by Geri Schear
I itched to join him, to see what was going on, but courtesy compelled me to keep my seat. Softly, Beatrice whispered, “Poor Sherlock. Held prisoner by social convention.” She squeezed my hand in sympathy.
I did not have to sit for long. About fifteen minutes later, there was another knock at the door. Now the maid returned and, with an anxious look, said, “I beg your pardon, Rabbi, but Inspector Glaser asks if Mr Holmes might join him.”
“What has happened, Sarah?”
“I’m not certain, rabbi, but I think someone’s been killed.”
“Mein Gott! Who is it, do you know?”
“I do not know, Rabbi. The boy will take you to the address, Mr Holmes. It’s not far away.”
“Will you forgive me?” I said as I tossed my napkin on the table. “I hope I shall return shortly but...”
“Go. The cause of justice continues even on the Sabbath, Mr Holmes. I send my blessing for your safety and for David’s, too.”
“Holmes?” Watson said.
I shook my head. “I’d prefer you stay and look after Beatrice, Watson.”
“I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself,” she said giving me a scolding look.
“We shall see to the lady’s safety, Mr Holmes,” Solberg said.
“Indeed, Beatrice can stay here for the night if need be,” the rabbi’s wife said. “Esther will not mind sharing her room.”
“Oh, please say you will,” the Rabbi’s daughter said.
My wife, none too pleased at being managed, said in a tone that belied her words, “Thank you. I should be delighted.” Then she made a face at me.
The body that had been Mordechai Schwartz lay face down in a sea of still-wet blood. Glaser glanced up at me with anguished eyes.
“Stupid old fool,” he said. “What in the world had he been up to? Why would anyone want to hurt him?”
Watson, careful to avoid any of the bloody tracks on the floor, knelt down and examined the body.
“Still warm,” he said. “Rigor has not set in yet. Dead considerably less than an hour. Possibly no more than twenty or thirty minutes.”
We were in the room where I had first met Schwartz. Now he lay not eight feet from the long bench where we had drunk tea sweetened with cherries. The air tasted of blood and death and violence.
“Shot at point blank range,” I said. “Through the left temple. You see the stippling around the wound. Death would have been instantaneous.”
“Are you all right, Glaser?” Watson said looking up at the inspector. “Do you need to get some air?”
The policeman shook his head but his hand squeezed Watson’s shoulder as if to steady himself. “Thank you, no. I’ll be all right.”
His blue eyes were almost violet in the gaslight, intensified by the redness of his sclera. His cheeks were damp with tears I doubt he even knew he’d shed.
“Who found the body?” I asked.
“Constable de Vine. He’s outside; I knew you’d want to talk to him. I sent the other constable, Bing, to start the search.”
“Excellent. Ask de Vine to step in, would you, Glaser?”
The policeman hesitated. “Is that really necessary, Mr Holmes? He’s never seen a murdered body before. He’s pretty shaken.”
“He’ll have to get used to such things if he wants to be a police officer,” Watson said. “Still, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad an idea to talk to him outside, Holmes.”
Such squeamishness! True, the impact of the bullet had shattered the skull and the wound was dreadful. The arterial spray drenched not only the floor but also the walls and the ceiling. Gobbets of bone and brain tissue spattered the leather tobacco pouches that hung from the big black beam. Dreadful, I admit, but as Watson said, a policeman surely must get used to such things.
He and Glaser were looking at me with such, I don’t know, hope, I suppose. In the end, I submitted and went outside.
The young officer, Charlie de Vine, was a sickly greenish colour and he was shaking so hard his truncheon and keys beat a dissonant rhythm against his hip.
“This gentleman is Mr Sherlock Holmes,” Glaser said. “He wants to ask you some questions.” He spoke matter-of-factly, thank goodness. I can make some concessions to a man in shock but I draw the line at mollycoddling.
“Yes, sir,” the fellow stuttered.
I suddenly had a memory of my case last year and another man who died of a gunshot wound to the head. I remember B standing at the doorway looking at him. She was shaken and pale but ten times calmer than this supposed officer of the law.
“Tell me what happened from the moment you arrived, de Vine,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” the young policeman stammered. “Well, it was a quiet night. I mean, this area on a Friday evening tends to be very dull. Anyway, about...” he glanced at his watch. “About thirty minutes ago I was coming down Hatton Garden and I saw a light in the window of Mr Schwartz’s building. It was just a glimpse and I thought at first I’d imagined it.”
“It was not the gaslight?” I said.
“No, sir. It was a torch. I saw the beam of light move about.”
“Good. Continue.”
“I was just crossing the street when I saw a flash through the window and heard a bang, all in the same second like. I blew my whistle and started up the steps. I could smell something, too, something pungent like chemicals or burning.
“I used my torch and made my way down the hall. Then the door at the end burst open and someone came rushing out. He knocked me over. I blew my whistle again and I think I shouted.”
I stared hard at the young man and he continued to jangle.
“What happened next?” I said.
“Next?”
“Did you give chase?”
“No.” The word came out flat and pallid. “I’m sorry, sir. I know I should have.”
“What did you do?”
“I went inside to see where the man had come from. It’s that confusing in there. I fell over twice on the flagstones and I bumped my head on one of those beams. Anyway, after a few minutes I found him, that Mr Schwartz gentleman. Gave me a right turn to see all that blood.”
I gazed at the man for several moments in silence. Watson knows me too well to interrupt. Glaser remained silent, too.
“Is there anything else you haven’t told us?” I said. “Think carefully.”
The man looked in my eye and said, “No, Mr Holmes. Nothing.”
“What did the man look like? The one who knocked you down.”
“He was young, in his early twenties, I’d say. He was tall and clean shaven.” The words were calmer now, more fluid. “He had a hat on, pulled down low but I could see he had light-coloured hair, or it could have been silver. He wore a longish coat in some dark colour. Black or dark brown, perhaps.”
“What did he have in his hands?”
“In his hands, sir?”
“Was he carrying anything?”
The policeman took a moment then said, “No, sir. He had the gun in his right hand, but it was just dangling from his fingers, like he’d forgotten he was carrying it. But he didn’t have anything else. He pushed me down with his left hand. Strong as a bull, he was.”
“Very well. Stay here, Constable. We need to examine the scene in more detail.”
We returned to the body of the late Mordechai Schwartz. At my request, Watson went around turning on all the gaslights. I examined the entire room and traced my way back through the outer chambers, then to the hallway and, finally, the front door of the building. All the windows and locks were intact. There was no evidence the killer had forced his way in.
There was a confusion of tracks in the murder room: Large footprints that slid and skidded in the blood headed in several different directions. It was ob
vious what had happened: The murder had occurred in the dark. Now, alone, the killer found himself disoriented. I also reasoned that he was agitated. Perhaps the murder had not been premeditated? No. He had brought a weapon so he was prepared to use it.
The smears on the floor suggested the killer had fallen over at least twice. It was definitely he; de Vine is a much smaller man with a correspondingly smaller foot. His own tracks were easy enough even for an amateur to track.
So, the killer was disoriented. He fell. The sound of de Vine’s whistle panicked him. How had he found his way to the exit? De Vine’s whistle or his torch probably acted as a guide. What a fool that policeman was. Such rank incompetence. If only he’d used his wits, used some stealth, we might have trapped our killer nicely. Or was it mere foolishness?
We went back outside. I said to De Vine, “You’d recognise this man if you saw him again?”
“I think so, sir, though it was dark.”
“Had you seen him before?”
“No, Mr Holmes. I’d remember a fellow like that.”
“What about Mr Schwartz’s neighbours? Who lives in the buildings on either side?”
“I don’t know,” he said. With a furtive glance at Glaser he added, “I don’t know these people.”
Before I could reply, a report cracked through the night.
“Stay here,” Glaser commanded as he, Watson and I fled down the road in the direction of the shot, for shot it most certainly was.
Chapter Eleven
Where Hatton Wall meets Saffron Hill there lay a body.
“It’s Bing,” Glaser said when we were still forty yards away. The lamplight clearly picked out the stricken policeman’s silver uniform buttons and his helmet.
We reached the body and the inspector knelt beside it. “Poor devil,” he said.
“A sudden attack,” I said. “He didn’t have time to blow his whistle.”
“The bullet went right through his heart,” Watson said. “He was dead before he fell.”
“He’s just a boy,” Glaser said. He raised his anguished eyes to me. “I want this man, this Avery Rickman, Mr Holmes. I will find him. You may depend upon it. I will find him.”
“You can count on my help, Inspector,” I said.
“And mine,” Watson added.
I put my arm around Glaser’s shoulders and led him a few feet away from the corpse. “Take a breath. No, no, it’s all in hand. There’s nothing you can do for the man now.”
After a moment, he stopped shaking and took a deep breath.
“It is my experience that work is the best remedy for distress. You’d best call for some assistance, Glaser. You now have two murders to investigate and I wouldn’t place much faith in de Vine. Go and telephone the Yard. Watson will stand guard here and I shall begin the search. Speak to Lestrade if he is on duty and send him my compliments. Ask him if a young constable by the name of Maurice Stevens may be available to assist. He is a good man despite his youth and comparative inexperience. I trust him.”
Glaser nodded and ran down the road.
I turned to my friend and said, “Watson, will you be all right if I leave you here alone?”
“Go,” he said. “I’ll be fine, Holmes.”
“Be careful. This is a filthy area. There are dangers aplenty even without gun-wielding murderers. If you catch sight of this fellow on no account try to detain him.”
“No fear of that, Holmes.”
I ran south down Saffron Hill all the way to Charterhouse Street, then west from Holborn Circus to Brook Street, and then back north. I investigated Dorrington Street and Leather Lane, St Cross Street and came back via Hatton Garden, but the killer had vanished.
At last, I returned to where Watson remained with the body. A small crowd had gathered but they kept their distance. In the cramped and crooked buildings people leaned out from their windows, watching everything.
“Any luck?” Watson asked.
“Nothing. Has anything happened here?”
“Not a thing other than the usual busybodies gawking.” He nodded towards the macabre spectators.
I approached the crowd. “Did any of you see what happened?” I said. “Come, if this fellow will murder a policeman no one is safe. It is in your interests to help us.”
I turned at the sound of running footsteps. It was Glaser. He addressed the gawkers. “Come on,” he said. “One of you must have seen something. Lefkowitz? Blum?”
The mob melted, vanished. Only a prostitute and a retired naval officer remained.
The woman said, “I saw him, sir. A tall and slender man he was and hair like snow, though he was young enough.”
“It’s Maggie Chase, isn’t it? Hullo, Maggie. Did you see what happened?” Glaser said.
“Hullo, Davy,” she crooned, taking his arm. Then, remembering the horror, suddenly dropped her flirtatious attitude. “It was all so fast. I didn’t see the shooting. I heard a loud bang and turned in time to see the fellow run away.”
“I saw it,” the old sailor said. “The tall man, with very pale hair like this girl says, and he was running down the street. The young policeman asked him to stop for a moment. Very polite he was, called the devil ‘sir’. But the man turned and just fired. There was no need for it. No need at all.”
“There now, Cap’n, you mustn’t upset yourself.”
“Which way did they go?” I said.
The pair pointed back in the direction from which I had come.
“He stopped,” the sailor said, “in the doorway of one of those houses up there. I saw him stop and bend down.”
“What do you think he was doing?” Glaser said.
“Being violently ill, I reckon,” the man replied.
I walked slowly back along Saffron Hill examining every inch of the road. All the doors were shut; the windows had their curtains drawn. There would be no help for the police in this place.
Some thirty yards later, I stopped and studied a puddle of vomitus. It reeked of undigested alcohol. There was potato, too. So that was his dinner: a potato and a jug of whisky.
I returned to Watson and Glaser, now standing alone with the dead body. The inspector said,
“Inspector Lestrade sends his compliments, Mr Holmes. He himself is engaged upon another case but he is sending Hill and young Stevens as you requested.”
“That is very good news. What else has been happening?”
“I’ve sent word that there is a dangerous man at large, and have asked that people stay in their homes for now. I’ve also spoken to the rabbi. He make send a plea for any witnesses to come forward. I doubt there will be any, but we lose nothing by trying.”
“That was well thought of,” I said. “Have you informed Schwartz’s family yet? Good. If you do not object, I should like to accompany you when you do so. Perhaps they might be able to explain what he was doing in that building tonight.”
“I’d like to come, too,” Watson said. “But we cannot leave the body.”
Even as he spoke, I could hear the rattle of the police vehicle approaching. A moment later, Tavistock Hill, Stevens, and four other constables joined us on the pavement.
“Good to see you again, gentlemen,” Hill greeted us.
There followed a wholly unnecessary period of handshaking and pleasantries. Stevens, still shiny in his brand new uniform, stood proud yet watchful at the perimeter. His eyes were scanning the ground around the body, the buildings where people sat at their windows peering into the street, and the street itself. I would like to think this acute attention is something he learned from watching me work on the Rillington Manor case, but in truth, I think the man just has an innate capacity for taking pains. He would not have let a killer get away without at least giving chase.
The two inspectors, in the meantime, had
caught up on events and made a plan. They would divide the two crime scenes between them with Hill responsible for the murder of the policeman while Glaser handled Schwartz’s case, though Glaser, as senior officer, would oversee both crimes. Watson and I would assist the two strands of investigation.
“He has already killed twice, that we know of,” I said. “So you must be on your guard and take no unnecessary risks. Use your whistles.
“Stevens, a word with you, if I may.”
I took the young man aside and said quietly, “I have a particular task for you, if you would be so kind.”
“Whatever you need, Mr Holmes. I’m your man.”
I explained and he nodded. “I understand.”
“Not a word to any of your colleagues, not even Inspector Glaser. You come directly to me or to Doctor Watson.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. No quibbles about the chain of command or other such nonsense, thank goodness.
We returned to Watson and Glaser. I said, “I thought since Stevens is a newly minted policeman he might be best served working with Constable de Vine.”
“I had thought to send de Vine home,” Glaser said. “You saw how shaken he was.”
“Which is why I think he could use some company,” I said.
“He’d surely see it as a condemnation if you sent him off duty, Glaser,” Watson said, following my lead.
“Perhaps,” Glaser said. “Very well.”
We stopped on our way back long enough for me to indicate the vomitus I had found.
“Whisky and potato. Hardly nutritious,” Watson observed.
“Yes,” Stevens said. “But what does it tell us?”
“Glaser?” I said.
“Well, the killer dined before meeting with Schwartz. He only ate a potato so he is too poor to afford meat. Of course, he could be Catholic; I believe they do not eat meat on Fridays.”
“He may be a Catholic and he may certainly be impoverished. However, I think there is another explanation. Watson?”
“It’s the whisky that is significant,” my friend replied. “There is no blood or other indication that the fellow is a chronic drinker, though we cannot be certain. There isn’t very much food here and what there is is undigested, so I’d venture to say he was nervous and steeling himself for whatever lay ahead.”
