The Sherlockian

by Graham Moore

  The man gave Arthur a long once-over.

  “Yes,” he said when he’d finished. “That looks like you. I’ve seen your pictures in the paper, awhile back. You sitting at your writing desk, bent over with pen and paper, looking like a grubby queer.”

  Focused on the task at hand, Arthur did his best to conceal his annoyance.

  “Sir, might we come in and take a look around the room where this girl stayed?” he said.

  The little man opened the door a bit farther. “A spiffy gent like yourself, I don’t see why not,” he said. He turned away, pushing the door open wide behind him as indication for Arthur and Bram to follow. They did, taking care as they stepped in to avoid tripping on the raised door sill. They entered a small kitchen area and felt a slight warmth emanating from the stove on the far side of the room.

  “Are you working on a new story?” said the man as he led his guests through the kitchen and up a back staircase.

  “Yes,” said Arthur. “I suppose you might put it like that.”

  The man’s face sparkled with excitement. “So you’re going to do it, then, eh? Bring him back to life?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Sherlock Holmes!” exclaimed the man as he turned at the top of the staircase to look downward at Arthur, circled in a halo of light from windows on the higher floor. “It’s about time, you ask me. He was always good for a snort, you know, to get a workingman through the day. I miss him like he were family.” The man laughed to himself. “More than my own family, right, if I do say so.”

  In silence, Bram followed Arthur up onto the second floor. They could hear noises—muffled but close—from behind some of the locked bedroom doors.

  “How many people do you typically have staying here?” asked Arthur, desperate for a change in subject.

  “Oh, that depends,” said the man. “I’ve got ten or so regulars who lay their heads here every night, and then another five or ten who come and go as the whim pleases them. You’d be surprised, but it’s the regulars who give me more trouble. Think they can get a day behind in their rents and I won’t notice, or I’ll give them credit for another night. They get right indignant when I refuse. The comers and the goers, though, they know damn well they’ve to pay in advance. Threepence a night, and none of that Jew haggling neither.”

  “Which sort was the dead woman?” asked Arthur.

  “Neither, really,” said the man. “She only come that one night. With a gentleman, so I gathered, but I never got much look at him.”

  “Why was that?”

  “She come in first, asking if I had a room for the night for her and her husband. ‘Husband,’ she says! If I had a shiny copper for every ‘husband’ jerked out his dirty peter in these—”

  “But you never saw his face?” interrupted Arthur, trying to learn as little of the sordid details of the man’s business as he was able.

  “No, sir. Like I says, she come in first, in that pretty white dress, pocketful of coins, talking about a husband. She’s giddy, you know, talking all quick, got a blush in her face. Like my own girl on Easter, knows she’s got a fresh sweet orange waiting for her from Mum and Pop when she comes down the stairs. This girl is chock-full of grins. Tells me her name is Morgan Nemain, writes it down in my book and—”

  “Might I take a look at that book?” interrupted Arthur.

  “Surely, I’ll fetch it from downstairs on your way out,” said the man.

  “Pray continue.”

  “I show her to the room,” the man went on, “and she says a gentleman’ll be along shortly. I tend to my affairs, and a few minutes later I’m in Hattie Stark’s room, explaining to her why the slavey girl hasn’t done her wash yet. She’s putting up a fuss, saying she needs her wash, and I’m trying to explain that if she doesn’t have it out in the morning before ten o’clock, the slavey can’t get to it till the next day.” Arthur looked down the hall at the row of locked bedchambers. The room in question was at the far end.

  “We’re going back and forth, like Hattie will do, when I hear a knock on the front door and a voice calling out to get let in. Thought it was a woman’s voice at first, to be honest, it was so high and squeaky, but then the ‘bride,’ she says that’s her husband and she’ll let him in.

