Sherlock Holmes and the Four Corners of Hell

by Seamas Duffy

  ‘It is possible, is it not,’ asked Holmes, ‘that they may have been frequenting premises there that are used for purposes for which they are not, shall we say, licensed?’

  ‘It is possible, but generally the beat men in the divisions know all the dives and shebeens and kiphouses. I knew most of them myself when I worked there, and I’ll wager some of them are hardly changed. None of the victims has any record, nor were they known to us.’

  Lestrade took out his notebook and continued: ‘It all started on the twelfth of June when the body of Jane Smart, twenty-seven, was found at about a quarter-past four in the morning in Falcon Lane, just off Falcon Square, by two tradesmen passing on their way to work. She had been seen drinking champagne with a client, “a real toff” her friend said, at a posh hotel in the West End around half-past ten the previous evening: she was never seen alive again. She had been strangled and the body was left underneath one of the windows of a terraced house, yet nobody in the house or the street heard or saw a thing. The time of death seems to have been during the early hours of the morning. There was no robbery, and the girl’s purse contained four pounds and some change. We thought nothing of it at the time, but when we lifted the poor girl’s body to remove it to the mortuary, we found a five-shilling piece lying on the ground beneath the body. As the girl had been carrying a fair amount of money, we assumed that it had fallen out of her pockets or purse, or had been dropped by her assailant as he was making his getaway. The strangest thing, though, was that the dead girl was clutching in her left hand an ear of corn!’

  ‘Most remarkable.’

  ‘How she came to have this is a complete mystery, and, though we had hoped it might give us a clue as to her attacker, we have drawn a blank. As you know, there was a second murder five days later at St Clement’s Court: the first we knew of this one was on the Monday morning about six o’clock. Constable Chandler, a City man, had been on fixed point duty at the junction of Cannon Street not far from the Monument Underground Station when he saw two men running towards him. One of them cried, “Another woman has been murdered in the lane!” so Chandler followed them back to the passage where he found the body of a young woman lying on the ground; she had been strangled, as had the first victim. The time of death seems to have been about the same as the first victim. She was Patsy Harvey, an Irish girl from Limerick, twenty-four, and again her purse contained a decent sum of money; likewise, when Chandler bent to examine the body, he found a five-shilling piece, and in her left hand she grasped on this occasion not one, but two ears of corn.’

  ‘This was not mentioned in the public reports of the case,’ I said.

  ‘No, that’s right, Doctor. In cases like these where we have a series of murders, we often hold some of the minor details back from the press and public. The official force is not only deluged by hoax letters in these matters, but often also beset by numbers of quite innocent but deranged persons, who, from some unfathomable motive, claim to have committed the deed themselves. It is a strange sidelight on human nature, gentlemen; we know for certain that in a rare number of cases, some of these people have actually died on the scaffold, their innocence being afterwards established by almost chance discoveries. If some of the small, but significant, details of the crimes are held back, any impostors can be eliminated by close questioning.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Holmes, ‘Are you sure, though, that neither you, nor any of your men on the case have said a word about the ears of corn at the moment?’

  ‘As certain as I can be about anything.’

  ‘You ought to have come here straight away after the second murder; precious time has been lost. Any further details?’

  ‘This girl had last been seen in the Haymarket about ten o’clock, where she had been waiting for a client to pick her up in a cab.’

  ‘I don’t suppose anyone knows the name of this client?’

  ‘We have no names. No one saw her leave the street on Sunday night. As with the first case, no one in the vicinity where the body was found had heard anything. Our conclusion is that both victims must have been killed very quickly and noiselessly – it looks like the work of a professional killer, almost certainly the same person in both instances. Now, the third one was slightly different, and a particularly bold one, too, because it was discovered just after midnight on Friday the 21st, when there were still quite a few stragglers around. It was just outside the boundary of the City, near Petticoat Lane, that a railway porter coming home from Liverpool Street Station saw the figure of a young woman lying apparently comatose at the corner of the alley. She was well-dressed, which marked her apart from most of the local inhabitants, and when the man bent over her, he suddenly realized that she was dead. She was Rosemary Carden,’ Lestrade continued, ‘twenty-two. She had been seen earlier in the day coming out of the Duke’s Head public house in Frith Street, then later in the evening she was seen waiting outside the Half Moon near Piccadilly. No robbery, but again a five-shilling piece was found under the body. Now then, gentlemen, how many ears of corn do you think this time?’

