“Not a location in which one would expect to encounter a respectable landlady.”
The inspector was emphatic. “No, not at all.”
Holmes had been silent throughout this exchange, but now he spoke up. “And she had definitely been murdered, in your opinion?”
“Undoubtedly,” the inspector agreed. He pulled out his notebook and read from it. “Marks of strangulation round the neck, covered by a scarf that may or may not have been the murder weapon. Victim found sitting up against a wall, no other signs of violence.”
“Was any money or jewellery found on her person?”
“None, but fall asleep in a place like that, even for five minutes, and you’d be lucky to wake up still in your clothes, never mind in possession of your wallet.”
“No way of knowing if robbery was the motive then.”
“The very fact that the lady was in such a place, Holmes,” I protested. “Surely that militates against the possibility of opportune robbery?”
“A good point, Watson. You are most definitely improving – finally. But perhaps the lady was lured there under false pretences and then robbed? Or robbed and killed elsewhere, then her body dumped where it would not be noticed for some time? Unlikely, given the attempt to disguise her injuries, and more trouble, I suspect, than it would be worth, but not impossible. Still,” he paused and marshalled his thoughts for a moment, “best to concentrate on the likely for now and leave the unlikely for more desperate times. Inspector,” he asked suddenly, “was the lady killed where she was found?”
“Difficult to tell, Mr Holmes,” Bullock replied. “The rooms from which such shops are run are filthy at the best of times. Puddles of blood – and worse – are commonplace. Add in the lack of illumination and the chances of locating usable evidence are slight, at best.”
“Still, I should like to see for myself, if I may?”
I was unsurprised by Holmes’s request; the look that crossed Bullock’s face did, however, surprise me a little. He completely failed to suppress a smile as he gave a sharp nod of assent and agreed to lead us to the beer shop, almost as if he looked forward to the task. While, as I say, Holmes had a reputation for cold-bloodedness, nothing he had ever done or said had struck me as quite so lacking in human feeling as that smile on the inspector’s face.
* * *
I was still troubled by the inspector’s reaction on the short cab ride to the Five Points, while Bullock explained how a stale beer shop operated. It seemed that ‘stale beer’ was a drink composed largely of the unwholesome dregs taken from almost empty barrels of beer left outside local hostelries. Mixed together, and with narcotics or even paraffin oil added, it was a drink for the truly lost, the nameless tramps and hopeless dipsomaniacs who, Bullock informed us, made their home in the Points.
“Not that the place is as bad as it used to be,” he went on, more cheerfully. “Why, when I landed in New York, Mulberry Bend still stood and the last few Dead Rabbits still ruled the roost round about. It’s been knocked flat now, turned into a park would you believe, and the Points a sight safer for it. Still, though,” he concluded contemplatively, “it’s no place to go if you’ve no need and no place for any lady at any time.”
He sighed and knocked on the roof of the cab, telling the driver to stop, and then we stepped into the infamous Five Points district for the first time.
In truth, while obviously not overly prosperous, there was little to mark out Bayard Street from any other street we had seen thus far in New York. True, the plethora of stalls on each side of the road spilled onto the pavement at regular intervals, blocking our progress, and the area as a whole was malodorous, but the people buying and selling bore little resemblance to the alcohol-sodden vagrants I had expected. A buzz of industry surrounded us, and I wondered if perhaps too many years in the United States had caused Inspector Bullock to forget what real poverty looked like. A green park, glimpsed through the gap between two tenements, simply added to my feeling that New York’s worst streets were not as bad as all that.
“This way, gentlemen,” Bullock called over his shoulder as he strode towards a building positioned on a corner where Bayard and another unnamed street crossed one another. “The body was found only hours since, so I had the room cleared and set an officer to keep watch until you arrived.”
As he led us into the building and directly to an interior door which, I assumed, belonged to the beer shop, he ordered the policeman who stood guard to allow us access. The door was pushed open and we stepped inside, exchanging the crisp air of the street for the stale stench of tobacco, alcohol and death.
