The Last Sherlock Holmes Story

by Michael Dibdin

  Holmes applauded enthusiastically. ‘Capital, Doctor! Really first rate! If I were in the market for a theory, I would sooner take yours than half a dozen others I have heard. In fact there is still more evidence you might adduce in its favour. The arrangement of the objects around Chapman’s body, for instance, might be explained as a heathen rite.’

  ‘I know nothing of that.’

  ‘The killer took the rings from her fingers and laid them out carefully at her feet, together with a few coins. By her head he placed part of an envelope, and you have heard Dr Philips’s evidence about the arrangement of the intestines on her right shoulder. Does that not suggest some form of ritual sacrifice?’

  I could scarcely believe my ears. With each new detail the case seemed to grow darker and more unfathomable.

  ‘It’s devilish,’ I cried.

  ‘It has certainly been made to appear so. Incidentally, one of the inmates of the boarding-house Chapman frequented identified the envelope as being the property of the deceased. She had seen her with it earlier that night, but at that time it lacked the mark it bore later, when it was found by Chapman’s head.’

  ‘What mark was that?’

  ‘The letter “M”. A capital “M”. That would seem to put paid to your ignoble savage, Watson.’

  ’Perhaps one of his fellow-seamen had taught him a few letters,’ I suggested feebly. ‘Or perhaps –’

  My voice died away. Holmes nodded.

  ‘Aye, “perhaps”. There you have the key to this whole affair. “Perhaps.” Have you ever heard of Occam’s Razor?’

  ‘What?’ I was rather startled by this sudden change of tack. ‘I don’t believe I have. Is it one of the new safety models?’

  ‘Hardly. It has been with us for over five hundred years. It is a philosophical axiom. In its original form it runs: Entia non sunt multiplicanda.’

  ’I see.’

  ‘In other words, entities should not be unnecessarily multiplied. Now then, Doctor! How many theories are necessary to solve a problem?’

  I sat up straight and endeavoured to collect my thoughts.

  ‘How many are necessary? Well, just one. As long as it’s the correct one, of course.’

  ‘Precisely! But when we come to look into these White-chapel murders, what do we find? Handfuls of theories! Theories by the score! One penny plain and tuppence coloured! Every man you meet has his own and every hour brings with it a fresh one. So let us try all these prolific hypotheses upon old William of Occam’s cutting edge. Are they necessary to explain the facts? They are not. Do they bring us any nearer to apprehending the criminal? They do not. Do they enable us to predict what he is likely to do in the future? No. Then what use are they? The answer, my dear Watson, is that they are of no use whatsoever to us, but of very great value to the murderer.’

  As Holmes expounded his argument, his tone grew more heated and his gestures correspondingly more intense. At length he leapt up from his chair and began to pace the floor.

  ‘I said that I had a clear idea of the kind of man he is, Watson. Perhaps now you begin to perceive the outlines. You must put all conventional notions out of your head. We are dealing with an artist of misdirection with an uncanny knack for manipulating the public mind. He knows that organ as well as any great musician knows his instrument, and he can make it play whatever medley of popular airs will best enshroud the augmented tones of his grim leitmotif. Is it any wonder then that Lestrade and company provoke my mirth? This Whitechapel killer is as far beyond their ken as Lassus’s polyphony is beyond the patrons of the Savoy Theatre. In fact, Watson – and I say this without the slightest immodesty – I very much doubt whether there is any man in London besides myself who is capable of cutting through this cunning devil’s webs of deception, to reveal the unholy genius at the heart of it all. He is truly a formidable opponent! Finally I have an adversary wholly worthy of my powers! To destroy him will set a fitting crown upon my life’s work. And if I fail – But no! I must not fail. There can be no question of that! The consequences would be unthinkable.’

  Never had I seen Holmes display such agitation as in uttering these last words. It was as if he found himself doubting his own powers for the first time. In another moment he was master of himself again, and all purposeful energy, but that single glimpse of the inner man disturbed me far more than all the dreadful news I had heard that morning.

