Dust and Shadow (13 page)

A middle-aged man with greying muttonchop whiskers, a shabby bowler hat, and the physique of a dray horse approached us, a tentative smile fighting for supremacy with his suspicious and hooded eyes.

“Excuse me, sirs, but I can’t help but notice that you’ve been in this square and out again more times than is natural. I wonder if you might be good enough to say what your business is here.”

“Tell me who’s asking,” my friend replied with a surly glare and, I noted with amusement, a perceptibly Welsh turn of phrase.

The man crossed his powerful arms expectantly. “That’s no more than your right, I suppose, though I’m under no obligation to tell you with the Ripper still at large. My name is Samuel Levison, and I’m part of a group organized to keep the peace in these parts. The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee we go by, and if you’re reasonable, you’ll tell me your business before I call a policeman to do my work for me.”

Holmes’s eyes lit up eagerly. “I’ve heard of your men,” he cried, “and you’re just the help I’ve been wanting. Yesterday, it was—I’d been to a few more pubs than I should, I don’t mind telling you, and close toward morning someone told me I was but a quarter mile from the spot where another poor creature was killed. Sounds absurd in the light of day, but I’d a terrible urge to see the place. I’d hardly entered the square when I heard someone behind me. A rogue and a rascal if I ever saw one, and he flashed a blade, saying he’d have my money or my blood. Well, I’ve never been one to back down from a fight, so I pulled out my knife, but drink had the better of me and the bloody scoundrel cut me straightaway—here, in the shoulder. By the time I’d dragged myself home, I never realized I’d dropped my pipe in the scuffle. It’s been with me for many a voyage, and I wasn’t easy in my mind until I’d had a look round. Stem was burnished wood, with designs I’d carved—birds and such.”

“Lads?” Mr. Levison called to his companions. “Seen anything on the ground that might belong to this fellow? I am sorry, sir, but like as not someone’s pawned it by now.”

“Ah, more’s the pity. I’d little enough hope as it was.” Holmes squinted at the murder site. “You’ve more important things on your minds than my pipe. The body was in front of those houses?”

“Yes, opposite Church Passage.”

“And what did the neighbours hear?”

“Unfortunately, the buildings are unoccupied.”

“Ah, that’s a shame, it is. Seems an empty enough place, to be sure.”

“Kearly and Tonge’s Warehouse yonder is guarded by night, and a police constable lives just there, but no one heard a thing.”

“Police just on the other side of the square?” Holmes whistled softly. “I might never ha’ lost my pipe if I’d known that.”

“Don’t see how you could have known—not unless you were Sherlock Holmes, that balmy cove.”

The men laughed heartily at this incomprehensible jest, and Holmes flashed a ready smile in return. “What, that unofficial ’tec? Don’t tell me you know him.”

His question provoked another bout of merriment. “Know him!” chuckled Mr. Levison. “That’s rich. I think Lusk, our president, knows him, but if he’s a careful man, he’ll steer clear of Sherlock Holmes. I know I would, if I were him.”

Torn between burning curiosity and the sight of a colourless Holmes leaning ever more urgently upon his stick, I ventured, “Hadn’t we best return home?”

“Yes indeed, see your friend home, my good man,” agreed Mr. Levison genially. “I’m right sorry about your pipe, sir, but you’re a good deal too peaked to be out of doors.”

“There’s days I’ve felt better, and that’s certain,” Holmes replied. “My thanks for your help, such as it was.”

We slowly, for my friend grew steadily more faint, passed back through the narrowest of the entrances. Holmes made no protestation when I took him firmly by the arm.

“What in the world could that fellow have meant?”

My companion shook his head. “I haven’t the first idea,” he answered, “but I fear that we shall soon enough find out.”

By the time I got Holmes up the stairs, he was so drained of all energy that I lost no time in administering a fresh injection of morphine before consigning him to his bed. Afterward I felt compelled to clear my thoughts and, with no immediate object in mind, ambled toward Regent’s Park where a hailstorm of brown leaves lay strewn over the spacious grounds.

Our visit to Mitre Square appeared only to have raised still more mystifying obstacles. Why should our quarry have killed again when he knew the alarm had been raised? Why should he have done so where at any moment he may have been interrupted from one of three directions? Above all, I dwelt upon the bizarre remarks the committee man had made about my friend. For all the Yard’s reticence to consult a self-labeled amateur, there was scarcely a more respected figure in the layman’s eye, and with each successive case Sherlock Holmes solved—in the rare instances he received full credit—he was compelled by his natural Bohemian reticence to turn down countless congratulatory invitations proffered by rich and poor alike. What extraordinary rumour could possibly have run him afoul of public opinion?

