The Crack in the Lens

by Steve Hockensmith

  I read the article to my brother as Cuff and his minions went about their business not thirty feet away. My voice was as low as I could keep it and still be heard above the clanking and rattling of the printing press, and the hushed, whispery tones made it seem like I was unspooling a spook story over a cattle drive campfire.

  A few days before, the article said, the Ripper had claimed two more victims, bringing his official tally to four. The women were again members of London’s “unfortunate class,” and had been, yet again, slashed to death while making their rounds. One had been horribly mutilated, as well. Just how horribly was left largely to the reader’s imagination, though the word “eviscerated” popped up to offer a none-too-subtle hint.

  Eventually the article trailed off into a long regurgitation of the case to date and various windy proclamations of resolve from Ripper-hunters both amateur and professional. I stopped about halfway through.

  “Heck of a coincidence,” I said.

  Old Red shook his head. “I can’t figure it for a coincidence at all.”

  “But how could it not be? It ain’t like the Ripper squeezed in a trip to San Marcos between killings.”

  Gustav squinted and stroked his mustache as if mulling over that very idea. “Could be whoever killed Adeline wanted to make it look random-like. The work of a lunatic. To hide the real why of it. Or could be a real lunatic read that there story and got…you know…”

  My brother spun his hands in the air listlessly, too lost in other thoughts to chase down the word he wanted.

  “Inspired?” I suggested.

  He nodded.

  “Don’t that seem a tad far-fetched?” I said. “Some asshole all the way out here in the West hears tell of a crazy Englishman and sets out to copy his every move?”

  Old Red gave me a droopy-lidded glower. “What do you think I been doin’ the past year?”

  “Hmmm, yeah, well…” I cleared my throat and tried another tack. “All the same, we been drawin’ a bead on Milford Bales, and he don’t strike me as the madman type. A nasty SOB maybe—when you’re around, anyway—but not a madman.”

  “He never seemed the lawman type neither, but look at him now. Besides, to get away with murder all these years, you’d have to be pretty good at buryin’ things down deep.”

  “I suppose. Only bein’ loony ain’t some secret you can tuck out of sight, like rustlin’ or diddlin’ the neighbor’s wife. Sooner or later, crazy’s gonna show.”

  Gustav’s eyes widened, a new thought hitting him hard. “What if it did show…five years ago? Only I was so drunk when it happened I didn’t even remember come morning?”

  “You mean the time you took a swing at Bales? You think he let something slip?”

  “I don’t know, dammit.” Old Red looked away and pounded a fist on his thigh, his anger turned inward. “One less shot of rye, and maybe we wouldn’t be here now. Maybe I would’ve known the truth five—”

  The sound of approaching footsteps clamped his lips tight.

  Horace Cuff loomed up behind us.

  “Local history?” the Englishman sniffed, cocking a disapproving eyebrow at the article I’d been reading.

  I shrugged and dredged up a chuckle. “Guess we let ourselves get distracted.”

  Cuff told us what he thought of such distractions (and the sort of person who’s susceptible to them) with a wrinkle-nosed sneer.

  “I wonder, Mr. Cuff,” my brother said. “Was you still journalizin’ in London when all that Ripper stuff was goin’ on?”

  Cuff’s whole face wrinkled with revulsion now.

  “Yes, and before you ask—because certain people always ask—no, I did not write about ‘that Ripper stuff.’ I refused. In fact, it’s part of the reason I came to America. Fleet Street may have been eager to wallow in such salaciousness, but not I. I left for New York a few months after the Ripper appeared.”

  “A few months?” I said. “Why, that whole business would’ve been about through by then anyway, wouldn’t it? As I recall, ol’ Jack stopped of his own accord after the sixth killin’.”

  “The fifth,” Cuff said. He gave his head a quick shake and straightened his already impressively stiff spine. “I’ve said all I intend to say on this subject.”

  “Oh, yeah. You made that right plain,” Gustav said—and God bless the single-minded little so-and-so, he forged ahead anyway. “I’m curious, though. There was a feller in London at the time—the best crime-buster the world ever knew, to hear some tell it. Mr. Sherlock Holmes. How come he didn’t catch the Ripper?”