  Holmes spent the afternoon at Scotland Yard, returning for dinner in a mood of taciturn introspection. After the meal, which we ate in silence, he retired to the acid-stained table in the corner and busied himself with his retorts and test-tubes. I took myself out for a walk, and went early to bed. The next morning our front room reeked of some malodorous compound which Holmes had brewed up in what had evidently been a late sitting. Of Holmes himself there was no sign until almost midday, when he emerged from his room dressed as the shabbiest tatterdemalion imaginable, and announced coolly that he would spend the next three days in Whitechapel.

  ‘You mean to leave me behind then?’ I cried in dismay.

  ‘No, no. But you cannot assist me at this juncture. Fear not, though, you shall miss none of the sport.’

  ‘Might I not at least tag along?’

  ‘Tut, Watson! It wouldn’t do, old fellow. I shall spend my time mingling with the people of the district. As you see, I intend to pass as one of themselves. Now I think you would agree that your dramatic talents do not extend much beyond the occasional recitation of “The boy stood on the burning deck” at yuletide festivities, whereas I must come and go in houses which the police themselves will not enter. If the folk there suspected for an instant that I was a “toff” I should be in great danger of leaving the premises horizontally.’

  ‘That’s all very well, Holmes, but you cannot expect me to sit idly by while you battle this fiend alone!’

  ‘By no means. On the contrary, if things turn out as I expect I shall be only too glad of your support. As you know, I maintain a number of small refuges in various parts of London, and one of these is situated quite conveniently close to the scene of these crimes. I intend to put up there. It is too small to accommodate us both – a mere glory-hole – but Lestrade is to call for me if a murder is discovered, and I shall at once dispatch a cab to bring you to the spot.’

  They also serve, the poem says, who only stand and wait. Perhaps their service is in fact the more arduous. Certainly it seemed so that evening as I sat alone in Baker Street, gazing into the fire and wondering what Holmes was about and what hazards he was facing and what the outcome would be. At eleven o’clock I lit my candle and went upstairs. I lay down fully clothed on my bed, and after a time sleep claimed me.

  At half past two a rapping at my bedroom door awoke me from a fitful slumber. I was grateful for the interruption, for I had been visited by a fantastic and terrible dream in which I seemed to be following a woman down a dreary street, a knife in my hand. From such unwholesome phantoms even the rudest awakening comes as a welcome relief. At the door I discovered Mrs Hudson’s Billy, clad in a woollen wrap and shaking with cold and excitement.

  ‘There’s a cab for you down below, sir,’ said the youth. ‘Mr Holmes ‘as sent for you, seein’ as which there’s bin another ’orrible murder!’

  The situation had proved too much for Billy’s grammar, but his meaning could not have been clearer. I fetched my hat and coat and hurried down. But it soon seemed that I had shaken off my dreams only to enter a world equally spectral and oppressive. The hansom bucked and swayed through deserted streets. A chill wind had laid waste the city. How many of all the millions who toil daily in London have ever seen its other face? It is an eerie reflection of that brash and bustling metropolis. All is the same, and yet not the same. No doubt it sounds fanciful, but seen from that madly dashing cab the city bore the aspect of a skull. The very streets seemed terrible, and a fit arena for these most terrible crimes.

  The cabbie had said only that the murder was in Aldgate. ‘They wouldn’t let
me near the body. They said it was no fit sight.’ We sped down Holborn and Cheap-side, past the Bank, and into Leadenhall Street. Here at last the driver checked our furious progress, as we turned off down a narrow lane to the left. Some distance along we turned again, and drew up. The cabbie jumped down. ‘You’re here,’ he said bluntly.

  A cut opposite debouched into a small square where a group of persons were gathered together under a lamp. As I approached, a policeman emerged from the shadows and asked me my business. I explained that I was an associate of Mr Sherlock Holmes, upon which I was conducted to the group under the lamp and introduced to an Inspector of the City Police. This official denied all knowledge of Holmes’s whereabouts, but on learning that I was a doctor he in turn introduced me to the police surgeon, a Dr Brown, who was waiting for arrangements to be made to remove the corpse to the mortuary. It was he who invited me to view the remains.