  ‘Three,’ Holmes and I replied, almost in unison.

  ‘None at all!’ said Lestrade, relishing the effect of his words. ‘That’s the difference with this one, you see, that’s why we’re not sure that it is the same bloke. This murder certainly took place earlier in the night than the others had done, for both the porter and the policeman who first attended the scene depose that the woman’s body was still warm. And that’s what caused us to wonder if it was the same person.’

  ‘But the five-shilling piece? That is obviously part of the killer’s ritual,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but to return to the point about the details which we give to the press,’ said Lestrade, ‘it occurred to us that someone may have read about the five-shilling piece, and may have copied the pattern of the murder, without knowing about the ears of corn that had been left in the girls’ hands.’ Lestrade shook his head sadly, ‘As well as people admitting to crimes they never committed, we suspect that in other cases there are those who go out and copy murders that they’ve read about; it’s a strange world and no doubt.’

  ‘Nevertheless, on the balance of probabilities, I think it is likely that the murders were carried out by the same person,’ said Holmes, ‘and I shall take that as a working hypothesis. The absence of the ears of corn in the third case may or may not be significant; they may have been placed there and then subsequently knocked out of the woman’s hand by the porter when he disturbed the body.’

  ‘Yes, but we searched the area thoroughly afterwards.’

  ‘Well, who knows what might have been overlooked in the dark,’ said Holmes diplomatically. ‘It is not impossible that someone else may have disturbed the body before the porter arrived, and then was too frightened to report the matter. Then again, perhaps there is some reason for the third victim not having it.’

  ‘I am certainly keeping an open mind on it,’ replied Lestrade. ‘To be honest, I am not sure that the coins and the corn are not simply a blind to throw us off the trail, but why they chose them I have no idea. Apart from what I have told you about the five-shilling pieces and the corn, there are really no other clues and no witnesses.’

  ‘You mentioned some letters,’ said Holmes.

  ‘Oh, the letters! I wouldn’t like to tell you how many hoax letters I have seen in the past ten days or thereabouts, for the guv’nor’s desk was covered with them. Between those and the ones the press have passed on to us, I have given up counting. To be frank, I wouldn’t want to waste your precious time on them.’

  ‘You think they are all hoaxes?’ Holmes asked.

  ‘It is always difficult to tell,’ said Lestrade, pausing. ‘There were one or two sent to the Islington Gazette which were so atrocious that they might well have been written by someone with murderous tendencies, and the ones addressed to me personally certainly made my blood curdle. You may call at the office and view them at any time.’

  ‘I think I shall do s
o, for one ought not to exclude any data no matter how irrelevant it may seem at the time. There is not a single suspect?’ asked Holmes.

  ‘We’ve interviewed one or two people who were reported as behaving suspiciously on various occasions, but there was nothing at the bottom of it,’ Lestrade sighed wearily. ‘I’m afraid that’s all there is to tell.’

  ‘What about these girls’ clients?’

  ‘It is almost impossible to find out who they are, for none of the dead girls’ friends would tell us even if they did know. It is likely that there are some very respectable people involved.’

  ‘Therefore it is just possible, is it not, that the victims have been murdered to preclude blackmail or to prevent scandalous gossip leaking out?’

  ‘If that were the case, we’d have a hundred bodies a week. It would be like the plague year.’ Lestrade shook his head, ‘No, it suits these girls to keep their mouths shut, so I should think there must be more to it than that.’

