by Lyndsay Faye
“Forrester Hyde—who it appears kept to form and made every effort to charm his fellow prisoners—was released without much fuss back into the city, since as you say he was convicted on only a single count of theft. His whereabouts after he departed are unknown, but sometime during those two days, he attempted to return to his respectable profession of engineering. After a search, the body revealed a notebook containing information about contacting three foremen, though we all know how difficult it is to regain employment following incarceration. The other items on the deceased were quite immaterial—an inexpensive cigarette case, a key that presumably matched his new lodgings, and an initialed watch with a brass chain. His clothing is good quality, but secondhand. I found a jerry shop ticket in the pocket of the jacket.”
“Very good thus far, friend Hopkins. And what befell him?”
“He was shot through the heart at close range with a small-caliber revolver that would have been easily concealed. There were powder burns on his coat. Hyde was able to crawl for a scant few feet, but we think he died in under a minute at most, and according to the blood that pooled, the body was not moved. This would have been sometime between midnight and two a.m., according to the coroner.”
“You claim he was killed at Wapping Station?” Holmes asked incredulously. “Surely not. No, no, it is too outlandish, even so late at night! We are expected to believe that a man was shot on the platform with no one the wiser?”
“By no means, sir!” Leaning forward, Hopkins clasped his hands together. “I expect you to believe that a man was shot beside the tracks in the middle of the Thames Tunnel, and without a single witness.”
“Ha!” Holmes crowed. The brightness of his eyes was crystalline with slightly manic sleep-deprivation, but gratifyingly clear, and avid with interest. “Pray continue your account, my good man.”
Hopkins reported that on the previous evening, the 12:14 train experienced a brief stop in mid-tunnel due to someone’s having triggered the emergency brake. The conductors at once endeavored to ascertain whether there was a safety issue, but their search for the perpetrator was inconclusive, and—after every precaution had been taken—the train continued on its way again.
“Surely the method if not the motive is obvious, then,” Holmes argued. “As to what Hyde was doing precisely, we must yet determine, but a fatal altercation must have taken place during the time the train was stopped, and the body was thrown from between two cars to the edge of the tracks. All is coal smoke and foulness as the engine passes under the Thames, and where decades ago it was packed with fashionable promenaders and fancy goods markets, now you can hardly see your hand before your face while still under the archway. Even a careful conductor could easily have missed spotting Hyde where he lay.”
“Agreed. Well, in part. No blood was found in or between any of the cars afterward, however. And the marks in the mud are most uncanny. Foot impressions begin about five feet from where we found the body and end in a pool of his blood, but there are no deeper gouges or splatters to indicate he fell from the train. In fact, signs appear to suggest that he materialized within the tunnel.”
“Hopkins,” Holmes said in a tone of such exquisite patience that his irritation could not have been clearer, “we have more than once conducted this discussion, and I remain more inclined to believe that you cannot read visible footprints than that criminals can fly.”
“But you shall see for yourself that the dirt and soot are clear as day, Mr. Holmes! And anyhow, there was no train ticket on the body.”
“Now you sound like one of Watson’s lurid Strand fabrications.”
Smiling, I said judiciously, “If the evidence at hand seems too daunting, Holmes, another few hours’ sleep would not go amiss.”
Holmes waved away this suggestion as if it were preposterous. “No, no, I shall have a look, of course. There is an explanation for everything under the sun.”
“The body is at the morgue en route to Wapping.” Hopkins set down his teacup. “We’ll stop there, with your permission, and then continue on to Wapping Station. I’ve good men standing watch, and we need not fear they’ll displace anything.”
Holmes and I went for our coats and boots, which thankfully had dried somewhat. “In that case, I am in your hands, Inspector Hopkins,” Holmes announced.
“Just wait until you see the remains, sir. I quite shrink from thinking of them.”
“Of a bullet wound?” Holmes asked in visible bafflement.
