Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

“That was beautiful, Holmes.”

“Do you like it? I am not satisfied with the middle cadence, but the portamento in the final phrase is rather effective. If you are ready, we can set off for the East-end. I’ve arranged for a cab.”

“Holmes?”

“Yes, Middleton,” he replied with a twinkle of amusement.

“If we should identify the former police constable Bennett tonight, I am at a loss to know what we should do with him.”

“We shall arrest him and give him to Lestrade, who this morning met with Mr. Matthews himself.”

“And if we cannot find him?” I pressed him.

“Then I shall run him down.”

“And if—”

“I have no intention of allowing that to happen. Come, Watson. We must bear all. Hard condition is twin-born with greatness. You’ve your revolver?”

“And a clasp knife in my pocket.”

Holmes threw his head back with laughter, wrapping a thick cravat about his neck. “Then my mind is entirely at ease.”

We met by arrangement with Lestrade at the Ten Bells, near the center of the region delineated on Abberline’s map. The staunch fellow looked quite as haggard and absorbed in his draught of ale as any of the labourers filling the surrounding tables.

“Has it all been arranged?” asked Holmes rather feverishly, pitching his voice low beneath the rumble of conversation.

Lestrade looked up from his pint with the greatest reluctance. “Fifty men in plain clothes from F Division, Paddington District, none of whom Bennett is likely to know, in addition to the expanded complement. I’ve redrawn the routes. If you are mistaken about this wild tale, Mr. Holmes, I promise to arrest you myself.”

“If I am mistaken, you are welcome to do so.”

“You say these Vigilance chaps have police whistles?”

“Assuredly.”

“It’s just as well that these amateurs are here,” the inspector sighed. “I lose half my force at four this morning, for they’re needed again at the Lord Mayor’s procession at eight.”

Holmes’s fist came down upon the table in an outraged display of disbelief. “Am I to understand that preventing rotten vegetation from striking that hideous gilded monstrosity in which the Lord Mayor will be nestled tomorrow is of greater import than preventing Jack the Ripper from adding any further organs to his collection?” he hissed.

“I shouted myself hoarse this morning. It can’t be helped. There’s that Dunlevy fellow at the door,” Lestrade added doubtfully. “Bit thick to trust a journalist so far, isn’t it, Mr. Holmes?”

“I see your usual healthful skepticism has returned in full measure,” my friend returned archly. “I was concerned I’d deeply unsettled your mind.”

“On with it, then,” the inspector grunted. “I’ve a man stationed here all night through as a touchstone, if you will. The constables have been instructed to whistle like mad if they spy anything suspicious, for I didn’t like the look of you, Mr. Holmes, the last time you went hand to hand with him.” Holmes bristled visibly at this but for-bore reply. “I’m with the journalist up Brick Lane, and the two of you over Bishopsgate. We meet every hour at this pub. I’ve two lanterns here without which we should scarcely see our own feet in front of us. Best of luck, gentlemen all.”

The inspector and I took up the lanterns. Nodding to Dunlevy as we passed, we made our way out into the pouring rain.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Case and the Heart

Within half an hour we were soaked and chilled, and my leg ached dully as we made our way down rain-washed alleyways, the sound of our footsteps obscured by the storm. Fewer locals were about in that night’s elements than was usual, though people did continue to hurry past, shawls and scarves wrapped tight about their heads, sloshing the eddying mud beneath their feet.

“Curse this weather,” Holmes muttered fiercely after our first rendezvous with Lestrade and Dunlevy had ended, propelling us back into the rain. “It is hardly possible to identify a man at three yards in this wet, let alone that the garb necessitated by such conditions lends itself perfectly to concealment.”

“There are plainclothesmen enough to cover every passage. He can do nothing without being seen, if he ventures out on such a night at all.”

“He will be here.”

“But taking into account this gale—”

“I said he will be here,” Holmes repeated fervently. “No more words. We must have all our wits about us.”

Four o’clock came and went, marked by a lessening of loiterers as the weary plainclothesmen made their way home for a bath and an hour or two of sleep before the Lord Mayor’s Show recalled them to duty. The streets began to fill with scattered workmen and unfortunates, ducking into gin shops before the break of day.

Holmes and I met with Lestrade and Dunlevy at the Ten Bells for the final time at six o’clock that morning. We each allowed ourselves a glass of whiskey, clutched in fingers stiff from the cold. No one spoke for a time. Then my friend rose from the table.

“We must search every alley and courtyard.”

“We have missed nothing, Mr. Holmes,” moaned Lestrade. “If anything, we have stopped him entirely.”

“Nevertheless, I will satisfy myself that it is so. The shifts he indicated are over; we may as well go together. If anything has happened, it is too late to prevent it.”

We stepped out of the Ten Bells into Church Street and made our way down the road. Holmes strode avidly into passages, but Dunlevy, Lestrade, and I were by then so disheartened that we made scant effort to follow his every darting movement. Dawn’s cold grey light had just begun to soften the edges of the gleaming brick buildings when we passed a whitewashed entrance to yet another anonymous courtyard. My friend plunged into its depths while we waited on the street.

“I shall need a warm breakfast and a cup of tea if I’m ever to make it through this day,” Lestrade lamented.

“You’re to be in attendance at the Lord Mayor’s Show?” I commiserated.

“I am indeed.”

“My sympathies, Inspector.”

“It’s not the first sleepless night I’ve had on account of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

“Quite probably we have foiled an evil design by it. I can at least remind you that Holmes is the last man to mire himself in chimera.”

“That may be so, Dr. Watson,” Lestrade muttered sourly, “but he mires himself deep enough in theory that it’s a wonder he finds his way out again.”

“What’s keeping him, I wonder,” Dunlevy yawned.

“Holmes!” I called out. There was no reply. I passed through the shabby arch leading to the court, where entrances to tenements lined the constrictive corridor. The second door on the right stood open, and when I saw no sign of the detective at the end of the passage, I entered it.

In all my ensuing years of friendship with Sherlock Holmes, excepting that particular morning, we have never once spoken to each other of that room. On the rare occasions since that day I have pictured hell, I have seen that chamber. Cracks in the masonry showed through the dank walls. There was a candle resting on a broken wineglass, a fire dying in the grate, and a plain wooden bedstead standing in the corner. The metallic smell of blood and offal saturated the air, for on that bed lay a body. More accurately, on the bed and on the table lay various pieces of what had once been a body.

Holmes was leaning with his back against the wall, his countenance deathly white. “The door was open,” he said incongruously. “I was passing by, and the door was open.”

“Holmes,” I whispered in horror.

“The door was open,” he said once more, and then buried his face in his hands.