Becoming Holmes

by Shane Peacock

  “I ain’t carrying anything you lot would like, except me fists,” says Holmes.

  “Is that so?” grins a little one, advancing on him.

  “ ’Old your ’orses,” says the big one, “let’s ’ear ’im gab. There ain’t many who would talk to us on their lonesome. Let’s give ’im a chance.”

  Sherlock stares right back at the little one, who seems to be emboldened by being in a group.

  “I can defend meself, friends. I don’t cares that much ’ow long I live, so much as I live an interesting life to me last breath. If one of you … for example, you, sir,” he speaks right at the little one, never moving his gray eyes from him, “was to attack me, I would be satisfied with just cutting off your nose, I would, and perhaps with shoving it in your gob before you all accosted me. That would give me satisfaction and take me to me maker with a smile upon me face.”

  Sherlock puts his hand into his deep trousers pocket to grip his horsewhip, shoving part of it forward in the material to make it look like the business end of a knife. The light goes out in the little one’s eyes. He even takes a step backward. The others stop coming forward too. The big one actually smiles.

  “Who might you be looking for? We knows every bloke worth knowing.”

  “A fellow named Malefactor.”

  There is absolute silence. In fact, even in the dim gaslight in the fog, Sherlock can see a look of fear flicker across the big one’s face. Then he swallows so hard that his Adam’s apple is evident moving in his throat. Sherlock expects someone to say something soon. But no one utters a word. It shocks the boy. He knew that Malefactor’s influence had been great on the streets in the old days and that it had grown of late, but he never dreamed that it would stop the very voices of East End criminals. Already, he thinks.

  The silence continues. Finally, Sherlock speaks.

  “What about a man named Crew?”

  “You best be moving on,” says the big one, in a voice that actually trembles.

  Holmes doesn’t need a written invitation. He backs away, keeping his face toward them until he is at the end of the street. When he turns, he moves as fast as he can go without running. But when he gets two blocks away, closer to the river, a face suddenly appears in front of his out of the fog. The man had rounded a corner and almost bumped into him.

  It is the big thug. His chest is heaving as if he has been running.

  “That ain’t a question you asks on the streets. Who is you?”

  “Anonymous,” says Sherlock Holmes, and he employs the big word without his low-Irish accent. In fact, he pronounces it carefully and clearly.

  “I knows what that means,” says the thug, “and I knows you ain’t that. You IS someone. But if you ’ave a beef with that man you mentioned back there, that power, then you ’ad best give it up. His lieutenant, a devil not much bigger than a midget, went by the name of Grimsby, was murdered round ’ere just short days ago. It weren’t done the way it should ’ave been done. There were something not right about it, a killing more vicious than even we would do. Word is that man you mentioned, ’e ’ad it done.”

  “Malefactor?”

  The man won’t respond.

  “By the hand of Crew?” asks Sherlock. “Do the streets say it was Crew?”

  “All I can say of a man by that name is that I ’ave seen ’im. Big ’un, extra fat on him, blonde ’air and blue eyes, narrow brush mustache, never says nothing, and very queer. But I don’t really know nothing ’bout ’im, don’t know where ’e lives or what ’e does, ’cept ’e is connected to that there other man you mentioned. And as for the murder, the streets is silent about things such as that. I could tell you were different back there, but whoever you is, copper or villain or worse, I would leave this be.”

  “Tell me more.”

  But the man vanishes into the fog. Sherlock pursues him in a mad rush, barely able to see. As he does, he thinks about what else the man might be able to tell him if he asked the right question. Heart pounding, chest heaving, catching up, losing the man, and spotting him ahead now and then as he runs away down the little streets and around corners, the right query comes to the boy.

  Suddenly, the man completely disappears. And it isn’t because he has turned another corner, entered an establishment, or taken to his heels with greater effectiveness. He simply was standing in a spot on the road and then vanished.

  Sherlock rushes up to the place and sees a circular, heavy-iron grating about three feet in radius in the foot pavement right next to a building. One has to look closely to see it. The man obviously pulled it back, went down into it, and then returned it to its place from beneath. Holmes looks around and then does the same.

  When he dangles his legs into the underground, his feet reach rungs. Down a ladder he goes and finds himself in a tall, circular passageway tiled with brick. The smell is horrible. Big pipes run along the floor. He knows that he is very close to the river now, in the sewers, the magnificent new conduits built by the queen’s brilliant engineer Joseph Bazalgette. There are more than a thousand miles of them passing under London to move the city’s excrement into the water far downstream, instead of having it dumped in the streets to run into the Thames near where the populace lives, giving them cholera and a host of other diseases. Sherlock remembers Bell muttering about this, saying that it should have been done centuries ago.

  Though impressed by his surroundings, the boy has no time to admire the engineering. He hears voices ahead, and scuffling, as if more than one person were moving at a brisk pace up there. Sherlock begins to run. For a while, the big rats out ahead of him try to get away. They scurry through the sewers as if they know them, up and down its short iron staircases, around corners, avoiding pipes, crouched over through the tighter parts of the system. But eventually, they stop.

  Sherlock halts too, and then carefully approaches.

