Sherlock Holmes and The Shadows of St Petersburg

by Daniel D Victor

  Though I remained standing at the portal, I could readily see that the contents were equally Spartan: a wooden table and chairs to the left, a small bed against the back wall, a chest of drawers and a small rickety shelf full of books to the right. Mildewed strips of what once might have been yellow wallpaper curled down at varying lengths from just below the crown moulding at the ceiling.

  Upon the bed were heaped piles of old clothes and blankets, and it took a few moments for me to discern some movement beneath them.

  “Will - William, is that you, mate?” came a muffled voice at last.

  “No,” I said, entering slowly, “I am afraid I am not William. I am, in fact, John Watson, a medical doctor.”

  A drawn, pale face burrowed up from under the blankets. Thanks to the photograph I had brought along, I concluded that in spite of a week’s worth of beard, dark lines in the forehead, tangled hair, and deep shadows beneath glazed eyes, the face did indeed belong to Mr Roderick Cheek.

  “Has - has William sent you? He knows I’m not well.”

  I took a step towards the bed in the same manner I would approach a patient. “What is wrong with you?” I asked.

  “I’m burning up, Doctor. I - I have some sort of fever.”

  I stood next to the bed now and, applying the back of my hand to Roderick Cheek’s perspiring brow, was immediately convinced that he had accurately diagnosed his condition. A metal cup and glass water-pitcher had been placed on a chair next to the bed. I filled the cup with water and placed it in his shaking hand. He raised the cup to his lips and slowly drank.

  I waited for him to put down the cup, and then I spoke of my true intentions. “I’m afraid, Mr Cheek, that you have welcomed me under false pretences. I have not come here to examine your health.”

  The ailing young man struggled to sit up. With his feverish eyes, he examined me closely. “Then what - what are you doing here?” he demanded.

  The very question I was asking myself. What could I hope to determine by questioning someone in so sickly a condition? “I am the associate of Mr Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective. Perhaps you are familiar with his name.”

  Exhaling and falling back against a limp pillow, Cheek shook his head. “Never heard of him. What’s this got to do with me?”

  “Your sister came-”

  “Priscilla sent you?”

  “Your sister is deeply concerned about your welfare, Mr Cheek. She asked Sherlock Holmes to find out where you were living. She wishes to help you.”

  “I’m done with her!” Cheek fairly shouted. “For my sake, she insists on marrying a fool of a banker. She wants his money to enable me to succeed. I shall not allow it!” He screamed and shuddered at the same time.

  Whatever his strategy - if strategy it even was - his histrionics needed to be reined in. The issue that kept gnawing at me would be the very thing to sharpen his focus. “Do you know a pawnbroker called Gottfried?” I dared to ask.

  “Samuel Gottfried?”

  Obviously, he did know the man.

  Roderick Cheek paused to collect his thoughts. “I-I know him. He lives nearby. In Brick Lane. I’ve pawned a few items with him. I - I think he still has the watch my father gave me. Why do you ask?”

  “Monday night.” said I calmly, “Mr Gottfried was murdered.”

  Cheek’s expression remained quizzical though perspiration covered his brow. He said nothing for a few moments, as if trying to come to grips with what I had told him. “And why,” he asked at last, “have you come here to report this to me?”

  “You were a client of the man,” I said. “Associates for Sherlock Holmes-” (my friend’s euphemism for “children” seemed reassuringly official) “-reported to me where you live, and I am here to investigate.”

  “Investigate? Investigate what? This is the first I’ve heard of any such murder.”

  “And Monday night? Where were you?’

  Cheek sighed. “Like any night lately - here in bed. Look at me. I’m not well, I tell you.”

  I looked, but my mind was already racing ahead to the key question. If I was not the one to ask it, who would? “Tell me, Mr Cheek, have you ever read the Russian novel, Crime and Punishment?”