“No, of the other signs, which I shan’t report lest I bias your judgment,” Hopkins said with a shiver. “There’s something worse afoot here than a simple murder, that I can promise you.”
Deadhouses, no matter how well maintained, always excrete an aroma of inevitability, that commingled scent of metal and decay that reminds you how long some elements can outlive others, and how short a time it may be before your own tenuous thread is snapped. This smell festers much more strongly in the summer months, but was present nevertheless as we walked into the stone morgue, approaching a table where a body lay under a sheet. When Hopkins pulled back the covering, Holmes’s high forehead knit in consternation, and I admit I was myself taken aback. While I recognized an older, gaunter version of Forrester Hyde—his squarely masculine head and even features, now of course minus the ostentatious facial hair—my eyes were by no means drawn to his face.
“Whatever can have caused these abrasions?” the detective murmured.
“That’s what plagues me too, Mr. Holmes,” Hopkins assented. “Dr. Watson, you’d better have a look.”
I leaned down over the source of the fuss as Holmes cast his eyes over the rest of the body. The bullet wound was straightforward in the extreme—a neat, puckered hole now wiped clean of gore. Much more disconcerting were the victim’s hands: his fingertips were bruised and scraped, his nails raggedly torn away, even the edges of his thumbs having bled their share before he was killed. Had he dipped his hands within a sausage grinder and yanked them out again, he could hardly have done more damage.
“Any conclusions?” Holmes inquired, his attention still fixed on the body’s shins and ankles.
“I’ve one comparison, but I’m afraid it confuses rather than illuminates matters,” I admitted.
“Why so?”
“Well, the only time I’ve ever seen anything like this, there was a fire that had broken out in a derelict building, and very shortly thereafter the doorway was heaped with rubble. Men and women clawing for an egress made such marks upon their hands universally. The ones who survived, anyhow, and before the firemen tore the grating from a window.”
Nodding, Holmes lifted the left hand as if cradling exquisitely delicate porcelain. “I would have said the same, Doctor. It is very unlikely these are anything but self-inflicted. There is no torture I can think of that batters phalanges in this haphazard manner. And had he been trying to climb something, his knees would be equally damaged. No—he was trying to escape from somewhere.”
“Just as I feared, then,” Inspector Hopkins lamented. “As Dr. Watson says, this only adds to the confusion.”
Holmes replaced the appendage with extraordinary care. I noted that his movements, though steady, were still more languid than usual, and determined that I had better force some food into the man before he dropped in the street.
“On the contrary,” said he. “It is an uncommon fact; therefore it is a helpful one. One uncommon fact can potentially be worth twenty of your boot prints, bullet shells, or cigar stubs. So Hyde was likely captured—or at least trapped—shortly after having been released from prison. Anyone could have discovered the date of his parole, but he would have lost his lodgings years beforehand. His destination must have been unknown to any save close confederates. Therefore he was either followed after leaving Wandsworth, or betrayed by one of those trusted individuals, as the odds are astronomically against these injuries being coincidental.”
/> “But what can we do?”
“Might you wire the warden for me and find out whether he received any regular correspondence there?”
“By Jove, that’s the ticket! In a trice, Mr. Holmes. I’ll just write it out, and then we’ll be en route to Wapping Station.” Hopkins turned on his heel, clattered up the stairs, and left Holmes and me standing with puzzled brows on either side of a most peculiar corpse.
“Did you find anything else?” I inquired.
“Nothing to signify. He had a bad knee and favored it, likely due to an old insult he sustained as a convict. Or else, it is not outside the realm of possibility that it was a tennis injury. Who can say? We are through here.”
Duly, I replaced the sheet. “We are going to stop for a sandwich, Holmes. At the very least, toasted cheese.”
