by Lyndsay Faye
At length we turned north onto Commercial Street, where pools of water stood in front of the narrow shops illuminated from within by greasy tallow candles. Rats scurried from under our clattering wheels, and doors leading to derelict stairwells stood yawning in the rain. I peered into them, but to no avail; the glow and bustle of Whitechapel High Street had been replaced by pervasive darkness. It was a black so heavy that its weight appeared only to be deepened by the efforts of the meager lamps, and I wondered aloud to Holmes what deeds might with impunity be committed in such a realm.
“To live in these houses, one cannot survive without either condoning or incorporating the criminal element,” my friend replied. “See here—this street we are passing, Flower and Dean—it is one of the most dangerous places in the known world, and it is not in the wilds of Africa but mere miles from the place where you and I so peaceably hang our hats.”
One glance down the road he had indicated sufficed to prove his point. The air was heavy despite the recent rain, and there was hardly a window which had not been smashed in, then vainly patched over with paper or scraps of cheap cloth.
“Here is our destination. I thought it best to establish our connection early in the evening. Follow me, and please try not to draw attention to yourself.”
Holmes has, as I have remarked elsewhere, an air of self-importance about him which occasionally tries the patience of his few friends. However, upon entering the establishment called the Queen’s Head, on the corner of Commercial and Fashion Streets, I at once took his meaning. The place was populated by gentlemen—if one could stretch the word to its outer limits—of the roughest character; by rouged women awkwardly holding babies in their arms, pausing for a glass of gin before returning home; and by Miss Mary Ann Monk, who sat at the bar near the doorway and shot an eye at us as we entered.
“How about that one, Middleton?” Holmes said brightly after surveying the room. “She looks likely enough, and that glorious hair. You won’t do better than that, my friend, not in these parts.”
My look of dismay must have registered with many of the patrons, who chuckled quietly at Holmes’s words.
“Oh, come off it, man, we haven’t got all week. See here,” he said to Miss Monk in a lower tone. “My friend is about to leave London for the Australian colonies, and—well, it would be pleasant to remember England as a welcoming land, if you understand me. You are not engaged at the moment?”
Miss Monk regarded us appraisingly and made no reply.
“Well, well, it is no matter,” said Holmes suavely, passing her a half-sovereign. “Now, I expect this is more than you make in a month, and I further expect you to earn it. We shall stay here for a drink, then continue on to the Bricklayer’s Arms down the road apiece. A thicker* when all’s said and done ought to persuade you to meet us there, I think? Many thanks, my dear girl.”
After purchasing two glasses of beer and two glasses of gin from the proprietor, we sat down on a bench near the back of the room. We sipped the beer, leaving the gin untouched.
“I suppose that we intend to grant Miss Monk an ironclad justification for giving Dunlevy the slip when she feels it necessary,” I remarked dryly.
“Precisely so. My apologies, my dear Middleton, but apart from an assignation, I could not devise any excuse that would so effectively ensure her safety.”
“Your vaunted imagination fell so short?”
“Come now, my dear fellow! It is a dark enough investigation without a touch of sport to lighten it. But I say, what have we here—no, do not look toward the door, I beg of you,” he stopped me softly. “The reflection in that excellently placed mirror should serve you every bit as well.”
Stephen Dunlevy, his face slightly distorted by the ageing of the mirror, was casting an affable blue eye about the crowded room. He was a genial fellow with a modest, upward-tilting moustache set over a pleasant mouth and a square jaw. Holmes looked him over in his careless, languid fashion, but I knew that he was recording every salient detail as the ex-guardsman strode further into the room and hailed our diminutive friend. On their way to sit down, Miss Monk nodded once in our direction, which immediately prompted her companion to question her.
Holmes smiled. “Now that Dunlevy has seen us, let us take our leave.” We exited the bar and the air hit our faces in damp gusts as he continued. “You see, my dear fellow, the only way I could feel absolutely sure of Miss Monk’s security was if she had an appointment—not a fabricated one, mind you, but an established fact—that her companion discovered as if by accident. Should she not appear, she will be missed, and Dunlevy knows it.”
We walked slowly down Commercial Street as the skies began to clear. “I have no doubt but that you are aware of every possible eventuality,” said I, recovering my equanimity outside the close confines of the Queen’s Head. Falling into a more comfortable silence, we drifted in the direction of our meeting place with Miss Monk.
By the time we had reached Whitechapel High Street once more, all the revelry and apathy of a hedonistic Carnevale permeated the smoky atmosphere. Had Holmes or I wished to lose any of the money in our pockets, every corner boasted either a cardsharp, skittle sharp, or some other variety of bold-faced cheat. As we passed the intersection into the morass of Commercial Road, I confess that I should have doubted the safety of our route had Holmes not so clearly known precisely where he was going. Indeed, I believe that only my friend’s air of total self-assurance prevented us from harm as we strolled down the jaggedly cobbled street.
While I cannot vouch for the history of the Bricklayer’s Arms, it had likely once served as a local guildhall, for it boasted the banner of its trade name above the low-linteled door. It was perhaps eleven o’clock by the time Holmes and I arrived, as we had more than once been forced to extricate ourselves from the attentions of inquiring ladies of the evening. I will be pardoned, therefore, for having expressed a degree of relief when we at last entered the crowded tavern.
