The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors (27 page)

Holmes made a face. “I would not be surprised if he claimed the murderer had horns and tail and cloven feet! Do me this, will you: Go out on the next brightly moonlit night and hang some colored bunting from a line and stand off twenty yards or so — make it five yards, if you wish. I
defy you to distinguish what colors they are! What unmitigated rubbish!”

Abberline shrugged. He was too weary to argue. Holmes, on the other hand, was now wide awake and was just getting into stride.

“I am being foolish perhaps,” said he, “but I find it difficult to subscribe to the theory that in the absence of concrete fact, it is not only permissible but desirable to fabricate one. How convenient, how very efficacious! Grasp at a straw if you must, but at least have the good sense to grasp at a real straw!”

Abberline shrugged again. “At least it’s the City force to blame this time, not the Yard.”

Holmes snorted. “I am certain the Yard shall make up for it, given time,” he replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm. He got up from his chair and took a turn about the room. “Wherever is Mrs. Hudson with the coffee?” he muttered irritably. “I’ll tell you how it is, Abberline,” he continued. “We now have three separate descriptions of the killer being circulated. One indicates he was dressed in something like blue serge with a deerstalker cap, another indicates he wore a black diagonal coat with a hard felt hat and collar and tie, and the third indicates he wore a loose-fitting pepper-and-salt tweed jacket with a gray cloth cap and red neckerchief tied in a sailor’s knot. All in one night! This man is a wonder! I shouldn’t be surprised if he turned up in a clown suit next — ah, there she is.”

Mrs. Hudson’s unmistakable tread was heard upon the stair at last, and Holmes moved swiftly to the door to open it for her.

“Morning, Mrs. H. Thank you so very much. Allow me to take it from here. You need not trouble yourself further.”

She handed the tray over without a word and threw an ugly glance at the early morning visitor before turning on her heel to descend the stairs.

Holmes nudged the door shut with his foot and carried the tray of coffee service to the table. “Sugar? Milk?”

“No, I take it neat, thanks.”

“There’s some toast here if you wish.”

“Thank you, no.”

Holmes poured the coffee and handed Abberline his cup. “Aside from this sudden plethora of eyewitness descriptions, what else is new that you can tell me?”

Abberline took a sip of coffee and darted a glance at Holmes before replying. “You have heard about the dogs, of course.”

“Dogs? What dogs?”

“The commissioner, Sir Charles?”

“Yes, I know his name,” snapped Holmes. “What’s this about dogs?”

“He wants to bring in sleuth hounds.”

“Sleuth hounds?”

“You know, bloodhounds.”

“To do what? Piddle on the cobbles?”

Abberline smiled despite himself. “He has got it in his head that bloodhounds will be able to sniff him out.”

Holmes clapped his hands. “Sniff him out? Oh, jolly good!”

“He’s given instructions that if or when there is another murder, the dogs are to be brought in before the body is removed so they can be put on the scent. A breeder over near Scarborough has been contacted and has agreed to provide two of his animals. The commissioner has arranged to hold a trial in Hyde Park within the next few days.”

“Truly?”

Abberline placed a hand over his heart. “Truly.”

Holmes said nothing. Thoughtfully he took another sip of coffee, then put the cup down and walked over to the bow window to gaze down at the street. After a minute or so he turned. “Hyde Park, you say?”

Abberline nodded.

“Bloodhounds in Hyde Park?” Holmes’s thin lips curved upward
in a puckish smile. “What a vision that conjures up, what a perfectly marvelous show it should be.” He turned wistful for a moment. “Pity I shall miss it, but Watson’s letters from Baskerville Hall are becoming most insistent. I am afraid I have a long-overdue appointment with another dog, this one on the moors of Devon. More coffee, dear chap?”

S
UNDAY
, O
CTOBER
21-T
UESDAY
, O
CTOBER
23, 1888

“I thought at first you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all.”

—
The Red-Headed League

J
ohn H. Watson, M.D., gazed out of the rain-spattered window of the first-class rail car compartment, the monotonous, curiously soothing clackety-clack of the wheels against the track combining with the dreary weather to lull him into a state of lassitude, of semi-sleep. The bleak autumnal countryside of rural England, neat and picture perfect despite the weather and the season of the year, had given way to the industrial outskirts of London, soot blackened and grimy gray. The tall chimneys of the factories and foundries that flickered past his window vied with one another in sending aloft dark plumes of greasy smoke that rose to merge with the low-lying clouds, laying a pall over the still-distant city and over his spirits as well.

Still, he was glad to be getting back to London. The affairs at Baskerville Hall in Devonshire had been successfully concluded, but it
had been a close thing and a harrowing experience, and he and Holmes were both tired and mentally drained. The homey atmosphere of Baker Street, coupled with Mrs. Hudson’s cooking and her other comforting ministrations, would do them both the world of good. Rural life was not always so settling to the nerves after all, he reflected. Not when murder was involved; not when a vicious hound roamed loose on the moors. He would spend tomorrow compiling notes about the case, he decided, in preparation for the day when he would sit down and write the story in its entirety. What to call it, was the question.
The Hound of Baskerville Hall? The Beast of the Baskervilles
perhaps? Yes, that had a nice ring to it.

