Becoming Holmes

by Shane Peacock

  “You are aware, Holmes, that I would do anything for you in a professional way, just about anything that is, but this is really against police protocol.”

  “And?”

  “And that means it can’t be done.”

  “Lestrade, you cherish your rise in the ranks of this police force, do you not?”

  The detective, again, does not like the look in Sherlock Holmes’s eyes.

  Ten minutes later they are downstairs in the dank-smelling basement of Scotland Yard, which the Force keeps as a temporary morgue before bodies are sent off for burial in London’s many graveyards. Sherlock wants to see the corpse today since he knows it will be in the ground as soon as tomorrow. Visiting cemeteries, for any reason, is not one of his favorite things – it has been even less so since his parents died. Unearthing a body (as the city’s creepy body-snatchers often do and Sigerson Bell has paid for on occasion) would not be something he would ever want to be part of. Though some of London’s richer graveyards are respectable and pleasant to tour, most are festering fields of decaying flesh and disease. In fact, the location of many has been forgotten by authorities, and skulls are always turning up, sometimes as the equipment for stick and ball games that children play. Grimsby will likely be dumped in some such godforsaken place. Sherlock tries not to think of it.

  When the rough old sackcloth is pulled off the little criminal, Holmes is almost immediately overpowered with guilt. In death, with all the care gone from Grimsby’s face and the evil intentions not present in his eyes, his appearance is that of a young man in an adolescent’s body. A mere child, destined to be nothing, brutally murdered. Sherlock can’t believe how small he looks.

  “This was not suicide,” says Lestrade. “He was killed, no doubt in a desperate fight or brawl of some sort. We know little else. There are actually no visible signs of injury to him at first glance. You only see them when you pull up his shirt.”

  Lestrade does so and reveals a nasty purple ring across Grimsby’s chest. Sherlock actually turns away. That isn’t like him. It surprises Lestrade.

  “Getting squeamish in our old age, are we?”

  “Not at all.” Sherlock turns back.

  “As I say, we are not exactly sure how this was done. But he had no money on his person, no purse. So, we assume that it was robbery.”

  “Or meant to look like it.”

  “We are considering that too, of course.”

  “You won’t do much about this, will you?”

  “Well, no, you know how it goes, Sherlock. We don’t have the resources, and this is a poor boy whose death is not particularly important.”

  “Where was he found?”

  “A mudlark pulled him from the river near St. Katherine’s Docks, Wapping.”

  Sherlock knows what mudlarks are – he has seen them plying their trade many times down by the Thames, picking up things that others throw out on the shoreline or dragging the river from their boats attempting to find their kind of gold: dead bodies at the ends of their hooks, pockets filled, they hope, with something that can be sold, or simply corpses of some value to the Force.

  “Anything else?” asks Lestrade, who is obviously anxious to leave.

  Sherlock looks closely at the body again.

  “Where was the corpse taken when it was found?”

  “To St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, simply for a quick analysis. If that is everything, we really should be going.”

  “That is sufficient, for now.”

  Back in Lestrade’s office, they say good-bye. Sherlock doesn’t linger. He is soon out the door and down the hallway toward the foyer. But he stops part way and returns. Lestrade looks up.

  “Something else?”

  “Do you record a meeting like ours?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Do you note in your records that I came to see the body and that I will be investigating this in order to solve the crime, find the murderer?”

  “What a strange question.”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, normally I might. But this is not a normal situation. I am not allowed to have ordinary citizens into the morgue to look at corpses. You well know that.”

  “But you could say that I knew the deceased and thus my observation of the body was helpful to you in your pursuit of the culprit.”

  “Even though we aren’t really pursuing him?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that is absurd.”

  “Were you to get into any trouble over this – I observed that a few people saw us slip through the door that leads down to the morgue – you would then have an excuse.”

  “I suppose you are right.”

  “You should also note that, as I mentioned, I too am anxious to have the murderer found.”