“Do you know, Watson, I never liked Forrester Hyde,” he reflected with a gaze lost in the mists of time. “Granted, he never made much of himself as a criminal genius, which already disposes me against him, but I recall he had a mean, vengeful streak, and a still thicker stripe of unchecked rage. Such men all too often prey upon the opposite gender and, rather than retaining any scrap of chivalry by simply going in for robbery or embezzlement at a faceless business, exploit women because they fear no revenge from such victims whose positions are already tenuous. He was no exception. When we appeared in court and he spied the ballerina who was his downfall, he spat at her despite the fact she was a galaxy away, up in the gallery. You remember her, I suppose, despite the passage of years?”
“Miss Elizabeth Gayle,” I readily answered. “Though I know her to have been very low at the time—and who would not have been, betrayed as she was—despite her melancholy she could not seem to repress sudden flashes of humor. Her wardrobe entirely lacked the ostentation favored by so many of her profession; she preferred cleanly draped lines and dark fabrics, though nothing she wore was morbid or plain in the slightest. As pale and slender as a birch tree, a shimmering configuration of light brown hair, large and luminous eyes, and a serenely sad countenance livened by a small, delightfully puckish mouth. She was quite riveting. Yes, of course I recall her.”
My friend, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose in satirical despair, made to follow Hopkins.
“I say, Holmes, I was not in jest when I remarked we must consume a little sustenance.”
“Come along, my dear Watson. We must have all our wits about us, or at least I must. Your own are rather more dispensable.”
In vain did I remonstrate and in vain reason with the man until finally, abandoning hope, I consumed the two apples I’d purchased from a street urchin, and we rejoined Hopkins to survey the scene of the crime.
It is difficult not to envy those who were able to enjoy the Thames Tunnel at the apex of its beauty: the sheer marvel of its craftsmanship; the otherworldly pathway beneath the river itself; the polished marble steps leading under the turgid waters; the blue and white mosaic floor; the brilliant glow of the gas lamps; the opulently dressed pleasure-seekers stopping to have their fortunes told and to listen to the melody of the great echoing organ. The sight must surely have been a wonder in its time, but those days are long past. Now, just as my friend had mentioned, the Thames Tunnel is a soot-encrusted chute connecting Wapping with the South London Line, transporting cargo and weary-eyed passengers back and forth with none of the attendant awe associated with speeding through a corridor surrounded by a titanic volume of water. For what, after all, is there to see save fellow laborers with faces like crumpled newsprint? Or if one chooses the window as a vista, all-enveloping darkness until one reaches the opposite station?
The air was foul and thick with grit as we stepped onto the platform from the stairway. Four uniformed constables guarded Wapping Station, and we had been promised by Hopkins that the same configuration was repeated on the other end of the tunnel—one set of two patrolmen on each side of the platform—for a total of eight officers. No one, he vowed with such fervor that Holmes hid a laugh in an abrupt cough, could possibly have disturbed the integrity of the footmarks. In a dignified yet still transparent glow of pride, Hopkins ordered yet another set of four policemen to make certain that the trains had been stopped, and to light their brightest bulls-eye lanterns for the examination of the evidence.
“Thank God you’re here, Doctor,” said Holmes under his breath.
“I am always glad to help, but what can you mean?”
“If friend Hopkins grows any more stimulated, I fear for his heart despite his relative youth and vigor. Just think of the strain.”
Smothering a smile as Hopkins informed us that all was in readiness was an arduous task, but I managed it. We followed after the constables, descended a set of iron steps for the railway workmen down to the tracks, and then stopped as Holmes whisked himself into place before the group.
“Everyone take the utmost care to step only on the railroad ties, on the gauge side and not the field side, if you please!” he called out, his ringing voice weirdly diminished in the foulness of the atmosphere. “Granted, our quarry may have done the same, but it takes a bold fellow indeed to walk in mid-track when the trains have not been stopped. A quarter hour of your time, and we shall return triumphant having escaped the underworld!”
