Associates of Sherlock Holmes Page 29

  “Lime, Inspector Lestrade. Specifically, lime combined with small amounts of soda ash and lye. Before you wrinkle your brow, all three are used in the process of tanning and were discovered, in varying quantities and concentrations, on the remaining skin and clothes of all four victims during my initial examinations. A simple if lengthy chemical analysis confirmed it.”

  After leaving the growler, we approached the broad archway that led into an even broader square, arranged around which were numerous doorways. A bustling, jostling crowd filled the square. Some towed carts, others carried great rolls of hide upon their shoulders.

  “Here then, Inspector,” said Holmes, “and where we shall find our Mr Wainwright.”

  My constables turned to me. Barrows had paled a little, and Cooper looked eager but uncertain. “You heard the man,” I told them, “don’t drag your feet. If he’s here, we’ll have him in shackles before the day is out.”

  Skins lay in abundance or hung from the rafters of the many warehouses appended to the square. Hides of all hue, shape and provenance were in evidence, as were the narrow-eyed merchants, smoking and glaring at the policemen in their midst. Shadows lurked within the vast stores, lit by flickering torchlight. The smell of leather was rich and heady, and men looked about furtively as my constables and I went about our business. None of them, however, were Jacob Wainwright.

  “Are you sure this isn’t a fool’s errand, Holmes?”

  “One can never be certain, Lestrade,” he replied, “but I think our quarry is not far.” He gave a shallow nod of the head and, as I followed the gesture, I saw a man slip furtively through the crowd. Though I caught little of his appearance through the mob I knew it was him. Older, certainly, but his chewed left ear gave him away.

  “Get after him,” I bellowed at my constables, and gave chase. I lost sight of Holmes almost immediately, who had gone haring off in another direction. I had no inkling, nor care, as to why. Instead, I pushed and elbowed my way through the crowd with a constable on either side.

  “Move! Move in the name of the law!” Wainwright had crossed the square and scurried into the skin market. None stayed our passage, and as we gained on Wainwright, who was clad in a heavy coat, I noticed the man had a limp. He ran quickly enough though, his knowledge of the market and its secret ways giving him an advantage over my men and me.

  Barrelling around the back of a well-stacked hide cart, I lost sight of Wainwright for a moment and feared he had slipped the leash, until I rounded the cart and saw the tanner lying on his back. Standing over him was Holmes, a stern look in his eyes. Lowering the cane he had used to trip Jacob Wainwright, his gaze then alighted on me.

  “Making heavy weather of it are we, Inspector?” He looked like he had been out for a gentle stroll, whereas I had sunk to my haunches as I tried to catch a breath.

  “Had I the verve, Holmes,” I said, brandishing the cosh, “I would use this thing on you.” Barrows and Cooper joined us a few moments later, red-faced. “And don’t get me started on you two,” I snapped.

  “I’m afraid, Inspector,” said Holmes as he approached Wainwright and pressed the end of the cane into the man’s chest to keep him from rising, “we have greater cause for concern.”

  When I had recovered and came to stand next to Holmes, I saw Wainwright properly for the first time. He was short, his shoulders narrow and his hands smaller than mine. But that wasn’t the most damning thing about his appearance.

  “His left hand…” I muttered, and felt frustration rise anew. It was badly deformed, and this combined with his diminutive stature led to only one conclusion. “This isn’t the Peeler.”

  It couldn’t be. A man Wainwright’s size could not have overpowered someone like Jeremiah Goose, especially not with one hand. A hammer lay discarded nearby, and I assumed Wainwright had intended to use it on me or one of my men.

  Holmes looked on, impassive, but I could tell he was angry.

  “The Peeler is still at large,” I said, leaning down to grab Wainwright. “Jacob Wainwright?”

  The man nodded, scowling. “Aye, what’s it to you?”

  “Why did you run?”

  “You’d run if someone chased you.”

  “A man who runs has something to hide, Mr Wainwright,” I told him. “You’re coming back to the station.”

  Wainwright’s face went from indignation to fear in short order. “Bleedin’ persecution, this is,” he shouted to anyone in earshot. “You coming here to my place of business, chasing me down and then accusing me of God knows what.”

