Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 28

  “So we might assume our killer was at least as large, if not larger,” I said. “But why take this poor wretch’s face?”

  “Why, indeed,” said Holmes.

  “We’ll learn little more from Mr Goose, I think.”

  “I would have to agree,” said Watson.

  I nodded, swallowing back the bitter tang of ammonia itching the back of my throat. “Well, I don’t know about you gents, but I need some air.”

  * * *

  I have neither the inspiration of Holmes nor the education of Watson, but I am still an inspector of Scotland Yard, and what I might lack in cognitive faculty I more than make up for in a dogged determination to see justice prevail.

  With nothing further to learn from Jeremiah Goose’s body, I fell back on police work. Whilst Holmes and Watson departed the Yard to conduct their own investigations, I took Metcalfe, Cooper and Barrows to follow up on the one lead I knew we had.

  But by the time we got to Lower Thames Street, Alderbrook Workhouse was already burning.

  The old building had gone up like dry tinder, the smoke visible across the Thames as far as Leathermarket. Six engines circled the blaze, the firemen struggling to contain it. I saw a constable too, no doubt alerted by the shouts of passers-by, but he was on the other side of the fire and I only saw him through the heat haze. Something about his manner seemed odd, the way he just looked on at the flames, but then what else could we all do?

  I stood, my officers beside me, and watched as whatever evidence may have been contained within was destroyed by the conflagration. I felt the fire on my face, such was the sheer heat, and pressed a handkerchief against my nose and mouth to keep out the smoke.

  “There’ll be nothing but a gutted ruin once this is done,” remarked Metcalfe. I smelled something other than smoke too, and knew that not everyone within had escaped.

  “What now, Inspector?”

  I didn’t answer straight away. Unless Holmes has found some further thread that he had yet to avail me of, I had no further leads to follow. “Question everyone at this scene,” I told them. “Get help if you need to.” I looked for the constable I had spotted earlier but couldn’t see him through the smoke. “I’m off back to the Yard.” I was angry at my own impotence and the knowledge that I was at the mercy of the killer, my only choice to wait until he killed again.

  As it turned out, I did not have to wait long.

  * * *

  Unlike the first murder victim, the dead girl was lying on her back, not far from the Fenchurch Station, but in kind with the first, her skin had been flensed off. By the time I arrived, four constables were warning off the riffraff and Sergeant Metcalfe met me as before.

  “Have you sent someone for Holmes?” I asked immediately.

  Dragged to a side street cluttered with refuse and punctuated by the back entrances of shops and emporiums, the dead girl looked like she had tried to put up a struggle. She’d been hidden, at least partly, a dirty blanket laid across her legs and abdomen.

  More blood this time. Less skin, though. The flesh of the shoulders and upper chest was missing. Her arms too.

  Metcalfe could scarcely bring himself to look at her. He nodded. “All right,” I said. “On your way for now.”

  Gratefully, Metcalfe went to marshal the constables whilst I got a better look at the girl. She wore a red velvet dress with a low neckline to expose the bust and shoulders. Her boots were also velvet, though in a darker red, closer to crimson, and she had a small hat with a black veil that had stayed pinned in place in spite of her violent death.

  Her eyes were still open, frozen in her last moments, and I reached over to close them.

  “God give us strength…”

  Gradually it dawned on me, I knew her, you see, or rather knew of her. I had seen her face plastered around the East End and farther afield.

  “Molly Cavendish.” I turned and saw Holmes standing a few paces back, the doctor a respectful distance behind him.

  “Did you ever hear her sing, Mr Holmes?” I asked. “She had quite the voice.”

  “And all of the East End shall mourn her loss, I am sure, but this is most curious…” Holmes approached to begin his examination.

  “You are a cold man, Holmes,” I said.

  “No, Lestrade,” he replied. “I am engaged, which is just as well for you. I fear your admirer’s grief has little to offer Miss Cavendish and, if I am not mistaken, she still has something to offer us.” He turned and gestured to Metcalfe. “Sergeant, as you did at Lime and Leadenhall Street, if you please.”

