He warned me of this fellow’s somewhat peculiar nature. As I recall, he described Sherlock Holmes as a man who is not “easy to draw out.”
When I met Holmes, he was pricking his finger to demonstrate this “haemoglobin,” a chemical he said that could verify bloodstains. In the midst of explaining how he’d achieved this considerable discovery, which anyone would rightly be busily congratulating themselves for making, Holmes took one look at me and casually remarked that I was obviously just back from fighting in Afghanistan.
No matter how astonished I appeared, or how I cajoled him to tell me how he came to know this information, he refused to explain. It bored him to bother recounting what he considered to be such a simple matter. Truthfully, when he finally revealed how he’d deduced it, it did seem rather simple. But it is the kind of simplicity that requires a unique intellect. That is my first and best answer when it comes down to why I have always been so taken with Holmes. He accepts what is seemingly impossible, and upon filtering it through the keen lens of his mind, makes it into something workable. He finds truth when there are mountains of lies. He finds hope when all is lost.
It is called The Art of Scientific Deduction, and the play on words has always amused me, though I suspect the genius of it escaped even Holmes when he termed it that. “Scientific Deduction” implies a series of mathematical calculations, or basic patterns of a problem’s reduction, stripping away the entanglements and obfuscations until all that is left is the result. In Holmes’s mind, that is the entire process, and all of us who are incapable of making such reductions are simply not thinking correctly.
You see, that is where it becomes an “Art.” If Holmes ever attempted to create a course designed to instruct others in his methods, there would be whole volumes on his approach to investigations. How he looks for clues and what intellectual traps to avoid, and so forth. But that would not even begin to approach the depth of his abilities.
Just as Michelangelo could instruct a student how to paint, or Aristotle could give lessons on reason, the actual application of the knowledge is unique to that person. There never has been, and never will be, an artist as capable of applying his talents as Sherlock Holmes had applied his.
As unto all great artists, his apologists are willing to forgive him for his shortcomings. When Holmes is engaged in the pursuit of a criminal, all is well. He is vibrant. Alert. Alive. It is between those times, in the dark recesses of inactivity that he descends into a pit of depression and narcotics. In fairness to Holmes, he’s never made any secret of his love for the needle. After we moved in at 221 B Baker Street, he celebrated by sitting in his chair by the fireplace and loading up a syringe containing a seven-percent solution of cocaine and morphine. He rolled up the sleeve of his smoking jacket, and drove the needle into his vein. I was amused, at first. “What are playing at, man?” I said. “You think that isn’t dangerous?”
Holmes’s eyes fluttered as he depressed the stopper, injecting himself until the syringe was empty. He sat back in his chair with a great sigh. “Narcotic stimulants are the only way to kill the stagnation weighing heavy on my heart and soul, Watson.”
“So, you poison yourself intravenously because you…hate feeling bored?”
Over the years, Holmes’s dependency on narcotics increased. It was no longer an activity limited to the periods of inactivity between cases. His usage grew to several times a week and then several times a day.
During the past several weeks, I have taken advantage of the lengthy amount of time he’s spent sleeping by rooting out the implements of his addiction. Dozens of syringes were scattered carelessly around the apartment. They were also strewn across the mantelpiece and floor of his bedroom. I found them on his bed, uncapped, waiting to stab him while he slept. It was no wonder that he so often slept in his chair. I suppose I should have been glad to find only three syringes stuffed between the cushions there.
There were vials and vials of cocaine and morphine in his desk drawers and hidden between the pages of his books. I uncapped them and dumped them into the sewer, imagining thousands of rats were now feasting on his vicious powders and watching the gutters with greedy hopes of tasting more.
One morning, Holmes woke and came out into the parlor. The dark circles under his eyes were gone. His face was shaven and his skin had a new rosy tint, instead of its normally pale, sickly color. He smiled at me and sat in his chair, “Watson, I need to thank you. That was astoundingly kind of you to care for me while I was ill. I feel wonderful.”
