Dust and Shadow (14 page)

I closed the door and turned on Holmes as he lit a cigarette. “Are you quite certain you know what you’re doing, old man?”

“You mean to ask whether I am certain I know what Miss Monk is doing,” he shot back, and I was once more made aware of just how excruciating it must have been for a man of his active nature to find himself restrained by his own body. “For the moment, I am rendered physically inert. Do you imagine it possible for you to saunter into Dunlevy’s digs and demand Blackstone’s whereabouts? She’ll play the game nearly as well as I could, and one mystery, at any rate, will be solved.”

“The whereabouts of Johnny Blackstone?”

“The intentions of Stephen Dunlevy.”

“Did we not venture into Whitechapel in the first place to safeguard Miss Monk from him?” I queried bluntly.

“I know far more now than I did then.”

“That is very gratifying. But in any event, there are key discrepancies surrounding the Tabram murder. What if the thread leads us nowhere?”

“You regard the matter from the wrong angle entirely, which hardly surprises me,” Holmes replied caustically. “This thread cannot lead us nowhere, for wherever it leads, it exposes more of Stephen Dunlevy, who interests me in no small degree. And now, Watson, you are going out.”

“Indeed?”

“You are to meet with one Leslie Tavistock, in the offices of the
London Chronicle,
that shining beacon of ethical journalism. You’ve an appointment at half past three. And on your way back from Fleet Street, do stop by our tobacconist’s for a fresh supply of cigars,” he finished, nudging their receptacle with his foot. “The coal scuttle, I am afraid, has run entirely dry.”

I was made to wait for a quarter of an hour after my designated time in the bustling antechamber of the
London Chronicle
’s headquarters, rife with shabbily appointed journalists and far too short on both light and coal. From the moment I stepped into the office of Mr. Leslie Tavistock, I knew that the experience would not be a pleasant one. The man himself sat in his desk chair with a mixture of calm insouciance and deliberate irony on his clean-shaven, calculating features. I introduced myself, and before I could utter another word, he had half raised his hand in a gesture of amiable protest.

“Now, Dr. Watson,” he began, “I have no intention of insulting either your natural loyalties or your good sense by asking what brought you here. That story is already the talk of London, and I’ve followed up with my original source in order to furnish the public with a few more salient details regarding the unconventional Mr. Sherlock Holmes. But in the meanwhile, I am delighted you are here. I should like to pose a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“I most certainly do. Mr. Holmes has already been shamefully abused at your hands, and my sole mission this afternoon is to determine whether you would prefer to reveal your source or defend yourself against charges of libel.”

If Tavistock was surprised at my words, I had hardly expected
myself to engage in a frontal attack so suddenly and so soon. He arched his brows as if greatly disappointed.

“I have my doubts as to whether that course of action would be open to you, Dr. Watson. Mr. Holmes must resign himself to the glare of public scrutiny if he wishes to continue his extraordinary exploits. The facts behind my article are entirely true; if the particulars are couched in terms you dislike, perhaps you would care to clarify Mr. Holmes’s uncanny prescience.”

“Sherlock Holmes has always been the scourge of the criminal element. His motives in this case should be abundantly clear,” I seethed.

“Does he hold himself responsible for apprehending the culprit?” Tavistock asked casually.

“He intends to do everything in his power to—”

“How does Mr. Holmes feel about having failed to capture the Ripper that night, possibly enabling further killings?”

“Come, sir! This is really intolerable.”

“My apologies. Dr. Watson, considering the terrible mutilations that have become the overriding feature of these crimes, is it possible that a doctor could be responsible for them?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean to say, speaking theoretically, as a medical man, you would no doubt be aided in such work by your own skills and training?”

“The Ripper’s ‘skills’ are the merest butchery. As for my own medical abilities, I have so far confined their use to healing the sick, both practically and theoretically,” I replied coldly.

“No doubt, no doubt. Now, Mr. Holmes, though not a doctor, possesses a very workable knowledge of anatomy. I believe I may have read so in your own account of his work—that very engaging piece in
Beeton’s Christmas Annual
from last year. In your opinion—”

“In my opinion, you are guilty of the most outrageous perversion of the truth I have been witness to in the public print,” I exclaimed, rising from my chair. “Rest assured that you will hear from us again.”

“I have no doubt of it, Dr. Watson,” Leslie Tavistock smiled. “May I offer you and Mr. Holmes the same assurances? A very pleasant day to you, I am sure.”

The sun had etched long shadows across the brick walls of Baker Street before I arrived home once more. Though the crimes of Jack the Ripper had sickened me beyond words, this lesser grievance infuriated me in a much more personal fashion. My arrival in our sitting room must have been more violent than I intended, for Holmes, who appeared to have appointed the sofa as his base of operations, awoke immediately upon my entering.

