Текст книги "Dust and Shadow"

Автор книги: Lyndsay Faye

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE With the Respects of the Yard

I awoke in my own room to the sight of pale November light falling on the plane tree outside my window. I touched the bandage upon my head in confusion. I was extraordinarily hungry, and there was a violin playing somewhere.

When I tried to sit up, my left side flooded with a searing pain. I felt the area gently with my fingertips. No bandage had been applied, but there was a compress—a broken rib, then, or two perhaps. Using my elbow as a prop, I gradually managed to ease myself upward, until I was seated on the edge of my bed. No sooner had I accomplished this feat than I saw that it had been entirely unnecessary, for a bell had been placed within arm’s reach upon my side table.

The bell rested on a page from the London Chronicle.The most prominently placed article’s title blared out, “AN HEROIC RESCUE.”

In a striking and dramatic turn of events, a courageous rescue has been effected by the dauntless private investigator Mr. Sherlock Holmes, whose unflagging vigilance in connection with the Whitechapel murders once caused spurious doubts to be cast upon his activities in the district. A terrifying fire set in the basement of a building on Thrawl Street speedily led to the destruction of the entire house, a development which could well have caused many fatalities if Mr. Holmes and his partner and biographer Dr. John Watson had not been present at the scene. In a daring display of valour, Mr. Holmes carried two women from the inferno, one of whom had been trapped helpless upon an upper floor. Such evidence of gallantry is welcome indeed in times such as these, when the women of the district have been given so much cause for fear and discouragement. Both Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson sustained grave injuries at the scene, and though both the ladies to whom they proffered aid lived to see the hospital, the elder, a Mrs. Bennett, regretfully passed on as a result of internal wounds sustained during the blast. The conflagration, which was swiftly contained by that adept firefighting force we have all come to admire so universally, caused only one other casualty: that of ex–Scotland Yard officer Mr. Edward Bennett, who sustained extensive chest injuries during the explosion caused by the sudden movement of the fire from the basement to the ground floor. No doubt he wished to ascertain that his mother was no longer within the deadly structure. It is fervently to be hoped that Mr. Holmes’s recovery is a speedy one, that his energies may be directed once more to that protection and defense of the populace for which he is justly famous.

I threw my head back and laughed heartily at this account, though I was forced to stop when the pain in my ribs grew greater than the joy afforded me. Replacing the page under the bell, I abandoned the bed. Dressing proved such an ordeal that I stopped after my trousers, shirtsleeves, and dressing gown, and thus fractionally clad, I made my way downstairs.

Sherlock Holmes was perched on the edge of his desk, improvising a version of a Paganini air so intricate as to be nearly unidentifiable. When he laid eyes on me, the chords shifted at once to a triumphal ode ending in a dizzyingly quick flourish of exultation as he leapt to his feet.

“Thank heaven. My dear fellow, I am indescribably happy to see you about.”

“No more than I am to see you,” I returned warmly.

“I shall lose no time in sacking the nurse. These two days have been a trial. She drones comforting platitudes and whistles popular music-hall tunes in unlikely keys.”

“Then I am grateful to have only just awoken,” I said with a laugh.

“And some time you have been about it too,” Holmes added severely. “You have a concussion, you know, and Dr. Agar was rather of the opinion your ribs were broken.”

“I am of the same opinion. I read that you were also cruelly injured.” Apart from the deeply furrowed circles beneath his eyes and a small gash on his hand, Holmes appeared the picture of health.

“Oh, so you did see that? Leslie Tavistock has been affecting a sort of servile allegiance, but he has not yet added veracity to his brief list of virtues.”

“No indeed, for he said Edward Bennett was killed by the explosion.”

“That inspired falsehood was Lestrade’s notion, as a matter of fact.”

“Was it?” I murmured.

Holmes’s grey eyes searched my face solicitously. “Here, sit down, my dear fellow. The blast, though it was terribly hard on you, served one higher purpose in the end. Every relic and artifact was burned in the house; I know, for I had searched the other rooms myself, and there was nothing in them.”