  “Crime and Punishment? Dostoevsky?” He pulled up the dark-blue blanket to mop his forehead. “Why, yes,” he said. “In school. A year ago. For a tutorial in Russian literature. But why-” here a smile broke through the man’s illness - “oh, I see. In the novel, Raskolnikov murders his pawnbroker, and you’re wondering if... Hold on - Raskolnikov murdered the pawnbroker’s sister as well. Who else besides Gottfried was killed?”

  “His wife,” I said. Holmes would have noted that it was Cheek himself who suggested a second victim. Cheek’s next admission seemed even more incriminating.

  “With an axe, no doubt.” He followed this observation with a high-pitched laugh.

  The synchronicity was unnerving. Though Cheek had offered no more information than the novel itself provides, Dostoevsky’s killer spends much of the time after the murders in bed with a fever. Whatever else Cheek had to say, I could readily see that my visit to this foul den would do nothing to ease my suspicions.

  At that moment the door swung open to reveal another young man. He was holding a large, brown earthenware pot by its handles. The grey-brown hue of his suit matched the colour of the pot.

  “William,” Roderick gasped. “Thank God, you’ve come back.”

  “Who’s this then?” William demanded, nodding at me.

  I proceeded to explain my presence as best I could. “Who are you?” I asked in turn.

  It was the sick man who answered. “Doctor Watson, this is William Arbuthnot. We read for the law together when I was still at King’s College.” Another trill of laughter. “Save your breath. No need to ask. He’s read Dostoevsky’s novel too. We shared the same tutor, in fact, and discussed the book quite often.”

  “What does he want here?” asked William. “And what book is it that I am supposed to have read?”

  Cheek’s eyes burned with excitement. “Someone’s murdered Gottfried the pawnbroker. With an axe. This crazy fellow believes that anyone who has read Crime and Punishment is a suspect.” He turned to me. “Did I get that right? William is a suspect as well, is he not? I should judge that you wish to question him too.” Again he broke into that weird laughter.

  In the novel, Raskolnikov has a friend called Razumihin, who after many twists and turns ends up marrying Raskolnikov’s sister. Though I had no reason to believe William Arbuthnot to be the fiancé of whom Miss Cheek had spoken, he clearly filled the role of friend for her brother. And since at the very least, this William had also read the novel, I put the question to him as well, “May I ask, Mr Arbuthnot, where you were Monday night?”

  The man answered me with a change of subject. “Let me guess,” he replied, “you’re one of those Christians who believe everyone suffers Original Sin.”

  I failed to see the logic. Besides, religion has never been a major influence in my life, and I was rather taken aback at so personal a query.

  “Original Sin is a vague concept,” pontificated Arbuthnot, sounding every bit like the erudite student he still was. “As a result, one school of thought believes there are sinners among us who feel they must commit a truly immoral act to give tangible reality to their guilt. Is that what you are suggesting, sir - that someone murdered the pawnbroker in order to provide himself a real crime about which to feel guilty? Is that your hypothesis?”

  Suddenly, Cheek sat up and shook both his fists in the air. “Well argued, William!” he shouted.

  Though an upstanding member in the Church of England, I readily acknowledge that juggling the concepts of sin and guilt is well beyond my depth. As for interpreting the theological implications of Crime and Punishment-well, allow me to say that I
was perfectly content with Raskolnikov’s repentance at the novel’s conclusion. His confession sufficed. I saw no need for additional questions about why he had committed the murders.

  William’s intellectual response, however, suggested those new psychological interpretations that serve to undermine any sense of contrition, religious or otherwise. Indeed, I wondered if William Arbuthnot might be offering a look into his own state of mind. Whatever his thinking, I recognised that at the very least he had dodged my question concerning his whereabouts on the night of Gottfried’s murder.

  Whilst I pondered the meaning of all this chatter, William was placing on the chair next to the bed the pot he had been holding all the while. “Calm down, mate,” he said to Cheek. “I’ve brought you the perfect medicine - chicken soup.” Retrieving a large wooden spoon that had been lying on the table, he reported, “It’s from the shop downstairs. Mrs Lindermann gave it to me when I said you were ill. ‘Eat,’ she told me to tell you. ‘Then go to sleep. You’ll be fine in the morning.’”

