by Nick Kyme
I found myself in a large, angular room filled with wall-to-wall bookcases brimming with copious volumes of legal records. A circular table dominated this first research room, beyond which were several narrower ones, which ran around the edge of the room. A large number of patrons were present: clerks of court, professors, academics and the like, judging from their manner and attire, but as I did not see Sherlock Holmes I pressed on to another room.
It took me several minutes to finally locate my companion, who had spread out a great swathe of papers across one of the side tables, much to the apparent chagrin of his fellow patrons. Absorbed in his research, Holmes paid them no heed and very nearly failed to notice me as I approached.
“Hard at it I see,” I said genially.
“It is positively Sisyphean, Watson,” replied Holmes, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows and his jacket slung over the back of a nearby chair, his top hat upon the seat. “For though there are records aplenty here, there is precious little in the way of order.”
A few of the other patrons looked around at this outburst, to whom I could only politely nod. Holmes appeared neither to care nor notice, and already had his head down amongst a hefty stack of legal papers.
“All the tenancy agreements for Bethnal Green and Shoreditch,” he explained, with a wave of the hand. “I believe I have made a dent, though assimilating them from the scattered archives of this place took me almost half the morning! Watson,” he added, looking up from his labours to regard me intently, “I must know the outcome of your visit to Scotland Yard. Was Inspector Gregson returned from the country?”
I replied that he was not, but passed on the note I had been given, which Holmes read silently, his eyes feverishly darting back and forth with such urgency that I wondered what else he had partaken of that morning apart from his usual coffee.
“Ha! It is as I expected,” he said at last. He elaborated no further, and I was left wondering again what Dunbar’s origins had to do with the case. I chose not to ask, feeling my efforts could be better spent helping my companion sift through the myriad documents he had gathered before him. Removing my jacket and rolling up my own sleeves, I followed Holmes’s lead.
“Anything on Church Row, Columbia Road, Bethnal Green Road and whatever lies between, Watson,” he said. “She is here, I know it!”
“A shame your urchins could not be put to this task, Holmes,” I said.
“I’m afraid the scholars and lawyers of Chancery Lane would be quite ill at ease with the Irregulars, Watson. At any rate, so few of them can read I fear it would only add to the state of confusion.”
I could only agree, if young Hobbers was any sort of gauge.
I put myself to the task. As Holmes had spread himself almost across the entirety of one desk, I was forced to take another, though did so less expansively than my companion.
Even with the both of us now poring through the tenancy records of the slum where Holmes had followed Damian Graves, it was the work of several hours before Holmes found what he was looking for.
“This is it!” declared Holmes, brandishing a paper like it was a flag he had claimed upon the field of battle.
“What a relief, Holmes,” said I, “for I had begun to think Graves might have used another alias for the girl after all.”
“I had thought he would not,” Holmes replied, “and am glad of it, Watson, for another hour or so of this would have driven me to distraction with its mind-numbing monotony.” He smiled then, and I saw the spark of victory in his eyes, that true vim that neither meat, drink nor narcotic could ever replace. The case was back on. “We have her, Watson. A small tenement, owned by Graves and rented to Letitia Irwin, our figure in black.”
* * *
We made our way to Church Row immediately, travelling with all haste from Chancery Lane. Upon arriving at the slum, we were accosted by an urchin whom Holmes introduced to me as Price. Having learnt my lesson from the watch thief on Regent Street, I kept my hand close to my wallet.
“Good eev-ning, Mister Ohmes,” Price began in that common Londoner’s lilt that all street urchins seem to share. He gave a polite nod in my direction, which I felt bound to at least reciprocate.
“Price,” Holmes replied, “you have done your duty in exemplary fashion.”
The little street urchin seemed to stand taller at this remark, puffing up his chest like a proud cockerel strutting about the barnyard. Much as I might find the likes of Price and his brood distasteful, I had to admit his service was both loyal and faithful. He doffed his scrappy little cap, and Holmes swiftly popped in several farthings before it was back on Price’s scrawny little head.
