by Lyndsay Faye
“We must search every alley and courtyard.”
“We have missed nothing, Mr. Holmes,” moaned Lestrade. “If anything, we have stopped him entirely.”
“Nevertheless, I will satisfy myself that it is so. The shifts he indicated are over; we may as well go together. If anything has happened, it is too late to prevent it.”
We stepped out of the Ten Bells into Church Street and made our way down the road. Holmes strode avidly into passages, but Dunlevy, Lestrade, and I were by then so disheartened that we made scant effort to follow his every darting movement. Dawn’s cold grey light had just begun to soften the edges of the gleaming brick buildings when we passed a whitewashed entrance to yet another anonymous courtyard. My friend plunged into its depths while we waited on the street.
“I shall need a warm breakfast and a cup of tea if I’m ever to make it through this day,” Lestrade lamented.
“You’re to be in attendance at the Lord Mayor’s Show?” I commiserated.
“I am indeed.”
“My sympathies, Inspector.”
“It’s not the first sleepless night I’ve had on account of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
“Quite probably we have foiled an evil design by it. I can at least remind you that Holmes is the last man to mire himself in chimera.”
“That may be so, Dr. Watson,” Lestrade muttered sourly, “but he mires himself deep enough in theory that it’s a wonder he finds his way out again.”
“What’s keeping him, I wonder,” Dunlevy yawned.
“Holmes!” I called out. There was no reply. I passed through the shabby arch leading to the court, where entrances to tenements lined the constrictive corridor. The second door on the right stood open, and when I saw no sign of the detective at the end of the passage, I entered it.
In all my ensuing years of friendship with Sherlock Holmes, excepting that particular morning, we have never once spoken to each other of that room. On the rare occasions since that day I have pictured hell, I have seen that chamber. Cracks in the masonry showed through the dank walls. There was a candle resting on a broken wineglass, a fire dying in the grate, and a plain wooden bedstead standing in the corner. The metallic smell of blood and offal saturated the air, for on that bed lay a body. More accurately, on the bed and on the table lay various pieces of what had once been a body.
Holmes was leaning with his back against the wall, his countenance deathly white. “The door was open,” he said incongruously. “I was passing by, and the door was open.”
“Holmes,” I whispered in horror.
“The door was open,” he said once more, and then buried his face in his hands.
I registered footsteps behind me. “What the devil are you two—” Lestrade began, and then a choked cry escaped his throat when he saw what had been done.
“He could not work out of doors,” I stated. “And so, he took her to her room.” I forced myself to stare at what had once been her face, but very little apart from the eyes had been left intact.
The inspector gripped the wood of the doorframe unsteadily, all the blood draining from his features.
Dunlevy entered slowly, like a man sleepwalking. “Dear God in heaven,” he whispered in a breaking voice. “He has torn her apart.”
“You must go,” said my friend without moving, his face still covered by his hands.
“What?”
“You must send a telegram to my brother. His name is Mycroft Holmes. Tell him what has happened. He lives at one eighty-seven Pall Mall. Tell him what you see.”
“Mr. Holmes—”
“Go quickly, for God’s sake! The stakes are incalculable!”
Dunlevy ran off into the rain.
My friend forcibly pushed himself away from the wall and commenced examining the contents of that abominable bedchamber. I stood stupidly by the door for several moments longer before making my way to the body and staring at the various piles of flesh which had been removed and rearranged.
Lestrade joined me. “What do you make of it, Dr. Watson?”
“It is impossible to know where to begin,” I replied dully. “I saw something like it once, in a gas explosion.”
“The door was open, you say, Mr. Holmes?”
“Yes. It has been open for perhaps twenty minutes.”
“How can—”
“The amount of rain which has saturated the floorboards.”
“Ah. Anything of interest in the fireplace?”
Holmes turned from his work with an expression of furious impatience, but a second sharp cry from Lestrade arrested whatever rebuke hovered upon his lips.
