Whitechapel: The Final Stand of Sherlock Holmes (25 page)

“Get out!” Holmes shouted, beating the arms of his chair with his fists.

Mycroft leapt to his feet and roared, “That’s it! Show me a little spirit! You cannot frighten me. I knew you when you shat yourself and sucked your thumb. I knew you when your schoolmates were cruel to you and when you broke your mother’s heart by telling her you would never marry.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Hot tears sting Holmes’s eyes like cups of rubbing alcohol. “I am sick. Can you not see that? Please, Mycroft, just leave me be. I beg you.”

“And here I never thought you would ever beg from anyone. I suppose fear has broken better men than you before. I should not be surprised.”

“Afraid?” Holmes said. “By all means, tell me what I am afraid of. If you honestly think I fear The Ripper, you are a fool. I would take his knife and plunge it into my own heart at the first chance. I would do it myself if I could hold the damned thing steady. I want to die, Mycroft. I cannot go on like this any longer.”

Mycroft leaned forward and lowered his head until he was level with Sherlock. “For years you have hung a sign outside your door, telling the entire world that you were here for anyone who was in need. For years, you have been the one man that people could turn to when everyone else, including the police, have failed them. But that was all child’s play, Sherlock. That was looking for missing race horses and fooling about with childish cryptograms. Now you finally have a worthy challenge, and what do you do? You sit in here hiding like a bloody coward.”

Holmes groaned and wiped his sleeve across his nose. “What have I done, Mycroft? What the hell have I become?”

Mycroft shook his head, and sighed deeply. “I’ve never told you, but in my travels I encounter many people who have heard of you. It can be difficult for me to hear how they speak of you.”

“Why? Is what they say so terrible? Please, tell me how they mock me because obviously I am not yet wretched enough for you.”

Mycroft shook his head. “Actually, they heap praise on you as if you are some sort of hero out of an adventure story. ‘The Great Detective’ they call you. Balderdash, I say. He’s just the small brat I used to tease and slap around until he cried. ‘Oh no,’ they say. ‘You do not understand, sir. He found my missing little boy’ or ‘He deduced that my sister was slowly poisoning my old mother to get a faster inheritance.’ That type of thing.”

“Not the fancy international affairs you’ve shown such an aptitude for, I confess.”

Mycroft looked Sherlock straight in the eye. “Better than that. A thousand times better than what I am, or what I do. Can you not see that? Do you not know how I admire you?”

Holmes was silent. His lower lip trembled as he tried to steady himself. Mycroft looked down, shaking his head. “There is a monster loose in the crown city of the Empire and Her Majesty’s enemies are watching us closely, always plotting ways to exploit our weaknesses. Right now, I am afraid, we look quite weak. It would seem that it is the duty of those best-equipped to serve to find a way to do so. This city needs a hero, brother.”

“I am not that hero,” Holmes said.

“You are all that we have.” Mycroft put the tip of his finger against his younger brother’s heart. “Unfortunately, these times do not come when we are ready for them. They do not come when we are equipped to deal with them. They come when we are weak and frail and vulnerable. It requires something more than the rest of us can summon. It is a time for champions, little brother. It is your time.”

Mycroft had left him hours ago.

Holmes sat without moving until the light of day began to fade through the windows, until darkness set completely over 221 B Baker Street. He sat sweating in his chair, feeling the urge for drugs burning within. He let it make him sick. He let the need slither throughout his body like a worm, until it was coiled around his every organ.

For hours, the cravings washed over him like waves. They rose high in the air and crashed down onto him. They tried to drown him and unseat him from his place on the earth. To swallow him into a vast, black ocean.

Holmes withstood them. He beat the urges back down inside of himself until they grew too weary to stand back up.

In time, the sun began to rise. It broke through the tattered curtains and dirt-smeared windows and shined hard into his eyes.

Sherlock Holmes struggled up from his chair and stripped off the wet, foul-smelling gown from his skin. He threw it into the fire and felt the surge of heat on his bare flesh as the fabric burst into flames. Holmes went to the window and stood bathed in the light. He looked out over the city. “A fight it is, then,” he whispered.

