Though several ounces of his favorite black shag had been expended, and the sitting room’s atmosphere made no sweeter in the process, he came no closer to finding answers to the questions that plagued him. If anything, the questions multiplied in his mind and became more perplexing.
Watson? He was at a total loss. He did not have the faintest idea of what to make of recent events. It was beyond him. Holmes’s bewildering statement that James K. Stephen was not the Ripper had set his mind on endless trails of speculation, trails that twisted and tangled and got him nowhere, leading him ever deeper into thickets of confusion. If Stephen was not the Ripper, who, then, was? And if Stephen was not the Ripper, why, then, was Holmes so interested in him?
Holmes, of course, would provide him with no further enlightenment — that was a foregone conclusion. He rarely revealed his thoughts until they were totally clarified in his own mind, until he was satisfied that any ideas that resulted were valid and any judgments that were made were correct. And besides, like the stage conjurer who delights in mystifying his audience by drawing out the suspense, the artiste in him required just the right moment to perform his sleight-of-hand, the perfect time to make the dramatic gesture.
Meanwhile, Captain Burton-FitzHerbert, true to his word, made a concerted effort to obtain the information that Holmes had requested, but he was unable to come up with anything very helpful. For the most part, he could confirm only what was already known, that Mr. James K. Stephen was a particular friend of Prince Eddy’s and an almost constant companion during the prince’s private moments in London, the two appearing to be all but inseparable. Sometimes they were joined by others of a select group in attending the theater and dining at one or another of the city’s more fashionable restaurants: the Café Monico, the Criterion (the “Cri,” as it was called by habitués), the Café Royal in Regent Street’s Quadrant, or Florence’s at Rupert and Coventry Streets, the latter two known to be popular with Oscar Wilde’s set. Sometimes they were entertained at small dinner parties in private homes. And, reported a stone-faced Captain Burton-FitzHerbert, sometimes they paid a visit to a certain address in Cleveland Street off Tottenham Court Road, that same homosexual establishment which Holmes had placed under personal surveillance.
That the captain was most uncomfortable in divulging this last bit of information was evident. “Atrocious bad form,” he muttered — his way of letting it be known that he was not at all happy to be discussing matters that any proper gentleman would consider inappropriate under any circumstances. He was doing so only because he was instructed by the Prince of Wales to cooperate fully with Holmes, and he wanted that made abundantly clear.
Curiously, Holmes displayed little interest in the information the Guards officer had to impart, hardly questioning him at all as to the details. To Watson, who was listening quietly in the background, Holmes seemed more interested in the sources of Burton-FitzHerbert’s information than in the information itself. He questioned him closely about the identity of his informants.
His major source, as it turned out, was a none-too-circumspect coachman by the name of Netley who was usually to be found hanging about in the Royal Mews near Buckingham Palace. Netley was not a regular palace coachman, but belonged to a pool of spare drivers who were taken on as needed during particularly busy times, or as substitutes for staff coachmen who were ill. Generally members of this pool drove for lesser palace aides and royal messengers, but now and then, when things got really tight, Netley was assigned to younger members of the royal family or their visiting cousins from the Continent. On more than one occasion, he drove for Prince Eddy, and on more than one of those occasions, Prince Eddy was accompanied by one Mr. James Kenneth Stephen.
The coachman, highly flattered that a Guards officer and royal equerry would grant him anything more than a sniff and a nod, let alone actually initiate a conversation with him, was pleased to share his store of knowledge with Captain Burton-FitzHerbert, a store that was not inconsiderable. What Netley had not amassed through personal observation (and he was a most ardent observer), he learned secondhand from his colleagues who, it seemed, gossiped among themselves incessantly. The prattle in the mews “flowed as freely as feed grain from a split sack,” noted Burton-FitzHerbert with a smug little smile, savoring what he considered an uncommonly clever turn of speech. Yes, he said, many a choice tidbit made the rounds of the tack room, along with the saddle soap and metal polish, and in the stalls while the lads attended to their equine charges, and in various palace courtyards while they loitered about waiting for their human ones.