“I see you’ve exchanged pleasantries with Mr. Tavistock,” he commented wryly.

“I am sorry, Holmes. You ought to be resting. How do you feel?”

“A bit like the misaligned pistons of an unbalanced steam engine.”

“I shall prepare some morphia if you like.”

“Dear me. Best have it out at once, Watson.” He smiled. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”

I related, with a deal of disgust, the conversation which had passed between me and Mr. Tavistock. When I concluded, Holmes’s piercing gaze settled into an unfocused reverie as he reached for a cigarette. It was near ten minutes before he spoke again.

“It is the most confounded nuisance to be unable to light one’s pipe effectively.”

I could not help but smile at this non sequitur. “It is always trying to lose the use of an appendage, however temporary. I ought to know.”

“I have my pick of annoyances today, to be sure. Tavistock mentioned nothing that would give away a clue as to his source?”

“Nothing.”

“And he does not appear to you to be approaching a state of penitence.”

“That would be understating the matter.”

Our conversation was interrupted by the distant ringing of the bell. “That will be Lestrade.” Holmes sighed. “He purports to inform us of the new victims’ identities and habits. His call, however, was preceded by a reply-paid telegram asking after my degree of fragility, a kindly meant sentiment that you will agree does not bode well.”

Lestrade’s dogged, inquisitive features had sagged into an expression of resigned determination to see a bad business through no matter the cost. His persistence was an admirable distinction but, I now realized, a trying one as well, for he seemed not to have slept more than six hours since I had left him in Whitechapel.

“Mr. Holmes,” he said, a smile briefly quickening his features, “I’ve brought respects from your friends at the Yard.”

“Convey them my thanks, if you would. Have a seat, and regale the infirmatory with tales of the latest victims.”

“Well,” Lestrade declared, drawing out his official notebook, “we do at least know who they are. Though that does us no positive good at all. First victim of the evening was one Elizabeth Stride, a widow who may or may not have had children.”

I nodded. “The unhappy woman dressed all in black. By chance, we caught a glimpse of her in the neighbourhood just before she was killed.”

“Did you?” Lestrade responded eagerly. “Who was she with?”

I had already shrugged my shoulders in apology for my imperfect memory when Holmes replied, “A brewer who resides in Norwood with his domineering mother and has absolutely no bearing upon the matter at hand.”

“Ah. In any case, her habitual mourning was supposedly for her husband and children, all of whom she claims died in the
Princess Alice
steamship collision, but we have records stating her husband, John Thomas Stride, died from heart disease in the Poplar Union Workhouse; she must have meant to elicit more charity by it. She was born in Sweden, according to her local Swedish Church clergy, who tell us
she was a wreck of a woman and lucky to have lived so long. We’ve also interviewed her live-in man, Michael Kidney. He apparently used to padlock her indoors.”

“Charming. Well, it explains the duplicate key.”

“As for the other poor creature,” continued Lestrade with a shudder, “her name was Catherine Eddowes, and she had three children by a man named Thomas Conway of the Eighteenth Royal Irish. No suggestion they were ever married. Just wandered from place to place hawking gallows ballads. She lost touch with him and the children after she took to drink, and had recently returned from hop picking with her man when she was killed. Name of John Kelly—took us a mite longer to find him than we would have liked, but they were sleeping separate on the night of the murder. Hadn’t the money for a double bed.”

“Lestrade, does any evidence lead you to believe that Eddowes and Stride, or Nichols and Chapman, or any combination of the victims accrued thus far were known to each other?”

The inspector shook his head. “Seemed an idea worth having to me as well, Mr. Holmes—they all may have been members of some heathen cult, killed for betraying the society, that sort of trash. Better still, that they’d all an old flame in common. Nothing of the sort has turned up. They may have spoken to each other, but they were none of them friends.”

“Then I am very much afraid I may be right,” Holmes murmured.

“Right about what, Mr. Holmes?”

“I must iron out my theory a bit more, Lestrade, and then you can be sure to learn of it. Have you any leads in your own investigation?”

“Well, Mr. Holmes, the truth is, there are some at the Yard who think we do have a lead,” Lestrade admitted.

“You’re of the opinion they are mistaken, then?” my friend suggested knowingly.

“Well, I am. Mind you, it’s not many of the inspectors, but they’re a damn sight louder than they ought to be.”

“You have my full attention.”

“Bearing in mind, Mr. Holmes, in my opinion, this line of questioning is the worst sort of wild goose chase.”

“So this fruitless lead is emphatically not one that you espouse?” the detective prodded with uncharacteristic good humour. “Perhaps your firsthand experience of the case sets you against it. Or perhaps even your own special knowledge of the suspect.”