  Reluctant, but impelled by my glare, Metcalfe turned poor Miss Cavendish over. The back of her dress was torn, crudely slashed. I feared something even darker had taken place than what I had first assumed, until I realised the cut garments were merely an outer layer, an impediment to be removed before taking the skin from Molly Cavendish’s back.

  Holmes examined what skin remained, getting close enough to smell it. Her inspected her nails, her clothes, had Metcalfe turn her back again so he could look under her eyelids. He took a few strands of her hair, and regarded the soles of her boots. It seemed like a violation, as if Holmes were disturbing this poor girl’s final rest.

  “Holmes, is that enough? What more can you possibly learn–”

  Holmes turned sharply. “There is always more to learn, Lestrade. You would do well to permit me, Inspector. Watson,” he said to his companion. “See here.”

  “Bruising around the neck,” Watson replied. He looked grey faced. “I would say strangulation is the likely cause of death, but the marks,” the doctor shook his head, “not done with the bare hands. The discolouration, on what little skin is left, is uniform, straight.” He mimicked how the murder might have happened, bracing his legs and holding out that cane he carries in two clenched fists. “Like this,” he said. “I believe our killer was armed.”

  “Just so, Watson, just so,” said Holmes. “Skin under the nails also,” he added. “Miss Cavendish fought before she died.”

  Holmes glanced up suddenly at a noise from further down the side street. Instinctively, I reached for my gun, and saw the doctor grip his cane a little more tightly. It’s for his limp, an old war wound I’m given to understand, but I’d always reckoned there’d be sharp steel inside it.

  “Show yourself,” I bellowed to the shadows and the warren of awnings, doorways and refuse amongst which something much larger than a rat could easily hide. “Come out now, in the name of the law.”

  Slowly there came a scuttling, as something small detached itself from the darkness, emerging into the grey dawn light. A girl, an urchin as filthy as the alleyway.

  I lowered my gun and gestured to Metcalfe. “Bring her over here, Sergeant. Make yourself useful.”

  Metcalfe nodded but as he closed on the girl, she screamed. She would’ve run too had my sergeant not seized her by the wrist.

  “Calm down, girl,” he urged, as she wriggled and squealed. Metcalfe was a big man, with a full red beard. To some he might appear fearsome, I suppose, but the girl’s reaction seemed extreme. He half turned, twisting as if trying to grasp an eel, “I don’t know what’s come over her, sir. I only–’

  Metcalfe cried out, letting go as the girl sank her teeth into the meat of his hand. He turned to her, face red with anger and with a fist raised until the doctor intervened.

  “Don’t, Sergeant,” said Watson, his hand clamped firmly around Metcalfe’s forearm. There must have been something in his eyes, some remnant of the soldier he used to be, because Metcalfe retreated at once, looking sheepish.

  Letting my sergeant go, Watson crouched so he was eye to eye with the girl and said something softly that made her cling to him.

  “She’s terrified,” he said.

  “Not of the law, I think,” said Holmes, “or the threat of your thuggish sergeant.”

  “Steady on,” I said, but regarding Metcalfe, I could hardly disagree that the man was brutish in aspect if not demeanour. He nursed his hand.
The girl had bitten through the skin and drawn blood.

  “What then, Holmes,” I asked, “if not my sergeant?”

  “Have you ever seen primeval fear?” said Holmes. “Note the wide eyes, the diluted pupils. Her skin, Doctor?”

  “Is cold as bone, Holmes.”

  “Gelid,” Holmes replied. “A feverish sweat dappling the brow. Bodily tremors, the fingers most acute.” Indeed, the girl did shake, her hands horribly so. Holmes looked back at Metcalfe, as if seeing what I could not. Then he looked back to the girl shivering in Watson’s arms, nothing more than a pallid little thing.

  “What did you see?” he asked softly but without empathy. The urchin girl extended a tiny finger towards Metcalfe.

  “It wasn’t me,” exclaimed the sergeant.

  I scowled. “It’s not you, you idiot.”

  The girl shivered harder, murmuring, “Peeler, peeler, peeler…” in a little rasping voice.

  Holmes turned his gaze on Metcalfe and for a moment I thought he was about to declare him the murderer.