TWENTY TWO

It was early evening and Irene had not yet returned from wandering Spitalfields. She insisted she needed the time to get acquainted with our new surroundings. While she journeyed into the heart of Ripper’s hunting ground, I decided to purchase new bedding and some accoutrements that would help us maintain at least a modicum of civilization while we were forced to stay in such squalor. I tossed the old bug-ridden sheets out of the window and before the sheets settled onto the ground people were fighting over them on the street below.

Our bags had arrived earlier in the day and I unpacked them while listening to the people above our room stomp. Below us, they banged on the ceiling for even the slightest noise. On either side of the room, the voices of whoever was speaking came through as clearly as if they were standing at my side.

I laid Irene’s skirts and petticoats out on the bed and folded them carefully. The next bag contained her undergarments. I found a chemise made of such sheer material that I could see the details of my hand through both sides of the fabric. I lifted it to my face and inhaled deeply, detecting faint traces of Irene’s scent.

The door to our room burst open and Irene announced, “I have it, John! I can find my way back to Crossingham’s from nearly any point in Spitalfields. How did you make out?”

I quickly stuffed the chemise underneath the folded skirts on the bed and turned. “Ah. Basically, the same as you. I did a bit of freshening up to the place as well.”

“Excellent,” she said, looking at the folded clothes. “You did not have to do that, John. Now, do me a favor and remove your shirt.”

“Pardon me? Why?”

“You need a shave. That mustache is too well-kept. I have been studying the faces of the men here, and most of them are not nearly so well-groomed. Come on. I have what you need in my bags.”

I nervously undid the buttons of my shirt, sucking in my belly as much as I could. It was hairy and jiggled from too many of Mrs. Hudson’s biscuits. I stood as erect as I could and lifted my shoulders, as if I were back in the Army.

Irene did not seem to notice and handed me a pair of clippers, a razor and a bar of soap. Our room did not have a toilet, and she told me to wait there while she fetched a bowl of water from the common facility down the hall. The water she returned with was an ugly yellow color.

“There is no mirror,” Irene said, looking around. “Here, let me have those. Hold still, if you please.” She pressed against me, lifting my chin as she started scissoring away the ends of my mustache. Her breath was sweet and her chest crushed against me as she leaned forward. She lifted my nose and yanked on my lip.

“Ow!”

“Oh, stop being a baby, Watson,” she said, smirking. She handed me one end of a leather strop and quickly sharpened the razor upon it, then wetted her hands and lathered them with the soap.

She put her warm palms against my face. “That smells lovely,” I said.

“That soap costs enough money to pay for every room in this place for a month. Your skin will positively tingle when we’re finished!”

“Oh good. That is precisely what I have always wanted. Tingly skin.”

“Try not to move. I would hate to cut off such a perfectly formed lip. I imagine a man could get used to this. Not lifting a finger while a woman bathes you.”

“Perhaps I could convince Mary to apprentice under you?”

“Only if she would enjoy it as much as I,” Irene said, winking. “There you are, sir. What do you say, a thruppence ought to settle us up?”

“In Whitechapel I believe a thruppence entitles me to a much more thorough bathing.” Irene looked at me with such shock that I felt my cheeks flush. “I have no idea what just came over me, Miss Adler. That comment was inappropriate and I deeply apologize.”

She smiled and tapped me on the cheek, “Oh stop, John. I thought you were finally coming out of your damned shell there for a moment. All right, we need to rest up for tonight. The first girl, Polly Nichols, was killed after three in the morning. Annie was killed after five. The next two were killed closer to one. What do you make of that?”

“The Ripper is a creature of the night?”

Irene stared at me for a moment. “Sometimes I really think you are playing with me, Dr. Watson. Anyway, I would venture to guess that he killed the first girl in the middle of the night but found that too many people were out and about. Many were probably still stumbling home drunk at that hour. He killed Annie closer to the morning thinking there would be fewer people. For some reason, he then switched to a much earlier time. Why would he do that?”

