Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes (33 page)

“How the hell did you get them to agree to help?”

“It wasn’t easy. That Dr. Faulds did not want to help the other two do anything else that would give them any more recognition. He’d only agree to assist them if everyone agreed to leave their names off of the formula.”

“So whose name is going on it?”

“My cousin Ed Henry is with the Bengal Police out in India. He’s a bit of a prankster, and would get a kick out having something like that named after him. I gave them his name, and they agreed to it,” Lamb said.

Sgt. Byfield knocked on Lestrade’s door. “Well now. It is my understanding that one of my boys is still out in that festering dung heap. Is that correct, Inspector Lestrade?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Lestrade said. “Young Frederick Wensley is out there on his own.”

“According to the Chief Inspector, you two are under strict orders to sit in this office until tomorrow morning. Is that clear? Now, I am going to go sit at my desk and take a nice long nap, and when I wake up, I had better see young Mr. Wensley back in this police station safe and sound. I do not care how he gets here. Just make sure he is. We clear, gents?”

“As crystal, Sergeant,” Lestrade nodded.

THIRTY TWO

I tightened the bonnet under Irene’s chin and checked the leather harness to make sure it was snug to her neck. “Is everything all right?” I said.

She took up the gun from the table and ejected the cylinder to inspect that six bullets were within its chamber. She spun the cylinder and flicked it shut with a jerk of her wrist, then tucked it into her coat. “I am fine, John. Stop asking me that.”

“Are you sure you do not want me to carry the gun?”

“Not after last time. Get your own,” she said, smiling thinly.

I carried nothing with me but a few coins. I had nothing that identified me as a doctor, nor even my name. I was no one but another faceless citizen of Whitechapel. My medical bag had not left our room in Crossingham’s since it first arrived.

On the night before, I was on the streets with Irene, and we were watching a man whom we thought looked suspicious. He had a way of eyeing the bunters, taking their measure as if he might snatch them and drag them off into the darkness. Without any warning, another man came up behind him and smashed a brick across the back of his skull. “Cheat me at cards now, yeh bleedin’ clove!”

The man collapsed to his knees with his head split open. His hands instinctively tried to clutch the wound as dark blood pumped through his fingers and spilled onto the street below.

There were a dozen people with me who saw it happen, and none of us moved to help. Irene looked to me, and I turned to lead her away. As we neared the top of the street, I looked back. The man had stopped moving. Somewhere in the distance, a police whistle sounded.

I now found myself adept at locating weapons anywhere. I looked for bottles that could be smashed against a wall and give me a weapon of jagged glass that was ready to slash an attacker’s gullet open. I made note of loose stones that would be big enough to smash someone in the face if I needed to. Whenever my boots struck a loose nail on the pavement, I watched where it went, just in the event that I needed to grab it and jab it into an aggressor’s eye.

Luckily, the only attackers I had to dispatch were the hissing, teeth-baring rodents that lurked in the shadows. The sight of a foot-long rat would have sent me yelping in disgust only weeks before, but now I stomped on their heads at the first sight of them as they tried to race out and bite me in the ankle.

“Irene,” I said. “Before we go out tonight, there is something I need to say to you.”

She looked at me for a moment as she buttoned her coat. “Does whatever you are about to say have something to do with the task at hand, John? We need to concentrate.”

“I believe I would be able to concentrate better if I tell you what I am feeling.”

“Well then, I guess you had better get it off your chest. What is it?”

I looked at her face and saw nothing but a firm commitment to the task at hand. There was no kindness in it for me. “I just want you to know that I have come to care for you deeply, and I want you to exercise the utmost caution. We must be ever-vigilant.”

She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “You are a good man, John Watson. Miss Morstan is a lucky woman indeed.”

~ * * * ~

I looked up and down Commercial Street. “We’re staying in Spitalfields tonight? May I ask why?”

“He’s killed twice in this immediate area,” Irene said. “The other three murders were spread out all over Whitechapel. It makes sense to me that the Ripper is more familiar with Spitalfields than any other location. He is comfortable here, and I would think that it is his preferred hunting grounds. He probably only ventures outside of it when necessary. Did you play hide-and-seek as a child, Watson?”

