Sherlock Holmes Murder Most Foul (36 page)

Closing the door, but not locking it, Kosminski lights the candle on the table and motions to a chair in the corner of the room, “Yah, there, good.” Acting upon his instruction, Bullen and Cooper dump Holmes down on the chair. Placing his hand under Holmes’ chin, Kosminski raises his drooped head and passes the flame of the candle, from side to side, in front of his expressionless eyes, “Yah, ’e’ll come ’round, five t’ six ’ours.”

Slipping her shawl off her head down to her shoulders, Cooper smirks, “Then ’e’ll git a bleedin’ surprise, won’t ’e?”

Bullen catches sight of Mary lying on the bed, her head tilted to the left and towards him, “Her eyes, they’re open.”

Cooper quips, “Waitin’ t’ see wot ’appens next, ain’t she?"

Returning the candle to the table, Kosminski impatiently waves Bullen away with his hand, “Go, return cart.” He indicates Holmes, his head lolling, “T’morrow, bogies find ’im ’ere. Report wot yer see, an’ write it well.”

Eager to depart, Bullen nevertheless hesitates, “And?”

Cooper interjects, “Then yer git wot’s owed t’ yer, don’t yer?”

Bullen stares at Kosminski and motions to Cooper with his thumb,
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“She your tongue?”

Kosminski begins to unwrap the oblong box on the table,
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“Gelt, yah?”

Bullen nods, “Five hundred gold sovereigns, to be exact.”

Again, Kosminski waves him away with his hand, “Yah, yah. I pay. Go now, ’urry.”

Placated, Bullen steps to the door, then pauses. Taking a final look at Mary, he sighs ruefully, “Whilst greed exists, Marie Jeanette, the meek, such as yourself, shall never inherit the earth.”

Departing solemnly, he quietly closes the door behind him.

Cooper quickly turns the key in the lock and leaves it in place,
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“’E ’as a slate missin’, if not the ’ole roof.” Stooping, she picks up Mary’s boots from the floor. Upending one boot, she shakes it, tosses the boot aside and then upends the other. Two shilling coins drop from the boot straight into the palm of her hand,
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“Ol’ ’abit’s die ’ard, eh?”

Indicating the two brass rings Cooper wears on the index and middle fingers of her right hand, Kosminski sneers, “First yer nick from Chapman an’ now from Kelly. Yah, some ’abit’s do die ’ard.”

Ignoring his remark and clasping the coins in her hand, she pulls her shawl tightly around her shoulders, “Bleedin’ cold in ’ere, innit?”

Kosminski raises the lid of the polished mahogany box, revealing a scarlet velvet interior, inset with two Liston surgical knives. A third inset, which should contain yet another Liston knife, is without its instrument. Removing a small bottle, containing clear liquid, from the box and uncorking it, Kosminski sprinkles surgical alcohol over the three shirts, petticoat and bonnet left behind by Maria Harvey for Mary to sell. Stuffing two of the shirts into the sooty grate of the fireplace, he ignites the clothes with the flame of the candle, which suddenly blows out, extinguished by a downward draught of air from the chimney flue.

Standing, Kosminski places the candle upon the mantelpiece beneath a cheap print of ‘The Fisherman's Wife’, hanging on the wall. Reproduced from the oil-painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, the print depicts a solitary woman standing on a desolate beach with surf waves behind her. Wearing a cotton bonnet, a heavy woollen cape and a long skirt, the peculiarity of the woman is her face. She has no facial features. Her eyes, nose and mouth are missing. She is, in fact, utterly faceless.

Hogging the fire, Cooper raises the back of her skirt and begins to warm her buttocks, “Oooh, bliss. ’Eavenly bliss.”

Silently removing a knife from the box, Kosminski steps to the bed, pulls aside the blanket and, without further ado, slices open Mary’s throat.

Seeing blood ooze from the wound, Cooper shudders excitedly, “Yer ’ave time. Do ’er good an’ proper.” With the back of her skirt still raised, she steps to one side, allowing the light from the fire to illuminate Mary’s partially naked body.

Holmes lifts his head, his vision blurred. Staring at the sight before him, he attempts to concentrate, but with a modicum of success. Bizarre, ethereal images greet his eyes, distorting reality. He sees a woman lying on a bed, sound asleep. Stooped over her, a man wields a baton, similar to the conductor of an orchestra. Another woman, the front of her skirt raised before a fire, has her head grotesquely turned around in the opposite direction. She laughs hysterically. Flourishing the baton, the man tosses a rubbery object over his shoulder. Wet, yet warm, the object strikes Holmes in the chest and then drops to his lap.