  ‘All the same, we cannot rule out the possibility that here has been some blackmail attempt, perhaps involving all three women, which has tragically backfired.’

  ‘As far as we can ascertain, none of these girls knew each other.’

  ‘Dear me, that is stranger still. Well, I had given very little thought to the matter other than to conclude that given the singularity of these crimes, the killer must be some species of madman, who, I believed, would find it impossible to remain at large for very much longer. It is the completely ordinary crime – the matelot knifed in a riverside tavern, the stranger beaten, robbed, and left for dead in one of the rookeries – in which it is more difficult to bring the culprit to book. If this is the same man, why should he stop at three? It is possible that he may strike again.’

  ‘That is the conclusion I have come to. The guv’nor is extremely concerned, too, and that is why I have come here to ask if you would take a look at the case.’

  ‘Yes, I should be certainly happy to do so, but before I can give you even a preliminary view of the case, a visit to the actual scenes of the murders would be very useful, especially in the company of someone who has professional knowledge of the case. I am bound to go out this afternoon on another matter, but if I could prevail upon you this evening, Inspector; and perhaps, Watson, you would accompany us?’

  I glanced at the clock with some alarm. It was now well half past eleven o’clock and I recalled that I had a number of appointments with patients – the first at twelve noon – for I had agreed to oversee my friend Jackson’s practice, as he had gone abroad. I quickly donned my coat and hat, seized my basket, and dashed for the door. As I rattled off in the cab up through Marylebone High Street towards the Park, I pondered over the strangeness of the case. A less encouraging start to any of our adventures I could scarcely recall. I tried to fathom the significance of the five-shilling pieces and the ears of corn. Were these really a blind, designed to throw the police off the true scent as Lestrade had suspected? Or was the man simply a deranged lunatic whose recklessness must inevitably bring about his capture? I cudgelled my brains and tried to apply Holmes’s methods in order to make some sense of the matter, but I confess to no avail; as the cab gained the crest of Primrose Hill, the roaring of a steam engine emerging from the railway tunnel into the cutting below brought me out of my reverie. After a detour to another of Jackson’s patients in St John’s Wood, I returned to Baker Street. When the maid brought in afternoon tea, she handed me a note which Holmes had left with her before he had gone out. It was characteristically terse: ‘Leave tonight, 8.30.’

  Chapter 2

  Our four-wheeler called promptly at the appointed time and very soon we were trundling away through the noisy, crowded thoroughfares of Marylebone. Although the day had been bright and warm, the temperature had dropped sharply, and by sunset a slight evening chill had set in, bringing with it the first slender wisps of mist. We drove along Blandford Street, and as we went down through the junction of Lower William Street and Marylebone Lane, the yellow glare from the windows of the Queen’s Arms lit up the street-corner, and we could hear the merry buzz of singing voices mixed with the unmistakeable clatter of the piano resounding through the street. Crossing Wigmore Street, into Oxford and Regent Streets, we went down the Haymarket, past Trafalgar Square and into the Strand, through Covent Garden and on towards Fleet Street. Although the opera and theatre crowds had disappeared, there was still a milling throng thick on the pavements, and one could hear the hoarse shouts of the hot-chestnut sellers, the shrill calls of the flower girls, and the occasional hum of a barrel organ, whilst a steady procession of hansoms and broughams rattled by on the opposite side.

  I was somewhat diverted by this flowing tide of humanity which marked our passage through the beating heart of this magnificent city, though Holmes reclined in the corner, characteristically detached and deep in thought, unmoved and oblivious to his surroundings save for an occasional remark when some familiar sight brought to mind a previous case. By the time we had passed St Clement Dane’s, the pavements had grown less crowded, and as we drew by the Temple, thick woolly clouds of vapour were curling up from the steep lanes leading down to the river on our right and were beginning to suffuse the light from the gas-lamps and to deepen the gloom of the quieter streets of that quarter. Past St Paul’s, on through the sepulchral City and up beyond Bishopsgate, the breeze had dropped and the haze grew thicker and heavier. By the time we had arrived at our rendezvous with Lestrade in a warren of dismal backstreets in Spitalfields, we were mired in the drab wraiths of a summer fog. It may have been due to the depressing object of our journey, but I recall musing that such a fog as this had shrouded the nefarious activities of London’s felons since time immemorial.

