Dust and Shadow (26 page)

“What I intend to say to you all must go no further than this room. I am telling you what I know because I require your help. When I have said my piece, you are welcome to pose any questions you wish, but I had better lay our cards on the table in my own fashion so that you will be able to see the matter as I do.

“It really all began with Stephen Dunlevy here. Not long after Miss Monk consented to serve as our contact in Whitechapel, she met Mr. Dunlevy, who confessed to her that he was the soldier who had awaited his friend’s return on the night of Tabram’s murder. Because the circumstances cast a great deal of suspicion upon this other guardsman, and no less owing to my own doubts regarding Mr. Dunlevy’s chosen career, his story arrested my immediate interest, especially as other women began meeting equally inexplicable and violent ends. I endeavoured to learn more by venturing myself into Whitechapel, which is why Dr. Watson and I happened, through purest coincidence, to catch the Ripper at his foul work. A deduction based on the pony’s behaviour led me into Dutfield’s Yard; the Ripper escaped, as you know, to kill again after he failed in his attempt to dispatch me.

“After this fifth murder, it became obvious to me that we were dealing with no ordinary criminal. He was not a raving lunatic, for if he were, who would ever agree to accompany him with so many unfortunates already dead? Neither was he a thief, nor did he seek calculated revenge, for try as I might to link the poor souls, his victims followed no pattern other than that they were all, as I have said, unfortunates. Thankfully, because I have records of two or three earlier cases matching these particulars—bizarrely motiveless slaughter of anonymous victims—I was able to conclude that the man calling himself Jack the Ripper is a severely diseased monomaniac whose habitual demeanour remains nonetheless perfectly genial.”

“That’s the most atrocious notion I’ve ever heard,” Lestrade muttered, but Holmes took no notice.

“My mention of the name Jack the Ripper brings me to the letters. When he described in exact detail my own cigarette case, and Mr. Lusk received half a human kidney, I had final proof that the man who had murdered five women was writing these letters to bait us. I have no doubt that another note sent to Dr. Watson purporting to be from me was also the Ripper’s work. At first these letters helped us in no way. But finally, I discovered a curious series of numbers which had made an impression on the page beneath. These proved far from negotiable without any context, and so I filed them at the back of my mind until such time as their meaning could be determined.

“After I ascertained his true vocation, Mr. Dunlevy confessed that, while he may have been dressed as a private on the night of Bank Holiday, he was in actuality a journalist whose candid stories were often aided by disguise. He informed me that he had observed Johnny Blackstone, for that was the other soldier’s name, lead Martha Tabram into an alley a mere half hour before the time the medical examiners assured us she met her death. Mr. Dunlevy revisited the pub, but he returned to await his acquaintance and while doing so met with Constable Bennett. Finally giving up on Blackstone, Mr. Dunlevy returned to his home and only later discovered that any foul play had taken place.

“I had the strongest intuition that this terrible series of murders had begun the night of Martha Tabram’s death, and thus locating the elusive Johnny Blackstone became of the utmost importance. He disappeared following his relief from service for erratic and disturbing behaviour, and he was reportedly hiding in Whitechapel, all of which made me very eager to lay my hands on him. After all, any man who would stab a woman thirty-nine times and then coolly walk away was no doubt a very dangerous individual.”

“Dangerous enough,” Miss Monk put in darkly.

“Then another, rather oblique clue fell into my lap. Matthew Packer had heard Elizabeth Stride remark that the man she was with, the man who all evidence suggests was her killer, was not clad in his
habitual attire. Now, the notion that Blackstone considered himself in a sort of negative disguise when he was not in uniform was a very attractive one. Most people identify casual acquaintances through dress and bearing as much as their faces, and if Blackstone could shed his uniform, changing one or two other significant details about his person, he would be well on his way to traveling invisibly through his neighbourhood.”