  “I don’t see how that is pertinent, but I shall do as you say, as a queer favor.” Lestrade waves him off. “Now go away, Sherlock. You are acting strange today. I’m guessing this has something to do with your strategy on this case?”

  Sherlock smiles. “Absolutely.”

  “Well then, pursue it, without my official approval, but keep me informed.”

  “Oh, I shall.”

  Holmes walks out onto Whitehall Street, enthralled. He has learned a great deal. He notices Her Majesty’s Treasury a few buildings down and across the road. It looks quiet. Many of its employees have left for the day. He crosses over and sits on its steps, thinking.

  I want Malefactor and Crew hanged. But he recalls what Lestrade said about Grimsby’s murder, the official police line. “We assume that it was a robbery.” I have to prove them wrong. They must believe it to be an assassination: a brutal killing performed by a vicious thug at Malefactor’s angry request. That thug could very well have been Crew.

  “Sherlock?”

  Mycroft Holmes is coming down the steps, one of the last Treasury employees on his way home. Though, as usual, he slows when he sees his brother, this time he actually doesn’t seem entirely displeased.

  “I can say with sincerity that I am glad to see you today. I have done some legwork for you, my boy.”

  “Legwork?”

  “This Grimsby fellow. I had someone in the hiring department look into his situation. This detecting thing is great fun when you give it a try!”

  “His situation?”

  “It seems Ronald Loveland lived in a recently let home on Doughty Street.”

  That’s to the north, thinks Sherlock, just north of Bloomsbury, not far from where Irene lives on Montague Street. The address doesn’t surprise him. Malefactor’s brain and Holmes’s work similarly, or at least they come to the same conclusions when at the game of crime or fighting it. It isn’t a particularly rich neighborhood, but it is a nice, reasonable place for decent people with decent occupations. That makes perfect sense – Malefactor wouldn’t have been spending too much money on Grimsby, but had the Treasury authorities come by that neck of the woods, they would have been sufficiently impressed. From there, Grimsby was close to the action in Whitehall, just a healthy walk away, but not too close for his movements to be observed by anyone from work on a regular basis. It is also not known as an area where government employees live. He would have had enough privacy to conduct his other life.

  “Is this helpful to you?” asks Mycroft. But his younger brother seems distant.

  Sherlock tries to imagine how he might build a case around this information. Malefactor or Crew, or both, came to quiet Doughty Street, where only they and the Treasury hiring department knew Grimsby could be found, most likely in a barren house let for him, without a spot of furniture, pennies pinched. One of them murdered him there, leaving that welt on his chest, and then took him many miles to Wapping and threw him into the Thames. Does that make sense? Is it not believable that this murder, with its violent wound, was performed by someone who knew Grimsby and his location, a crime of revenge and passion? Or …

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I am sorry, Mycroft. Thank you fo
r your efforts. But I must be going.”

  Sherlock almost leaps to his feet.

  Enough with Grimsby’s residence or even with him, period! Enough with theories! It doesn’t matter where he lived! Malefactor or Crew or another of their thugs performed the ugly deed. That is the only conclusion worth considering. And of those roughs, it certainly makes sense that the physically powerful and pitiless Crew was the culprit. That is my starting point, no other.

  “I shall see you again, Mycroft, uh, sometime soon.”

  Sherlock starts striding quickly away, up Whitehall toward Trafalgar Square. The older Holmes stands silent on the steps of the Treasury, interrupted in his detective career and thrown by his brother’s erratic behavior.

  Sherlock breathes hard as he walks, and his mind is teeming. I must simply find Crew and see if I can prove that he, and no one else, did it, and that Malefactor was supporting him both financially and strategically! Do NOT make this complicated.

  The time has come to get further into his enemy’s brain and find Crew’s lair. Sherlock doubts that such a nest is in an even remotely respectable part of town. It will be far from Doughty Street.

