on the other. Light and dust sparkled from the backs of loaded hay-wains, and dead cattle swung from hooks above carts filled with fresh hides. But despite the thriving dynamism of its widest thoroughfares, I never failed to be shaken by the misery evident as we turned off the main road into narrow, shop-lined byways and passed snarling youngsters fighting over a street corner from which to sell matches, and staggering drunks of both sexes propped against doorframes in the early afternoon.

The mortuary shed was by its very nature a dismal place, frequented only by those whose sole recourse was to indenture themselves to the parish disposing of human remains, and characterized by its utter unsuitability as a medical facility. Lestrade had sent warn
ing of our imminent arrival, so immediately upon locating the hodgepodge of wooden slats, we witnessed firsthand the sight that had so upset Dr. Llewellyn.

Across the crude wooden slab of an examining table lay a woman slightly more than five feet tall. Though her face was small-featured with high, merry cheekbones and a sensitive brow, it was etched deeply with the coarseness of care and toil. Her neck was indeed nearly severed and her abdomen opened in bestial, purposeless lacerations.

I began to inquire whether anything stood out to Holmes’s sharper eye, but suddenly he dived toward the corpse with a cry of impatience.

“We have arrived too late after all! It has been washed, Watson,” he exclaimed. “Most obtusely and effectively washed.”

I nodded. “It is a common enough practice, as you know. Some even argue one cannot see the wounds effectively otherwise.”

Holmes practically snorted. “I tell you, Watson, if Scotland Yard were to reimburse my time for retrieving every clue lost due to negligence or hysterical hygiene, I could no doubt retire this afternoon. As it is, I am forced to glean the leavings. Do you observe anything Dr. Llewellyn may have missed, being less intimately acquainted with the criminal element than you yourself?”

“Really, Holmes.”

His eyes glinted wickedly over my shoulder. “Come now, my dear fellow. Expertise is none the less admirable for being of an unsavoury variety.”

I looked her over. The poor wretch had come to a sorry end; a blessing indeed if her killer saw fit to cut her throat first, leaving the remainder of his rage for a lifeless shell.

“Her neck has been slashed nearly to the vertebrae, lacerating the two major arteries, and there are seven senseless cuts through her abdominal tissue. She does not appear to have been victim of any other indecencies, for I see no sign of recent connection, and the
cuts are smooth-edged and deliberate. What do you make of it, Holmes?”

The detective hovered over her pensively. “Notice the discolouration near the jaw; he robbed her of consciousness, then slit her throat upon the ground, for she exhibits no bruising on the arms consistent with fending off her attacker, and it would explain the lack of blood upon the upper torso that Dr. Llewellyn mentioned. From the cleanliness of the other cuts, which you noted so astutely, we may also deduce that she was dead, drugged, or in some other way incapable of struggle when they were performed, else they would be jagged or torn. I believe all these injuries were made with the same weapon, that is to say, a six-or eight-inch knife kept well sharpened, possibly with a double blade. He killed her, cut her apart in near total darkness—at a serious threat to his own safety, if we consider the surplus time required—and then made his escape.”

“But why? What could possibly have occurred between Polly Nichols and her killer to enrage him so?”

“Why, indeed. Come, Watson—off to Buck’s Row. If we are miraculously lucky, we may find something the police have not already either trampled on or swept into the rubbish bin.”

When we arrived at the scene of the murder, the bustling cacophony of Whitechapel Road faded, replaced by the headlong rushing of the Northern Railway Line. Mean two-story houses, hastily constructed and poorly maintained, crept along one side of Buck’s Row, while the blank faces of austere warehouses stood like sentinels on the other. Holmes leapt down from the hansom and approached a knot of reporters and policemen while I paid the driver and elicited a promise to await our return.

“Certainly, Mr. Holmes,” a young constable replied as I approached, tipping his rounded hat. “We were about to scrub down the whole area, but we can give you ten minutes if you like. We’ve found nothing out of the ordinary.”

