Dust and Shadow (7 page)

“Excellent, my dear Watson. You make me feel as if I were there.”

“He then hid the cat’s meat, placing the organ in the bloody package and making off down the street, free of suspicion.”

“You shall master the deductive arts yet, my boy.”

“But who is he?”

“Mrs. Hardyman’s riveting description was as follows: ‘A sort of regular-looking chap, middle-sized, very polite in his ways.’ She thought she had seen him before but could not recall where or whether she had ever previously sold him cat’s meat. You see our earlier inference is confirmed; he is apparently not a man who imposes himself upon the senses. And this cat’s-meat business indicates premeditation yet again, which is more than a little disturbing to my mind.”

“What the devil could he have wanted with such a gruesome prize?”

“I cannot begin to tell you. Well, at any rate, it is certainly the best lead we’ve dug up, and while Miss Monk pans the silt, we shall see if we cannot add some fresh particulars to this shabbily dressed fellow, whose taste in souvenirs is as indecent as it is incomprehensible.”

The next morning, I was interrupted whilst stoking the fading morning fire in our sitting room by a resounding exclamation of disgust from Sherlock Holmes, who sat transfixed with a newspaper upon the breakfast table in front of him and an arrested coffeepot in his hand.

“Confound the man! Well, if the fool wishes to waste his labour on squaring the circle, as it is said, we can do nothing about it.”

“What has happened?”

“Lestrade has arrested John Pizer, against all tattered remains of rational thought.”

“At your suggestion, surely,” I reminded him.

“I wired him there was nothing in it!” Holmes protested. “Even the
Evening Standard
cannot credit his having anything to do with the matter.”

“And what more have the gutter press to say on the subject?”

Snapping the paper emphatically, he read, “‘It would seem that there is, haunting the slums and purlieus of Whitechapel, some obscene creature in human guise, whose hands are stained with the “gory witness” of a whole series of butcheries’…ha!…‘shocking perversion of Nature…bestial wretch…unquenchable as the taste of a man-eating tiger for human flesh.’”

“For heaven’s sake, my dear fellow.”

“I didn’t write it,” he said mischievously.

A brief knock at the door heralded the approach of our pageboy. “You’ve a telegram, Holmes.” I could not help but smile as my eyes scanned the correspondence. “Mr. Lusk is now the acting president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. He sends his allegiance and his warm regards.”

“Capital! Well, I am gratified to see that some of these active fellows are actually applying their energies in a beneficial direction. We shall follow their example, my good man—we must learn more about this purchaser of cat’s meat, and with all possible haste.”

But throughout the week that followed, Holmes met with only the most limited success. Despite all our efforts, as the killer had left no physical trace, we could not identify the man who had vanished that morning into the cold September air. The Vigilance Committee, a truly robust organization from the start, swiftly organized neighbourhood watches and nightly patrols, but they encountered few hazards beyond the outbreaks of vicious antiforeign mobs, who took it upon themselves to beat any hapless immigrant whose “sly looks” or “crooked demeanour” proved his degenerate nature. Every citizen of Whitechapel from the most devout charity worker to the lowest cracksman cried out in chorus that no native Englishman could ever have killed a poor woman so.

Annie Chapman was buried secretly on Friday the fourteenth of September, at the same paupers’ cemetery where Polly Nichols had been given back to the infinite little over a week before.
“Pulvis et umbra sumus,”
Holmes remarked that night, staring into the fire with his long arms cast thoughtfully about his drawn-up knees. “You and I, Watson, Annie Chapman, even the revered Horace himself—dust and the shadow cast by it, merely that and nothing more.”

Though Holmes lamented during the weeks following Annie Chapman’s death that the trails grew colder with every nervous twitch of the clock, I knew he was gratified that at least his investment in Miss Mary Ann Monk had proven fruitful. As Holmes followed slen
der leads to their barren conclusions, we anticipated eagerly our meetings with Miss Monk, who appeared to relish her new occupation. My friend, whose casual charm all too often masked cold, incisive professionalism, seemed genuinely pleased to see her, while I looked forward warmly to the boisterous air of enthusiasm with which she infused our discouraged sitting room.

On the twenty-third of September, the Polly Nichols inquest ended in resounding ignorance. Upon the following Wednesday, the selfsame coroner concluded the Annie Chapman inquest with the novel suggestion that a rapacious medical student had killed her and stolen the organ, intending it for sale to an unscrupulous American doctor. This news, reported earnestly in the
Times
the next day, resulted in Holmes’s raving silently at the ceiling before locating his hair trigger, falling despairingly into his chair, and tattooing a small crown in bullets above the previously rendered intertwined
VR
to the left of our fireplace.