The room was about ten feet square, uncarpeted, with patches of brown paint peeling from the walls and a ceiling turned black by decades of smoke. A window, devoid of glass but patched with pieces of card, looked out onto the crossroads, letting in the muted murmur of people moving about outside, and giving enough light to make out the contents of the room. Puddles of spilled beer and who knew what else pooled on the uneven floor and assaulted our noses with their stench. What little furniture there was consisted of two barrels in one corner and half a dozen rickety chairs arrayed in a semi-circle around them, but other than that the room was empty, except for a pile of filthy rags and scraps of newspaper heaped in its centre. A second policeman stood directly in front of this heap of refuse, facing the door through which we had just come, but stepped to one side as we approached.
Bullock hurried to explain himself. “Tobias Gregson mentioned more in his letters than just the fact you were on your way, Mr Holmes. He also told me that you were meticulous in your methods and made quite a song and dance about the need to keep the location of a crime untouched. I have tried to follow his instructions as closely as possible.”
Now the cause of the inspector’s good humour became clear. Bullock had taken Gregson’s words to heart and had ensured that the scene of this particular crime was as undisturbed as could be managed. I was on the verge of saying that all we were missing was the unfortunate victim herself when Holmes fell to his knees on the filthy floor with a cry of satisfaction and placed his palms flat against the top of the pile of rancid rubbish.
“Oh well done, Inspector, well done indeed,” he said without looking up. “This is where the body lay?” Without waiting for Bullock’s reply in the affirmative, he continued carefully to pull scraps of rag from the pile and discard them, until he had exactly what he wanted in front of him. Whatever it was, he scooped it up in his hand, then spent the next ten minutes criss-crossing the room on his haunches, occasionally darting down to examine something which had caught his interest, each time to be followed by a tsk of irritation as the object proved a disappointment. Bullock and his subordinate watched this performance in bemused silence, though I believe I saw the flicker of an occasional smile on the inspector’s face.
Finally, Holmes came to a halt behind the two barrels and, with a groan of exertion, pushed himself back to his feet. “You were quite correct, Inspector,” he began, without further preamble. “This room is so polluted that it is well-nigh impossible to differentiate the genuine clue from the discarded detritus of the drinkers who routinely pass their time here.” He opened his palm, exposing the small object he had discovered beside Mrs van Raalte’s last resting place. “But this may prove of interest, I think.”
At first I was unclear what it was that he was showing us. The poor light didn’t help, but even in the broadest sunlight I might have struggled to ascertain any especial significance in the small, mud-encrusted lump that Holmes held. I said as much, but Holmes simply tipped the object into my hand and invited me to examine it more closely.
It was a quarter of an inch in diameter, coated in dirt that Holmes had scraped off at one corner, exposing the golden shine of brass beneath.
“Get the rest of the mud off with your handkerchief, there’s a good fellow,” Holmes instructed as Bullock crossed the room to join us. “I fancy there’s something of interest under there.”
I
did as I was bidden, but it proved unnecessary to ruin a perfectly good handkerchief, for the dirt slid off easily as I held it out for Bullock to see. The metal exposed beneath was indeed brass; it was a small button which had once been inscribed around its circumference, but which age and use had smoothed to an indecipherable flatness. I turned it over in my hand but, other than the eye through which the button must once have been fastened to its parent, there was nothing to see on the reverse. I passed it to Bullock but, though he took it over to the doorway and examined it in better light, I had little expectation of his spotting anything significant on so small an object. So it proved. He returned to us after a minute’s examination and handed the button back to Holmes.
“There’s not much to be gleaned from this, Mr Holmes,” he announced. “It’s just a brass button. I’ll bet there’s similar lost every day in the Five Points.”
Holmes nodded, though it was impossible to tell if he were agreeing with Bullock or not. “Perhaps,” he said eventually. “But this is a button that has been polished often, both in the past and more recently. It is obviously of a high quality manufacture and a distinguished vintage – you will have noticed that there was at one time an inscription – and has not lain here long, hence the ease with which dirt may be cleaned from it. An unusual thing to discover near a body in a drinking den of this sort, would you not agree?”