“Transportation, perhaps? Depending on where the Ripper lives, he may have needed to find a cab to get home and had trouble finding one before.”

“An interesting theory. And here, I had been thinking that the killer lived relatively close to Whitechapel.”

“When he killed Annie Chapman at five in the morning, he would have found many more people on the street than he expected,” I said. “People who live here that can find work must have to travel, for I have seen no factories or plants in Whitechapel. They must go out of the area, and that would mean getting up quite early. I would expect one o’clock was a much better time to kill his victims, because the people who work were asleep already and those who are unemployed were probably still inside a tavern.”

Irene nodded, “I believe that is a rather brilliant deduction, John. Has Holmes been pulling the wool over all of our eyes all this time, while it was really you doing all the detective work?” We both laughed, and Irene checked her pocket watch. “It is nearly six now. We should try to get some sleep.”

“All right,” I said. I watched Irene cross to the other side of the bed and begin undoing her clothing. I lowered myself to the floor and unlaced my boots. I stretched out on the cold wooden floor, listening to the whisper of Irene’s clothing sliding off of her body. I turned over on my side. “If it is not too much trouble, Miss Adler, would you mind throwing me down a pillow when you have a chance?”

“What are you talking about?” Irene asked.

“A pillow maybe? Or, even a blanket? It is rather uncomfortable on the floor without one.”

“Stop being silly and come up on the bed this instant, John.” Irene patted the mattress, “Really, I will not bite.”

I laughed sharply, “I could not begin to imagine how inappropriate that would be.”

“John, there is not one thing in this whole damned world that is as appropriate as you imagine it. I have been with royals and nobles all over the world; the exact people we fall all over ourselves to impress with good manners and etiquette, and let me be the one to tell you, they engage in more depravity than the worst whore in Whitechapel. It is a gigantic ruse that people like you and me scurry around trying to be appropriate, while every other Lord is busy buggering his own sisters. Get in the damned bed.”

I started to stand up, saying, “If my Mary ever found out about this, I should be in...”

“What? What is it?”

It was the sheer chemise, and she wore it lying on the bed, turned toward me. Her hand was beneath her head, so that her hair spilled down onto the pillow. The soft pale skin of her neck and the tops of her breasts were revealed by the gown’s low-cut neck and her nipples poked through the fabric. Two long, shapely legs stretched out toward me, with Irene rubbing one bare foot slowly over the other. “Why are you just standing there? Surely you’ve seen a woman without her petticoat before.”

“Of course I have,” I said, sliding into the bed beside her. Irene closed her eyes and in moments, her breathing became slow and rhythmic. In that instant, she eclipsed all that I knew, casting my remaining days into a cold and empty night. Like the bright star sailors set their course both to and from, I would be doomed forever to follow her distant glittering light.

~ * * * ~

“Wake up, John.”

“Mmm. What? Something wrong?”

“Yes, you snore like a grizzly bear and I weep for your intended bride. We have to get going.” Irene was already dressed in a dark frockcoat and a wide black bonnet. “How do I look?”

I regarded her costume. It was the same attire as that of every other woman in Whitechapel. She wore several skirts and a thick coat. Her bonnet was tightly wrapped under her chin, and two long black ribbons hung down over her chest. Only her throat was exposed. I thought for a moment, then said, “Undo your bonnet. I have an idea. Hand me your leather strop. I may have to get you a new one, but if this works, you will thank me for it.”

From my medical bag I retrieved a sharp knife, suture and thread. I measured Irene’s neck with the strop and began cutting the leather at either end. “When I was in the army, we were travelling on the Arabian Sea and had to be escorted by an American naval vessel. The ship was protected by a group of US Marines.”

I cut several holes in the leather and began stitching. “The Marines all had tightly fitting leather collars that were designed to protect their necks from sword strikes. ‘Leathernecks’, I think they called themselves.” I held up the length of leather strap to measure it around Irene’s neck. “All of the Ripper victims’ throats were cut first. It is the killing blow that incapacitates them enough so that he can do his business.” I wrapped the leather around her throat. “It will fit you snugly like a belt around your neck. Can you still breathe? Good.”