The inspector had unthinkingly plucked a gleaming silver object out of the tissue heaped on the table. The thickened blood dripped from his hand as he stared at it.
“What is it, Lestrade?”
Lestrade merely shook his head and continued peering at the thing.
“I believe it is your cigarette case, Mr. Holmes,” he said in a very small voice.
Holmes released a short breath as if he had been struck in the chest. The inspector began absently polishing the blood off with his pocket handkerchief. “Initials S. S. H., I see. Yes, it is undoubtedly yours. You lost it the night of the double murder, is that not so?” He offered it to Holmes on his right palm. “Take it.” Wiping his hands mechanically, Lestrade furrowed his brow in thought. My friend turned the case over in his delicate fingers as if he had never seen it before.
At length, Lestrade spoke more forcefully. “Have you nearly finished in here, Mr. Holmes?”
My friend shook himself. “I require a few minutes more.”
The inspector nodded. “Very good. Then, Mr. Holmes, I think you had better leave. Yes, I must ask you to leave very quickly. That is most important. And you as well, of course, Doctor. Then I will just lock this outer door if I can manage to, or shut it at any rate, and make my way to the procession route. I’ve duties to attend to there. And then, soon enough we shall hear of this matter.”
“You cannot be serious!” I cried in wonderment. “Do you honestly suggest that we leave this poor wretch here, as she is, and wait for someone else to discover her?”
“I do. If she is not found by this afternoon, I shall arrange something, but Mr. Holmes must have time to—” My friend glanced up sharply at the inspector. “That is to say, who’s to know what else may have been planted in this room. We can’t very well look under every piece of remains, disturbing the evidence as we do so. Dr. Watson, I know it is difficult, but when do you imagine this…butchery…took place?”
“The usual rigor mortis would have been wholly altered by the damage to her body. I would hazard a guess at four in the morning. If the door has been open for only twenty minutes, then he was with her for approximately two hours.”
Lestrade nodded, fidgeting with his watch. “Nearly through, Mr. Holmes?”
“I can learn nothing more here,” my friend replied, getting up from his hands and knees, in which posture he had been examining the floor.
“You have finished with the fireplace?”
“Quite finished.”
“Dr. Watson, you’ve nothing further?”
“There is nothing to be done in a matter of minutes. Perhaps you could send the complete report of her injuries on to Baker Street?”
“Certainly.”
“You must also find out when you are able if the neighbours heard anything, and determine who if any of our number was in a position to observe this girl enter her room,” said Holmes.
“Naturally, I will do so. Anything else?”
“There is nothing,” my friend replied in a very soft voice. He took the cigarette case from his pocket and regarded it once more. “I have seen enough, Lestrade. We have all of us seen more than enough.”
“Then for God’s sake, please disappear,” Lestrade said calmly. “It’s a police matter now. Not a word of that cigarette case, and I shall see to the rest.”
The rain continued to strike our faces as we
began our return to the west of London, but I do not believe Holmes or I felt it any longer. Indeed, I found it a struggle to feel anything at all, once we had collapsed into a cab. Even so early, straggling crowds began to gather along the anticipated parade route, where labourers struggled on the slick cobblestones to erect heavy cloth banners dripping with water.
“Holmes,” I said at length, “have we any hope of success?”
“On which front do you mean, Watson?”
“On any of them, I suppose.”
My friend would have appeared perfectly composed at that moment to anyone save myself, but to a man intimate with his habits, his appearance was cause for the greatest trepidation. His eyes shone as hectically as quicksilver, and there were spots of frantic colour on his high cheekbones. He began ticking off points on deceptively steady fingers.
“Do I harbour hopes of running down Jack the Ripper? Undoubtedly. Am I at all likely to be prosecuted for his disgusting crimes? I am not, though such an ordeal would be no worse than I deserve, imbecile that I have proven myself. Do we near the end of our quest for this demon? I am certain of it. Will it matter to that poor girl, whose body has been strewn about that room like so much compost? Will it do her a trace of good, not merely dead as she is, which is tragedy enough, but dead solely so that her corpse could be desecrated beyond recognition by a depraved freak?”
