Castle Rouge (12 page)

Whitechapel had become a cesspool, the stopped drain into which poured the dregs of the British Isles and Eastern Europe. The times had created a vast, shiftless population of former peasants clogging the great cities, flowing inward in a never-ending stream. The pogroms in Russia forced the Jews to choose death or flight. The Poles fled a variation brought by the same Eastern invaders who had bedeviled their land for centuries, along with many from many lands to the east. Ironically, these refugees came to the East End of London. Such people were poor, seldom spoke English, had few skills to sell.

All sank like stones into the lowest sections of our great city to mingle uneasily with our own unfortunates. These last were the legions of displaced farm workers forced from the wholesome country into the city-bred flotsam of humanity that had always blighted Mother London, including the homeless women who had no trade to ply but themselves.

“Why, Holmes,” I had jibed him as we began our proposed jaunt across the street, “I knew you were a Bohemian, but I did not know you are a socialist.”

“I am no ‘ist’ nor ‘ian,’ Watson. Merely an observer by inclination and trade. I take no political position except to note how these upheavals in nations may effect the commission of crime.”

“Many believe a foreigner is Jack the Ripper, that no Englishman would slaughter women so fiendishly.”

“And so they believed of Frenchmen in Paris,” he murmured.

“Paris? Is that where you were? You say that they suspect the Ripper of having relocated to Paris?”

“Series of brutal murders occur everywhere, Watson. They are seldom recorded in sufficient detail and tallied in any sensible way that shows whether one man or a dozen may have done the deeds. It is always assumed that the lunatic’s violence is so severe and mystifying that the deed stands alone…until the next lunatic attack occurs. There is never an attempt to follow or show a pattern.”

“And did the Ripper show a pattern in Paris?”

“Several,” Holmes said tightly.

Using the rabbi’s name after knocking on the door, Holmes was shortly able to persuade a rather surly bearded fellow to speak to us, although we were obviously not ‘working men’ of any stripe.

“I’m searching for a man,” Holmes began.

“We are all men here,” was the short answer, accented but understandable.

“This man would have been a visitor, like ourselves.”

“Then he would be an exception.”

“That is what I hope,” Holmes went on. “I hope he was exceptional enough for you to remember him. You come from the Ukraine, I perceive. I see the journey has cost a great deal, including the loss of your sister, no, brother, pardon me. No doubt it has been hard to obtain work as an ostler in a city in which so many Irish are naturally suited for the job and also as hungry for work. 1 cannot blame you for seeking betterment through uniting with other men in your situation. Certainly the English lessons you study here are a great help, for your mastery of such a difficult language is commendable, and at least your mother will soon arrive.”

“What are you? Some Gypsy fortune-teller?”

“Alas, no. I could certainly use prescience in my profession but must rely on evidence instead. I am a consulting detective.”

The man’s shrewd eyes darkened with speculation. “And how did you discover about me?”

Holmes smiled slightly at the awkward construction that betrayed the fellow’s serviceable yet imperfect command of English. “I am a student like yourself, only I deconstruct the articles of appearance instead of those of sentences. An instant’s glance allowed me to notice the resemblance between your face and that of the tiny photographic likeness you wear on your watch fob. The fob was swinging during that instant or I would have never done your brother the disservice of taking him for your sister, however briefly. As for your origin, I am also a student of accented English. By the secure lodging of your tongue in your lower jaw, yours certainly springs from east of the Volga. Beyond that is the handkerchief that peeks out of your left inner breast pocket. The embroidery is of Russian style. I admit I hesitated for a moment there. Such handiwork is usually done by young women preparing for hope chests, or quite old women occupying time as best they may. However, your watch fob already paid tribute to your late brother and the handkerchief lay near your heart. I detected a mother, one whose arrival you expect soon in view of the loss of your brother. As for your history in working with horses, such men acquire calluses on certain areas of their fingers—on the second joints between the first and second fingers, for instance—that betray the constant rub of the reins through their hands.”

The fellow tucked the visible portion of the handkerchief away and ran his fingertips over the visage of his brother. He may not have liked Holmes’s insight into his family matters, but he couldn’t deny it.

“What sort of man do you look for?” he asked.

“Of middle years, perhaps fifty. Not terribly tall but powerfully built. Dressed quietly, as a clerk, but affecting a peaked cap, to hide a lack of hair, I suspect. He would have been seeking quarters some months ago, say last summer.”

Holmes’s litany had been casual to the extreme. I admired the way he slipped past the fall’s Ripper atrocities to a time when Whitechapel had been calm and mired only in the usual thefts, riots, and odd crimes of passion. I also recognized his method of disarming me when we first met on New Year’s day of 1881 by reciting my personal history to me as if he had read the family Bible just before we met.

“I am a steward here,” the man admitted. “I do in fact recall another fellow coming in about then, but he didn’t want to rent a room, which of course we wouldn’t have done now, would we, being we are devoted to working Jewish men?”

“No, this man would not have been Jewish.”

“How is it Rabbi Barshevich allows you to noise his name about?”

“He trusts me,” Holmes said simply.