“It was my pleasure, Holmes. I am truly pleased to see you up and about. It has been weeks since I’ve seen Mary, and she is probably ready to end our engagement.” I watched his eyes trail off to search the mantle. “Holmes?” I said. “Are you listening?”
He spun in his chair to look around the rest of the room. “Where is it, Watson?”
“Where is what?”
“My Moroccan case. What on earth did you do with it?”
“The case is safe, however, it is empty.”
Holmes’s mouth twisted in rage and I seriously thought he might strike me. “How dare you! What gave you the right to tamper with my property?”
I stood to my feet and curled my fists. Holmes was taller than me, but I was thicker. I dreaded the idea of being struck by one of his practiced boxing maneuvers, but was determined that should it come to blows, I would tackle him before he got the opportunity. Instead, to my surprise, Holmes threw his face into his hands and began sobbing. “You cannot do this, Watson! Please! I only need a little! I beg you.”
I helped him into his chair and wiped the sweaty hair from his forehead. “No.”
“Please,” he said, clenching his eyes and crying as he reached out to grab my arms. “I dream of it when I sleep,” he hissed.
I pushed him away and sat down across from him. I folded my hands and took a deep breath. “Do you know what I think about, sometimes? I wonder what you were like as a child.”
“Shut up, Watson! I want my damned cocaine!”
“My own childhood was quite simple. I was fat, lonely, and sensitive. I grew up and joined the army to prove to everyone what a man I was, intent on becoming a surgeon. I have no idea who or what you were before the first day I met you. It is as if you sprang into existence a fully formed creature capable of the most complicated deductions. For the life of me I cannot fathom you in any other way.
When I was a boy, I remember my father returning from a year long engagement in the Second Opium war. I was delighted to see him and ran to his arms the moment he came through our front door. I told him I loved him and gave him a kiss right on the lips. I was ten years old. He pushed me away and wiped his mouth off in disgust and said, ‘Do not do that ever again.’ I was not allowed to tell him that I loved him, because he thought it was not something gentlemen said to one another.
But in truth, I love you, Holmes. I love you very, very much, and that is why I would rather die than watch you stick another needle in your arm. You are finished with that poison, and I if I have to beat it, burn it, or cut it out of you, I will exorcise this demon from your soul whether you like it or not.”
“But what if I need it, John?” he whined. “I need it...so help me God, I need it…I need it…I need it.”
“Well, you cannot have it.” I opened my newspaper and ignored the sounds of his pain.
~ * * * ~
There was damn little literature to be found on a method of properly extracting cocaine from a patient’s system. As physicians, we barely understood the ramifications of using it for appropriate purposes. For years, medical researchers thought the Holy Grail was a mythical plant in South America rumored to cure illnesses and give its users special powers. Europeans were desperate to study the coca leaf, and speculation ran rampant in scientific journals as to what it was actually capable of, but no one could acquire an adequate enough crop to do research on it. The raw foliage could not survive the long journey back to our shores intact, always arriving as noth
ing more than a large batch of useless shriveled brown plant material.
Finally, a German doctor isolated the cocaine alkaloid from the leaf of a coca plant. Medical journals filled with praise for the new “Wonder Drug” and that excitement quickly spilled over into the populace. Or rather, those who could afford it.
Those who could not afford it were forced to soldier on with beer and gin, but the upperclass soon were indulging in wine, cigarettes, powders, tablets, and even toothache drops for children, all with cocaine as the main ingredient.
I’ve taken to reading anything I could find about treatment for addiction to the drug, but there is little interest in admitting even to the problem. I learned of a doctor in Illinois who is injecting addicts with gold chloride for treatment, and he is planning on creating franchises of treatment centers. Sadly, the only evidence of improvement seems to be that of the funds in Dr. Keeley’s bank account.
Holmes stares at me when he thinks I am not watching him.
