by George Mann
Even if it is strange, why do you recoil? You hang in the morning. What fate could be worse? And after all a man condemned to death cannot leave his cell, can he? What would it take to make such a thing happen? What would it take to have another man take the place of a man who is going to die? What could induce the governor, surgeon and witnesses to sign that the man who drops at the end of the rope is the man condemned to make the fall? How could that be done? Who could do such a thing?
Comfort yourself. Is that not impossible? For if it was going to happen, then Sherlock Holmes would have delivered you not to the law’s justice, but to mine.
And that is impossible, because the great detective could not make such a mistake.
Ah… The key turns… It is time to go.
THE DOCKLANDS MURDER
Dan Watters
Wiggins the street urchin first appears alongside the Baker Street Irregulars in A Study in Scarlet as Holmes’s eyes and ears on the streets of London. He seemed the perfect character through which to view Arthur Conan Doyle’s city from a new angle – one both physically and socio-economically lower.
The early Holmes stories, after all, take place during a time of great economic upheaval, particularly in urban areas – the Second Industrial Revolution of the late nineteenth century – which led to both great opportunity and great exploitation. The London Dock Strike of 1889, a great step towards the founding of trade unions, seemed the perfect crystallisation of these ideas.
Holmes considers the boys “sharp as needles”, and so I wondered how they themselves might view the oft taken for granted wealth and privilege of Holmes and the majority of his clientele. From this, certain class-based double standards began to make themselves clear – Holmes, for one, is a habitual user of cocaine. Yet we find him in “The Man with the Twisted Lip” showing a somewhat vitriolic dislike for frequenters of opium dens. As such, I considered whether there might have been elements of society impenetrable to Holmes that Wiggins and his gang may understand all too well.
—Dan Watters
Before she died, Mother insisted that I have my letters, and I’ll admit I’m proud to have them. The others, they wouldn’t know to cross their ‘i’s and dot their ‘t’s. But recently I was visiting Mr Holmes and I saw a cheque on the desk (not that I’m the kind of fellow to go through a man’s papers; it had been casually discarded and was plain for anyone to see, once they’d opened the drawer and lifted a couple of books). It was from one of the magazines Dr Watson publishes his stories in, and blimey if he doesn’t make a pretty penny off his stories, writing about Mr Holmes. So I figured, having an entrepreneurial spirit as I do, I would give it a go and see if anyone would want to pay me for the story of the Docklands Murder, which was a case that I took myself, though Mr Holmes helped (and so did the rest of the boys, I suppose, in a way).
* * *
It started when I saw the man on Baker Street. I knew he was on the way to see Mr Holmes by the way he was walking. They have a particular manner, a certain hurried hunch. They seem to be weighed down with an odd sort of guilt, though they might not have done anything wrong (and few come to Mr Holmes because they themselves have, as he’s all too likely to prove it for them and everyone around them). They feel a very specific kind of guilt, I think, just for allowing their lives to have reached a place in which they require a consulting detective, especially Mr Holmes himself. Therefore they walk as though their bodies are trying to go in two different directions: urgent, yet reluctant. They desperately need to get to Mr Holmes and his help, but they don’t look forward to the conversation they’ll have within 221B.
This one caught my eye because he was doing that walk that they do, but he didn’t look like one of Mr Holmes’s usual clients at all. His boots were well worn and had recently (but not too recently) been reheeled, and his overcoat was patched and threadbare. He didn’t look as though he could afford Mr Holmes’s services, in short, and this is what piqued my interest. Mr Holmes and Dr Watson do miraculous things, but mostly they do them for those who can afford miracles, and most ordinary folk would never even consider being able to hire their services. Most folk worry about being able to eat the following Wednesday, rather than whether or not they can afford to hire a private detective, to pay another man’s wages (even for a few days) with their own. Never mind the wages of the most famous and prestigious detective in London. Thus I wondered what could have driven this fellow to try his luck at 221B Baker Street. I also thought, being an ordinary fellow myself, I might be of some assistance to him during the case, should he choose to take it.
