Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes (Gentlemen's Edition)

by Bernard Schaffer

  Clifton was handsome and tanned. Monty smiled and they waved to each other quietly. “Can you play cricket?”

  “No,” Clifton said.

  “Come on and I’ll teach you.”

  Clifton was instantly better at the sport that Monty was. The boy was strong and sure of himself after spending his entire life on one farm or another. He had been helping his father scythe wheat and chop wood since he was old enough to hold the tools. The only consolation Monty could find was that Clifton knew every possible thing about animals that Monty could think to ask, and could describe in intimate detail how cows were butchered and how chickens behaved when beheaded.

  Clifton had also seen several cow births, and at Monty’s insistence, related the colors of the juices that spilled out of the animal’s orifices, and the gelatinous sack the newborn calves slid out in.

  One day the two boys were playing in Monty’s room, and Clifton was complaining that he was tired of telling the same stories over and over, and no longer wanted to play cricket or any of the other games they knew. “Do you ever want to become lost from everyone around you? To hide yourself so that no one may find you?” Clifton said.

  “I have one place,” Monty said, “but it is a secret place and you must swear to never tell anyone you were ever there.”

  Clifton nodded eagerly and Monty took his hand, leading him down the hall toward the staircase. He instructed him on tiptoeing silently around the jars and toiletries. He told him which steps to avoid stepping on and keep them from squeaking.

  As soon as they were in the room, Clifton surprised Monty by kissing him on the lips. Monty stepped back and swiped his hand across his mouth in disgust and said, “What did you do that for?”

  “It is just for practice, Monty,” Clifton said. “So you can do it right when you kiss a woman for the first time.”

  Monty looked down, feeling his cheeks grow hot. Clifton came closer to him, pressing his chest against Monty’s and lifting his chin. Their lips touched again and Monty relaxed, letting Clifton control him. He lost himself in the embrace, not hearing the door open behind them.

  ~ * * * ~

  “Do you like how you look?”

  Tears spilled hot and thick down Monty’s face. He could not bear to look in the mirror. Ann snatched him by the back of his neck, shaking him. “Look! Look!” she screamed. She swung the thick belt across his bottom again, stinging one of the open wounds. Monty howled in pain.

  Porcelain dolls lined the shelves of the room. Rows and rows of wide-eyed, evil-looking, ceramic children stared at Monty in all his humiliation. None of them had been touched since Georgiana took a running leap past the bed and out of the window.

  “Look at yourself, in all your filth,” Ann said, grabbing a handful of Monty’s hair.

  Monty finally looked in the mirror, seeing the bright yellow flower print of Georgiana’s dress. For a moment, he thought he saw his dead sister’s face, wearing the dress and winced. Georgiana looked as she had the day she died, face swollen and blood-stained. This face, however, was Monty’s own, covered and smeared in the makeup his mother had forced him to apply.

  “Do you like being a girl?” she demanded, shaking him.

  “No,” Monty said.

  “Do you want to be a girl?” she screamed, bending so that her mouth was directly in his ear.

  “No!”

  “Do you like wearing your sister’s dress, sinner?”

  “No!”

  Ann whipped him across the back and shoulders, making the boy scream even louder than her own shrieks of “Never, ever do that again! Filthy animal! Filthy, wretched beast!” The leather snapped across his skin, raising welts with each strike. She lost her grip, and the buckle of the belt clipped across the back of his head, cutting it open.

  Monty felt the split flesh at the base of his skull and panicked, screaming that he was going to die. Ann grabbed another dress from Georgiana’s closet and threw it at him, telling him to press it against the wound.

  He spent that night locked in Georgiana’s room. The moon was enormous and shined brightly through the wide windows surrounding the bed. With a start, he realized his sister was on the bed at his feet, staring through the window with black hollow eyes. Her belly and throat were split open and the organs spiraled from her like tentacles, glistening in the light of the moon.