“Well, I don’t intend to waste my time on it, that I’ll swear to. So have Gregson, Jones, Wickliff, Lanner, Hawes…”

“I should be delighted to look into the matter in your stead,” my friend offered.

“I don’t intend to squander your energies, Mr. Holmes.”

“Nonsense,” he scoffed. “I suspect I could confine my inquiries to this very room.”

Lestrade looked as if our carpet had been pulled out from under him, but he soon rallied and clenched his fists in frustration. “Confound it all, I’m that ashamed to tell you, but you’ve brought it on yourself, haven’t you?” cried the exhausted inspector. “All this ‘you will find the gun in the third stable on the left,’ and ‘the letter was posted by a man in a wideawake hat.’ Knowing things you shouldn’t, appearing magically at crime scenes! Bennett was in my office this morning and said it’s a miracle this hasn’t happened before.”

“Ha! You do suspect me, then! This really is most gratifying.”

“Mr. Holmes, I assure you—”

“No, please, I shall just sketch the outline of this little theory for the sake of argument,” announced Holmes with an air of exaggerated deliberation. “So, to retrace my own steps, the night of Bank Holiday, I stabbed Martha Tabram thirty-nine times in a mad frenzy. Dr. Watson may assert that I passed a quiet evening restringing the bow for my fiddle, but—”

“I never said—”

“When you knocked me up the morning after the Nichols killing, did I betray myself with any suspicious behaviour?”

“Mr. Holmes—”

“I am just working out how I managed to kill Elizabeth Stride moments before I discovered her body,” he continued ruthlessly. “But if the Doctor lied about my activities the night of Bank Holiday, why should he not do so again? I really must apologize to you, my dear Watson, for ever having asked you to maintain this vile charade. After killing Stride, I dashed off to the City to slay Eddowes, then returned to the scene of my earlier crime covered in her blood. What could be simpler?”

“Now, see here,” cried the red-faced inspector. “I’ve not come here in person to present you with all the evidence we’ve gathered because I think you’ve anything to do with the matter! Your character was never even questioned before that wretched article turned everything on end yesterday. We’ve been hung out to dry in the press, and there’s one or two who had a dark laugh that you’d been put to it as well. Soon enough, some of our number started asking awkward questions about the article’s contents, and there you are.”

“Men have been hanged for less, that I’ll grant you.”

Lestrade calmed somewhat when he saw that Holmes was more amused than outraged. “Very good, then, if I could just take your statement back with me to the Yard, we’ll avert some unpleasantness. Just the bit before I arrived, if you please.”

“Dr. Watson and I happened upon a woman who appeared only very recently to have died. We commenced a search for the culprit and all too quickly found him.”

“I see,” said the inspector, jotting down notes. “Time?”

“Close upon one in the morning.”

“There was a constable we encountered who was privy to the whole story,” I interjected. “Constable Lamb, I believe.”

“Yes, well,” replied Lestrade sheepishly, “we have his report. But as he arrived after Mr. Holmes disappeared, I’ve volunteered to get the story from your own lips. I turned up soon after you came back, Mr. Holmes, and saw you enter the cab. You proceeded directly to London Hospital?”

“No, I returned here.”

The inspector looked crestfallen. “Did you?”

“What difference can it make?”

“Oh, none, none. Save that…well, a particularly idiotic suggestion was made that once you departed in the cab, Mr. Holmes, you wrote the chalked lines in Goulston Street.”

Holmes and I must have looked as stunned as we felt, for the inspector hastened to assure us, “The timing of such a caper would be extremely difficult, but you see how I am obliged to set the record straight.”

“The handwriting was as unlike Holmes’s as I can possibly imagine,” said I, growing angry in spite of myself.

“I know that, don’t I? I saw it. But as you’ll recall, Doctor, there’s nothing left for a comparative sample. And taken in conjunction with the equally wild idea that the blood was not his own…”

“If my own word is not good enough for the Yard, you need only apply to a Dr. Moore Agar of two twenty-seven Baker Street to confirm whose blood it was!”

“Or have a look for yourself,” Holmes added merrily. “Watson?

Have you any medical objection?” Throwing his tie to the ground, he undid the first two buttons of his shirtfront.

“Heavens no, no, thank you, I have quite enough material,” said the inspector in an agony of professional embarrassment.

“Good evening, then, Lestrade. A pleasure to see you,” tossed Holmes over his shoulder as he strode toward his room.

“There is just one more thing, Mr. Holmes! Gregson and Lanner wanted me to tell you that it may be best not to be seen in Whitechapel for some short time—until after all this ugliness is cleared up.”