  It is the same men he had encountered on the street. They seem at home down here, as if this were a common place for them to meet. They have obviously decided that whoever is following them can be faced now, deep in the tunnels. There are seven of them against Sherlock Holmes. They don’t seem to be worried about his knife anymore.

  The big one steps forward.

  “You is trying our patience. I told you clear – we cannot talk about the man you seek. No one can. You must leave or we will ’urt you. You must leave now!”

  The others advance on Holmes. Two in particular seem to truly want at him.

  But Sherlock has had enough of this. It is time to act. He pivots in perfect Bellitsu motion, executing an Oriental move that the apothecary has made him practice hundreds of times and that these thugs have never seen on London streets, marshals the power in his legs and hip by twisting, and drives the sole of his boot into the chest of the first man. Not a little fellow, he is nevertheless driven back by the blow as if he were shot from a cannon. He flies six feet backward and smacks into the wall, his spine hitting first and then the base of his skull. He is instantly semi-conscious and slides down the wall into a partially sitting position. Sherlock knows that the second man will go for his weapon to neutralize it first. (“Always imagine what your opponent is about to do!” Bell had often screamed at him in the midst of their battles.) The boy seizes the man by the arm that darts at his trousers’ pocket. He pulls him close, and in an instant has that arm in a “bar,” forcing it in two different directions, about to snap it in half. The man cries out in pain and asks for mercy.

  “Stand back!” Sherlock shouts at the others, “or I will break it!”

  The other men stop. The big one can’t resist a grin.

  “What else do you wants? Ask us for something simple, and we will tell you. There are things we can’t speak of, because we fear that man you mentioned more than we will ever fear you. But if there is something we can tell you that will release my accomplice ’ere and satisfy you, then we will try.”

  Sherlock knows what to ask. It was what came to him while pursuing this fellow up on th
e streets. He had plucked it from his memory.

  “There was a man, an operative in the Brixton Gang, arrested a few years ago in Rotherhithe, nominally for robbing the Crystal Palace and for the attempted murder of Monsieur Mercure. He squealed on his fellow gang members to the Force and before the magistrates. For that, for putting his brothers away for a very long time, causing even the execution of one of the gang’s two leaders, the evil and most murderous of their lot, one Charon, whom the police were desperate to destroy, this man was allowed to go free after two years. He has been at liberty for some months now. I know of that gang and its members.” Sherlock taps his finger to the side of his temple. “I know them by name and appearance. I was instrumental in bringing them to justice. I heard, through sources, of the freeing of one of their number, but I do not know who that was, which one, or where he is. He is plainly a man of few scruples, one who can be bought, and one whose exact whereabouts are protected by the police. But the streets know things. You may not have all the information I need, but I am guessing you know something. If you can tell me anything about this turncoat, it may lead me in the direction I need to go. You would be telling me nothing directly about Malefactor or Crew. The Brixton Gang was as well connected as any in the criminal world. It is my theory that this man, this squealer, knows something of Crew and his location. And he may be the only one of your like who would actually tell me. I must speak with him.”

  The big thug hesitates for a moment, calculating. Sherlock tightens his grip on the other man’s arm, bringing another cry of agony from him.

  “That slime was the other leader. He’s a clever rat … name is Sutton.”

  “Ah, Sutton!” remarks Holmes, remembering that night in Rotherhithe. “Sutton himself!”

  “I am told he lives to the east somewheres, though some says south, in a small town. No one ’as found the squeak yet, but we will!”

  “Not before I do. But thank you, sir. You have been most helpful.”

  Within moments Sherlock Holmes has vanished from their sight and is hot-footing it home to the apothecary’s shop.

  Holmes has always feared Crew. His size, his silence, and the deadness in his eyes speaks of a soul that, unlike Grimsby, who appeared to have fallen into his circumstances from hard beginnings, is truly evil, born that way. Sherlock realizes how little he really knows about Crew. He doesn’t even know his first name.

  Where in the world would such a man live? And do I REALLY want to find him, somewhere in a lair in these streets, with HIS back to the wall?

  16

  SOMETHING INHUMAN

  In the morning, Sherlock Holmes once again tells Sigerson Bell every single thing that he has just done concerning the case. He explains what happened on the streets the previous night and gives him a detailed analysis of what he intends to do next. The old man receives the information with a shake of his head.

  “You neglected to tell me precisely when you urinated this morning and have yet to inform me of exactly how many breaths you took since the last hour struck.”

  But despite the humor in his reaction, underneath he is beginning to ponder in a deeper way why his young charge is operating in this manner. An idea has come into his head and it worries him. He barely thinks it possible.

  Sherlock isn’t at school today, so he has it all to himself to continue the search for Crew in earnest. His first stop is Scotland Yard. He needs answers to two questions. After that, he doubts he will require Lestrade anymore. He hopes he can do the rest himself.

  “Ah, Sherlock!” says Lestrade, not nearly as happy as his tone.

  “Just two questions,” says the boy, barely looking at his ally as he rushes through the doorway. He begins to pace in the office’s tight quarters, his head down, his eagle nose to the floor, nostrils flaring, gray eyes darting back and forth. He is like a restless hound sniffing for the fox, knowing the scent is near, the chase getting hotter. “You said that Grimsby’s body was taken to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital first, before it was brought here?”