“Payment as agreed, the usual rate,” Holmes told him, at which Price nodded and gave a broad, nearly toothless grin. “But tell me, Price,” he asked, “what else have you seen?”
Price then broke into a long and unnecessarily detailed description of almost every coming and going that he had borne witness to, which, although colourful and occasionally disturbing, had no connection to our case. At least, I could find none and Holmes’s expression said much the same. The last thing he mentioned, however, intrigued Holmes greatly.
“There was a woman who came around,” said Price, “but she weren’t in no cloak and ’ood. She looked right fine, Mister Ohmes, not like some of the dollies around ’ere. Very pretty she was, sir. I kept my eye on her, I did, but I reckon she must’ve been lost and ended up in the Old Nichol of all places! Gave me a look and I think she must’ve had a turn, because she didn’t linger after that.”
“Very good, very good,” said Holmes, after Price had finished his report, then sent him on his way.
“What now then?” I asked.
“I believe Price has done his job. Now we shall set about ours, Watson. Be alert,” said Holmes, as we approached the tenements on Church Row, “she might yet be nearby.”
I gripped my walking stick a little tighter, silently lamenting the fact I had not thought to bring my revolver. “I have no wish to be impaled, Holmes.”
“I should think not. It would quite spoil your jacket, Doctor.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE SECRET OF CHURCH ROW
We entered the Church Row tenement just as the sun became lost to the smog of the city and the approach of evening. Holmes led the way, his stick at the ready, and I followed closely behind. According to the tenancy agreement in the Public Record Office, Miss Irwin had rented a south-facing third-floor room.
A shabby hallway led to a stairwell that was rickety and wretched with mildew. I lightly shook the bannister rail to gauge its strength and was instantly put in mind of Columbia Road and the modest home of Molly Bugle. Such conditions can make people desperate, and I had to stifle a pang of anxiety as my companion and I climbed the steps to the third floor.
“Here!” Holmes hissed as we came to the room we had been searching for, that which had been rented to Letitia Irwin, our murderess in black. “Hold this, Watson,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper, handing me his walking stick as he sank to his haunches to inspect something by the door.
He first removed a glove, holding it in his other hand as he brought a substance to his nose that I could not immediately identify and inhaled deeply. At a noise from the shadows, I turned sharply, made wary by the dingy confines and the ever present impression of being watched, and was rewarded by a scurrying behind me as our silent audience retreated, unwilling to meet my gaze or challenge.
When I turned back, Holmes was standing up again and appeared a sight more at ease than he had a moment ago. I proffered his stick.
“Thank you, Watson,” he said, “but I don’t think it will be necessary after all.”
“Oh, really,” said I, relaxing only a little.
Holmes produced a leather wallet from his jacket pocket and proceeded to remove two thin metal picks with which he would bypass the lock.
“I expect Inspector Gregson would frown upon such extremes, Watson, but we cannot afford to da
lly further and I am sure there is evidence here connected to the case and the crimes at hand.”
It took but a matter of seconds for a dull click to sound and our ingress to be made possible.
“You can be at ease, Watson. Put simply,” he said, gently urging the door open with his foot so it swung wide and allowed a good view of the room beyond, “no one is in residence.”
Holmes was right; the place was evidently deserted, though we still entered cautiously. It appeared that Letitia Irwin had fled in a hurry, for the dark room was in a frightful mess. I remarked as much to my companion.
“Yes, that much is clear, Watson. Miss Irwin has been put to flight, and thanks to Price, she realised she was being watched and has not returned since that hurried exodus, I think.”
“And yet you seem rather pleased with yourself,” I said, noting the satisfied smile on Holmes’s face.
“Oh, I did not dare believe we would catch our quarry here, Doctor,” said Holmes, “and even if we did, I imagine she could have effected a swift escape.” He nodded towards the room’s only window. The pane was dirty, almost begrimed to the point of opacity, but the latch and frame betrayed signs of wear.