And that basically was it. Aside from the stable gossip, Burton-FitzHerbert was able to provide little else. However, he did give Holmes a short list of recent dates when Prince Eddy had been in London, a list that Holmes glanced at only briefly before placing it into the closest handy depository, a copy of Burke’s Peerage, which happened to be on the table next to his chair.
But it would seem that Burton-FitzHerbert had failed to come up with the information Holmes was most interested in obtaining, for Watson could not help but notice the look of disappointment on his face after the military man had departed.
“Really, Holmes, I don’t know how you expect people to gather intelligence for you when you won’t even let them know what they’re looking for! There is such a thing as being too secretive.”
Holmes favored him with a wintry, thin-lipped smile. “Oh, I don’t know. One can never be too circumspect. If I tell our young friend what it is that I am looking for, there is always the danger he will let it slip to someone else, and that would never do. But if he were to come upon it in the natural course of events — even without knowing what it was — it is the kind of thing he almost certainly would report to me without being prompted, and very likely without recognizing the full extent of its importance. And that would be most desirable. I find that a secret is best kept by keeping secret the fact that it is a secret.” He reached for a fresh pipe.
Watson considered him for a brief moment. “Came upon what?”
“Hmm?”
“You said that if he were to come upon it, he would tell you even if he didn’t know what it was. Exactly what is it that you wish to know?”
Holmes shot him a sidelong glance, but did not reply. He smiled faintly at Watson’s expression of annoyance.
“In any event,” he said, reaching for the Persian slipper in which he kept his tobacco, “it is of little consequence.”
But his manner belied his words, for he once again retired to his chair to brood, long legs outstretched, chin on chest, billows of smoke rising in splendid puffs from his great yellowed meerschaum.
There was much to brood about. To begin with was the fact that the murderer knew that he, Holmes, was involved in the investigation; it was unlikely it was sheer guesswork on the man’s part. The only possible answer was that he was close to someone who had reason to know and who willingly (but in all likelihood, unwittingly) shared that information with him, someone who was either with the police, the Home Office, or, less likely, connected to the prime minister or the Prince of Wales — or, least likely of all, connected to Mycroft.
Holmes shook his head silently. No, the latter notion was totally out of the question. Mycroft’s secrets were inviolate. He rarely confided in anyone, and then only if there was good and sufficient reason for the individual to know. In that respect, he was not very much different from any other government bureaucrat. He had a positive dread of sharing information on any account, whether it be sensitive or not, for he believed almost devoutly that to know something that somebody else didn’t was, to put it crassly, money in the bank.
It had to be some other source — a source that perhaps Lord Randolph Churchill had access to as well, for he also appeared to have knowledge he should not have. No matter how good his connections and channels of information, there were certain things he could not possibly know and yet did, and Holmes was as much confounded by this as he was by anything.
Lit
tle wonder that he had remained the better part of the past few days burrowed deep in his chair, pipe rack and tobacco slipper close at hand. To Watson he seemed depressed and discouraged — understandably so. He was no further along with his investigations than he had been weeks earlier. Indeed, the new disclosures served only to confuse matters further, adding, in his words, “layers of mist to the haze that already enshrouds the fog.”
As if in sympathetic response, the room filled with a haze of his own making, and he withdrew behind it gratefully, as if behind a protective curtain that insulated him from the routine annoyances and petty disturbances of life around him.
But not all of Holmes’s time in that period was spent in quiet contemplation. It had been anything but a tranquil period at 221B Baker Street. There had been an almost constant procession of visitors — incessant comings and goings and telegrams at all hours of the day and night. It was a period of activity that had all but driven poor Mrs. Hudson to distraction, and, had it not been for the timely addition of Billy to the household several days earlier, all of the bustle and bother would have surely been beyond her endurance.
