Lyndsay Faye: Dust and Shadow

Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

For Jim LeMonds

and his Five Easy Pieces

DUST AND SHADOW

At first it seemed the Ripper affair had scarred my friend Sherlock Holmes as badly as it had the city of London itself. I would encounter him at the end of his nightlong vigils, lying upon the sofa with his violin at his feet and his hypodermic syringe fallen from long, listless fingers, neither anodyne having banished the specter of the man we had pursued for over two months. I fought as best I could for his health, but as a fellow sufferer I could do but little to dispel his horror at what had occurred, his petrifying fear that somehow, in some inhuman feat of genius, he could have done more than he did.

At length, though never for publication, I determined that in the interests of my own peace of mind I should write the matter down. I think only in my struggle to record the Reichenbach Falls business have I borne so heavy a weight as I laid pen against paper. They were evil days for me, and Holmes more than once, up and about as the cases flooded in with more force than he could practically avoid, leaned against my desk and remarked, “Come see about the Tarlington matter with me. You needn’t write this, my dear fellow. The world has already forgotten him, you know. One day we shall too.”

However, as was very seldom the case, Sherlock Holmes was mistaken. The world did not forget him. It has not forgotten him to this very day, and it is a brave lad indeed who does not experience a chilling of the blood when an elder sibling invokes the frightful phantom of Jack the Ripper.

I finished the chronicle, as much as possible in that measured biographical tone which had become my habit. I did so many years ago, when Holmes’s part in the matter was still questioned. But our role in the Ripper murders soon ceased to be a topic of any interest save to a select few. Only the cases visibly solved by my friend drew the accolades of a grateful public, for a story without an end is no story at all, and for London’s sake, as well as for our own, the solution to the Ripper affair had to remain absolutely secret.

Though I may act against my own best interests, I cannot now bring myself to burn any records of the cases Holmes and I shared. I intend to leave my papers in my solicitor’s capable hands, with this particular missive resting upon the very top of my dispatch box. No matter how vehemently I may insist upon it, however, I cannot be certain that my desire to leave this account unpublished will be obeyed. This tale throws into stark relief the most distant margins of man’s malevolent capacities, and I will not stand accused of embellishment or of sensationalism. Indeed, by the time anyone lays eyes on these pages, I pray that Jack the Ripper will have faded into a mere memory of a less equitable, more violent time.

My sole intent in setting the story down at all was to applaud those indefatigable talents and high-minded purposes which I hope will ever single out my friend of more than fifty years. And yet, I am gratified to note, even as I write—beset with tidings of new war and of new grief—posterity in her kindness has already singled out a place in history for the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

Dr. John H. Watson, July 1939

Contents

Prologue

CHAPTER ONE Two Crimes

CHAPTER TWO The Evidence

CHAPTER THREE Miss Mary Ann Monk

CHAPTER FOUR The Horror of Hanbury Street

CHAPTER FIVE We Procure an Ally

CHAPTER SIX A Letter to the Boss

CHAPTER SEVEN A Whitechapel Rendezvous

CHAPTER EIGHT In Pursuit of the Killer

CHAPTER NINE The Double Event

CHAPTER TEN The Destruction of the Clue

CHAPTER ELEVEN Mitre Square

CHAPTER TWELVE Dark Writings

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Miss Monk Investigates

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Lestrade Questions a Suspect

CHAPTER FIFTEEN The London Monster

CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Problem of Whitechapel

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN A Man in a Uniform

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Trophies

CHAPTER NINETEEN What Stephen Dunlevy Had to Tell

CHAPTER TWENTY The Thread

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE A Narrow Escape

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Disappearance of Sherlock Holmes

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Fleet Street Enterprise

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The East-end Division

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Bonfire Night

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Lie

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Killer

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT A Hunting Party

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Case and the Heart

CHAPTER THIRTY The Gift

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE With the Respects of the Yard

Acknowledgments

Prologue

FEBRUARY 1887

“My dear Doctor, I fear that I shall require your services this evening.”

I looked up quizzically from an article on the local elections in the Colwall Gazette. “With pleasure, Holmes.”

“Dress warmly—the barometer is safe enough, but the wind is chill. And if you don’t mind dropping your revolver in your pocket, I should be obliged. One can never be too careful, after all, and your revolver is a particularly businesslike argument.”

“Did I not hear you say at dinner that we would return to London by the morning train?”

Sherlock Holmes smiled enigmatically through the gauzy veil of pipe smoke which had gradually enveloped his armchair. “You refer to my remarking that you and I would be far more productive in the city than here in Herefordshire. So we shall be. There are three cases of variable interest awaiting us in London.”

“But the missing diamond?”

“I have solved it.”

“My dear Holmes!” I exclaimed. “I congratulate you. But where is it, then? Have you advised Lord Ramsden of its whereabouts? And have you sent word to Inspector Gregson at the inn?”

“I said I had solved it, not resolved it, my dear fellow.” Holmes laughed, rising from the damask chair in our elegant guest sitting room to knock his pipe against the grate. “That work lies ahead of us. As for the case, it was never a very mysterious business, for all that our friend from the Yard appears to remain bewildered.”

“I find it just as inexplicable,” I admitted. “The ring stolen from a private vault, the absurd missing patch of lawn from the southern part of the grounds, the Baron’s own tragic past…”

“You have a talent of a sort, my dear Watson, though you make shockingly little use of it. You’ve just identified the most telling points in the whole affair.”