His eyes have grown dark again, shadowed. His drawn, gaunt face is motionless, but in his pupils I see hatred swirling, his rage so palpable that I can feel it coming off of him like heat from the fire. By now, the cocaine must be completely out of his system. I’ve spent hours calculating the rate of speed the drug would take to circulate throughout his entire body, before finally breaking down enough to no longer effect him, and there is no reason why it should not be completely gone from him. I am at a loss and can make no sense of his condition.
~ * * * ~
“These make six murders to the fiend’s credit; all within a half-mile radius. People are terrified and are loud in their complaints of the police, who have done absolutely nothing. They confess themselves without a clue, and they devote their entire energies to preventing the press from getting at the facts.”
“Six murders? They’re giving him credit for six, now?” Lestrade exclaimed in disbelief. “This bastard is going to play hell with us trying to catch up to his own myth!”
“What are the blasted Yanks thinking, writing that bollocks?” Collard said.
Lestrade shook his head. “It’s written by a local correspondent. Some twiddle poop bastard without the nutmegs to write it for a paper in his own country, I reckon.”
“The local papers aren’t much kinder. Here’s the Evening News.” Collard read: ‘The public cannot fail to be impressed with one fact-the apparent bravado of the assassin.’ Oh, that’s just charming. Yes, I’m impressed with his bravado as he’s stabbing bunters in their privates and ripping their innards out. Really quite brave of him.”
“These reporters are interviewing people right after we leave. Some of the locals give better statements to the press than they do to the police. What in the hell is everybody thinking? The whole sodding world is insane.” Lestrade chucked the paper across his office.
“Did you hear what they did down in Mile End?” Collard asked. “Formed a Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. Some bastard named Lusk rallied up a bunch of hooligans to ‘patrol the streets’ because they don’t think the police are doing a good enough job.”
“Well there you go,” Lestrade said. “Let the public do it themselves if they think it’s so easy.”
“Excuse me, Inspector Lestrade?” Constable Lamb said, knocking at the door.
“What now?”
“There’s a Mr. Morrissey here from the Central News Agency. He said he wants to talk to someone involved in the murder investigations. That’s him in the suit.”
Lestrade stormed out of his office and into the lobby. “I don’t give a damn who you are or what you want, but you had better get the hell out of my police station before I throw you through the front door! You bastards have bollixed up this entire investigation from start to finish and nearly created a national hero out of this murderous scum! Get out! Now!”
Morrissey pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and smiled gently at Lestrade. “I did not come to argue the merits of press coverage with you, Inspector. I came to tell you the name of your suspect.”
“You and every other maniac,” Lestrade said. “Half the people who come into this police station claim to have the killer living right upstairs from them. Let me guess, it’s Walter Sickert. Bugger off!”
“I make no such claim, Inspector. I did not mean his legal name. I meant the one that he wants us to use. The killer has written to our newspapers twice,” Morrissey handed a satchel to Lestrade. “Perhaps we can go somewhere more private and talk?”
Lestrade sat at his desk, looking over the “Dear Boss” letter, seeing it was received on September Twenty Seventh, three days before the double-killings of Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes. “Why wasn’t this given to us immediately?”
“My editor thought it was a hoax,” Morrissey said. “I believe the second victim, Miss Eddowes, had some injury to her ear?”
“Fourth victim,” Collard corrected him.
Morrissey nodded, “As you say, sir.”
“This says ‘clip off her ears,’” Lestrade said. “Our boy only cut off a piece of Eddowes’s one ear lobe.”
Morrissey pulled a postcard out of the satchel and handed it to Lestrade. “We then received this, just today. I believe, in light of recent events, it is certainly worth considering these as genuine.”
Lestrade inspected the card. It was written in the same red ink as the letter, but its face was stained with larger streaks of blood.