  I know where to look.

  The first thing he knows he must do is disguise himself again, and in a different way. There is no question that Malefactor and his people will be following him, are likely even observing him now. He glances around Trafalgar Square as he marches through it and then moves briskly toward the apothecary shop. It is time to act!

  When Sherlock tells his master what he intends to do that night, the old man looks worried. It takes him a moment before he responds.

  “Well, if you go through with this, we must disguise you again. You cannot pursue Mr. Crew while being followed by you-know-who.”

  The boy smiles. He and Sigerson Bell are thinking in tandem again.

  “I am guessing you should be a thug!” cries the old man.

  “You are guessing correctly.”

  An hour later, an hour of great fun for the two friends, they have Sherlock dressed as though he were a member of the Trafalgar Square Irregulars. Choosing expertly from Bell’s stock of clothing, they soon have him dressed in rags. He wears a tattered old navy pea jacket, an oily soft cap pulled down tightly over his face, and is long-haired, soot-stained, and even smelling of fish, since Sherlock believes his search must begin in the East End in Whitechapel and move from there down toward the river, the Tower of London, and the docks. That is where the greatest number of criminals make their grimy residences. It is also near where Grimsby’s body was pulled from the Thames.

  They wait until darkness comes. This doesn’t please Bell – he knows that criminals come out at night. But he also knows that this is exactly when the boy must do his work, when his search will be most productive.

  In order to get Sherlock out of the house undetected, they once again perform the little feat they employed to twice spring him from the shop this past week. Together, they become the hugely Fat Man one last time, with the emaciating Bell inside Sherlock’s massive trousers, clutching his chest. Anyone casing the apothecary shop from the outside would assume that this big man is now a regular pedestrian on Denmark Street. But this time Holmes is upset when they are glued together. He can tell that his mentor has lost weight even in the last few days and, when they are moving, he can feel his bony chest heaving as he coughs inside the costume. Bell’s days are numbered to a very few. The boy is so distraught that he wants to turn around. But he knows the old man would not like that. They go out the secret entrance in the back and hail a hansom cab on Crown Street. They send it down to Trafalgar Square and east on Fleet Street, up the hill and past the magnificent Cathedral. When they stop near London Bridge, only the boy gets out, looking for all intents and purposes like a street thug. The cab turns around and heads back to Denmark Street, while Sherlock makes his way up to Whitechapel Road and into those warren-like streets and alleys to its south, where all of London knows that danger lurks.

  15

  UNDERGROUND

  There are fewer gaslights in Whitechapel, and Sherlock can feel tension in the air. There aren’t many pedestrians in the streets now either. All the working-class people have gone home to early beds so they can rise before dawn to pursue their brutally hard lives. Almost no one above their class ever comes to the East End, unless perhaps safe inside a carriage to attend the Garrick Theatre or some such place of entertainment. But even those folks never leave their carriages to walk the streets, either on their way into these neighborhoods or out.

  Sherlock, of course, is on foot. His disguise, the calculated look of danger in his appearance and attitude, is part of what will protect him, and he is well aware of it.

  He is searching for inhabitants who may know Grimsby or Crew.

  This nightly adventure isn’t something new to Sherlock. Though Sigerson Bell doesn’t always know it, Holmes has taken to walking the streets of London at night alone over the past year or so, learning all of it – its rookeries, its wealthy areas, its nooks and crannies, all the strange people who move about in it after the sun goes down. It is part of his training, so he works at it with unwavering attention. He must be willing to risk his life when he gets older, so he might as well begin now. He has learned to spot criminal elements at a glance. Sometimes when he walks, he thinks of Dickens. He has heard it said that the novelist used to do exactly this – walk the streets for hours at night, sometimes taking in twenty miles or more at a time. It was as if, like Sherlock, he were on a mission, a need to reveal the truth about this glorious and inglorious city, this good and evil place.