Holmes—who could be very popular with the roundsmen when he wanted something from them—received applause and cries of “Hear, hear!” for this exhortation from the Yarders, while I shook my head in undisguised worriment. His behavior was not at all out of character, but his eyes gleamed quicksilver-bright and his gestures grew more expansive by the minute. My iron-willed friend has more than once driven himself directly into loss of consciousness due to lack of the most basic human maintenance; this was a spectacle I desired specifically to avoid.
As we walked along the ties, the light grew dimmer and the air thicker until the lanterns were of scant use. Still, it was no worse than an ordinary London Particular, and one by one we began tying our scarves round our faces to keep out the hovering charcoal.
“Here we are, Mr. Holmes!” Hopkins, who walked alongside my friend in the lead, whistled grandly to signal the halt of the party. “Everyone with a lantern, do as Mr. Holmes and I bid you, and this will go at first-rate speed. Mr. Holmes, allow me to present to you the murder site!”
We could barely see one another, but I could not miss the humorous flash of my friend’s eyes as he glanced at me, and even in the gloom I was forced to bend and—ostensibly—clear the foul atmosphere from my lungs.
“The footmarks begin here.” I could hear Hopkins’s familiar voice but could see nothing from my position, so I planted my hands in my pockets and followed the line of the light as it hazily illuminated the inspector’s back and Holmes’s profile as it paid Hopkins’s account the most minute attention. “And here they are the most concentrated. Much is explained if, as you said, he traveled via the ties and then leapt over to the margin, as indeed much is explained if he descended on foot—still alive, though mortally injured—from the stopped train. Both hypotheses present serious difficulties. But as you can see, he has faced in a number of directions just here, where the ground is all but churned, and then we shift to the signs of a man crawling on hand and knee, blood dripping from his waistcoat. Can you see them?”
“Yes, they are unmistakable,” said Holmes.
A jolt coursed through me at his tone. Sherlock Holmes had noticed something already, had transformed from a distant, ironical man into a sleek panther crouched in a cover of spreading foliage, a predator alert, as it stalks its natural prey, to the merest quiver of a leaf.
“Hyde crawls for about as far as you might expect from the severity of the wound,” Hopkins continued, “and the wider puddle here is where he expired.”
“Indeed, I gathered as much. And you are right to say that nothing indicates he landed here after having been expelled from between cars. However, do you not, H
opkins, find the details of this jumble of initial marks rather indicative?”
“In what way?”
“Well, I admit that I may be very fanciful, but the weight balance of some of these prints seems to me unusual. Note that just there he seems to be moving forward—you’ll perceive a slightly deeper depression between one foot and the other, which confirms a superfluous observation I made in the morgue regarding a knee injury—but in any case, those indentations are quite different from these, for example, when he staggers back. Do they suggest anything to your ample acumen?”
“Yes!” the young inspector exclaimed. “Good heavens, you’re right, Mr. Holmes, you must be! My cap is off to you already, sir.”
The detective paused. “What am I right about, if I may beg the extreme honor of knowing my own mind?”
“He was reeling to and fro, Mr. Holmes, from the shock and the pain of it—first on his toes and then on his heels, and from the very beginning! Therefore we can eliminate the notion that he entered via either of the stations. The murderer stopped the train, shot Hyde before the squeal of the brakes and the clatter of the tracks would cease to cover the noise, and then pushed the still-living Hyde from between the cars, thereby making a masterful getaway. Then the killer mopped up any traces of blood onboard before we were alerted. Have I got the right end?”
“Well, I grant that you are at least partially correct, though I admit I was thinking of something rather more outlandish regarding one aspect of that theory. Tut-tut, never mind—my trifling whims get the better of me from time to time, you understand.”
“You might share your idea anyhow, sir. I am all attention.”
“I certainly will, if it comes to anything. You may assist in that regard, as a matter of fact.”
“At your service, Mr. Holmes.”
“Constable! Shine your lantern so that I can make a note on my cuff, will you? Many thanks. Now, Hopkins, give me the names of the engineers Hyde wrote down and presumably contacted in search of employment, please. I shall be indebted.”
