Текст книги "Dust and Shadow"

Автор книги: Lyndsay Faye

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Problem of Whitechapel

The following morning, I descended from my bedroom to discover Holmes had already finished his breakfast. He had then, I gathered, occupied himself by amassing all our cushions, piling them beneath the settee, supplying himself with an unholy reserve of cigarettes, and then draping himself on the floor with all the incense-shrouded dignity of a heathen god. My greeting went unanswered, so between the hours of eight and nine I devoured an egg and several rashers of bacon over a slow perusal of the Timesand Pall Mall.

“A word with you, Watson, if you can spare the time,” Holmes called out as he discarded the stub of a cigarette in a teacup situated within easy reach.

“Certainly, Holmes.” I quit the breakfast table and, selecting a cigar from the coal scuttle, settled myself in my armchair.

“I shan’t tax your patience for longer than is necessary, but it is the curse of the solo investigator that he has no confederate to bend an ear when a problem grows too unwieldy for private conjecture. You have surely realized that our case proceeds upon three lines. The primary—and may I say least fruitful—investigation is that surrounding the Ripper’s actual crimes, which have afforded us shockingly little physical evidence. Although our conference with Dr. Agar last night aids us in a general sense, our quarry still has allowed us no details which could possibly lead to a residence, name, or arrest. The next line of inquiry concerns the proposition that Jack the Ripper, whoever he may be, takes a deal of pleasure in tormenting us. This idea is based on the letter I had in February of last year. It seems he takes nearly as much pleasure in penning taunting notes as he does in committing horrific murders; however, this thirst for correspondence may well prove very dangerous for him, for the slightest physical clue could point to a place of origin and thus prove his ultimate undoing. Am I clear thus far?”

“Perfectly.”

“Finally there is the matter of the Martha Tabram murder.”

“You still believe it to have been the work of the Ripper.”

“I do indeed, but there is another puzzle tied to Tabram’s stabbing, and that is this abstruse tale of Stephen Dunlevy and Johnny Blackstone. Miss Monk had barely been in our employ a week when a strange man approached her claiming to know all about Tabram’s death. Granted, Whitechapel is not a large district, although it is densely populated, and thus it is perfectly possible that she should have instantly met a man connected to the Ripper. But is it probable?”

“How do you mean?”

“Is it not odd that within a few days of our forging an association, Miss Monk should discover a colossal lead quite by accident? The circumstance grows even more inexplicable when one takes into account the source, Mr. Dunlevy himself. I must confess to you that our glimpse of him in the pub that terrible night was not the first time I laid eyes on the man, but it has taken me days to place where I’d seen him before. I saw him the very day we met Miss Monk, as we exited Lambeth Workhouse.”

My mouth fell open at this revelation. “You are certain?”

“Entirely. Yet another reason, you see, for Miss Monk to keep a close watch on the fellow.”

Though I had often noted the peculiarly scientific way in which Holmes at times directed people like pieces on a chessboard, custom had not inured me to it. I shrugged coldly, exasperated by his glibness. “Perhaps Dunlevy and Miss Monk are engaged in a conspiracy against you.”

My friend only smiled. “You imagine I had not considered that alternative. Rest assured, Miss Monk is not in his employ, or she was not when I engaged her assistance.”

“Barring any personal bias from the question, how can you be sure?”

“Because of the scuffed new boots which caused such a fracas last night.”

“I do not understand.”

“Her old men’s boots had two small symmetrical holes just in the instep where the foot breaks the arch, an almost unbearable condition at this time of year when the wet and the cold are conjoined against one. And yet she did not, for two weeks after I had been paying her, purchase new boots. No, she presumed I was joking when I took her on as a colleague, and she clearly had no competing source of income from Dunlevy. She imagined if I came to my senses and cut off her payments, she would still be ahead by a pound or two, which is enough to keep out of the workhouse.”

At that moment we detected a slow, lumbering tread upon the staircase. The door swung open to admit the enormous personage of Mycroft Holmes, the elder brother of the great detective, whose high position in government office was as unknown to the public as it was vital to the realm. While his formidable acumen could hardly be exaggerated, neither could his martial adherence to habit, which made sightings of him outside the vicinity of Whitehall, his own lodgings in Pall Mall, or the Diogenes Club exceptional indeed. I at once offered him a chair, but he stood peering down at his brother upon the floor from his own formidable height with profound concern and displeasure mixed in his cutting grey eyes.