  Roderick Cheek ignored the spoon and, taking hold of the two handles, drank directly from the pot. Some of the steaming broth trickled down his bristled chin and onto the blanket.

  More concerned with the soup than with their visitor, Cheek and Arbuthnot succeeded in convincing me that it was time to leave. Though Miss Cheek’s brother had indeed been located, I seemed to have uncovered a more pressing issue. Both young men were readers of Crime and Punishment, and either one - or both - might have appropriated the deadly plan that Dostoevsky had established in the book’s opening section. Having travelled to the East End with a single suspect in mind for the Brick Lane murders, I found myself returning to Baker Street with the number doubled.

  * * *

  Not long after I had returned to our sitting room, Inspector Lestrade arrived with a short, grizzled man in tow. Maintaining a firm hand on the man’s shoulder, Lestrade marched him in as he might treat a criminal. The stranger, dressed in baggy work clothes and flat tweed cap, sported a dramatic, grey moustache that extended outward and ended in sharp, waxed points. Lestrade had previously spoken of his contacts within London’s Russian community; and here, as I was about to discover, stood a living representative.

  “Says his name is Dmitry,” Lestrade told me as he let go of the man, “but he calls himself the Assistant, he does. Lives in the East End. Claims that before coming to England, he’d been an Assistant Superintendent with the St Petersburg police. As I recall, it’s the same city where those murders in that book took place.”

  St Petersburg. It haunts this investigation.

  “I brought him here so you could have a look, Doctor. Never can tell what valuable memories he might be storing away.”

  In spite of the man’s drab coat and trousers, he held his shoulders back and, though not very tall, evoked the erect, formal posture of a military officer. I seemed to remember an assistant superintendent mulling about in Crime and Punishment, but the pleasure I was experiencing from the credence Lestrade had bestowed upon my suspicions pushed that memory out of mind.

  “Actually,” said Lestrade, “the Assistant here is a difficult fellow to lay hands on. He’s a walking contradiction, he is. A former policeman in Petersburg who now wants nothing to do with the police - nothing, that is, except when we pay him for his information.”

  The man continued to stand at attention.

  “I must say,” Lestrade rattled on, “that he’s actually provided some helpful tips about criminal goings-on among our London Russkies.”

  The man removed his hat. “Iss enough I tell you what you want,” said he to Lestrade with a snarl. He spoke competent English with a thick Russian accent. “More I not wish to do.”

  “How much does he know about the murders in Brick Lane?” I asked. “Has he even heard about the pawnbroker?”

  At the word “pawnbroker”, the Assistant looked at me.

  “Here, then,” said Lestrade, catching the movement as well. “Do you know something about the death of the pawnbroker, Samuel Gottfried?”

  “Gottfried?” repeated the Russian. “I give him pledge from time to time. Not lately.”

  “Didn’t happen to see him Monday night then?” Lestrade asked.

  “Not for months have I seen him. I know nothing about murder.”

  “So you say,” Lestrade replied slowly, his manner of dragging out the words suggestive of his scepticism.

  Sensing a connection to Dostoevsky, I was more direct. “What about the story of the murdered pawnbroker and her sister in St Petersburg twenty years ago?” I asked. “Two women killed with an axe and robbed.”

  The Assistant shrugged his shoulders. “Iss long time. I forget old cases.”

  Perhaps he had indeed forgotten an old case. At the same time, I wondered that he had not refuted the axe-murders as fiction.

  “I work hard as policeman in Russia. On my hat, I wear - how do say? - cockade of officer; and still they sack me. Too angry, they tell me. Where is justice?”

  “But do you not see a similarity between a murdered pawnbroker in St Petersburg and the murdered pawnbroker in this current case?” I was nothing if not persistent.

  He shrugged once more. “Coincidence.”

  Coincidence-the Assistant’s use of the word was itself a coincidence. For when Raskolnikov is still in the planning stages of his crime, he overhears someone talking about the benefits of killing the very same pawnbroker Raskolnikov has made his target.