Holmes, every sinew of his slight frame alive with that nervous
energy only apparent within the boundaries of a crime scene, set to work. The detective was as avid in his pursuit of a case as he was lethargic at the lack of one, and no patch of the surrounding roads or stable yard escaped his steely scrutiny. After nearly twenty minutes, he struck his stick impatiently against the stable yard fence and returned to where I stood.

“Any progress?”

Holmes set his thin lips and shook his head. “From the blood upon the ground, I believe she was not moved from another site, which is a point worth knowing. The quarrel ended here. Apart from that, I can only tell you that the apothecary over there was recently the victim of a robbery, that two gentlemen of leisure came to blows over a bet near that patch of mud, and that the police constable immediately to your left is a bachelor who owns a terrier. And thus, friend Watson, we finish no better off than we began.” He waved to the constables to proceed about their business.

“I suppose the points you’ve mentioned can have nothing to do with the crime itself, but how did you deduce them?”

“What?” His grey eyes were busily scanning the upper stories of the surrounding buildings. “Oh, yes…Old door with new lock near broken window, a costly variety of the jack of spades torn in half near obvious signs of a struggle between square-toed male boots, and Constable Anderson’s truly appalling trouser legs. No, they are not related to our investigation. And yet, we may still find ourselves employment. The angle of that window is ideally positioned for our purposes.”

I looked up in curiosity. Behind us stood the Brown and Eagle Wool Warehouse and Schneider’s Cap Factory, both constructed with that wholehearted devotion to industry that sullies the word
architecture.
The window Holmes indicated, belonging to a tenement, was almost immediately above us. My friend lost no time but strode forward and rapped upon the door.

At first I thought his mysterious intentions would be denied, for there was no answer. Then the detective smiled in his ironic fashion.
“Slow footsteps…a woman, I think. Yes, and slightly lame in one foot. Naturally, I cannot yet tell you which foot. My apologies. Ah, here is the lady herself.”

The door flew open, revealing a wrinkled, forward-thrusting face wreathed with a nimbus of wispy white hair, a face resembling nothing so much as a mole emerging from its burrow. Her spectacles were so dirty that I could hardly see the use of them. She peered at us as if at two scabrous street dogs and tightened her grasp on her cane.

“What do you want? I don’t let rooms, and if you’ve business with my sons or my husband, they work for a living.”

“What miserable luck,” Holmes exclaimed. “I was informed that your fellow knew a man with access to a cart.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, her eyes narrowing still further, “but my youngest won’t be back until seven.”

“By Jove! No rest for us today, Miles,” said Holmes with a wry face. “I was prepared to meet nearly any price, the goods being what they are, but we’ll simply have to inquire elsewhere.”

“Now, wait. You’ve need of a cart today?”

Holmes bent his aquiline face toward the old woman and replied, “I’ve certain…materials which need transporting. I’m afraid it’s rather a man’s business, Mrs….?”

“Mrs. Green.”

“Of course, you’re his mother. And you’re sure Mr. Green will be out for some time? Well, it is a pity. I don’t imagine you’ve any experience with such matters?”

She pursed her wrinkled mouth and, reaching some private conclusion, beckoned us inside. We were led into a small, dimly lit parlour, which featured not one iota of furnishings more than was necessary, and sat down.

“I must admit,” Holmes began, “I’ve been set on my guard by recent events.”

Mrs. Green’s eyes lit like tapers. “Oh, you mean the murder, do you? Begging your pardon, what was your name?”

“I am Mr. Worthington, and this is my associate Mr. Miles.”

She nodded sagely, replying, “A nasty business.”

“But how terrifying! You must have heard something, living so near at hand.”

“Not I, sir. Though I am, I may tell you, a very light sleeper. I was once awoken by nothing more than my cat leaping onto the downstairs balustrade.”

“Dear me. But you sleep downstairs, surely, to have heard such a thing?”

She shook her head proudly. “No, indeed. My daughter and I sleep on the first floor. I am very sensitive, nocturnally speaking, sir.”

“Then you must certainly have been disturbed! Your window overlooks the very spot.”

“Would that I had seen something, or heard it, but I slept peacefully through till morning. It’s eerie, that’s what. But what time shall you be needing the cart?”