  THREE

  Dr. William Druitt was never informed of the incident, but he quickly took notice of his wife’s cold behavior toward their youngest son. Whether it was his guilt from losing a child, or his desire to protect the boy from her hostility, he invited Monty to come to work with him. A permanent position was not offered, only a conditional invitation. His continued apprenticeship would depend on his performance and attention to detail.

  On his first day, Monty stood impatiently by the front door, waiting for the carriage to arrive. Finally, it was rolling down the road toward their house and Monty passed William his tall, black hat, but insisted on carrying the medical bag. Once inside the carriage, William mopped his forehead and sat back. He clapped his son on the shoulder and smiled gently, “I am proud to be taking you to Portsmouth, Monty. I had originally hoped your brother would be the one making this trip with me, but instead he chose to go gallivanting around India, blowing the place to bits. Now he seems content to be a solicitor for the Western Circuit.”

  “I am proud as well, Father.”

  “Excellent. Now, before we get there, I want to tell you something. People in other parts of this country live in a substantially different way than we do. Not everyone is as fortunate as we. Do you understand?”

  “Will I get to cut people open?” Monty asked.

  “Absolutely not. Did you hear what I said? I will stop the carriage this instant if you are not paying attention to me.”

  “I understand, father.”

  “All right. As far as your duties go, you will assist me by cleaning my surgical instruments, and in labeling the preservation jars. When we do not have any patients, I want you to sweep or mop.” William turned to Monty, looking at him sternly. “Under no circumstances are you to enter the operating room when I am with a patient, unless I give you specific instructions. You are to stay in the specimen laboratory during those times.”

  “But—”

  “This is not open for discussion.”

  “Do you not think I am ready to witness your surgeries?”

  William put his hand on the boy’s head and tussled his hair. “Perhaps you are ready, son. But perhaps it is I who am not. Soon the day will come when you are a man and able to see all of the grim realities this world has to offer. I just prefer it to not be all at once, and not today.”

  As their carriage pulled into the train station, Monty was impressed by the crowd of well-dressed men and women standing on the platform, surrounded by swirling steam from the engine. He smiled in wonder, studying the train’s gigantic mechanical gears as they smoked, banged and hissed. He had never ridden the train before, and was taken by William’s understanding of how to acquire tickets and who to present them to. The men on the train assisted the women to their seats and lifted their belongings up onto the overhead track. William tipped his hat to women as they arrived onto the train, and shook hands with several men who greeted him by name. The train hissed, belching a giant gust of smoke that rained ash on Monty’s hand through the open window. With a loud whistle and a shake, they began to move. “You might as well try to sleep, Monty. Portsmouth is quite far.”

  The train rocked back and forth as it sped along, soothing Monty into a light sleep. A whistle blew and William tapped him on the arm, “Get up, Monty. We have to go.”

  Monty cleared his eyes and looked through the window at a sign that read Portsmouth. Wisps of foul-smelling fog swirled past the train car as Monty leaned forward, trying to see. Buildings blocked his view, one after the other, much taller than any he had ever seen. Everything was grey, carved from concrete and steel, and dripping wet from a brown mist
that descended over the entire city.

  Even from inside the train car, the sounds of Portsmouth filled Monty with both terror and excitement. Men hawked goods from the train platform, calling out in loud carnival-barker voices. Women screamed, and police blew sharply pitched whistles. Carriages crashed into the pavements when the horses pulling them veered out of each other’s ways and the carmen operating the cabs shouted angrily at one another.

  Monty gripped his father’s hand tightly as they left their seats and began moving toward the exit, scanning the people waiting to board the train. These people were dirty. Their faces were filthy, dripping grey sweat down their necks. William pulled him through the crowd, whispering in a quick, hurried tone, “Do not make eye contact with anyone, Monty. Do not look afraid. Do not look at even the tallest buildings in wonder. Act as if you are in a hurry. Act as if you belong here.” They reached the entrance to the train station, and there was a cab waiting for them. William lifted Monty into it, and shut the door tightly behind them.

