The Strange Adventures of Charlotte Holmes

by Hilary Bailey

‘Very hard to turn the head of a member of the Holmes family,’ Lestrade said, peering over her shoulder. ‘Any results?’

  The items Lestrade had sent to Charlotte for examination had been found, neatly arranged, round the body of Annie Chapman, who had been murdered by the Whitechapel murderer, known as Jack the Ripper. Her body had been discovered early in the morning of 8th September in the back yard of a small house in Hanbury Street. The rings and coins had been tidily arranged at the body’s feet. The yard was connected to the street by a passageway and neither the back door nor the front door was ever locked. Prostitutes therefore often took their clients through the front door and out into the yard for privacy.

  ‘The victim was very badly mutilated, they say,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘Atrociously,’ said Lestrade tersely. ‘I wouldn’t tell even you what that villain did to the poor woman. Do you think you can help catch him?’

  ‘You say in your note you hope I can find the murderer’s fingerprints on these items,’ Charlotte said. ‘But I suppose every policeman in London has already handled them. And this is an unproven technique. I’m improvising as I proceed.’

  ‘I’ve certainly touched them,’ said Lestrade. ‘I hope this doesn’t mean I have to swing for four murders.’

  ‘It isn’t magic, Lestrade,’ reproved Charlotte. ‘It’s simply a matter of finding the fingerprints on the items, if one can, and comparing them with the prints of the possible murderer. I presume that even if the evidence is not acceptable in court, at least if the fingerprints of suspects could be matched with the fingerprints on these pathetic items the police would know whom they should be pursuing. I’ve tried, Jules, but, honestly, too many people have handled these items, which are very small. Why are you so suddenly interested? There’s been no murder in Whitechapel for six weeks.’

  ‘Commissioner’s taking an interest in scientific detection,’ Lestrade said, without enthusiasm. ‘And it seems Her Majesty, who’s always occupied herself with the murders, has sent another little note asking what’s going on. That’s put a rocket under the Yard. By the by,’ he added, remembering something, ‘I ought to tell you there was a commotion in your hall when I came in. Front door standing open, rough, burly chap standing there arguing with a young woman, luggage being hauled downstairs with the idea of putting it on a donkey cart standing outside, adding no dignity to your residence. Your servant’s in tears, pleading with the other young woman not to remove herself. I trust that’s all in order.’

  ‘Far from it,’ Charlotte replied, pulling off the cloth in which her hair was wrapped, so that her black curly tresses rippled down over her shoulders.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ Lestrade whispered to himself.

  ‘The young woman,’ Charlotte continued, rapidly taking off her overall and hanging it on a peg, ‘is my servant’s sister, sent here by her family in Whitechapel, to avoid the Ripper. Apparently, they’ve decided it’s now safe for her to return – though I confess I’m not so sure. Nor, I suppose are you, Jules, since you’ve sent me these things.’ She led the way up the garden path with a rapid step, saying as she went, ‘Have the police made any progress in finding out who the murderer might be?’

  ‘Not that they’ve told me about,’ he replied gloomily as they entered the kitchen. There Betsey was sitting at the table in tears, being comforted by Charlotte’s cook, Mrs Digby. Betsey turned a wet face to Charlotte and said, ‘Oh, Miss Charlotte. Lou’s gone, silly girl. Gone off with her luggage in Dad’s cart. I kept on telling them the place isn’t safe while that horrible madman’s still at large, but they wouldn’t listen. They’re saying he’s been found out and done in and the body thrown in the Thames, but how can you believe that? Can’t you go and find him out, Miss Charlotte? I shan’t rest easy till I know he’s been caught and hung. Try to get her to help you, Inspector,’ she appealed. Then she began to cry again.

  ‘Pull yourself together, Betsey,’ commanded Charlotte. ‘And bring Inspector Lestrade a mug of beer from the barrel. We’ll be in the drawing-room by the fire.’

  ‘The family may have a point,’ said Lestrade, once they were in the drawing-room and he was rudely warming his behind at the fire, blocking the warmth from Charlotte. ‘Four women were killed in the space of a month, and now there hasn’t been a death for six weeks. Perhaps the Whitechapel rumours are right – someone found the villain out, exacted rough justice and threw his body in the river. It won’t be the first time that’s happened round the docks. The man knew his Whitechapel – every alley, yard, nook and cranny. That makes him local, which means he may have been known locally. People in neighbourhoods of that kind don’t always call in the police to settle their difficulties, Miss Holmes, as I suppose you know.’