  “Because,” Cuff said with a smugness so thick it practically oozed out of him like syrup, “he made no attempt to do so.”

  The Ripper was someone Cuff didn’t care to talk about, but Mr. Holmes? The way the man carried on now, we couldn’t have shut him up had we tried.

  “Oh, there were rumors of a confidential inquiry on his part, but even if true—and I imagine they weren’t—it came to naught. No, it’s more likely, I think, that the man simply couldn’t pull himself from his needle without a fee to collect. Either that, or it was plain cowardice. Imagine the blow to his standing—and his bank account—should he involve himself in so very public a mystery only to fail.”

  Cuff’s gaze lifted away from Old Red and me, drifting off to something beyond us, distant. The Promised Land, maybe. He certainly had the air of a prophet about him now…even if it is hard to picture Moses in an ascot.

  “Sherlock Holmes,” Cuff intoned, somber and slow, “was the embodiment of everything misguided about our modern age. Mind devoid of soul, so-called progress that masks moral rot, the hubris of science. He claimed to see things others couldn’t, but the yawning emptiness within himself—the emptiness only God’s grace can fill? That he was blind to. It came as no surprise to me when his foolish ‘adventures’ destroyed him. Logic is not wisdom, and a rational mind without a repenting heart is worse than worthless. Those are truths someone like Sherlock Holmes could only understand once he felt for himself the full agony of perdition’s flames.”

  I waited for my brother to jump to his hero’s defense. There’d been a time when he wouldn’t even admit that Holmes was dead—sure, everyone else in the world thought he’d gone over a Swiss waterfall, but had anyone actually seen the body? So I couldn’t believe Old Red would let some prig say Holmes was roasting over Beelzebub’s own barbecue pit.

  Yet he just stared off the same direction as Cuff, like he was trying to spy with his own eyes whatever vision it was that had transfixed the man so.

  Myself, all I saw that way was a wall.

  “Well.” I slapped my hands on my knees and pushed myself to my feet. “I think we best be goin’.”

  “No…not yet,” Gustav muttered, tearing his gaze away from Infinity. “We ain’t done researchin’.”

  “I rather think you are,” Cuff said. He’d returned to the Here and Now a lot quicker than my brother, and what he found awaiting him there—namely, us—was obviously not to his liking. “This is not a public reading room. It is a private place of business, and it’s been disrupted enough by your presence. I would ask you to leave now.”

  “Look, mister…I don’t mean to come off pushy,” Old Red said, “but if we could just have ten more minutes to—”

  Cuff turned toward the typesetter and printer still slaving away behind us. “Mr. Littlefield. Mr. Maleeny. Would you show our visitors to the door?”

  The men glanced at each other, neither looking anxious to play bouncer. Nevertheless, when Cuff prodded them with a tart “If you please?” they reluctantly started toward us.

  “Thank you ever so much, Mr. Cuff.” I tugged my brother to his feet. “Your hospitality’s something we won’t soon forget.”

  Gustav said not a word as the newspapermen escorted us outside. He just stared ahead, blank-faced, looking like a man who’s had the rug not only pulled out from under him but rolled up and dropped on his head. I fancied I knew just what was gnawing at his mind…and his con
fidence and even, I dare say, his soul.

  He’d put his faith in something, and of late that faith had been foundering. Now we learn that Sherlock Holmes, the great sage of observation and logic, had failed when he’d been needed most? That either the Method had proved useless against the Ripper or the Great One had simply turned tail and run?

  Well, if that was true—if lunacy could trump reason, and our killer was indeed a lunatic—then what chance did we have?

  How can you deduce the hows and wherefores of what a madman might do…except perhaps go mad yourself?

  19

  The Kriegers

  Or, Old Red Admits He Doesn’t Know Jack

  Thanks largely to my busybody brother, I’ve been thrown out of more places than most folks ever get into. Only once, though, have I received an apology midboot.