  ‘I have no idea how extensive your practice has been, Dr Watson,’ he remarked, ‘but I shall be very surprised if you have seen anything like this before.’

  He led me across the square to a dark corner. On the flagstones lay a shapeless mass. The surgeon shone his bull’s-eye on it, and bent to turn back the sheet of dirty canvas that covered the thing. It was a dead woman. Her throat had been slashed in the most vicious manner, and the whole face was brutally disfigured. Pieces of bloody tissue were heaped about the neck. Then Dr Brown pulled the canvas all the way back, exposing the lower body to view.

  For a moment I was in danger of disgracing myself before a fellow medico. And yet that corpse presented nothing new to eyes that had witnessed countless dissections. It was not the injuries themselves that were so shocking – the gaping abdomen, the entrails torn asunder, the pools of drying blood – but rather the terrible violence with which they had been inflicted. Nothing that was said at the inquest could begin to suggest the impression that was immediately burned upon the mind of everyone who saw that poor woman’s body. The knife had been jabbed with tremendous force into the groin and then dragged upwards through the body until it was stopped by the breast-bone. The signature on the letter Lestrade had shown us leapt instantly to mind in all its hideous aptness – the woman had been literally ripped open. All those present that morning were either doctors or policemen, and by profession inured to grisly scenes, and yet they all conspicuously avoided the corner where the body lay, and huddled together on the other side of the square as if for protection. I knew that each man had felt as I had on gazing at that obscene spectacle, that some dark power had risen out of the swamps of history, some atavistic freak come to unleash horrors we had thought to meet only in old books and country tales, and with which we were helpless to deal.

  Brown covered the body again, and we rejoined the others. After a time I fell in conversation with the constable who had discovered the crime. He told me that he had passed through the square on his rounds at half past one, and had seen nothing untoward.

  ‘Fifteen minutes later I came through again, and there she was,’ the fellow declared solemnly. ‘I’ve been on the force a few years now, but I’ve never seen nothing like that. I hope to God I never shall again! There she was, just like you saw her, laying on her back with her skirts hoisted up and her legs spread and all her guts hanging out. It can’t help but give you a bit of a turn, you know, coming on the likes of that without fair warning. Anyway, I ran over here to the warehouse, and the watchman went off to fetch some others while I stayed with the body. Then later the Commissioner comes round in a cab, and I showed her to him myself.¶

  By now I was feeling increasingly concerned by Holmes’s continuing absence. How comforting it would be to watch him at work, evaluating the evidence that others had overlooked, forming and testing theories, dropping sibylline remarks or stubbornly keeping his own counsel. At his side, I knew, the terror that had possessed my soul would recede and diminish, until at last this abomination would come to seem natural and explicable and its author an ordinary mortal like ourselves. When the constable had concluded his account, therefore, I asked him whether he had seen my friend. Much to my surprise he answered readily:

  ‘Mr Holmes, sir? Why yes! He was here not long after Sir Henry. About a quarter past two it must have been. There was a little foxy-looking fellow with him. An Inspector from the Yard, he said.’

  ‘That would be Lestrade,’ I confirmed.

  ‘Yes, sir, that was his name. They were come straight from the other murder, and when –’

  ‘What! The other murder! You mean there has been another atrocity tonight?’

  ‘Why yes, sir, Have you not heard? There’s another woman killed, down the Commercial Road East. Her throat was cut the same as this one, like he had a mind to take her head home with him. He did that one before, though. Around one o’clock they found her, and then when they got news of this one they came straight over.’

  ‘But they are not here now?’

  ‘Oh no, sir! They didn’t stop long. First Mr Holmes had a look at the body, then he whips out this magnifying-glass, goes down on all fours and starts crawling about the square. The gent from the Yard stands here watching with what you might call a smirk. All of a sudden Mr Holmes jumps up. “This way!” he calls out, and they went off through that cut over there.’

  The man pointed to a narrow passage at the end of the square. I was just wondering whether I should go that way myself, in hopes of finding Holmes, when I heard a clatter of hoofs and the scraping of a wheel against the kerb. With mingled pleasure and relief I heard my friend’s voice hailing me. I hurried over to the waiting hansom. Holmes opened the doors and helped me up.

