Then there was the flash of steel and a scream of surprise and pain as she slashed his left wrist with a razor.
Graff wrenched his injured hand free and stared at it in horror, the knife dropping from his nerveless fingers.
Margaret swung blindly over her head, cutting the back of Graff’s right hand, causing him to release her and severing some of her braided hair.
He screamed as the dark blood ran glistening down both arms in the dim moonlight. Then, snarling, he backhanded Margaret in the face before dropping to his knees, fumbling for his fallen blood-slicked knife with his injured, though still functioning, right hand.
We rushed forward just as Margaret recovered from the blow and lashed out again, this time slashing the right side of Graff’s exposed neck.
Graff shuddered as he slapped his hand over the wound, then, in pure terror, looked up at Bell, pleading like a frightened child. “Make it stop, Professor! Dear God, make it stop!”
Bell stood there silently for a moment, then responded in a voice husky with emotion, “Ye’re already dead.”
Graff whimpered, and tried to speak once more. Then, with a soft sigh, his right hand fell away and he collapsed slowly onto his left side.
Margaret leaned over and carefully wiped the razor and her hands on Graff’s trousers, then slowly folded the razor with shaking hands. She tried to stand but fell back to her knees, unable to rise.
I found myself suddenly there, holding her.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” was all she said, weeping.
“For God’s sake, Margaret!” I exclaimed, “Are you all right?” I could feel her rapid heartbeat against my chest, such was the force of my embrace. Then, after a long moment within the damp London fog, I stood back slowly, as I had to. As I always had to.
She smiled softly as she held my hand a moment longer. “I am fine, dear Porthos, though I think I’ll need a new hairstyle.” The last said with a wan smile. Then she held the razor up to me, her voice weak and uneven. “A little keepsake from our first meeting. Remember the fragrant gentlemen who threatened us with it? When I began leaving my derringer with Molly, I got into the custom of carrying it. Luckily I continued that habit tonight.”
She slowly bent over, picked up her derringer, and slid it back into her coat pocket along with the razor. She suddenly embraced Bell, and although surprised he returned it fiercely.
“I knew you two could not restrain yourselves from rushing him,” Margaret said, after she and the professor stood apart once more. “As charming as that would have been, Graff was entirely correct; it would have served me nothing.”
Margaret patted the coat pocket containing her weapons, and shook her head. “Remember what I told you, Doyle, about my envy of men and their pockets? Thank goodness your fashion allows them!” Turning to Bell, “Thank you, Professor, for restraining Doyle long enough for me to pull out the razor.”
Bell nodded, unable to speak for the moment, and Margaret continued, looking at Graff’s body with disgust. “He always underestimated women; that was my one advantage. Believing I was about to die, I decided I wasn’t going down without a fight. Just once, I wanted him to feel the knife. When he left his neck exposed, I had no choice.
“But he has damned me with his blood!” Margaret spat. “As surely as his family curse damned him. I shall live the rest of my life knowing I have taken a human life, though he well deserved it.” She looked at her still-bloodstained hands. “I have a sudden empathy for Lady Macbeth.”
“Justice was well served, Margaret,” I said. “The killer of women died by a woman’s hand.”
The body was lying beneath the moonlight in a pool of blood, as so many of his victims had. His face was distorted by the terror of his final moments, and I readily admit the image gladdened my heart.
Margaret nodded without speaking, looking at Graff’s remains, when suddenly, without warning, she kicked Graff’s face as hard as she could, grunting with the effort.
I was shocked, and before she could kick again grabbed her shoulders, exclaiming, “He’s dead, Margaret!”
“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth, then roughly shrugging my hands off her shoulders, gritted out, “but he will never be dead enough!”
She followed her exclamation of “enough” with one final kick, delivered with such ferocity that I heard the crunching of broken bone, the face now clearly distorted. Then she stood there silently, weeping, and in an uneven voice gasped out, “That was for Mary, you bastard. And all the others. Now go to HELL!”
Bell stepped over to Margaret and softly laid his hand upon her right shoulder but said nothing. We stood there silent and looked at one another, savoring breathing deeply.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
A TRAIN TO CATCH
Sunday, November 11, cont.
Finally, Bell cleared his throat, finding his voice once more. “I am overjoyed you survived, Margaret, but I doubt the killing of a German noble and the grandson of the Queen will be well received by the authorities. I expect the German ambassador would press for our prosecution, if only to rebut the allegation that Graff was the Ripper. We are in treacherous waters, my friends,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “We should avoid becoming officially connected to his death.”
“I agree,” Margaret replied, slowly returning to us from wherever she had gone. “We do not have conclusive proof of his guilt, even now. We have a false constable with two knives. Suspicious, but a prosecutor could argue he was trying to catch the Ripper and had the knives to protect himself. If a director of the Bank of England can masquerade as a workingman in an attempt to stop the murderer, a German noble could easily disguise himself as a bobby. Besides, I do not wish to be known for the rest of my days as the woman who killed him, as it would define me in ways I could never control. But we cannot leave an obviously murdered body here. Scotland Yard would be forced to investigate, and there’s no telling where that could lead.”