Though severed from its vascular arteries, the heart, covered in blood, bizarrely continues to pulsate.

Mercifully, Holmes slips into unconsciousness.

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Dawn has broken and, on this damp Friday, 9 of November morning, a ceremony, dating back to the 12th century, will unfold in the metropolis shortly after midday.

At approximately half past twelve, fifty-four-year-old alderman James Whitehead, newly appointed Lord Mayor of the City of London, will leave his office at Guildhall, close to the City of London Police headquarters in Old Jewry, and journey to the Royal Courts of Justice in Chancery Lane. Once there, and wearing his symbol of office, the ‘Collar of Esses’, a heavy chain consisting of twenty-eight golden emblems, each in the shape of the letter S, he will swear an oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria. Although Her Majesty has had no constitutional say in his appointment, she knows, however, it will only be for one year.

For the tens of thousands of people who will flock to witness the ceremony, particularly those from Whitechapel and neighbouring environs, it matters not to them who has been appointed the new Lord Mayor of London. What matters is pomp and circumstance, a colourful pageantry to brighten up their drab lives. At the direct request of James Whitehead, the ceremony this year will not be a frivolous carnival affair, which has been the case in the past, but a State Procession befitting a dignitary of notable eminence. He will travel in a gilded State Coach, preceded by footmen and flanked either side by yeomanry dressed as medieval pikemen.

However, some three hours before the procession is due to start, Holmes is to find himself in a desperate situation from which there appears to be no escape.

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At about 8 a.m. and quietly leaving her husband in bed asleep, Catherine Picket descends the stairs from their first floor room to the outer yard beside the two windows of Mary’s room. Operating the hand-pump, she splashes cold water over her face, stoops and raises the lower part of her long skirt with which she dries her face. Feeling a chill in the air and thinking Mary might lend her a shawl, she hurriedly raps on her door. Getting no reply, Catherine turns away and scurries off along the passageway to work, blissfully ignorant of the abomination which now lies upon the bed within the room.

Chapter 13

Hue and Cry

Holmes lies prone upon the floor of 13 Miller’s Court, having had his gag and bonds removed and taken away by Kosminski, so as not to denote a plot. Regaining consciousness, he gradually opens his eyes and focuses, staring at the bloodstained Liston knife held in his right hand. Wearily rising to a kneeling position, he catches sight of a pool of dark blood, two feet in diameter, on the floor beneath the bed directly in front of him. With a sense of foreboding, he stands unsteadily, inhales deeply and then gazes down at the revolting sight on the bed which, until a few hours ago, had been Mary Jane Kelly.

Except for part of a chemise which covers her shoulders and upper arms, she is naked. Her head is inclined to the left. Her face has been so hideously slashed that she is beyond recognition. The ears and nose have been sliced off, her cheeks and eyebrows partially removed. The lips have been nicked and several incisions run down her chin at an angle. Her throat has been savagely cut from ear to ear, right down to the spinal column. The breasts have also been sliced off. One breast is under her head, the other near her right foot. Her heart has been removed. The arms have been extensively scored with several jagged cuts. The left arm, bent at the elbow, has its hand in her abdominal cavity. Her right arm remains straight at her side. The right thumb has a superficial cut about an inch long whilst the back of the right hand has several minor abrasions. The stomach and abdomen have been ripped open and emptied of its contents. The uterus and her kidneys are by her head. Her liver is between her feet, the intestines by her right side and the spleen to her left side. The thighs and legs have been terribly mutilated. The left thigh is stripped of both skin and muscles down to the knee, whilst the left calf has a deep gash from the knee to the ankle. Some partially digested food, fish and potatoes, are to be found in what is left of her stomach. Pieces of flesh, removed from both her abdomen and thighs, have been deposited on the bedside table. The bed is saturated with blood. Mary has not merely been murdered and defaced, she has been expunged.

Holmes stares at a part of the partition wall on the other side of the bed, close to the right shoulder of the corpse.

Upon its surface, written in blood, is the initial
M
.

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Beside the entrance to Miller’s Court, Thomas Bowyer stands in the doorway of the chandler’s shop, leaning on the handle of a broom. Observing scores of excited people hurrying past him in the street, he murmurs, “Lord Mayor’s parade an’ I’m stuck wiv work. Bloody rich, innit?”

Experiencing an irritating degree of discomfort, John McCarthy emerges from behind a door at the rear of the shop and snaps at Bowyer, “Ain’t payin’ yer t’ let weather in.
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Put wood in the ’ole.”

Bowyer hurriedly steps back into the shop, closes the door and motions to the people in the street with his head, “Lively lot, ain’t they, guv’nor?”