“My dear fellow, might I suggest that any further adornment of Her Majesty’s initials would be disrespectfully garish?” Carefully orienting myself behind Holmes, I opened the windows in anticipation of Miss Monk’s imminent arrival.

“You question my loyalty to the Crown?”

“I question your employment of firearms.”

Holmes sighed ruefully and replaced the gun in his desk. “Miss Monk is due any moment. Perhaps she brings further evidence against the diabolical American purveyor of female reproductive organs.”

“Really, Holmes!”

The detective smiled briefly by way of apology and then, catching the unmistakable tread of a slightly built woman ascending a staircase in heavy work boots, crossed our sitting room and threw open the door.

“Lor’, what’s this, then? A fire?” Miss Monk demanded, coughing. She had indulged part of her weekly pound in a bit of silvery ribbon to line the bottom of her coat, I observed. I also noted, not without some satisfaction, that her tiny frame had taken on a decidedly less skeletal appearance.

“Holmes occasionally mistakes our sitting room for a firing range,” I replied wryly. “Do sit down, Miss Monk.”

“Had a drop of the lush, have you?” Miss Monk nodded. “I’d a friend once was known to shoot at naught when he’d made himself good and comfortable with a bottle of gin. You’ve something better, haven’t you—whiskey, I suppose?”

I hid my own smile by clearing some newspapers off the settee, but Holmes laughed outright and strode to the sideboard for glasses.

“Your remark seems to me absolutely inspired. Whiskey and soda for all concerned is, I think, very much in order.”

“Bollocks to this cold,” Miss Monk said contentedly when she had been seated by the fire clutching her glass of spirits. “Could freeze the eyes out of your head. At any rate, gents, I’ve earned my billet this week.”

“How so?” queried Holmes, leaning back and closing his eyes.

“I’ve traced the soldier, that’s what.”

Holmes sat up again, the picture of zeal. “Which soldier do you mean?”

“The pal. The cove what lost his mate, like enough to have stabbed that first judy, Martha Tabram.”

“Excellent! Tell me everything. You may well have wired me over a discovery of this magnitude, you know.”

“Happened this morning,” she replied with pride. “Dropped by the Knight’s Standard for a cup of max
*
to open me eyes as I do every morning, earning my keep all the while as you know. It’s a right thick, smoky place, and near empty at that time, but there’s a soldier I could barely make out, off in the corner. I begin to think I’ll wander over and chat him up a bit, but before I can shift, he’s spied me, seemingly, and gets up to join me at the bar. He’s a well-built chap, strong jaw, dark moustache turned up at the ends, with blue eyes and sandy brown hair.

“‘Hullo there,’ says he.

“‘Hullo yourself,’ says I. ‘Share a glass of gin with a lonesome girl?’

“‘I can’t imagine you’re ever lonesome for long,’ says he, smiling.

“I think to myself, if that’s all he’s after, he can move straight along, for I’ve no need of his business. But he must have seen I weren’t pleased and says quick and eager, ‘It was only meant for a compliment, Miss.’

“‘That’s all right, then. I’ll let you sit here till you’ve thought of a better one.’

“‘A very generous offer,’ says he, and sits.

“The conversation starts out slow, but seeing as we’re drinking max and he’s a proper flat, soon enough he’s chattering his nob off. ‘Got discharged just last week and came straight back to London. The whole lot of us were in town last near two months ago,’ says he. ‘There’s a pal of mine I’m keen to find.’

“‘Your mate owes you something?’ I ask.

“‘Nothing like that. But I have to lay my hands on him all the same.’

“‘But why?’

“‘He’s committed murder, you see.’

“Well, you can bet your last tanner I wasn’t letting him out of my sight now until I’d heard the whole tale. I look as shocked as I can, which is no hard lay seeing as I’m fairly staggered.

“‘Murder! What’d he do it for, then? Lost his head during a caper? Or was it a fight?’

“‘I’m afraid it’s far worse. My friend is a very dangerous fellow.’

“‘What, one of a gang?’

“He shakes his head and peers down his nose thoughtfully and says, ‘He acted alone, so far as I know.’

“I sit and wait for him to go on, and when he sees I’m hanging on his every word, he says, ‘You see, when we were last here, a woman was killed. My friend did it, or so I believe. And I’m very sorry to say that he got away.’

