by A S Croyle
“Did you say eight hundred?”
Sherlock nodded. “And this murderer who is on the loose is likely not London’s first nor will he be our fair city’s last. Some of the boroughs breed crime, Poppy. Cheapside, Whitechapel, for example, where some of my young sleuths hail from. They are filled with prostitutes, the destitute, and demented individuals. Who knows what fate might befall them if someone takes it into his mind to rid the city of those he considers wicked or immoral or useless, a drain on society? I fear such places are ripe hunting grounds for someone who seeks out his prey where the lawful do not venture and a criminal may go unseen and slip away in the fog.”
All at once, the air felt heavy. It was almost like Sherlock had acquired Effie’s psychic gift. There would come a day in the not-so-distant future when I would recall those prescient remarks because just such a serial killer would roam the eerie streets of Whitechapel and become known to the world as Jack the Ripper.
Exasperated, Sherlock stomped around the room. “I am baffled and I do not like it. So, who is able to find these men and who has the power to overcome without striking a blow? I have checked this man’s hands and fingernails. There is no sign of a struggle or defensive wounds. And it is a ritual of sorts.” He paused a moment, then said, “I suspect our killer is a man, of course.”
“Why is that? Do you not consider a woman capable of such cunning?”
“You would be intelligent enough. But most women I know would not be and women are by nature nurturers. They grasp at hope when none exists. Men do not.
“Now, most men in this city are Caucasian so the balance of probabilities suggests that is the race of our killer, yet the Buddha is intriguing.”
His face turned, as if shaded by a darkened sun.
“Transient or geographically stable?” he asked himself.
“Stable,” I answered, “given they were all found here.”
“Yes, London is his fertile hunting ground. For now, at least. But motive,” he muttered. “Does he enjoy killing? There is no sign of torture,” he added, his voice drifting to a whisper. “Is he delusional? Playing out some fantasy? Or have the men wronged him or his religion in some way and he seeks revenge?”
“The ultimate revenge,” I added.
“The murders follow a regular pattern, a very specific pattern, and the bird and the statue are part of the ritual. I’ve read of cases in Africa called Voodoo Death. People chanting and humming like zombies as some tribal leader dressed up in witch doctor regalia points a bone at the victim.” He thought for a moment, then said, “The victims were not robbed. It does not appear to be larceny or blackmail, but I will check their financial records further.” He paused a moment. “No gun. No knife or other edged weapon. No blunt objects. And not a single witness or accuser, according to Lestrade. I spoke to employees at the bank where this victim worked and none acknowledge any sort of grudge against him.”
“So what is your plan, Sherlock?”
He stared at me blankly, as if he were surprised I needed to ask the question. He said, “Has your brain turned to dust like a crumbled building? I will examine the crime scene again. I will determine the cause of death. An autopsy will illuminate many things. I will evaluate the finest details. Then I can begin to build my case file.”
“And?”
“And then I will invade the killer’s mind to determine his vulnerabilities. A killer reveals himself through his victims. How they are killed, where and when. In the end, I will have a portrait of the killer’s mind - a good part of it, at least. A profile of his personality, if you will. I will keep an open and non-judgmental mind, unlike those idiots at the Yard. And I will find the truth.”
10
“So, here it is, Poppy. The coroner has thus far ruled them all natural deaths. He is a buffoon. In fact, in County Kent, he was investigated for neglect of his duties. Besides, the coroner only obtained his position through Mycroft, and so he answers to Mycroft, who wishes even more than Lestrade to keep this quiet. Lestrade is sometimes out of his depth, I’ll grant you, but his motives are pure. He does not wish to start a panic; Mycroft simply wants to be in charge of it all.”
