George Mann - Associates of Sherlock Holmes

More blood this time. Less skin, though. The flesh of the shoulders and upper chest was missing. Her arms too.

Metcalfe could scarcely bring himself to look at her. He nodded. “All right,” I said. “On your way for now.”

Gratefully, Metcalfe went to marshal the constables whilst I got a better look at the girl. She wore a red velvet dress with a low neckline to expose the bust and shoulders. Her boots were also velvet, though in a darker red, closer to crimson, and she had a small hat with a black veil that had stayed pinned in place in spite of her violent death.

Her eyes were still open, frozen in her last moments, and I reached over to close them.

“God give us strength…”

Gradually it dawned on me, I knew her, you see, or rather knew of her. I had seen her face plastered around the East End and farther afield.

“Molly Cavendish.” I turned and saw Holmes standing a few paces back, the doctor a respectful distance behind him.

“Did you ever hear her sing, Mr Holmes?” I asked. “She had quite the voice.”

“And all of the East End shall mourn her loss, I am sure, but this is most curious…” Holmes approached to begin his examination.

“You are a cold man, Holmes,” I said.

“No, Lestrade,” he replied. “I am engaged , which is just as well for you. I fear your admirer’s grief has little to offer Miss Cavendish and, if I am not mistaken, she still has something to offer us.” He turned and gestured to Metcalfe. “Sergeant, as you did at Lime and Leadenhall Street, if you please.”

Reluctant, but impelled by my glare, Metcalfe turned poor Miss Cavendish over. The back of her dress was torn, crudely slashed. I feared something even darker had taken place than what I had first assumed, until I realised the cut garments were merely an outer layer, an impediment to be removed before taking the skin from Molly Cavendish’s back.

Holmes examined what skin remained, getting close enough to smell it. Her inspected her nails, her clothes, had Metcalfe turn her back again so he could look under her eyelids. He took a few strands of her hair, and regarded the soles of her boots. It seemed like a violation, as if Holmes were disturbing this poor girl’s final rest.

“Holmes, is that enough? What more can you possibly learn–”

Holmes turned sharply. “There is always more to learn, Lestrade. You would do well to permit me, Inspector. Watson,” he said to his companion. “See here.”

“Bruising around the neck,” Watson replied. He looked grey faced. “I would say strangulation is the likely cause of death, but the marks,” the doctor shook his head, “not done with the bare hands. The discolouration, on what little skin is left, is uniform, straight.” He mimicked how the murder might have happened, bracing his legs and holding out that cane he carries in two clenched fists. “Like this,” he said. “I believe our killer was armed.”

“Just so, Watson, just so,” said Holmes. “Skin under the nails also,” he added. “Miss Cavendish fought before she died.”

Holmes glanced up suddenly at a noise from further down the side street. Instinctively, I reached for my gun, and saw the doctor grip his cane a little more tightly. It’s for his limp, an old war wound I’m given to understand, but I’d always reckoned there’d be sharp steel inside it.

“Show yourself,” I bellowed to the shadows and the warren of awnings, doorways and refuse amongst which something much larger than a rat could easily hide. “Come out now, in the name of the law.”

Slowly there came a scuttling, as something small detached itself from the darkness, emerging into the grey dawn light. A girl, an urchin as filthy as the alleyway.

I lowered my gun and gestured to Metcalfe. “Bring her over here, Sergeant. Make yourself useful.”

Metcalfe nodded but as he closed on the girl, she screamed. She would’ve run too had my sergeant not seized her by the wrist.

“Calm down, girl,” he urged, as she wriggled and squealed. Metcalfe was a big man, with a full red beard. To some he might appear fearsome, I suppose, but the girl’s reaction seemed extreme. He half turned, twisting as if trying to grasp an eel, “I don’t know what’s come over her, sir. I only–’

Metcalfe cried out, letting go as the girl sank her teeth into the meat of his hand. He turned to her, face red with anger and with a fist raised until the doctor intervened.

“Don’t, Sergeant,” said Watson, his hand clamped firmly around Metcalfe’s forearm. There must have been something in his eyes, some remnant of the soldier he used to be, because Metcalfe retreated at once, looking sheepish.

Letting my sergeant go, Watson crouched so he was eye to eye with the girl and said something softly that made her cling to him.

“She’s terrified,” he said.

“Not of the law, I think,” said Holmes, “or the threat of your thuggish sergeant.”

“Steady on,” I said, but regarding Metcalfe, I could hardly disagree that the man was brutish in aspect if not demeanour. He nursed his hand. The girl had bitten through the skin and drawn blood.

“What then, Holmes,” I asked, “if not my sergeant?”

“Have you ever seen primeval fear?” said Holmes. “Note the wide eyes, the diluted pupils. Her skin, Doctor?”

“Is cold as bone, Holmes.”

“Gelid,” Holmes replied. “A feverish sweat dappling the brow. Bodily tremors, the fingers most acute.” Indeed, the girl did shake, her hands horribly so. Holmes looked back at Metcalfe, as if seeing what I could not. Then he looked back to the girl shivering in Watson’s arms, nothing more than a pallid little thing.

“What did you see?” he asked softly but without empathy. The urchin girl extended a tiny finger towards Metcalfe.

“It wasn’t me,” exclaimed the sergeant.

I scowled. “It’s not you, you idiot.”

The girl shivered harder, murmuring, “ Peeler, peeler, peeler …” in a little rasping voice.

Holmes turned his gaze on Metcalfe and for a moment I thought he was about to declare him the murderer.

“You’re right, Lestrade,” he said. “It’s not your sergeant, but rather his uniform.”

All three of us looked at Metcalfe, at the blue of his policeman’s attire, and I felt the chill of the morning deepen and sink its teeth into my marrow.

“The murderer… he’s one of ours.”

I left the girl in Dr Watson’s care. To take her to the Yard would only worsen her trauma and yield little, I suspected. She had done her part, giving name to a dark legend that would come to haunt my thoughts in the coming years. The irony of the killer’s moniker was not lost on me, nor on any constable, sergeant or inspector of the Yard.

There were 14 inspectors, 92 sergeants and 781 constables registered to the City of London Police Force, and after ensuring the dead woman had reached the morgue at Scotland Yard, I spent most of the next few days reading through their records with the help of Barrows and Cooper, and conducting interviews. Even with a hundred constables, going through every officer in the Metropolitan Police and beyond would take months; time, I felt, we could ill afford, and so I confined my efforts to the district where we had found the victims, all of which were in the City of London.

I barely slept or stopped, save to have the odd cup of tea, even though I felt I needed something stronger. The last pot was stewed, a wince-making bull of a brew, and I had to shout at the constable who made it. I didn’t recognise him, though he had an Irish lilt and more than a little cheek, and I resolved to find his sergeant and have words.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, surprised at how little the stack of reports had thinned since that morning, and looked up from my desk to regard a map of the City of London pinned to the wall. Four marks indicated where each of the bodies had been discovered: Jeremiah Goose and Molly Cavendish and two others, a brothel keeper by the name of Vivian Dawes and a young dockhand called Edwin Buckle. They circled an area from Smithfield Market to Leadenhall Street. Metcalfe was prowling as much of it as he could with an army of constables, but had yet to uncover anything of use. Holmes, somewhat disturbingly, had not been in touch for three days, and all attempts to reach him at his lodgings at 221B Baker Street had failed. To make matters worse, both the Standard and The Times , as well as a number of other newspapers, had caught wind of the killings and that the killer was an officer of the law.