  “You’re right, Lestrade,” he said. “It’s not your sergeant, but rather his uniform.”

  All three of us looked at Metcalfe, at the blue of his policeman’s attire, and I felt the chill of the morning deepen and sink its teeth into my marrow.

  “The murderer… he’s one of ours.”

  * * *

  I left the girl in Dr Watson’s care. To take her to the Yard would only worsen her trauma and yield little, I suspected. She had done her part, giving name to a dark legend that would come to haunt my thoughts in the coming years. The irony of the killer’s moniker was not lost on me, nor on any constable, sergeant or inspector of the Yard.

  There were 14 inspectors, 92 sergeants and 781 constables registered to the City of London Police Force, and after ensuring the dead woman had reached the morgue at Scotland Yard, I spent most of the next few days reading through their records with the help of Barrows and Cooper, and conducting interviews. Even with a hundred constables, going through every officer in the Metropolitan Police and beyond would take months; time, I felt, we could ill afford, and so I confined my efforts to the district where we had found the victims, all of which were in the City of London.

  I barely slept or stopped, save to have the odd cup of tea, even though I felt I needed something stronger. The last pot was stewed, a wince-making bull of a brew, and I had to shout at the constable who made it. I didn’t recognise him, though he had an Irish lilt and more than a little cheek, and I resolved to find his sergeant and have words.

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose, surprised at how little the stack of reports had thinned since that morning, and looked up from my desk to regard a map of the City of London pinned to the wall. Four marks indicated where each of the bodies had been discovered: Jeremiah Goose and Molly Cavendish and two others, a brothel keeper by the name of Vivian Dawes and a young dockhand called Edwin Buckle. They circled an area from Smithfield Market to Leadenhall Street. Metcalfe was prowling as much of it as he could with an army of constables, but had yet to uncover anything of use. Holmes, somewhat disturbingly, had not been in touch for three days, and all attempts to reach him at his lodgings at 221B Baker Street had failed. To make matters worse, both the Standard and The Times, as well as a number of other newspapers, had caught wind of the killings and that the killer was an officer of the law.

  For a moment, I shut for eyes and willed for inspiration to strike and strike quickly. I had just opened them again when a knock at the door disturbed me and I gestured to the waiting constable to enter.

  “Sir,” said Barrows, his police helmet nestled in the crook of his arm as he leaned inside, as if afraid to step across the threshold fully. “They are here, sir.” He gave a weak smile that pulled at a scar on the right side of his face, an injury sustained as an infant, a fire or some such.

  I nodded, weary, and sent Barrows on his way.

  The vultures of Fleet Street had gathered outside Scotland Yard in an agitated flock as I came out to meet them.

  “Four dead, all by a policeman’s hand,” began a young-looking oik from the Standard called Arthur Grange, “and Scotland Yard no closer to a suspect let alone an arrest. What steps are being taken to ensure public safety, Inspector?”

  “Every step, Mr Grange. My constables are at large across the city and–”

  “Any one of whom could be a cold-blooded murderer,” chimed a weaselly fellow I didn’t recognise with a trimmed beard framing his smug grin.

  Before I could reply, another voice called out from somewhere in the crowd, “I ’eard he’s been cutting ’em up and selling their parts as mutton!”

  The vultures laughed uproariously, which only drove my anger all the hotter. I found the man amongst the crowd, an older, dishevelled-looking fellow, straight off the docks judging by his attire.

  “I can assure the public, all measures are being taken to apprehend this murderer, and I would urge the good people of London to remain vigilant at all–”

  “Vigilant?” asked the dock tramp, “and what will the mutton shunters be doing whilst we are remaining vigilant?”

  “Everything is in hand,” I said, in an attempt to reassert some measure of order. “Be reassured that we shall catch this heinous killer.”

  “Who is likely one of your own,” said the weasel, George Garret of The Times, as I later came to learn. “An overzealous Bobby who batty-fanged some poor wretch and went too far.”

