The Last Sherlock Holmes Story (5 page)

Brown covered the body again, and we rejoined the others. After a time I fell in conversation with the constable who had discovered the crime. He told me that he had passed through the square on his rounds at half past one, and had seen nothing untoward.

‘Fifteen minutes later I came through again, and there she was,’ the fellow declared solemnly. ‘I’ve been on the force a few years now, but I’ve never seen nothing like that. I hope to God I never shall again! There she was, just like you saw her, laying on her back with her skirts hoisted up and her legs spread and all her guts hanging out. It can’t help but give you a bit of a turn, you know, coming on the likes of that without fair warning. Anyway, I ran over here to the warehouse, and the watchman went off to fetch some others while I stayed with the body. Then later the Commissioner comes round in a cab, and I showed her to him myself.
¶

By now I was feeling increasingly concerned by Holmes’s continuing absence. How comforting it would be to watch him at work, evaluating the evidence that others had overlooked, forming and testing theories,
dropping sibylline remarks or stubbornly keeping his own counsel. At his side, I knew, the terror that had possessed my soul would recede and diminish, until at last this abomination would come to seem natural and explicable and its author an ordinary mortal like ourselves. When the constable had concluded his account, therefore, I asked him whether he had seen my friend. Much to my surprise he answered readily:

‘Mr Holmes, sir? Why yes! He was here not long after Sir Henry. About a quarter past two it must have been. There was a little foxy-looking fellow with him. An Inspector from the Yard, he said.’

‘That would be Lestrade,’ I confirmed.

‘Yes, sir, that was his name. They were come straight from the other murder, and when –’

‘What! The other murder! You mean there has been another atrocity tonight?’

‘Why yes, sir, Have you not heard? There’s another woman killed, down the Commercial Road East. Her throat was cut the same as this one, like he had a mind to take her head home with him. He did that one before, though. Around one o’clock they found her, and then when they got news of this one they came straight over.’

‘But they are not here now?’

‘Oh no, sir! They didn’t stop long. First Mr Holmes had a look at the body, then he whips out this
magnifying-glass
, goes down on all fours and starts crawling about the square. The gent from the Yard stands here watching with what you might call a smirk. All of a sudden Mr Holmes jumps up. “This way!” he calls out, and they went off through that cut over there.’

The man pointed to a narrow passage at the end of the square. I was just wondering whether I should go that way myself, in hopes of finding Holmes, when I heard a clatter of hoofs and the scraping of a wheel against the kerb. With mingled pleasure and relief I heard my
friend’s voice hailing me. I hurried over to the waiting hansom. Holmes opened the doors and helped me up.

‘Goulston Street, cabbie!’ he called out, and we drove off. ‘He has escaped us, Watson! We had him in our net, but somehow he has given us the slip. We followed his trail as far as Dorset Street, but there we lost him. Lestrade is busy turning out all the doss-houses in the area.’

‘He may yet be apprehended, then!’

‘I think not. Such a refuge would be too public to suit our man’s requirements. Lestrade will almost certainly achieve nothing more than waking up a large number of exhausted paupers. No, I fear the killer has got clean away this time There is nothing more we can do here. I just want to show you something of interest, and then we may go home.’

His voice was lifeless and his whole bearing weary and dispirited. After a short journey the cab drew up in a gloomy and forbidding street composed of tall
dwelling-houses
built to a common model. Holmes bade the driver wait, and led me to the entrance of one of the buildings, where a sturdy man in an ulster was standing. Holmes greeted him.

‘Well, Halse, anything new? Are they still set on rubbing it off?’

‘So it seems, Mr Holmes. I’ve sent for a photographer, but we can do nothing until it gets light. It seems the Yard is still worried there might be a riot if the writing is seen.’

‘I should have thought Warren would have been all in favour of that,’ Holmes returned drily. ‘Putting down riots is his
forte
, isn’t it?’
||

Halse smothered a grin.

‘All I know is if we were standing on the other side of Petticoat Lane, this business would be handled differently. But this is Metropolitan ground, and they’ve got an Inspector in there with a bath sponge waiting to wipe off the writing the moment a crowd gathers. They call it maintaining the peace. I won’t tell you what I call it.’

At this point I could restrain myself no longer.

‘What writing are you talking about? What has happened?’

Holmes turned to me apologetically.

‘My dear fellow, do forgive me. I had quite forgotten that you are not yet
au courant
. This is Detective Sergeant Halse of the City Police, who is keeping an unofficial eye – this being outside his bailiwick – on the imbeciles from Scotland Yard, who seem bent on erasing one of the most interesting clues we have in this affair. Look over here!’

Taking a lantern from the policeman, Holmes illuminated a portion of the wall at the entrance to the building. Some words were scrawled there in chalk on the black dado.

‘An interesting example of killer’s graffiti, is it not?’ commented Holmes.

‘But how can you tell he did it? It could have been put there by almost anyone.’

Holmes shook his head decisively.

‘Note the long strokes on the “t”s, the slope of the double “l”s, the almost separated “m”s and the oval “o”s.
Altogether there are some seventeen quite unmistakable correspondences with the letter Lestrade showed us on Friday. But we have more conclusive proof. A piece of bloodstained cloth was found with the writing, and there is no doubt that it was cut from the apron of the woman whose remains you just inspected in Mitre Square. He used it to wipe his hands on before penning these lines.’

‘My God!’

‘Quite. Well, so much for that. Nothing now remains but to return to Baker Street and put our brains to work. Good night, Halse. Try and save us from our friends.’

‘I will do what I can, Mr Holmes.’

As we drove back across that unpatrolled frontier which separates the territories of the two great tribes which inhabit London, Holmes maintained his dour and troubled silence. I could tell that he was goading himself with recriminations and reproaches – as if any man could have succeeded where he had failed – and I thought it best to interrupt this morbid introspection.