  Holmes makes his way south toward the river. Grimsby was thrown into the Thames, and the boy doubts that it would make sense to a court that someone could be murdered and then carried more than a few hundred yards to the water, let alone several miles. At least, it wouldn’t be believable that an assassination would have happened that way. It had to have been planned. And good planning by Malefactor or Crew would entail disposing of their target as quickly as possible. It needed to be fast and clean.

  In minutes he can smell the river. Though he is still a good distance off and in little streets with pungent sewage running down the narrow foot pavements, he can smell that fishy, metallic odor that rises from the mighty Thames.

  The Tower of London, looking ominous, is south and to his right, and the sprawling London docks are just ahead to his left. He is entering the center of London’s criminal world, an area where the police seldom venture, where they get in and get out, and only when they must.

  The buildings along here are ancient – stone and brick – all of them looking black or gray, built up close to the road, forming veritable walls that make the streets look like frightening tunnels. The rancid yellow fog is heavy. People come in and out of it, appearing suddenly right near the boy. At times he can barely see anything – sounds and smells predominate. He hears babies crying from the open windows, sees children with almost green-colored skin walking past in rags as if half asleep. Ladies of the night, appearing nothing like ladies and more like sea hags, smile toothless grins at him. But he knows not to look directly at anyone. He moves quickly, as Dickens did, noting everything but dwelling on nothing. He is well aware of what he is looking for.

  Not long before he reaches the docks, he finds it. On a tight corner in a little gray courtyard outside a grimy coffee house or sandwich shop (it is hard to tell which it is, and hard to imagine anyone frequenting it since no food seems evident), a group of men huddle on the foot pavement. No one comes near them. No one dares. Every one of them looks like the illustrations of Bill Sikes, the bad man from Oliver Twist who murdered his sweet Nancy with his bare hands. They are dressed in layers of clothing despite the warm, misty night. They wear big boots and heavy coats, filthy rags around their throats, dirty hats, from felt caps to toppers. Sherlock nears. His heart begins to pound. I must speak to them. I must summon the courage. That is the only way. It will be all right in the end. I must
have my fists ready, my Bellitsu, act older. I can do it.

  “Bottom of the evening to you, blokes,” he says, keeping his voice in the lower registers it sometimes occupies these days. He tips his hat and comes to a halt. His accent is working-class Irish.

  The men had been murmuring. They grow silent.

  “And whot if it is, you Mick?” says the biggest one.

  “I is looking for a chap.”

  For now, the men appear impressed enough that he is speaking to them, so they don’t make a move to hurt him. They seem to think they recognize a fellow blackguard.

  “Well, we ain’t in the business of finding ’im,” says another one.

  “Unless,” says a third, “you can makes it worth our worthwhiles.”

  They all laugh.

  “And if you can’t,” adds the big one, “then we mays ’ave to find you a place in St. Saviour’s Cemetery.”

  Sherlock knows that they aren’t interested in his clothing. When you walk through this area at night, you mustn’t wear anything that anyone would want. You could be beaten and stripped bare. His clothes are so grimy and soot-stained that they aren’t any better than what these men are wearing. But what they think he might have inside his attire is likely of interest. The boy needs to be ready for that.

  “Spare any coins?” laughs one of them as they begin to try to surround him. Sherlock shifts so his back is to the building. Bell taught him to do that in the early days of his self-defense instructions. It is a cardinal rule.

  “If you have more than one gentleman to deal with,” the old man had sputtered, dressed in his bizarre fighting outfit (which included his hideous sparring tights), the sweat pouring off his bandanna-draped forehead like it was coming out a breaking dam, “always keep everyone of them in front of you. The same thing in an establishment of any sort – find a chair with its back to the wall.”

  The big one seems to notice Sherlock’s subtle defensive maneuver. He is likely a street fighter of some skill. He doesn’t say anything, but the boy can tell by his expression that he glimpsed the move and is impressed.