“In all honesty, Mrs. Green, I should not like to discuss my goods with anyone other than your son. I cannot convey to you my absolute trust in his discretion except to offer my warmest compliments regarding his upbringing. We shall return at a later time.” Holmes bade a cordial farewell to the woman, who limped appreciably on her right foot as she showed us to the door.

“You were quite effective at gaining an entrance,” I noted as we returned to the cab.

Holmes smiled, but his gaze was distant. “It goes without saying in this community that, given even a single male member of the household, any resident will be acquainted with a man who has access to a cart. You can hardly fail, provided your pronouns are vague enough.”

“It is a pity she could tell us nothing.”

“On the contrary,” my friend replied softly, “she told us a great deal.”

“How do you mean?”

“I had hoped, despite its cool execution, that this was some mon
strous crime of passion. Mrs. Green’s room overlooks the scene of the assault, and I know for a fact that Nichols was not moved. If Mrs. Green is a light sleeper, and if Nichols was not moved, and Mrs. Green heard nothing, then there was no quarrel. If there was no quarrel…”

“Then the murder was premeditated,” I continued. “And if the murder was premeditated—”

“Then it is worse than I thought,” Holmes concluded grimly. “Whitehall, please, driver! Scotland Yard.”

We entered the Yard’s headquarters through the rear of the building and hastened up the familiar staircase to locate Inspector Lestrade. Our associate’s office was hardly a shrine to organization at the best of times, but that afternoon we found the windowless room could hardly be glimpsed beneath its litter of notes, maps, and memoranda. He looked up from his chair with a decided smirk.

The inspector appeared to have recovered a deal of composure within the haven of the Yard, along with the officious manners which were wont so often to chafe the considerable vanity of my companion. I had watched the pair collaborate over crimes both trivial and momentous over the years, and despite their mutual love of justice and regard for each other’s talents—tenacity on Lestrade’s part and innate brilliance on the part of Sherlock Holmes—I had never yet witnessed a meeting when the two friends failed to pique one another’s temper, either deliberately or incidentally. The fact that both would end up nettled and self-important was a foregone conclusion, even if Holmes religiously delivered full credit to Lestrade in all their mutual cases, and Holmes was Lestrade’s first and last defense against the incomprehensible.

“Well, Mr. Holmes, the notion we’d a homicidal maniac on our hands was a bit rich, don’t you think? I’ve put together the evidence regarding the Tabram case for you, and I think you’ll see it’s hardly the work of the same man.”

“I do not recall stating that the crimes were perpetrated by the same individual, only that they are both singular and similar.”

Lestrade proceeded to rummage through his papers primly.

“Very well, Mr. Holmes. Lecture as you like. I will confine myself to the facts. Deceased, one Martha Tabram, an unfortunate, found in George Yard Buildings on August the seventh stabbed thirty-nine times. Took us a full week to identify the body, finally confirmed by Henry Samuel Tabram, her former husband. They had two sons, but she seems to have been more interested in gin than in children, so she deserted him. He cut off her maintenance money when he discovered how she was supplementing her income. One can hardly blame him.” Here the inspector coughed discreetly before continuing his report. “She was last seen in the company of a drunken sergeant, and whoever he may be, the case is black against him. Tabram ducked into an alleyway with the chap and that’s the last we know.”

“To whom are we grateful for this information?”

“Constable Bennett, whose beat includes George Yard Buildings, and a Miss ‘Pearly Poll.’ Miss Poll and Mrs. Tabram fell in with a pair of guardsmen at the Two Brewers public house sometime before midnight. When they had finished at the pub, they parted ways into dark corridors in pairs. I’m sure you can deduce why that might be.”

“Thank you, the matter is indeed within my powers. What says this Constable Bennett?”

“That he approached a young grenadier guardsman at two o’clock in the morning just north of George Yard Buildings. Fellow told Bennett he was waiting for a friend who had gone off with a girl. Almost three hours later, one John Reeves came running up to Bennett with the news that he’d found a body. Bennett said that the corpse was placed in a disheveled and provocative position, and the time of death was estimated at close upon two a.m. So you see by now, it can have nothing to do with the other business.”