A stranger to all, my companion was within half an hour the intimate confidant of every unhappy sot within the premises. Though seeped through with tallow smoke and careless splashes of gin, the atmosphere grew less unpleasant as I realized that Holmes was as at ease in our present environs as he was in our own rooms, and thus I settled back in my chair and tried my own hand at observation. Close upon my right was an elderly fellow, clearly a sailor, I thought, from his tattoos, who declaimed to a curly-headed boy that he had more women at his beck and call in Asian ports than any other seafarer he had either seen or heard tell of. Directly in front of us sat a woman who I imagined to be in mourning owing to her dark garments, then remembered that the denizens of that neighbourhood possessed at the most one entire set of clothing.
When over an hour had passed without a sign of our comrade, I began to shoot Holmes worried glances, only one of which he responded to by pressing my arm reassuringly. My friend was lifting his glass once more in the direction of the barkeep’s daughter when Miss Monk at last appeared at the doorway. Upon spying us, she rushed over, leaping into the nearest chair.
“I’d bet my life that bloke’s onto summat,” she declared delightedly, drawing Holmes’s half-sovereign out of her garments and tossing it back to him. He placed it in his waistcoat pocket and then quite inexplicably glanced down at her shoes.
“Well, then,” he prompted, raising his eyes, “pray report. What did he tell you?”
“Wouldn’t talk about that soldier friend of his for nigh on an hour. Just asks what I’ve been about and who you lads are, and I tells him some stories so everything’s warm and comfortable. Finally he lets on that he thinks he’s found a way to trace Johnny Blackstone.”
“This gentleman grows ever more enthralling,” Holmes remarked. “Did you discover anything further?”
“Only where he lives!” she whispered.
“How on earth did you accomplish that?” I exclaimed.
“Well, when I left him to meet my swells, I’m off with a peck and a nod, but I duck
s into an alley to see which way he goes. When he comes out, he walks straight down Commercial Street and ends up on Ellen Street, down a passage or two and into a doss house. I spies a woman at the front entrance, and I offer her a shilling to let on what sort of callers he has. ‘No one,’ says she, ‘but he’s out all hours, and only the devil knows what he’s about. He’s true enough to you, so far as I know.’ Well, I weren’t about to wait around for him to come out again. But I’ll show you his digs, and the woman what keeps the entrance will tell me for a few pence if he’s there, like as not.”
“It is a sterling idea, Miss Monk. I may have a mind to follow him myself tomorrow. Quietly now, and so as not to cause any curiosity over our departure, do take my friend Middleton’s arm and lead us out of the bar.”
CHAPTER EIGHT In Pursuit of the Killer
Heading in a southwesterly direction, we were soon avoiding heaps of debris and rivulets of sewage on our way to Dunlevy’s abode. Miss Monk, freed from the gaze of our fellow bar patrons, let go of my forearm with a comradely squeeze and we traveled three abreast. We had passed a board school, and were nearing a two-story barn housing what sounded like a gentleman’s club in the midst of a celebration, when a pony-driven cart blocked our path as it approached an open gate. The workman sitting upon the small seat of his costermonger’s barrow, a stooped man with spectacles and fingerless gloves, called out impatiently to his animal. To his surprise, his pony shied backward with a nervous neighing sigh. Another attempt to enter met with the same resistance, and as a result, our party trod into the street to cross to the other side.
We had continued for several more paces when Holmes cried, “Wait! The reins, Watson! The reins in that man’s hand, they were slack, were they not?” Without awaiting a reply, he turned on his heel and flew back toward the gate and the fretfully pawing pony, whose owner had temporarily abandoned the project and gone inside the club.
Miss Monk turned a quizzical eye toward me. “They were slack, right enough. But what could that mean?”
I intended to reply, but some instinct instead caused me to run with all my speed after Holmes into the long space between the two buildings. The walls rose at an impossible angle for any light to penetrate from the street beyond, and I could barely make out my friend’s tall form against the opposite mouth of the corridor.
“Holmes!” I called, proceeding forward with one guiding hand on the cold wall. “What is it, Holmes?”
The spark of a lit vesta flared out, revealing my friend’s thin hand and a patch of stone wall. “It is murder, Watson.”
When Holmes lit the bull’s-eye, the sight which had been invisible to my duller senses caused me to gasp in alarm. There lay the very gaunt, sable-clad woman I had noted in the Bricklayer’s Arms not two hours previous. Her eyes were now open and staring, seemingly in disbelief at the rivulets of blood which ran from the gaping gash through her neck onto the ground.
I immediately knelt to see what could be done, but she had breathed her last mere seconds before our arrival. At this observation, a new thought struck me, and I looked urgently up at Holmes as I drew my service revolver, indicating the enclosed yard beyond. He nodded once. Lantern in hand, the detective cautiously advanced the remaining fifteen feet down the end of the corridor until he reached the edge of the threshold and stepped into the shadowy yard.