  ‘I do,’ replied Charlotte. She sighed. ‘But rumour, gossip and speculation have surrounded this crime from the first. There’s been a shocking lack of concrete evidence or even, if I dare say so, coherent thought. One thing is certain. Whatever the Commissioners, or even Her Majesty, may say, now a month and a half has passed without another murder, they will be taking policemen off the streets of Whitechapel and returning them to their own areas. Scotland Yard will be only too pleased to believe the story over. Their fear was always, was it not, that they would find the murderer to be a Jew, which would send the East End into a frenzy of riot against the Jews? They will be happy to let it all die down, if they can, won’t they, Inspector? It would be nice to think it all over.’

  ‘Right, as ever, Miss Holmes,’ said Lestrade, taking a tankard of beer from the tray held by Betsey, who then departed reluctantly, listening. The door did not close completely behind her when she left the room.

  Lestrade looked appreciatively at the froth on the beer, drank and sighed with satisfaction. ‘Have you any results from your fingerprinting?’

  ‘I’m having to devise techniques for lifting the prints,’ Charlotte explained. ‘The science is very new. Before the arrival of that poor woman’s pathetic property I was at an experimental stage, taking fingerprints from people I know by asking them to handle various objects, dusting them with different compounds to see which produced the best impression, photographing the impressions – a very long, laborious process of research. Now you have handed me tiny items, heavily handled by every policeman in London, and you expect me to stand up and shout Eureka! I have it! Your murderer is John Smith, a man with a red beard of such-and-such an address! I am a detective, Jules, not a conjuror.’

  Lestrade sighed. ‘I take your point, Miss Holmes. I hoped for a miracle.’

  Betsey had put her head round the door. ‘It’s always a weekend or a holiday when he does for his victims,’ she stated.

  ‘I’m a Scotland Yard detective and I spot you for a girl who listens at doors,’ Lestrade remarked phlegmatically.

  ‘One might hypothesise he’s not mad at all,’ Charlotte remarked dreamily. Her eyes were on the wall opposite.

  Encouraged, Betsey edged into the room. ‘Not mad?’ she exclaimed. ‘When he picks on perfect strangers, poor women down on their luck, doing it with men up against walls and fences for sixpence a time? Then disembowelling them? Not mad? What else could he be?’

  ‘A man who kills only at weekends must have a life which encourages him to kill then, or discourages him from killing on a weekday, whichever way you prefer to look at it. Perhaps he is employed elsewhere and therefore only free to come to Whitechapel at weekends.’

  ‘Or he lives in Whitechapel and whoever it is he lives with goes away at weekends so he can go out and do his horrible work without getting caught,’ Betsey contributed. ‘Still, who goes away for the weekend from Whitechapel? They don’t get a lot of invitations to big country houses down there.’

  ‘Hop off and get me another glass of this excellent beer, Betsey,’ Lestrade instructed. When she had gone he sat down and said to Charlotte, ‘I don’t think that young servant of yours should be sitting with us in the drawing-room, privy to confidential police information.’

  �
�Is there any?’ Charlotte asked sceptically. ‘As I see it, Betsey’s Whitechapel born and bred and has the keenest motives for wanting the man caught – her family’s safety. She may know something which could help us.’

  ‘Us?’ enquired Lestrade.

  ‘Jules,’ Charlotte said firmly, ‘you may have brought me various items in the hope that a science in its infancy would provide a magic solution as to the identity of this killer. But you know now that more ordinary detective procedures are still the only way of solving the problem. I take it you will not object if I involve myself?’

  ‘I should object extremely strongly if there were any question of your going to Whitechapel in person. It is a very dangerous and a disreputable neighbourhood,’ Lestrade told her.

  ‘I will bear what you say in mind,’ Charlotte replied.

  ‘You will do a great deal better than that,’ Lestrade said hotly. ‘Your brother would never forgive me if I allowed you to endanger yourself – ’

  ‘I am not a child – ’

  ‘I absolutely forbid you – ’

  ‘By what right do you forbid me –?’

  Betsey, who had brought the Inspector his second glass of beer and had lingered again in the room, stood up. ‘Thank you’, she said with a sardonic air, ‘for allowing me to be present during your important deliberations.’