The professor turned thoughtful for a moment. “I think the solution is right before us. Indeed, it is right beneath our feet.”
“The track?” I asked. “How does that resolve our problem?”
“I have, on occasion, been called in to treat the victims of rail accidents,” he replied, “and I have seen the remains of those who were run over. Trust me, though the wounds Margaret inflicted on Herr Graff were telling, they are small. The trauma inflicted by a train often results in the body being torn to pieces, which would leave the incisions Margaret made scarcely noticeable. If we remove any identifying information from his clothing, when the remnants are found he may well be thought a suicide or a drunkard who fell asleep on the tracks. There will be no murder investigation, as there will be no discovery of murder. Are we agreed?”
While Margaret concurred at once, I had some difficulty reconciling my sense of justice with the disguise of a homicide, but, in the end, I saw the necessity.
“We are standing on the local track,” said Margaret. “Let’s move him over to the farther track. That’s the freight line. As those trains run continuously, the body won’t lie here until morning, when it is apt to be discovered intact.”
“Capital idea,” agreed Bell, “and we should remove the constable uniform, as it might draw more notice in the press and among the police than we desire. We can rub some mud on the white shirt, and coupled with the dark pants that should render him sufficiently obscured for our purpose.”
“Before we do,” Margaret urged, “let’s see what information his belongings provide.”
She proceeded to rummage through his clothes, producing an expensive gold pocket watch, a small batch of keys, and a battered brass ring, identical to the two I had received in the mail. There was also his thick sealskin wallet. To my surprise Margaret loudly proclaimed, “I hereby declare myself executor of Herr Graff’s estate. All ye who have claims against his earthly possessions come forth now or hold silent henceforth!” Turning to us, she said more seriously, “I think I’ll take the watch,
since Pennyworth’s is not fit for formal occasions.” She collected the envelope Graff had tossed at my feet, which revealed a sum of five hundred pounds, and a penny.
“A final taunt,” observed Bell. “He would buy your surrender with the exact amount offered for his capture by the City of London, plus a penny. I suspect the penny was to deepen the insult by paying the least amount more than the reward for his capture. While I despise his morality, his subtlety was remarkable. Introducing you to Miss Harkness to provide him with a victim for whom you would feel compassion, however, was utterly fiendish.”
“I have an alternate explanation for the penny, Professor,” Margaret said, her lips compressed into a thin smile. “Remember how Graff said the money was ‘For services rendered, and a life?’ I believe the life he was referring to wasn’t his, but mine. He must have somehow known of my alias as Pennyworth, and intended to mock your impotence by paying you one penny for my life.”
Then, shaking her head, she continued, “But I cannot imagine why he would believe you, Doyle, would ever accept his bargain.”
“I think I understand,” I answered slowly. “He saw only what he required of me: a prop for his drama—an excuse for his butchery. He grew up in a world surrounded by servants and those who owed allegiance to his family. He believed other men were as shallow and grasping as he needed them to be in order to control them.”
Bell nodded approvingly, a satisfied smile on his face. “Welcome to a larger world, my friend,” he said. “I believe you have mastered your final lesson from me.”
Margaret opened the wallet and, after adding up the contents of the two, gave a low whistle. “Six hundred and eight pounds, and a penny, gentlemen. As executor, I award two hundred to each of us and beg your indulgence to claim the remaining eight pounds and one farthing, for I find myself in sudden need of a new hairstyle and a lady’s hat to go with it. To you, Doyle, I bestow the wallet, knowing of your history with seals. To you, Professor, I bequeath his knives.
May you use them to heal, and thus redeem the labor of those who forged them.”
To our surprise, the constable’s jacket was reversible, the opposite side an unremarkable dark wool men’s coat. Beneath the coat we discovered a leather harness with sheaths for his knives and a pocket containing a flat, lozenge-shaped stiff hat. When we withdrew it from the pocket, it expanded, revealing a collapsible police helmet.
“That explains much,” remarked Margaret. “After murdering someone, he merely reversed his tunic, with his bobby’s helmet assumed the guise of a constable, and walked calmly away. Even if he got blood on the civilian coat, the reverse side with the uniform would be clean. The leather harness he wore underneath with the knives gave him the appearance of being heavier than he was, further altering his appearance.”
“I noticed he held the knife in his left hand, Professor,” I said. “That must give you some satisfaction.”
“It does,” Bell replied. “While we do not need further proof of his guilt, it is always gratifying to see one’s deductions confirmed.”
I went back to retrieve Bell’s cane and the cricket bat, while Margaret and the professor applied mud to Graff’s white shirt to make him less noticeable. As I returned, we heard the whistle and saw the light of a westbound train, shining dimly through the gathering fog, headed toward us on the far track.
Bell hooked the cane over his arm, while I, in my rush, dropped the bat. We hurriedly picked the body up, Margaret and Bell each holding a leg, while I carried the upper torso with one arm under each of his, and we staggered to the track in a manner that would have been comical were it not for the gruesome burden we bore.
The fog was now so thick we could not tell how far off the train was, nor how quickly it was approaching, so we moved with a purpose. We positioned the corpse so the traverse of the wheels would pass over his neck and arms, then hid behind a maintenance shed as the train came roaring past.