‘I say, Holmes, you might tell me what has happened tonight, you know! I’m still pretty much in the dark.’

‘Of course, of course. I may as well recount my experiences in the order in which they occurred. I reached my retreat shortly after ten, and passed a few hours with a pipe and my pocket Seneca before retiring. Lestrade’s man roused me at ten minutes before two. The body of the first victim had been found an hour before, in a courtyard off Berner Street, by a hawker returning from Sydenham market. The police were summoned. Lestrade, who was at Leman Street station, was notified, and as soon as he had verified that it was indeed another Ripper murder, he sent for me.’

‘Verified? But how could there be any question? Is it possible to have the slightest doubt whose hand inflicted those dreadful mutilations?’

Holmes wagged his forefinger at me.

‘Ah! Therein lies the interest of the Berner Street killing. The body was not mutilated.’

’It was not?’

‘Not in any way.’

‘Then how did you know –’

‘Because of the way the throat had been cut. And because of what happened forty minutes later in Mitre Square.’

In a flash I perceived the fearful pattern.

‘The second woman was killed because he had been unable to mutilate the first?’

‘Precisely. The Berner Street victim was still warm when discovered. The blood was flowing from the throat. She can have been dead no more than a few minutes. The murderer was in fact probably still in the yard.’

‘He was still there?’

‘I am certain of it. Why should he have left? Put yourself in his shoes for a moment. You have just killed your intended victim and are about to butcher her – such butchery being the object of the exercise – when you hear a pony-trap coming along the street. It is a hundred to one against it turning in, so you retire into the shadows, confident of being able to resume your work immediately. But instead of passing by, the cart pulls into the yard. The horse shies at the smell of blood, and the driver gets down to investigate. At that point, of course, you realise that the game is up, and slip away while the man is fumbling for his matches.’

‘You must be right, Holmes,’ I declared. ‘No doubt the murderer was hiding close by. How infuriating! If only he had been spotted! His luck is devilish.’

‘I doubt very much whether he would have agreed with you,’ Holmes retorted. ‘Consider the position in which he now found himself. Here is a man who has deliberately set out to appal the civilised world with
abominations of such enormity that the details cannot even be set forth in print. No one knows better than he how needful it is to maintain the crescendo of horror. It is no good falling back on mere throat-cutting when his public has come to expect evisceration. There is therefore but one course open to him – another killing,
instanter
, and this time followed by the most thorough disembowelment of the victim.’

I shook my head in amazement at this extraordinary series of events.

‘Strange indeed are the ways of fate,’ I remarked. ‘Had that hawker only been delayed a few minutes, that poor woman I saw would still be alive and whole.’

’No doubt, but the argument is puerile,’ Holmes replied severely. ‘Let us abstain from fruitless conjecture and devote our energies to an analysis of the known facts. Now we know that on leaving Berner Street the murderer walked west –’

‘I don’t see what evidence there is for that,’ I returned somewhat peevishly. ‘As you said, forty minutes elapsed before the next killing. He might have gone a longer route and still reached Mitre Square in good time. Surely it is in fact most likely that he went north to Spitalfields in search of another victim. They were saying at the club that the area is one of the best, I mean the worst, in that respect.’

‘Dear me, Watson, have you been at my cocaine by any chance? You coruscate this morning! But here we are in Baker Street. Let us postpone this most interesting discussion for a few minutes. Thank you cabbie, this will do.’

Once in our rooms, Holmes threw himself down in his wonted chair and lit his cherry-wood pipe.

‘Perhaps you would rather turn in, Watson? It has been a long night.’

‘I am quite awake now.’

‘You were asking, I believe, how we can know that the
killer did not solicit his victim in Spitalfields. The answer is simple. She was not in Spitalfields. Until one o’clock this morning she was in Bishopsgate police station under lock and key.’

‘Good heavens!’

‘One of the constables who were called to Mitre Square when the body was discovered remembered having spoken to her during the time she was in custody. She had been taken in charge earlier in the evening as drunk and incapable. Incidentally, if you still wish to indulge in idle speculation, you might care to consider the fact that had the woman chosen to get drunk in Whitechapel rather than in Aldgate she would not now be forming the subject of our conversation.’

‘The murderer would not have met her, you mean?’

‘Not unless he was arrested himself, and put in the same cell. In Whitechapel, you see, she would have been apprehended by the Metropolitan Police, whose Commissioner, Warren, is a teetotaller who insists on the letter of the law. The woman would have spent the night in the cells, to be haled before a magistrate in the morning. The City Police, on the other hand, are in the habit of releasing any revellers who have sobered up sufficiently by one o’clock in the morning. Kate Kelly, which was the name she gave, was duly inspected at that hour and found to be presentable. Thus at the very moment that the costermonger was frustrating the Ripper in Berner Street, his next victim was being set free less than a mile away in the City. For the next twenty minutes or so each proceeded, all unknowing, towards the other.’

Holmes fell silent. It seemed as though even his coldly rational mind had been overcome by the sensation of an implacable fate permeating every aspect of these dreadful crimes. We both sat staring into the cold ashes in the grate, no doubt sharing the same thoughts, but both unwilling to voice them for fear of ridicule. What
impressed me above all was how everything conspired to further the murderer’s schemes. He was always at the right place at the right time, his prey close to hand, whilst his pursuers could do no more than trace the trail of gore and say, ‘He has been here, and here.’

At length I rose, hoping to lose these gloomy notions in sleep. Holmes bade me a subdued good night, and I made my way upstairs to bed once more. But there too I could think of nothing but the violated body of that pathetic old woman. The image loomed up in the darkness on every side. Finally the light of dawn dissolved the screen on which the horrid peep-show was displayed, and I slept.