Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

Holmes closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. “The damnable luck is that I never once caught a glimpse of his face. He had wrapped himself about the neck and mouth and ran with his head down. He wore an overcoat, British cut, dark material, heavy shoes, and a worn cloth hat. He was clutching a parcel wrapped in newspaper, not heavy, under his left arm. Did you see him clearly, Watson?”

I somberly indicated I had not.

“So, Mr. Holmes, you and your friend here maintain that, although you confronted this fellow on two separate occasions this very night, you would be unable to identify him? I mean to say, it seems very unlikely, does it not?”

“Well, Officer,” my friend replied, crushing the remainder of his cigarette underfoot, “I suppose I must ask whether you find it likely that a man would take up tearing apart street women as a hobby. We appear to have quit the realm of likelihood, have we not? Come, we are losing time. Where strength has failed us, let us see what we can accomplish through reason alone.”

CHAPTER NINE The Double Event

It must have been well past two by the time we approached the grimy passageway where the body remained. Holmes looked ghastly but frenziedly determined. The constable frequently attempted to catch my eye, I suspected with the idea of removing Holmes from the scene, but he met with a stony and unflinching profile.

“Has anything been touched?”

“We have searched the surroundings for accomplices. The scene remains as it was when the Yard took possession.”

It is perhaps irrelevant, however pressing it seemed to me at the time, to say I had developed a headache the likes of which I had never before experienced. In my dazed state, I failed to observe my companion’s machinations with any exactitude until he approached the constable with fiery resolve in his slate grey eyes.

“The deceased is between forty and forty-five years old, though hard living has made her age more difficult to ascertain. She is a smoker, she went with her killer willingly into this byway, she makes occasional use of a padlock, she is not an absolute drunkard, she had experienced more than her share of violence before this event, and she consumed a bunch of grapes with the man who killed her. He, by the by, is right-handed, five foot seven, intimately acquainted with the district, and an Englishman.”

Constable Lamb blinked once and then narrowed his eyes. “In the absence of my superiors, I must record the evidence behind your…assertions, sir.” He rested his case, seemingly pleased by his own propriety.

“Must you indeed?” Holmes said lightly. “She is a smoker, because she retains in her hand a packet of cachous.* She went with her killer willingly because she would have dropped them had she fled. In addition, I happen to have seen this woman some little time ago at a pub, and she was not then wearing a red rose with white maidenhair fern pinned to her jacket. The killer courted her briefly—you may observe the grape stalk yourself just beside the body—and led her into this alleyway. She or someone she knows must own a padlock, for what other lock could possibly fit the key I have discovered upon her? She once before was the victim of a violent individual who tore an earring from her lobe, and were she an utter drunk, she would doubtless by now have pawned one of her two combs.”

“I don’t see what’s so dashed clever about any of that,” muttered Constable Lamb, jotting down notes as quickly as he was able.

“Yes, I would be very much surprised to learn you could see anything at all.”

“Er…,” faltered the constable. “Yes, Mr. Holmes. If you would just wait for my superiors—”

“I should be all too gratified if you had any, but I fear—”

“They are approaching, I think, sir.”

Constable Lamb was correct. A very distraught Inspector Lestrade bore down upon us, nearly at a run. Behind him stood a hansom cab as well as a police carriage emitting further reinforcements from the Yard.

“Sherlock Holmes himself!” the trim inspector snarled, clearly delighted at the opportunity to vent his fury. “I have no reason to question why you are here. I am grateful—indeed, deeply grateful. For if you were not here, how would I go about explaining two murders in one night? Two murders, all within the space of a half mile!

Who could explain such a thing if not Sherlock Holmes, the crack private theorist?”

“Two murders certainly demands an explanation,” my friend replied, but I would be guilty of perjury were I not to report that he started visibly at the news, while I inhaled an unabashed gasp of amazement.

“What the devil has happened to your arm?”

“Return, if you will, Lestrade, to the scintillating topic of double murder,” Holmes shot back bitingly, his deeply rooted nonchalance shattering beneath the force of his alarm.

“Oh, it is of considerable interest, without a doubt,” sneered Lestrade. “Two murders certainly, to the minds of the official force, grow in consideration if they are committed within an hour of each other, not to mention a bloody twenty minutes’ walk!”

“Oh, yes?” was all my friend managed to stake upon a reply.

“You may ‘oh, yes’ all you like, Mr. Holmes, but you must know perfectly well that the murder you are presently investigating is neither the more revolting nor the more pressing of the two.”

Doubting my companion’s capacity for speech, I interjected, “We discovered this crime in progress. What has the killer done since we interrupted him?”

Lestrade looked as if he were about to swallow his own head, such was his confidence in Sherlock Holmes’s omniscience. “Don’t set yourselves against my nerves,” he snapped. “You mean to tell me you’ve heard nothing of the second victim this evening? Nothing of the evisceration, nor the cutting of her face, not to mention the intestines smeared all over her,” he continued, with ominous calm, “nor the other atrocities visited upon her person, which so help me God I will wrest from you the truth of if it is the last thing I do!”

“Lestrade,” my friend protested, “I promise you I know nothing of which you speak, but I will immediately place myself in a cab in the hopes of assisting you. Where did this second event take place?”

“Holmes, I cannot allow—” I began, but at that very instant, as my friend set off toward the vehicle, his iron strength at last failed him and he clutched at the window of the cab for support.

“We are taking you to hospital, and I will not hear another word on the subject,” I swore.

“Hospital! Confound it all, what has happened to him?” begged Lestrade.

“He pursued the killer and was the victim of a murderous attack. I do not like to think what will happen if he exerts himself an instant longer. Driver, you are to proceed to London Hospital!”

“I believe that Baker Street would be preferable, driver,” Holmes called out, as I half lifted him into Lestrade’s hansom. I made as if to join him.

“You are forbidden to accompany me.”

“Why on earth should I be?” I demanded, wounded to the quick.

“You are going to the site of the second killing. You are taking Miss Monk, whose eyes are invaluable. The two of you will record everything you see, and you will tell me of it when we meet again. See that Miss Monk comes to no harm.” During these instructions, he paused intermittently to gather the fortitude to speak, which did nothing to calm my fears.

“I am to safeguard Miss Monk while you may be—”

“Of course not. You are to lead a murder investigation whilst I am recovering. All caution, Watson. Drive on!” he cried, and I stood there as the hansom cantered off into the darkness, leaving only myself, a hysterical inspector, various constables, and the intrepid Miss Monk, who had just emerged from the men’s club composed and resolute.