Holmes’s eyes darted to the charred remains of Tavistock’s latest attack in our fireplace. “By this time, the now notorious Mr. Leslie Tavistock had begun his deeply disquieting press campaign. While I worried that his information was far too close to the mark, much of his accuracy could be blamed upon Mr. Dunlevy here sharing what he knew of my movements to friends within the London press. I had very nearly convinced myself that any other hypothesis would be irrational when, as a result of an expedition masterminded by my associates, Dr. Watson informed me that not only did Tavistock’s source possess information about me that no one but my allies could know without tailing me (and I observed no such person), but that he also had access to my handwriting, and that he and the letter writer, and by extrapolation the Ripper, were one and the same person.”

“Dear God,” Stephen Dunlevy exclaimed softly. “So the same individual who proclaims himself down on whores has endeavoured to lay the blame for his crimes at your doorstep.”

“You see that it is small wonder such an outlandish theory did not attract me before,” Holmes stated grimly. “However, in retrospect, it was damnably clever of this fiend to ferret out an unscrupulous journalist, dangle the temptation of a career-making scandal before him, and thus so oppress my movements that I have at times been in danger of my very life.

“Soon after I made the connection between the Ripper, the letter writer, and Tavistock’s source, Dr. Watson and I discovered what had become of Johnny Blackstone. He was dead by his own hand, unable to live with the weight of his guilt bearing down upon him.”

“Then surely he was the culprit, and our troubles are over!” cried Lestrade. “If I were capable of such acts, I should lose no time in ending my life.”

“Therein lies an inherent logical fallacy, my good Lestrade,” Holmes said kindly. “You are
not
capable of committing such acts. Neither, in fact, was Johnny Blackstone. In a letter to his sister, which I have since posted, he admitted stabbing Mrs. Tabram with his bayonet in a convulsion of rage, then confessed himself wholly wracked by the crime.”

“But monomania is a very poorly understood malady; there is no reason for us to assume he remembers aught of his disgusting actions.”

“At first, I thought as you do,” my friend continued, packing more shag tobacco into his pipe. “But it is the maximal error, the unpardonable sin, if you will, to twist facts to suit theories rather than twisting theories to suit facts. I asked myself what it would mean if Blackstone’s letter were entirely true. The moment I did so, everything was as clear to me as if I had seen it with my own eyes.

“Consider the accounts. Blackstone states that some few minutes after he entered the alley with Tabram, he stabbed her with his bayonet—a fact corroborated by the coroner—and then, hearing footsteps approach, he ran. Mr. Dunlevy told me he stepped back into the bar for a few minutes, and Constable Bennett told you, Lestrade, that he saw nothing in the alley; a man approached him some hours later with news of the body. Surely Mrs. Tabram was not dead instantaneously from a single, hastily delivered stab wound, and just as surely, she would have been in a panicked and highly vocal state. No one saw anything. And yet Blackstone ran because he heard footsteps. Someone was lying, and I knew immediately that the key was to discover who, if not Blackstone, that could be. I am afraid, Mr. Dunlevy, though you were a very long shot indeed, I could not count you out. I made haste to see that Miss Monk was safe, for if you had been the one plaguing me with accusations of murder as you wreaked havoc in
Whitechapel, I would not be overpersonalizing the matter to say your next victim ought to have been Miss Monk.”

He continued steadily, his eyes fixed on the journalist. “To my great relief, Miss Monk was in impeccable health, but I put you to a further test by obtaining a sample of your handwriting. I found you had
not
written any of the letters, which meant that, despite your initial false pretenses, you could not be the Ripper. I knew, therefore, that Bennett was lying when he said he had seen nothing in the alley, for however much like a pile of rags a slain body may appear in the dead of night in Whitechapel, just before Constable Bennett approached you, Mr. Dunlevy, Martha Tabram was still very much alive.”

Holmes paused to draw upon his pipe reflectively. It was a mark of his severely analytical nature that the whole harrowing case was laid before us in the abstracted tone of a chemist expounding upon a breakthrough in alkaloids.