I followed the man from the other side of the street. Sure enough, he rapped at the door of 221B, and Mrs Hudson admitted him. I thought it pertinent, as I had already decided to offer Mr Holmes my assistance (and that of the others, of course) on the case, that I should be present for this initial meeting. I did not, however, wish to intrude nor interrupt, and so decided that it would be far more courteous of me to listen from the drainpipe that runs up and around the side of the house, and offers a near-perfect vantage point from right outside the small back window which just about grants a view of the sitting room. Ducking around the building, I scrambled up leisurely, hand over hand, my boots finding familiar footholds. I judged, by his hurried yet reluctant gait, that the man would not outpace me by any margin. Sure enough, I reached the window, happily finding it cracked open, allowing me to hear the knocking as it came at the sitting-room door.
“Enter. The door is unlocked,” said Mr Holmes. I realised that Dr Watson must be absent, and probably had been for some time. The detective’s voice carried the tell-tale drawl of recent morphine use, a vice that I knew Dr Watson is not in any way fond of, and one that I have a feeling Holmes, though he would never admit it, makes half-hearted attempts to keep distant from and out of the sight of his companion. As such, for him to be partaking so openly in the sitting room, in which he also conducts much of his business, was, I am sure, not too common a thing, and indicative of the doctor’s being away on some travelling or other.
I removed my cap so that it wouldn’t jut above the window frame, and looked in with intermittent glances so that I was sure I would not be noticed. Mr Holmes was sat in his usual chair. The man stood by the door. “Mr Holmes?” the man enquired. “The detective Mr Sherlock Holmes?” His voice was thickened by an East End accent.
“Come in, sir,” said Mr Holmes. “Take a seat, Mr…?”
“Macrain. Albie Macrain.”
“And how go the dock strikes, Mr Macrain? I was reading about them in the papers only this morning.” I too had read of the strikes – Jonesy, one of the others, makes a few bob a day flogging papers on the corner near the station, and he always holds a few back for the rest of us. The newsagents don’t seem to have noticed yet, and I make sure the rest of them keep up to date with current events. (There’s no way to get ahead in life without knowing what’s happening in the world, you know, and sometimes I despair that the others wouldn’t get anywhere without me and my entrepreneurial spirit.) When I next glanced in, the man Macrain was seated, and his mouth was open in the familiar ‘o’ of surprise that Mr Holmes so oft elicits from people. (Sometimes I wonder if Mr Holmes thinks that the rest of us just sort of walk around with our mouths agape all the time, since this is how he so often sees us.)
“But, Mr Holmes. I ain’t said a thing about the docks yet.”
Though his back was to me, I could sense Holmes’s smile. He loves doing that to people, though he acts like he doesn’t. “Mr Macrain, your boots are heavy duty, hardened and reinforced leather, and, though you’ve filed it down and polished it, the left has a wide scrape upon the toecap from some large, heavy, but flat object. Perhaps pulled out from beneath a fallen cargo crate?”
Mr Macrain nodded, dumbfounded.
“Your clothing, if you don’t mind me saying so, is well worn – worker’s clothes – and your hands are calloused. Yet you take good care of yourself. Your hair is recently cut, your face shaven, your shirt clean
and your jacket patched. So you’ve taken care to make yourself presentable. But, the patches on your jacket are all cut from the same piece of cloth, and sewn with the same coloured thread. Therefore it is likely that all the patching was done at once, in a single sitting or near enough. This suggests that you have recently begun to pay more attention to the respect of your dress. Thus, you have taken a new position of some standing, but not one with better pay, or else you’d have been more likely to simply replace the jacket. So a position of influence amongst your peers, more plausibly. The strikes of which I read this morning, now entering their fifth week, are being led by organisers who have taken charge from within the workers themselves. The kind of position of authority that’d make a man want to appear respectable to the best extent of his means, wouldn’t you think?”
Mr Macrain nodded slowly, impressed I think, yet pensive. “They said you were good. That’s why the boys all clubbed together for your fee. Couldn’t have more gratitude for them. They’re good lads, but desperate. They just want to work. A man’s got that right.”