“And Mrs. Bennett is dead,” I reflected. “And her son—”

“He is already buried,” my friend said quickly. “Returned to the dust whence he came. There isn’t a trace left of the man we knew as Jack the Ripper.”

“I cannot believe it is over.”

“You must give it a little time. You’ve only been conscious ten minutes.”

“And it seems there are only five people outside the British government who will ever know the truth of the matter.”

Holmes’s eyes had been dancing merrily at me, but at this remark their fires dimmed.

“Just at the moment, there are four people.”

“Four? There are yourself, Lestrade, Dunlevy, Miss Monk, and I. Five.”

My friend suddenly concentrated very hard on the ceiling. His jaw was working, but it was some time before he could bring himself to speak.

“There are four. I am afraid that Miss Monk is not herself.”

“What do you mean?” I cried. “She was alive. She is alive!”

“Calm yourself, my dear Watson.”

“The article said nothing—”

“Bennett drugged her deeply to allow him to spirit her to his mother’s rooms. I believe he found her in a pub, doctored her drink, and, under the pretense that she was intoxicated, made away with her. That opiate dosage, whatever it may have been, in combination with inhalation of the polluted atmosphere and the nervous strain of it all, had a profound effect.”

“Do not tell me she is—”

“Watson, cease overtaxing yourself, I beg of you. She is not mad. Her memory has been affected. There are gaps. She knows many of those around her, and she understands perfectly, but she is very quiet and frequently confused.”

Holmes and I had already suffered too much at the Ripper’s hands. This news, however, struck me as I have hardly ever been struck in my life.

“It is cruel, Holmes,” I whispered through the catch in my throat. “It is far too cruel. Where is she now?”

“She left hospital yesterday and is living with Mr. George Lusk and his family in their spare room.”

“They wished to extend their charity to her?”

“Not at all. I arranged it.”

“You feel responsible,” I said numbly. “I do not blame you.”

To this day, I do not know why I said it. It was an unforgivable remark. My companion did not reply, and I cannot imagine how he could have. He merely steepled his fingers and closed his eyes.

“My dear fellow, forgive me. What you have accomplished is nothing short of miraculous. You could not have—Holmes, don’t look like that, please.” In my confusion, my eyes rested on the side table. A syringe lay where it had dropped from careless fingers, and the bottle of seven-percent cocaine solution, habitually shut in a drawer, sat beside it in plain view and empty. Nearby rested a large, official-looking envelope with a rich seal and embossed coat of arms.

“Who has written you, Holmes?” I asked in an anguish to shift the subject.

“It is nothing. My brother’s whim. He took it into his head that I deserved a knighthood.”

“But that is wonderful!” I gasped. “There is not a man in England who could deserve it more. My deepest congrat—”

“I have refused it.” He rose from his chair to procure his pipe and tobacco.

I stared at him in blank disbelief.

“You refused a knighthood.”

“Don’t be obtuse, my dear fellow. I said I refused it, and that is what I have done. Respectfully, I need hardly add,” he pronounced, stuffing his pipe with shag.

“But in heaven’s name, why? You have single-handedly run to ground the most notorious criminal in modern British history, and no one will ever know of it. At the very least you deserve—”

“If I deserved a knighthood even by the standards of the most vermiculate logic, I would no doubt have accepted it,” he snapped viciously.

Then, more gently, Holmes added, “I told Mycroft you ought to have one. I was rather eloquent upon the subject. But I don’t think he was listening.” He withdrew his watch. “It is now a quarter to one. Miss Monk will arrive two doors down for the first of her continuing sessions with Dr. Agar, at my behest, at half past two this afternoon. He entertains hopes that she will recover. I can think of no reason, if you feel strong enough, you should not walk over to visit her. It would please her, I am certain.”

“I would like nothing better. But surely you will accompany me?”

“Not unless you require my assistance. She doesn’t know me, you see.” He swept the evidence of his drug use into the voluminous pocket of his dressing gown. “Dunlevy will be there, no doubt. He is a most fixated chap—not to say monomaniacal.”

“Most would refer to it as love, Holmes.”

