The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors (18 page)

The boy, craning his neck around to look at him, his eyes huge with fright, ceased his struggles at once, his legs almost buckling under him, he was that relieved. Holmes took his hand away from the child’s mouth. “Cor, blimey! Is that you, Mr. ‘Olmes?”

Holmes released him, and the boy slumped back against the wall and ran a trembling hand over his mouth. “Cor, oy like to foul meself, oy did.” His voice quavered. “Ya gave me one bloody fright, guv!”

“Tell me your name.”

“I’m Solly. They calls me Solly the Slip.”

“Is he in there, Solly? The man whose description you were given? Did you see him in there?”

“Aye, that oy did, Mr. ‘Olmes,” came the hoarse reply. “I was jist on me wa’ay to find Wiggins to let ‘im know. The bloke walked in boldly as you please, ‘e did — not three minutes ago. Oy spotted ‘im ryght off. ‘E’s wearin’ a long ulster an’ a deerstalker ‘at an’ a scarf ‘at cuvvers ‘is face, an’ ‘e’s got long mustachios an’ strynge oyes ‘at gives ya a chill just to look at ‘em.” He stopped and took a breath and looked out into the street. “Oy was runnin’ off to fetch Wiggins at St. Mary’s Station when ya grabs me.” His thin shoulders began to shake uncontrollably.
“Gawd, oy t’ought me gyme was h’up, oy did.” He started to sob.

Holmes reached over and squeezed his shoulder, then awkwardly put an arm around him. “It’s all right, Solly, it’s all right,” he said softly. “There’s a brave lad.”

The boy wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and snuffled loudly, manfully, holding back the flow of tears.

Holmes reached into his pocket. “Here, take this,” he said brusquely but not unkindly. “A little something extra. You’ve earned it.”

The boy snuffled again and nodded, placing the coin in his own pocket with a quick, almost furtive motion, as if fearful this toff with his strange ways and stranger habits would change his mind and snatch it back again.

Holmes pulled him deeper into the doorway and whispered urgently into his ear: “Now, listen carefully. This is what I want you to do...”

When he was finished, he made the boy repeat the instructions aloud. Then, with a parting pat on the shoulder, he sent him scurrying off on his errand. St. Mary’s Station, where Wiggins was posted, was not far off, and even in the fog little Solly the Slip, knowing the area intimately, would be able to get there in practically no time at all.

Once again Holmes settled down to wait, this time feeling somewhat better pleased with himself, but not so pleased that he forgot to give thanks to whatever saint it was that watched over the fortunes of bumbling consulting detectives. He was lucky and he knew it, and luck was not something he normally gave countenance to.

Holmes again lost track of time during this renewed vigil of his. He had no idea how long he had been standing in the doorway — it could have been twenty minutes or an hour, for there was not enough light for him to see his watch by. But at least the fog had dissipated to a great extent while he lingered, a soft breeze having come from nowhere, leaving
the street around him still in darkness, to be sure, but no longer in its shroud of almost total invisibility.

He did not know whether this would prove to be a blessing or a curse, for if he could see, he could be seen.

But it was not in his nature to concern himself with matters over which he had no control: He knew it to be a fruitless exercise. He would manage one way or the other, whatever the situation, having absolute confidence in his ability to adapt to changing conditions.

But this constant waiting, this lurking about in the shadows, was exceedingly wearing. It was not the physical discomfort so much — that he could bear. It was the tedium, the forced inactivity that was most difficult: The inability to keep his brain occupied.

Given the circumstances, he could not help but allow his mind to wander, conjuring up thoughts about this man upon whose pleasure he awaited. Was it not monstrous, he thought, that this single individual, this creature, had precipitated the greatest manhunt England had ever known, and had caused a surge of fear unequaled in modern times — not simply fear, but a phenomenon entirely new to his experience: Mass hysteria.

It was as if a medieval plague had broken out anew, or a kind of contagion hitherto unknown to modern science: A strain of universal insanity that seemed to be spreading through the populace like an epidemic of smallpox or influenza. Women everywhere were afraid to walk the streets unescorted. Men took to going about armed; a brisk business was being done in weighted walking sticks. Foreigners, and those who were perceived as such, were set upon for no reason by angry crowds. Jews and Gypsies, always the first to bear the brunt of unreasoning fears and invariably the blame for universal ills, were being denounced and attacked in the streets. While politicians in Parliament decried police inefficiency and government inaction, ministers in their pulpits and orators on Hyde Park Corner bemoaned the erosion of traditional moral values, and the
editorial writers of the press vied for the distinction of printing the most hyperbolic hyperbole. The man had become the devil incarnate, a symbol of all that was wrong with society, a metaphor for the immorality, the utter depravity that had permeated English life.

The press had taken to calling the period the “autumn of terror.” In this instance Holmes wondered if they were guilty not of exaggeration but understatement. Terror had indeed descended upon the city — descended upon it like the fog, affecting everyone, drawing across class lines, clouding judgment and reason and good English common sense.

Holmes almost felt sorry for the man. An imaginative lawyer, he mused sardonically, could probably come up with reasonable grounds for a slander suit in his behalf. He was being made out to be a sort of generic bogeyman, both the cause of and depository for all that was wrong, sick, evil, and ugly in the world. Events which bore not the slightest resemblance or relationship to his outrages were being attributed to him without discrimination.

Only that morning, while stopping at the neighborhood newsagent’s, Holmes had eavesdropped on a conversation between two elderly gentlemen, a conversation that both amused and troubled him greatly. One had asked the other as they picked through the periodicals if he had heard of any new developments in the Whitechapel case.

“Well,” the other gentleman replied portentously, “there is the matter of the severed arm.”

“Severed arm?”