“I was most unpleasantly alarmed about you Sunday when a circulatory from the highest levels was posted directly to my home,” Mycroft Holmes announced. “I trust he will come to no lasting harm?” The latter query was addressed to me, and I shook my head. “Well then, Sherlock, what the devil have you been playing at? You have been pursuing the Whitechapel killer in an egregiously foolhardy manner.”

“Do sit down, brother Mycroft, you’ll exhaust yourself. You are already exhausting me,” my friend replied, both amused and annoyed by his sibling. “As it happens, we came upon the murder scene entirely by accident.”

Mycroft Holmes accepted the chair grudgingly, his eyes focused as always upon some vacant middle ground, a gaze which in both men looked like distraction and was in fact the most powerful concentration of thought. “I had wondered. Clever of you to pursue him unarmed, in the dark. I suppose you continued the chase even after the first time you collapsed.”

I must have looked confused at this remark, for Holmes, with a satirical flourish, pushed up his cuff and further exposed the opposite wrist, which, I had not even noticed, had been more than once bruised and scraped in a fall. “I thought to limit his future activities, but as you can see, rather the opposite has occurred,” he said to his brother.

“My dear boy, you must take this matter more seriously, really you must.”

Holmes’s mouth twitched impatiently. “Mycroft, if you imply that I consider the gruesome murders of five helpless women a frivolous concern—”

“You deliberately misunderstand me.” Mycroft’s expression was as fond as his tone was dry. “It is of immense practical interest, not to mention of course immense sentimental interest to your only sibling, that you leave off rushing single-handedly after dangerous madmen. More is at stake here than has been made clear to you. Whitechapel is a very minor fraction of a vast metropolis, but the effect these crimes are having on the entire nation…Sherlock, surely you see the consequences of failure?”

“An ever-increasing number of ritually disemboweled prostitutes.”

“Your morbidity is misplaced,” the elder Holmes sniffed. “Did you see the report on the double murder in the Star?”

“I looked over it. They are calling for the dismissal of Sir Charles Warren.”

“Occasionally those zealots hit near to the mark of public opinion. Whitechapel will smash the Empire, they say—a hyperbolic slander, but one which worries us exceedingly. Though I know it doesn’t interest you in the slightest, my boy, the problem of Whitechapel is being amplified to symbolize the problems of an entire nation. Even as we pray for progress, we are beset by anarchists and agitators.”

“Surely a dilemma more worthy of your attentions than of mine,” my friend observed. “I do not pretend to be the incarnate central clearinghouse of the British government.”

Mycroft Holmes merely pursed his lips sternly. “You would be shocked, perhaps, to learn of the woes currently assailing Her Majesty from all sides. I am not at liberty to discuss such matters with you, but perhaps you will do me the honour of trusting me. It all looks very bad, Sherlock, and getting worse all the time. The question of Irish autonomy alone has so splintered Parliament that this madman at large among the destitute could plausibly fuel incendiary actions rather than incendiary words. And now I hear rumours that a provocative message was scrawled upon a wall directly implicating the Jews.”

“I heard the same rumour,” Holmes drawled. “Your Sir Charles erased it, you see.”

Mycroft sighed with an expression of sorely tried patience. “Can you imagine I do not appreciate your frustration? Perhaps you will be more disposed to consider the political side of this affair when I say that though I have been most anxious to call upon you, I was also asked to do so by an individual whose importance can hardly be exaggerated.”

Holmes’s eyes softened, but his brow lifted quizzically. “My dear brother, what do you wish me to say? I can offer you nothing but assurances.”

“On the contrary, you can answer key questions. Mr. George Lusk has sent a petition to Her Highness directly, asking that a reward be offered.”

“Yes, he has an excellent grasp of the concept of chain of command.”

“I should like to hear your thoughts.”

My friend shook his head decisively. “No. The game would hardly be worth the candle: to say nothing of the official force, who are already in it to their necks, I should be required to sift through great masses of useless detritus.”

“We are in agreement, then. No reward. What other forms of assistance would prove functional?”

