Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

“It was a dark, dirty place. The houses were short and very old.”

“Brick or wood?”

“They were made of wood.”

“Individual doors, or halls leading to multiple entrances like the rookeries around Flower and Dean?”

“There were many doors and corridors. No freestanding houses save Bennett’s.”

“Any warehouses?”

“No, just those horrible residences.”

“Were there any vendors or open markets?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“What sort of traffic was it?”

“I beg your—”

“Carriages, ambulances, hay-wains, dogcarts?” Holmes snapped.

“No ambulances, but there were carts.”

“Then you were not near the hospital. Could you hear any trains?”

“No, I do not think—”

“Could you hear bells?”

“Yes, Mr. Holmes!” he cried. “Yes, I could hear bells! Very loud, nearly on top of us.”

“Then you were adjacent to Christ Church and far from the railway. Did you pass any landmarks?”

“There was a pub with shabby gold lettering above the door, on a sharply angled corner. It had a picture of a girl—”

“That is the Princess Alice, and it is on Commercial Street and Wentworth Street. Which way were you walking?”

“I do not know—”

“Was it on the right, or the left?” Holmes demanded with his teeth clenched.

“The right.”

“Did you pass the narrower street corner side of the building first, or the wider part further down the block?”

“The—the narrow, I am sure.”

“Then you were walking north. Did you stay on that road?”

“We turned right, as I recall.”

“Had you passed another pub before you turned?”

“I do not think so.”

“Then you did not pass the Queen’s Head, and you were either in Thrawl Street or Flower and Dean Street. Was there an apothecary shop on the corner?”

“No, sir—I think it was a stable yard.”

“Where horses are kept?”

“Yes—the house he entered was the only one of its kind, with an area before and a separate entrance. As I walked, it stood to the left.”

“Then he resides at either number twenty-six or twenty-eight Thrawl Street.” Holmes made a note of it in his pocketbook. “Very well, then. Now, Mr. Tavistock?”

“Yes, Mr. Holmes?”

“I suggest that you forget what you know. If you make an effort to forget this affair, then I will make an effort to forget as well. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Mr. Holmes.”

“Now,” said my friend, his voice dangerously low, “get the hell out of my rooms.”

Tavistock gasped something incoherent and fled.

“Holmes,” I breathed, “that was marvelous.”

“Nonsense,” he retorted, inhaling a deep draught of smoke. “It was an elementary series of deductions.”

“No, not the inferences. The right cross.”

“Oh, that,” he said, looking down at his knuckles, which were beginning to bruise. “Thank you. That was rather marvelous, wasn’t it?”

Not long after we had dug through the early morning papers and sipped exhaustedly at hot coffee strongly fortified with spirits, a telegram arrived for Holmes. The thin yellow slip read as follows:

New murder discovered in Miller’s Court, Spitalfields. No clue as to killer’s identity. Preliminary medical examination completed; cause of death slit throat. Injuries to corpse too numerous to list. In all likelihood, same six-inch double-bladed knife as used previously. Her heart is gone. God help us all.

Lestrade.

My fist closed over the writing of its own volition. I dropped the paper upon the fire. As I turned away from the hearth, it must have been a trick of the moisture in my own eyes that made me imagine the same expression mirrored upon the face of my friend.

CHAPTER THIRTY The Gift

For much of that afternoon Holmes sat in his armchair, perfectly still save for the minuscule movements required to smoke his pipe. The rain cleared in the midmorning, the skies wiped clean of their mists while the mud in Baker Street below scattered from the wheels of the cabs and lorries.

At long last, as evening approached, the pageboy entered with a yellow slip on his salver. Glancing at Holmes, I could not tell whether he might, in his utter weariness, have fallen asleep. I shook his shoulder gently.

“Just read it to me, will you, Watson?”

I tore open the telegram. “‘I am sorry, Sherlock. It cannot be helped. You have full discretion. Godspeed, my dear boy. Mycroft.’”

Holmes remained silent for a moment, pressing at his shoulder absently. “Then that is final.”

“Holmes,” I asked somberly, as he unfurled himself from his chair and rang for his boots, “what does ‘full discretion’ mean?”

“I am afraid I have been requested to undertake a small service by the highest levels of government.”

“I see,” said I. “May I inquire whether the task they wish you to perform is a criminal one?”

Holmes looked startled but soon recovered. “You and I have several times apprehended a culprit only to discover that justice lay entirely upon the side of the lawbreaker. In those instances, we could do nothing more equitable than to let him go. We acted outside of the British courts. This is…similar.”

“So the word ‘discretion’ is used in place of ‘pardon,’” I affirmed.

“My dear Watson—”

“They no longer wish for us to arrest him.”

“No,” he said shortly, and then crossed to the desk in which our revolvers were stored and slipped his gun in his pocket. “My dear fellow, I cannot in any sort of conscience wish you to accompany me.”

“I see. It is possible that you are being selfless, and also possible that you are being merely solitary.”

“I must do what I must, but I refuse to ask the same of you.” He looked me in the face as he leaned back against the mantel. I waited quietly.

“They want me to kill him.”

I nodded in silent sympathy.

“And will you?”

“I haven’t the slightest notion,” he said softly. “Logic appears to have failed me. Among other failings.”

“Holmes, it isn’t remotely your fault,” I stated firmly. “But will you do what they’ve asked?”

“I suppose if we were to look up the dueling codes, the wretch has certainly given me ample cause. And yet, I can’t simply…My dear Watson, surely you’ve no wish to be associated with what is bound to be an altogether ungodly enterprise?”

Though I had never seen Sherlock Holmes so determined, I had also never seen him so at sea. For that reason among a great many others, I could not easily imagine abandoning him in his hour of need.

“I cannot in good faith remain behind,” I considered. “If the evening goes as powers beyond our control desire it to, one or more people will require medical attention before the night is out.”

Holmes smiled gravely and then shook me by the hand.

Squaring his shoulders, my friend strode to the door and tossed me my hat from its peg. “They’ve a valid position, you know. We cannot conceivably leave him to roam the streets, and so we shall at least deprive him of his liberty. Arm yourself as you were, but I do not think we need affect any disguise this evening. For an investigator, a charade is often of the greatest use, but for an assassin, it smacks of skulduggery. I cannot be expected to lose all my self-respect in a single day. I should never be able to take on another case.”

Of Holmes’s pursuit of the world-renowned killer known as Jack the Ripper, little remains to be told. And yet, as the circumstances were so very remarkable, and the outcome so dramatic, I must proceed in my own way. Holmes may decry colour and life in my tales all he likes, but when a winter’s evening prevents our embarkation from Baker Street and he has exhausted his agony columns, still he reads them. But I digress, as he has so often had occasion to remark. I shall do my best to keep to the point.