“Yaas,” drawled the other. “Seems that about a fortnight ago a portion of someone’s anatomy washed up on the foreshore of the Thames off Pimlico. It was a human arm, severed above the shoulder, armpit still attached.”

“My word!”

“Indeed. They rushed it off to Millbank Street, where it was examined
by a surgeon with some experience in limbs of one sort or another, and he gave it as his opinion that it was the right arm of a woman, and that it had been in the water for some two or three days. The police were unable to decide if another murder had been committed or if the arm was placed in the water as a sort of prank by some medical student. There was something about this in
The Times
around then — are you quite certain you didn’t see it?”

“Mmm, no — missed it, I fear.”

“Well, it remains a mystery still. And it gets better! — or worse, actually. It seems that some workmen digging the foundations for the New Scotland Yard headquarters on the Thames Embankment came upon a torso. Just the torso, mind you, nothing else — no arms, legs, or head. Altogether a rather revolting sight, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Mmm, good Lord, yes.”

“Some police surgeon got wind of it, popped in at the mortuary for a look, and announced: ‘I have an arm which will fit that!’ And would you believe? They brought the thing around and it was a perfect fit — an absolute perfect fit! Now, there’s a pretty puzzle for you.”

“The man’s a fiend!” said the other gentleman with some heat. “Whoever he is, he’s certainly not the product of an English public school, I can tell you.”
⁵²

To Holmes, in recalling the conversation, the real puzzle was how a sizable portion of the city’s population — decent and compassionate people all — could go about their daily lives knowing so little about the appalling conditions of the poor in their midst. Though few in the affluent West End of London knew it, bodies (and portions of bodies) washed up from the Thames almost every day, many of them the victims of crime, to be sure, but most merely the victims of poverty. Life was cheap in the East End, and if life was cheap, why should death be held any dearer? Wasn’t it far more practical and much less expensive to carry the dead
to the river or a convenient building excavation than to the undertaker?

Yet the two elderly gentlemen knew nothing of this and would have been shocked and highly indignant if so informed. It was more comfortable, less disturbing, to believe that every unexplained death in the East End was caused by a maniacal killer on the loose rather than by society’s own ignorance, insensitivity, and indifference.
⁵³

Holmes tensed in the doorway, his reverie suddenly interrupted. Across the way the front door of the pub had opened and someone was emerging into the street. In the light of the gas lamp over the entrance, Holmes could see clearly who it was. He smiled grimly. “Ah, the game,” he said to himself softly. “The game.”

Once again he took up the pursuit. There was no time to wait for the official police reinforcements he had sent for. He had misgivings about that in any event. Too many heavy-footed policemen in the vicinity — no matter how well disguised or hidden — would be more of a hindrance than a help. Yet, he had felt he was duty-bound to have little Solly inform Abberline of his whereabouts — but not until after Wiggins had been located and the other Irregulars were sent to take up positions in the surrounding streets. Their deployment would serve as insurance, just in case he was to lose the man yet again. But he had no intention of doing so, not this time. This time he would cling to him like — like jelly to toast. This time he would never allow him out of his sight, not for an instant.

But it was not that easy. He found that he had to remain much farther behind him than before. The fog had all but disappeared, and even though the night was still dark and the streets poorly illuminated, it was necessary for him to maintain even greater precautions than he had earlier. He was tiring now. The tension was beginning to take its toll and he knew it. It meant that he must be even more alert, more cautious; a mistake now — a fall, a stumble, a sudden sound — and all
might be lost. And he might never have this opportunity again.

The man set off at a steady pace, more rapid than before, as if a sense of urgency had overcome him, as if he were becoming desperate.

Holmes had no trouble keeping up the pace. To the contrary, he had to restrain himself from rushing headlong after the man and getting too close. A careless move at this point could ruin everything, and he knew it, but it still took every bit of self-control that he possessed to hold back.

Holmes was the most patient of men when he had to be — an acquired virtue, not one that came naturally to him — but even his patience had its limits, and at this juncture it was rapidly approaching them.

Fortunately, the man he was following reached his destination before his forbearance gave way entirely. His quarry simply turned a corner and was there, and it was as if a stage-setting had been prepared for his coming.

The scene, to Holmes’s eye, was perfect, absolutely flawless. It appealed deeply to his sense of the theatrical: A narrow, darkened street, a soft haze, damp cobblestones glistening in the light of a single street lamp. And beneath the vaporous light, leaning casually against the lamppost as if posed, the figure of a woman silhouetted dramatically against a backdrop of dilapidated buildings, amorphous pallid shapes in the haze.

Then suddenly, as if a gauze curtain had been raised or a switch thrown, the haze dissipated and the square was bathed in bright moonlight. The transformation was startling. It was almost too perfect, a touch too melodramatic for Holmes’s fastidious tastes, as if contrived by a second-rate designer of scenic settings, unimaginative in the extreme.

The man slowly approached the woman. The woman reached up and preened her hair suggestively. The man lighted a cigarette, a wisp of smoke curling up toward the gas lamp. Eye contact was made, silent words exchanged. Moves were performed as if part of a ritual pantomime. It was like some fantastic tableau, a living, breathing portrait.

Holmes waited in the wings and watched.

S
UNDAY
, S
EPTEMBER
30, 1888

“From the position in which the body was found, it is believed that the moment the murderer had got his victim in the dark shadow near the entrance to the court he threw her to the ground and with one gash severed her throat from ear to ear.”

—
The Times
, October 1, 1888

T
ime and all motion seemed to come to almost a standstill, as if somehow retarded or restrained by some inexplicable preternatural force. It was like being part of a dream in which every move is made with unnatural lumbering slowness, every gesture separate and distinct from every other, painfully exaggerated, ponderously heavy, all so very unreal.