The Last Confession of Sherlock Holmes (17 page)

“There is a difference between mistrust and manipulation to an appalling degree,” said Holmes coldly. “But come, let us not play games; there is less mystery surrounding Miss Sutherland's fate than you appreciate. It seems apparent that she has chosen a man of much higher calibre, and from your descriptions, I am sure such a woman would not find it difficult to attract a desirable suitor; after all, if she had heard of your professional predicament and read between the lines of your fickle attempts at winning her hand, why would she choose to settle for such apparent mediocrity?”

“Mediocrity!” bellowed Kirkby leaping to his feet, hands clenched in fury. “I have never been slandered by such language in my life! If she has chosen another man, she has done herself a great disservice!”

“Ahh, we have touched upon a nerve, have we not?” said Holmes, remaining calmly in his seat. “You claim to have no particular feeling for this woman, yet at the slightest hint that you are unworthy of her companionship, you become quite deranged. A curiously violent disposition, is it not, Watson?”

“Most curious, Holmes,” said I.

“You will not speak to me this way!” cried our guest.

“Oh, I do not believe it is your ego that we are worried about upsetting, Mr Kirkby. No matter what façade you may use to try to fool us with, it is quite apparent that although you enjoyed toying with this young woman's emotions, you were actually deeply in love with her. In your own shameful way, you may have even believed you were being charmingly aloof. A great shame to have lost her, I am sure, but fret not, I am sure she is being looked after by a far worthier candidate.”

I cannot recall another occasion where there has been such a scene inside our quarters. Most men whom Holmes backs into their respective corners accept their plight, and submit into a state of passive inevitability; Mr Kirkby, however, displayed no signs of rationale, and we were given a violent demonstration of just how unhinged he had become. Upon Holmes's final taunt, Kirkby flipped the delicately arranged tea-table laid by Mrs Hudson, sending the china cups and crockery crashing down upon the floor. Holmes and I were on our feet in an instant, but such was the condition of our man that it was more like engaging a wild and untamed beast. Blows were cast with such uninhibited violence that it was clear our man had become quite deranged; Holmes and I both suffered considerable knocks before we had restrained our man once more.

“I think we should simply tie him for now,” said Holmes, wrapped around Kirkby on the floor in some form of foreign stranglehold. We tied our man's ankles, thighs and wrists, and left him writhing upon the floor like some pathetic serpent as we regained our composure. “Now that we have indeed experienced your violence, Mr Kirkby, I would like you to entertain yet another theory of mine, for I must confess that I have been rather dishonest with you. What would you say if I were to tell you that I know exactly where your beloved Elizabeth is?”

“Fiend! Tell me where she is this instant!”

“I believe you already know her whereabouts, do you not, Jack.”

“Jack? What is this? Who are you talking to?”

“I believe I am talking to Jack the Ripper, am I not?”

“Jack the Ripper? Are you insane?”

“Ah, come now, Mr Kirkby, you must surely know that Miss Elizabeth Sutherland is lying, perfectly preserved, upon a stone slab in Whitechapel Mortuary. After all, are you not the man who poisoned her, and then defiled her body with nothing but a long sharp blade?”

“You lie!” screamed Kirkby, before breaking down into sobs of unmitigated horror.

“The victim is Elizabeth Sutherland. I would take you to see her, but I am afraid it would be a most unpleasant experience. You remember her eyes, don't you? Those blue eyes of dazzling beauty: it really is a shame Jack the Ripper gouged them from their sockets. Who knows what he will have done with them: after all, he previously claimed to have fried and eaten a victim's kidney.”

“Enough,” Kirkby wept in a barely audible manner. “I am not Jack the Ripper.”

“That is yet to be seen,” said Holmes, pacing around the slithering wreck upon our floor.

“I was forced to reveal my secret! I don't know how he found out but he did! He told me to make sure that you heard about my case through your little gang. I was to convince you I was losing my mind. He told me if I did not comply then he would
kill Elizabeth!
… and myself,” he added, as an almost insignificant afterthought.