  ‘Goulston Street, cabbie!’ he called out, and we drove off. ‘He has escaped us, Watson! We had him in our net, but somehow he has given us the slip. We followed his trail as far as Dorset Street, but there we lost him. Lestrade is busy turning out all the doss-houses in the area.’

  ‘He may yet be apprehended, then!’

  ‘I think not. Such a refuge would be too public to suit our man’s requirements. Lestrade will almost certainly achieve nothing more than waking up a large number of exhausted paupers. No, I fear the killer has got clean away this time There is nothing more we can do here. I just want to show you something of interest, and then we may go home.’

  His voice was lifeless and his whole bearing weary and dispirited. After a short journey the cab drew up in a gloomy and forbidding street composed of tall dwelling-houses built to a common model. Holmes bade the driver wait, and led me to the entrance of one of the buildings, where a sturdy man in an ulster was standing. Holmes greeted him.

  ‘Well, Halse, anything new? Are they still set on rubbing it off?’

  ‘So it seems, Mr Holmes. I’ve sent for a photographer, but we can do nothing until it gets light. It seems the Yard is still worried there might be a riot if the writing is seen.’

  ‘I should have thought Warren would have been all in favour of that,’ Holmes returned drily. ‘Putting down riots is his forte, isn’t it?’||

  Halse smothered a grin.

  ‘All I know is if we were standing on the other side of Petticoat Lane, this business would be handled differently. But this is Metropolitan ground, and they’ve got an Inspector in there with a bath sponge waiting to wipe off the writing the moment a crowd gathers. They call it maintaining the peace. I won’t tell you what I call it.’

  At this point I could restrain myself no longer.

  ‘What writing are you talking about? What has happened?’

  Holmes turned to me apologetically.

  ‘My dear fellow, do forgive me. I had quite forgotten that you are not yet au courant. This is Detective Sergeant Halse of the City Police, who is keeping an unofficial eye – this being outside his bailiwick – on the imbeciles from Scotland Yard, who seem bent on erasing one of the most interesting clues we have in this affair. Look over here!’

  Taking a lantern from the policeman, Holmes illuminated a portion of the wall at the entrance to the b
uilding. Some words were scrawled there in chalk on the black dado.

  The Juwes are

  The men That

  Will not

  be Blamed

  for nothing

  ‘An interesting example of killer’s graffiti, is it not?’ commented Holmes.

  ‘But how can you tell he did it? It could have been put there by almost anyone.’

  Holmes shook his head decisively.

  ‘Note the long strokes on the “t”s, the slope of the double “l”s, the almost separated “m”s and the oval “o”s. Altogether there are some seventeen quite unmistakable correspondences with the letter Lestrade showed us on Friday. But we have more conclusive proof. A piece of bloodstained cloth was found with the writing, and there is no doubt that it was cut from the apron of the woman whose remains you just inspected in Mitre Square. He used it to wipe his hands on before penning these lines.’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘Quite. Well, so much for that. Nothing now remains but to return to Baker Street and put our brains to work. Good night, Halse. Try and save us from our friends.’

  ‘I will do what I can, Mr Holmes.’

  As we drove back across that unpatrolled frontier which separates the territories of the two great tribes which inhabit London, Holmes maintained his dour and troubled silence. I could tell that he was goading himself with recriminations and reproaches – as if any man could have succeeded where he had failed – and I thought it best to interrupt this morbid introspection.

  ‘I say, Holmes, you might tell me what has happened tonight, you know! I’m still pretty much in the dark.’

  ‘Of course, of course. I may as well recount my experiences in the order in which they occurred. I reached my retreat shortly after ten, and passed a few hours with a pipe and my pocket Seneca before retiring. Lestrade’s man roused me at ten minutes before two. The body of the first victim had been found an hour before, in a courtyard off Berner Street, by a hawker returning from Sydenham market. The police were summoned. Lestrade, who was at Leman Street station, was notified, and as soon as he had verified that it was indeed another Ripper murder, he sent for me.’