Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

One glance down the road he had indicated sufficed to prove his point. The air was heavy despite the recent rain, and there was hardly a window which had not been smashed in, then vainly patched over with paper or scraps of cheap cloth.

“Here is our destination. I thought it best to establish our connection early in the evening. Follow me, and please try not to draw attention to yourself.”

Holmes has, as I have remarked elsewhere, an air of self-importance about him which occasionally tries the patience of his few friends. However, upon entering the establishment called the Queen’s Head, on the corner of Commercial and Fashion Streets, I at once took his meaning. The place was populated by gentlemen—if one could stretch the word to its outer limits—of the roughest character; by rouged women awkwardly holding babies in their arms, pausing for a glass of gin before returning home; and by Miss Mary Ann Monk, who sat at the bar near the doorway and shot an eye at us as we entered.

“How about that one, Middleton?” Holmes said brightly after surveying the room. “She looks likely enough, and that glorious hair. You won’t do better than that, my friend, not in these parts.”

My look of dismay must have registered with many of the patrons, who chuckled quietly at Holmes’s words.

“Oh, come off it, man, we haven’t got all week. See here,” he said to Miss Monk in a lower tone. “My friend is about to leave London for the Australian colonies, and—well, it would be pleasant to remember England as a welcoming land, if you understand me. You are not engaged at the moment?”

Miss Monk regarded us appraisingly and made no reply.

“Well, well, it is no matter,” said Holmes suavely, passing her a half-sovereign. “Now, I expect this is more than you make in a month, and I further expect you to earn it. We shall stay here for a drink, then continue on to the Bricklayer’s Arms down the road apiece. A thicker* when all’s said and done ought to persuade you to meet us there, I think? Many thanks, my dear girl.”

After purchasing two glasses of beer and two glasses of gin from the proprietor, we sat down on a bench near the back of the room. We sipped the beer, leaving the gin untouched.

“I suppose that we intend to grant Miss Monk an ironclad justification for giving Dunlevy the slip when she feels it necessary,” I remarked dryly.

“Precisely so. My apologies, my dear Middleton, but apart from an assignation, I could not devise any excuse that would so effectively ensure her safety.”

“Your vaunted imagination fell so short?”

“Come now, my dear fellow! It is a dark enough investigation without a touch of sport to lighten it. But I say, what have we here—no, do not look toward the door, I beg of you,” he stopped me softly. “The reflection in that excellently placed mirror should serve you every bit as well.”

Stephen Dunlevy, his face slightly distorted by the ageing of the mirror, was casting an affable blue eye about the crowded room. He was a genial fellow with a modest, upward-tilting moustache set over a pleasant mouth and a square jaw. Holmes looked him over in his careless, languid fashion, but I knew that he was recording every salient detail as the ex-guardsman strode further into the room and hailed our diminutive friend. On their way to sit down, Miss Monk nodded once in our direction, which immediately prompted her companion to question her.

Holmes smiled. “Now that Dunlevy has seen us, let us take our leave.” We exited the bar and the air hit our faces in damp gusts as he continued. “You see, my dear fellow, the only way I could feel absolutely sure of Miss Monk’s security was if she had an appointment—not a fabricated one, mind you, but an established fact—that her companion discovered as if by accident. Should she not appear, she will be missed, and Dunlevy knows it.”

We walked slowly down Commercial Street as the skies began to clear. “I have no doubt but that you are aware of every possible eventuality,” said I, recovering my equanimity outside the close confines of the Queen’s Head. Falling into a more comfortable silence, we drifted in the direction of our meeting place with Miss Monk.

By the time we had reached Whitechapel High Street once more, all the revelry and apathy of a hedonistic Carnevale permeated the smoky atmosphere. Had Holmes or I wished to lose any of the money in our pockets, every corner boasted either a cardsharp, skittle sharp, or some other variety of bold-faced cheat. As we passed the intersection into the morass of Commercial Road, I confess that I should have doubted the safety of our route had Holmes not so clearly known precisely where he was going. Indeed, I believe that only my friend’s air of total self-assurance prevented us from harm as we strolled down the jaggedly cobbled street.

While I cannot vouch for the history of the Bricklayer’s Arms, it had likely once served as a local guildhall, for it boasted the banner of its trade name above the low-linteled door. It was perhaps eleven o’clock by the time Holmes and I arrived, as we had more than once been forced to extricate ourselves from the attentions of inquiring ladies of the evening. I will be pardoned, therefore, for having expressed a degree of relief when we at last entered the crowded tavern.

A stranger to all, my companion was within half an hour the intimate confidant of every unhappy sot within the premises. Though seeped through with tallow smoke and careless splashes of gin, the atmosphere grew less unpleasant as I realized that Holmes was as at ease in our present environs as he was in our own rooms, and thus I settled back in my chair and tried my own hand at observation. Close upon my right was an elderly fellow, clearly a sailor, I thought, from his tattoos, who declaimed to a curly-headed boy that he had more women at his beck and call in Asian ports than any other seafarer he had either seen or heard tell of. Directly in front of us sat a woman who I imagined to be in mourning owing to her dark garments, then remembered that the denizens of that neighbourhood possessed at the most one entire set of clothing.

When over an hour had passed without a sign of our comrade, I began to shoot Holmes worried glances, only one of which he responded to by pressing my arm reassuringly. My friend was lifting his glass once more in the direction of the barkeep’s daughter when Miss Monk at last appeared at the doorway. Upon spying us, she rushed over, leaping into the nearest chair.

“I’d bet my life that bloke’s onto summat,” she declared delightedly, drawing Holmes’s half-sovereign out of her garments and tossing it back to him. He placed it in his waistcoat pocket and then quite inexplicably glanced down at her shoes.

“Well, then,” he prompted, raising his eyes, “pray report. What did he tell you?”

“Wouldn’t talk about that soldier friend of his for nigh on an hour. Just asks what I’ve been about and who you lads are, and I tells him some stories so everything’s warm and comfortable. Finally he lets on that he thinks he’s found a way to trace Johnny Blackstone.”

“This gentleman grows ever more enthralling,” Holmes remarked. “Did you discover anything further?”

“Only where he lives!” she whispered.

“How on earth did you accomplish that?” I exclaimed.

“Well, when I left him to meet my swells, I’m off with a peck and a nod, but I ducks into an alley to see which way he goes. When he comes out, he walks straight down Commercial Street and ends up on Ellen Street, down a passage or two and into a doss house. I spies a woman at the front entrance, and I offer her a shilling to let on what sort of callers he has. ‘No one,’ says she, ‘but he’s out all hours, and only the devil knows what he’s about. He’s true enough to you, so far as I know.’ Well, I weren’t about to wait around for him to come out again. But I’ll show you his digs, and the woman what keeps the entrance will tell me for a few pence if he’s there, like as not.”