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

by Bernard Schaffer

  Constable Wensley was seated at the sergeant’s desk clutching what appeared to be a pound of raw steak to his face. Sergeant Byfield and City Police Inspector Collard glared at Brett as he came into the station.

  “What is all this?” Brett said. “What happened here?”

  “What happened, despite your every attempt to forestall it, was the culmination of a months-long joint investigation between the London City Police and Scotland Yard, Chief Inspector,” Collard said. “No disrespect, sir, but I must confess it is a highly unusual way to do business, and I will be forced to report it to my superiors.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Brett hissed. “Who the hell are all these men?”

  “It’s the entire Old Nichol Gang!” Sergeant Byfield said. “Inspector Lestrade has been hot on the trail of these bastards since Emma Smith was killed. Who knows if they might have been responsible for some of the other so-called Ripper killings too? And then, just as Inspector Lestrade was about to put an arrest plan together to collar the whole buggering lot, you had the brilliant idea to confine him to his office.”

  Sir Robert Anderson grunted, and Brett looking around the room nervously. “Why wasn’t I informed? Nobody told me about this. H-how could I have—”

  “They tried to kill a civilian last night!” Byfield said. “Caught him all alone in an alleyway and were trying to do unspeakable things to him when our boy Wensley intervened. Fought the whole gang by himself single-handedly until the rest of my men got there.”

  “Well, er, good show, Wensley!” Brett said, waving meekly at the Constable.

  “Good show my arse!” Byfield said. “Your orders to put Watson under constant surveillance almost got the lad killed! We’d all be down at Spitalfields Church saying ‘Hail Mary’ for him right now if it weren’t for such a fine investigation done by Inspectors Lestrade and Collard. They knew right where to go. Now I have to put nearly every person in the station in for a damn medal! You know how much bleeding paperwork that is going to create?”

  “Just so I am clear, you arrested an entire criminal street gang last night?” Sir Robert Anderson said.

  “All except for that one-eyed bastard Mickey Fitch,” Collard said.

  “So,” Brett sniffed. “Despite all this, you still failed to capture the leader?”

  “Well, we’d have him by now,” Byfield said. “Trouble is, the only copper that knows how to get him was ordered to sit in his office until you got back.”

  Brett and Anderson both leaned forward to see Gerard Lestrade sitting in his office with his arms folded. Anderson turned to Brett and said, “Am I correct in understanding that you confined the lead investigator to his office right in the middle of a full-scale joint operation that you never even bothered to become informed of?”

  “No, not exactly,” Brett said. “I can explain, sir.”

  “The Metropolitan Police’s reputation is in desperate need of a boost, Chief Inspector. I would suggest that firing the men responsible for cleaning up our filthiest streets is not a wise idea in these times.” Sir Robert Anderson turned and went back toward the door, carefully stepping around the arms and legs of the Old Nichol Gang as left. Brett turned, glaring murderously at Lestrade, who folded his hands above his head and smiled widely back at him.

  THIRTY SIX

  When the morning sun came through the windows of the doctor’s office and Holmes was still breathing, I began to feel as if he might survive.

  Irene followed behind as I carried him to the carriage and set him in the back. She climbed up onto the gate and kneeled down beside him as I went to the front and began to drive. At one point I turned back to check on them and saw that Irene had laid Holmes’s head on her lap and she was gently stroking his face.

  The front door to 221 Baker Street was boarded shut. I thought of the soft, weeping man I’d been when last crossing that threshold how he would recoil in shock as I pried off the wooden slats with my bare hands. Shards and jagged nails gouged my flesh, but I tore and yanked each plank until they came loose from the frame. I carried Holmes from the carriage and up the staircase to our old apartment to lay him in his bed.

  I wiped his face with a damp cloth and said, “Rest, my friend. I will give you something to assist you.” I rolled up his sleeve and retrieved the bottle and syringe from my pocket. I put the needle into the vial and began to draw it into the chamber, about to inject him when his eyes suddenly flew open and he covered his arm.

  “Give me no more of that, Watson,” he wheezed. “I will manage.”

  “This is a special circumstance, Holmes. I promise it will not-“

  “I said no. Please. Take it away.” He folded his hands on his stomach, just below the sutures and winced as he breathed. “I have not survived this night just to succumb again to the very things that nearly cost me everything. I will never again surrender my faculties.”

  “If that is what you wish, Holmes. I will stay close in case the pain becomes too much.”

  “You saved me, Watson,” he said, turning to look at me. “I always knew you were a good friend, but who could have guessed you were such a remarkable doctor?”

  I laughed, for the first time in what felt like forever.

  Irene came into the room and sat next to him on the bed. She laid down beside him and nestled into the crook of his arm. I realized I did not belong there. I left the bedroom and shut the door to sit in my old chair and stoke the fireplace.

  ~ * * * ~

  He was certainly a handsome bastard, I had to admit. Well dressed, with a long, spotless coat and black leather shoes decorated with bright silver buckles. I had given up such a pair at the pawn shop in Whitechapel and traded them for the dirty brown boots I was still wearing while I spiked on Mary. I peeked around the corner to watch this gentlemanly fellow escort Mary to her door.

