Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

“How do you mean?”

“Is it not odd that within a few days of our forging an association, Miss Monk should discover a colossal lead quite by accident? The circumstance grows even more inexplicable when one takes into account the source, Mr. Dunlevy himself. I must confess to you that our glimpse of him in the pub that terrible night was not the first time I laid eyes on the man, but it has taken me days to place where I’d seen him before. I saw him the very day we met Miss Monk, as we exited Lambeth Workhouse.”

My mouth fell open at this revelation. “You are certain?”

“Entirely. Yet another reason, you see, for Miss Monk to keep a close watch on the fellow.”

Though I had often noted the peculiarly scientific way in which Holmes at times directed people like pieces on a chessboard, custom had not inured me to it. I shrugged coldly, exasperated by his glibness. “Perhaps Dunlevy and Miss Monk are engaged in a conspiracy against you.”

My friend only smiled. “You imagine I had not considered that alternative. Rest assured, Miss Monk is not in his employ, or she was not when I engaged her assistance.”

“Barring any personal bias from the question, how can you be sure?”

“Because of the scuffed new boots which caused such a fracas last night.”

“I do not understand.”

“Her old men’s boots had two small symmetrical holes just in the instep where the foot breaks the arch, an almost unbearable condition at this time of year when the wet and the cold are conjoined against one. And yet she did not, for two weeks after I had been paying her, purchase new boots. No, she presumed I was joking when I took her on as a colleague, and she clearly had no competing source of income from Dunlevy. She imagined if I came to my senses and cut off her payments, she would still be ahead by a pound or two, which is enough to keep out of the workhouse.”

At that moment we detected a slow, lumbering tread upon the staircase. The door swung open to admit the enormous personage of Mycroft Holmes, the elder brother of the great detective, whose high position in government office was as unknown to the public as it was vital to the realm. While his formidable acumen could hardly be exaggerated, neither could his martial adherence to habit, which made sightings of him outside the vicinity of Whitehall, his own lodgings in Pall Mall, or the Diogenes Club exceptional indeed. I at once offered him a chair, but he stood peering down at his brother upon the floor from his own formidable height with profound concern and displeasure mixed in his cutting grey eyes.

“I was most unpleasantly alarmed about you Sunday when a circulatory from the highest levels was posted directly to my home,” Mycroft Holmes announced. “I trust he will come to no lasting harm?” The latter query was addressed to me, and I shook my head. “Well then, Sherlock, what the devil have you been playing at? You have been pursuing the Whitechapel killer in an egregiously foolhardy manner.”

“Do sit down, brother Mycroft, you’ll exhaust yourself. You are already exhausting me,” my friend replied, both amused and annoyed by his sibling. “As it happens, we came upon the murder scene entirely by accident.”

Mycroft Holmes accepted the chair grudgingly, his eyes focused as always upon some vacant middle ground, a gaze which in both men looked like distraction and was in fact the most powerful concentration of thought. “I had wondered. Clever of you to pursue him unarmed, in the dark. I suppose you continued the chase even after the first time you collapsed.”

I must have looked confused at this remark, for Holmes, with a satirical flourish, pushed up his cuff and further exposed the opposite wrist, which, I had not even noticed, had been more than once bruised and scraped in a fall. “I thought to limit his future activities, but as you can see, rather the opposite has occurred,” he said to his brother.

“My dear boy, you must take this matter more seriously, really you must.”

Holmes’s mouth twitched impatiently. “Mycroft, if you imply that I consider the gruesome murders of five helpless women a frivolous concern—”

“You deliberately misunderstand me.” Mycroft’s expression was as fond as his tone was dry. “It is of immense practical interest, not to mention of course immense sentimental interest to your only sibling, that you leave off rushing single-handedly after dangerous madmen. More is at stake here than has been made clear to you. Whitechapel is a very minor fraction of a vast metropolis, but the effect these crimes are having on the entire nation…Sherlock, surely you see the consequences of failure?”

“An ever-increasing number of ritually disemboweled prostitutes.”

“Your morbidity is misplaced,” the elder Holmes sniffed. “Did you see the report on the double murder in the Star ?”

“I looked over it. They are calling for the dismissal of Sir Charles Warren.”

“Occasionally those zealots hit near to the mark of public opinion. Whitechapel will smash the Empire, they say—a hyperbolic slander, but one which worries us exceedingly. Though I know it doesn’t interest you in the slightest, my boy, the problem of Whitechapel is being amplified to symbolize the problems of an entire nation. Even as we pray for progress, we are beset by anarchists and agitators.”

“Surely a dilemma more worthy of your attentions than of mine,” my friend observed. “I do not pretend to be the incarnate central clearinghouse of the British government.”

Mycroft Holmes merely pursed his lips sternly. “You would be shocked, perhaps, to learn of the woes currently assailing Her Majesty from all sides. I am not at liberty to discuss such matters with you, but perhaps you will do me the honour of trusting me. It all looks very bad, Sherlock, and getting worse all the time. The question of Irish autonomy alone has so splintered Parliament that this madman at large among the destitute could plausibly fuel incendiary actions rather than incendiary words. And now I hear rumours that a provocative message was scrawled upon a wall directly implicating the Jews.”

“I heard the same rumour,” Holmes drawled. “Your Sir Charles erased it, you see.”

Mycroft sighed with an expression of sorely tried patience. “Can you imagine I do not appreciate your frustration? Perhaps you will be more disposed to consider the political side of this affair when I say that though I have been most anxious to call upon you, I was also asked to do so by an individual whose importance can hardly be exaggerated.”

Holmes’s eyes softened, but his brow lifted quizzically. “My dear brother, what do you wish me to say? I can offer you nothing but assurances.”

“On the contrary, you can answer key questions. Mr. George Lusk has sent a petition to Her Highness directly, asking that a reward be offered.”

“Yes, he has an excellent grasp of the concept of chain of command.”

“I should like to hear your thoughts.”

My friend shook his head decisively. “No. The game would hardly be worth the candle: to say nothing of the official force, who are already in it to their necks, I should be required to sift through great masses of useless detritus.”

“We are in agreement, then. No reward. What other forms of assistance would prove functional?”

Holmes drew a deep breath. “I need unquestioned access to the evidence held by the City Police and the Yard, no matter what the London Chronicle is inclined to print about me.”

“I shall ensure the fact.”

“I need an increase in Whitechapel patrols and a guarantee that they will be manned by competent men.”

“I’d already anticipated that requirement. The new men were diverted from other districts yesterday. You’ve glanced into the history of the London Monster, I imagine?”