“It’s to my understanding, Mr Macrain, that the work is sitting there waiting for them, and your men are refusing to get on with it. That’s the very meaning of a strike, is it not?”
I could see Macrain bristle through the window. “Ten thousand men there are in Tower Hamlets alone, Mr Holmes, scrabbling for work each day on those docks, and the West India Docks Company employing about a third of them each time. Getting up each morning, unsure whether they’ll be bringing home a pay packet that evening. These are men with families. Wives and children to feed. And now the trading companies want to take away our plus money – that’s the bonus we get for clearing a ship real fast – just so’s they can offer cheaper rates and bring more ships into our docks. I tell you, Mr Holmes, it’ll do them no good if their entire workforce is starved. To strike, to deprive them of our hands and bodies and sweat and blood, is the only way we can make our voices heard.”
“I see your plight, Mr Macrain. But not how it requires the services of a consulting detective.”
“Well, that’d be for the murder, wouldn’t it? We’ve got a shipping man dead, and either today or tomorrow I’m like to be arrested for killing him.”
Mr Holmes sat up straighter in his chair. He offered Mr Macrain a cigarette from his silver holder, which was gratefully received. He took one himself, and lit both.
“And you didn’t kill him, I take it?”
“Would I be here if I had?”
“You underestimate the overconfidence of some who walk through that door, Mr Macrain.”
“Well I didn’t. And I wouldn’t. His death’s going to do me no good, I can tell you that.”
“Whose?”
“What?”
“Whose death, Mr Macrain. What is the name of the deceased party?”
“Robert Gail. He was the overseer of the dock. They found him this morning in his office.”
“Blunt force trauma? Shot? Asphyxiated?”
“That’s the thing, isn’t it. There was nothing wrong with him. Other than that he was dead.”
“I’d say that’s enough, wouldn’t you, Mr Macrain? Poison then, presumably.”
“That’s what the police are saying too. Especially as the door was locked and Mr Gail had the only key.”
“And what makes you the principal suspect, if you please?”
“Mr Gail… he wasn’t much for the strike. And we were surprised, you know? He may have been the overseer for the dock, may have had a little more job stability than the rest of us, but that didn’t mean that he was one of them. He wasn’t a wealthy man, and he knew many of us pretty well. We expected him to be behind us, especially, bear in mind, since he was getting paid either way.” Mr Macrain had finished his cigarette, and eyed Holmes’s holder. The detective offered him another, which was again quickly accepted.
“Well, over the last few weeks, Mr Gail had been getting more and more aggressive. Making frequent mistakes with his own work, while spending all his time trying to urge the men to get back to theirs. Said that we’d all be out of a job, that the ships would use other docks and ours would close down altogether. The men refused, of course, but that kind of thing’s not on. Us working people, we got to stick together and look after one another or else no one’s going to do it for us, are they? So I’m afraid… I’m afraid the other day I saw red. Stormed to his office and hammered at his door, yelling at him to come out. When the door flung open, he had a face like a devil on him, teeth bared in a snarl. He didn’t look any more impressed with me than I was with him. Normally Gail had such a calm demeanour; the men made fun of him for having ideas above his station. He was a tall, thin man, something of your build, Mr Holmes – in fact, if you don’t mind me saying so, he had something of your general demeanour altogether. He talked the way you talk – increasingly so, in fact – though he’d only grown up in the next street over from me. His mam used to take tea with my mam every so often.
“But that was all dropped now, and I can’t say I wasn’t taken aback by the way he came at me. He shrieked at me to leave him alone, to get back to work. Called me a slovenly rabble-rouser and a traitor to my class. Bear in mind, Mr Holmes, that there were people watching, men who’d normally be at work alongside me, who looked to me now for leadership. Men who were holding the line though their bellies and those of their children were empty, all for a better future. I couldn’t stand there and take it, is what I mean, couldn’t have them demoralised like that, so I had to respond in kind and… well. I’m not proud to say that we came to blows, and I’m even less proud to admit that it was me who swung first. I struck him on the nose; not so hard that he bled, but so’s he knew he’d been punched is all.
