The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors (15 page)

The account continued on, detailed and starkly vivid, for almost three full columns extending the entire length of the page. Watson read it with growing dismay — dismay and a profound sense of helplessness and frustration, for the events he was reading about had occurred two nights before — indeed, on the night of the very day he had departed from London. And here he was, far from the scene of events, isolated in one of the loneliest, most out-of-the-way spots in England, many hours away by rail. The thought that Holmes might be engaged in feverish activity without him being there by his side to assist him, without even knowing what was going on, was simply intolerable to him.

Furiously, he flung the newspaper down and began pacing the room, only to snatch it up again to reread the account, which, of course, only added to his sense of anxiety and frustration. While he knew full well that being in London would change little, that his assistance to Holmes would be of minimal, perhaps even questionable, value; he also knew from past experience that his being there would in some small way be of comfort to Holmes: A settling influence. After all, his presence was something Holmes had come to depend upon — no matter how unlikely it was he would ever admit it.

“
He was a man of habits
,” Watson was to write elsewhere many years later, “
narrow and concentrated habits, and I had become one of them. I was like the violin, the shag tobacco, the old black pipe... When it was a case of active work and a comrade was needed upon whose nerve he could place some reliance, my role was obvious... I was a whetstone for his mind. I stimulated him. He liked to think aloud in my presence...
”
⁴⁶

With all of this going through his mind, Watson of course considered rushing to the village to wire Holmes and inquire whether he should return to London, but he immediately discarded the idea. He knew what Holmes’s response would be, that for the moment he was more urgently needed in Devonshire and could best be of assistance if he
remained there. It was the correct response of course; there could be no other, as Watson knew in his heart.

Still, the realization gave him little comfort, and he spent the better part of the day roaming the moors exploring the countryside, trying his best to follow Holmes’s instructions to familiarize himself with the locals and with the lay of the land, trying his best to concentrate his attentions on the problem that lay before him. But despite his efforts, his thoughts kept wandering back to London, to Whitechapel, and, of course, to his friend in Baker Street.

Though Watson had no way of knowing it, of course, Sherlock Holmes was in Baker Street at that very moment, reading the very same article from
The Times
. His ribs ached, his face was bruised, he was in a black humor, and it is doubtful that even Watson’s presence would have helped. To the contrary: Given the circumstances, it was just as well that Holmes was alone. Solitude was what he required now, time to lick his wounds, time to think. Time to systematically review the events of the previous few days and attempt to cull something from them that might be useful, something that might turn failure into success.

It was clear — all too abundantly clear — that he was dealing not only with a madman but with a fiendishly clever, highly resourceful individual who, along with everything else, had the devil’s own luck.

All of Holmes’s careful planning, all of his painstaking arrangements, had been to no avail. The man had escaped him. It had been a close thing, very close, but obviously not close enough: Failure was failure, whether it be by a whisker or a mile, and Sherlock Holmes was not a man who accepted failure with equanimity.

The Times
had it accurately. The account of the night’s events was well reported as far as it went, but then the correspondent did not have all the details — fortunately.

In the first-mentioned case the body was found in a gateway, leading to a factory, and although the murder, compared with the other, may be regarded as of an almost ordinary character — the unfortunate woman only having her throat cut — little doubt is felt, from the position of the corpse, that the assassin had intended to mutilate it. He seems, however, to have been interrupted by the arrival of a cart, which drew up close to the spot, and it is believed to be possible that he may have escaped behind the vehicle.

That is not quite the way it happened, but that wasn’t the correspondent’s fault. That is what he had been told by the police, and that is what Holmes had told them to say, or, rather, suggested they say — in the strongest possible terms.

Holmes let the newspaper fall to the floor and reached for his pipe. It had been a long night, an extraordinary night, one filled with tension and physical strain, though it had started out quietly enough.