There it was again, the rivalry between Sherlock and his brother Mycroft. Sherlock was the youngest of three brothers. The eldest, Sherrinford, had managed the family estate since their father passed away. Mycroft was seven years Sherlock’s senior and he held some mysterious position in the British government. Sherlock insisted he was the right hand of Her Majesty and ran the whole institution. He had told me that Mycroft had created his position, his own destiny, as it were, just as Sherlock insisted he had shaped his own position of Consulting Detective. He said that Mycroft frequently decided national policy and that his great brain could hold so much minutiae that he was now indispensable to Her Majesty.
“Lestrade has a great deal of faith in your uncle,” he said, “particularly since he undertook to be a part-time pathologist here at St. Bart’s. When Lestrade heard of your uncle’s implementation of the advanced protocol of the German doctor, he realized that Dr. Sacker was ahead of most of the physicians in Great Britain.”
I couldn’t disagree with the assessment of Uncle. He was an incredibly skilled and talented physician. And when Virchow developed the first step-by-step procedure for conducting autopsies a few years ago, Uncle Ormond had devoured the English translation that was published later that year.
“So, since Dr. Sacker is not here, I told Lestrade that you might assist us.”
“I am not my Uncle Ormond,” I confessed sadly. “I’ve only been a doctor for a year and-”
“Oh, do not be modest, Poppy. It does not become brilliant people. It is so transparent. Didn’t you tell me that you are thinking seriously about seeking a position as a railway surgeon? Must they not be open to new and creative medical practices?”
“What has that got to do with this?”
“Logic dictates that the more experience you have with body trauma and forensic medicine, the better internal guide you will have in the treatment of wounds and injuries. You have freely admitted that your practice has gone wanting. Surely it’s best to garner your knowledge of wounds and injuries and disease by examining and cutting into corpses rather than living patients, is it not? Particularly, when living specimens are so few and far between.”
“Sherlock, I don’t know. I-”
“Don’t you need to know about which injuries may cause death within hours?” he interrupted. “Lung bruising or heart bruising, a torn diaphragm or windpipe, a ripped gullet, hollow organ damage, solid organ damage... not all body parts are created equal. This body is fresh. It has been just hours since the man’s demise. It would seem to me the more you learn, the more you-”
Sighing, I said, “All right. What do you want me to look for, Sherlock?”
“I am hoping you can confirm my suspicions. All five bodies were found in the vicinity of the British Museum. I believe I shall soon know the ‘who,’ the identity of all of them, and the ‘where’ - if the bodies were not moved, and the ‘when’ is obvious. I believe that I have the ‘how’ as well, which is what I need you to confirm. I have yet to ascertain the ‘why.’”
I took off my hat, removed my cape and draped it over a chair in a corner of the necropsy suite. “You said you think you know how this man died. Do you wish to share your opinion?”
He took a small box from a table near the body. He donned gloves - he had been studying both sanitation and preservation of evidence for some time - and removed from the box a small statue of Buddha. It was perhaps fifteen centimeters tall and closely resembled a larger one I had seen on display at the British Museum. Then he removed from the box something covered with white linen. He unwrapped it to reveal a bird - dead and stiff.
“The Buddha is hollow and the bird was next to it. I believe the bird was poisoned. I will draw some bl
ood to examine it microscopically, and I shall do the same with the dead man, for I believe they were murdered with the same poison. I have also asked Lestrade to have the bodies of the other four men exhumed so they can be examined as well.”
“They will be in various stages of decomposition.”
“Yes, that is true. All the more reason to have at this chap. He is fresh.”
I cringed. Only Sherlock Holmes would describe a recently departed soul in such a way, yet I knew that he meant not to degrade and likely had no recognition of the fact that he had.
“I will do the toxicological work, but I want you to examine the body. For some reason, Lestrade refuses to rely upon the conclusions I reached upon my examination of it.”
For some reason, I thought. Of course, Sherlock would be incredulous. Why should anyone question deductive reasoning powers that were as sharp and sure as a surgeon’s scalpel?