  To be sure, hearing that conversation truly is coincidental; but believing the words to be some sort of sign, Raskolnikov convinces himself that he should actually go ahead and commit the awful deed. After all, had Providence not been on his side, had the Fates not been interested, he obviously would have encountered no such reinforcement of his plan. In his own twisted way, Raskolnikov trusts that he is carrying out some greater design.

  “Come round Scotland Yard in a day or two,” Lestrade said to the Assistant. “Once we go through all the pledges that the pawnbroker held at the time of his death - that is, the ones that were not stolen - we’ll be returning the items to those who come to claim them. Put the word out to everyone you know who used his services.”

  “I already tell you,” the Assistant replied, “no pledges to Gottfried now.” Then, “Can I go?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said Lestrade, and without another word, the Russian left - “escaped” might be a better term - and fairly bounded down the stairs. The outer door slammed shut with a resounding bang.

  “I’ll be taking my leave as well,” said Lestrade. Before exiting, however, he turned to ask, “Any word from Holmes?”

  I answered in the negative, and then it was Lestrade’s turn to lumber down the stairs. Only this time, the outer door closed without a sound.

  Chapter Six: Dust to Dust

  On the same Wednesday evening that Lestrade and I were quizzing the Russian informer, no less a personage than Rabbi Nathan Adler, the venerable Chief Rabbi of the Great Synagogue at Duke’s Place, requested the bodies of Mr and Mrs Gottfried from Scotland Yard for burial the next day.

  “The Superintendent agreed straight away,” Lestrade informed me with a derisive laugh. “I mean, we knew what killed them, didn’t we? No need to waste time examining the corpses.”

  The bodies were released late Wednesday night and prepared for burial the following morning. It was Lestrade’s idea to attend the service, and he invited me to come along. “You never know who might show up,” said he, suddenly sounding very much the expert detective. “You never know who might take extraordinary interest in the murders. Some killers like to view the results of their handiwork.”

  Thursday broke dark and wet, a penetrating rain drumming on the roof of the police van, which Lestrade had commandeered to retrieve me at Baker Street. Within minutes we were circling the east side of Regent�
�s Park and then continuing north by way of Seven Sisters Road to the Edmonton Cemetery some eight miles from the East End murder scene.

  An hour later we were trundling through the cemetery’s open gates marked on both sides by a pair of red-brick columns, each surmounted with a large Star of David. The cemetery had opened only a few years before, and swards of green lawn still remained unmarked by the countless gravestones inevitably destined to fill the landscape.

  A protective white canopy had been set up for the Gottfrieds’ funeral though what had softened to a thin rain eased to a gentle mist before the service began and ceased completely minutes later. Standing on the wet grass within in a copse of beech trees, Lestrade and I kept ourselves out-of-sight. We were close enough to distinguish words like “kind” and “caring” in the eulogy and the plaintive melodies of the prayers the rabbi was offering up. The prayers were in Hebrew, of course, and beyond our understanding; and yet the lugubrious chants conveyed the shared sadness of the people pressing close to the two open graves.

  In addition to the rents in their black clothes, the adults who stood shedding tears near the rabbi - the Gottfrieds’ two sons and their wives, I would learn later - all wore head coverings: the men, tall hats; the women, round affairs shielded with black lace. Also dressed in black, two young grandchildren, a boy and a girl, leaned quietly against their parents. The police, Lestrade explained, had already spoken to the family members concerning their suspicions and gained no useful information.

  I might add that due to his height and slender physique, the taller of the sons put me in mind of the still absent Holmes. In fact, a single look at the man’s frock coat, dangling side locks, and full beard suggested how easily one might disguise oneself. Had the young boy not suddenly grasped his father’s leg, I could even imagine the tall son being the absent Holmes himself.

  Others besides the family were also in attendance. Four young men were hovering a number of yards beyond the canopy. Three wore flat caps and one a bowler, their distance from the graves as well as their conventional attire suggesting little connection to either the family or to the religion.