Sherlock Holmes and The Shadows of St Petersburg

by Daniel D Victor

  Holmes emitted a dry chuckle. “Why, the parallels are obvious, Watson. In the Moscow case, the murder weapon was an axe. And as in Brick Lane, the scene of the crimes had been ransacked and the victims robbed of gold jewellery, jewellery - I might add - which had been hidden by their employer, like Dostoevsky’s pawnbroker, in an iron chest. What is more, my dear Watson, the killer, one Gerasim Chistov, was said to be a member of the religious denomination called ‘Old Believers’. Do you know the Russian word for the member of such a group?”

  Needless to say, I did not - though I was beyond certain that Holmes did.

  “Raskolnik, old fellow. It comes from the Russian raskol for ‘dissenter’, one who separates himself from a traditional point of view - or, at the risk of invoking the imagery of the axe - one who splits.”

  I felt truly defeated. Clearly, Holmes knew that the name of Dostoevsky’s murderer was ‘Raskolnikov’.”[1]

  In spite of a yawn offered up by Lestrade, Holmes continued to defend his account of the criminal behaviours that might have influenced Dostoevsky. “In the other example, I mentioned,” said he, “a Mrs Dubarasova was murdered in St Petersburg just as Dostoevsky was beginning to write his novel. What is key in the Dubarasova case, Watson - as I am sure you will not fail to note - is that the poor woman had been distracted by a false package presented to her by the killer. All the St Petersburg newspapers reported the story, and Dostoevsky was certain to have read of it.”

  Lestrade mulled over the details. “The St Petersburg newspapers, you say. A false package?”

  Holmes nodded. “For that matter,” said he, “I have yet to mention the traditional association, the case that most criminal experts argue shaped Dostoevsky’s thinking. How else to account for the references he recorded in his published preface to the transcripts of the trial concerning the French murderer Lacenaire?”

  Lacenaire-another name I had never heard before.

  “Although the Frenchman’s crimes took place some fifty years ago,” Holmes explained, “not only was he responsible for at least two deaths, one with an axe, but he also shared many similarities with Dostoevsky’s killer. Both were educated; both were poor. Both had anti-social beliefs, about which they wrote in public journals. Lacenaire challenged the penal system; Raskolnikov, you may recall, defended the very nature of crime itself in an article he wrote. As a result of their ruminations, both came to view murder as protest and hoped for the ascendancy of a superman - what the Germans call the Übermensch-to set society right. Why, Dostoevsky himself called the case more compelling than anything he had found in fiction.”

  We continued eating in silence though throughout the remainder of our meal Holmes maintained a triumphant smile that seemed altogether unworthy of someone considered a friend.

  Lestrade, on the other hand, seemed to be pondering my observations. Minutes passed before he spoke again. Then he asked, “Roosians, you say, Doctor?”

  I nodded.

  “I may have a few connections in that area,” said he, taking a final bite of his sandwich. “Just lately, many of them Russkies - anarchists and Nihilists they call themselves - have come to England to create trouble with their radical ideas. To get themselves out of tight fixes - or more than likely, to earn a few quid - a goodly number have turned informer. Now that we suspect there might be a Roosian flavour to these murders, I think I’ll just nose round a bit and see if any of them have something to say about what went on in Brick Lane.” On that note of possibility, Lestrade employed his napkin to wipe clean his mouth.

  “Must get back to the Yard,” said he, rising from the table. “We have a murderer to catch.”

  1 The transliteration of Russian into English is a tricky business. Whilst the spellings of Fred Whishaw constituted my initial encounter with the rendering of Russian names, I have chosen to employ the spellings of Constance Garnett in this account since hers have become much more recognizable to the English-reading public. Thus, “Raskolnikov” for “Raskolnikoff”, “Porfiry” for “Porphyrius”, “Ilya” for “Elia”, etc. (JHW)

  Chapter Four: Another Case

  At the door, Inspector Lestrade barely managed to avoid colliding with Billy the page.

  The boy had arrived to announce a client. “Miss Priscilla Cheek,” he proclaimed.