  “She seems like a good enough sort, so I let her do it. And I hear her and the gent laughing, coming up the stairs. I poke my head out of Hattie’s room to make sure it’s just the two of them—three or more people to a room is extra, you know—and I see her leading a tall fellow into the bedroom. I just see him from behind. Black evening cloak, top hat. Walked like a fine sort. Then I’m back to Hattie and her hollering. Told the detectives from the Yard as much.”

  Arthur and Bram followed the man into the cramped bedroom. A well-made bed sat in the right corner, low to the floor. A pitcher of water rested on top of a bedside table. A stained bathtub that might one day, long ago, have shone bright white was in the left corner.

  There were no bloodstains anywhere. There was no visible echo of the horrible killing that had happened just two weeks before. And yet, standing there, conscious of all that had happened and of the great mystery before him, Arthur shivered. The air seemed to reverberate with a distant death, like far-off explosions from the war in the Transvaal.

  “What’s your story about?” asked the man as Arthur and Bram surveyed the scene of the murder.

  “My story?” said Arthur.

  “The one you said you’re writing! Is Holmes after another thief? Or is it a murder story? I like the murders the best, if you care for my opinion.”

  “I can’t tell you,” said Arthur. “It would ruin the surprise.”

  The man laughed, slapping at his thigh. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “You know what I like to do, when I read your stories?” he asked. “I like to try to guess the endings early. To figure out who’s done it before Mr. Holmes has.”

  “And do you manage it?” asked Bram, joining the conversation. “Can you outsmart Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Haven’t done it yet,” said the boardinghouse proprietor. “But I have an idea, you know. For how you could bring him back to life.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You don’t need a wizard or nothing,” the man said. “How’s about maybe Mr. Holmes didn’t die at all? Maybe he didn’t fall off that ledge into the Reichenbach Falls—what if he faked it? To fool Moriarty, like? And then he’s been in hiding, off on adventures all around the globe. You bring him back home to London for a triumphant return. That’s the way, I’ll tell you. There’s no one wants to think of Holmes as being dead. Sits ill in the stomach.”

  “Is that so?” asked Bram, amused by the man’s ramblings.

  “Honor bright. You swells, you get so accustomed to your writing you forget to think of how your readers will feel about it. We don’t want to see Holmes dead, no matter how good is the battle that does him in. We want Mr. Holmes to live forever.”

  “How about that, Arthur?” said Bram, needling his friend. “How about pushing aside the rock and resurrecting the divine Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Do all your rooms have baths in them?” asked Arthur of the boardinghouse owner. “It seems like a fine feature.”

  “No, no. Just this one,” said the man. “This was a powder room years back, when the place was built. Now I rent it out for extra. For a higher class of customers, you understand.”

  Arthur walked to the bathtub and ran his forefinger along its smooth rim. It felt thoroughly cold, like a windowpane on a snowy day.

  “They found her body here?” he said.

  “I found her body here, myself. She was laying right in the tub, naked as a baby. Her neck was blue and purple, her eyes all bursting out of her head. Like someone grabbed tight around her tiny throat and squeezed till she was going to pop. The dress was set out on the bed, like it were laid out for somebody to put on.”

  “Did you notice the tattoo? On her leg? Shape of a crow, black, with three
heads?”

  “I saw it, yes, sir.”

  “Ever seen a symbol like that before? Something from the hooligans down by the docks?”

  “No, no, I can’t say that I have. It was a funny shape, though. Right down on her leg, by her ankle.”

  “Was anything else found in the room? Anything to indicate who this poor woman was?”

  “Not a whit. Just a pretty white dress and a dead, naked molly.”

  Arthur and Bram spent the next few minutes trying to jog the man’s memory for any other clues as to the woman’s identity but found no success. Arthur then led Bram on a hands-and-knees inspection of the floor, to which Bram begrudgingly acquiesced, though he spent the entire search complaining about the layer of dirt that was being applied to his trousers in the process. The owner of the house produced his guest book, in which they found the signature of “Morgan Nemain”— tall letters, pressed deeply into the page with a wide, heavy stroke. While Holmes was an expert in handwriting analysis, able to discern the most telling clues as to a person’s identity from his or her signature, Arthur was not thus skilled. He closed the book silently, resigned to its secrets.

