Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

“Nevertheless, I must insist upon it.”

“Very well,” Miss Monk replied in an agony of distress. “I know who the killer is.”

“And who might that be?” the patient constable demanded.

“Prince Albert Victor.”

I did my best to regard Miss Monk with the air of an abundantly disappointed and exceedingly irritable newsman. It was difficult to achieve.

Constable Brierley sighed heavily. “Is he indeed? I will pass that startling piece of news on to my superiors. And now, the three of you had best go on about your business. I strongly suggest that your business take you home without delay.”

Our return journey to the Strand was a silent one for some three blocks, until we had left all trace of Constable Brierley behind us and Stephen Dunlevy threw his head back with a peal of relieved laughter.

“Prince Albert Victor?”

“I’m sure he would be glad to know his name came in handy,” Miss Monk remarked.

“Miss Monk, you are absolutely unparalleled. Well, Dr. Watson, I dearly hope that the envelope will be of some use to Mr. Holmes.”

“You may be sure I will keep you apprised.”

“In any event, the evening has been most enormously satisfying. Miss Monk, I beg you will do me the honour of sharing a cab with me back to the East-end.”

“The honour is granted. Oh, Dr. Watson, I do hope we’ve helped Mr. Holmes.”

“We have helped Alistair Harding, in any event,” Dunlevy proclaimed gaily. “I’m to return his keys in the morning. I have not a doubt but that when he hears the news, he will be the happiest man in London.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The East-end Division

As I sat at the breakfast table next morning, feeling not a little self-satisfied, I turned the envelope over in my hands pondering the best way to get it to Holmes. No doubt he had made excellent arrangements, for he was continually darting off to the country or to the Continent and never had I seen him without prompt postal service. However, perhaps from a sense of innate pride in our accomplishment and perhaps from a certain leery caution, I found myself in midafternoon with the hard-won object still resting in an inner pocket and realized that I had grown irrationally determined to deliver it to my friend in person. How I could go about that task I had barely begun to surmise, but circumstances soon occurred which lifted the burden of ingenuity from my shoulders entirely.

The frail light had begun to fade and the combative autumn winds come to blows with the last of the dry leaves when the pageboy arrived with a hand-delivered note from Holmes. The message was addressed to Dr. John Watson and read:

Am on our quarry’s scent. Meet me at the corner of Commercial Street and Brick Lane at once, on foot, and bring your medical bag, as I fear we may have need of it.

Sherlock Holmes

I need hardly say that not only my black bag but my cleaned, loaded revolver were at hand in an instant, and I bounded into the street to hail a cab. It was just past seven o’clock in the evening as I set off, and the stolid, pastel houses passed by me in a darkening blur. Descending from the hansom just as night officially triumphed over day, I cast about for the correct orientation.

To my complete dismay, almost instantly, my direction grew twisted and confused due to the bizarre fact that the streets Holmes had indicated ran parallel to each other. After some deliberation, I determined to follow Brick Lane to see whether it intersected any roads of a similar name to Commercial Street, for often the names of London thoroughfares repeated themselves, and after turning off Stoney Street, one would hardly be surprised to find oneself in Stoney Lane. It was not a mistake typical of Sherlock Holmes’s exhaustive memory, but I could account for it in no other way and so determined to find the true cross street even if it took me all night.

I fell victim to nothing more than a few haphazard jeers for the first half hour, but as I retraced my steps down Brick Lane past Hebraic fellowship halls and the smell of frying sausages, sick at the thought I might have failed Holmes at the culmination of his labour through a simple misdirection, I became aware that the shouts of the locals were increasing in frequency as they narrowed in scope.

“Oy, you doctor! Out to sew up a whore?”

“Looking for a fresh one to patch together, are you, or will you do it yourself?”

These gibes soon became so antagonistic that I ducked down a quiet alley to think of a way to contact Holmes, if that were even possible. I had not been there two minutes, however, leaning against a barrel and straining to recall every detail of Whitechapel’s topography, when a group of five men approached me from the left, their mean figures silhouetted by the single jaundiced lamp. Even had I not been accustomed to the advent of sudden danger, my instincts would have alerted me to their postures and the cudgels they carried in slack, cavalier grips.

Initially I hoped they had some other object in mind and would pass me by, but the leader of the gang, a heavyset man with bristling hair and weighty jowls, nodded to the others to stay back and advanced toward me, tapping his stick against a meaty palm.

“Good evening,” I began. “Is there a problem?”

“Well, lads? What say you? I believe Underhill thought there might be a problem, is that not so?”

His four footpads laughed, slapping a thin, evil-eyed man with a wicked gash for a mouth upon the back. “That’s it! Underhill! He’s not easy in his mind, he isn’t,” one of them chuckled.

“Look here, sir,” I attempted, “I am—”

“Wait just a tick, guv. These is dangerous times we find ourselves in. So let’s say it comes to our attention that there has been sighted a bloke, a medical type of bloke, what’s pacing the area as if he’s…well, he has a prowling manner about him, if you understand me.”

“Now, see here, my good man—”

“And let’s further suppose that I, Ezekiel Hammersmith, being a chap of upstanding character, let’s say I calls me lads from the pub so as to get a better look at this medical bloke what’s lying in wait in a dark alley ten yards from me sister’s lodging house.” The brute smiled evilly and glanced up at a dingy hellhole of red brick.

“No, no, guv’nor,” he continued sadly. “Folk of your type need a powerful reason to be in these parts after dark.” He dropped his voice to a gravelly undertone. “By God, you’ll wish you’d never seen a whore before we’re done wi’ you.”

I reached for my revolver in an effort to deter them from five-on-one hand combat, but a swarthy fellow missing the majority of his left ear leapt forward and hacked my arm away with a cane. He had attempted two more solid blows, one narrowly missing my forearm and a second aimed at the neck that I managed to take on the shoulder, when his proximity afforded me the opportunity of delivering the left-handed hook which had many years previous granted me total freedom of movement at my rough-and-tumble grammar school.

Just then a very slender man entered the alley behind me, whistling softly to himself and carrying a long-handled brush over his left shoulder. His face and all his dark clothing were obscured by soot, and I saw at once that he was a chimney sweep returning home from an engagement. In a far-off corner of my mind, I noted in confusion that the tune he whistled was from Wagner’s Parsifal, but all my thoughts were suspended when the fellow stopped short at seeing so many rough characters wedged into the narrow corridor.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked.

“Be on your way, if you don’t want a piece of it for yourself,” Hammersmith replied, stepping aside to let him pass. “This gentleman here is down on whores, and we are helping to make his peace with them.”