The Secret Fiend (25 page)

“Ah, Master ’olmes. It is a pleasure to see you again, sir. You will forgive me. I was lying down on me little bed
’ere behind the counter to let Miss Beatrice do up some correspondence. I need me rest these days, me mind gets tired. She works so ’ard, she does, but keeps up the letters to our folks and friends, too. Why are you carrying that sack, sir?”

“May I see her?”

“Yes … yes, Master ’olmes. Just go through. She is always ’appy to see you. I’ll just lie down ’ere again. Won’t bother you two young folk.”

Sherlock walks silently across the dark room, avoiding the hats hanging from hooks. When he gets close to the door, he stops and simply looks at her. Her head is bent down and she is writing carefully, thinking about what she is saying. She seems to be pressing the pen down hard onto the paper. Her bonnet is off and her long black hair hangs in ringlets almost onto the paper. There is a little wooden box on the table near her hand. Because she is next to the fire, she isn’t wearing a shawl. In fact, she has pulled the sleeves of her dress up, so her slender forearms and wrists are visible. Sherlock beams. A wonderful idea comes to his mind.
In my new life, I can have a partner. There would be none better than Beatrice Leckie, and I know she would choose me too. Perhaps, in a few years, I can send for her. What if we talk about it … tonight.

He pushes the door and it creaks. Beatrice turns with a smile, but when she sees who it is she gasps and puts her hand to her mouth.

“Sherlock!” The look of fear dissolves into happiness. But there is something else there too.
Guilt.
Instantly, she turns to her writing and stuffs the paper into her dress pocket.

The boy drops his cloth sack on the floor. “Doing your correspondence?”

“Yes … yes, I like to write at night.”

“The way you put your letter away when I came … it must be very private. I suppose you are writing to someone special. Perhaps I should go.” His heart is sinking.
Why would I assume that Beatrice Leckie has no one special in her life? There were many boys at school who liked her.

Beatrice sees his intent. “Oh, no! No, Sherlock, it isn’t like that!”

“That is fine, Beatrice. I was just going, anyway.”

“Sherlock!” she rises and takes him by the hand. “Don’t go. I’ll … I’ll show you what I would write … if I were writing to you.”

She takes another piece of paper from a sideboard nearby, leans over it with a coquettish smile, hiding its contents from the boy. She writes. The ink is red. She hands it to him, glowing up.

“
I LOVE YOU
,” it says.

But Sherlock isn’t smiling back. There is a shiver going down his spine. And it isn’t pleasurable.
Her handwriting! It is EXACTLY the same as the Spring Heeled Jack’s!

He seizes her. For an instant, she thinks he is trying to embrace her. But he has her by the arms and is pulling her to her feet, hard.

“Sherlock! You’re ’urting me!”

“You wrote those notes! YOU!”

“Please let me go!”

He pins her to the table and reaches into her dress, fishing out the notes from her pocket. She wrests one arm free and holds it over the little wooden box on the table, as if to keep the lid down. Sherlock wrenches that arm off and almost in the same motion, flicks open the lid. There is a stack of papers inside. He sees two words written in red across the one on top, same handwriting,
TREASURE FAMILY
, and then some numbers and a word he can’t read. Struggling to hold her, he flicks it and sees the note underneath.
MUST HAVE
it says, but the rest is ripped. He sees the word
CHAOS!
on another note under that.

“A family was murdered!” he shouts at her. He can feel tears coming to his eyes, but he won’t let her go. He digs deeper into her pocket. She sinks her nails into his hand, but he pulls out all the papers. There are three of them, one with writing, the other two blank. She reaches out and claws at him, but he throws her to the floor. He spreads the notes on the table.

“Beatrice?” Her father has risen from his bed and is coming toward the door.

MARCH 10
reads the first note and two addresses in Lambeth. He recognizes them as poor areas.

“What does this mean?”

On the floor, Beatrice is crying. “Sherlock, please don’t! You won’t understand!”

March 10 is tomorrow.

“WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?”

“I can’t tell you!” she cries.

A startled Mr. Leckie is now at the door. “What is going on in here?” he asks.

It’s a schedule. It’s tomorrow’s locations for the fiend’s attacks!
It is growing dark outside. The police will be coming … the villain is about to prowl.
What about tonight? Where is he scheduled to strike tonight?

“Who is the Spring Heeled Jack, Beatrice? WHO IS HE!”

“Don’t … don’t ask me,” she cries, putting her hands to her head. “I can’t tell you, Sherlock.”

Mr. Leckie grips the tall boy and tries to knock him to the floor. “I can’t allow this! Why is you asking ’er this? What is you up to? Is you this fiend, Sherlock ’olmes!”

“Let him go, father!” shouts Beatrice, getting to her feet and pulling him away from the boy. “He means no harm.”

“Oh, yes, I do, Miss Leckie! I mean harm to anyone who means harm to others. And you are one of those!”

“No, Sherlock!”

“You were writing up the schedule for planned assaults for tomorrow night!”

“No!”

She wrote the notes that were left on the victims, in order to protect the Jack, in her girlish hand so the handwriting could never be traced to him. Very clever. But what about these schedules? For some reason, she was asked to make them up. Why? Is she the mastermind? Does the Jack want everything written down? If so, he’s an amateur – it leaves a trail. Are the notes sent by mail? Then he doesn’t live nearby.

“Tell me one thing and save your soul, Beatrice Leckie. Tell me where he will strike tonight!”

She sobs, holding her father, and says nothing.

“Tell me!”

“I can’t! I just can’t!”