“Your theory is not without merit. But my dear Watson, you must be famished.” He threw open the door and advanced to the top of the stairs. “Mrs. Hudson! A cold luncheon for two and a bottle of claret, if you please!” I heard the distant sound of a joyful exclamation followed quickly by remonstrance. “My dear lady, what is it to me that I have already sent a meal back?” I hid a smile as Mrs. Hudson’s voice rose in conviction and force.

Holmes sighed. “I’ll be back in a moment, Watson. I think in this case capitulation is the better part of valour.”

On an evening flecked with snow some three weeks later, when the groups of crass thrill seekers and vulpine pressmen had disappeared from the former residence of Mary Kelly—the final unfortunate to fall victim to Jack the Ripper—I ambled gingerly down the stairs and out our front door. The air’s bite had scarcely accomplished more than to send a feeling of invigoration through my shoulders by the time I had knocked at Dr. Agar’s residence and been shown into the immaculately clean vestibule. Even if I required direction, I could hardly have avoided the peals of merriment emanating from the good doctor’s consulting room. When I pushed open the door, I observed Miss Monk in heady conversation with Dr. Agar while beside her on the sofa sat Stephen Dunlevy, whose eyes, after glancing genially in my direction, snapped back to the object of their affection.

“That’s the cure for hysteria, and you’ll swear to it?” she was demanding, her hand tracing her brow in disbelief.*

“Not at this clinic, I assure you,” Dr. Agar said with a laugh.

“I granny why they’d enjoy it, make no mistake, but it’s a sight cheaper in the Chapel—Oh! Dr. Watson,” she interrupted herself, leaping to her feet and darting over to grasp me by the hand. “Have you ever treated a woman for hysteria?”

“Not as such,” I demurred as she seated herself once more. “Miss Monk, you are looking ten times better. I congratulate you, as well as your groundbreaking physician.”

“She is doing all the work and I am collecting all the credit.” Dr. Agar smiled. “It is quite shameful, but many careers are built so, after all.”

“You do yourself a disservice,” Dunlevy interjected. “Dr. Watson is right, and may I seize the opportunity to say that I have never been so grateful to anyone in my life. Apart from Mr. Holmes, of course,” he added with a grave look in my direction.

“How is Mr. Holmes, Doctor?” Dr. Agar inquired.

I must have hesitated over the question, for Miss Monk stated gamely, “I’ve recalled summat else about the fellow. He’ll think me a right nickey for having ever forgotten so much at this rate, but hasn’t he a trick of treating more or less anything in the room as if it’s a chair?”

“Yes, he has.” I smiled.

“I’m on the point of it, and then it’s—” She made a whistling sound and waved a hand in the air. “But I have the best of help.” She then looked, to my inner delight, not at Dr. Agar but directly and unmistakably at Stephen Dunlevy.

My hat in hand, I declared, “I merely wished to say hello. Holmes will be very relieved to learn how well you are doing, Miss Monk.”

“Has he left your flat yet, Dr. Watson?” Dr. Agar asked softly.

“No,” I returned, “but he will.”

“I know he will,” Dr. Agar assured me. “He has an excellent physician.”

Glaring at our front door with perhaps more dissatisfaction than the object deserved, I turned my key in the lock. However, as it happened, I was not destined for an evening of attempting to elicit speech from a companion submerged in the worst of reflections, who to my great distress had been subsisting on tobacco, tea, and narcotics. Just as I opened the door to our sitting room, I accidentally nudged the leg of Inspector Lestrade, who appeared to have arrived moments before and was facing my haggard friend with an attitude of determined cheer.

“You are looking far better than when last I saw you, Dr. Watson, and I am heartily glad to say it,” he exclaimed, shaking my hand.

Holmes waved us in from his armchair and tossed the prim little detective a matchbox in a graceful arc. “There are cigars on the side table and spirits in the decanter.”

“Thank you.”

“So you were there that night?” I prompted Lestrade, for I had my own questions to ask, Holmes or no Holmes. I’d not had the heart to force my friend into reliving that hour of painful memory, nor to ask how we had managed to escape.