“When he hit me back was when he slipped, though. He weren’t too much of a physical man, but even so when he landed a punch on my jaw I was surprised at how little it stung. He’d put all of his weight behind it, so he lost his footing. He was on the step up to his hut, and he sort of fell off it altogether. The fall didn’t seem too nasty, and those who were present, having grown to a small crowd of spectators due to all the shouting and that, seemed to find it pretty amusing, and there was a fair bit of laughter. Not too cruel, you understand, but well it’s always nice to see someone who thinks they’re better than you put in their place, isn’t it?”
Holmes didn’t respond, so Macrain went on. “Anyway, I went away satisfied that Gail had made a spectacle of himself and would be too sore about it to make any more trouble amongst the workers, at least for a little while. And that was the end of it, I thought. But now…”
“Now Mr Gail has turned up dead and you fear that you will be seen to have had a motive to murder him.”
“That’s right. More enough, the boys fear that if the papers get wind that one of our supervisors was murdered they’ll say it was a dock worker that did it, and the docking companies will find it all the easier to smear our reputations. With the weight of the public behind them, they’ll force us back to work at even lower wages than we’ve been on before. So you can see why we need your assistance, Mr Holmes, and quite desperate like.”
“Hmm.” I realised all of a sudden that Macrain had lost Mr Holmes’s interest altogether some way back. “I think you’ll find that you don’t,” he said. “Tell me, Mr Macrain. This fall that Mr Gail took. Did he slip backwards or forwards off the step?”
“Backwards. In that he ended up lying on his back.”
“And his head, I presume it was near the step or the door when he landed?”
“Against the door frame, I suppose. He ended up almost leaning against the hut.”
“And a good man like yourself, Mr Macrain, in front of men who respect you and know that you care for the wellbeing of others, I suspect that you bent down to check that Mr Gail was not too badly harmed?”
“I did, as a matter of fact.”
“And did you notice anything untoward about Mr Gail’s demeanour then?”
�
�Well, now that you mention it, once I was leaning over him, up close, I did notice that his eyes seemed strange; there weren’t really any focus in them, I guess you would say. But he seemed fine after that, scuttled back inside and slammed the door.”
“Well, congratulations, Mr Macrain,” Holmes sounded bored. “After the autopsy is complete, I would expect that the worst they will convict you of is manslaughter.”
“Excuse me? But I told you I didn’t kill him, and I meant it.”
“I know you did, but unfortunately the police may not see it that way. I believe that the autopsy will reveal that on slipping from the step, Mr Gail struck his head against the wall of his hut, resulting in a concussion. Nasty things, concussions; they disorientate a man, resulting in the kind of quiet, unfocussed demeanour that you describe the victim as suffering. Furthermore, they can have longer lasting results: nausea, sickness and even death, but can take days to appear. My expectation would be that Mr Gail most likely worked late the night before his body was found, and fell asleep at his desk, never to wake. There are a few other ways it might have happened, but all along the same lines. The police will be able to fill in those blanks at the very least. It was unfortunate that you were involved in a physical altercation with the victim when he received the concussion itself, but it sounds as though you’ll be able to find enough witnesses to convince the police that you didn’t inflict the—”
Mr Macrain had gone very white in his chair, and I could see even from a distance that he was physically trembling. He did not, however, appear afraid, but angry. “They’ll crucify us for this, Mr Holmes. The papers will. It doesn’t matter if I did it or not, if there’s any doubt that I did they’ll run this like it was murder. The strike will be over, and the trading companies will get everything they want from us. Nothing will get better for anyone except for those who have it all already. You must do something to help us.”
“That sounds terrible, Mr Macrain.” I don’t know if Holmes knew how disinterested he sounded, but I’d like to think that he didn’t. “And for what it’s worth, I shall not be charging you my fee; I cannot in good conscience, for you have taken less than fifteen minutes of my time. But the truth is the truth, I am afraid, and we can only interpret it in so many ways before we bend it. And that, as you know, is anathema to my profession. Good day, Mr Macrain. And good luck.”