  “And what’s this then?” I asked, showing him the hammer. There was a name etched into the handle, Archie.

  “It’s for tanning,” he said.

  “Not for breaking skulls then?” I pressed. “And who’s Archie?”

  “He’s my cousin. He gave me the hammer when he left London.”

  “Left for where?” I asked.

  “No idea. He came into some money, though he never gave me a penny, and left the city, left his business too. I use the hammer for trade.”

  Everything about this man screamed criminal, but not murderer. “And where is your place of trade, might I ask?”

  I let him go so he could point in the direction of one of the tanneries. I saw a wooden sign nailed above the entrance.

  “Inspector,” said Holmes, “far be it from me to interrupt this expert interrogation, but we are not alone.”

  Wainwright’s plaintive wailing had drawn a crowd. Some amongst them, the rougher sort, clutched tools and clubs as they advanced a cautious step towards us, and I was suddenly aware of how thin the blue line was here.

  “Perhaps we should observe discretion on this occasion, Lestrade?” He nodded towards George Garret scribbling notes. No doubt he had followed us from the Yard.

  “You’ll find nothing in there but skins,” sneered Wainwright as he got to his feet.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What happened to you, Wainwright? Weren’t you Old Bill, once?”

  “I was,” he said, with no small measure of bitterness, and slapped his injured leg and gestured to his left hand, “then I wasn’t. What business is it o’ yours?”

  It turned my stomach to see one of our own so disaffected. “Don’t make it my business,” I said, with half an eye on Garret who tipped his hat and sauntered off, “because if you do, all the tanners, dockhands and scribblers of London won’t keep you from the law.”

  As Wainwright limped away, I turned to my constables who had yet to stow their truncheons. “And you two, put those bloody things away!”

  Mollified, the crowd began to disperse. Holmes was gone. I hoped, wherever he was, he was close to that one elusive scrap of evidence that would end these murders. Until then I would try and lay a trap for the Peeler.

  * * *

  Fog lay thick over London that night. It had done so the last four nights as I waited in the shadows of back alleys and side streets, or peered through shop windows, hoping for some glimpse of my prey. Four nights, and nothing to show for my patience but a deep chill.

  “I can barely see the fingers before my face, sir,” said Metcalfe.

  “Keep looking,” I said, squinting through the greenish pall. “He’s out here. I can feel it, Metcalfe.” I looked over at him. “And put your bloody hand down!”

  I waited and I listened, standing in the shadows of a shop doorway on the east end of Leadenhall Street, in the vicinity of Aldgate.

  “How many, Inspector?” came a voice from the shadows that gave me such a fright I almost drew my pistol and fired at the speaker.

  “Hell and blood, Holmes!” I hissed at the detective as he emerged from the dark. “I almost put a bullet in you!”

  “At this range, I like my odds, Lestrade.”

  Metcalfe had the good sense to keep quiet. I scowled, returning to my vigil of the street.

  “Absent of your keeper again, Mr Holmes?”

  “If you are referring to Watson, he is nearby. With half the constabular
y taking to the streets these last four nights, I thought you might appreciate some assistance.”

  “Clandestine operation, my hat,” I muttered, recalling the briefing I had given to the sixty-three plainclothes constables on the eve of this endeavour. Few were abroad this night that I had not sent out myself. Fear had wrapped itself around London like a noose, and the hangman attired like an officer of the law.

  The shrilling of a whistle tore apart the night. Shouting followed, muffled by the fog but clear enough. Other whistles joined it as my constables gave out the call to arms, and I was filled with a sense of impending retribution as I ran towards the sound.

  “We’ve got him,” I said to Metcalfe, but loud enough for Holmes to hear too, “we’ve got him now.”

  From street corners and side alleys and back ways, an army of constables spilled out into the night to chase down the fiend. I ran down Leadenhall Street, following the whistle. And then the shrilling changed, a whistle no longer but now a shout, an awful noise that sent my heart into my throat, for I recognised the voice.

  “Barrows…”

  I got as far as Billiter Street, and hurled my body around the corner only to stop dead as I came upon the devil himself.