I must have wandered for an hour, lost in pointless speculation. I had just turned the corner, my steps leading back down Baker Street,
when I observed from half a block’s distance an angry altercation taking place upon our doorstep.

“It is undoubtedly a sad circumstance which brings harm to the faultless health of the great Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” growled Mr. Rowland K. Vandervent, “but I will be damned, my good lady—and I use the word
damned
only in the presence of those it will affect—I will be damned if his condition prevents me from saving his character!”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Vandervent,” I said sternly. “I should like to have a word with you in private. Your gross disregard for both courtesy and Holmes’s frail state of health has been well noted, I warn you. Mrs. Hudson, I will deal with this person.”

Thanked with surreptitious glances of gratitude from both parties (neither of whom, providentially, observed the other), I proceeded with Mr. Vandervent up the stairs. I roused the coals into a blaze as he finished the few laboured steps required to propel him into our sitting room.

“I say, she isn’t a distant extraction of any of the Borgias, is she? I’ve never had such adjectives trowled in heaping mounds upon my person. What I mean to say is, Doctor,” continued Vandervent, suddenly lowering his raspy voice and glancing toward Holmes’s door, “the gawky fellow isn’t about to die on us, is he?”

“By no means!” called the detective’s piercing tenor from his bedroom.

“It is common enough knowledge,” declared Holmes when we had entered the room and Mr. Vandervent had cast himself into the armchair, “that spoken low tones, provided that the
s
consonant is disguised, are far more easily masked than a whisper.”

“So it’s true, then?” returned Vandervent, running his hand through his frenzied hair. “You were knocked about by Jack the Ripper?”

“I am at death’s door,” my friend replied acidly. “Therefore, I beg of you to come to the point.”

“I only mean to tell you that I am sorry about the late edition of the
London Chronicle.
I had nothing whatever to say about it.”

“How fascinating. I have barely finished the early morning editions. Look it up, would you, Watson?”

I cast about the chaotic room for some moments in search of the periodical in question, finally extracting it from the vortex of newsprint. The article was titled, in the usual gaudy capitals, “A MURDEROUS STRUGGLE,” and read as follows:

To my immense surprise, at the conclusion of this trash, Sherlock Holmes threw his head back and laughed heartily in his inner, noiseless fashion until he had entirely exhausted himself.

“I fail to see the humour you have, in your greater wisdom perhaps, detected,” remarked Mr. Vandervent.

“As do I, Holmes.”

“Oh, come, Watson! Really! It is quite too preposterous.”

“It is libelous!”

“It is superb. It clears up a small mystery, for this piece was written by the enigmatic Leslie Tavistock. However, it presents a fresh one, for the article is factually irreproachable. Where could Tavistock have obtained these particulars? Before the press even learned of the first murder, I had been carted off like a sack of oranges and you had left the scene. Do you imagine Miss Monk was interviewed about the events of the evening?”

“It seems very unlikely.”

“Or perhaps the regular Yarders spread the word that their peculiar amateur reinforcements frequent pubs of ill repute?”

“Even less probable.”

“I don’t imagine you’ve forgone your usual custom of appallingly florid biography and gone straight to the gutter press?”

“You may put the thought from your mind.”

“There is something about this article I do not understand,” Holmes confessed. “It is peculiarly malignant.”

“I don’t see anything so peculiar about that. Journalists rarely worry about malignancy,” Mr. Vandervent corrected him. “They are far too concerned with selling papers, you see.”

“I cannot help but think that the business of journalists is to report the news, and not to sell newspapers,” Holmes returned dourly. “Be that as it may, I cannot imagine any newsman would take it upon himself to write such rubbish without cause.”

“You have more faith in my industry than do I, perhaps because you have suffered from less prolonged exposure. Nevertheless, you
are right in thinking he has a clever source. Apart from your friends and the Yard, who are diligently shutting as many open mouths as they can, it is difficult to know who could have dogged your movements that night. Speaking of your allies, I don’t suppose any of them are false?”

“I don’t suppose they are,” my friend stated flatly.

“Quite right. In that case, I believe we have exhausted the subject of your delightfully rendered portrait in the local press. Consider, then, a postcard we received the morning after. It doesn’t make for pleasant reading, but I am clearly no judge as to what will amuse you.”

Holmes’s face changed swiftly when he viewed the card, betraying his eager interest. After scrutinizing it, front and back, he tossed it to me.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” mused Holmes. “The hand at first appears to differ, but on closer examination, it is merely very hastily and agitatedly written. What do you intend to do with this beauty?”