  Finally, and with heavy feet, Arthur and Bram left the boardinghouse. Arthur in particular rejoined the frantic thoroughfares of Stepney in a sour mood. This had not gone as planned.

  “Well, are you all done now?” asked Bram. He was waiting for an opportune moment to tell Arthur that they were headed in the wrong direction. “Have you had your fill?”

  “I won’t pretend that the day has gone as I had hoped,” said Arthur. “Indeed, this puzzle seems ever darker. My Sherlock had his data with which to work. And what do we have? A dress. An eyewitness who only saw the murderer from behind. A nameless woman of the evening. There must be tens of thousands of them on this block alone. I say this is a mite outside the realm of Sherlock’s adventures.”

  Bram thought for a long moment and then made a very fateful decision.

  “Arthur, I don’t like that you’re doing this, and for my own part I would very much like simply to return to my theater in peace, inasmuch as the theater can ever be described as being ‘at peace.’ I believe that you’re jiggling the lid of Pandora’s box and that once you become involved, you have nary a notion of what might pop out. Look at where you are right now. This is not a place for you. You’re too good a man, Arthur. Others of us . . .” Bram paused for a long moment. “Well, not everyone is so good a man as you.”

  “Thank you,” said Arthur, regarding Bram fondly. “But, though I don’t yet see the way forward, I am too committed to turn back now.”

  “Very well,” said Bram. “In that case I have precisely two things I need to tell you. In two distinct ways you’re headed in the wrong direction. First, literally, we are walking north, and Blackwell Station is behind us.” Arthur looked up for confirmation of this, and, finding none, he nodded before turning about and walking back the way he’d come.

  “Second,” continued Bram as he turned and walked beside Arthur, “the dead girl was not a prostitute.”

  At this, Arthur stopped abruptly.

  “Whatever do you mean? She was found in that house, with a man—”

  “Balderdash,” said Bram. “What East End prostitute owns a clean white wedding dress? Which of them owns a clean dress of any kind? It’s grim work, and not the sort that tends to induce sartorial cleanliness. That horrible little man we were speaking to said that she burst into his boardinghouse, face bright with smiles, and then paid her nightly rent up front. The gentleman followed a few minutes later. If she were whoring, pardon my language, she would have paid the rent with his money. Now, tell me, what sort of prostitute takes her gent’s money in advance and goes blithely into their flophouse to pay for their hours together? If she were on the clock, so to speak, I tell you she’d have stolen the money and snuck away as soon as the man took his eyes off her.”

  Arthur thought about this deeply. If the dead girl was not a prostitute

  “If not . . . Well, if not that, what was she, then?” asked Arthur.

  “I can’t say for sure,” said Bram. “I don’t possess the deductive faculties of which you’ve written so eloquently. But I can’t understand why no one seems to think of the obvious.”

  “The obvious?”

  “Yes. That she was exactly who she said she was. A bride.”

  “If she was a bride,” said Arthur, putting it all together in his head, “then he was . . .”

  “Yes,” said Bram, leading him through the York Street square, ensuring that Arthur, adrift in his head, wasn’t hit by a passing hansom. “Then the murderer was the man who’d married her.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Jennifer Peters in Mourning

  “London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers

  and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.”

  —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

  A Study in Scarlet

  January 9, 2010

  In the chilled belly of a British Airways 767, Harold attempted to find out a little more about Sarah. He was not immediately successful.

  “Been to London before?” he asked as they settled into their leather seats.

  She was silent for a moment before her face brightened into a wry smile.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” she replied.

  Harold was confused. “What?”

  “Isn’t that one of those things that’s in all the Holmes stories? He looks at strangers and can tell everything about their life from the way that they look? The specks of dirt on their shoes, or the calluses on their hands, that kind of thing.”