  Crouched apelike over Constable Barrows, he turned as he heard me and slowly rising to his full height I beheld not a man but a creature the likes of which could only be found in the Gothic imaginings of Mary Shelley. I do not consider myself a learned man, but I was familiar with such works and saw their pages given grim verisimilitude by the monstrous Peeler. His shoulders were thick and broad, with hands like spades, but it was his face that froze me to the core. Though his eyes were hooded by a policeman’s helmet, I saw the skin. Pale, almost to the point of white and somehow… ill-fitting, as if it would slip from his skull at any moment. All the more aberrant was the fact he wore a policeman’s uniform, but one large enough to accommodate his brawn. He loomed as menacing as death and just as inevitable.

  As he glared at me, the same feeling returned that had come over me at the workhouse fire, and I considered with some horror that I had met this fiend before.

  Only when I saw the blade, the briefest flash of light catching its edge, and knew it had been used to lay Barrows low, did I find my voice.

  “Halt!” I declared, wrenching out my pistol. “In the name of the law!” I fired and my shot struck him in the shoulder, but he barely flinched and was quick to take flight. I plunged into the fog, pausing only to look upon the ruin of poor Constable Barrows, who lay dead, mired in his own blood.

  I got as far as Fenchurch Avenue when I realised the Peeler was gone. As Metcalfe and the others reached me, I heard the whistles, desperate and reminiscent of screams.

  * * *

  Holmes and Watson were kneeling by the body of Constable Barrows as I trudged back down Billiter Street, my feet leaden.

  “He was just a lad,” I whispered.

  “Slit across the throat, I’m afraid, Inspector,” said Watson as he gently pulled aside the boy’s collar to expose the savage gash.

  “But that’s not all, I think,” said Holmes. He held up Barrows’ left hand. “Skin under the nails…” he added, before pressing the fingers to his nose and inhaling deeply.

  “Christ, Holmes…” I said, dismayed at such desecration.

  “Pungent, Inspector. The likes of which we have encountered before, and quite recently.” He stood up and began to cast about, sifting through the detritus of the street.

  “Holmes, what the devil are you up to?” asked Watson.

  I shared the doctor’s incredulity and was about to protest when Holmes proclaimed, “Ha!”

  He held something in his right hand, which looked like a scrap of cloth. It was only as he brought it closer that the grimmer truth of what it really was became obvious.

  “Merciful God…” hissed Watson.

  It was a face, or at least the peeled skin of a face. I recalled the pale complexion and ill-fitting nature of the Peeler’s flesh and realised he had been wearing this skin like a mask.

  “A simulacrum to hide his identity and torn loose when he took flight,” said Holmes.

  Watson shook his head. “And yet, the lad still has his face. If this is what he came for…”

  “And more besides, Watson,” said Holmes. “Our man has some skill with a blade, a paring knife or some such. The cuts on all of his victims were rough but swift, hardly the act of a surgeon but more in kind with a butcher or tanner. How long, Inspector, did you hear the screaming?”

  “A few minutes, no more.”

  “More than long enough for our Peeler to do his work. But, instead, he was given pause.”

  “What does it mean, Holmes?” I asked. “Tell me it means something, and that this poor lad’s demise has not been for naught.”

  “See here…” Holmes crouched again to turn Barrows’ head to the side and expose the scarred side of his face. “Flawed. And here,” Holmes went on, pulling open Barrows’ shirt where it had been torn. “Scarring also.” He looked again at the horrific mask, the skin, I now realised, had come from the dead porter. “The late Jeremiah Goose, his death mask entire.” His gaze then flicked to Watson. “I can think of only one reason for such scrutiny and discernment. Watson, if you please, would you surrender your gloves.”

  The doctor got to his feet and looked at his hands.

  “What for, Holmes? It’s freezing out here in this fog.”

  “Your gloves…” Holmes repeated, “if you please.”

  By now, several of my men had gathered at the scene. Metcalfe was doing his utmost to marshal them, but curiosity had gotten the better of some. A few carried lanterns and tried to shine a light on poor Barrows so the detective could do his work.