“But does it bring us nearer the murderer?” Bullock’s priorities were clear, and little wonder. He had provided us with informal assistance as a favour for an old friend, but what had begun as a minor case of impersonation had blossomed into a murder, and he must now fear the reaction of his superiors.
“Immediately?” Holmes shook his head. “No, not immediately. But later, when we have a suspect to hand? A missing coat button, and a match between this stray and those remaining, might prove very useful indeed.”
Bullock conceded Holmes’s point with a grunt of approval. “Very true, Mr Holmes, but first we need—”
Whatever the inspector might have been about to say was lost as a rock crashed through the flimsy cardboard that stood in place of window glass and smashed itself against the rear wall, missing us by a matter of feet. Bullock at once ordered his subordinate to look out of the window, but before he could do so, the young officer who had been guarding the door stepped through it and reported that a large crowd had gathered outside and were calling for the police inside to leave.
“How many?” Bullock asked.
“More’n fifty, sir. Some of them’s armed, sir.” The officer was more youthful than I had thought, nineteen or twenty at most, and his voice trembled for a moment as he spoke, before he quickly regained control of his nerves. “What d’you want we should do, sir?”
Bullock was utterly calm. “Any other officers nearby?”
“No, sir. Just you, me an’ Jackson, sir, plus the two gentlemen.”
“I have my revolver, Inspector,” I reminded Bullock. “I’m happy to put it to whatever use you judge best.”
“Oh, there’s no need for that, Doctor. Maybury here is letting his imagination get the better of him, that’s all. The people round here remember the bad old days, when the New York police were not the gentlest, nor the most honest, and not above breaking a few heads for no reason at all. But that was fifty years ago, and though they still don’t like strangers on their patch, the folk round here know that harming a policeman is the quickest way to earn themselves an early grave. They make plenty of noise and throw the occasional brick, but nothing more terrible than that.”
“All sound and fury, signifying nothing, eh?”
“Exactly, Doctor. Very well put. Now,” he said briskly, evidently keen to settle the business at hand, “if you’re finished here, Mr Holmes, there seems no point in causing further unrest with our presence.”
Holmes agreed that there was nothing else he needed to see and so, with Bullock to the fore, we left the room and, after a brief pause at the tenement entrance, emerged onto the street.
Traffic had been forced to a halt by the crowd that greeted us, and which had spilled out into the road itself. I would have estimated there were close to one hundred men and women before us, with a similar number of grubby children interspersed amongst them, their shrill voices added to the indignant cries of their elders. It was impossible in the hubbub to make out individual protests, and in fact they were clearly recent immigrants for I could hear no English being spoken, but the general mood was clear; the police – and those with them – were not welcome in the Five Points. I saw one or two in the front rows with rocks already in their hands and, further back, others holding iron bars, staves of wood and, in one case, a pickaxe, ready for action. The temptation to pull my revolver from my pocket was immense, but I had faced far greater threat in the army and I knew that even reaching for my pocket might be enough to turn this from a discontented crowd into a murderous mob. Consequently, I stood back as Bullock raised his hands for silence and, in the relative quiet that descended, declared that we would be leaving now and that the crowd should peacefully disperse. There were one or two loud grumbles at that, but as we stepped forward, the crowd parted before us and we were able to walk unmolested through them and out the other side. A few minutes’ walk and we were back at our cab, which had patiently awaited our return.
As it pulled away and began down the road, I looked back, but the crowd had already dispersed and the streets behind us looked exactly as they had when we arrived, with no sign we had ever been there.
* * *
Bullock had the cab drop us at our hotel, while he returned to his office. Holmes spent the journey back in contemplation, resting his chin on his palm and closing his eyes the better to concentrate. Only when we were settled once more in front of the fire in the hotel lounge did he describe the situation as he saw it.