  “Good morning, Dr. Druitt,” the carman said. “Made it again, eh? How was your trip?”

  “Excellent. This is my son, Montague.”

  “Montague?” the driver said. “That’s a big name for such a small lad.”

  William smiled, putting his hand his son’s shoulder. “I wanted to name him Jack, but his mother insisted on naming him after her father. He will grow into it though. Today was his first time on the train.”

  “That right, Mr. Montague? First time in Portsmouth, then?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Different here than back home, I reckon,” the carman said. “You get used to it. Mind yourself, though. Desperate people do desperate things.”

  Monty stared in wonder at the swarms of people crowding the streets of Portsmouth. Women leaned against the walls of broken-down buildings and called out to anyone who passed, “Feeling good natured, sir?” Children in ragged clothing coughed and spat black clumps of phlegm into the sewers, looking up at him as the carriage flew past.

  “Are these the people we are going to help, father?”

  “The ones out there?” William said, laughing. “No, I am afraid not, Monty. Unfortunately, there is no money in that. Those folks cannot afford food, let alone my services. It is already too late for my clients.”

  “I do not understand,” Monty said.

  “If I wanted to cut off tumors and spend my day treating tuberculosis, I could work in Dorchester or Weymouth. Multitudes of sailors there are willing to promise payment, but then they ship off to Africa, never to be seen again. A prostitute will try to barter, promising goods that no one in their right mind would take. In medicine, there is only one sure way of receiving money, and that is from the dead.”

  The horse pulled their cab to the curb, underneath a small grey sign that read “Medical Offices of William Druitt Sr.” Monty waved to the carman, as William unlocked the door, telling Monty to come along. “No time to waste, son. Let us see what work the police surgeon has left for us to do today.”

  Monty followed his father into the operating room and gasped. The stench was unlike anything he had ever experienced, unlike anything he thought possible. He had become accustomed to the smell of dead animals in the woods near their house, and the spoiled food that his mother had forgotten to remove from their stores, but this was quite different. Tears formed in his eyes as the gasses stung them and snot began to drip from his nose down his chin. “Excellent,” William said, removing his coat and his hat as he glanced at the corpses laid out in his operating lab.

  Three dead bodies lie lined up on racks in the room’s center. One of the corpses was a docksman whose skin had turned various shades of blue and black. His fingers were outstretched and his face frozen in a look of shock. The other two were women, and they had been dead longer. Their faces were swollen, with fat, puckered lips and bulging eyes that stared at the ceiling. One of the women had a huge, expanded stomach, as if she’d sucked in more air than she should have and could not let it out. William looked at her and chuckled, “We had better get to her first. She looks ready to pop.”

  “Pop?” Monty gulped, covering his mouth.

  Each body was dressed as it had been when the person died, as if the corpses had walked into William’s office and laid themselves down on the rack waiting to be found. Flies buzzed around their bodies, and Monty realized that the smell reminded him of something he could not place. Something familiar.

  Georgiana.

  “There is only one designated police surgeon for this entire area of England,” Dr. Druitt explained. “He is hired by the police departments to investigate deaths that are, for whatever reason, suspicious, or undetermined. Those bodies all get collected by the police and brought here for examination. I conduct an autopsy and record my findings for the surgeon. He signs my reports, as he does for all of the other doctors who contract their services to him in this region. I am paid depending on the number of bodies I examine. Say what you will about Her Majesty’s governance, but she pays her bills on time.”

  Dr. Druitt pointed Monty toward a room in the rear. “I have a set of instruments in the specimen laboratory that need to be cleaned. I’ll begin here with the ones in my bag. You can also help prepare my specimen trays. Give me one tray for each body set up and labeled exactly as you see this one, which is already outfitted. Take it with you, and arrange the others precisely the same way.”