“To be sure,” the inspector answered readily. “By the time the fire brigade arrived, Mr. Holmes had moved you and Miss Monk back to the courtyard. You were out of danger there, at least temporarily. Mr. Holmes here alerted the force to the existence of a body at the side of the house, and you were all taken by police ambulance to London Hospital. The constables on the scene called me in immediately. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw who it was, considering the chase he had led us on the night before.”

“I read that he was injured in the explosion.”

“Quite so.” The inspector coughed. “I was able to spirit the brute to the morgue quickly enough. The coroner was not inclined to disagree with my idea that shards of glass from the exploding window struck Bennett fatally. Of course, we are still investigating the murder.”

Holmes, who had been regarding the bearskin rug, roused himself briefly at my expression of dismay. “Not you, my dear Watson. That could hardly be called a murder by any standards. Lestrade refers to Mary Kelly.”

“Oh, I see,” I said in relief.

“It’s difficult to keep my heart in it, knowing you sent her killer to hell already, Doctor,” Lestrade said placidly, sipping his spirits. “But it’s the duty of the Yard to promote a feeling of safety.”

“I do not envy you that duty,” Holmes said grimly. “It will take some time before anyone can be convinced the Ripper has vanished.”

“On the contrary, there is a rumour among the detective inspectors to that very effect,” Lestrade retorted. “They are saying that Sherlock Holmes does not run into burning buildings without cause.”

My friend appeared abashed. “That is potentially a very dangerous notion.”

“You likely think it best for me to quash that bit of gossip,” Lestrade nodded. “Well, I won’t. I’ve been approached by a good many of the other inspectors. They seem to think if anyone’s likely to know aught of the matter, I’m their man. Well, I haven’t told them anything. But if they’ve suggested that you’ve put an end to this wretched affair, Mr. Holmes, I’ve as good as shaken their hands and winked a friendly eye.”

Holmes sat up in his chair in indignation.

“Listen here, Mr. Holmes, and see it from my side for a moment. From what we know of Bennett, he hated the force and everything it stood for. Mad he may well have been, but this is a man who actually performed the most evil acts he could conjure up, and then used them against us. We won’t ever understand why, but he did his utmost to make us look like fools, gentlemen, to make us all look like fools, and if you ask my opinion, he would have succeeded if not for you, Mr. Holmes. I’m under no illusions about the business. You did an extraordinary thing, and the more at the Yard who work out you had a hand in it, so much the better. All London is in your debt, sir, and I will be damned if I lift one finger to keep it secret.”

“Hear, hear,” said I.

Lestrade stood. “In fact, we inspectors have taken it upon ourselves to give you a token of our appreciation. I rather thought you might have done with the old one. But we hope this one serves.”

My friend opened a small box which Lestrade had produced. Inside lay a beautiful silver cigarette case monogrammed with Holmes’s initials, underneath which ran the words, “With the Respects of Scotland Yard, November 1888.”

Sherlock Holmes sat with his lips parted, but no sound emerged.

“Thank you,” he managed at length.

Lestrade nodded firmly. “It’s our honour, Mr. Holmes. Well, I’ve said my piece. I’m afraid I must be off.”

The inspector strode purposefully to our door but stopped upon reaching it. “I hope if anything out of the ordinary comes up, I may call on you?” he asked.

“I have not felt much inclined to take any cases of late,” my friend replied hesitantly. “However, you know that should you ever require assistance, you are welcome to consult me.”

Lestrade smiled. “You do occasionally stumble on the truth, I’ve always said that much in your favour. Well, as it’s late, I won’t keep you.”

He had stepped outside the door when my friend called out, “Lestrade!”

The inspector’s head reemerged. “Yes, Mr. Holmes?”

“That housebreaking business in Hounslow—it is obvious that there was no break-in at all. You must lay your hands on the nephew.”

Lestrade grinned at me broadly.

“I’ll pass the word along. Thanks for the tip. Good night, Mr. Holmes.”

My friend rose from his chair and threw the curtains back from the bow window. The air outside was crisp and clean, and the wind had died. Holmes glanced back at me.

“What do you think of a ramble through London?”

I smiled cautiously. “Do you mean a silent trek, or an explication of every passerby we happen to encounter?”

“I leave it to you.”