  Once we had alighted from the cab, Holmes bid the driver wait for us and we followed Lestrade to the scene of the third murder: Frying Pan Alley, a dark, narrow, evil-smelling cobbled lane off Sandy Row, barely wide enough for the passage of a cart. Even in daytime, the tall buildings would have rendered the place sunless, and within a few yards of the opening, the shadowy passageway made a dog leg, which threw the corner into complete darkness. The foggy atmosphere and the footpath lit only by the single gas lamp at the end of the street gave the whole place an impression of brooding melancholy. Lestrade halted at the corner and, indicating a spot on the ground, began his explanation.

  ‘I thought we should begin with the most recent one and work backwards to the first. This is where Rosemary Carden, the third victim, was found. The woman who owns the house here,’ he pointed to a low window a few yards beyond the angle of the wall, ‘a widow, Mrs Greenbaum, describes herself as a light sleeper, and has two sons and a daughter who live on the premises, too. She deposes that they were all in bed by eleven o’clock and remained there undisturbed by any sound until the body was discovered and the police arrived.’

  Holmes surveyed the scene, taking in everything. He scrutinized the corner where the body was found, walked along to the window of the house, then gazed at the pavement, the high walls of the passage and the houses opposite, then back toward the entrance to the lane. By now, more than three days had passed, and it was beyond all hope that my companion would be able to glean any material evidence from the scene; not once did I see that spark of illumination in his features which would show that he had discovered anything of importance.

  Finally with a shrug he remarked, ‘Your assumption seems to have been that the deceased was murdered in situ. It seems barely credible that someone could have been murdered within yards of these houses without letting out a single sound and without putting up any kind of struggle.’

  ‘It is technically feasible to commit a murder of this kind without the victim making any sound,’ I replied to Holmes. ‘However it would have to be done very quickly, with precision and sudden great force; if it were botched in any way, it is obvious that the victim would scream out in terror and so alert the local populace.’

  ‘No, it simply won’t do,’ retorted Ho
lmes, ‘I’m afraid, Lestrade, I find it quite impossible to credit that this woman was murdered under the windows of houses in which whole families were sleeping. The only alternative explanation is that the victim’s corpse must have been conveyed here and dumped after the murder.’

  ‘But why would anyone want to do that?’ asked Lestrade incredulously.

  ‘Once we have discovered why they were murdered in the first place, perhaps we can come to a view on that question,’ replied Holmes. ‘There is nothing more to interest us here, now let us make our way to St Clement’s Court.’

  We returned to the waiting cab and proceeded through a succession of narrow, muddy streets of dirty, smoke-blackened two and three-storied brick tenements, some of the houses so narrow that they suggested stables built for human beings. The dour monotony of the entire district was relieved only by the gaudy street stalls in the lanes with their babble of quaint guttural tongues, riots of brightly-coloured fabrics lit by the flaring lamps, and the miasma of exotic odours. Finally we arrived at the spot off King William Street where the third murder had occurred. St Clement’s Court was at the confluence of a warren of alleyways which retained their mediaeval aspect, and which wound back to the rear of the parish church – two men could barely have passed side by side in the extremely constricted passageway.

  ‘It’s very quiet here in this part of the City, almost deserted during the night, and as you can see, there are few houses in the area,’ explained Lestrade. ‘Nothing was seen or heard until two fish porters heading down to the Billingsgate market happened to notice what they thought was a bundle of clothing, went to investigate and raised the alarm. The body was found right here at the mouth of the passage. It is at least possible in this case that the victim could have been murdered on the spot, for the nearest houses are a long way off from where the girl’s body was found.’