“The papers will be falling over each other to publish it. That previous letter has already been printed in facsimile by the
Daily News.
Every man, woman, and child is referring to the mad devil as Jack the Ripper.”

“So I observed. What do you hope to accomplish?”

“We shall sell newspapers, no doubt. In addition, I have not despaired that the handwriting may be recognized.”

“You have been of immense help.”

“Well, it was my duty to warn you and warn you I did. I was also determined to absolve myself of blame, and I congratulate myself on
both counts. I shall see myself out, thank you. It would be a waste of ten minutes to accompany me, Dr. Watson. Good day to you both.”

Holmes lit a cigarette at the candle by his bedside. He then glanced at me with a shrewd smile. “You see the significance of these taunting missives?”

“Do they furnish any tangible clue?”

“No, but they indicate a trend. In the first case, they are localized; both are postmarked from the East-end, which is further confirmation that our man knows Whitechapel intimately, perhaps lives there. But more interestingly, these letters will accomplish a very specific purpose upon their publication.”

“What purpose, Holmes?”

“Terror, my dear fellow. Abject terror. I will be very much mistaken if the colour of this investigation, black as it was before, will not have darkened by this evening.”

I knew better than to think Holmes had been exaggerating for the purpose of effect, and soon word arrived from George Lusk that riots had flamed up in various East-end neighbourhoods, none of them fatal yet each an outpouring of impotent rage. A creeping fear now gripped half of London, and geographically speaking, the hysteria was spreading. Proposed solutions flooded into the Yard from all quarters and included, as I recall, dressing up male constables as female unfortunates, and spreading alarm wires throughout Whitechapel to serve as electric warning buttons.

On the following morning, at Holmes’s request, I set out for the East-end to retrieve Miss Monk, whose presence was required in order to lay out our plans. What these plans included the detective omitted to tell me, but I was easier in my mind merely knowing such existed.

When I knocked at the ground-floor room Miss Monk had taken for herself upon her improvement in fortunes, I half expected to find her still the victim of a morose nervous reaction. Instead, when the door opened, I discovered her neatly dressed, with a pot of tea on the stove and the gleam of fresh intelligence in her green eyes. She bid me sit with her usual blend of imitative elegance and habitual coquetry, then threw herself into the other of the two chairs flanking her roughly sanded table.

“And wouldn’t you love to hazard at what I’ve been about.” She grinned, pouring me a cup of tea. I assented with an encouraging smile.

“I’ve been out on the town with the likes of Stephen Dunlevy, that’s what.”

I started forward in some disquiet. “Miss Monk, surely you know how dangerous his company may be. We were in pursuit of Mr. Dunlevy when last we encountered…”

“Jack the Ripper?”

“Indeed, for want of a better name. Miss Monk, I don’t like to think what could happen.”

“Aye, I know,” she assented gravely. “It’s a funny thing, Doctor—I thought I’d be too terrified to set foot out of doors again. Spent half of Sunday starting at every creak and whisper. But now even when I am frightened, the devilish thing is that I’m too angry to notice.”

She looked me square in the face, and in that moment, Miss Monk and I understood each other. I had traveled through lands that she had never dreamed of in her most elaborate imaginings; she had lived a life whose sufferings I could not begin to guess at. Still, we understood each other, and I knew that whatever was asked of her in our increasingly desperate venture, she would perform to her utmost ability.

“Very well. You saw Stephen Dunlevy. You are far too pleased for the errand to have been fruitless.”

“You recall how his landlady let on he goes out more than he should, but never with any woman in mind?”

“Yes, she reassured you of his total devotion.”

Miss Monk laughed. “He don’t care ha’penny for me, Dr. Watson. But this tale he has, about his mate Johnny Blackstone killing that girl while he stood by—it’s true as gospel so far as I can tell, for after we’d had an afternoon pint yesterday, I doubles back and follows him again, and he walks straight over to—”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Monk, but how did you come to meet with him in the first place?”

“We’d arranged it when I left him to find you and Mr. Holmes. How is Mr. Holmes, then, Doctor?” she added apprehensively. I assured her that he would soon mend and requested she go on with her story.

“We’d set on two o’clock to have a glass of beer just round the corner, and after what happened I was fair sick over whether he’d show up at all, for there’s something in this business he knows more about than he tells. But at two there he is, sure enough, and when he sees me he smiles right out and calls my name. The Knight’s Standard is a right den of fighting cocks now, the ladies all huddled together, whispering over what’s to be done—the hop picking’s good as spent, so even the judies what prefer to leave the city won’t have any means to buy bread and tea. So there they are, wondering just as everyone is what’s best to do, though with a sharper interest than most.

