Gaslight Grimoire: Fantastic Tales of Sherlock Holmes (30 page)

That certainly was in line with what Parsons had told us earlier that day.

“Why addled?” Holmes asked. “Why did Parsons regard the American as addled?”

Lestrade lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Something about him becoming easily distracted. The American had come highly recommended, but seemed a poor hand at his duties, always staring at a patch of sunlight on the wall, or counting the number of trefoils on a rug, or some such, and his conversation rambled all over the place.” Lestrade chuckled. “Of course, it seems to me the steward had little room to talk, given how long he banged on about the whole matter. Seemed hungry for conversation, I suppose.”

I failed to see the significance of any of this, save that several of the men on Dupry’s list had lost members of their domestic staffs before their fortunes were ransacked, and that one of the missing servants had apparently fallen victim to the Dockside Dismemberer. But Holmes appeared to divine a much more subtle truth in it all.

“Come along, Watson,” Holmes said, slipping back into his great coat and making for the door. “You’d better come, too, inspector. Unless I’m mistaken, we have only a short time left to prevent another fortune being stolen, and perhaps even another murder from being committed.”

It was late afternoon, the sun still lingering in the western sky, when we reached Dupry’s house. The unfortunate stable-hand had evidently been sent back to his duties, as Dupry’s butler answered the door.

“Can I help you gentlemen?”

“Where is Mr. Dupry?” Holmes asked, abandoning all courtesies.

“Interviewing a prospective applicant for the under-butler position, sir.” The butler sniffed, haughtily. “I am confident that by this interview’s conclusion the position will be filled.”

“Why does everyone take me for a domestic?” Holmes fairly snarled. “Tell me quickly, man! This applicant? He comes to you well recommended, seemingly perfectly suited for the task and able to start immediately?”

The butler was a little taken aback. “W-why, yes,” he stammered. “We had the most glowing report of his services from the house steward at the Tomlinson estate…”

“Take me to Dupry right away,” Holmes interrupted, shouldering his way through the door. The butler, a portrait of confusion, merely bowed in response and hurried to do as he’d been bid. Lestrade and I followed close behind, neither of us any more aware of what Holmes was about than the other.

We came upon Dupry in his office, interviewing a man of middle years. The interviewee was speaking as we entered unceremoniously, and I detected a distinct accent to his speech, Canadian or possibly American.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Dupry blustered.

Before the butler could answer, the interviewee in the chair turned, and when his eyes lit on Holmes it was with visible recognition.

After only a moment’s pause, Holmes’ own face lit up, and he snapped his fingers in sudden realization. “Merridew!” he said.

I recalled the name of the mentalist Holmes had reported seeing in America, years before.

“The Hippodrome Theatre, Baltimore, January 5th, 1880,” the man said in a strangely sing-song voice. Then, the syllables running together like one elongated word, he recited, “What art thou that usurp’st this time of night, Together with that fair and warlike form, In which the majesty of buried Denmark, Did sometimes march? By heaven I charge thee speak!”

“It is some years since I trod the boards,” Holmes said, not unkindly. “You have gotten yourself mixed up in some messy business, I fear, Merridew.”

The American lowered his eyes, looking somewhat shamed. “Horatio, thou art e’en as just a man, As e’er my conversation cop’d withal.”

“What is this, Holmes?” Lestrade demanded, pushing forward. “What the devil is he talking about?”

“Memories, inspector,” Holmes explained. “This is a man who trucks in memories.”

“See here,” Dupry said, slamming his hand down upon his desk, “I demand an explanation.”

Holmes clasped his hands behind his back. “A moment, Mr. Dupry, and a full accounting will be presented.” He turned to the American in the chair. “You didn’t hatch this one yourself, Merridew. You haven’t the stomach for the darker work this scheme requires. So who was it?”