  Lestrade burst out laughing. ‘What an impertinent girl you are. Very well – let’s not quarrel, Miss Holmes. Let’s assume you have the sense to take care of yourself and that if you need a companion in Whitechapel you will call on me. Now – where are we to start detecting?’

  ‘I’m interested in investigating the question on the assumption that the murderer is not mad. That is one thing,’ said Charlotte. ‘And it might be more satisfactory to examine the matter in a different way: not to think of him, but to study his victims. Where’, she asked Betsey, ‘do you think we might find someone who knew any of the murdered women?’

  Betsey thought. Then she replied, ‘Most of them must have spent a lot of time where all the cheap lodging houses are in Flower and Dean Street and Hanbury Street. Then there’s the pubs.’

  ‘Which one would you suggest?’ asked Lestrade.

  ‘You can’t take six paces in Whitechapel without hitting on a pub,’ said Betsey. ‘And all these women seem to have been too fond of drink.’

  ‘We might start at the Ten Bells near Spitalfields Market,’ suggested Lestrade.

  ‘Good as any,’ Betsey agreed.

  ‘Then to the Ten Bells we will go,’ Charlotte said, standing up. ‘For, first of all, we must find someone acquainted with one or more of the victims.’

  Lestrade protested, ‘I am expected at the Yard,’ only to be told by Charlotte that she would collect him there at seven o’clock.

  It was nearing eight when Charlotte and Lestrade entered a big public house by Spitalfields Market, in the shadow of the great, gloomy church, Christchurch, Spitalfields, and only a stone’s throw from the wealth and dignity of the City of London, one of the world’s great financial centres. Inside the pub gas-lamps hissed on the walls and a motley crew had assembled – some were old men and women nursing their pints in corners, others workmen spending too much of the day’s wages on beer. There were young men in bright neckerchiefs, plotting mischief in corners, while, nearest the fire, sat a group of made-up women in bright hats, trimmed with feathers and flowers. They wore low-cut dresses of every hue, many with feather boas over their shoulders. Some better-dressed men were watching them carefully from the bar.

  Charlotte had known disguise would not deceive this crowd, who lived on their wits to survive, so wore a plain grey costume and a grey felt hat. Lestrade, from his bowler hat to his well-polished boots, was every inch the policeman. ‘Subterfuge is pointless,’ he had said. ‘These people have been trained from infancy to spot a policeman half a mile away.’

  It was not long after they had taken seats at a wooden table near the door that the piano, which had been playing noisy tunes, sank to a lower tone and a large woman in a tight black silk dress, with many gold chains round her neck, came up to them and, feet strongly planted, hands on hips, demanded, ‘Is there anything I can get you, sir and madam?’

  ‘I’ll take a pint of brown ale, if you please,’ said Lestrade. ‘The lady, I think, would like a lemonade and we would both like some information.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the woman, ‘I thought it might come to that.’

  ‘Well, if you will fetch us our drinks, and something for yourself, perhaps you would like to sit down with us?’ said Lestrade.

  ‘You came straight to the point,’ commented Charlotte, while the drinks were fetched.

  ‘It’s sometimes better,’ said Lestrade.

  When the woman returned Lestrade introduced himself and Charlotte. ‘Holmes?’ smiled the woman. ‘A name to conjure with. I am Mrs Wills, sister of the licensee of this house. So, what do you want?’

  ‘I should like to find a woman who knew Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride or Catherine Eddowes,’ Charlotte said levelly.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Mrs Wills, clutching her throat. ‘I can’t hear those names, somehow, without it doing something bad to me.’

  ‘Very understandable, madam,’ Lestrade assured her. They were now under covert surveillance by everyone in the bar but the old ladies and gentlemen, and even some of them were shooting sharp looks at their table. Mrs Wills recovered her equanimity and gave Lestrade and Charlotte a careful look. ‘So you’re planning to catch the Ripper, are you? Hot on his trail? A doomed man, is he? Only inches from the scaffold?’

  ‘The police have failed,’ Charlotte said. ‘But now they’re taking many of their men off the streets. And the murderer is still at large, as far as we know. Will you help?’

  ‘Co-operating with the police doesn’t go down well round here,’ Mrs Wills said. ‘It can lose you trade.’