“It strains too far the bounds of possibility for the murder of Mrs van Raalte so soon after we visited her not to be connected to my missing doppelganger. Clearly, the mere occasion of our visit, or something arising from it, was sufficient to require her death, and quickly, for you will recall that the lady was not at home when I visited her yesterday. The task for us – or rather, for you, my dear fellow – is to ascertain exactly what it was that brought this tragedy about. I spoke to the inspector as we left that blighted tenement, and he has given us permission to enter the van Raalte residence and examine the contents, though we may take nothing away. In spite of the unlikelihood of such a coincidence, the inspector is concerned that murderer and doppelganger may not be the same man or even connected, and naturally feels that his murder takes precedence over our own investigation into a mere fraudster.”
“As it should, of course,” I said.
“Only if the two cases are not intimately connected, which I strongly believe they are. But ignore that for now. Take a cab to the van Raalte residence and see what you can find. I would go with you myself,” he explained, “but I have another appointment. One of the people on Bullock’s list, a Pastor Hoffmann, was visited by the imposter within a day or two of the latter’s arrival in the city, and I now have his address. I intend to present myself as working in collaboration with the police – for are we not, strictly speaking, doing so? – and see if I cannot winkle a useful fact or two from the man.”
“Pastor, you said? The imposter’s first client is a man of the cloth?” I said, in surprise. Many ministers had come through the doors of Baker Street in the past, of course, but they tended to a certain timidity and were always keen on absolute discretion. Holmes had a hard-won reputation for probity, which guaranteed this last requirement, but I was at a loss to understand how a detective newly arrived in town could possibly be viewed as equally trustworthy. Perhaps it was this that had prompted him to purloin the name “Sherlock Holmes” for his own use.
Holmes, however, was already far ahead of me. “Exactly so,” he confirmed, then continued, “I do wonder who the pastor thought he was engaging, however – an untried investiga
tor freshly arrived and with his train ticket still in his hand, or Sherlock Holmes, the renowned consulting detective of London, England.” He slipped his fingers into his waistcoat pocket and fidgeted with the brass button that I knew he had placed within. “But let us put that to one side for now. We have a greater conundrum to consider, do we not? The imposter would, of necessity, have needed to advertise his services somewhere for the pastor to have knowledge of him at all – and the inspector has already told us that he did not do so.”
He trailed off and fell into a brown study, observing the flickering of the flames for several minutes, his fingers tapping a steady beat on the arm of his chair. Finally, just as I was beginning to wonder if my friend intended to remain thus for the entire day, he jumped to his feet and stood before me, rubbing his hands together. “Lunch first though, I think, Watson. This morning’s events have supplied mental nourishment, but my body is now in need of more tangible sustenance.”
Chapter Seven
After lunch, I left Holmes to finish one of the American cigarillos he had taken to smoking since our arrival, and hailed a cab in the street outside the hotel.
An early afternoon shower had slicked the pavement outside Mrs van Raalte’s house, and an expanse of grey clouds overhead promised more to come in the very near future. I hurried up the steps to the front door, made myself known to the policeman standing there, and let myself in just as the first few heavy drops began to fall, glad to have avoided a drenching, but less than happy at the thought of poking through a dead woman’s possessions. Holmes would have pointed out that by doing so I might improve our chances of identifying the murderer, but I found no consolation in the thought and made my way along the deserted corridor reluctantly.
The sitting room was unchanged since our visit, suggesting that Mrs van Raalte had not been killed at home. It was cooler than before, undoubtedly due to the inclement weather outside and the lack of people within, but there remained a heaviness to the air, and I had the unsettling sensation that the late Mrs van Raalte had merely stepped outside and could return at any moment. As though to lend weight to my morbid flight of fancy, I noticed a teacup, still containing dregs of tea, on a small table by one of the chairs. I hesitantly pushed it to one side, still uncomfortable with my role as examiner of the deceased’s effects, but there was nothing underneath it.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes--The Counterfeit Detective Page 8