Merridew, surprisingly, did not even attempt to dissemble. He calmly and patiently explained that he had come to England some months before with an eye towards performing his mentalist act on the English stage, but that he had fallen in with another passenger on the ship, a man who gave his name only as Stuart. When Merridew had demonstrated his ability for total recall, Stuart had hit upon a scheme. It appeared that he had recently come into a considerable amount of money, having gotten hold of confidential financial information belonging to his employer. The sum Stuart had embezzled was scarcely large enough to be noticed by his wealthy employer, but was a small fortune to him. And now he was hungry for more. Stuart could not take much more from his employer without tipping his hand, though, and so he would need to gain similarly sensitive information from other wealthy men.

Stuart identified their targets by looking over his employer’s business transactions to locate those with the largest fortunes invested in the appropriate ways. Once the target was chosen, Stuart would select a member of their household staff, and eliminate them. With a position vacant, Stuart would equip Merridew with a flawless resume and sterling recommendations, put in perfect position to be hired as the missing man’s replacement. Then Merridew would simply wait for the chance to get even the barest glimpse of the target’s financial documents. Only an instant was needed, and then he would be able to recall all of the information in perfect detail.

“And this man Stuart,” Holmes said, “which doubtless was merely an alias? Where did you meet with him?”

Merridew gave an address in the East End, and said that he’d been instructed by Stuart to meet him there at the conclusion of each assignment.

Holmes turned to us with a smile. “Gentlemen? Anyone fancy a trip to the East End?”

We hired a growler in the street outside Dupry’s home, and the four of us rode east, Holmes and Merridew on one side of the carriage, Lestrade and I on the other. There was a strange, almost childlike quality to Merridew. He seemed lost in a world of his own, and would answer truthfully any question put directly to him, unless he had some prepared answer already provided. It appeared that was how this “Stuart” had been able to work Merridew’s skills to his advantage, training him to act and speak just enough like a household domestic that he could pass a few days in the wealthy households, just long enough to catch a fleeting glimpse of a piece of paper such as the one Dupry had shown us. And with eyes that could read an entire page of text in a single glance, it was a task of complete ease to recall only a string of digits and a few words. And with that information, this Stuart would have complete access to the target’s Swiss account.

As we rode west, away from the setting sun, Holmes plied the alienist, asking Merridew questions about the man in pursuit of whom we rode. It was hard for me not to feel sorry for this idiot savant, who seemed little more than a dupe in this business. But as Merridew described the man with whom he worked; I was reminded that four men lay mutilated and dead at this Stuart’s hands, and that in a just world some of the blame for that carnage had to be laid at Merridew’s feet as well. His hands may not have been red with their blood, and he claimed never to have seen the men whom he was positioned to replace, alive or dead, but he was still implicated in their deaths.

Urged by Holmes’ questioning, Merridew explained that Stuart appeared to have grown unsettled in recent weeks. Stuart had arranged a set of signals by which he and Merridew could communicate, without ever coming face to face unless necessary. There was a north-facing window on the top floor of the building in which they met, visible from the street, at which hung two drapes, one red and one black. If the window was curtained in black, Merridew was to mount the stairs and enter, where he would find Stuart waiting for him. If the red curtain was instead drawn, Merridew was to stay away, and not to approach under any circumstances.

“Red curtain,” Merridew said as we stepped down from the growler to the street. “Stay away.”

“Come along, Merridew,” Holmes said, taking the American by the elbow and steering him towards the door. “The signal suggests that your Mr. Stuart is in, and he is a man that my friends and I would very much like to meet.”

When we reached to the top of the stairs, in the deeply shadowed gloom of the ill-lit interior, I caught a strong smell of bleach and lye, overlying something stronger, ranker, more unsettling. Through the flimsy wooden door at the landing, I could hear faint moaning, somewhere between the cry of a child and the mewling of a drowning cat.

“Red curtain, stay away,” Merridew repeated, looking visibly shaken.

“You’ve been here before,” I said, feeling the irresistible urge to cheer him, if possible. “What is there to be afraid of?”

Merridew shook his head, and fixed me with a pathetic gaze. “When I came before, it had always been cleaned. Now, I think, it is still dirty.”

“Enough of this nonsense.” Lestrade pushed ahead of us, and pounded on the door. “Open up in the name of her Majesty!” He pounded again, louder. “It’ll only go harder on you if you resist.”