“It looks like she hardly used the door much at all,” I said, squinting at the marks on the wooden window frame. In doing so I noted a small scrap of dark cloth, caught by a splinter. “Here,” I added, extracting the cloth with my fingers. “It looks like the same material from the cloak we have at 221B,” I said.
“Look closer, Watson. What else do you see?” asked Holmes, passing me his lens.
I obliged, examining the scrap of cloth in detail, and though the light was far from good I detected a few faint specks of white. “Chalk?”
“Perhaps,” said Holmes, taking both the evidence and his lens and secreting them in his jacket.
“It certainly looks like the same substance we found on the cloak,” I said.
Further evidence was revealed as we searched the modestly sized room. A collapsed easel sat in one corner, paint spatters marking the wood, and a vague chemical stink pervaded, as if it had settled into the very floorboards and was reluctant to depart. Holmes sniffed, both the air and the floorboards, as he tried to absorb every scrap of evidence presented by the abandoned room. I noted a bench pushed into one corner with a three-legged stool tucked underneath, and here the chemical aroma was at its most potent.
“Ammonia…” Holmes said, in that absent way that meant I had simply overheard an uttered thought and had not actually been addressed.
There was also a bed and a small wardrobe. Propped up against one wall behind the bed was a large noticeboard, turned so its blank side faced towards us. Together, Holmes and I eased the bed aside to pull out the board. As we did so Holmes paused, seemingly fixated on a point on the floorboards, but did not remark upon what he had seen.
We hefted the noticeboard between us, turning it to reveal a raft of newspaper articles pinned to it, affixed in what amounted to a manic collage. There were dozens of pieces, some raggedly torn by hand, others meticulously cut out. Several, judging by the obvious voids in the presentation, had been removed. Every scrap of print related to the Grand Duke Konstantin—his visit to London, photographs of his excursions, his suite at the Langham, the crowds on Regent Street. Most prominent was an article about the commissioning of a portrait to be presented to the nobleman that very night before the gala performance at the Royal Opera House. This in itself prompted a trill of alarm in my mind, which only worsened as I read the name of the artist who had been given the honour of painting the grand duke. Ivor Lazarus.
“Good lord, Holmes,” I breathed, my voice scarcely more than a whisper, “could she mean to murder the grand duke just as she murdered those poor people in the Grayson Gallery?”
Holmes said nothing. His gaze remained fixed on the clippings, analysing every detail. Beneath the scattered clippings were notes pertaining to chemical formulas, and maps of Bethnal Green, Mayfair and Covent Garden. There were rough pencil sketches of the grand duke from a variety of different angles, and though accurate, sought to portray him in a stern aspect. One rather loose composition depicted two men standing side by side in an alley in the rain.
“Good heavens…” said I.
“Not a bad likeness,” said Holmes, first looking sideways at me and then back to the sketch of the two of us on what I took to be Tavistock Street. “Though I do believe she has given you a squint, Watson.” He glanced at me again, frowned and then gave a small shake of the head. “I don’t see it myself.”
“Holmes!” I cried, as a desperate sense of urgency seized me. “We must find Gregson. I only hope he has returned from the country.”
“Not yet,” replied my companion, and I could barely credit his calmness in the face of this revelation.
“What if she means to murder a foreign dignitary on British soil, Holmes? The scandal alone…”
“Not yet,” said Holmes more firmly. He turned from the board and went to the wardrobe, pulling open the doors and delving inside. “Look here, Watson,” he said, his head in the shadows of the wardrobe, then reappeared with a silk glove clasped in one hand. “We must learn everything before we leave this place. We have no idea who she really is, or what she looks like at this point.”
“We at least have her height, weight and colour of hair.”
“True, but both her height and weight are fairly average for a woman and she could have dyed her hair or be wearing a wig.”