“My dear fellow—”
“No,” he finished. “It will do her not the smallest particle of good. And I am to blame for that.”
“That is outrageous, Holmes!” I protested. “You cannot seriously assume any fault upon your own shoulders. You, who have done so much…”
“I, who have failed so utterly that the end of this case ought by rights to mark the end of this preposterous career.”
“Holmes, be logical—”
“I have done so!” he lashed out in fury. “See where it has gotten us! Driver!” He struck the roof of the cab with his stick and leapt out.
“Stay here, Watson. I shan’t be long.”
Looking about in confusion, I saw that Holmes had led us to Pall Mall and, I could only assume, the rooms of his brother. He was inside one of the stately cream-coloured buildings for nearly half an hour, and when he emerged again from the heavy door, his countenance was positively unreadable.
Wordlessly, I extended a hand and helped him back into the cab. I peered at him curiously, but we continued down the few remaining blocks to our rooms in silence. The hansom had barely paused across the street from 221 when Holmes jumped out of it, then stood rooted to the pavement.
“Well, well!” he drawled as an expression of withering contempt flooded his features. “What in the name of all that is loathsome and diseased is standing upon our doorstep?”
I glanced up and nearly lost my footing as I set my boot on the metal support to descend from the cab. Leaning on our door, with his arm upraised as if to ring the bell, was Leslie Tavistock. My companion fleetly crossed the street, stopping on the kerb some few feet beyond our front step.
“What the devil do you think you are doing, Tavistock?” he demanded. The rumpled fellow whirled around to face us, then rushed down with his arms outstretched and his brown eyes wild with fear.
“Oh, Mr. Holmes, is that you? Of course it is. Dr. Watson—Mr. Holmes—you must help me! I can hardly overstate the urgency of my visit.”
Holmes brushed past him to the door, his key already in his hand. “I am afraid I am professionally rather busy just now. My schedule could not possibly accommodate you.”
“But you must, Mr. Holmes! My very life is in danger. It is horrible, too horrible to contemplate!”
“Is it indeed? I’m afraid I do not find the idea of your life being threatened horrible in the smallest degree. De gustibus non disputandum,* you know.” He threw open the door.
“You must feel as if I’ve wronged you,” Tavistock pleaded, rubbing his hands together desperately. “Never mind about that. I am prepared to pay any price so long as you agree to save me!”
“I tell you for the last time, you ask the impossible.”
“I’ll print a retraction, Mr. Holmes—your work on this case will be trumpeted from every street corner!”
“Remove yourself from my stairs or you will regret it,” Holmes said inexorably, turning as if to go inside.
“Mr. Holmes!” Tavistock cried once more, and seized his left shoulder in an effort to detain him. In an instant, my friend had shifted his weight, whirled upon his left foot, and delivered the journalist a powerful blow to the side of his face. Tavistock fell backward down the steps and landed prostrate upon the pavement gasping for air, the wind knocked from his lungs. Holmes promptly resumed his journey up the stairs to our rooms.
I wished very badly simply to follow him, slamming the door he had left open for me emphatically as I did so. However, my medical instincts prevailed, and I approached the pathetic figure lying splayed beneath our windows.
“Your nose appears to be broken. Can you stand?” I offered him a hand and half lifted him to a sitting position on our steps.
“Oh, I am ruined!” he gasped, fumbling for his handkerchief.
“Here.” I offered my own. “I must say, after the way you’ve treated Sherlock Holmes, I hardly think you deserve any less.”
“Deserve! It was in the interests of my profession, nothing more,” he whimpered, attempting to stem the tide of blood from his nose. “And now the source of all my information is revealed to be a degenerate lunatic, and Mr. Holmes will not consent to—”
“Stop a moment,” I interrupted him. “You would reveal nothing of your source to us before—indeed, you as much as declared undying fealty—and now you refer to him as a lunatic?”