The moaning on the door’s far side took on a different quality, and I could hear the sound of scuttling, feet pounding against wooden boards, as if someone were trying to flee. But the room occupied the entire floor of the narrow building, and the only out would be through the window.

“He’s trying to scarper,” Lestrade said.

“Not today, I think,” Holmes said. Stepping back, he carefully studied the door in the dim light. “There, I think.” He pointed to a spot midway up, near the jamb. Then, after taking a deep breath, he lashed out with his foot, kicking the door at the point he evidently felt the weakest. He’d been right, as it happened, for the thin door flew inwards, shattering into three pieces.

The stairway and landing had been darkened, a gloaming scarcely lighter than a moonless night, but in the room beyond candles burned in their dozens, in their hundreds. Their flickering light cast shadows that vied across the walls and floor, shifting archipelagoes of light and darkness. The room itself might once have been suitable for a human dwelling, but had been transformed into an abattoir. Bits of viscera hung like garlands from the rafters; blood and offal painted the walls and floor. A pair of severed limbs had been transformed into grotesque marionettes, strung up on bits of intestine tied with ligaments, a kind of macabre Punch and Judy awaiting some inhuman audience.

It took an instant for me to recognize the figure that lay stretched on the floor as being that of a human being at all, so little was left of him, the rest having been spun out and excised to decorate the room. And a further instant to recognize as human the figure crouched by the now-open window, his arms and face covered with blood as red as the curtain he’d torn out of his way. In one hand, the man held a knife, in the other what appeared to be some severed piece of human anatomy. The blood-covered man regarded us with crazed eyes, lips curled in a snarl baring red-stained teeth, his cheeks sunken.

“Don’t do it, Phipps,” Holmes shouted, taking a single step forward, and only then did I recognize the steward of the Tomlinson household.

There must have been some confusion when Merridew and the man first met, and the American’s strange recall had fixed on a term he’d misunderstood. Phipps had simply never corrected him when Merridew assumed his
name
was Stuart, not his
profession
that of steward.

Phipps snarled like an animal. “Money is power, blood is power, both are mine.” He threw one leg over the window’s sash. “You cannot stop me, nothing can.”

I don’t know whether Phipps truly believed in that moment that he could not be hurt, or even that he might be able to fly. When he struck the cobblestones below a heartbeat later, though, he quickly learned that neither notion was true.

While Lestrade rushed to the window, already too late to do anything about Phipps, Holmes and I turned our attention to the man on the floor. He was alive, but only barely, and would doubtless perish before any help could arrive, or before he could be transported anywhere else.

“Dupry’s under-butler,” Holmes said, his hand over his nose and mouth to block the worst of the smell.

“Poor fellow.” I held a handkerchief over my own nose, but still the fetid stench of the place threatened to overwhelm me.

Lestrade stepped over from the window, his expression screwed up in distaste. “The man ‘removed’ so that Merridew could take his place, I take it.”

“The most recent of five,” Holmes corrected. “Most recent and final victim of the so-called Dismemberer.”

It was only then that I thought to see where Merridew had got to. I turned, and saw him standing there in the doorway, just as he had been when Holmes had kicked the door down. The American idiot savant had not moved, but had stood stock still with his eyes wide open and fixed on the scene before him, his mouth hanging slightly open, slack-jawed.

“Merridew?” I said, stepping towards him.

But it was clear that Merridew would not be answering, not then, not ever. He could not look away from the horrible carnage that his erstwhile partner in crime had wrought, and for which he in some sense at least had been responsible. Eyes that could recall entire books in a single glance, that could find untold levels of detail in the patterns of shadows’ falling or the curve of a cloud, took in every detail of the grisly scene. And having seen it, Merridew would never see anything, ever again. He would live, but his mind would be so occupied by that macabre sight in all its untold detail that his mind would refuse to allow any other sensations or impressions to enter. He would live forever in that moment, in the horrible realization of the horrors he had, however inadvertently, helped to accomplish.