Holmes drew a deep breath. “I need unquestioned access to the evidence held by the City Police and the Yard, no matter what the London Chronicleis inclined to print about me.”

“I shall ensure the fact.”

“I need an increase in Whitechapel patrols and a guarantee that they will be manned by competent men.”

“I’d already anticipated that requirement. The new men were diverted from other districts yesterday. You’ve glanced into the history of the London Monster, I imagine?”

“My dear Mycroft, what a very novel idea.”

“Have you any further needs?”

Holmes looked suddenly very weary. “I need time. If that is all, Mycroft, I wish you good afternoon. I must resume my threads of inquiry.”

My friend’s elder brother heaved his considerable frame out of our chair. “Sherlock, I know very well that our respective fortes are at cross-purposes. You revel in the minutiae, and I, the macrocosm. You reason backward from the smallest details, while I predict the great events which arise from the soil of the trivial. I rely now entirely upon your own specialty; be active, Sherlock. Come to me immediately if you find yourself in need of aid.”

“You may report back to that gracious personage that I will shirk at nothing to stop this man.”

“Indeed, Sherlock, well said. And nor will I. Once you have a case, I shall see to the rest. Mend quickly; I am pleased beyond words you aren’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere.”

“My thanks. I quite share your view on that point.”

“Farewell, then.”

I saw Mycroft Holmes out. As he stepped from our dwelling onto the street, he turned and grasped my arm with one of his sizeable hands. “Look out for him, Doctor,” he said. “I am dismayed to see my younger brother embroiled in this wretched business, but he can leave no stone unturned. He must act, and act quickly! We all of us depend upon it.”

As his portly yet erect frame lumbered its slow way down Baker Street toward the neighbouring Dorset Street cab stand, I stood for a moment to breathe in the crisp draughts of the autumn afternoon. Mycroft’s exhortation had lifted my spirits more than any false assurances could have done. My friend possessed remarkable powers of recovery when his mind was set upon it; the same man who had lain ill with nervous prostration for over a month following an arduous case would stop at nothing whilst in the midst of one. I silently vowed that when Sherlock Holmes set himself once more in the path of Jack the Ripper, I would be there beside him.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN A Man in a Uniform

Close upon four o’clock the following afternoon Mrs. Hudson appeared at the door.

“Miss Monk is here to see you, Mr. Holmes. She’s brought a man with her as well.”

“Capital, Mrs. Hudson. Send them up!” With a display of energy that surprised me, Holmes leapt to his feet. “We progress, Watson, despite the odds. Miss Monk, how are you?”

She must have taken the stairs at a run, for we heard the slower steps of her companion still plodding upward. “I’ve brought him!” she whispered excitedly. “I’ve followed the grape trail ever since you put me onto it, and strike me dead if I haven’t found him. Took a shilling’s worth of persuading to do it, but he came round in the end.”

The man who walked through our doorway was grey and wizened with a prominent nose, deeply furrowed jowls, and an expression of permanent chagrin which we soon learned could shift toward resigned disappointment or deep disdain depending upon immediate circumstance. Just then, his watery blue eyes and obstinate chin seemed to indicate he was even more displeased than was usual.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes,” said my friend cordially, “and this is my associate, Dr. Watson.”

“I know who you are,” he snapped, “and I know what you do. What I don’t know is why I’ve been dragged across London to assure you of it.”

“This is Mr. Matthew Packer,” Miss Monk put in hastily. “He lives across town, right enough, on Berner Street as it happens. Mr. Packer’s digs have a very nice front window to ’em and he uses it to sell fruit out of. Don’t you, Mr. Packer?”

“Never said I didn’t.”

“Mr. Packer, I am very gratified to meet you,” said Sherlock Holmes enthusiastically. “Would you care to sit here, by the fire? I find the cold troubling at this time of year, and your rheumatism must render it well-nigh intolerable.”

“Never said I had rheumatism. But I don’t care how you know it, so don’t bother to tell me,” said Mr. Packer as he made his way to the basket chair.

“Dr. Watson,” said Holmes, hiding his amusement beneath a mask of perfect innocence, “have I not heard you remark that there is nothing better for rheumatism than a glass of good brandy?”

“Many times, Holmes. Might I pour you a glass, Mr. Packer?”

“You might, and then this young woman can start explaining why an old man can’t be left in peace to tend his shop of a morning.”