“Who is this man?” said Holmes, kneeling over Kirkby's head and piercing him with his gaze.

“I did not see him. I had been at Regent Street until a late hour; he picked me up from outside, disguised as a cabbie. He locked me inside and took me to a deserted yard. He held me at gun-point but it was an unusual weapon, with some form of strange extension upon the barrel.”

“It was most likely a silencing device,” said I, “used for muffling the sound of a shot.”

“Well, only the barrel and this silencing device protruded through the barrier, I could not see his face. He gave me my instructions and forced me from the cab, abandoning me in the yard. He told me if I tried to pursue him, he would not hesitate to shoot me. I had no desire to follow.”

“Why did you not tell me this when you first entered the room instead of carrying out this foolish charade?”

“He told me he would know if I did not comply! I did not dare risk such a chance. I was to convince you I was mad, he gave me three options Mr Holmes.”

“Insanity, suicide or murder,” finished Holmes.

“You know the man of whom I speak?”

“Did he give you a name?” asked Holmes.

“Yes… Professor James Moriarty.”

There is little more to tell from our interview with Mr Cecil Kirkby. The man was entirely incomprehensible, such was his recent trauma. It took some time to convince him that the latest victim of Jack the Ripper was not Miss Elizabeth Sutherland. Although he would still have to accept the far more likely truth that his love had departed with another man, it was at least of some reassurance for him to know she had not been mutilated by the most infamous of criminals.

What was of far greater significance was his final revelation: one so profound and shocking in its nature that Holmes had simply stood there silent, before retiring to his room, leaving me to deal with the broken man upon our floor. When Holmes finally re-emerged, his countenance was grave, and he was quite visibly disturbed.

“You do not honestly believe Moriarty survived Reichenbach?” I asked as he glided silently across to the windows and drew the shutters.

“If there was one man other than myself who could have survived such a fall, it was Moriarty.”

“But I thought you had a plan of action? Will you allow all those hours spent with Mycroft simply to go to waste because a man whom we had not even heard of until this afternoon, claimed to have been threatened into a task by Moriarty? It could quite easily have been Moran.”

“You are right, Watson, there is only one way to be sure, - through decisive action.”

“Will you share this information with me?”

“Tonight I shall be in command of my very own specially trained force. All most secret, of course: Abberline and Lestrade are not trusted with such information but they will be informed.”

“You expect to weasel out Jack the Ripper with a team of specials?”

“Hardly, Watson; the weaselling, as you so eloquently put it, will be entrusted to a far more suitable and far less official force.”

“The Baker Street Irregulars?”

“Who better to flush out a criminal than a gang of criminals? Mycroft and I have devised a plan of action which allows for the complete exploitation of both these agencies, and of course, we shall also have our part to play, the most dangerous of parts.”

“Holmes, this is fantastic news!” I cried. “What is the plan?”

“Patience, Watson, patience. First, I believe it will be an entirely worthwhile exercise if we were to recount all of the facts as we have them, to ensure that the plan is indeed viable. If you could fetch a pen and paper while I rearrange the furniture, then I shall cast my thoughts out into the air for you to catch upon your parchment.

“Now, the first five victims were all women of the night, and all were successfully identified. None of the bodies showed any evidence of a struggle or robbery. The violence of each crime, excluding the first of the double murder, always increased with the next victim. Only upon the occasion of the double murder was there any attempt to place blame, which I believe to have been a purposeful act of arrogance and diversion. Previously I believed these crimes not to have been random but meticulously planned and executed by Professor Moriarty. Is there anything I have missed?”

“I believe that is all the facts,” I replied.

“Good. Now this recent victim is an anomaly. She was not a lady of the night; she has most likely been dressed to appear so, and her identity remains unknown. The victim was poisoned and taken to the scene of the crime: she was therefore not a victim of chance but of choice, though we are still none the wiser as to why this was the case.The effort taken to remove identifiable features from her person is also suggestive, and presumably there is something regarding her identity which will aid us in unmasking Jack the Ripper. Previously I would have been inclined to follow the assumption that the man Kirkby described was, in fact, Colonel Moran. But now I am not so sure, for we are still missing an agent capable of committing the recent crimes. Kirkby was a pawn: he did not have the stomach for such horrors. I am certain that he was not threatened into performing the monstrous deeds under the alias of Jack the Ripper.”