Billy was young and energetic; a flight of stairs meant nothing to him. He scampered up and down with the ease of a mouse, and even several dozen ascents and descents a day (and there averaged at least that many during that period) failed to sap his energy or diminish his enthusiasm. He was like a puppy’s tail that never seemed to tire of wagging, a poor working-class lad with large dark eyes and small prospects, eager to please and do well, puffed with a newfound pride, his neck and hands scrubbed unaccustomedly clean, unruly hair newly clipped and, if not totally subdued, at least reasonably amenable to the blandishments of hairbrush and pomade, the brass buttons of his tunic shined to a fare-thee-well, almost as bright as the glitter in his eye, almost as shiny as the apple glow of his cheek.88
Billy was not from the neighborhood but from some poorer district across town, the young son of a local shopkeeper’s widowed sister who had gone tubercular and could no longer care for him properly. Boys like him usually ended up in the workhouse or worse, and he knew it. So if during those first few days he seemed annoyingly too willing, too eager to please, too desperate to do the right thing, surely — surely — he could be forgiven.
It was not his labors or long hours but his stiff new shoes that finally slowed him down, raising blisters the size of ha’pennies on the heels of both his feet so that by the time Sunday evening came around he was reduced to a painful hobble, a not-unwelcome predicament insofar as the rest of the household was concerned, because the shoes squeaked horribly, a most irritating noise that no amount of tallow seemed able to dampen.
But neither could the discomfort of mere blisters dampen Billy’s enthusiasm. He was almost as proud of his new employment as he was of his page’s uniform, which, though secondhand (or was it third?), showed hardly any signs of sag or wear and fit him admirably — this last point, if he only knew, being a far more compelling reason for his selection over the other applicants than any of his other qualifications.
Watson, still not accustomed to the boy’s presence, his scurrying about, and his constant popping in and popping out, was in the process of taking a sip of his morning coffee, when Billy’s head appeared through the door yet again.
“What now?” Watson asked over the top of his newspaper, irritability creeping into his voice, the tranquility of his morning having been marred by all of the activity.
“Mr. Shinwell Johnson!” piped the boy manfully, his high-pitched voice betraying only aspirations of ever becoming manly.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” muttered Watson, as much in response to the boy’s vocal performance as to the significance of his message.
Holmes, in contrast, reacted with surprising pleasure, given his subdued and distracted manner those last few days. “The blithe Shinwell?” he cried. “Show him up, Billy, show him up! How eagerly I’ve awaited his porcine, plaid-vested presence. And more coffee from the kitchen, lad, and bring another cup!”
Shinwell Johnson, or “Porky Shinwell,” as he was more familiarly known in the shadowy precincts of Blackfriars, was a large, coarse, lumpy individual with puffed and bloated features, a rubicund nose, thick, beefy lips perpetually curled in a sly smile, and dark, piggy eyes that were equally crinkled with pleasure and narrowed in cunning. His arrival at the top landing, red-faced and wheezing, was heralded in a marked and most striking manner by an almost combustible reek of brandy, which had ascended the stairs far enough in advance of him to make Billy’s announcement of his approach seem altogether superfluous.
The exertions of the climb left him breathless but hardly speechless, for Mr. Shinwell Johnson was a most loquacious man, as chatty as he was stout and as stout as he was shrewd. He carried in his brain and pockets an accumulation of knowledge which if ever divulged could place several dozen (or more) in the dock, including the odd one or two who in the normal course of their day were accustomed to looking down upon it from the bench.
It was Holmes’s habit to use Shinwell as his agent in the vast serpentine underworld of London, for he was well known and welcome in the darkest recesses of that world, and, being trusted by its inhabitants as few others were, was able to obtain information where no one else could. Information was his stock in trade, a commodity he dealt in as other men dealt in foodstuffs or cotton goods or ribbons for “m’ladies’ hats.” His store of knowledge pertaining to the activities of London’s criminal class was unequaled, and it was this that endeared him to Holmes. That in the early years of his career he had been known to the police as a dangerous character did little to harm him professionally. To the contrary. To those with whom he customarily did business, the fact that he had two terms in Parkhurst on his sheet was a definite point in his favor. That he had somehow managed to evade a third term, through the intercession of a certain individual who shall remain nameless, only enhanced his reputation further (and, incidentally, was what endeared Holmes to him).89
It was a rare occasion when “the blithe Shinwell” graced Baker Street with his “porcine, plaid-vested presence.” Holmes used his services sparingly and with discretion so as to limit the possibility of their association ever being revealed to the world at large. Exposure of their dealings would reflect badly not so much on Holmes as on Johnson, whose customary business associates — most unforgiving of indiscretions on the part of any of their number — had a tendency to make their displeasure known in emphatic ways.