“You see, Mr. Holmes,” obliged Miss Monk, “there I was walking down Berner Street when I sees that Mr. Packer has a mess of fresh black grapes in his window. Then it comes to me—that poor woman what was killed near the club! She’d a stalk of grapes in her hand. The same kind you sell, Mr. Packer,” she added with a radiant smile. “Black ones, if you please.”

“I suppose you mean to say I killed her,” sneered the old scoundrel, “and you have brought me to these gentlemen for interrogation.”

“Nothing of the kind, Mr. Packer,” said Holmes sadly. “In fact, I’m afraid it’s nearly an impossibility that you may have seen anything of use.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling this young madwoman.”

“Our only hope of success would hinge upon your having seen a woman with a flower pinned to her jacket on that evening. Red, backed by white fern. But as I’ve said, the situation is quite hopeless. This Jack the Ripper seems far too clever for any of us.”

Mr. Packer’s face shifted slowly from contempt to condescension as he sipped his brandy. “You say a red flower pinned to her jacket?”

“Yes,” sighed the detective. “Futile, is it not?”

“Funny thing is, I do seem to recall having sold grapes to a woman with a red flower; the man paid for them, of course, but she was standing there the whole time.”

“Really? That is a strange coincidence. I don’t suppose you recall anything else about her face or figure?”

“She was a sad sort,” Mr. Packer replied, “fair-complected, dark curls, and dressed all in black—black skirt, black bonnet, dark bodice—with fur trim on her jacket.”

“Indeed?” Holmes replied coolly.

“She had what I might call a strong face—square-jawed, high cheekbones, if you understand me.”

“And her companion?” Holmes appeared as nonchalant as ever, but I could see he was entirely engrossed.

“He was a plain fellow—not thin, of healthy build, I suppose, average height. Simply dressed, like a clerk or a shopkeeper. And he wore no gloves. A frock coat and hat but no gloves.”

“You interest me exceedingly, Mr. Packer.” My friend’s zeal was beginning to infuse his tone. “And his face? Can you describe the fellow?”

“He had regular features, clean shaven, wearing a cloth hat. I’d seen him before, to be sure.”

At this Holmes could not help but start forward. “Oh, indeed?”

“Must live in the neighbourhood, for he seemed that familiar.”

“Can you recall where you had seen this man before?”

“Somewhere about. Could have been in a pub or a market.”

“But you have no clue as to his occupation or place of residence?”

“Said I’d seen him before. Didn’t say I knew him, did I?”

Holmes clenched his fist in frustration, but his voice remained even. “What time do you imagine you sold them the grapes, Mr. Packer?”

He shrugged. “Close to twelve, I should think.”

“And have you spoken to the police?”

“The police!” he snorted. “Why should I speak to the police, I wonder. They spoke to me right enough—knocking on my door, demanding to know what I’d seen. Well, of course I told them what I’d seen when I closed shop at twelve thirty. Nothing.”

“You failed to tell the police you had seen anything suspicious?”

“I saw nothing suspicious. What in God’s name is suspicious about folk buying a bunch of grapes?”

“Quite so. Well, Mr. Packer, is there anything further you can recall about that night or the man you saw?”

“Well, for the sake of the brandy I’ll say one more word on the matter,” Mr. Packer deigned to reply. “This gloveless fellow, then—they may not have been friends, but the woman had seen him before, sure as I had.”

“Why do you say that, Mr. Packer?” asked Sherlock Holmes.

“He’s buying the grapes when the woman says, ‘They won’t be missing you tonight, then?’ ‘Who won’t be?’ he says, irritated. ‘Oh, I see the game,’ she says. ‘Right enough, no offense meant. But you do look splendid in those clothes.’”

“She mentioned his attire specifically?”

“That she did,” Mr. Packer assented, downing what remained in his prodigious snifter. “Can’t think why, for it was nothing to speak of. Shame she seemed so taken with the bloke, if what you say is true. An hour later she was dead.”

Holmes made no reply, for his mind was elsewhere. Our guest made a studied harrumphing sound and arose. “In any event…that’s all the time I’m willing to give you gents, for I don’t see what good any of you have done so far.”

“I beg your pardon, sir!” I exclaimed.