“Why would Constable Bennett lie about his experience in the alley?” Holmes asked with perfect composure. “He had emerged from the shadows in which a terribly wounded woman must have been seeking help. I do not pretend to know what happened between them, whether they were once lovers, or what triggered the demon that had lain dormant heretofore. All I can say for certain is that when Bennett happened upon Martha Tabram, she had been stabbed once with a bayonet, and when he left her, only to walk into the arms of Stephen Dunlevy, she had been stabbed thirty-eight times with another weapon entirely—a pocketknife, such as any constable, or indeed any Londoner, might carry about his person.

“What other indications could inform me I was on the right path? The writing in Goulston Street, for one. I expressed surprise at the time that the killer should happen to have chalk in his pockets. Chalk is used by Scotland Yard officers to brighten the white stripes on their sleeves throughout the course of a shift, to avoid the wrath of their superior officers.”

“Of course!” Miss Monk exclaimed. “He carried some in his trousers.”

“Then there was the matter of the uniform. I had imagined the apparel Stride missed seeing upon her killer to be military in nature. What if, instead, she had been used to seeing him in a police uniform and customary high helmet? He would look vastly different in street clothes, and her curious remark would thus make perfect sense.

“I attended the funeral of Elizabeth Stride, for the crimes had been so vile and so public that I reasoned her killer might well wish to gauge the effect of his deeds. I saw no one I did not expect to be there, save for a lone police constable who informed me that you, Lestrade, assigned him to keep the peace at Stride’s ceremony, such as it was.”

Lestrade’s distraught features drew together in puzzlement. “I gave no such order.”

“I know that now. Your department confirmed as much.”

The inspector closed his eyes. “I suppose we must hear the rest of it.”

“I had already wasted many hours pondering how the devil any reporter could know what befell me on the night of the double event, not to mention that I attended the funerals of the deceased, or that an irrelevant, discarded knife was found near Eddowes’s body, or that I had quit Baker Street to conduct researches in the East-end. The Yard knew every one of these facts.”

“And so he held abundant material,” I remarked.

“Precisely—he used Tavistock as a conduit to spread his calumnies. Add the fact that I often jot down short missives to you, Lestrade, as well as to a dozen or more other detective inspectors, and the mystery of my forged handwriting was solved in an instant. He could easily have stolen such a note from any one of many offices. But the final, most conclusive inference still eluded me until a profound remark made by you, Watson, at last sparked the long-dormant flames of deductive reasoning.”

“I can scarcely recall what I said,” I admitted.

“You simply observed, as I should have done in the first place if I were the perfectly honed logical mechanism you present in your tales, that it was astonishing that the Ripper could operate so seamlessly in a district swarming with constables. The perfectly obvious reason for his success was that he knew when they would pass, and on what streets. But when I asked myself what had happened on the night of the extraordinary double murder, yet another seemingly irrelevant fact fell neatly into place,” Holmes expounded, his already rapid speech increasing to match his enthusiasm.

“The Ripper killed Elizabeth Stride without a thought of interruption, for he knew Constable Lamb’s beat would not take him into Dutfield’s Yard. When we disturbed him, he took flight in the direction of the City, and in order to halt my pursuit made an attempt on my life. Then, quite unfathomably, and at enormous risk, he proceeded to slit the throat of yet another girl, presumably because the mutilation, the unholy impetus behind all his thoughts and deeds, had been thwarted by our intervention. He could not be so prescient as to know at all times, on any street, whether or not he would encounter a fellow officer of the law. But members of Lusk’s Vigilance Committee mentioned in passing that Eddowes had been killed, senselessly, across the square from the very residence of a Metropolitan police officer. Bennett lives in those buildings. He knew the routes around his own home, of course. How could he not know them?”

Lestrade shook his head with the heavy calm of a man who knows the worst. “He was in such a rage at you that encountering Eddowes must have seemed like a gift from above.”

“But what are we to do?” cried Miss Monk in great distress. “You’re right, Mr. Holmes. It all fits, every bit of it. But what’s the use of talking about it when at any moment, he could—”

“I desire nothing more than to have the villain at our mercy, Miss Monk,” he assured her gravely. “However, Constable Edward Bennett resigned from his service, citing overwork and fatigue, and disappeared on Monday, the fifth of November.”