“Well, we’d stowed ourselves in a corner when he says, with an odd look, ‘I’m glad you’re all right, for you must have seen by now what has happened.’

“‘The whole Chapel’s well-nigh set on fire over it,’ I says back.

“He looks at me right close and then asks if I’ve been putting myself in any sort of careless danger. Of course I says no, though I can’t think why he should ask, and we’re back to the question of finding Blackstone before the worst happens again. He allows as he’s sure he’s on the trail. ‘But,’ he says, ‘I’ll not hear of you running around in dark alleys and corridors.’

“Now I’m wondering what cause he could have to warn me special when every ladybird this side of the City is shivering at the thought of a knife ’cross her neck, so I asks him whether I’ve any choice but to take a plunge into the dark every now and then.

“He grabs my hand and then he says, ‘Rely on your income from this West-end benefactor. I have high hopes of success, but I beg that you will keep low until I can manage to set things right.’

“Well, that couldn’t help but strike me as queer, and when he’d left the pub with a promise to meet again, I duck out of sight into a
tobacconist’s and wait until he’s a fair ways off afore I follow him. He goes into the same crib he’d done before, comes out in fresh togs—not the uniform he sometimes wears, but dressed like a toff—and then sets off again. I follows at a safe distance until he turns into a passage what leads to a few rookeries. I waits a good piece before dogging him down the corridor, and when I does I’ve a story to tell him about knowing he’s after another woman if my luck runs out and he spies me. When I reach the end of it, I watch as he goes into a set of digs there on the ground floor.

“I figure the chances a window or a door is open enough for me to hear are long odds considering the London particulars
*
we’ve had of late, but I creeps up to the house to be certain. And when I does, I hear something, so I duck around the side. Would you believe it—the window’s clear cracked and all broken at one edge, as half of them are thereabouts, not covered by anything more’n a scrap of paper, and if I sets my ear to the broken part careful enough, I can hear every blooming word.

“‘You are certain he stayed here for the duration of his leave?’ Dunlevy asks.

“‘Oh, yes,’ says a woman’s voice. ‘It was but a few days shy of the Bank Holiday and both my daughters away with their aunt in Yorkshire. Naturally I hadn’t the heart to leave the attic room empty when I knew there’d be visitors to the city, and soldiers on leave.’

“‘Indeed not. But the day after the holiday, he disappeared without warning?’

“‘It was the strangest thing,’ says she. ‘My Joseph is naught but ten, and that Blackstone swore he would show him the right way around a pistol the next morning. Then we come to find he was clean gone. Though he did leave his money all laid out on the table there. It’s a shame he left no trace of himself, for as you know he’s a charming fellow and was very well spoken to the children.’

“‘Quite so, ma’am. If I should discover his whereabouts soon, I shall be glad to give him your regards.’

“And on they go, but I’ve heard a fair piece and’ve always had rum enough luck without tempting it, so I legs it back here. I thought best to leave all to Mr. Holmes.”

“Undoubtedly, Miss Monk!” I affirmed. “Back to Baker Street and Holmes will sort this out. Stephen Dunlevy was right about one thing—we must exercise all necessary caution.”

Holmes was awake when we arrived but still ashen of countenance, leaning heavily against the sitting room mantelpiece in his shirtsleeves and mouse-coloured dressing gown. He had swept all objects from the ledge and replaced them with a hastily sketched map of Whitechapel covered in scrawled markings and obscure street references. Its legibility was not aided by the fact that my friend was right-handed, and unable to make use of that particular limb. Disheveled as he was, staring fixedly at a jumble of erratically scribbled byways, he could as easily have been an escapee from an asylum as the final court of appeal in criminal detection.

“Miss Monk, where does Stephen Dunlevy keep his pocket handkerchief?”

“In the lining of his coat, if I recall.”

“Hum. I thought as much.”

She was staring at my friend despondently. “Lor’, Mr. Holmes, I knew you was bad off that night from the doctor’s dinner jacket, but to see you like this—”

“You have been considering going into business, I see.”

“How do you know that?” she gasped.

“The same process which informs me you got very drunk recently and have a young female acquaintance, possibly a neighbour, whose happiness is of some import to you.”

“Of all the rotten cheek,” cried Miss Monk, her chin up and her
eyes blazing. “You’ll talk that way to the carpet if you like, for I’ll be damned if I stay to hear it.”

As she made her way to the door, Holmes, employing perhaps the last of his resources, leapt after her, catching her gently and easily by the wrist. “My sincerest apologies, Miss Monk. Dr. Watson will tell you that my powers have not the charm of tact to recommend them. Pray sit down.”