  As Lestrade made his way towards the stairs, he none too discreetly took the time to admire the lady from stately crown to dainty toe. Doubtlessly inured to such rude glances, the handsome young woman, draped in a long, black woollen coat and wearing a small, round purple hat, walked determinedly into our sitting room.

  I took her coat whilst Holmes pointed Billy to the luncheon dishes left standing and, with the wave of a hand, indicated their removal. Ignoring the clatter of the table business, Holmes ushered our visitor to the chair facing the window. He sat opposite, as was his wont in hearing new cases, allowing whatever was left of the dwindling daylight behind him to hide his own facial reactions in the contrasting darkness of his silhouette.

  “Miss Cheek,” said Holmes, “may I introduce to you my friend and colleague, Dr John Watson. Whatever you wish to say to me may be spoken in front of him as well.”

  “Charmed,” said I, hoping my compliment had not been obliterated by the rattle of dishes as Billy vacated the premises.

  Miss Cheek managed a brief smile, but then immediately turned to address my friend. In her frock of purple velvet, she presented quite the picture of a determined young lady. “It is about my brother Roderick that I have come to see you, Mr Holmes.” So saying, she removed from her reticule a photograph of a handsome young man in the black vestments and white collar of a school uniform and handed the picture to my friend. “Please keep it. It may help you in the matter I’ve come to discuss.”

  “Why, he could be your twin,” observed Holmes. “Despite the difference in gender, your appearances seem quite similar.”

  “We are indeed twins,” she replied with a shy smile.

  I leaned in Holmes’ direction to view the photograph he was holding. The young man had the same firm jawline and expressive dark eyes as his sister. “You make quite the handsome pair,” said I.

  This time Miss Cheek blushed crimson. “Thank you, Doctor; but pleasantries aside, my brother has gone missing, and I am quite concerned.” To my friend, she said, “I would like you to find him, Mr Holmes. I am twenty-one and due to be married shortly. Our mother and father are dead, you see, and we have only ourselves to look after each other. Worrying about poor Roderick is the last thing I want on my mind.”

  Sherlock Holmes propped the photograph against a stack of books on a nearby table and, steepling his long fingers beneath his chin, leaned back in his chair.

  “I live in a boarding house for women in Norwood,” Miss Cheek continued. “Roderick and I were both of age when our parents died in a terrible carriage accident. They left us a bit of money, most of which, Roderick and I agreed, was to be used for his schooling. Before he went missing, you see, he had hoped to become a barrister; and he was reading for the law at King’s College here in London. He couldn’t afford rooms in the Inns of Court, but he did find a small flat not far from Somerset House.”

  “Quite ambitious,” said I.

  “Indeed, Doctor,” replied Miss Cheek. “I thought my brother to be the most ambitious of students until I got a letter from him informing me that, due to a lack of funds, he had given up his studies. I possessed some money of my own, and I immediately went round to his rooms just off Kingsway to give it to him.”

  “Did you find him there?” I asked.

  She smiled wistfully. “No, he had already gone, and his landlord knew nothing of his whereabouts. I imagine it was just as well. If he had known where Roderick had got off to, I should think he would have tracked him down to collect the rent still owed. As it was, thanks to the money intended for my brother, I was a
ble to settle the matter with the landlord myself.”

  “Most responsible of you,” said I. One need not be versed in the field of psychology to recognise that bonds between siblings can be amongst the strongest in the world, especially regarding twins.

  Blushing once more, Miss Cheek continued her narrative. “Most fortunately, a pleasant young man who had lodgings in that very building overheard my conversation regarding Roderick. Accompanying me to the street, he said that although he would never tell the landlord, he knew that Roderick had moved to new lodgings and had been tutoring young children to help pay his school costs and lower rent. But as one might expect, Roderick’s earnings didn’t amount to much; and once he ran out of money, he decided to forgo his schooling and look elsewhere for an even cheaper place to live.”

  “Did this young man have any idea where that ‘elsewhere’ might be?” Holmes asked.