“Did he?” I exclaimed bitterly. “The very day Tavistock discovered that his office had been compromised.”

“Well done indeed, Watson. I have reached the same conclusion. Whether Tavistock merely bewailed his misfortune to his friend the police constable, or urged Bennett to identify those who had humiliated him, the results were the same: Bennett was warned off. He could not take the chance that his relation to the
London Chronicle
had been discovered.”

“But Mr. Holmes,” ventured Miss Monk, “if Bennett hadn’t run off, what would have happened?”

My friend crossed to the window and looked down into the street. “In all likelihood, complete disaster. In my responsibility to lay hands on him immediately, I would have unleashed all the fury of hell upon the good men of Scotland Yard. Imagine it—the killer in their midst all the while, slaughtering five women in two short months without exciting the least suspicion. Worse still, I have not a scrap of hard proof against the man. It’s ten thousand to one we could have convicted him. As much data points to me as it does Bennett, which well illustrates the value of circumstantial evidence. Name the calamity and it would no doubt have befallen us—riots against the force, chaos in the streets. Even now, Sir Charles Warren has already tendered his resignation; Mr. Matthews will accept it at any moment. The case has ruined him. Bennett has ruined him.”

Holmes turned to face Lestrade. “I shall not permit him to ruin the Yard itself.”

Some moments passed in silence. “Well, then,” said the little inspector simply, “what are we to do?”

Unexpectedly, Holmes laughed. “I’d nearly convinced myself that you would not believe a word of it.”

“Now, Mr. Holmes,” chided Lestrade, “I’ve always known you to take an odd line, but you do occasionally stumble upon the truth.”

“Quite so.” My friend smiled. “As to our plans, we have one, and I am afraid only one, advantage at the moment. The paper I mentioned
to you, as I have said, revealed an impression. I’ve the original here, marked over with lead pencil.” He passed it to Lestrade and we both examined it.

“What the deuce are these meant to indicate?”

“They are nearly as good as a map, my dear Inspector. These are the collar numbers of three police constables, followed by the time it takes them to complete their beats.”

“Wonderful!” cried Lestrade. “You’ve worked out who they are, I hope? There are nearly five hundred constables in Whitechapel’s division alone, not including those who have been reassigned.”

“My dear Lestrade, of course I have. They are Sample, Leather, and Wilding, and their beats proscribe quite a small area, half in Spitalfields and half in Whitechapel. After I found out their names, I wired Inspector Abberline, who was kind enough to send me a map.”

“Did you tell him why?”

Holmes shook his head emphatically. “With the exception of my brother, and the high officials he has chosen to consult, we five are the only ones who know the identity of this madman. Whitehall has every wish to avoid a monumental scandal, and they are aware of my discretion in such cases. I want to impress upon you all that aside from the weeks following the double murder, which must have rattled his nerve, the Ripper has followed a pattern of dates in his crimes. I cannot promise you that he will attack again tomorrow, in time for the Lord Mayor’s Show, exposed and on the run as he is. But nevertheless I believe that he will. He has shown a contempt for the Yard and a hatred for me that will not cease simply because he has abandoned his former persona. You and I, Lestrade, are the last line of defense. With any luck, if we keep our hand close, Bennett will never know the alarm has been raised against him.”

“When do those Yard fellows begin work?” Miss Monk asked.

“All three have the night shift, from ten until six. I wired George Lusk the moment Abberline related their territory to me. Lusk has shifted half his Vigilance Committee to assist the official force this evening and the next. Anonymously, of course, Inspector.”

“Mr. Holmes, I am beyond the capacity to protest anything you may do.”

“That is an appalling admission, Lestrade,” my friend noted amusedly. “I very much hope that you may recover swiftly from all the shocks to which I’ve subjected you.”

“As do I.” Lestrade smiled. “Have you anything further to tell us?”