“But we could rally Gregson and his constables, intercept the painting and avert a possible calamity.”
“And how then are we to catch her, Watson? In doing as you suggest we may foil one attempt but then if she is not under lock and key what is to prevent her from making another, if indeed that is her intent? No, we must examine all evidence before we determine how to proceed.”
“But surely we must act?”
“And act we will, but based on sure and certain facts. Now tell me, do you recognise this article of clothing?”
“The glove?” I frowned, moving closer to examine it. There was something familiar about the garment, but the memory escaped me.
“Consider the incongruity of it, Watson,” said Holmes, and gestured to our surroundings. “A rather drab and unremarkable dwelling, wouldn’t you say?”
“I would.”
“And this,” he added, brandishing the glove, “quite out of place, as is the rest of the contents of this wardrobe. I am not an expert on sartorial elegance, Watson, but even my rude knowledge can tell these garments are too refined and expensive for such a place.”
“I don’t see the significance, Holmes.”
“It is simple enough to explain, and serves no greater purpose than Miss Irwin’s hooded cloak. It is a disguise, Watson. One I believe that has failed our murderess.”
“I see…” I said.
“I fear you do not, Watson, but allow me to assist you. Do you recall the grand duke’s manservant? Grigori Andropov?”
“I do, Holmes, his body found on Columbia Road. His face had been mutilated.”
“Quite so, Watson. Gregson, displaying a surprising amount of deductive intelligence in identifying the man from his boots, but we met him much earlier. Or, at least, you did.”
Dumbfounded, my frown deepened. “Whatever do you mean, Holmes? I had no knowledge of the man before I set eyes upon his corpse.”
“Not only that, Watson, but I believe you had already met Letitia Irwin before our encounter on Tavistock Street. I could not be sure until a few moments ago, although I had my suspicions, for what is detective work but the synthesis of theories to corroborating fact, but now I am certain of it!”
“Holmes, pray reveal how or I fear I shall become obsessed with this mystery.”
“I shall, but first a question.”
“Good God, Holmes, you are determined to frustrate me.”
“Your pocket watch, you would recognise it I assume?”
“Indeed I would, Ho
lmes. It is very dear to me, and I am most perturbed about its theft.”
“And can you describe its appearance precisely?”
I nodded. “It’s a silver open-faced pocket watch with a silver chain. The face is white, the numerals black and the metal unadorned. My father’s initials are engraved on the back, H.W.”
Holmes had his left hand behind his back, his right still holding the glove, but now brought it around to reveal a silver open-faced pocket watch dangling on a silver chain.
“Gracious, Holmes! That’s the very one!”
“Discovered amongst the abandoned finery in the wardrobe.”
Astounded, I looked again at the silk glove as Holmes returned my watch. “The girl on Regent Street?”
“Yes, Watson. Letitia Irwin is none other than your light-fingered thief. The glove suggests it, for it is the perfect match to the one she wore on Regent Street, but the presence of your stolen watch puts it beyond all doubt.”
“And the grand duke’s manservant?” I said, only now making the connection. “Her pursuer?”
Holmes nodded.
I gasped in disbelief. “How can you be sure, Holmes? I would not like to bring back the memory, but his face was mutilated beyond recognition.”
“It is true that a man’s physiognomy can be altered through base and brutal tortures, but other aspects of his physicality; his height, his weight, size of hands and feet—these are much more difficult to obscure. And let us not forget his boots. I only caught a glimpse of him as you remonstrated with him, but my memory captured these details. I think Letitia Irwin meant to obscure his identity.”
“To what end, Holmes?”
“To give herself a precious few more hours to flee her lodgings on Church Row. She was discovered on Regent Street that day amongst the crowds, Watson. Grigori Andropov recognised her. Clearly our man was most dogged in his pursuit, and despite your gallant efforts to impede him, later found Letitia Irwin’s trail and followed it here. I even believe he succeeded where we could not, at least at first.”