I offered to go alone to inspect the result, but Margaret would have none of it. “I need to see,” was all she said, while Bell followed, as silent and solemn as a pallbearer.
We found his head resting face up, separate from everything else, three feet from the rail. The wheel had cleanly severed his neck where Margaret’s incision had been made, obscuring the initial wound perfectly. The face was frozen in the terror of his final moments, and the intermittent moonlight reflected dully in his dark eyes. “This is how I wish to remember him,” Margaret said, with grim satisfaction. “Now he’s dead enough.”
We looked at one another, nodded, turned our backs on the Ripper’s scattered remains, and walked slowly side by side through the thickening fog toward the station.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
A FINAL VOW
Sunday, November 11, cont.
To my surprise, I heard a church bell toll three times as we walked. So much had happened, yet it was still over three hours until sunrise. We reached the station platform greatly fatigued, finding it as deserted as when we arrived. Margaret, taking pity upon us, invited us to her flat, saying Miss Jones could brew us some tea while we made our preparations to greet the day.
“What do we do now?” asked Margaret, swaying on her feet in weariness.
“I have learned as a surgeon that I make my worst decisions when exhausted,” said Bell. “Let’s recover our strength and our wits and make a proper ending of our alliance. I would be of no use back in Edinburgh at the moment. I shall require a decent holiday before I return to therapeutic bloodletting.” The last said with a genial nod toward Margaret.
“Odd,” she replied with a faint smile. “I believe the bloodletting I performed tonight was most therapeutic.”
Dawn found the men dozing fitfully in chairs in Margaret’s front room, while the ladies slept in their beds. I dreamt of Margaret and Graff struggling beneath the moonlight. On both sides of Margaret, and behind her, were the vague shadows of women, the one to her right discernible as Mary Kelly.
Some of the figures were helping Margaret rise from Graff’s second blow, while others were moving his knife to and fro among the stones, making it more difficult for him to grasp.
When Margaret lashed out the final time, the faces of the women glowed, and I saw Miss Kelly’s right hand reach for Margaret’s. As their joined hands sliced his neck, the faces of the apparitions grew brighter still, and then, with a soft sigh, they faded away. I awoke with a deep sense of tranquility, never to dream of that moment again.
Later that morning, in a moment of inspiration, I asked Margaret to meet us at the Fenchurch Station at seven o’clock that evening dressed in her finest male attire. Margaret could tell I intended some mischief, but agreed, smiling.
Bell and I hobbled like two old men as we left Margaret’s apartment. Prolonged encounters with unyielding furniture seemed to be my lot for much of this adventure, and I was looking forward to returning to my own bed. We boarded a cab at the now bustling railway station, and both of us made an effort not to look too far to the west to see if anyone had discovered our handiwork.
Once our hansom was underway, Bell asked me mildly what I had observed of our driver.
“A former jockey, I believe,” I responded, puzzled by his inquiry.
“How did you arrive at that conclusion?” There was a slight smile at the corners of his mouth.
“Surely you noticed his size and the way he grasped the reins,” I answered, confused why he should ask me such an obvious question. “Given the stiffness of his right leg, I assume he suffered a fall, with the horse landing atop him and resulting in a hip fracture. His knowledge of horses continues to provide him with a living, however, and he still dreams of his days astride the finest of stock as demonstrated by the overhand grip with which he holds the reins, instead of the usual underhand grasp of your average carriage driver. Why do you ask?”
Bell said nothing, looking oddly pleased with himself.
We were silent for the remainder of the ride back to the club, agreeing to meet aro
und six o’clock in preparation for our call upon Margaret. When Bell asked me what was afoot, I smiled and said he would see soon enough. We parted ways to sleep some more and to bathe, while I made some private arrangements.
Margaret was in her West End dandy attire when we boarded our cab at the station, and I made sure to compliment her on her gold pocket watch. Her smile was warm, though her eyebrows showed she was bemused by my secretive manner. I had refused to tell Bell of our destination, either.
“We made the paper today,” Margaret said with an innocent expression. “See?”
She handed me the afternoon issue of the Star. At the bottom of page six was a small article circled in red, describing the body of a man discovered on the tracks that morning, identity unknown. It was presumed the man was a drunk who had fallen asleep; the only mystery was a cricket bat found nearby.
I blushed at this. “In the heat of the moment, I must have left it behind.”
“All the same,” Margaret teased, “You owe me a cricket bat.”
Bell shook his head like an indulgent parent, and we laughed together.
Margaret said nothing more, though the glow in her eyes warms me still when I recall it. I realized acutely how much I would miss her.
Margaret colored slightly when she saw how her gaze had affected me. The moment passed, as sadly such moments always do.
“We seem to be retracing our steps,” Bell said, to no one in particular.
I knew I could not keep my plan secret much longer, but I was savoring it until the last possible moment. “I believe we are,” is all I said.
Margaret looked at Bell, then down at her attire, and I could see the deductive process ongoing as plain as any formula drawn upon a chalk board. “You daren’t!”
A Knife in the Fog Page 25