  “Good evening then, Miss Morstan,” he said. He tipped his hat at her s she ascended the steps to her house.

  “Good evening, Edmund.”

  He paused, and by his shy smile I knew he was only a breath away from asking for some further token of her affection. I was not confident enough that she would say no, so I came around the corner and said, “Well, well, hello.”

  The man flinched at the sight of me. “Oh God,” he muttered and stuffed his hand inside of his pocket. “Run inside, Mary!” he said. “Do not harm us, you scoundrel. Here! Take the money and be gone from here.” He thrust a handful of coins toward me, rattling them like seeds you would feed to an animal in a zoo.

  I laughed at him and turned toward Mary. “May I speak with you?”

  She folded her arms and looked at me sternly. “I do not see why I should, John Watson.”

  “Wait. You know this person?” he said, scowling.

  “I am her fiance,” I said. “She is my intended bride.”

  “Is that so? You really have the nerve to still think so?” she said.

  “You’re engaged to this…this…ruffian?”

  “That she is, mate,” I said. “Madly in love we are.”

  “Now see here,” he said, lifting his cane defensively. “You have no business just barging up on us like that. I have been in Miss Morstan’s acquaintance for several weeks now and she has not mentioned you once!” He tapped me on the chest with its thick brass end and said, “Slink back to whatever part of the East End you crawled forth from and leave us alone! I should warn you that I am trained in baritsu!”

  I looked up the stairs at Mary. “Is that what you want?” She did not answer.

  “Of course that’s what she wants!” He poked me in the chest with the cane again and I snatched it out of his hands. I grabbed him by the neck and threw him against the wall.

  He bleated and squirmed when I lifted the cane to his face. “If she weren’t here I’d stick this thing inside of you and break the tip off. You get me? Now piss off before I lose my temper, fancy boy.”

  “Both of you stop it!” Mary shouted. “Everything is all right, Edmund.
Please just go home.”

  He looked at her in bewilderment. I handed him his cane back and said, “Sorry, mate. Have a good evening.”

  Mary waited for him to go and turned on me with blazing eyes, “I have never been so ashamed in all of my life, John Watson.”

  “You have every right to be angry,” I said. “I did not mean to just come barging back into your life like this. I would have written you a letter first if I thought you’d have read it.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” she said. “You are a cruel, cruel man to vanish like that without a single word. If I did love you, which I do not, how do you think I felt after not hearing from you for so long?”

  I went up the stairs and put my hands on hers. “I do not know how to tell you all of the things that happened to me in Whitechapel. I just needed to say that there was a moment when my life was ending and you were the thing I thought about. My single regret about dying was that I’d never get the chance to see you again. You can send me away if you wish. I just wanted you to know that.”

  She waited a moment without speaking. “So is it finished, then?”

  “No,” I said. “There is still much left to do, but if you will have me, it is nothing that will ever take me from your side again. I promise.”

  “No more racing off into the night after the evil-doers of London?”

  “No more.”

  “What else is there then? I do not see us making a return to high-society and surviving long around people like Edmund.”

  I frowned and said, “Would you want that?”

  She smiled slightly and said, “No. My God but he was a bore.”

  “I was thinking about starting a practice that affords me the chance to heal those in need. All I need is a home and a woman. A wonderful, wonderful woman who I hold tightly every night, as if it were my last.”

  Mary reached out and touched my face, running her finger gently across my lip. “You know, I never did like you with that mustache,” she said.

  THIRTY SEVEN

  “I ain’t got the money to pay yeh, Dr. Watson,” the woman said. Her little boy bent forward and coughed forcefully into his hand. I kneeled to him and touched his forehead.

  Mary looked down at their chart. “They live next to the lodging house on Dorset that’s been quarantined with the fever.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Watson,” I said. “Stick out your tongue, lad.” The boy did as I asked, and I saw green spots covering the surface of his mouth. “He needs a rather expensive medicine and he needs it quickly, I’m afraid. Are you working?”

  She looked down at the ground for a moment and shuffled her foot back and forth. “Here and there, sir. Whatever it takes to make the doss, if yeh catch me meaning.”

  I looked at Mary, who nodded and pointed to a stack of boxes in the corner. “Do you read?” The woman nodded. “Good. Do you see those boxes of patient files? We need someone to organize them and put them into alphabetical order while Dr. Watson examines your son. Start with that and then I will have more work for you.”

  “Thank yeh. So, so much. Everything they say is true,” she said, hurrying over to the boxes. I led the boy to my examination chair and lifted him up, mussing his hair and smiling before I went to the cabinet and found the proper medicine.

  At five o’clock the church bells of Spitalfields rang and I closed the door to my office and locked it. As Mary and I walked arm-in-arm to the train station, I tipped my hat to those who greeted me by name along the way. When I went to purchase our tickets, the conductor shook his head and smiled. “You don’t ever pay on my train, Dr. Watson. It’s an honor to have you on board. Please enjoy your ride.”

  ~ * * * ~

  That night I travelled to Baker Street where Mrs. Hudson answered the front door and smiled at me warmly. “Good evening, sir. How have you been?”