  “All he would say was that Roderick had found a room in the East End - where rents aren’t so dear.”

  “...And life is miserable,” I felt compelled to add.

  “Which is precisely the reason,” added Miss Cheek in reaction to my harsh assessment, “that this otherwise kindly fellow refused to give me the exact address. He said that Roderick told him that if I ever came to ask, the gentleman should not to worry his sister.” She shook her head in frustration. “Oh, gentlemen, we are not rich people, but neither are we so impoverished that Roderick should have to take lodgings in so desperate a part of the city.”

  “Obviously,” said I, “your brother has made no effort to contact you.”

  “I think Roderick is too ashamed, Doctor. I know I would be if I were in similar straits.”

  “However unhappy it may make you,” Holmes said, “if one has reached one’s majority - as you said you both have done - there is no crime in withholding from family members the location of one’s residence.”

  At this juncture, I risk authorial intrusion to remind my readers that Holmes and I entertained any number of different investigations simultaneously. Contrary to the idea perpetuated by the many individual cases I have chronicled, significant numbers began well before others ended; and though we were simultaneously involved in the investigation of the double murders in Brick Lane, there was no reason to suspect any sort of connection between those deaths and the disappearance of this woman’s brother.

  Nonetheless, with Dostoevsky’s novel fresh in my mind, various events in Miss Cheek’s account jumped out at me. For instance, before committing his horrific murders, Raskolnikov, like Roderick Cheek, had been studying for the law, had tutored children, and had moved to dingy lodgings in an impoverished area. Though not a twin, Raskolnikov too had a handsome sister, one Dounia by name. And like the attractive young woman seated before us, Dounia was also planning to marry.

  Dostoevsky and his novel bedevil me! I suddenly screamed inside my head. Was I going mad? One glance at the charming Miss Cheek should have rendered me incapable of thinking her twin responsible for any sort of foul act, let alone the ghastly axe murders committed by Raskolnikov.

  Still, I had to ask. “Miss Cheek, do you know if your brother ever frequented a pawn broker?”

  Holmes sprang to his feet. “Really, Watson, let us not go in that direction! Let me assure you, Miss Cheek, that I have associates well placed in the East End who should soon be able to locate your brother. They know the area, and they are especially alert to newcomers.”

  In spite of the abruptness of Holmes’ interruption, I retained enough composure to appreciate that Miss Cheek had not answered my question. Holmes had mentioned associates in the East End. To whom was he referring? I wondered. Before I could ask any further questions, however, he escorted our visitor to the door; assured her that his fees would be acceptable to her budget; and before conducting her to the stairs, recorded her address in Norwood so he could notify her when there was news.

  No sooner had he closed the door than Sherlock Holmes turned and admonished me once more. “Watson, I insist that you not bring up that Dostoevsky humbug in every case we encounter. Had you never read the book, you would not be making such connections. What is next? Will you read Miss Bronte’s Jane Eyre and begin searching for mad women in every attic you espy?”

  Yet another rebuke, and his previous complaint still ringing in my ears. His criticisms always stung - especially when delivered with that wry smile he was just then displaying. “Now,” said he “I shall meet with the Baker Street Irregulars.”

  The group to whom Holmes referred consisted of his personal collection of street urchins. In their ragged and dirty clothes, they could travel the byways of London and raise no suspicions, especially in the squalor of the East End from where a number of them hailed.

  Dostoevsky may have rightly bemoaned the ill treatment of St Petersburg’s “gutter children” (to employ Mrs Garnett’s translation), but at least here in London Holmes offered such youths practical employment. He paid the lads handsomely for their services though I thought that calling them “associates” seemed to be gilding the lily, as it were.

  “With this likeness of the missing person,” Holmes said, picking up the photograph of Roderick Cheek, “I have little doubt they shall find him post-haste.”

  * * *

  When I came down for breakfast the next morning, Sherlock Holmes, attired in ear-flapped travelling cap, wool scarf, and Inverness cape, appeared ready for cold weather. More to the point, he was carrying his Gladstone.