  Monty nodded, carrying the tray into the room. There were rows and rows of shelves holding labeled jars containing every organ imaginable. He passed a large jar of two dozen eyeballs floating in yellow liquid. Severed orbs tailed by stringy rectus muscles that trailed lazily behind the eyeballs. There were hearts of all shapes and sizes, each marked with a name and age. Some appeared healthy and strong. Others looked sickly and discolored. Monty inspected jars that held potato-shaped kidneys, jars packed with winding lengths of intestines, others with appendices, gall bladders, spleens, pancreases, and more. He twirled each jar, watching the organs move within their formaldehyde pools.

  William unzipped his medical bag and began setting his tools on an empty tray table. Monty crept to the door and opened it slightly, just enough to watch his father undress one of the women, about to cut her open. William looked up at him, surgical blade still high in the air. “Out, Monty.”

  “Yes, father,” Monty said, backing away from the door.

  ~ * * * ~

  After two years of working with his father, Monty could properly name and spell all of the organs and muscles shown in the diagrams of his father’s medical books without reading the text. Monty squinted, holding the book closer to the candle’s flame on his bedside table. He ran his finger over the drawing, tracing the branching arterial lines that travelled from under the jaw all the way to the groin. His prized possession was his father’s worn “Grays Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical” and he set it down carefully, then snuffed out his candle. A knock at the window startled him. He saw Clifton grinning stupidly at him through the window, clinging to the upper portion of its frame. “Monty! Open it quickly, I’m about to fall!”

  Monty stormed to the window and heaved it open, clutching Clifton and yanking him into the bedroom. “What are you doing here? Spying on me? I ought to thrash you.”

  “I was not spying!” Clifton said. “No one answers the door when I knock.”

  “People in polite society call that a clue,” Monty said. “Mother said she’d kill us both if we ever saw one another again.”

  “Well, she doesn’t have to know now, does she?”

  “If she catches you here, she’ll have your testes for earrings.”

  “My what?”

  “Your nutmegs!” Monty said.

  “Then best we hope that she is a sound sleeper.”

  Monty paused, listening for the sound of anyone coming. His house was quiet, and the hallway dark save for the moonlight cutting through the shutters. “Come on,” Monty said, waving toward the door. “I’
ll get in less trouble for being outside the house than I will for having you in it.” He took off his nightshirt, aware that Clifton was watching. “Hand me those clothes on the floor, but try and walk lightly.”

  Together, they crept down the hallway, past Ann’s room. The door was shut. Monty’s heart beat so rapidly that he thought the pounding would wake his mother, and he clearly envisioned her throwing the door open, pale face shining in horror. William’s door was open, but he was snoring loudly, his stockinged feet hanging over the sides of the bed. They made their way down the stairs, seeing Will standing at the foot of the steps.

  “Christ!” Clifton gasped, nearly turning and running back up the steps.

  “Stop!” hissed Monty, grabbing the boy and holding him tight with one hand clamped over his mouth. “It’s my brother.”

  “What the bloody hell are you two doing skulking around the house in the dark?” Will grinned.

  “What are you doing here in the middle of the night?” Monty whispered. “Keep your voice down. If mother wakes up we’ll be in for it.”

  Will shrugged, walking away from the steps and into the kitchen. “I came to give you that adventure I promised, but it seems as if you’re already about to go on one.”

  They followed him. “What sort of adventure?” Monty called out.

  Will turned, eyes cast low so that his face was covered in shadows. “There is a beast loose in the woods. Some say it is a wolf.”

  “What? Ridiculous,” Clifton said.

  “You think,” Will said, smiling. He reached into a dirty military knapsack and removed a bottle from within, setting it on the counter. “I’ll have you know there have been reports of a wolf nearby, terrorizing the farm animals. I intend to go out and find it tonight.”

  “You’re joking, Will. Father said wolves have been extinct in England for over two hundred years.”

  “Maybe it is high time they returned then?” he said, uncorking the bottle. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled deeply, moaning as it entered his nostrils. “You boys are not afraid, are you?”