The attack happened so quickly that it was difficult for me to know exactly what occurred. A dark figure, who had clearly been waiting flat against the wall beyond, focusing all his senses upon our movements, darted behind Holmes and dealt me a powerful blow near the left eye, momentarily stunning me as he tumbled out the street side of the passageway. My next memory, which could only have been a split second later, was of Holmes shouting, “Remain here!” as he left the lantern and took flight after the murderer of the unidentified female, whose eyes, though my own were still painfully blurred, I gently closed as I leaned against the wall.
After bitterly regretting my own stupidity in allowing myself to be assaulted in such a manner, I reflected that the terrain had been far from in our favour—to walk from a narrow entrance into unknown landscape is to invite ambush—and I soon left off cursing my ill luck to ponder what use I could be where I was.
Upon approaching the gate, I nearly collided with the workman from the pony cart, which remained where we had left it, the animal still tossing its head in indignation at the proceedings. The driver had evidently gone inside and brought back with him a few lit candles and several of his comrades, many of foreign appearance, all respectably dressed and glaring at me suspiciously.
“My pony was afraid, and I stop to see why,” he began in slightly accented but perfectly comprehensible English. “He is not usually this way, and I saw a dark shape. You—you were hiding? In the yard?”
“No,” I replied, “but a terrible event has occurred there. We must summon the police at once.”
The knot of men exchanged worried glances. “I am Mr. Louis Diemschutz,” declared the cart driver. “We are members of the International Workingmen’s Educational Club, through that door. My house, my wife—they live off this yard. I must see what has been done.”
I nodded and stood aside. Mr. Diemschutz approached the body and gave a small exclamation at the pool of blood surrounding the victim’s head.
“This is not my wife,” he cried, “but another woman has been killed! This man is right. We must find help.”
Fortunately, that task required negligible effort, for before we had traversed ten yards of the street, Miss Monk rounded the corner in a visible rage with an exceedingly recalcitrant police constable in tow.
“You’ll leg it sharp, or I’ll begin screaming and I won’t stop till you’ve done what’s right. Bloody hell, do you think I spend my time chatting up every crusher I see trudging along his little circle?” She stopped short at the sight of me. “Oh, Dr. Watson,” she cried, leaving the policeman and flying to my side. “Your eye is bleeding. I knew summat was wrong. What’s in that alley? What’s happened to Mr. Holmes, then?”
“There has been another murder, and Holmes has gone after the killer,” I replied, half for the benefit of Miss Monk and half for that of the bewildered constable. As I uttered those words, I wondered with a sudden stab of fear whether it was remotely possible for Sherlock Holmes to be outmatched, and I lamented even more keenly that I was not with him.
“You saw the man what’s done it?” Miss Monk questioned. I nodded. “And there’s—there’s another woman in there? She’s dead, you’ve said as much, but is she—?”
“We interrupted her killer. Nothing of the sort that was done to Annie Chapman has happened here.”
“That’s a blessing, then.” Miss Monk exhaled. “Right. You want me to see her? The poor soul. I may know her, after all.”
I considered this suggestion and, knowing that time was of the essence, reluctantly gave my assent. The startled policeman likewise had no objection. I had left the lantern by the corpse, so together we approached the harsh halo of illumination delineating the arm and head of the body. Miss Monk bit her lip in distress at the sight of the victim but slowly shook her head. I took her arm and led her away.
“Are you all right, Miss Monk?”
“I’m like to be fine in a moment, Doctor.”
“Perhaps one of the men associated with the Educational Club will escort you inside.”
I had expected words of protestation either from Miss Monk, who looked stalwart but very pale, or from the club members, each of whom appeared to be attempting to work out my exact relationship with the shabbily clad young woman. No dispute was forthcoming, however, and a thin fellow with a pince-nez offered Miss Monk his arm and led her into the light and noise of the club.
“You’re Dr. Watson?” demanded the policeman. He was a ruddy-faced youth with a blond moustache and weak chin. “I am Police Constable Lamb. The area must be secured, and no one is to leave the club until we’ve settled this matter. Pray God Mr. Holmes has caught
the fiend by this time.”
His words echoed my fervent hopes. I informed Constable Lamb I’d seen the dead woman two hours previous at the Bricklayer’s Arms, and Mr. Diemschutz, who was much distressed, then described his pony’s fright and his subsequent foray into the men’s club for assistance. By this time many of the neighbours had been roused, and word of the fresh crime spread rapidly from house to house as other policemen arrived on the scene.
After twenty minutes had elapsed, I was anxious; twenty minutes beyond that saw me fretfully pacing the pavement, wondering whether it would be possible for one man, in the dead of night in an unfamiliar and tortuous setting, to find another man when his initial trajectory had not even been observed. At nearly a quarter to two by my watch, feeling vaguely ill, I made up my mind simply to cast about the adjacent streets and had just set off when an unyielding hand on my shoulder stopped me.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Watson, that Mr. Holmes has not returned,” said Constable Lamb firmly, “but it is in direct violation of police procedure to allow you to exit the scene of a crime you…well, discovered, sir.”
“Sherlock Holmes is at this very moment attempting to bring in the man responsible for these vile acts, and I mean to help him in whatever way I can.”