J. Campbell - Gaslight Arcanum - Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Though we were fresh to the scene of this incident — able to examine it before, as Holmes would say, Lestrade and his men could contaminate it — we found nothing amiss … save for the brutal murder of Mr. Thorndyke.

As you know, I have long been a student of Holmes and his methods, so it was with a heavy heart that I watched him pace the room, sniffing the air, taking out his glass to pay close scrutiny to a piece of carpet here, the edge of a table there, only for him to concede that — as she must have done — Mrs. Thorndyke had plunged the knife into her husband during the meal. Holmes pressed a gloved finger to his lips. “Ah, but it is the way it happened that is the most curious, Watson,” said he. “Note the way the plates are scattered on the table. The look of shock and surprise on Mr. Thorndyke’s face. This happened quickly. As if something unimaginable came over the woman. One moment they sat eating dinner together, the next…” His sentence trailed off.

I nodded. “But what could have come over her?”

“Once again, you are the physician, Watson. I would suggest that you examine the body of not only Mr. Thorndyke,” he encouraged, “but his wife as well. We shall also be needing access to the body of Miss Judith Hatten.” Holmes looked over at Lestrade as he said this.

“I beg your pardon? What has the one to do with the other?” the policeman asked.

“Oh, come now, Inspector. Surely you can see the connection here?” The man could not, but I could. Two people murdered by their partners, both surviving halves — though Mrs. Thorndyke did not survive for long, I grant you — claiming that they did not commit the crime, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

Lestrade allowed us to examine the body of Miss Hatten anyway, along with the others. But even as Holmes watched my explorations from a distance down in the icy morgue I could offer him no new leads.

“The causes of death are accurate,” said I, “a head injury in the case of Miss Hatten and repeated stab wounds in the case of Mr. Thorndyke.”

Holmes looked past me to the grey bodies on the tables, breathing in deeply — something I would not readily advise in such a situation. “But what of Mrs . Thorndyke?”

I shook my head. “Nothing that I could see, at any rate. Perhaps an examination of her blood…”

However not even that afforded us an explanation; no abnormalities that would have accounted for sudden changes in personality. Nor did Holmes’ trip to the Hatten residence uncover a thing, largely because Judith’s father would not grant us permission to view the crime scene once he learned who had enlisted our help.

“No matter,” Holmes said as we climbed back into the cab, heading towards Baker Street once more. “After so long, I doubt whether it would have yielded anything of interest.”

While Holmes attempted to make some kind of sense of the incidents thus far — littering his room with everything from articles on insanity to reports alleging bodily possession by demons (“You cannot seriously be considering that?” I said to him when I discovered his notes, but he just waved me away with his hand), playing his violin into the small hours of the morning — more incidents occurred.

In Kentish Town an antiques dealer named Falconbridge used an ornamental sword to disembowel his housekeeper then turned the weapon on himself. At Westminster Hospital a middle-aged builder’s merchant called Robertson took it upon himself to secrete a hypodermic needle about his person and inject his elderly mother with an overdose of morphine … a mercy killing, you might assume, but the woman was actually recovering from her malaise and was expected to be discharged within a matter of days. Colleagues of mine who were present informed me that the son, in a state of confusion and remorse, ran away. His body was later found in the Thames. Finally, passengers on a train bound for Waterloo described hearing piercing screams, only to witness a woman backing out of a carriage covered in blood and holding a fire axe. According to the ticket inspector her hands were trembling, as she looked left and right, then she dropped the axe and fled, eventually flinging herself from the moving vehicle. Inside the carriage were found the dismembered bodies of her husband and their twelve year old daughter.

It was the latter, I fear, that had the most telling effect upon Holmes. As we stepped onto that train, Lestrade now very glad of any assistance, my friend wavered, almost turning back. But he forced himself to look upon those remains. And I swear to you now, that in all my years and service in Afghanistan I had never seen the likes of it before — nor would I care to again.

“I should have been able to prevent this,” Holmes said, under his breath, his gaze fixed upon the contents of that carriage.

“How?” I asked him, my own mouth dry as sandpaper.

“There is a pattern to these events… I simply cannot see it yet.”

When we returned to Baker Street that evening, silence prevailing in the cab along the way, Miss Cartwright was waiting for us. She said nothing as Holmes stepped into the room, but merely strode towards him and slapped his face; before departing without a word.

We discovered not long afterwards that Simon had committed suicide in his cell by swallowing his own tongue. Lestrade said that there was nothing that could have been done, but I knew Holmes disagreed.

I did not see him for some time after that. On the single occasion I did knock and enter his chambers, I found the room empty apart from the usual detritus of the case. However, on the table I spied the means by which he was administering his seven percent solution; a habit from which I never did manage to free him.

Holmes staggered from his bedroom then, unkempt and wearing a dressing gown. He looked drawn and pale, a ghost of his former self.

“Holmes, I really must—” but before I could get out another word, he flew at me, enraged. I thought for a moment he might attack me in a murderous rage, but instead he simply shouted:

“Get out! Get out! Get out! ”

I did as instructed, retreating and allowing him to slam the door behind me. I heard a lock being drawn on the other side and considered it was for the best that I should leave him alone, despite my grave concern.

An equally concerned Lestrade contacted me several times over the course of those next few weeks, informing me of yet more murders — drownings, beatings, stranglings — as well as suicides, asking if Holmes would be continuing his investigations. I lied and told him that the great detective was looking into several quite promising leads.

In reality, I feared that he had finally met his match. It is a conviction that I still hold to this day.

When I heard Holmes leave 221b Baker Street, it was the middle of the night. He told neither Mrs. Hudson nor myself where he was going, but after his tirade I was not at all surprised. When Lestrade called at the house, protesting that he was no longer able to prevent the papers from reporting this insanity that seemed to have gripped London, I had to admit that Holmes was not present.

“Then where is he, Doctor? And why aren’t you with him?”

I said again that he was chasing a line of enquiry, but the Inspector’s words struck a nerve with me. It wasn’t the first time Holmes had retreated into himself, nor the first occasion he had vanished without warning — and Heaven knows he had justification this time — but Lestrade was right; I should be with him. I was deeply distressed about his condition, and if there was a connection between all of these bizarre events then I should be working with Holmes to uncover it.

I set out to look for my friend, searching all the places I could think he would go. Sadly I even tried some of the opium dens that he had been known to frequent from time to time. In Limehouse, I discovered that he had been spotted enjoying some of the more questionable vices it had to offer, but had departed some considerable time ago.