I considered the question. “Your deductions are always of the greatest interest to me.”

“In that case, I have no choice but to hone my skills,” he replied with a shrug.

“Will a bite of supper be involved? For the both of us, mind,” I added emphatically.

“It is entirely possible,” he granted. “If we are agreed, let us be off. ‘Beneath is all the fiends’. There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulfurous pit…’”

“My dear fellow, I don’t imagine Shakespeare intended that speech to describe the view from our window. He had never seen it, after all.”

“Hadn’t he?” Holmes smiled. “Then I suppose you’ll have to do in his stead; you’ve a penchant for the dramatic as well. Let me know when you’ve worked out something better. Come along, my dear fellow.” He disappeared down the stairs.

Acknowledgments

My thanks are first owed to my parents, John and Vicki Farber, whose interest in literature in general and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries in particular led directly to my having the gall to write this book in the first place. They should also be credited with my having the gall to think I can do any thing I set my mind to, which is uncommonly kind of them. Key credit must also be given to my late uncle Michael Dobbins, who once gave a ten-year-old girl his hardback red suede copy of the Adventuresand the Returns. He is missed and will be remembered.

Credit for Fight Choreographer, and President of the Department of Sticking to the Plot for the Love of All That’s Decent, goes to Johnny Farber: my brother, my first editor, and my first collaborator. I would pay him, but I probably couldn’t afford him.

To my actual editor, Kerri Kolen, and all the team at Simon & Schuster including Victoria Meyer and the band of talent who have made my book what it is, thank you from the bottom of my heart. My vague notions of the concept “editor” were blown to smithereens by Kerri, who is unfailingly kind while she is being critical. I couldn’t have asked for a more sensitive and forthright commander in chief.

Dan Lazar’s dedication is, as far as I am concerned, the gold standard for agents. If he ever sleeps, I haven’t seen it, or at least he sleeps about as much as Sherlock Holmes does. Josh Getzler, also of Writers House, was the first person who ever laid eyes on my book who felt inclined to do something about it. They are both impossibly good to me, and Dan deserves a medal.

My love of Sherlockiana is deep-rooted, but a few scholars must be singled out for mention. William S. Baring-Gould’s annotated collection was an invaluable staple, drawing from Sherlockian luminaries too numerous for me to list. Likewise Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmesprovided answers of all varieties, and I am grateful for his scholarship, as well as that of all those authors cited in his work.

My most grateful thanks are due to the Estate of Dame Jean Conan Doyle, and in particular its representative Jon Lellenberg, for their invaluable assistance and support. As a lifelong admirer of the world of Sherlock Holmes, their blessing is a prodigious honor. I hold the highest respect and love for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters, and the Estate’s encouragement of my project has meant more to me than I can express. In addition, I am in debt to the vast international web of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, whose generosity and heartfelt enthusiasm continually astonish me. They share their lives with me, and that is what writing new tales of the Great Detective is about. As John le Carré said, no one writes of Sherlock Holmes without love.

There are a great many Ripper scholars whose research was mined for this volume, and they deserve far more than my thanks. To be specific where specificity is due, Stewart Evans is the sole reason this book appears remotely free of error, and any remaining mistakes fall squarely on my own head. Donald Rumbelow, Martin Fido, Paul Begg, Keith Skinner, Philip Sugden, Stephen Knight, Philip Rawlings, Peter Underwood, Peter Vronsky, Scott Palmer, Roger Wilkes, Patricia Cornwell, James Morton, Harold Schechter, Jan Bondeson, Colin Wilson, Andrew Maunder, Brian Marriner, Paul H. Feldman, Melvin Harris, Paul West, Peter Costello, Nathan Braund, Maxim Jakubowski, Eduardo Zinna, and the press reports archives of the comprehensive www.casebook.org were critically helpful to me in grasping the details of these still-harrowing crimes.

I would like to thank the New York City restaurant Osteria Laguna for firing me, leading to a series of events without which I would never have written this book.

Finally, thank you, Gabriel. You inspire me. Your willingness to expand the realm of the possible makes me fight all the harder. Thank you for believing in this book.