Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

Holmes lit a cigarette at the candle by his bedside. He then glanced at me with a shrewd smile. “You see the significance of these taunting missives?”

“Do they furnish any tangible clue?”

“No, but they indicate a trend. In the first case, they are localized; both are postmarked from the East-end, which is further confirmation that our man knows Whitechapel intimately, perhaps lives there. But more interestingly, these letters will accomplish a very specific purpose upon their publication.”

“What purpose, Holmes?”

“Terror, my dear fellow. Abject terror. I will be very much mistaken if the colour of this investigation, black as it was before, will not have darkened by this evening.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Miss Monk Investigates

I knew better than to think Holmes had been exaggerating for the purpose of effect, and soon word arrived from George Lusk that riots had flamed up in various East-end neighbourhoods, none of them fatal yet each an outpouring of impotent rage. A creeping fear now gripped half of London, and geographically speaking, the hysteria was spreading. Proposed solutions flooded into the Yard from all quarters and included, as I recall, dressing up male constables as female unfortunates, and spreading alarm wires throughout Whitechapel to serve as electric warning buttons.

On the following morning, at Holmes’s request, I set out for the East-end to retrieve Miss Monk, whose presence was required in order to lay out our plans. What these plans included the detective omitted to tell me, but I was easier in my mind merely knowing such existed.

When I knocked at the ground-floor room Miss Monk had taken for herself upon her improvement in fortunes, I half expected to find her still the victim of a morose nervous reaction. Instead, when the door opened, I discovered her neatly dressed, with a pot of tea on the stove and the gleam of fresh intelligence in her green eyes. She bid me sit with her usual blend of imitative elegance and habitual coquetry, then threw herself into the other of the two chairs flanking her roughly sanded table.

“And wouldn’t you love to hazard at what I’ve been about.” She grinned, pouring me a cup of tea. I assented with an encouraging smile.

“I’ve been out on the town with the likes of Stephen Dunlevy, that’s what.”

I started forward in some disquiet. “Miss Monk, surely you know how dangerous his company may be. We were in pursuit of Mr. Dunlevy when last we encountered…”

“Jack the Ripper?”

“Indeed, for want of a better name. Miss Monk, I don’t like to think what could happen.”

“Aye, I know,” she assented gravely. “It’s a funny thing, Doctor—I thought I’d be too terrified to set foot out of doors again. Spent half of Sunday starting at every creak and whisper. But now even when I am frightened, the devilish thing is that I’m too angry to notice.”

She looked me square in the face, and in that moment, Miss Monk and I understood each other. I had traveled through lands that she had never dreamed of in her most elaborate imaginings; she had lived a life whose sufferings I could not begin to guess at. Still, we understood each other, and I knew that whatever was asked of her in our increasingly desperate venture, she would perform to her utmost ability.

“Very well. You saw Stephen Dunlevy. You are far too pleased for the errand to have been fruitless.”

“You recall how his landlady let on he goes out more than he should, but never with any woman in mind?”

“Yes, she reassured you of his total devotion.”

Miss Monk laughed. “He don’t care ha’penny for me, Dr. Watson. But this tale he has, about his mate Johnny Blackstone killing that girl while he stood by—it’s true as gospel so far as I can tell, for after we’d had an afternoon pint yesterday, I doubles back and follows him again, and he walks straight over to—”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Monk, but how did you come to meet with him in the first place?”

“We’d arranged it when I left him to find you and Mr. Holmes. How is Mr. Holmes, then, Doctor?” she added apprehensively. I assured her that he would soon mend and requested she go on with her story.

“We’d set on two o’clock to have a glass of beer just round the corner, and after what happened I was fair sick over whether he’d show up at all, for there’s something in this business he knows more about than he tells. But at two there he is, sure enough, and when he sees me he smiles right out and calls my name. The Knight’s Standard is a right den of fighting cocks now, the ladies all huddled together, whispering over what’s to be done—the hop picking’s good as spent, so even the judies what prefer to leave the city won’t have any means to buy bread and tea. So there they are, wondering just as everyone is what’s best to do, though with a sharper interest than most.

“Well, we’d stowed ourselves in a corner when he says, with an odd look, ‘I’m glad you’re all right, for you must have seen by now what has happened.’

“‘The whole Chapel’s well-nigh set on fire over it,’ I says back.

“He looks at me right close and then asks if I’ve been putting myself in any sort of careless danger. Of course I says no, though I can’t think why he should ask, and we’re back to the question of finding Blackstone before the worst happens again. He allows as he’s sure he’s on the trail. ‘But,’ he says, ‘I’ll not hear of you running around in dark alleys and corridors.’

“Now I’m wondering what cause he could have to warn me special when every ladybird this side of the City is shivering at the thought of a knife ’cross her neck, so I asks him whether I’ve any choice but to take a plunge into the dark every now and then.

“He grabs my hand and then he says, ‘Rely on your income from this West-end benefactor. I have high hopes of success, but I beg that you will keep low until I can manage to set things right.’

“Well, that couldn’t help but strike me as queer, and when he’d left the pub with a promise to meet again, I duck out of sight into a tobacconist’s and wait until he’s a fair ways off afore I follow him. He goes into the same crib he’d done before, comes out in fresh togs—not the uniform he sometimes wears, but dressed like a toff—and then sets off again. I follows at a safe distance until he turns into a passage what leads to a few rookeries. I waits a good piece before dogging him down the corridor, and when I does I’ve a story to tell him about knowing he’s after another woman if my luck runs out and he spies me. When I reach the end of it, I watch as he goes into a set of digs there on the ground floor.

“I figure the chances a window or a door is open enough for me to hear are long odds considering the London particulars* we’ve had of late, but I creeps up to the house to be certain. And when I does, I hear something, so I duck around the side. Would you believe it—the window’s clear cracked and all broken at one edge, as half of them are thereabouts, not covered by anything more’n a scrap of paper, and if I sets my ear to the broken part careful enough, I can hear every blooming word.

“‘You are certain he stayed here for the duration of his leave?’ Dunlevy asks.

“‘Oh, yes,’ says a woman’s voice. ‘It was but a few days shy of the Bank Holiday and both my daughters away with their aunt in Yorkshire. Naturally I hadn’t the heart to leave the attic room empty when I knew there’d be visitors to the city, and soldiers on leave.’

“‘Indeed not. But the day after the holiday, he disappeared without warning?’

“‘It was the strangest thing,’ says she. ‘My Joseph is naught but ten, and that Blackstone swore he would show him the right way around a pistol the next morning. Then we come to find he was clean gone. Though he did leave his money all laid out on the table there. It’s a shame he left no trace of himself, for as you know he’s a charming fellow and was very well spoken to the children.’