“Yes.”

“I was the best at it,” Irene said. “When the other children were supposed to be seeking, they ran around shouting for people, expecting to stumble upon them. When it was my turn to hunt them, I hid.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she spoke. “I waited for them to emerge, thinking it was safe, and I then took them. Tonight is our night, John. I can feel it. You stay back from me, keep to the shadows. I shall go further up Brick Lane, and survey the area. Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You looked for a moment as if you weren’t paying attention.”

“I was,” I said. “Be careful, please.”

“You do not understand, John. It is not we who need to be afraid of the Ripper. It is he who needs to fear us.” With that, she disappeared into the shadows and began to move silently up Brick Lane. I squinted and tried to follow her yellow scarf as best as I could in the thick fog. When she was so far ahead that I could not see her, I moved to follow her up the alleyway just as an arm clasped me and a hand clapped over my mouth.

“It’s Constable Wensley, Doctor Watson,” he whispered in my ear. “I implore you to not make a sound. The Old Nichol boys are right around the corner and they are looking for you and the woman.”

As he took his hand away from my mouth, I turned and realized that he looked little more than a boy without his uniform on. Wensley was crouched low in the shadows, peering down the alley. I bent with him, feeling my heart thumping against my breast. I searched for Irene, but she was already gone. I leaned over to Wensley and whispered, “We have to go warn Miss Adler.”

“There! I heard something,” a voice called out from the street and my blood turned to ice.

Another man answered him, “You only heard yourself huffing and puffing yeh fat bastard.”

“Shut up, I’m serious. I heard something. Over there.”

They were coming closer. Constable Wensley crouched, keeping his thick wooden police truncheon at the ready. “When they get close enough, we’ll jump out and take them by surprise.”

I searched the ground for a weapon but saw nothing. I swallowed hard and said, “All right. On your go.”

“I’m telling you I heard a voice,” the man repeated, now close enough that I could see his outline through the smog.

“Go look then, yeh tommy dodd!”

“Bugger off! Oy, where you going! Come back!”

Their voices trailed off as they left and I let out a long breath. I clapped Constable Wensley on the shoulder, “We are safe. Now quickly. Let’s go find Miss Adler.”

At my first step I was frozen by a bright light that illuminated the entire alleyway, cast from behind us and trapping us in its glare. There was a harsh laugh and I heard Mickey Fitch say, “Well, well, well. You just never know what you’ll find slinking around the alleyways of Whitechapel, now do you, boys?”

I turned to see Fitch’s one dark eye fixed on me above his bullseye lantern. A dozen members of the Old Nichol Gang stood to his side with a variety of weapons in their hands.

Men came running into the alley behind Wensley and me, sealing off our exit. “What the hell do you want with us, Fitch?” I said.

“Me an’ you got unfinished business, mate.” Fitch reached behind his back and removed a large Bowie knife that he held up to the light.

THIRTY THREE

There was a man was standing on Hanbury Street with his hands in the pockets of a long dark coat that flapped lightly in the breeze. He did not move from the place where he stood staring at the rear Twenty Nine Hanbury. The house’s rear wall was where Annie Chapman had braced herself as the Ripper’s blade severed her throat.

Irene moved quietly toward him, carefully avoiding stepping on any trash or loose stones scattered on the street as she came closer to him. He was still too far away to see in the soggy, stinking mist, and the brim of his tall top-hat cast his face in shadows.

She turned to look back down Brick Lane and waved her arm in the air to signal for Watson to hurry forward. There was no response. Irene’s chest tightened and she had to force herself to breathe steadily. She put her hand inside her coat and felt the revolver’s warm wooden handle, keeping it at the ready as she emerged from the shadows. She waved her hand and said, “Hello guvnah! Yeh feelin’ good natured this evening? I bet you are, on such a fine night.”

Irene came around the man’s side and looked at his thin face and narrowly set eyes. They were red-rimmed and shining like those of a creature that lived in caves and had not been exposed to the light. “Go away. Please,” he said. “I just want to be left alone.”