Despite his lack of medical degree, despite his lack of any medical or scientific background other than some chemistry and biology courses, he would find it hard to understand how anyone could doubt him.
I started to say, “But I am just a woman. Lestrade will doubt me as well.” Refusing, however, to lend any credence to inequality of gender so far as intelligence, competence and medical background were concerned, I said instead, “I doubt that Detective Inspector Lestrade will trust a physician like me with so little experience in this arena.”
Sherlock put his hands on my shoulders, which sent the familiar shiver down my back, followed by a rush of warmth through my veins that made my entire body simmer. At these times, I barely recognized myself.
“Poppy, how can you belittle yourself when I have supreme confidence in you and your abilities? Now, put on these gloves and cover that elegant dress with this apron and get on with it.”
I opened the curtains, as I knew such an examination required daylight. Colour changes can be invisible in artificial light. I pulled on the gloves, then slid the apron over my head. He slipped behind me and tied it. I turned around to face Sherlock and our eyes met for a moment. Suddenly awash with memories of our one romantic evening in a cottage at Holme-Next-The-Sea - an emotional experience that he generally attributed to both of us having consumed too much wine - I felt my cheeks flush.
How right Sherlock was... not all body parts were created equal. The human heart was boundless, infinitely, and sometimes cruelly, inventive. A wound to the human heart could send madness and a bubble of rage to the brain. It could drape you in an aura of anger that darkened and eclipsed everything else. Forced into quietness and stillness, swathed in a bog, it could beat in a dull thump, nothing more than a feeble tremor, barely able to dispatch blood to your vessels. Or it could struggle against your breast, fight to smooth each recalcitrant nerve, make you feel drunk and giddy and littered with hope. When I thought of that night I’d spent with Sherlock, my heart flitted in a powerful frenzy, glittered with light, as though I had come out of a dull, grey shadow and stepped through a gateway to a meadow of rosy warmth and refreshing raindrops. I remembered how he had cupped my face with his palms. I remembered his touch, the scent of the sea, and the fragrance of the flowers he had left for me in the morning. I deliberately averted my gaze, walked toward the body and asked in what position it had been found.
“On the ground, face up,” he said. “Hands folded across his chest with the Buddha and the dead bird next to his head on the right.”
“Sherlock, is Detective Inspector Lestrade coming? Should we wait?”
“He was here earlier, but since you decided you had more important things to do, he left. He shall return soon; a page came with a message just moments before you arrived,” he said. “Lestrade told me to proceed without him.”
“Did you remove the man’s clothing?”
Sherlock nodded. “And before you ask, no, it was not soiled or stained with blood, there were no signs of a struggle, no torn fragments. There were no objects of any kind in the area except for the statue. I noted the absence of cadaveric rigidity and putrefactive changes.”
“Good,” I whispered as I examined the body for moles, tattoo-marks, abnormalities, and cicatrices, like keloid scarring or calluses.
“His hands were soft,” Sherlock said. “As I said, he worked in a bank so he earned his living in a profession that requires no manual labour. I took the liberty of taking measurements as well.” He looked at his notebook. “He is approximately 175 cm. and weighs 70 kg. Not very muscular. No violence to the genital organ, no foreign substances detected,” he added.
Sometimes I wondered if he said such things to get a reaction or if he simply forgot I was a woman. Despite the rude manner in which he sometimes addressed people, he was generally respectful of and genteel with women, so I thought this was his way of acknowledging my intellect and medical expertise despite my gender.
As I started to make my observations out loud, Sherlock took up pen and paper and began to scribble down everything I said, as if I were dictating a monograph. Then again, I felt certain that was exactly what he intended to do with his notes.
I had never done an autopsy per se, just some dissections in medical school, so I tried to channel the order and procedures I remembered from watching my uncle and reading the treatises of Virchow and others. “Male, Caucasian, appearing to be approximately forty years of age.” I lifted his limbs and manipulated his fingers. “Stage of lividity puts the time of death at approximately six to eight hours ago.”