  ‘Not in this case, surely,’ Charlotte persuaded, ‘with every woman in the East End at risk?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Mrs Wills said darkly. She thought, then apparently made up her mind. ‘All right – the beast needs catching, if someone hasn’t already caught him and done for him. What do you want to know?’

  ‘To begin with, if there’s any woman here who knew some of the women, or just one.’

  Mrs Wills leaned back over her shoulder and called, ‘Flo! Flo! Over here a minute.’

  From a group of three brightly dressed women near the fire one sauntered over, scanning the faces of Charlotte and Lestrade. She was not more than nineteen years old, with blonde hair and a healthy, heavily rouged face. She wore a red satin dress, low-cut, with black lace trimmings. As she spoke a rotten front tooth revealed itself.

  ‘Well, what do you want?’ she demanded of the whole group.

  ‘Will you sit down and allow me to buy you a drink, miss?’ Lestrade said politely. ‘We’re here about the murders.’

  ‘I’ll have a port and lemon,’ Flo said shortly. As Lestrade stood up to get the drink she sat down. ‘You part of this?’ she enquired of Charlotte.

  ‘Half Scotland Yard’s tried to catch the man. Perhaps it’s time they tried a woman,’ Charlotte responded.

  Flo burst out laughing. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said. Charlotte felt her amusement was forced.

  ‘You knew one of the dead women, didn’t you, Flo?’ asked Mrs Wills.

  Flo was out of her seat in a flash, yelling, ‘You leave me alone! I don’t know who these people are! Let me be!’

  Charlotte put her hand on Flo’s arm and said quietly, ‘You’re afraid, aren’t you? But do you think keeping silent makes you any safer? It didn’t help the others.’

  Flo, with a drained face, sat down. ‘Take a drop of port, Flo,’ Lestrade said sympathetically. ‘It’ll calm you down.’

  Mrs Wills’s small, clever eyes were on Charlotte. ‘What are you getting at?’ she asked.

  Charlotte asked Flo, ‘Perhaps you were
once a lodger at the same address as one of the victims? Or perhaps you knew one of the women?’

  Flo was trembling now. She said, ‘Oh God. Oh God help me.’

  ‘Was it in Hanbury Street? Flower and Dean Street? Tell me,’ urged Charlotte.

  Flo was wild with fear. She looked at Charlotte and cried, ‘How do I know you aren’t something to do with all this?’

  Charlotte leaned forward and looked her in the eye. ‘Do I look as if I am? And this gentleman, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is a Scotland Yard detective. We’re here to try and catch this man. You were at a certain address, and I must know that address. Something happened there, didn’t it? What was it?’

  Flo stood up and screamed, ‘I don’t know! I don’t know! Leave me alone! Let me go!’

  A young man in a smart brown suit and a curly-brimmed brown bowler was now at her side. He took Flo by the elbow and said to Lestrade in a threatening tone, ‘I don’t know who you and your friend are, though I can guess, but don’t think you can get away with threatening this young woman. Push off, and quickly, that’s my advice.’ Then he wheeled Flo round and took her back to the bar.

  ‘That’s it, I’m afraid,’ said Lestrade, standing up. ‘We’ll get no more help here tonight.’

  Charlotte handed Mrs Wills her card and said, in an undertone, ‘If Flo has anything to tell me, ask her to find me here. Or if you hear anything …’

  Mrs Wills took the card, her eyes on Charlotte’s face. ‘What have you hit on?’ she asked in a low voice. ‘What in God’s name are you bringing to light here?’

  ‘Get me that address,’ said Charlotte, ‘before it’s too late.’

  The information she needed arrived anonymously at Charlotte’s house at seven next morning, delivered by a dirty boy. The message, written on a scrap of paper, read: ‘Cooney’s Lodging House, 55 Flower and Dean Street’. But, though neither the informant, whom Charlotte assumed to be Mrs Wills, nor Charlotte herself knew it then, the message had come too late. The Whitechapel murderer had already killed another woman in the early hours of that same morning. A young prostitute named Mary Kelly had been murdered and more hideously mutilated than any of the previous victims. She was caught in her own room in the fatal warren of half a mile of slum streets where the killer had found his other victims. Charlotte, setting out at eight to make an early visit to Sherlock at The Priory, Balham and planning, after that, to spend the rest of the day in detection, did not know at the time that this had occurred for the body was not to be found until later on in the morning.