Rotating a ledger on the counter, McCarthy scoffs, “Traipsing up t’ the City t’ see a toff in a bleedin’ coach, more fool ’em.”

Putting his broom aside, Bowyer stares at McCarthy inquisitively, “Yer all right, guv’nor? Look a bit
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pasty, like.”

Feeling his organ smart, McCarthy grimaces and then inhales deeply, “If I were this ’ere Ripper bloke, I’d do ’er in next.”

Bowyer frowns, “Which ’er is ’er, guv’nor?”

McCarthy scowls “None o’ yer business.” He flicks through the pages of the ledger, “Rent day!
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First port o’ call, Mary Kelly. If she’s ’ome, come back ’ere an’ tell me, right away.”

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Harnessing his thoughts, Holmes turns away from the bed, wraps the Liston knife in a torn piece of newspaper on the table and then slips the instrument into the inside pocket of his jacket. Gripping the door handle, he tugs gently, “Ah, locked!” He peers through the nearest window, gazing out at the yard, “But hardly an ingenious move when two ground-floor windows offer an alternative means of escape. However, clambering out of a window in broad daylight does present a risk. Namely, being seen, when the object of the lesson is not to be seen.” Noticing the fireplace, he steps towards it, picks up the candle from the mantelpiece and kneels before the grate. Lightly brushing aside cold ashes with his hand, he uncovers a circular piece of wire which, having been used to strengthen the brim of a bonnet, has been burnt charcoal black.

Turning his attention to a partially blackened tin kettle beside his knee, he picks up its detached spout, lying upon the hearth. Feeling the roughened brazed end of the spout with his thumb, he murmurs, “Solder.” Returning the spout to the hearth, he pensively stares at the candle, “The light from the candle was not adequate for his deed. So, using clothes found in the room as a fuel, he lit a fire. A fierce fire that produced sufficient light and enough heat to melt the solder, loosening the spout of the kettle, which then dropped off.”

Standing slowly, he places the candle upon the mantelpiece and then studies the cheap print of ‘The Fisherman's Wife’ hanging on the wall. Staring at the depicted faceless woman, he suddenly turns about and looks at the corpse, its face stripped of all identity, “Life imitates art? Coincidence, or by design?”

Hurrying along the narrow passageway into the court, Bowyer thumps on the door of number 13, “Rent day, Mary.”

Reacting to the sudden interruption and selecting a part of the room where he cannot possibly be seen by Bowyer should he look through either of the two windows, Holmes positions himself in the corner between the door and the first window with its lower broken pane of glass partly obscured by the black overcoat.

Bowyer impatiently rattles the handle of the door, “Come on, Mary, it’s nigh on eleven o’clock.” Not easily deterred, especially by a locked door, he hurries around the corner and stoops before the nearest window. Carefully poking his hand through the hole in the lower pane of glass, he draws aside the overcoat and peers into the room, his eyes steadily adjusting to its dimness.

Confronted by the harrowing sight upon the bed in front of him, Bowyer gasps. Hurriedly withdrawing his hand and scraping his knuckles on the edge of the broken glass, he bolts. Hearing Bowyer dart past the door and then back along the passageway, Holmes opens his jacket and tears away a piece of the inner lining from its stitched seam. Removing an antler-handled pocketknife, which he had previously concealed in the jacket before donning his Alfred Mipps disguise, he flicks open its blade and quickly kneels upon the floor. With his fingers, he locates the head of a hammered nail embedded in a floorboard and begins to chip away at the wood with the tip of the blade, making a hole scarcely larger than the diameter of a pencil but deep enough to expose the entire nail. When he has finished, he moves along the same floorboard to the next nail and repeats the task.

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Throwing open the door of the shop, Bowyer rushes in and blurts to McCarthy, “She’s ’ome, all right. On the bed, cut t’ pieces.”

Forgetting about his own discomfort, McCarthy flinches, “Cut t’ pieces? The Ripper?”

Bowyer shakes his head despairingly, “Dunno, guv’nor. Knocked on the door, got no answer. Peeked through the window an’ she were lyin’ there. Blood everywhere.”

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Preceded by McCarthy, Bowyer reluctantly accompanies him back along the passageway to number 13. McCarthy grips the handle of the door, turning it first one way and then the other.

Extracting the tip of his knife from the floorboard, Holmes quickly stands and again positions himself in the corner of the room between the door and the first window.

Bowyer nudges McCarthy on the arm, “Door’s locked, guv’nor.” He motions to the outer yard with his head, “’Round the corner, first window. But don’t be askin’ me t’ look agin.”