“He is the lowest sort of aberration. I know it, I have seen! I followed him, you realize. I tracked him to his home.”
“And what did you discover?” I asked carefully.
“There were jars upon—no, no, it is far too revolting to speak of. I will be pilloried! My character decimated, my career ended.”
“What a pity,” said I, rising deliberately. “By the by, whatever possessed you to follow your source?”
“I was suspicious. I wish to heaven I had never thought to trail him, but I wanted to know how he’d got his miraculous information.” He commenced sobbing bloodily into his coat sleeve. “If he finds me out, he will kill me, I know it!”
“When did you follow him?”
“Last night. After he stopped by my office to ask for his letters back. He said the force would come after him if they discovered he had spoken to the press.”
“The force?” I repeated, praying my tone was as casual as I hoped. “What have they to do with it?”
“He is a police constable. His name is Edward Bennett. You cannot know how horrible it was, Dr. Watson. God help me! I am done for.” His head collapsed once more upon his arm.
“Come upstairs at once,” I said.
“Oh, bless you, bless you, Dr. Watson!”
“Get a hold of yourself, and follow me.” I advanced up the stairs and into our sitting room with the thrill of new-sparked hope shining in my breast.
“Watson!” called Holmes when he heard me enter. He had divested himself of his mud-bespattered clothing and was as immaculate as ever, though he rubbed at his shoulder gingerly. “Where on earth have you put the—by the Lord!” he growled when he saw who stood beside me.
“He has discovered the identity of his source, Holmes. He knows where Bennett lives.”
“Bennett has abandoned his City dwelling,” Holmes shot back, still casting about for I knew not what. “If he hadn’t, I would not now be forced to scour his bank accounts, his former office, his family tree, and his preferred tobacconist. There was a stub in the dog grate—”
“He knows where Bennett stayed last night, Holmes. Before—before it had been done,” I added lamely.
“Ha. Here they are.” Grasping the matchbox, the detective stopped to light a ci
garette and regarded the pressman with wintry disdain. “What a very interesting twist of events. Curiosity got the better of you, did it? You wanted to see what sort of line Bennett was investigating? You dogged him to his abode and then watched as he left again, which, equipped as you were, was as good as an invitation to break into his house. You’ve a cut under your right wrist just where an amateur cracksman would nick it on the windowpane, which tells me you used a glass cutter rather than a lock pick. Then you lit a candle stub without a holder and took a look round. The wax has dripped onto your sleeve in two places. Next, I imagine you laid eyes on a relic or two from Bennett’s past adventures, and his odd prescience became a trifle clearer to you. The red weal on the back of your hand from hot wax dripping upon bare flesh without remark proves your discovery was an unusual one, whatever it was. You then fled the premises. Am I close to the truth?”
Our visitor’s eyes were open and staring in awe. “It’s as you say. For God’s sake, help me, Mr. Holmes. It is more than a man can bear.”
I had never seen such an expression of loathing on Sherlock Holmes’s face before, and I hope I never will again. But just as quickly, his brow cleared and he approached our visitor with measured steps.
“Do you know, Mr. Tavistock, I do have a mind to help you. I shall just outline my little proposition. If you tell me where this rat is hiding, I will not tell all of London you are an ally of Jack the Ripper, I will not see that you are arrested for breaking and entering, and I will not throw you out of that window onto the pavement below.”
Leslie Tavistock gaped at Holmes, then whispered, “I do not know where he is.”
“Come, sir,” said Holmes, and his voice was deadly quiet.
“That is to say—I mean—I followed him, yes, but I’ve no notion where I was! The alleys all twisted and turned—”
“Mr. Tavistock,” my friend interrupted, “you will now tell me absolutely everything you can recall about your journey to Bennett’s house. Please bear in mind that you see before you a man who has squandered the last vestiges of his patience.”
The coward hid his still-bleeding face from us by turning to the window while shutting his eyes in desperate concentration.