“I was not codding
dear old Boss when
I gave you the tip,
you’ll hear about
Saucy Jacky’s work
Tomorrow
double event this time
number one squealed
a bit couldn’t
finish straight
off. Had not got time
to get ears for
police thanks for
keeping last letter
back till I got
to work again.
Jack the Ripper”
“Blimey,” Lestrade said. “This was postmarked this morning. None of the papers picked up the story until the first editions hit the street today. That’s not enough time for a hoaxer to write this.”
“Unless he wrote it before the papers came out,” Collard said.
“Right,” Lestrade whispered.
Morrissey took out his pen and began scribbling on a notepad. “Inspector Lestrade, let me ask you—” Lestrade snatched the notepad and pen away from Morrissey and led him by the shoulder toward the door. “Just a few quick questions, Inspector!”
“Out! I appreciate you bringing in the letters, and so help me God, you’d better get anything else you receive to us immediately, but now is the time for you to leave while I am seeing you in a kind light and before I remember why I hate all of you reporters so much.” He pushed Morrissey through the door and went back to his office.
Collard was reading the letter and post card, eyes wide. “Jack the Ripper?” he said. “What the bloody hell? This is insanity. I’m starting to think about taking my wife and girls and leaving London. This bastard can have the bloody East End for all I care. Folks like us don’t have a prayer, Lestrade. There isn’t a policeman in the entire world with any hope of catching this bastard.” Collard fished a pipe from his jacket with shaking fingers and finally got it lit. After taking a long smoke he said, “We don’t need a detective. We need a priest. Jack the Ripper is a demon and it’s going to take a miracle to stop him. Unless you know any detectives who can perform miracles. Ain’t got one of them lying around here, do you?”
Lestrade looked up at Collard’s pipe and said, “Actually, maybe I do know one.”
~ * * * ~
There was a knock on the downstairs door, coming from the Baker Street entrance to our apartment. The knock was loud and insistent and continued until Mrs. Hudson answered. “Can I help you, sir?”
“Good evening, madam. Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard calling for Sherlock Holmes.”
�
�I’m terribly sorry, sir, but the--of all the outrage! How dare you!” Mrs. Hudson shouted as Lestrade stormed past her and stomped up the stairs toward our apartment.
“Suppose I’ll let them in?” I said to Holmes. He only glared back at me in response. I sighed, turning the knob, and greeted Inspector Lestrade and the red-faced Mrs. Hudson.
“This-this-this ruffian pushed his way past me and forced his way up here!” Mrs. Hudson complained.
Lestrade looked at Holmes and said, “Are you sick? You look horrible.”
Holmes did not respond.
“He is very sick! That is what I was trying to tell you before you barged into my home!” Mrs. Hudson said.
Lestrade looked over his shoulder at Mrs. Hudson and then back at me. “I am here on official police business. I need to speak with Holmes. Alone.”
“I am afraid that is not quite possible at the moment, Inspector,” I said. “But if you do not mind my staying, I think it might be good for Holmes to hear what you have to say.”
Lestrade shrugged. “Just you, then. Nobody else.”
I apologized to Mrs. Hudson as I shut the door. “I am sorry for that, Inspector. She takes her charge quite seriously.”
Lestrade took off his coat and sat down in my chair, opposite Holmes. “Can you hear me? Your eyes aren’t even open.” Holmes sniffed and looked at the Inspector but did not speak. Lestrade looked at me and said, “How long has he been like this?”
“It is only temporary. He had a fever, but it has passed,” I said.
“Very well. I suppose you both know of the murders in Whitechapel?”
“We have heard a little,” I said. “The newspapers have certainly been paying a lot of attention to it. A little too much, I think.”
Lestrade nodded. “And here I always thought Holmes was the intelligent one. Regardless, I want you to purge your thoughts of whatever you might have read in the papers. I am going to give you the information I have, which is not to be discussed with anyone outside of this room. Is that perfectly understood?”
Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes (Gentlemen's Edition) Page 13