He had been standing slouched in a dark corner of a packed public house in Commercial Road with a glass of porter in his hand. Even Watson would have had difficulty recognizing him, dressed as he was in the nondescript clothes of a dock worker, a cloth cap pulled low over his eyes, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. His disguise was simple but obviously effective; that no one bothered him or even regarded him was ample proof of that. He blended in perfectly with his surroundings, remaining virtually unnoticed among the regular patrons of the crowded, noisy pub: A gruff, coarse, boisterous lot given to quick laughter and sudden anger, both fueled by copious amounts of cheap gin and beer. Yet, as if there were an unwritten code among them, one’s privacy, one’s anonymity, was scrupulously respected, and
he was left undisturbed with hardly a glance thrown his way. He said nothing to anyone and no one said anything to him. But no one within his sight remained unobserved, and no words that were spoken within his hearing remained unheard. This was the fifth pub in Whitechapel he had visited that night, the fifth dark, smoky corner he had appropriated, the fifth glass of porter he had held in hand all but untasted. The hour was late, but he was not tired. Nor had his senses dulled or his attention wandered. He was as acutely aware of everyone who came in and everyone who left, and every detail about them, as he had been many hours earlier when his vigil began.

On four previous occasions in four other pubs he had quietly departed the premises at a cautious distance behind four separate women, following them into the fog-shrouded streets. In one way or another, each of the women had borne a marked similarity to the victims of the killer. They were drabs, prostitutes. They were of the same approximate age, of the same general appearance, and in a vague but obvious way in the same desperate circumstances: They were poorly, shabbily dressed, down on their luck, hungry. They hadn’t the price of a three-penny gin or a place to bed down for the night.

Staying in the shadows, he stalked each of them in turn, observing unseen as one after another they sauntered through the narrow streets until coming upon a likely “mark,” and after negotiating a price, disappeared arm in arm with him into a darkened alley or behind a closed door. Each of the marks were also of a sameness, dressed in rough clothes of the sort that he himself was now wearing, all of them ostensibly native to the area, or at least at home in it, all of them poor. Holmes thought it unlikely that any single one of them would pose a threat to a woman. The worst any was likely to do was try to run off without paying. None of them, he knew, could be the man he was looking for. All were obviously of the working class, of the lowest
social order. Only one smoked, and he a pipe. Two were the worse for drink and could hardly walk, and one, a seaman, had a limp and could walk only with difficulty. Most important — and this Holmes was most particular in observing — none appeared to be left-handed. Quite obviously none was the man he was looking for.

Holmes knew, of course, that the task he had undertaken was an impossible one. There were eighty thousand prostitutes in London by some estimates, and there was no way he could pick out from among them a potential victim, just as there was no way of knowing what night the killer would choose to strike again. It was a shot in the dark, nothing more; a feckless gamble, a challenge of the laws of probability. But it was not the only card he was playing, and he undertook what he knew to be a futile exercise not simply out of desperation (though there was an element of that involved), but as an alternative to waiting and doing nothing. He had met with Abberline, they had decided upon a strategy, their forces had been briefed and suitably deployed. It was not unlike a simple military exercise, which was how Scotland Yard looked upon it.

But to Holmes it was more like the blocking of a stage play: The script had been written, the actors chosen and assigned their roles, the scene was set, the rehearsals were over and done with. Now for him came the hardest part, for as director all he could do was wait in the wings for the curtain to rise, and temperamentally he was unsuited for that role. He far preferred to don a costume and tread the boards himself.

Whom was he looking for? What did the man look like? He would know that when he saw him. He knew he would know, it was an absolute certainty; there was not a doubt in his mind about it.

The outside door opened, the grimy chintz curtains covering the lower part of the front window fluttering in the draft, and in scampered a small molelike creature wrapped in a muffler.

From his vantage in the corner, through the crush of people, Holmes
quietly observed the newcomer dart quick, furtive glances around the crowded pub, standing on tiptoe to peer over shoulders through the smoke, craning his neck to see. Spotting Holmes at last, he plunged into the crowd, using his arms in almost a swimming motion to make his way through. He did not look up at Holmes upon arriving at his side; indeed, he pointedly looked everywhere else but — his myopic little eyes darting this way and that, his head moving in quick nervous jerks, the eyes casting suspicious glances at everyone around him.