“‘You gave me a turn!’ I gasp, for I can’t help but think he’s talking of Martha Tabram, and suddenly I feel cold all over at the sight of him. ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself, telling such stories when every judy in the Chapel’s fair sick over rumours of the Knife.’

“‘You don’t believe me, but every word of it’s true,’ says he. ‘I had a friend in my regiment. Never knew a better mate than him. He was a fine chap all round but had a temper like you’ve never seen. He met a girl here when last we were in town. It all began harmlessly enough. We went from pub to pub—but then he took her into an alleyway with him. I waited. I knew something was wrong when they weren’t back in a few minutes, but I waited all the same. I’ve already told you the end of it, anyway. Since that terrible night, I’ve not laid eyes on Johnny Blackstone, but I am going to find him if it’s the last thing I ever do.’

“Then he’s quiet for a spell. Soon enough he comes back to himself and notices me sitting there. ‘I haven’t frightened you, have I? I’ve no wish to burden you, but it’s heavy on my mind. My duty’s clear enough: he has to be found, and found quickly.’”

“One moment,” Holmes interrupted. “This guardsman—he believes his missing comrade to be responsible for the other murders as well?”

“Seemed troubled enough by the question,” replied Miss Monk calmly. “So I tries to draw him out, but I must have looked so rattled that he thinks he’s said enough and shuts it. Keeps telling me he’s sorry to have upset me. Had the devil of a time after that to even get his name. I says to him, looking a mite faint, ‘I must go home…,’ and he takes my arm and leads me out. I stagger on the doorstep and clutch at his jacket, and he helps me up like a proper gentleman, but by then I’d tooled the reader straight from out his gropus.”

“You lifted his wallet?” Holmes repeated incredulously. I must confess that I was grateful for the interjection.

“I beg your pardon,” she blushed. “Been at it so long, it’s a job not to voker Romeny.
*
That’s right—I pinched it. His name is Stephen Dunlevy,” she finished.

Holmes and I looked at each other in amazement. “Miss Monk,” said my friend, “you have done splendidly.”

She smiled, a little shyly. “It was a ream job right enough, and I’m proud of it.”

“However, I fear that you may have burned a significant bridge by stealing this fellow’s wallet.”

“Oh, never fear for that, Mr. Holmes,” she replied, laughing. “I put it back.”

At that moment we detected the sound of a muffled argument on the ground floor. Before we could guess as to its source, the singular sound of two feet accompanied by two crutches approached our sitting room at an alarming speed, and seconds later one of Holmes’s most peculiar acquaintances tore into the room like a winter’s gale.

Mr. Rowland K. Vandervent of the Central News Agency was approximately thirty years of age and exceptionally tall, nearly on par with Holmes himself, but he appeared much less so as he was bent at the waist from a crippling bout with polio when he was a child. He had an unruly mop of shockingly blond, virtually white hair, and I fear that this combined with his frail legs and crutch-assisted gait gave me the perpetual impression that he had just fallen victim to electric shock. He had once watched Holmes spar, I believe, when a spectator at an amateur boxing match, and Mr. Vandervent, who held my friend in the highest regard, occasionally sent wires to inform Holmes of stories which had just been broken to the agency. Nevertheless, I was startled at the sight of the man himself, wheezing after his rapid ascent of the stairs. His right arm, clad as always in a shabby pinstriped frock coat, held aloft a small piece of paper.

“Mr. Holmes, I’ve a matter to discuss with you which can brook no delay. However, I encountered serious impediments downstairs. You’ve a most uncouth and tenacious landlady. By the Lord Harry! Here she is again. Madam, I have explained that it is a matter of profound indifference to me whether he is engaged or no.”

“It is all right, Mrs. Hudson,” cried Holmes. “Mr. Vandervent has had scant exposure to polite society. Do excuse us, if you will.”

Mrs. Hudson wiped her hands upon the tea towel she was holding, regarded Mr. Vandervent as she would a venomous insect, and returned downstairs to her cooking.

“Mr. Vandervent, you never call upon me but you upset the fragile balance of our household. Dr. Watson you know, of course. May I introduce our new associate, Miss Mary Ann Monk. Now, whatever it is you’ve got there, let us have a look at it.”

We all crowded around the table and examined the curious missive Mr. Vandervent had brought with him. I read the letter aloud, which was penned with vivid red ink and went in this manner: