“We identified her from the stencilings on one of her petticoats,”
Thicke said. “Lambeth Workhouse markings. The only personal articles found in her possession were a broken comb and a piece of broken looking-glass. She hadn’t a farthing to her name.”
The expression on Holmes’s face was grim, his features strained. “For God’s sake, cover her up,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
He groped in his coat pocket for his magnifying glass and proceeded to examine the woman’s fingernails, first the right hand, then the left. After several minutes he arose from his crouched position and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, “not a thing. One would have hoped to have found a hair or a sample of blood, even a fragment of torn skin or flesh, but there is nothing!”
He stood looking down at the woman’s body for a long moment as if his gaze alone would extract the information he sought.
Finally Abberline spoke: “Is there anything else you wish to see?”
Holmes shook his head. “No. We are finished here, I think. Let us leave this dismal place.”
It was almost dawn before Watson and Holmes returned to Baker Street. Both were tired and somewhat disheveled from their labors, the distinctive mud of Spitalfields now caking their shoes and trouser bottoms.
After leaving the mortuary, despite the lateness of the hour and lack of light, Holmes had insisted upon a visit to the scene of the crime. As anticipated, the visit was unfruitful. Holmes could do little more than ascertain where the body was first discovered, and “take the lay of the land,” as he put it. Buck’s Row, where the body had been found, was much like any of the other mean streets of Spitalfields, a narrow, gloomy passageway lined with rows of ramshackle tenements smelling of rotting garbage. One end of the alley let out into Baker’s Row, the other into Brady Street.
“If it were me,” said Thicke, “I would ‘ave made straightaway for Brady Street and thence for the underground station at Whitechapel Road. Easy to get lost in the crowd there.”
“You have as good a chance of being right as wrong,” responded Holmes, “inasmuch as there were only two ways our man could have gone.”
“Of course we questioned everyone who lives in the alley,” Abberline said. “No one saw or heard anything, which is what you might expect them to say — to us, in any event. Although Thicke here is well known by the locals, and is probably trusted by them more than most of us. They would talk to him if to anyone.”
“And none of them heard anything?” asked Watson.
“No,” replied Thicke, shaking his head. “The closest would have been Mrs. Green, who lives down there just a few doors away, and she said she didn’t ‘ear a thing, not a blessed thing, even though she was awake. Couldn’t sleep, she said. I know ‘er; I think she’d tell me if she knew something. Mrs. Emma Green is ‘er name, a decent sort really.”
Holmes shrugged. “Me for my bed, gentlemen. There is nothing to be learned here.”
Abberline would not leave it at that, however. “Do you not have any thoughts at all, Mr. Holmes? Or suggestions?”
“Only one, I’m afraid. Wait for the next murder.”
Watson and the two policemen stared at him.
“Oh, there will be another one, have no doubt. Have no doubt whatsoever.”
The first gray light of dawn was filtering through the window draperies when Holmes finally climbed into his bed, his once-immaculate evening clothes an untidy pile in the corner by the dressing table. No sooner had he pulled the covers over his shoulder than there was a light tap at the door and Watson stuck his head in.
“Forgive me, Holmes, but there is one thing I fail to understand.”
“Only one? How simply wonderful for you,” Holmes said sleepily.
“Last night in Simpson’s — you recall?”
“As if it were only yesterday.”
“That American chap sitting at the table across from us. You said he was in railroads, I believe.”
“Quite so.”
“However did you know that? You never did tell me.”
Holmes yawned. “Oh, that. Why, I overheard him say so, old fellow.”
Watson stood there. “Good night, Holmes!” he snapped.
“Good night, old fellow.”
Four
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2-SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1888
“Her cuisine is a little limited, but she has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman.”
— The Naval Treaty
Watson awoke shortly after noon to find tea waiting for him in the front room, brought up with the Sunday newspapers by Mrs. Hudson, who had heard him stirring. Holmes was nowhere to be found.
“Gone these few hours since,” announced Mrs. Hudson as she shook her head disgustedly. “Don’t ask me where, I don’t know. I never know where he goes or when he’ll be back. Hardly pecked at his breakfast, and such a nice one too. My best Sunday table with kippers and eggs just like he likes them, and that marmalade he favors — costs a pretty penny, I can tell you. And him? He gulps some coffee down and is off! Hardly half a cup!” She shook her head some more and actually waggled a finger at him. “Out till all hours of the night, the both of you! You’re as bad as he is, sometimes!”
Watson stood there like a shamefaced schoolboy.
“I expect he’ll miss his dinner too!” she said accusingly, as if it were Watson’s fault.
“I don’t know, I’m sure, Mrs. Hudson,” he mumbled. “No doubt he’ll do his best to return in time.”
She sniffed. “Well, I have my church meeting to attend and I won’t hold up dinner, so if he’s not back in time for it, he’ll just have to go without. Now, drink that tea before it gets cold, and there’s fresh scones there under the warmer, and try not to get crumbs on the floor!”
“Yes, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you very much indeed.”
“And the two of you tracked mud in last night,” she charged as she exited the room, closing the door on the last few words of her parting sentence. “All over the stair runner, it was!”
“Sorry, Mrs. Hudson, I assure you,” he called to the closed door as he attacked the tea and scones.
The remainder of the afternoon was spent with the newspapers, which were full of the Whitechapel murder and fairly screamed with the horror of it all. The leader in The Star, lurid as it was, was more restrained than some, and far more accurate than others:
A REVOLTING MURDER
A WOMAN FOUND HORRIBLYM
MUTILATED IN WHITECHAPEL
GHASTLY CRIMES BY A MANIAC
A Policeman Discovers a Woman Lying in the Gutter with Her Throat Cut — After She Has Been Removed to the Hospital She Is Found to Be Disemboweled11
London’s popular press could be forgiven for indulging in sensationalism in this particular instance, for it was indeed a sensational occurrence. Victorian England had never experienced such a horrible, vicious crime. Such a thing was virtually unknown, unthinkable. Murders were indeed committed, but generally in connection with a robbery or as a result of a personal dispute. But rarely was the victim a woman, even of the lowest order. No Englishman would treat a woman so cruelly. If this kind of depravity existed at all, it existed on the Continent — in Germany or France or Italy. That was to be expected of foreigners, after all. But to have such a thing happen on home soil was simply without precedent. The public, highborn and low, was deeply shocked, and the popular press accurately reflected that view.12
The day was waning, the shadows deepening, and Watson was dozing over the cricket scores when Holmes’s footstep was heard on the stairs at last. Watson awoke with a start as the door crashed open; Holmes cast him the briefest of dark glances upon entering.
“I should be both eternally and internally grateful for a good stiff one, if you would be so kind,” he said. “The day has been entirely fruitless.”
Watson bestirred himself and crossed over to the tantalus and gasogene as Holmes made for his room, removing his suit coat.13
“Wha
t have you been about?” Watson called over his shoulder as he fussed with the drinks.
“I have been about totally frustrated is what I have been about,” Holmes shouted irritably. He emerged a minute or so later in his favorite dressing gown, and took the whiskey and soda that Watson handed him, nodding his thanks and sipping appreciatively.14
“It would seem that for once our friends at the Yard are not alone in being confounded,” he said. “I tell you, this maniac, whoever he is, may just as well be a ghost as a living creature, for all the spoor he has left behind him. No one saw him, no one heard him, no one knows a thing! We have a murder without a motive — a singularly brutal murder, I might add — we have four people who came upon the victim within minutes, perhaps even seconds of the crime, we have only two directions in which the murderer could have gone, and we have nothing! Absolutely nothing!”
“You have been back to Spitalfields?”
Holmes plopped himself down in his favorite chair, crossed his legs Indian fashion, and gazed into the empty fireplace. “I have been to Spitalfields, I have been to the district police station, I have been to the local settlement house, to the local workhouse, to several doss-houses, and even to a few ‘houses of joy’ would you believe?”
“Holmes!”
“I have spoken to police constables, publicans, ladies of the street, missionaries, derelicts, teamsters, and jarvies, and just about everyone else you could think of short of the lord chancellor, and for all the good it has done me I might as well have frittered away the day as I see you have done.”
Watson ignored the barb. “You have seen Abberline again?”
“No,” he said disgustedly. “To what purpose? He has nothing, poor fellow. God knows he is trying hard enough. A good man, that — far better than most.” High praise, coming from Holmes.
“So, what’s your next step?”
Holmes brooded for a minute before answering, then shook his head violently as if to rid himself of depressing thoughts. “My next step? Why, a good wash-up and dinner! If I am not mistaken, that is Mrs. Hudson’s footfall upon the tread, and she most assuredly is accompanied by a leg of mutton, if the smells emanating from the kitchen are to be credited. And I, dear fellow, am famished!”
For all his protestations of hunger, Holmes ate very little that Sabbath meal; he merely pecked at his food, listlessly moving it around the plate, deep in thought. And when the dinner service was cleared away, he moved to his chair by the fireplace and spent the evening brooding, in one of his brown studies, not even looking up when several hours later Watson finally left the room to retire, quietly wishing him a good night.
The next morning, a bright and sunny one, Watson awoke at his usual hour to find Holmes once again already gone. This time Mrs. Hudson was at least able to impart the news, when she arrived with the breakfast things, that he had left hurriedly, in summons to an urgent telegram, that he was carrying his battered Gladstone bag, and that she overheard him tell the cabby that his destination was Paddington Station. “And when I called after him to ask what time he wanted dinner served, he shouted back, ‘seven-thirty next October.’ Now, really!” She shook her head and moved toward the door. “Oh, he said to tell you to be sure to take notice of the mantel.”
Watson went there at once, where he retrieved the note Holmes had left for him. It took a moment to decipher the hurried scrawl:
W —
Off to the countryside for a few days.
Looks to be an interesting little matter.
If nothing else, I shall enjoy the comforts
and diversions of a country manor.
H.15
The “few days” turned into several more. It was late Friday evening before Holmes returned from the countryside, a glow in his cheeks and, for once, in good humor. He declined to go into the details of the case, however, and even refrained from telling Watson where in the countryside he had been.
“His lordship insisted upon total confidentiality, and I gave him my word. Can’t say as I blame him, though he is hardly the first old fool with a young wife and a randy groundskeeper. But it is nothing that would interest you, dear fellow, I assure you. Merely a sordid little case of blackmail, a simple matter after all. It just took a while to sort out. A pretty house, though, with quite a lovely park. Unfortunately, the food was abominable. The lord of the manor is a vegetarian, would you believe: one of those rabid antivivisectionist fellows. Professes to despise all blood sports, and even chases behind the local hunt in his trap, ringing a cowbell and bellowing quotations of that Oscar Whatshisname chap.16 Won’t allow meat or fish at his table. Not even an egg for breakfast! God, what I would not do for a good thick cut of roast beef. Is it too late to dine at Rules, do you think? Oh, I see that you have been at table already. Pity, that. Well, perhaps tomorrow, if you have no other engagement. Yes, Rules tomorrow: something to which we may look forward!”
But it was not to be. It was shortly after seven A.M. when the two of them were awakened. There stood Mrs. Hudson on the landing, in robe and slippers and old-fashioned mobcap, the unmistakable uniform of a telegraph boy behind her in the shadows. “Most urgent it is, the lad says. Is it bad news, do you think? Oh, heavens, it must be at this hour!”
“Calm yourself, Mrs. Hudson, dear lady,” Holmes said, patting her on the arm. “Back to your bed now, and mind the stairs. No, no, don’t trouble about breakfast. A shilling for the lad, Watson, if you would be so kind. Make it two, seeing the earliness of the hour.”
Holmes turned up the lamp on the side table and tore open the flimsy envelope. A mere glance at the telegram was all that was needed.
“Quick, Watson, into your clothes! The devil’s afoot!”
Five
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1888
“You know my method. It is founded upon the observation of trifles.”
— The Boscombe Valley Mystery
It was a wild dash through the nearly empty streets of a gray-streaked London, the clatter of the horse’s hooves loud against the cobbles, Holmes banging on the ceiling of the hansom cab with his walking stick, urging the driver on to even greater feats of recklessness. Fortunately there was little traffic at that hour to impede their progress.
“Faster, man! Faster!” Holmes shouted. “In heaven’s name, faster!”
Watson, who had been handed the telegram as soon as he was bundled half dressed into the hansom by Holmes, was trying unsuccessfully to make out its message by the feeble light of the coach lamp, but the jouncing and buffeting of the speeding conveyance made it impossible.
“Great Scot, Holmes!” he shouted to make himself heard over the clamor. “Will you not tell me what has happened?”
“Surely you’ve guessed!” Holmes shouted back. “There’s been another murder in the East End!”
“Good Lord!”
“That’s from Abberline,” snapped Holmes, gesturing to the crumpled message in Watson’s hand. Once again he called up to the driver, “Faster, man! Can’t you go faster!”
Watson, for one, devoutly wished that he could not, for the coach was swaying alarmingly as it was; he could keep his seat only with the greatest of difficulty: His hat was knocked askew at almost every turning, and he found himself gripping the side strap so tightly that his hand hurt from the pressure.
“When did it occur?” he shouted to Holmes as he resettled himself in his seat after a particularly wild swing around Oxford Circus. “Does the telegram say?”
“Barely an hour ago, from what I gather. Fortunately the post office was at its most efficient. I’m thankful for that!”17
“Does Abberline give any details?”
“No,” came the shouted reply. “The telegram says merely, ‘Come in haste. Another Whitechapel outrage.’ And then the address, Twenty-nine Hanbury Street.”
“Hanbury Street? Not all that far from the site of the last murder, is it?”
“No, not all that far. A short stroll away; a half mile, perhaps.”
Th
ey then lapsed into silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts as the hansom sped through the city.
Familiar streets and landmarks flashed by in a kaleidoscopic blur as the daylight grew stronger, and the relatively few pedestrians at large turned to stare in alarm as the coach hurtled past: Oxford Street into Tottenham Court Road into High Holborn into Newgate, past the towering dome of St. Paul’s into Cheapside, Cornhill, Leadenhall, Aldgate — their progress from the West End of London to the East End was made in what must have been near-record time. It ran the course not only of the city’s streets but of its social and economic groupings as well, for while the two ends of London were mere miles apart geographically, they were poles apart in every other aspect. Their journey took them past mansions and palaces of the titled and wealthy, the sedate homes of the merely affluent; past shops filled with finery and all manner of delicacies, through lower-middle-class neighborhoods, shabbily genteel, into poor working-class districts, grimy, grim, and colorless.
The hansom took a particularly violent turn as it rounded into Commercial Street from Aldgate, the horse veering wildly to avoid a lumbering brewer’s dray: Both of them were knocked sharply to the side. The jarvey now was forced to slow his horse; the streets were getting narrower, the traffic heavier. They rode on in tense silence: The jostling ride made conversation difficult in any case, and the scarcity of information made it pointless.
The sky had brightened considerably in the meantime, but still the day promised to be a drizzly-gray one. Visibility was such that it was just possible to make out distinctive features of the buildings they hurried past. Holmes leaned forward expectantly in his seat, peering onward.
“Ah, we are almost there,” he said at last. “If I’m not mistaken, there’s a bevy of ‘bobbies’18 milling about up ahead.”
Watson, too, spotted the police picket in the distance. Obviously, the street leading to the scene of the crime had been cordoned off, and despite the early hour, small crowds of onlookers stood off to one side, straining to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that had caused the police to converge on the neighborhood in the first place.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors Page 4