  “Sorry about this,” whispered the typesetter—I’m not sure if it was Mr. Littlefield or Mr. Maleeny—as he helped escort us from the offices of the San Marcos Free Press. “Mr. Cuff’s a bit…well…”

  “Loco?” I suggested.

  “Prickly,” the printer corrected.

  “Oh, I know the type.”

  I peered around him at my brother.

  Gustav was squinting and blinking, momentarily blinded by the brightness of the sun outside. Yet there was something about him that seemed stunned, too—distant and oblivious.

  “You should try the Kriegers. Fredericksburg and Comal,” the typesetter said. Then he threw in another whispered “Sorry” before puffing himself up to bellow, “And stay out!”

  The newspapermen marched back into the building and slammed the door.

  Out on the sidewalk, a prim and proper couple stopped midstroll to stare at us.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, tipping my hat. “May I interest you in a set of genuine leather-bound encyclopedias?”

  The gentleman and his lady made for the hills.

  “So,” I said to Old Red, “got any notion who Fred and Comal Krieger are or why we should ‘try’ ’em?”

  “Fredericksburg and Comal ain’t people. They’re streets. Thisaway.”

  Gustav started up the sidewalk, moving fast.

  I caught up and matched him stride for stride.

  “So who would the Kriegers be, then?” I asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Not that that’s slowin’ you down any.”

  “Feels better goin’ fast,” my brother said without looking over at me. “Almost like we’re actually gettin’ somewhere.”

  Before long, we were scuttling past snug houses with shrub-studded yards set off by picket fences as white and straight as sets of perfect gleaming teeth. One home, though—the one we found casting a shadow over the corner of Comal and Fredericksburg—was considerably grander than its cozy neighbors, with so much curlicued ornamentation upon its gables and veranda it made a gingerbread house look about as fancy as a sharecropper’s privy. Posted in front was a large sign, which I dutifully read out for my brother.

  SAN MARCOS’S BEST

  (SAN MARCOS’S ONLY!)

  PHOTOGRAPHY & CUSTOM FRAMING STUDIO

  MORTIMER KRIEGER, PROPRIETOR

  “EXCELSIOR!”

  Gustav just grunted, then bounded up to the porch and knocked on the door.

  “Got any idea what you’re gonna say to this Krieger feller?” I asked as I came up the steps behind him.

  “I ain’t worried about that,” Old Red said. “You’re doin’ the talkin’.”

  “Well, thanks for givin’ me so much no—”

  The door swung open.

  The first part came easy. It’s not hard to figure “Good afternoon, ma’am” is the best way to start when greeting a matronly middle-aged woman.

  After that, I was winging it.

  “Would Mr. Krieger be available?”

  The woman was silent. Which isn’t to say she didn’t say anything. Her lips were moving, so I knew there were words floating around there somewhere. They just never made it so far as my ears.

  “Pardon?”

  The woman repeated herself…and I still couldn’t make out a sound. Fortunately she stepped back and swept an arm out behind her, which was easy to interpret even without words.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Our hostess offered up a small smile as Gustav and I stepped past her. She was a well-proportioned if unremarkable specimen of perhaps forty-five years of age, with curly black-gray hair and delicate features that fairly screamed gentility (if “GENTILITY!” is something that can be screamed). Her rather shapeless black-and-brown tea gown so matched the murky interior of the house that the woman almost literally faded into the woodwork.

  To be fair, though, she’d practically have to light herself on fire not to fade into the woodwork in such a place, so gloomy was it. Between the dark mahogany paneling and the walls papered in velvety red paisley, the house had all the warmth and cheer of your average bear cave. Further back, beyond the foyer, black banisters and crimson-carpeted steps curled up to a second floor so shadow-shrouded I wouldn’t have been surprised to spy stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

  The lady closed the door behind us and spoke/whispered again.

  “You’ll have to excuse me, ma’am,” I said, tilting an ear her way. “I can’t seem to catch anything more quiet than a thunderclap today.”

  Then at last I heard it—a tiny, distant voice, like one of Swift’s Lilliputians talking from under a teacup.

  “Are you here for a sitting?”