  “Yes.”

  “To which medical man?”

  “Sherlock, I can’t –”

  The boy holds a finger up to his lips, as if trying to keep back his anger and impatience, hold back the oaths he’d like to shout, angry that this inconsequential detective is hesitating to tell him what he must know.

  “Which doctor?!”

  “The same as we always use.”

  Sherlock shouts at him. “Tell me, Lestrade! Now!”

  Lestrade is shocked at the look on his face. The veins have come out on his neck and forehead. He knows this boy to be eccentric and driven. But now he seems almost possessed. Lestrade closes the door to his office, and gives up the name.

  “Doctor Craft.”

  “Thank you. Now, you must tell me something else, something much more delicate, so delicate that you will want to say that you can never tell me. But you must.” He is pacing even faster.

  “What is it?” Lestrade dreads the answer.

  “I want to know the whereabouts of one Sutton, formerly of the Brixton Gang.”

  Lestrade’s mouth drops.

  “Imagine,” says Sherlock, before the young detective can say a word, “that life is a very narrow thing and that, when one thinks, one always thinks narrowly. It is like that for the majority of people. Thus, let us imagine that when most of us think, we function as though our thoughts were in a box or a carton of some sort and that we could not possibly ever allow them to be outside of that container. But, if we were to really want to be different, to get things done in a way that others don’t allow, then we, we who are different and really want to achieve, must think outside of that container.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about, Sherlock, but I can’t –”

  Holmes’s face turns crimson. “Then know that if you do not do this for me I shall never speak to you again! And that you, sir, will occupy this tiny little office for the rest of your career, instead of the big one your father had, instead of becoming the premier inspector in the world’s greatest police force!”

  Lestrade can’t believe the color of Sherlock’s face. It is fear of that more than anything else that causes him to blurt out two facts.

  “He goes by the name of Hopkins, in Rochester.”

  Rochester is to the east of London. East, just as the biggest street thug said. They are closing in on him, thinks Sherlock. I must move fast.

  Holmes saves almost every penny that Bell gives him and has enough in his purse to take a train to Rochester and back. There will be many going in that direction today from London Bridge Station on the London, Chatham & Dover Railway line. Sherlock knows that for a certainty – this past year, he has begun memorizing the train schedules. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital is to the east, in the City, the old part of London. He will go there on his way to the station.

  The doctor saw the body immediately after it was found. The police have only vague theories. But Craft will know something about that nasty welt across the little villain’s chest – the wound the killer left behind. Has he ever seen anything like it? What exactly, in his mind, killed Grimsby? Does he think it was some unusual weapon, or technique, some machine? Or was it something else? Most importantly, can I connect Crew to it?

  The boy walks back along Fleet Street and swings north before he reaches St. Paul’s and the London Wall. He smells the meaty odor of the Smithfield Market and slows. He is almost there. If he had a choice, he wouldn’t go to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital at all. He knows that being inside its walls will upset him. He stops for a moment on Charterhouse Street, listening to the shouts and the bellows of the animals in the market.

  He remembers the first time he was in Bart’s. It was three years ago, in the spring of 1867, when he sneaked in to see Irene after she was nearly killed by the Whitechapel murderer’s coach. Sherlock had caused that nearly fatal accident, just as he had caused the death of his mother. To be more precise, his friendship with Irene had caused it. She
had been targeted by his enemies. And so, to protect her, he had pushed her away – the beautiful and dynamic Irene, now resident in America, soon to be in Europe, never to be with him.

  He steels himself and banishes all thoughts of Irene Doyle. He must go to Bart’s, get inside, and find what he needs to find. What he is doing today must be his priority. He cannot live in the past. I must never look backward.

  The hospital is so huge that it takes up several blocks, a monster building with tentacles everywhere, made of brick and rather ominous, looking in places as old as the many hundred years it is said to be. He finds the arched entrance through which he passed when he went to see Irene. He knows his way inside these two big wooden doors. Assuming that Dr. Craft will be somewhere upstairs, where Sherlock recalls that the chemical laboratories are, he passes the big outpatient room on the main floor, hears moans from patients, and flies up the big stone steps to the first floor. Here the halls are wide and whitewashed and everything smells of medicine. He remembers spotting several labs down one particular hall. He finds it and is relieved to see that he won’t have to pass the Accident Ward where Irene convalesced. He keeps his head down and doesn’t look into the eyes of the nurses who pass and only lifts his head when he nears the laboratories. The doors are tall and wooden, going almost all the way to the ceiling. A feeling of excitement begins to fill him, and not just because he feels he may be nearing the doctor who first examined Grimsby’s body. Laboratories always arouse him. Bell has taught him everything he knows about chemistry, and the boy adores it. There is nothing better for both of them than experimenting with the chemicals and alkaloids in the old man’s modest lab. He thinks of the space, equipment, and materials available in this, the largest of London’s hospitals. It almost makes him shake with excitement. Imagine being allowed in here to experiment! He considers the things he could learn, the theories he could test, the gruesome crimes he could solve with such a place as his ally.