Holmes nudged him with an elbow. “That’s quite enough, Squint,” he murmured. “No one has noticed you, but if you keep that up, someone is bound to.”

“I come fwom Wiggins, sor,” the boy whispered stiffly out of the corner of his mouth. “‘E send me to... to
report
— ‘ats the word he tell me to use.”

“And what is it that you have to report, Squint?”

“Well... nuffink, actually.” He looked a little puzzled at this. “All’s quiet, Wiggins say to tewll yer.”

“All the lads have reported into him, then?”

“Aye, sor. Wiggins tell me to say all p’wesent ‘n’ corweckt, sor.”

“Very good, Squint. Be off with you, then. Tell Wiggins that as planned, I’ll be at the Ten Bells in an hour and if he needs to he can find me there.”

“Aye, sor. Anythin’ else, then?”

“Nothing at all. Just tell him to continue the watch.”

“Aye, sor — ‘tinue da wotch.” With that and another furtive look around, little Squint was gone, enveloped once again by the crowd, the abrupt opening and closing of the street door indicating his departure.

The Irregulars were on the job, of course. Holmes fully expected to achieve better results from them than from members of the official police force, including those who were patrolling the streets in disguise.

The Irregulars not only knew the area well but were virtually invisible in it: As unnoticeable as rags in the corner, as the cobbles in the streets. Disguising policemen as locals, taking them out of uniform and dressing them in the garb of the working class, was all very well and good, and Holmes went along with the plan to do so, but he had limited faith in it. The inhabitants of Whitechapel were far too wily, too streetwise to fool easily. Most of them could recognize a “peeler” from the far end of a dark street and beyond, no matter how well disguised. But the Irregulars? They belonged, no subterfuge was required on their part, no feeble trickery. Their presence would go completely unnoticed, arousing no suspicions, causing no inhibitions. For work like this, they had no equal.

Another half hour passed, and Holmes considered leaving. It did not appear as though he were going to have any more success in this place than he had in any of the others. In any event, it was almost time for him to make his way to the next one on his list, the Ten Bells in Commercial Street.

The front door opened once again and he looked over, stealing a glance at the individual who now entered. He stiffened.

Slowly turning his head away, Holmes lifted the glass to his lips and took a sip of the dark, bitter porter, all the while keeping the newcomer at the very edge of his peripheral vision. The man — for it was indeed a man — was wearing a long, dark coat of some rough material and a deerstalker hat pulled low over his eyes, keeping the upper part of his face in shadow. The lower part, his mouth and chin, was hidden by a woolen muffler. But there was nothing sinister about his overall presence, nothing threatening; if anything he cut a rather ludicrous figure in the long, heavy coat and billed cap. The deerstalker was unusual headgear for the city, of course, being generally worn by a gamekeeper or hunter. But that in itself was not significant: Among
the poor, articles of clothing were often acquired from jumble sales and dustbins, the castoffs of the more affluent. As to his occupation, he could have been anything — a coachman or messenger, a teamster, or common day laborer. But he was none of these things, that much was obvious to Holmes.

He continued to observe out of the corner of his eye as the man casually surveyed the barroom from just inside the door, not as if he were looking for someone, just merely looking.

From what Holmes could tell through the dark, smoky haze of the barroom, the fellow was of average height and young, in his late twenties or early thirties at most. He seemed to be clutching a parcel of some sort under his arm, a parcel made up of newspaper, neatly wrapped and tied with string. Holmes still could not see his face. It appeared as though he were going to some lengths to keep it at least partially hidden.

Holmes’s hand tightened around his glass.

The man was looking in his direction. Holmes forced himself not to turn away — it would only attract the fellow’s notice, not avert it.