I examined the body and saw no stab wounds, no evidence of a gunshot. I considered strangulation by some means that would not show marks - a silk tie or handkerchief - so I looked closer at the neck, but the teguments and the skin over the windpipe showed no sign of an attempt at asphyxiation; there were no contusions or bruising. I checked the palms for some evidence of wounds he might have sustained had he tried to protect himself. Sherlock was right; there were none. Nothing about the gentleman’s body gave rise to a suspicion of violence.
“He could have died of a disease. We should-”
“No, Poppy. As I told you, he is the fifth victim in a series of murders and the killer has left his calling card. The bird and the statue itself. He is sending us a message. This man, and the other four men, did not die of natural causes.”
I leaned over the man’s face - he had a very pleasing countenance - and found no discolouration. I knew that if a man were strangled with a cord or silk or anything at all, it would affect his colouring, but this man’s skin was not black as it would have been instantaneously after death in such a manner.
I palpated his neck. The tissue was soft. I examined round his chest and sides. There were no marks at all. “The face is pale, the eyes staring, the jaw firmly closed.”
“Open his mouth, Poppy.”
I pressed between the man’s lips with my fingers to pry open his mouth. I leaned down. “There is a very distinct odor.”
Sherlock jumped from his chair and threw his hands into the air. “Yes! Precisely. Poppy, when hydrocyanic acid is present, there is a peculiar odor. But it is very volatile and readily decomposes. In very little time, the odor that would be present when you open the stomach and the thoracic cavity will dissipate.”
I whirled around. “You are not suggesting that I perform a full autopsy on this man, are you? Without a jury? Without... without any experience in the field?”
“That is precisely what I am proposing. I am certain you will find the vessels of the brain, the liver, the lungs and other organs engorged with blood, and the mucous membrane of the stomach reddened. Oh, and the blood will be a bluish or violet colour. As one would expect in one who ingests hydrocyanic acid.”
“Sherlock, truly, your faith in me is most gracious, but I am simply not qualified to undertake an autopsy without supervision.”
Sherlock and I both turned as we heard the door swing open.
<
br /> “No, Dr. Stamford, indeed you are not,” a man bellowed.
It was Detective Inspector Lestrade, and he did not look pleased at all.
11
I gave my head a sharp turn and stared at Sherlock. “You didn’t tell him I was coming here, did you? You lied to me? You got me here with a ruse? Again?”
Indeed, he had done it before, summoning me to the Diogenes Club under the pretence of a request for my presence by his brother Mycroft. I was assisting Mycroft Holmes with the dreadful baby farming investigation. My involvement with that case commenced when I overheard suspicious rumblings about a possible perpetrator at St. Thomas Hospital where I was a nursing student, prior to attending medical school and prior to meeting Sherlock.
“Sherlock, really, how could you?”
“He might have disapproved,” he replied, nodding toward Lestrade.
“I would have!” Lestrade yelled.
“Time is of the essence!” Sherlock exclaimed. “Listen, both of you, it’s important that we gather as much information as quickly as possible. If I am right, if it is the poison I think it is, much of the evidence could quickly disappear.”
“The coroner is on his way, Sherlock,” Lestrade said.
Again, Sherlock threw up his hands. Lestrade crossed his arms over his chest. For the next few moments, it was a bit like watching a long volley during a tennis match.
“Oh, brilliant, just brilliant,” Sherlock whined. “Now we’ll have a parade outside and a hundred minions voicing their opinions and-”
“No, Holmes,” Lestrade interrupted. “No jury. I have spoken at length with the coroner, and he has agreed to do this quietly so that we can confer about it before there is any inquest. But we are all on a very tight rope now, you know, with Director Vincent breathing down all our necks. There can be no more scandals, and the idea that some lunatic is on a murderous rampage and getting away with it... we could all be tossed out on the street at a moment’s notice.”