  “I have a trip to make, Watson. It shall take me out of the country for a number of days - perhaps a week or more. I shall give you a full report upon my return.”

  “Where - ?” I began to ask, but he was already out the door. Holmes would frequently go off somewhere on his own and leave me in the dark. Yet seldom did he do so at the start of a new case - or two new cases, to be precise. With nothing left to do just then, I turned my attention to the breakfast of kippers and eggs that Mrs Hudson had left waiting for me on the table. There was no sense in letting the food go to waste.

  Chapter Five: Voices from the East End

  Not two hours after Holmes’ abrupt departure, Charlie Duffle, the leader of the Irregulars, came to present his findings.

  “We found the bloke Mr ‘Olmes was looking for, Dr Watson.” he announced proudly. “No trouble at all.” Returning the picture Holmes had lent him, he pointed to the face of Roderick Cheek. “‘E’s hid out in a place in Goulston Street, hain’t ‘e?”

  Having spied the person in the photograph walking along a side street, one of the young watchers conveyed this information up the chain of command. Thus, it was Charlie himself who took up the hunt; waited for Roderick Cheek to reappear; and when he did, followed him to a boarding house in Goulston Street.

  “Fourth floor,” Charlie added with a proud grin and furnished me the address along with the room’s number. In point of fact, the building was not far from Brick Lane, the scene of the pawnbroker’s murder. Promising to share with his mates the agreed-upon sum established by Holmes, the lad took his payment and bolted down the stairs.

  No sooner had he exited than I faced a decision. Should I wait for Holmes’ return to question Roderick Cheek, or should I take it upon myself to perform the interrogation? Actually, my choice seemed obvious. Not only was there no way of knowing for how long Holmes would be gone, but there also remained the possibility that if Cheek changed his lodgings, we could lose sight of the elusive fellow once again.

  I must also confess that another thought continued to intrigue me. With Holmes away, I might more freely pursue the line of thought, which I simply could not get out of my head - the uncanny relationship between Cheek’s behaviour and that of Dostoevsky’s fictional protagonist.

  Ultimately, it was justice for the two bloodied corpses I had viewed the day before that prompted me into action. I slipped Cheek’s photograph into my jacket pock
et, put on my heavy overcoat, marched down the stairs, and proceeded out to the kerb.

  * * *

  “Goulston Street,” the hansom driver repeated. “Sure you want t’ go there, Guv?”

  Assuring him that I was, I climbed in and almost immediately fell back against the red-leather cushion as the hansom shot off down Baker Street and not long thereafter turned east into Oxford Street. The more eastward we travelled, the more the scenery devolved from the stately Georgian architecture and ordered parks and squares of Bloomsbury to the run-down warehouses and dingy living quarters of the East End. The cab finally came to a halt before an uninviting rooming house of five storeys.

  The cab took off as soon as I paid the driver, no one wanting to remain longer than necessary in that section of the city. For my part, I turned my attention to the dark-brick building before me, the reported dwelling place of Roderick Cheek. On the ground floor stood a small shop selling Jewish foods. I could make out the name “Lindermann” on a faded sign, the block Roman letters contrasting with the curls and flourishes of the seriffed Hebrew script that anointed much of the front wall and windows.

  A few paces to the left of the shop, a weathered black door led into the gloomy foyer of the boarding house itself. Immediately upon entering, I was struck by the same rancid smells that had assaulted my senses in the building in Brick Lane.

  Slowly, I climbed the darkened stairway to the fourth storey. Accompanied by the muffled shouts and cries of various inhabitants, I located the door, which Charlie Duffle had identified as belonging to Roderick Cheek, and knocked smartly upon it.

  Though no sounds came from within, the door creaked open at my touch. Thick grime clung to the window glass; but with no curtains to block the light, a few feeble rays did work their way into the room. I could not help musing that the small area they illuminated resembled the claustrophobic confines of Raskolnikov’s tiny flat. Dostoevsky had described the latter as “coffin-like”. Confining rooms cramp the spirit, he maintained.