Standing before the window, McCarthy inhales deeply, puts his hand through the hole in the upper pane of glass, which Mary had broken with the back of her head, and slowly eases aside a faded curtain. Peering into the room, he blanches and, as if touched by the hot tongs of a smelter, rapidly withdraws his hand. Breathing heavily, he stares at Bowyer, “It’s the devil’s work. Git the bogies.”

Bowyer nods, “Local nick, guv’nor?”

McCarthy catches his breath, “Yeh, I’ll shut up shop an’ catch up wiv yer. An’ mum’s the word, ’less yer want a riot down ’ere.”

Both men dash along the passageway out into Dorset Street. Bowyer turns left towards Commercial Street whilst McCarthy turns right. Taking a key from his pocket, McCarthy immediately locks the door of his chandler’s shop.

Picking up a poker from beside the fireplace, Holmes rams it into a gap between the end of the floorboard he has just worked on and an adjoining board. Pressing down on the poker, he applies leverage. Freed of its nail fastenings, the floorboard pops up.

Sliding the board aside and revealing a damp space beneath the floor, deep enough for a man to lie in, he swings the poker and, one by one, snaps off the rusty nails protruding from the joists.

Kneeling alongside an adjacent floorboard, he puts down the poker, picks up his pocketknife and again begins to chip away at the wood, murmuring, “Speed is of the essence. This, and the first floorboard, will have to do.”

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Having run the entire distance of just under a quarter of a mile from Miller’s Court, Bowyer enters Commercial Street Police Station and gasps hoarsely, “The Ripper! ’E’s done ’er in.”

About to descend the stone steps to the cells below, Sergeant Kirby, holding an enamelled mug of tea in either hand, pauses and addresses Sergeant Stokes, anxiously rising from his chair, “That bloody well exonerates the gentleman downstairs, doesn’t it?”

Ignoring Kirby, Stokes steps from behind his desk and snaps at Bowyer, “All right, all right, keep your voice down.”

Frantically, Bowyer seizes him by the arm, “She’s cut up summut ’orrible. Bits of ’er on the bed an’ the table, everywhere.”

Concerned that Bowyer might be unbalanced, Stokes tersely removes his hand, “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? Who are you?”

Striding along the main corridor of the station, Inspector Walter Beck hastily pulls on his jacket as he approaches Stokes, “What’s going on, Sergeant?”

Stokes frowns, “Don’t rightly know, Inspector.” He motions to Bowyer, “Says the Ripper’s done it again.”

Beck blanches, quickly opens an office door behind him and barks, “Dew, get out here, at the double.”

With his jacket slung over his arm, twenty-five-year-old Detective Walter Dew sleepily steps out of the office, buttoning his waistcoat, “Off on another wild goose chase, are we, Inspector?”

Beck retorts, “You’re not the only one who’s been up all night, Dew. Now shut up and pay attention.” He turns to Bowyer, “What’s your name?”

“Tom Bowyer!”

Beck looks up and sees McCarthy, who has just entered the police station, hobbling towards him, “Some folks call ’im Injun ’Arry on account ’e served Queen an’ country in India.”

Indicating McCarthy with his thumb, Bowyer gazes at Beck, “’E’s the guv’nor.”

Beck stares at Bowyer suspiciously, “Governor of what?”

McCarthy interjects, “Miller’s Court.”

Stokes glances at Beck, “Off Dorset Street, Inspector.”

McCarthy nods, “Yeh, where a lass from Limerick lies on ’er bed, butchered.”

Stokes gulps, “Then it’s true?”

McCarthy nods again, “Oh, yeh, it’s true, mate. An’ yer ain’t seen nothin’ like it this side o’ ’ell.”

Hurriedly, Dew puts on his jacket, “In heavens name, man, be precise. What number Miller’s Court?”

Bowyer blurts, “Thirteen.”

Beck points at McCarthy and Bowyer, “Right, you two. You’re coming with us.” He instructs Stokes, “Inform Inspector Lestrade at once.”

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Beck turns the door handle of number 13 and, as both Bowyer and McCarthy had discovered earlier, finds the door is locked. He glances at the two men, “From where did you see her, then?”

McCarthy replies, “’Round the corner.”

Bowyer adds, “First window, mate.”

Accompanied by Dew, Beck steps around the corner and halts by the window, noticing the lower and upper broken panes of glass. He beckons Bowyer with his finger, “You break these?”

Bowyer fervently shakes his head.

Beck turns to McCarthy, “What about you?”

McCarthy scoffs,
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“Wreck me own livelihood? Not bleedin’ likely. That daft parrot she lodged wiv broke ’em.”