  “Excellent, Mrs. Hudson, thank you.” I went up the stairs and when I entered 221 B, I had to walk between stacks of carefully arranged papers on the floor. Every available surface was covered in carefully arranged papers.

  Holmes was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, writing quietly. He did not look up as I greeted him, but continued staring intently at the page when he said, “What the deuce is the name of that fellow from New York who wrote to me? The one with questions about how to reform their police department?”

  I squeezed my eyes, trying to remember the name on a letter that had arrived what seems like a lifetime ago. “Was it Roosevelt?”

  “Yes!” Holmes said, writing the name “Theodore Roosevelt” on his paper. “He is making a bid to be Commissioner of Police there, and I think he may find some of the things I am working on quite useful.” As Holmes looked over what he wrote, I noticed him absent-mindedly stroking the long vertical scar on his chest through the opening in his robe. After two years, it was still a deep purple line of raised flesh. Holmes nodded in satisfaction as he finished reading and lowered his pen. “There we are. So, how goes the crusade?”

  “It goes, I suppose. Some weeks we can actually afford to leave the lights on and heat the place.”

  “I am certain you could improve your situation if you ever chose to move your office to a location that had citizens who could actually afford your services,” he said. “But then what would the people of Whitechapel do without their dear Saint John?”

  I laughed. “Perhaps someday, my friend. Just not today.” I looked at the stacks of papers and said, “So what is all this, then?”

  “This is the bare beginnings of the Apiary Society, Watson. The most ambitious thing I have ever attempted. Now, if only I can somehow manage to extract every thought pent up inside my brain fast enough to set it down on paper before I perish, I will succeed.”

  “Is Irene helping you?” I asked. As I walked further into the apartment, I noticed it had been redecorated since my last visit. No, that was not quite accurate. It had been un-decorated. The fancy curtains, lace doilies, flower vases, and everything else that Irene Adler had brought to 221 B were gone. And then I realized that so was she. “Good God, man. Are you all right?”

  He ignored me. “So how is Mrs. Watson? Still helping you at the clinic?”

  “Only for a short while longer, I’m afraid.”

  He put down the paper with a look of concern. “Is she ill?”

  “No,” I said. “She’s pregnant.”

  ~ * * * ~

  Perhaps you have heard of Sherlock Holmes, before all this.

  I certainly did my share to inform the world about the existence of a man I considered the keenest investigative mind of our era. Any era, really. Over the years, I published fifty-six short stories and four novels featuring the adventures he and I shared. Some of them were even true.

  During the course of my publishing career, I encountered numerous legal difficulties in accurately depicting our investigations, and protecting myself from lawsuits brought about by the parties involved in them. It became so tricky, in terms of last minute changes forced by attorneys, that when I look back over my writings as they appeared in print, I am horrified by some of the mistakes.

  One incident stands out in my mind, when the printer referred to my wife by her middle name and my loyal readership assumed my first wife had died and I’d remarried. I subsequently began receiving condolence cards from people who wished to apologize for not attending the funeral.

  Not all of the problems were caused by editors or lawyers.

  There was simply not enough money to keep the clinic open and continue to afford a roof over our heads. I spread the ledger across the kitchen table, recalculating the numbers grimly. I already knew the answer would be the same as the other times I’d done it. I lifted the book and shook it, looking to see if I’d misplaced anything that might be of use. There was nothing.

  “John!” Mary cried from the living room.

  I leapt from my seat, racing to her side. Her stomach looked ready to burst, and she sat on the couch, taking short, sharp breaths. “Is it time? Are y
ou contracting?”

  “No,” she said, grimacing. “The baby is walloping my ribs though. Someone is at the door. Would you mind?”

  “At this time of night?” I said. There was the enormous shape of a man filling the door’s window. I told Mary that I would only be a few moments.

  “Good evening, Watson,” Mycroft Holmes said. “We need to talk.”

  Mary stroked her belly worryingly, looking at me from the couch. I nodded to her and went out onto the porch and closed the door behind me. Mycroft waved for me to follow him away from the steps. As we walked I said, “I’d invite you in for tea, Mycroft, but Mary does not feel well.”

  “I did not come for tea, Watson. Your publisher’s office caught fire this evening. He managed to barely escape with his life.”

  “That’s horrible!”

  “Mmm,” he said. “Seems that someone put the idea into his head that your latest manuscript is to blame. He’s opted not to publish it after all.”

  “What? My manuscript? But that’s preposterous. He cannot do that,” I said. “We have a contract and I was relying on that money. I’ll need to find another publisher straight away.”

  Mycroft fixed his tiny black eyes on me, “His was the example the others will go by, Watson. No one will publish WHITECHAPEL from here to across the pond. Do you understand?”

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” I said, balling my fists. “Damn you, Mycroft! Why? I left you out of the other stories. You do little more than sit in your damned Diogenes Club in any of them. Why are you so threatened by this story?”

  “It wasn’t me,” Mycroft said sadly. “And there is nothing I can do to stop them. This time it was your publisher’s office.” His eyes glanced back at the doorway to my home where Mary stood in the window watching us. “Who knows what it might be next time?”