“Five women dead and not a suspect to show for it. I don’t call that a good average, do you? Well, let me know if anything comes of it, which doesn’t seem likely. I’m off to my shop.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Packer, but I do not believe you can deny us your company just yet,” said Holmes casually.

“Is that so? And why in hell not, might I ask?”

Holmes advanced toward the elderly man and stopped at a distance of no more than two inches. My friend towered over the irascible fellow, and even pallid of complexion with one arm in a sling, his physical presence was daunting in the extreme.

“While I am grateful for your call, you may well have heard that Scotland Yard is also pursuing Jack the Ripper. And while you may not have realized you possessed valuable evidence before, I believe we have now made your position abundantly clear to you. You and I will take the cab downstairs directly to Scotland Yard, where you will tell a friend of mine named Lestrade precisely what you told me. Do not for one instant make me suspect, Mr. Packer, that you have the Ripper’s best interests at heart.”

Mr. Packer struggled in vain for a reply.

“Very well, then. Watson, my coat, if you would be so kind. Miss Monk, I have greater respect for your time than to suggest you accompany us. You have my warmest congratulations for having managed to get him here in the first place. After you, Mr. Packer.”

So began a day that proved enjoyable for us only insofar as it was inconvenient for Mr. Packer. Lestrade eagerly took his statement, then required him to visit the morgue, where he was shown the face not of Elizabeth Stride but of Catherine Eddowes. At his adamant refusal that he had ever laid eyes on her, he was shown Stride, whom he confidently proclaimed to be the girl with the grapes. Evening drew near when, as a reward for his correct identification, he was taken to see Sir Charles Warren and deliver his statement a third time, at which point we gratefully took our leave of him.

“I must say,” I remarked to Holmes in the cab, “your tip to Miss Monk bore fruit swiftly enough.”

“It narrows our search exceedingly,” drawled my friend, as he leaned his head against the side of the hansom. “Rather than exert ourselves looking for a five-foot-seven Englishman, we shall set our caps for a five-foot-seven Englishman who is ‘clean shaven,’ with ‘regular features.’”

“Then what have we gained by Packer’s account of the man?”

“Well, two features of interest present themselves.”

“The lack of gloves?”

“Excellent, Watson. The glove detail narrows the social sphere, for I do not believe the lowest denizens of Whitechapel would balk at eating with gloves on. And the other feature?”

“That Packer recognized him from the neighbourhood?”

“My dear chap, surely we have not so soon forgotten that this man’s intimate knowledge of Whitechapel hints at his having been there before.”

“The odd remark about his clothing, then, if Packer heard aright?”

“Watson, you really do improve all the time. Yes, that remark interests me exceedingly. The fellow seemed to think that by wearing the apparel of any innocuous Britisher, he would be less recognizable.”

“I cannot imagine why.”

“Can you not?” he smiled. “You surprise me, my boy. Let us take you as an example. Now, I could, if pressed, deliver a very detailed description of you indeed. However, if you were a stranger to me and I had not made it part of my vocation to recognize traits of human physiognomy, I might describe you as having ‘regular features,’ for what does the term mean if not symmetrical and evenly spaced?”

“I fail to see what I have to do with Stride’s recognition of the man who would be the death of her.”

Holmes laughed suddenly. “Very well—your friends in London, they are astute enough to recognize you when they see you. If you were dressed to the nines as a common seaman, would they still recognize you?”

“I imagine so.”

“Do you? Dressed as you are now, if you were suddenly transported to India, would your acquaintances there know you?”

“Some would. Possibly some would not,” I granted.

“Why not?”

“My appearance has changed significantly. And I was always in uniform.”

“And there I rest my case,” said Holmes with his habitual far-off expression. “If your colleagues might not know you in a crowd when out of uniform, why should a stranger be expected to do so? There are people in this world with an eye for faces, and Elizabeth Stride was one of them. While most would not have recognized an unexceptional face without its context, she did so. Sadly, she would not live to tell of it.”

“You are right, Holmes,” I reflected, my friend’s idea now perfectly clear to me. “The garb of a civilian would significantly alter a man’s appearance if he were perpetually in uniform.”

“I am currently devoting all my resources to locating this Johnny Blackstone,” Holmes replied. “Whenever we do so, it will be not a moment too soon.”