Lyndsay Faye - Dust and Shadow

I looked up in curiosity. Behind us stood the Brown and Eagle Wool Warehouse and Schneider’s Cap Factory, both constructed with that wholehearted devotion to industry that sullies the word architecture. The window Holmes indicated, belonging to a tenement, was almost immediately above us. My friend lost no time but strode forward and rapped upon the door.

At first I thought his mysterious intentions would be denied, for there was no answer. Then the detective smiled in his ironic fashion. “Slow footsteps…a woman, I think. Yes, and slightly lame in one foot. Naturally, I cannot yet tell you which foot. My apologies. Ah, here is the lady herself.”

The door flew open, revealing a wrinkled, forward-thrusting face wreathed with a nimbus of wispy white hair, a face resembling nothing so much as a mole emerging from its burrow. Her spectacles were so dirty that I could hardly see the use of them. She peered at us as if at two scabrous street dogs and tightened her grasp on her cane.

“What do you want? I don’t let rooms, and if you’ve business with my sons or my husband, they work for a living.”

“What miserable luck,” Holmes exclaimed. “I was informed that your fellow knew a man with access to a cart.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, her eyes narrowing still further, “but my youngest won’t be back until seven.”

“By Jove! No rest for us today, Miles,” said Holmes with a wry face. “I was prepared to meet nearly any price, the goods being what they are, but we’ll simply have to inquire elsewhere.”

“Now, wait. You’ve need of a cart today?”

Holmes bent his aquiline face toward the old woman and replied, “I’ve certain…materials which need transporting. I’m afraid it’s rather a man’s business, Mrs….?”

“Mrs. Green.”

“Of course, you’re his mother. And you’re sure Mr. Green will be out for some time? Well, it is a pity. I don’t imagine you’ve any experience with such matters?”

She pursed her wrinkled mouth and, reaching some private conclusion, beckoned us inside. We were led into a small, dimly lit parlour, which featured not one iota of furnishings more than was necessary, and sat down.

“I must admit,” Holmes began, “I’ve been set on my guard by recent events.”

Mrs. Green’s eyes lit like tapers. “Oh, you mean the murder, do you? Begging your pardon, what was your name?”

“I am Mr. Worthington, and this is my associate Mr. Miles.”

She nodded sagely, replying, “A nasty business.”

“But how terrifying! You must have heard something, living so near at hand.”

“Not I, sir. Though I am, I may tell you, a very light sleeper. I was once awoken by nothing more than my cat leaping onto the downstairs balustrade.”

“Dear me. But you sleep downstairs, surely, to have heard such a thing?”

She shook her head proudly. “No, indeed. My daughter and I sleep on the first floor. I am very sensitive, nocturnally speaking, sir.”

“Then you must certainly have been disturbed! Your window overlooks the very spot.”

“Would that I had seen something, or heard it, but I slept peacefully through till morning. It’s eerie, that’s what. But what time shall you be needing the cart?”

“In all honesty, Mrs. Green, I should not like to discuss my goods with anyone other than your son. I cannot convey to you my absolute trust in his discretion except to offer my warmest compliments regarding his upbringing. We shall return at a later time.” Holmes bade a cordial farewell to the woman, who limped appreciably on her right foot as she showed us to the door.

“You were quite effective at gaining an entrance,” I noted as we returned to the cab.

Holmes smiled, but his gaze was distant. “It goes without saying in this community that, given even a single male member of the household, any resident will be acquainted with a man who has access to a cart. You can hardly fail, provided your pronouns are vague enough.”

“It is a pity she could tell us nothing.”

“On the contrary,” my friend replied softly, “she told us a great deal.”

“How do you mean?”

“I had hoped, despite its cool execution, that this was some monstrous crime of passion. Mrs. Green’s room overlooks the scene of the assault, and I know for a fact that Nichols was not moved. If Mrs. Green is a light sleeper, and if Nichols was not moved, and Mrs. Green heard nothing, then there was no quarrel. If there was no quarrel…”

“Then the murder was premeditated,” I continued. “And if the murder was premeditated—”

“Then it is worse than I thought,” Holmes concluded grimly. “Whitehall, please, driver! Scotland Yard.”

We entered the Yard’s headquarters through the rear of the building and hastened up the familiar staircase to locate Inspector Lestrade. Our associate’s office was hardly a shrine to organization at the best of times, but that afternoon we found the windowless room could hardly be glimpsed beneath its litter of notes, maps, and memoranda. He looked up from his chair with a decided smirk.

The inspector appeared to have recovered a deal of composure within the haven of the Yard, along with the officious manners which were wont so often to chafe the considerable vanity of my companion. I had watched the pair collaborate over crimes both trivial and momentous over the years, and despite their mutual love of justice and regard for each other’s talents—tenacity on Lestrade’s part and innate brilliance on the part of Sherlock Holmes—I had never yet witnessed a meeting when the two friends failed to pique one another’s temper, either deliberately or incidentally. The fact that both would end up nettled and self-important was a foregone conclusion, even if Holmes religiously delivered full credit to Lestrade in all their mutual cases, and Holmes was Lestrade’s first and last defense against the incomprehensible.

“Well, Mr. Holmes, the notion we’d a homicidal maniac on our hands was a bit rich, don’t you think? I’ve put together the evidence regarding the Tabram case for you, and I think you’ll see it’s hardly the work of the same man.”

“I do not recall stating that the crimes were perpetrated by the same individual, only that they are both singular and similar.”

Lestrade proceeded to rummage through his papers primly.

“Very well, Mr. Holmes. Lecture as you like. I will confine myself to the facts. Deceased, one Martha Tabram, an unfortunate, found in George Yard Buildings on August the seventh stabbed thirty-nine times. Took us a full week to identify the body, finally confirmed by Henry Samuel Tabram, her former husband. They had two sons, but she seems to have been more interested in gin than in children, so she deserted him. He cut off her maintenance money when he discovered how she was supplementing her income. One can hardly blame him.” Here the inspector coughed discreetly before continuing his report. “She was last seen in the company of a drunken sergeant, and whoever he may be, the case is black against him. Tabram ducked into an alleyway with the chap and that’s the last we know.”

“To whom are we grateful for this information?”

“Constable Bennett, whose beat includes George Yard Buildings, and a Miss ‘Pearly Poll.’ Miss Poll and Mrs. Tabram fell in with a pair of guardsmen at the Two Brewers public house sometime before midnight. When they had finished at the pub, they parted ways into dark corridors in pairs. I’m sure you can deduce why that might be.”

“Thank you, the matter is indeed within my powers. What says this Constable Bennett?”

“That he approached a young grenadier guardsman at two o’clock in the morning just north of George Yard Buildings. Fellow told Bennett he was waiting for a friend who had gone off with a girl. Almost three hours later, one John Reeves came running up to Bennett with the news that he’d found a body. Bennett said that the corpse was placed in a disheveled and provocative position, and the time of death was estimated at close upon two a.m. So you see by now, it can have nothing to do with the other business.”