Lyndsay Faye: Dust and Shadow

“You mean the Nichols murder?”

“I mean precisely what I say.”

“You thought little enough of it before, Holmes.”

“I expected every morning to read that they’d solved it. Men do not often stab helpless females thirty-nine times and then disappear into the ether. The motive behind such an outrageous act would necessarily be sensational.”

“And such women necessarily have a great many associates, most of them untraceable,” I pointed out.

“That is obvious,” he retorted. “It is also obvious that the district of Whitechapel offers a great many natural advantages to the predator. Once the sun has fallen, you can hardly see your hand before your face, and the slaughterhouses allow blood-spattered men to pass without remark. What is less obvious is whether we have anything to fear from the proximity, in place and in time, of the two deaths.”

“It is certainly a distressing coincidence.”

Holmes shook his head and reached for his walking stick.

“One viciously maimed corpse is distressing. Two is something else entirely. I fear we have not a moment to lose.”

CHAPTER TWO The Evidence

The body of Polly Nichols clearly demanded our immediate attention, so we at once made our way by cab to the mortuary shed at Old Montague Street Workhouse Infirmary. As we clattered roughly toward the East-end of London, the buildings grew steadily smaller, their façades coated with decades of sooty atmosphere. When we reached Whitechapel Road, however, I was struck as always by the headlong commotion of the place. A preacher stood shouting at a knot of jeering locals, fighting to wrest their attention from a gin palace on the one side and an equally vociferous peddler of men’s work shirts on the other. Light and dust sparkled from the backs of loaded hay-wains, and dead cattle swung from hooks above carts filled with fresh hides. But despite the thriving dynamism of its widest thoroughfares, I never failed to be shaken by the misery evident as we turned off the main road into narrow, shop-lined byways and passed snarling youngsters fighting over a street corner from which to sell matches, and staggering drunks of both sexes propped against doorframes in the early afternoon.

The mortuary shed was by its very nature a dismal place, frequented only by those whose sole recourse was to indenture themselves to the parish disposing of human remains, and characterized by its utter unsuitability as a medical facility. Lestrade had sent warning of our imminent arrival, so immediately upon locating the hodgepodge of wooden slats, we witnessed firsthand the sight that had so upset Dr. Llewellyn.

Across the crude wooden slab of an examining table lay a woman slightly more than five feet tall. Though her face was small-featured with high, merry cheekbones and a sensitive brow, it was etched deeply with the coarseness of care and toil. Her neck was indeed nearly severed and her abdomen opened in bestial, purposeless lacerations.

I began to inquire whether anything stood out to Holmes’s sharper eye, but suddenly he dived toward the corpse with a cry of impatience.

“We have arrived too late after all! It has been washed, Watson,” he exclaimed. “Most obtusely and effectively washed.”

I nodded. “It is a common enough practice, as you know. Some even argue one cannot see the wounds effectively otherwise.”

Holmes practically snorted. “I tell you, Watson, if Scotland Yard were to reimburse my time for retrieving every clue lost due to negligence or hysterical hygiene, I could no doubt retire this afternoon. As it is, I am forced to glean the leavings. Do you observe anything Dr. Llewellyn may have missed, being less intimately acquainted with the criminal element than you yourself?”

“Really, Holmes.”

His eyes glinted wickedly over my shoulder. “Come now, my dear fellow. Expertise is none the less admirable for being of an unsavoury variety.”

I looked her over. The poor wretch had come to a sorry end; a blessing indeed if her killer saw fit to cut her throat first, leaving the remainder of his rage for a lifeless shell.

“Her neck has been slashed nearly to the vertebrae, lacerating the two major arteries, and there are seven senseless cuts through her abdominal tissue. She does not appear to have been victim of any other indecencies, for I see no sign of recent connection, and the cuts are smooth-edged and deliberate. What do you make of it, Holmes?”

The detective hovered over her pensively. “Notice the discolouration near the jaw; he robbed her of consciousness, then slit her throat upon the ground, for she exhibits no bruising on the arms consistent with fending off her attacker, and it would explain the lack of blood upon the upper torso that Dr. Llewellyn mentioned. From the cleanliness of the other cuts, which you noted so astutely, we may also deduce that she was dead, drugged, or in some other way incapable of struggle when they were performed, else they would be jagged or torn. I believe all these injuries were made with the same weapon, that is to say, a six-or eight-inch knife kept well sharpened, possibly with a double blade. He killed her, cut her apart in near total darkness—at a serious threat to his own safety, if we consider the surplus time required—and then made his escape.”

“But why? What could possibly have occurred between Polly Nichols and her killer to enrage him so?”

“Why, indeed. Come, Watson—off to Buck’s Row. If we are miraculously lucky, we may find something the police have not already either trampled on or swept into the rubbish bin.”

When we arrived at the scene of the murder, the bustling cacophony of Whitechapel Road faded, replaced by the headlong rushing of the Northern Railway Line. Mean two-story houses, hastily constructed and poorly maintained, crept along one side of Buck’s Row, while the blank faces of austere warehouses stood like sentinels on the other. Holmes leapt down from the hansom and approached a knot of reporters and policemen while I paid the driver and elicited a promise to await our return.

“Certainly, Mr. Holmes,” a young constable replied as I approached, tipping his rounded hat. “We were about to scrub down the whole area, but we can give you ten minutes if you like. We’ve found nothing out of the ordinary.”

Holmes, every sinew of his slight frame alive with that nervous energy only apparent within the boundaries of a crime scene, set to work. The detective was as avid in his pursuit of a case as he was lethargic at the lack of one, and no patch of the surrounding roads or stable yard escaped his steely scrutiny. After nearly twenty minutes, he struck his stick impatiently against the stable yard fence and returned to where I stood.

“Any progress?”

Holmes set his thin lips and shook his head. “From the blood upon the ground, I believe she was not moved from another site, which is a point worth knowing. The quarrel ended here. Apart from that, I can only tell you that the apothecary over there was recently the victim of a robbery, that two gentlemen of leisure came to blows over a bet near that patch of mud, and that the police constable immediately to your left is a bachelor who owns a terrier. And thus, friend Watson, we finish no better off than we began.” He waved to the constables to proceed about their business.

“I suppose the points you’ve mentioned can have nothing to do with the crime itself, but how did you deduce them?”

“What?” His grey eyes were busily scanning the upper stories of the surrounding buildings. “Oh, yes…Old door with new lock near broken window, a costly variety of the jack of spades torn in half near obvious signs of a struggle between square-toed male boots, and Constable Anderson’s truly appalling trouser legs. No, they are not related to our investigation. And yet, we may still find ourselves employment. The angle of that window is ideally positioned for our purposes.”