“Now, now, me lovely. Why yeh lookin’ down that alleyway, anyway? Yeh see something’ yeh like down there, do yeh? Somewhere yeh wanna go, maybe?” Irene peeked over the man’s shoulder, hoping to see Watson emerge.

He squeezed his eyes tightly as if he were in pain and pressed his palms against his temple. “I-I am trying to remember. It all seems so blurry to me now.”

“What’s that, handsome? What seems blurry? Somethin’ about this house here?”

“Something happened back there in that yard. Something terrible.”

“That’s right,” Irene said. “A woman was killed there by the fence.”

“I knew her,” he said.

“Is that so?”

The man looked up into the starless sky and took a deep breath. “Have you ever been to India?”

Irene paused and said, “Er, yes. Once. Is that where you are from?”

“No.” He wiped his sleeve across his nose and looked back at her. “When I was a boy, my older brother promised to take me there. Whenever I become afraid, I imagine myself there. Can you tell me what it was like?”

“Some places are very beautiful. In other places there is tremendous poverty, and the people suffer. Somewhat like the East End.”

He nodded and cleared his throat, looking back at the rear yard. “I am so tired. So very tired. I think I am finally finished.” The man smiled with relief as he said the words. “That means I can stop now. I have just enough left for one more bite, and once that is gone, I will finally be finished and free of this thing forever. Do you know what that means?”

“No,” Irene said. “Please tell me. What can be finished?” She leaned over again, still looking for Watson, but saw nothing.

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a glass jar. As he unscrewed the lid, he said, “After this, I will be free.”

Irene recoiled at the horrific odor as the lid came off. He lifted the jar and poured the liquid into his mouth, catching a small brown object as it tumbled down and chewing it pleasantly. He wiped the liquid from his face with his hand and smeared his hand down the front of his coat. He looked at Irene and said, “Oh, no. I am afraid I am still hungry.”

~ * * * ~

They rushed us in swarms from every direction. Two grabbed me from behind by my hair and my coat and yanked me backwards, throwing me to the pavement. I watched Wensley swing out with his truncheon in a wide, whistling arc that smashed as many of them as he could reach. I swung and I kicked, I scratched and I bit, I tried tearing their skin from their very faces. It was not enough.

A boot kicked me in the mouth and loosened my teeth. I struggled to scream “Irene! Run for your life and save yourself!” between my broken lips as blood gushed into my mouth.

“Dr. Watson!” Wensley cried as he tried valiantly to fight his way toward me. I watched one of them crack him across the back of the head with an axe-handle and drop him on the spot. They beat him savagely.

“Get off of him, you bloody cowards!” I screamed. “You motherless dogs, have you no honor! Help! Help us! Someone save us!”

In that moment I thought of the man I’d watched collapse to the ground after the brick smashed open his head and I knew that no one was coming. Nobody cared.

“Stop all that yelling now, Dr. Watson,” Mickey Fitch said. He kicked me over onto my back and showed me his knife. “You’re going to need to save your voice.”

Fitch looked over his shoulder toward Hanbury and then back at me. “We’ll find that saucy bird of yours once I’ve finished with you. But it would be un-gentlemanly of me to show up without a present, wouldn’t it? I think I should bring her something she might like. A small token of my appreciation for all that she’s done for us good citizens of Whitechapel.”

“Go to hell!” I shouted.

Fitch called for several of the others to hold me down. They grabbed my arms and legs and pinned me to the ground. Fitch reached for the buckle of my belt and undid it. He pressed the tip of his blade against my trouser’s buttons and began slicing them off one at a time.

I squirmed against them. “What are you doing? Let go of me!”

“Stop struggling, doctor,” Fitch chuckled. “I am about to perform a very complicated surgery, and I can’t have you thrashing about. I told you what I was going to do when I found you. Mickey Fitch always makes good on his promises, mate.”

I shrieked into the starless sky as he touched the cold steel of his knife against the skin of my scrotum.

~ * * * ~

Irene raised the barrel of her gun at Montague Druitt’s face. “If you so much as flinch I will pull this trigger and blast you to hell.”