Miss Monk peered suspiciously at Holmes, but her temper waned as quickly as it had sparked. “Well, then. I’ll not say you were wrong, just a mite…
forward.
I’m that glad to see you alive, at any rate. There, I oughtn’t to have flared out so, but I thought the whole thing a slum.”

“My dear Miss Monk, I would never dream of using trickery to gain special knowledge,” sighed Holmes as he made his laborious way toward the settee, lying down and passing his operative hand through his hair. “Though you are not the first to think so, and if I am lucky you shall not be the last.”

“How d’ye do it, then?”

He leaned his head back, shutting his eyes. “That you are thinking of going into business is obvious from the four separate varieties of rag doll peeping at various angles from your pockets. Impoverished mothers make them, leaving it to their young offspring to hawk the wares. If you can provide materials with your new capital, you may well manage to ease the lives of all your acquaintances, at least those with rudimentary sewing skills.”

“What of the girl?”

“You’ve already examined and formed an opinion of each design. They are now well within your income, have no actual value, and yet you carry them about with you. They are a gift. What sort of person would be likely to enjoy such a gesture?”

“They are for Emily. She’s not yet four, poor little mite. And?” Miss Monk prompted, not willing to employ any further syllables.

Holmes winced gallantly and replied, “Your shoes.”

“My shoes?”

“The right shoe.”

She looked down quickly and glanced up again at Holmes.

“You recently replaced your worn boots with new ones, and thus when I last saw you, they were relatively unmarked. There is now a significant marring of the leather, in more than one place, on the right boot: you have been kicking something heavy, and quite violently.” The clinical tone in an instant gave way to easy charm. “I congratulate you that, while it is the nature of drink to compel one to lash out physically, it is the nature of a thinking person to confine her rage to one foot.”

“I’ll own up to it. Saturday night gave me a turn, and I was finding a bit of ease at the bottom of a glass.”

“My dear Miss Monk, I cannot tell you how—”

“Oh, bollocks to you both! I’ve had my fit, don’t you see, and all that’s left is a scuffed boot, and what’s a scuffed boot to the likes of us?” she cried, and sat quite naturally on our sitting room floor, Indian-style, next to Holmes’s head. “So what are we to do?”

“Wait a moment.” He laughed. “I have not all my data about me. You continue to meet with Private Dunlevy, do you not?”

“How the devil did you—”

“You do, then.”

“Well, yes.”

“Then if you would be so kind as to make me aware of any recent developments.”

Miss Monk did so, omitting nothing she had told me, although her narrative had smoothed through repetition.

“There it is, Mr. Holmes,” she concluded at length. “What am I to do with the blighter?”

Holmes considered briefly. “Have you any objection to continuing in his company?”

“No objection, save that I know what I’m in for.”

My friend rose with an effort and crossed the room. “Nothing
perilous, I assure you, provided you keep to public areas and take no risks once the sun has set. Carry this somewhere about your person—disguised, mind.” He produced from a drawer in his desk a small collapsible blade and tossed it to Miss Monk.

“Bloody hell,” she muttered, then remembered herself and replied, “Right then. I’m to gad about with Dunlevy looking for staring, mad soldiers, eyes glazed over and trousers covered with dried blood, and report back to you, shall I?”

“If you would be so kind. Dr. Watson and I can cover most lines of inquiry, but it is essential that someone remain in the field.”

“Seems best, with Blackstone on the lam,” she returned lightly. “Hope we find him soon, at any rate. Wouldn’t want to wander the Chapel with Dunlevy wi’out a specific agenda. Poor lad might get the wrong idea.”

“By the way, Miss Monk, do any of your companions, in your experience, carry pieces of chalk about with them?”

“Chalk? Like what that batty message about Jews was written with?” She reflected. “The girls I know might carry a stub of pencil, but it’s long odds. Half of them wouldn’t know the use of it. Chalk would be used to mark lengths, I suppose—a bolt of cloth, maybe, or a piece of lumber?”

“One more thing, Miss Monk,” Holmes added as she made her way to the door. “I discovered a stalk of grapes near the dead woman. If you would be so good as to look further into the matter, I should be grateful.”

“What sort were they?”

“The stem was consistent with black grapes.”

“There ain’t but a few merchants in that area who’d be selling black grapes. I’ll ferret ’em out, never fear.”

“Thank you, Miss Monk. Please be careful.”

“That I’ll be, make no mistake,” she called over her shoulder, already halfway down the stairs. “I may work for you, Mr. Holmes, but I’m not entirely daft just yet.”