Holmes shook his head. “You know all that I do.”

“Then I will set myself back to work,” he said, rising. “I’ve beats to redraft now, on top of everything.”

“If you will not dine with us, I wish you luck back at the Yard. I shall see you in Whitechapel at ten tomorrow, no doubt, Lestrade?” Holmes asked, shaking his colleague’s hand.

“It is an honour to go hunting with you, Mr. Holmes,” the inspector returned. “I would not miss it. Good night to you all.”

The four of us sat down to supper, although Holmes refused to say another word about the case until after the dishes had been cleared, brandies had been savoured, and Miss Monk had sleepily allowed Dunlevy to drape a wrap over her. We had already said our farewells when Dunlevy squared his shoulders and approached my friend.

“Mr. Holmes, I am very grateful to have been told the truth about these terrible crimes, and I thank you for it. But I am still curious—why did you ask me here this evening? Miss Monk is an ally, no doubt, and I hope you know you may rely on me, but all the same…You don’t seem one for idle confidences.”

“Nor am I, I promise you.”

“Then I cannot understand it.”

“No? Well, I do hope you will accompany us to Whitechapel
tomorrow, where we intend to defend its inhabitants tooth and nail, if necessary.”

“Of course, but—”

“You wish me to be clearer. Very well,” said he, assuming an air of command. “I require you, Miss Monk, without unduly alarming the district, to warn as many of your acquaintances as you can that there is likely to be trouble tomorrow night. No dark alleys. No lonely rendezvous. I know you cannot reach everyone, as they are great in number and are already saturated with wild conjecture, but do your best.”

“I’ll start in tonight, Mr. Holmes.”

“Thank you. As for you, Mr. Dunlevy, you are a rather rare commodity, you know. Tomorrow night we shall attempt to prevent a murder with the aid of a vast force, not one of whom can be allowed to know the identity of the man we are seeking. Watson and I saw him at Elizabeth Stride’s funeral. That leaves Inspector Lestrade, and finally you, Mr. Dunlevy, who have ever seen the face of our quarry. Call it a whim on my part, but I rather think having three people who are fully apprised of the facts on my side will not be excessively cautious.”

The next evening was wet and cold, with dark spears of rain striking our windows, and feeling chilled from within as well as without, I piled more coal upon our innocent fire than was necessary or reasonable. Peering out the bow window into the street below, my vision obscured by the glasslike curtain before me, I thought with apprehension that the odds of being able to see faces with any clarity in the gloom of Whitechapel were astronomically against us.

My friend entered near eight o’clock, dripping wet and deeply fatigued, but his entire hawklike visage fired with zealous determination. When he had emerged from his bedroom, he was clad once more in the shabby garb of Jack Escott. Recognizing the wisdom of this precaution, I wordlessly made my way upstairs to follow suit.
From my bedroom, I could hear the strains of Holmes’s violin as they rose and fell, a hauntingly austere melody in a minor key, which I knew to be one of his own compositions from its quavering heights and deceptively simple twists of phrase. When I came down again, Holmes had replaced the Stradivarius in its case and was slipping his revolver in his rough woolen coat pocket.

“That was beautiful, Holmes.”

“Do you like it? I am not satisfied with the middle cadence, but the portamento in the final phrase is rather effective. If you are ready, we can set off for the East-end. I’ve arranged for a cab.”

“Holmes?”

“Yes, Middleton,” he replied with a twinkle of amusement.

“If we should identify the former police constable Bennett tonight, I am at a loss to know what we should do with him.”

“We shall arrest him and give him to Lestrade, who this morning met with Mr. Matthews himself.”

“And if we cannot find him?” I pressed him.

“Then I shall run him down.”

“And if—”

“I have no intention of allowing that to happen. Come, Watson. We must bear all. Hard condition is twin-born with greatness. You’ve your revolver?”

“And a clasp knife in my pocket.”

Holmes threw his head back with laughter, wrapping a thick cravat about his neck. “Then my mind is entirely at ease.”