  “Slanderous remarks such as that, regardless of who you represent,” I said, “will land you in the cells.” I began to retreat, sensing an end to the conference. “I have nothing further at this time.” Garret took a step towards me, intent on further questioning. “I said that’s all,” I warned him, “and if you take another step then I smack that door-knocker off your face and call it arrest for public disorder.”

  A flash lamp went off to capture the moment my humours got the better of me, and I could already imagine a headline describing police brutality or some such libel.

  Garret sneered but stepped back, and I returned inside to the jeering and cajoling of the Fleet Street mob.

  “Bloody circus,” I remarked to Barrows, who was waiting for me. A second flash lamp hissed loudly behind me. “Ignore them, Constable,” I told Barrows, who was still looking fearfully at the mob. “They’ll get bored soon enough.”

  I was back in my office when there was a light rap on the door and I saw the dock tramp, grinning toothlessly at me through the smeared glass. Wrenching open the door, I was about to arrest the wretch for loitering when he smiled and I saw the glint in his eye.

  “See, Inspector,” he said, realising what the look on my face meant, “you aren’t entirely without wit.”

  “Holmes,” I replied, ushering him inside. “Why the theatre?”

  “I find it useful,” he said, removing the false teeth and shedding his threadbare jacket. “Few pay attention to the disenfranchised, Inspector.”

  “I see. Have you got Dr Watson somewhere under all of that paraphernalia too, then?”

  “Ah, no,” said Holmes, striking up his pipe and taking a short draw. “Watson is visiting our witness. Alas, she has said nothing since the incident, other than repeating the name of our perpetrator ad infinitum.”

  “So, why are you here Holmes? Is it just to irritate me?”

  “As mildly diverting as that would be… no, I am here on another matter. Tell me, Lestrade, of the hundreds of officers that you are no doubt already trawling through, how many of them are or were tanners?”

  I frowned, in part trying to recall, but also out of confusion. “I’d have to have a look.”

  “Allow me to save you the inconvenience, Lestrade. Jacob Wainwright, aged fifty-seven, an ex-constable of your borough, now a registered tanner in Bermondsey. Discharged due to ill health.”

  “And he became a tanner?” I asked. “I fail to see what any of this has to do with the case, Holmes.”

  Holmes smiled thinly.
“Should we not aim to catch him before the act, Inspector?”

  “Very droll, Holmes.” I frowned. “How did you come across the information about Wainwright anyway, might I ask?”

  “Obfuscation is a useful tool, Lestrade, much in the way that you can sometimes be useful.” I gritted my teeth. “By appearing as what is ubiquitous, one can attain a reasonable degree of anonymity. A police constable at a busy constabulary, for instance. Let us just say, I wished to experience what it was like to walk around as our Peeler does.”

  I was fairly sure Holmes had just confessed to illegally impersonating an officer of the law, but had neither the will nor time to take him to account for it.

  “Well, Inspector?” said Holmes, with sudden verve. “Should we tarry further and let the Peeler increase his tally, or shall we make for Bermondsey post-haste?”

  I wanted to tell him no, and that Her Majesty’s Constabulary could catch this fiend without the aid of Sherlock Holmes but instead I called to Barrows and sent him to fetch Cooper. As he ran off, I narrowed my eyes and asked, “Holmes, what has any of this got to do with a tannery?”

  “My dear Inspector,” he replied, his smile as condescending as his manner, “it has everything to do with it. Oh, and apologies for the tea.”

  * * *

  Few professions are as vile as that of the tanner. I could smell the dung and urine before we reached Bermondsey Leathermarket, on the Surrey side of London Bridge. London has its wretched quarters in abundance, but few are as foul as Weston Street. A grim calibre of men dwell here, a rough-handed, rough-hearted lot with all the distemper of those whose labours see them so befouled and oft reviled by fairer folk. What had brought Wainwright to such a place, I could not fathom. I knew little of the man – for I had never met him in person – save for what was in his records, the mention of an injury that had resulted in his discharge from the force. An old photograph described a thin-faced fellow with narrow eyes, his left ear with a piece missing where someone had bitten it off.

  “What are we doing here, Holmes?” I asked, sitting across from him in the growler we had taken from Scotland Yard, my constables either side of me.