Johnson, settled into the room’s sturdiest chair with a cup of well-laced coffee close at hand, needed little encouragement to get right down to business. He cocked his massive head to one side and beamed at Holmes affectionately, fingers laced across his ample middle, thumbs twirling in contentment. When he spoke it was with a slight impediment of speech, and not with any single distinguishable regional accent but with a combination of several, as if he had sampled them all and, not being able to make up his mind, had decided to partake of them all.
“Wh’ell, Mawster Sherlock, m’dear,” he said. “I ‘ave been most h’active in yer be’alf, ‘aven’t I? — tew’rribly, tew’rribly active.” He snorted — something he did loudly and often, to Watson’s annoyance, an unmistakable barnyard sound that could make heads turn in the street.
“This bushel o’ coke what calls himself Jack the Wipper is becoming a w’right pw’roper nuisance, h’ain’t he? — w’right pw’roper, indeed!” He snorted again. “I must tell yer, he’s as much a myster’wy to our sources o’ h’information in the stw’eets as he is to the clubs n’ sticks in Sco’lin’ Yard, and that’s an actual fact. But that don’t come as no surprise to yer now, does h’it? No, o’ course not,” he chuckled.
Holmes waited patiently, knowing that Shinwell would not be rushed.
“I’ll say this much: He’s not a local bloke. Me people would find him out quick enough if he was. No, he’s not from the East End a’tall, if yer axes me. ‘Strewth, I think he’s a p’woper fw’lag unf
urled, if yer catches me meanin’.” He cocked his head to the side and smiled slyly, pausing for Holmes’s response.
Playfully, he had salted his comments with the rhyming slang of the cockneys, knowing full well that it would get a reaction from Holmes.90 Johnson, who was no cockney, spoke it as a matter of course, as he also spoke a smattering of Yiddish and Gaelic, for they were the languages of people with whom he came into daily contact and with whom he had commerce, and being able to communicate with them on their terms helped him win their trust. Besides, it amused him.
Holmes regarded him coolly, but not without a faint sparkle in his eye. “If I understand you correctly, Shinwell, your friends don’t have any better idea of who the murderer is than the detective division of the Metropolitan Police, but most of them agree he is probably a person of quality. Do I have that right?”
Johnson bobbed his head and laughed, hugging himself delightedly. “Aye, an’ they fink it’s an uncommon poor way for ‘im to get his jollies, they do. They fink he’s mushuganah — a crazy bloke what wud be well adwised to confine ‘is play to his giggle stick, I shoul’n’t wonder.”91
Holmes cracked a smile at last, which pleased Johnson very much, for he enjoyed making people smile, particularly people he was fond of.
“Now, if you don’t mind, Shinwell,” said Holmes in the mock tones of a schoolmaster, “may we get on with it?”
Shinwell nodded and turned serious. “In point of h’actual fact, ‘ere’s the truth of h’it,” he said, “this bw’loke is as much an upsetting influence to me fw’riends and h’associates in B’wackfw’riars as ‘e is to yer fw’riends in Whitehall. I h’assure you, if h’any o’ our people knew who he was, they’d do for ‘im, and ‘at’s no lie. He’d get a good, ‘ealthy dose o’ his own medicine fer certain. Why, his life wouldn’t be worth a dicky diddle. H’it’s been most unsettling, this whole bleedin’ business. The chaps don’t like h’it, you see. It’s no good for commerce, is h’it? Why, h’it calls h’attention to fings, don’t h’it? Which h’it bw’rings the Sweenies into the distw’rict, an’ none o’ us wike that. Not even the Sweenies.” He smiled puckishly and snorted. “‘Strewth, least o’ all the Sweenies.”92
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors Page 32