“You believe there is a missing agent?”

“It is the only logical conclusion of the facts. We have two hypotheses, Watson: Moran used an agent that has escaped our attention or Moriarty has indeed returned.”

“Though more plausible, the latter is still surely far-fetched?”

“I never saw Moriarty's body, Watson, therefore we have no concrete evidence that he did in fact perish.”

“Do you have a theory as to a motive for all this?”

“Fear, Watson, pure and utter terror on an unimaginable scale.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“The one scenario that we failed to recognise: we provided Moran with an alibi upon the night of the latest murder. It is a fairly safe assumption that he did not anticipate his capture or that he was in fact destroying a wax-bust of myself. If we therefore assume Moran's involvement in the logistics of both my assassination and the return of Jack the Ripper, I believe we have our motive.”

“Good God! The murder of Sherlock Holmes and the return of Jack the Ripper upon the same night. It is unthinkable!”

“I see no other hypothesis to fit the facts: Moran knew of, or at least suspected my survival. If Moriarty is indeed still among us, he may have passed on this terrible design to lure me out of retirement and slay me in cold blood while he himself resurrected Jack the Ripper in all his infamy! Moriarty would have his revenge, and strike a fear so deep into the hearts of our citizens that they would barely brave to step outside their own doorsteps. A rather neat little plan, I must admit.”

“I fail to see how any plan of action can cater to the facts you have just laid out; all you have done is made it more than clear how little progress we have made.”

“Sometimes, Watson, if you wish to catch an illusive fish, the best course of action is to set fire to the sea.”

“You are going to set fire to London? What a brilliant plan! Are we going to shoot any survivors? Poison the water supply? I just hope Jack the Ripper has not simply gone on holiday, we may destroy the city for nothing.”

“I do not mean literally,” said Holmes, slightly amused. “We will force the Ripper out by beating him at his own game.”

“Beat him at his own game: Holmes, what on earth have you been planning?”

“Later tonight, the streets of Whitechapel will be littered with the bodies of mutilated and disembowelled women. Jack the Ripper always acts in the same area, and he will be forced to quench his murderous thirst, for if he can do so and avoid capture in such an environment, it would surely be his greatest triumph: or quite simply, he shall fail.”

“Holmes, that is absurd! You cannot tell me that you are willing to mutilate women just to capture this man!”

“Do not be blind, Watson; we use the Baker Street Irregulars and a very select group of volunteers. Wiggins and his gang shout fire all over Whitechapel, the ‘bodies' will be put in place and quickly sealed off. Maximum attention is drawn to the scenes, panic ensues yet no one is any the wiser. This will happen simultaneously all across the district. Contact has been made with all late-night establishments: they have agreed to keep their custom inside, other than a select few, all of whom are armed and being shadowed by a special. This practice is already in place: the disguised specials swap station every night to avoid detection, as do the women, which is of course entirely natural under such dangerous conditions. He will not be prepared for such an event, and will be forced back into finding a victim of convenience, of which we shall know the location of every possible candidate, and we shall unmask him; Moriarty or otherwise. If he is not lured out, then I have made arrangements with Lord Balmoral to print the rather lurid descriptions which I have conjured for him; the public will believe that the Ripper has been recruiting, but his ability to shock them will forever be substantially diminished. It is desirable that this should not be the case but it could well be a risky, yet worthwhile deception.”

“Holmes, what if Jack the Ripper simply goes to another part of London and enacts his revenge there?”

“That would be a most unfortunate occurrence, I admit, but I do not believe he would do so. Remember the audacity of his actions upon the night of the double murder; remember how he specifically brought a victim to Whitechapel before he murdered her. Unless I am very much mistaken, his pride will not allow this challenge to go unanswered.”