  “So you’ve read the Holmes stories?” asked Harold.

  “Bravo! Your first deduction turns out to be correct.”

  He could never quite tell whether Sarah was flirting with him or teasing him.

  “Only a handful, though,” she added. “As prep for my voyage among the Sherlockians. So. Tell me something else about myself.”

  Harold looked down at her stiletto boots, her dark jeans, her plaid flannel shirt with the upturned collar. He got the impression that she was dressed stylishly, but he couldn’t quite say why.

  She was right, obviously. Holmes performed these little tricks in practically every story. A new client would enter his drawing room and within moments Holmes would have the gentleman or lady completely sized up. In The Sign of the Four, Holmes was able to tell the entire life story of Watson’s brother after examining the man’s pocket watch alone.

  The trick was harder than Harold had imagined. His concentration fixed first on Sarah’s clothes, but they didn’t tell him much. They didn’t look cheap, but they didn’t look fantastically expensive either. Her nails were long and uneven, the bright red polish chipped off almost entirely.

  “Holmes had an advantage,” said Harold.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “He lived in Victorian England. He came from a society so class-stratified that you could tell where people grew up within a few miles by their accent. The word ‘Cockney’ originally meant someone who lived within hearing distance of the bells at St. Mary-le-Bow. Your shirt cuffs were your destiny. Holmes was able to tell so much about a man’s walking stick—in, say, The Hound of the Baskervilles—because gentlemen carried walking sticks. There are no more rules nowadays. You have a million options of clothing and style to choose from. If your clothes look expensive, they could still be from a secondhand store. I live in L.A., where the basic code seems to be the more casual you look, the more money you have. We’re both Americans, so outside of a few very specific regions, accents tend to move around. Especially among people who actually do move around. You’re a reporter—how many different cities have you lived in? Four? Six? You could have been born in any one of them.”

  “Excuses, excuses,” said Sarah. “You’re not the only Sherlockian who’s off chasing Cale’s killer right now. But you’re the one I bet on. You don’t want me to think I’ve put my money on the wrong
horse, do you?”

  “You haven’t.”

  “Good. So, have I been to London before or not?”

  Harold paused. A flight attendant deposited plastic champagne flutes on each of their tray tables.

  Harold believed in Sherlock Holmes. He knew the stories weren’t “real,” of course—he didn’t believe in Holmes like that. But he believed in what the stories represented. He believed in rationality, in the precise science of deduction. Sherlock Holmes could do this. And so could Harold.

  He examined her. Bright blue eyes. Thin nose. Two hoop earrings hanging from her earlobes. Curly brown hair held up in a ponytail, a few loose strands dangling down. Something behind her ear. He leaned in closer, over the gap between the first-class seats. There was a small tattoo behind her left earlobe.

  “Yes,” said Harold. “You’ve been to London before.”

  Sarah smiled. “How did you know?”

  “I didn’t know. But it was a reasonable guess. You have a small mark on your nose, where a piercing used to be. And there’s a tiny tattoo of a musical note behind your left ear. Who gets musical-note tattoos? Musicians, obviously. So you were a musician at one point. I’m going with rock band, because you don’t take care of your fingers like a classical musician would, and you used to have a stud in your nose. Bass player? You were dedicated, or else you wouldn’t have gotten the tattoo. But then you quit and became a reporter. You’re freelance, which means that either you’re semifamous or you don’t make that much money. I don’t think you’re famous, or I would have heard of you. So you didn’t quit music because you needed the money, and you didn’t become a reporter for that reason either. So I don’t think you’ve ever been strapped for cash. You were a rich kid, or at least a relatively welloff one, pursuing a crazy dream to piss off your parents. Between your childhood, with parents who could have taken you on European vacations if they wanted to, and your time in your band, which must have toured if you were that committed, it stands to reason that you would have been through London at one point or another.”