  Watson did as he was asked, carefully removing the garments and handing them to Holmes who promptly threw them into the gutter.

  “Holmes! What the devil are you–” Watson began, but Holmes had already snatched a lantern from one of my constables and smashed it against the doctor’s gloves. I have never seen Watson so apoplectic. “Good God, man! They were almost five pounds from Savile Row!”

  Oil and flame eagerly spread across the leather. The fire quickly took hold, blackening and curling the leather and giving off a most noxious stench. I knew the smell, a noisome odour. It reminded me of the workhouse fire at Lower Thames Street and the men and women I knew had been trapped inside, cooked alive. Watson knew it too, I suspect. A man who had spent any time on a battlefield will be all too familiar with the reek of burning human skin.

  “Good God,” said Watson, paling as he pressed a hand against his mouth, “is that…?”

  “Long pig,” Holmes replied, nodding. “Indeed, they have been fashioned from human skin. We should speak with your tailor, Watson, though I suspect I already know the name of his supplier from Bermondsey.”

  Watson appeared only to be half listening. “The sheer devilry of it,” he breathed, transfixed by his burning gloves.

  “Rest assured, justice will find him, Doctor,” I replied, “Then, it’ll be the noose for this fiend.”

  * * *

  Holmes’s prediction about the Savile Row tailor was accurate, and not long after dawn, I brought an army of constables down on Bermondsey and the tannery of Jacob Wainwright. Holmes and Watson had joined us, observing a grim silence. I crossed the threshold to declare, “Jacob Wainwright, you are under arrest!”

  No answer came, and the darkness inside the tanner’s warehouse made it hard to see much of anything beyond the shapes of hanging hides. The stench was palpable enough, though. I had drawn my pistol and used it now to urge my men inside.

  “Find him, and take him. Alive, if you please gentlemen. I have questions I will have answered.” Over thirty constables rushed into the tannery, brandishing their truncheons. “I’ll have this dog, Metcalfe,” I swore to my sergeant. Before Metcalfe could reply, a shout from within got the sergeant running and me with him. One way or the other, I would get Wainwr
ight to talk, and there would finally be justice for the dead.

  The hanging body put paid to that belief. Stabbed through the chest and hung up on a hook like the rest of the meat, I did not need Metcalfe to lift the dead man’s chin to know this was Wainwright.

  “He’s dead, sir,” said Metcalfe.

  “This is him, isn’t it,” I said, not needing to be a detective the calibre of Sherlock Holmes to realise this was the Peeler’s doing. Wainwright’s feet dangled over a foot off the ground, and with the strength it would require to impale a grown man like that…

  Holmes agreed. “It can be no other, Lestrade.”

  As he crouched down, ferreting for something beneath the hanging body, I heard Watson enquire, “What is it, Holmes?”

  “Burnt offerings, Watson,” said Holmes, holding up a scrap of blackened material to the meagre light before showing it to me.

  “He had some kind of fire? I don’t see the significance.”

  “Did you find anything resembling a lockbox or perhaps a safe?” asked Holmes.

  I frowned. “Nothing of the sort.”

  Holmes did not elaborate, but instead gestured to the scrap of material. “If you’ll permit me, Inspector Lestrade?”

  I couldn’t care less. “Be my guest, Mr Holmes,” I said, and turned to Metcalfe and my waiting constables. “Tear this place apart. If there’s anything that will help us stop this man, I want it found!”

  * * *

  The tannery yielded nothing but the skewered remains of Jacob Wainwright, certainly no lockbox or safe, and, as his body lay in the grim accommodations of the Scotland Yard morgue, I began to believe we might never catch the Peeler. Surely now, with Wainwright dead, he would go to ground, and we might never learn his true identity or the reason, if one existed, for his crimes. I could only assume Wainwright had been his accomplice, for surely there could be no other explanation, and the Peeler had turned on him and ended any chance we might have to question him.

  After several hours of searching, I left Wainwright’s empty-handed. Holmes and Watson had long since returned to Baker Street and I had little choice but to go to my office, my cohort of officers disbanded, and review what little evidence remained. It was a surprise, then, that when I did return I found the detective and the doctor waiting for me.