  She swiveled as she spoke, hand held out to a closed door to her right—the studio, I was guessing.

  “No, ma’am. We’re here on other business.”

  She pivoted the other way, gesturing toward a door directly opposite the first.

  “You’d like to join the subscription library?”

  Bull’s-eye.

  “Yes, indeed, ma’am. We’ve heard ever so much about it…haven’t we, Gustav?”

  “Talk of the town,” my brother muttered.

  “Come with me,” the woman said.

  At least I assume that’s what she said. I couldn’t make it out. Anyhow, she opened the door and gestured for us to follow her through.

  We did—and from drab darkness, we stepped into a miracle.

  Everywhere I looked, floor to ceiling, were books books books—more than I’d ever seen altogether at once. Andrew Carnegie may be sprinkling the East with public libraries, but out here in the West they’re still a rarity, as are bookstores any bigger than the back corner of a general store. Stumbling into such a treasure trove in someone’s home was like opening a tin of stewed tomatoes and finding the crown jewels.

  Old Red and I were stunned so silent it was actually possible to hear our hostess speak.

  “Please, make yourselves comfortable. My husband will be with you shortly.”

  With that she went gliding out of the room.

  “Quite the little firecracker, ain’t she?” I walked to the nearest bookshelf, pulled down the first volume within easy reach, and found myself holding The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. “I didn’t think I’d get a word in edgewise.”

  “The lady’s got ‘the grand gift of silence,’ that’s all,” Old Red said, appropriating a compliment Holmes once paid Watson. “I just wish that gift wasn’t so danged rare.”

  I slid Eddie Poe back in his slot.

  “This better?” I said.

  My brother either didn’t hear me or (about a thousand times more likely) chose to ignore me.

  I drifted over to a table covered with newspapers. “They got the Free Press for the last week or so. Could be they keep the old ones stashed away, too.”

  Gustav started flipping through a book big enough to crush a Chihuahua. Maybe he was looking for pictures.

  “I ain’t interested in that rag now,” he said.

  “Well, why the hell are we here, then?”

  Fortunately I’d merely mumbled this to myself, for at that very moment the door
opened and a nondescript man sidled into the room. And when I say “nondescript,” I mean it—even such a word as “sidled” imparts too much character to him. He was an average-looking man of average height and average build, dressed with the tasteful blandness expected of your average middle-aged, middle-of-the-road Everyman.

  We were face-to-face with mediocrity incarnate.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m Mortimer Krieger,” he said, and you’ll have to excuse the lack of adjectives describing his voice. To tell you the truth, I can’t even remember what he sounded like. “I apologize for keeping you waiting. I was attending to a client in my studio. An engagement of the utmost delicacy.” He leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “A memento mori.”

  “Ahhhh,” I said in a sympathetic, say-no-more kind of way.

  My brother said more.

  “A what now?”

  I stifled a sigh.

  “Keepsake commemoratin’ a dearly departed,” I explained.

  “Oh.” Old Red looked at Krieger. “You’re talkin’ about a death portrait.”

  The photographer nodded. “Just so.”

  Old Red scowled.

  Our family never succumbed to the fad for death portraits, though our resistance might have been more a matter of circumstance than sensibility: We lacked the ready cash for photographs of any kind, and when one of us died it was rarely in a way that made for a pretty picture.

  My brother jerked his chin at the door.

  “The ‘dearly departed’ ain’t over there in your studio, is he?”

  “No,” Krieger said, unruffled by my brother’s bluntness. There are advantages to having no discernible personality. “A member of the family was simply making arrangements for me to visit the home before the wake.”

  “Ahhhh,” I said in a neutral, no-accounting-for-taste kind of way. (Amazing how many meanings you can shoehorn into an “Ahhhh,” isn’t it?)

  Gustav was still scowling.

  “De gustibus non est disputandum,” Krieger said to him with a smile I might have labeled “sly” had it come from someone I credited with a capacity for irony. “There’s no accounting for taste…even in how we deal with death. Now”—Krieger’s smile grew larger, yet at the same time emptier—“how may I help you?”