He turns back to the notes on the table. He remembers how hard she was pressing with the ink pen, making big, thick letters. He looks at the first of the two blank notes beneath.
She must sit here at night and plan for attacks in different parts of London, moving things around to keep the police guessing – eluding them. She must have done this last night too! Then she sends them to the Jack!
He picks up a blank paper and sees a faint outline of letters, impressed into the page. He can make out the words
MARCH 10.
That came from writing today’s note.
He picks up the other blank sheet. The trace of handwriting is very faint.
This must have been made yesterday! It will have today’s attacks on it!
But he can’t read it. He steps toward the fire.

“NO!” shouts Beatrice and tries to grab his arm.

He snatches the sheet away and holds it close to the flames. The impression becomes visible.

MARCH 9 – ONE APPEARANCE – OLD NICHOL STREET ROOKERY, BETHNAL GREEN

Crying, Beatrice is hugging him now, as if he were as dear to her as a husband. He shoves her away, picks up the notes from the table and the box, and leaving his cloth sack behind, runs out the door and into the street.

“HOLMES!”

It is Inspector Lestrade. He is just down the street, rushing toward the hatter’s shop, three Bobbies by his side. Several feet behind, as if reluctant to be part of this, is his son.

Sherlock is off like a shot, and they are immediately after him. But he has run through the twisting and turning arteries of The Mint since he was a little child, and within minutes, he has lost them. He takes them south. Now, he doubles back and heads north, making for London Bridge. He tries not to think of Beatrice Leckie, his “flawless friend” … in league, somehow, with this violent fiend.
Trust no one.
Malefactor was right.

The Old Nichol Street Rookery in Bethnal Green is a perfect site for another Spring Heeled Jack attack. Beatrice and whomever she is working with have made a smart decision. It is north of the river and almost all the other appearances have been to the south. It is also in a poor neighborhood,
very
poor – just above Whitechapel Road in the East End. The Old Nichol Street Rookery is a London slum unlike any other, infamous for its crowded conditions, its crime and disease. But Sherlock runs across the bridge toward it, heading for it like a racehorse. He
knows
where the Spring Heeled Jack is about to strike! He will confront him in the dangerous little streets and alleys of that desperate slum amidst its filth and poverty. It would be best to be accompanied by others, by young Lestrade, by the Force themselves. But that is impossible. His only hope of staying in London, staying with Sigerson Bell, and becoming the person he wants to be, is to do this alone, completely alone.
Alone is best anyway. I can’t believe I thought of Beatrice Leckie as a partner!

If he can capture the Jack, or at least set up a hue and cry and attract the police, all will be well. They will see that he is the Jack’s enemy, not his accomplice.
But who is this fiend? Who is working with Beatrice Leckie? Can I REALLY confront him? This villain seems to have almost supernatural powers.

Holmes is glad he has his horsewhip up his sleeve.

UNMASKED

A
s he runs, he thinks. But his mind keeps turning to Beatrice.
How could she do this?
He shirks it off.
Think about the crimes. What do I know?
He considers the note that young Lestrade found in the Isle of Dogs.
It had horse hairs on it … the blood was a strange color. What if the blood, all that blood saturating the marsh, was actually horse blood?

He runs up through the old city, toward Bethnal Green. His heart is pumping and not just due to the strain of his sprint. The neighborhoods are getting worse. Darkness has now completely descended. Even if Beatrice wanted to help him, she couldn’t – young Lestrade will have stopped at the hatter’s shop.

The crowds are thin at this hour, but he senses that someone is following him, far back among the pedestrians
. Malefactor?
The young crime lord has gone underground, but Sherlock knows that he will never be free of the scoundrel.
I am vulnerable while I am pursuing someone else, my attention on my prey
.

But then he feels a second presence, up high on the buildings. Sherlock is scurrying along wide Shoreditch
Road, in order to keep off the smaller streets for as long as possible. He glances back and up onto the roofs …
no one.

He turns to his task again, running, thinking once more of Beatrice’s notes, now stuffed in his pockets.
She wrote the Treasure family’s name on one!
He can’t bear to even imagine her involved in what that fiend did. Huffing and puffing, he pulls that note from his pocket with a sweaty hand and looks at it closely.
The date and the time are for tomorrow. But the Isle of Dogs murder occurred yesterday. It doesn’t make sense. There is another word written there
–
MONTREAL.
Why Montreal? What does that mean?
He contemplates another note, the one with the strange message:
MUST HAVE.
It was smaller than the others and ripped after the letter
E
. The note young Lestrade had found at the crime scene said
SHERLOCK HOLMES ON OUR SIDE.
It was ripped too, right before his name.
What if you put them together?
MUST HAVE SHERLOCK HOLMES ON OUR SIDE.
The fiend must have had that note with him! But, perhaps as he struggled with his victims, as he did his gruesome deed, it was pulled from his pocket … ripped in two, and left on the ground. Aware that something incriminating remained at the scene, Beatrice searched the area and found one half.
But why was that maniac carrying the note in the first place? Why did he want ME on his side? Or did Beatrice?

He is nearing Bethnal Green. Again, he senses that two figures are pursuing him, one on the ground and one up above. Darting around a corner, he stops. No one comes.

He reaches Church Street, and turns into big Bethnal Green Road. The rookery is in there, a few strides up
Church and then to the left. He can actually smell it. It is renowned for it odors – human refuse in pools, slaughter houses, the boiling entrails and fat of animals, used by the rich for dog food, but here for human sustenance. Drunks lie about on the small streets. Herds of families live together in bedraggled, broken-down buildings. Tradesman, dustmen, costermongers, and silkweavers live mostly on its exterior, leaving the rotting core to criminals, prostitutes, and the desperately poor. John Bright often cries out for the Old Nichol Street Rookery in his speeches. “England,” he says, “has forgotten one of its children: ugly, diseased, forsaken; the East End of the East End.”