Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

“Who has written you, Holmes?” I asked in an anguish to shift the subject.

“It is nothing. My brother’s whim. He took it into his head that I deserved a knighthood.”

“But that is wonderful!” I gasped. “There is not a man in England who could deserve it more. My deepest congrat—”

“I have refused it.” He rose from his chair to procure his pipe and tobacco.

I stared at him in blank disbelief.

“You refused a knighthood.”

“Don’t be obtuse, my dear fellow. I said I refused it, and that is what I have done. Respectfully, I need hardly add,” he pronounced, stuffing his pipe with shag.

“But in heaven’s name, why? You have single-handedly run to ground the most notorious criminal in modern British history, and no one will ever know of it. At the very least you deserve—”

“If I deserved a knighthood even by the standards of the most vermiculate logic, I would no doubt have accepted it,” he snapped viciously.

Then, more gently, Holmes added, “I told Mycroft you ought to have one. I was rather eloquent upon the subject. But I don’t think he was listening.” He withdrew his watch. “It is now a quarter to one. Miss Monk will arrive two doors down for the first of her continuing sessions with Dr. Agar, at my behest, at half past two this afternoon. He entertains hopes that she will recover. I can think of no reason, if you feel strong enough, you should not walk over to visit her. It would please her, I am certain.”

“I would like nothing better. But surely you will accompany me?”

“Not unless you require my assistance. She doesn’t know me, you see.” He swept the evidence of his drug use into the voluminous pocket of his dressing gown. “Dunlevy will be there, no doubt. He is a most fixated chap—not to say monomaniacal.”

“Most would refer to it as love, Holmes.”

“Your theory is not without merit. But my dear Watson, you must be famished.” He threw open the door and advanced to the top of the stairs. “Mrs. Hudson! A cold luncheon for two and a bottle of claret, if you please!” I heard the distant sound of a joyful exclamation followed quickly by remonstrance. “My dear lady, what is it to me that I have already sent a meal back?” I hid a smile as Mrs. Hudson’s voice rose in conviction and force.

Holmes sighed. “I’ll be back in a moment, Watson. I think in this case capitulation is the better part of valour.”

On an evening flecked with snow some three weeks later, when the groups of crass thrill seekers and vulpine pressmen had disappeared from the former residence of Mary Kelly—the final unfortunate to fall victim to Jack the Ripper—I ambled gingerly down the stairs and out our front door. The air’s bite had scarcely accomplished more than to send a feeling of invigoration through my shoulders by the time I had knocked at Dr. Agar’s residence and been shown into the immaculately clean vestibule. Even if I required direction, I could hardly have avoided the peals of merriment emanating from the good doctor’s consulting room. When I pushed open the door, I observed Miss Monk in heady conversation with Dr. Agar while beside her on the sofa sat Stephen Dunlevy, whose eyes, after glancing genially in my direction, snapped back to the object of their affection.

“That’s the cure for hysteria, and you’ll swear to it?” she was demanding, her hand tracing her brow in disbelief.*

“Not at this clinic, I assure you,” Dr. Agar said with a laugh.

“I granny why they’d enjoy it, make no mistake, but it’s a sight cheaper in the Chapel—Oh! Dr. Watson,” she interrupted herself, leaping to her feet and darting over to grasp me by the hand. “Have you ever treated a woman for hysteria?”

“Not as such,” I demurred as she seated herself once more. “Miss Monk, you are looking ten times better. I congratulate you, as well as your groundbreaking physician.”

“She is doing all the work and I am collecting all the credit.” Dr. Agar smiled. “It is quite shameful, but many careers are built so, after all.”

“You do yourself a disservice,” Dunlevy interjected. “Dr. Watson is right, and may I seize the opportunity to say that I have never been so grateful to anyone in my life. Apart from Mr. Holmes, of course,” he added with a grave look in my direction.

“How is Mr. Holmes, Doctor?” Dr. Agar inquired.

I must have hesitated over the question, for Miss Monk stated gamely, “I’ve recalled summat else about the fellow. He’ll think me a right nickey for having ever forgotten so much at this rate, but hasn’t he a trick of treating more or less anything in the room as if it’s a chair?”

“Yes, he has.” I smiled.

“I’m on the point of it, and then it’s—” She made a whistling sound and waved a hand in the air. “But I have the best of help.” She then looked, to my inner delight, not at Dr. Agar but directly and unmistakably at Stephen Dunlevy.

My hat in hand, I declared, “I merely wished to say hello. Holmes will be very relieved to learn how well you are doing, Miss Monk.”

“Has he left your flat yet, Dr. Watson?” Dr. Agar asked softly.

“No,” I returned, “but he will.”

“I know he will,” Dr. Agar assured me. “He has an excellent physician.”

Glaring at our front door with perhaps more dissatisfaction than the object deserved, I turned my key in the lock. However, as it happened, I was not destined for an evening of attempting to elicit speech from a companion submerged in the worst of reflections, who to my great distress had been subsisting on tobacco, tea, and narcotics. Just as I opened the door to our sitting room, I accidentally nudged the leg of Inspector Lestrade, who appeared to have arrived moments before and was facing my haggard friend with an attitude of determined cheer.

“You are looking far better than when last I saw you, Dr. Watson, and I am heartily glad to say it,” he exclaimed, shaking my hand.

Holmes waved us in from his armchair and tossed the prim little detective a matchbox in a graceful arc. “There are cigars on the side table and spirits in the decanter.”

“Thank you.”

“So you were there that night?” I prompted Lestrade, for I had my own questions to ask, Holmes or no Holmes. I’d not had the heart to force my friend into reliving that hour of painful memory, nor to ask how we had managed to escape.

“To be sure,” the inspector answered readily. “By the time the fire brigade arrived, Mr. Holmes had moved you and Miss Monk back to the courtyard. You were out of danger there, at least temporarily. Mr. Holmes here alerted the force to the existence of a body at the side of the house, and you were all taken by police ambulance to London Hospital. The constables on the scene called me in immediately. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw who it was, considering the chase he had led us on the night before.”

“I read that he was injured in the explosion.”

“Quite so.” The inspector coughed. “I was able to spirit the brute to the morgue quickly enough. The coroner was not inclined to disagree with my idea that shards of glass from the exploding window struck Bennett fatally. Of course, we are still investigating the murder.”

Holmes, who had been regarding the bearskin rug, roused himself briefly at my expression of dismay. “Not you, my dear Watson. That could hardly be called a murder by any standards. Lestrade refers to Mary Kelly.”

“Oh, I see,” I said in relief.

“It’s difficult to keep my heart in it, knowing you sent her killer to hell already, Doctor,” Lestrade said placidly, sipping his spirits. “But it’s the duty of the Yard to promote a feeling of safety.”

“I do not envy you that duty,” Holmes said grimly. “It will take some time before anyone can be convinced the Ripper has vanished.”