Our interrogator nodded slowly, then continued. “It was June, I think. And he was interested in an assembly room, he said. Cellar, he wanted. Said they were a religious group and grew loud in their praises of the lord.” He shrugged. “Who am I to judge ways of worship? At Passover we celebrate with the sacrifice of the lamb. Christians do not understand that, yet they worship a sacrificed man.”

“Religion is indeed a complex matter,” Holmes said. “I assume then that you did not rent the Englishman your cellar for his rites?”

“No.” He frowned for a moment. “I don’t trust those who descend beneath the earth to worship anything.”

“So where did you send him?”

The man’s eyes whipped to Holmes, as if both startled and hoping to startle in return. “Why to the nearest pub. They will take money for anything there.”

“And that is—?”

“The Briar and Thistle, one street over.”

“This Englishman you describe sounds oddly familiar,” I mention as we trudged to the next address.

“As do most of the Ripper suspects. That is the devilish bit about this business, Watson. All these various suspects are types to be seen about Whitechapel day and night.”

“So you are convinced an Englishman is the Ripper, after all?”

“I am convinced of nothing, because I have not seen all the evidence there is to gather. But Whitechapel is a global stew, and I absolve no race or religion from suspicion. Not even,” he added with a rare glint of amusement, “Irish bartenders.”

And that is exactly what we found at the Briar and Thistle, a pub crowded with the very cast of characters that make up the Ripper suspects and his victims, with an Irish bartender indeed presiding over the chaos.

“Finn’s the name,” he said. “Thanks be my friend Saul a street over recommended me. Clannish these Jews, but then I come from a clannish sort meself. How can I help you gennelmen?”

“We seek,” said Holmes, “a private meeting place. I understand that you have a cellar that might accommodate.”

“Accommodate what, is it?”

“We are a scientific brotherhood,” Holmes said. “We wish to conduct experiments in the art of electricity as it passes from one body to another. A rather esoteric pursuit, requiring privacy and sequestering.”

“Sequestering, is it? ’Tis a bit noisy up here, gents.”

“All the better. We are a bit noisy below.”

The man shook his head, which was covered in tightly curled red hair like a mop. “Then we should suit each other well.”

“It is my ardent hope. I understand you have rented this space before, perhaps to an acquaintance of ours. Stout-set chap about fifty. Very sharp eyes.”

“Aye, blue as the bay off Donegal and just as icy. Quite the businessman.”

“And what was his business?” Holmes inquired.

“His business, Sor, as yours…is yours.”

Holmes asked no more, but offered a pound for the privilege of inspecting the “premises.”

I could not imagine his aim. All the Ripper’s victims had been slain on the street, down wretched byways and alleys, it is true, but on the public cobblestones, in the open air of night.

The barman pointed us to the back of the building and a narrow circuitous passage where, even there, the usual commerce of the district was being contracted between drunken men and women.

A shambles of a door led down into greater darkness and odor.

From the capacious pocket of his coat, Holmes pulled a small lantern. We paused halfway down the rough stone steps to light it.

Illumination, no matter how feeble, seemed to intensify our other senses. I inhaled the fetid, dank air, fearing for the wholeness of our lungs. A skittering sound punctuated by the rare drip or squeal below did little to encourage me. I would have brought a club instead of my revolver had I known we would be confronting sewer rats.

“What do you expect to find down here, Holmes?”

“A cellar. No doubt the hovels that pass as dwellings in this quarter have no such convenience, but this building is large enough and old enough to support an underground domain.”

“You almost make it sound like an annex of Hell.”

“Another concept, like the endlessly agitating heavens, that does not interest the true scientist, Watson. Had you not the rather lurid instincts of a teller of tales blended with your admirable medical precision, you would be more aware of the practical assets of a cellar, rather than their appeal to the gullible souls of the superstitious.”

“One of the Ripper letters was signed, ‘from Hell.’”

“Are they called ‘Ripper letters’ because they are proven to be from the uncaught killer of Whitechapel unfortunates, or because they captured the public imagination?”

“Who else would have sent them?”

“Cranks, Watson. They sent hundreds and thousands of other missives much less credible and much less…seductive. And perhaps the worst cranks of all, the journalists themselves, sought to stir up news.”

“That would be utterly irresponsible.”

“My point exactly. When have you seen any report of my modest efforts in the press that has not been riddled with error?”

“Well, the press tend to credit the police, above all.”

“Then it should not be surprising that the police should credit the manipulations of the press. The so-called ‘Ripper’ letters read like a ransom note from one of your fictionalized accounts of my cases, Watson. They not only employ a number of crude ‘Americanisms,’ such as salutations like ‘Dear Boss,’ but the diction and spelling mimic Cockney expressions. Why stoop to the patois of two such different and geographically separated classes?”

“No reason at all. Unless…the writer was the very opposite of those qualities.”

“This is my stout friend Watson. On the trail! So this would indicate that the Ripper is—?”

“An educated Englishman.”

“Bravo!” Holmes clapped me on the shoulder. “Perhaps now you understand the net of silence that has fallen over the case since the fiendish evisceration and flaying of Mary Jane Kelly in her Miller’s Court chamber on the ninth of November last. All London hopes and holds its breath that the world will hear no more of the Ripper.”

I had seen my friend Sherlock Holmes throw himself down on study floors to examine the weave of an Oriental rug, fiber by fiber.