The rain was coming down harder now, the gray, overcast skies seemed to settle lower over the dreary scene outside his window. It was a somber, depressing Sunday afternoon, one in which the fire of their sitting room and a hot toddy would be doubly welcome.

Across from him, Sherlock Holmes, donned in his familiar traveling costume of Inverness and deerstalker cap, coils of pungent smoke rising from his briar and curling about him, observed his friend from beneath hooded eyes. Good old Watson, he thought. What a pillar of strength he was; what a solid, dependable ally. Holmes could not imagine how he would have gotten along without him these past few harrowing weeks: He had served as his eyes and ears and more. That he, Holmes, was able to bring the Baskerville matter to a successful conclusion was due in no small measure to Watson’s selfless contributions.

The affair had been doubly difficult for Holmes. He was not accustomed to having two cases on his mind at once. That intricate mechanism that was his brain worked best when concentrating on one problem and one problem only, and for that reason it had always been a strict rule of his never to take on more than one case at a time. This was one of the few occasions when he had been forced to break that rule. But now that the Baskerville business was behind him, he would be able
to devote his full attentions to the matter that awaited him in London.

Holmes reached over and tapped the ashes out of his pipe. “You are quite right, dear fellow,” he said nonchalantly. “We shall be arriving at Paddington somewhat later than expected and, yes, we shall in all probability face difficulty in obtaining the services of a porter and possibly a cab as well.”

Watson, startled out of his reverie, looked across at Holmes in astonishment. “What’s this, Holmes! Have you now taken to reading my mind?”

Holmes chuckled softly. “My dear fellow, after all these years, I should be a dullard indeed if I could not at least follow your train of thought on occasion —”

“My train of thought?”

“— which is so transparently obvious: Like following a trail of bread crumbs left scattered behind you in the woods.”

“Bread crumbs?” retorted Watson. “Whatever are you talking about? I have done nothing of the kind, and I must say, Holmes, I consider your — your trickery, or whatever it is, most uncivil. It is nothing less than, than an invasion of my privacy. The very idea!”

Holmes, chuckling, leaned over and patted him on the knee. “There is no trickery involved, merely simple inference. It is you yourself who told me.”

“I? I told you nothing. Whatever do you mean?”

“Watson, what am I to think when I observe you looking out of the window, studying our surroundings for the longest while, craning your neck this way and that in an obvious effort to determine where we are? You then reach over to consult the train schedule lying on the seat beside you and pull out your watch, shaking your head in a disheartened manner. Then you glance out the window again and look up at the sky and shake your head again. Your gaze then travels to the
luggage rack above my head. You frown and rub your shoulder, the one in which you were wounded in Afghanistan, and shake your head yet again. What am I to make of all of this, if not the obvious? You ascertain that the train is running late, behind schedule. It is a rainy Sunday afternoon, rapidly approaching evening, a time when porters at Paddington are in short supply, which means you will be forced to carry your own luggage. That doleful glance at your bulging grip above me and the massaging of your injured limb tells me that you are not looking forward to that laborious indignity. Nor do I blame you. But really, dear fellow, you must learn to pack fewer things; I could have traveled round the world with less.”

Holmes inverted his pipe and blew the moisture out of the bowl. “And by the by,” he said with mock hauteur, “I do not especially appreciate being accused of trickery.”

Watson looked at him sheepishly. “You always make it sound so simple once you explain it.”

Holmes smiled indulgently. “Yaass, well, even the most abstract problem is simple once it is explained. Such as the one we have left behind us in Devon. However, my mind now dwells on the one that faces us in London. That, I fear, will not be so simple.”

Watson’s eyes narrowed. It had been a fortnight since the subject had even come up in conversation between them, so engrossed had they been in the affairs of Baskerville Hall. While it would be incorrect to say that he had not given any thought to the matter during all that time, it was not something that had loomed high in his consciousness either. London and all its cares had seemed so remote.

“At least there haven’t been any more murders since,” he said. “The fellow seems to have gone to ground. And if the papers are to be believed, the police don’t seem to have made any progress in tracking him down.”

Holmes smiled. “Nor did I expect them to.” He added ruefully: “But then, neither have I.”

Watson knew Holmes would not appreciate the consoling words he had in mind to utter, so he left them unspoken. “Any new thoughts?” he asked instead.

“New thoughts?” Holmes replied self-disparagingly. He shook his head in a gesture of hopelessness. “No, none at all.” He gazed out the window silently for a moment. “Only I continue to harbor nagging fears that there is something right under my nose that I have neglected, some obvious little tidbit of information that has escaped my notice.”

“Something to do with the cigarette ends that were found, do you think?”

Holmes dismissed that suggestion with an impatient wave of his hand. “No, not that. I have gone as far as I can for the moment in pursuit of answers there, and the possibilities that have suggested themselves as a result are totally impossible. No, there is something else. What it could be eludes me. I have no idea, no idea at all. When it finally does occur to me, I shall kick myself for it, of that I am certain. Well... it will come, it will come.”

He lowered his gaze and looked off into space for a moment. “In all likelihood,” he added quietly.

The train rumbled into Paddington Station not long after. To their mutual surprise and Watson’s relief, they had no difficulties in finding a porter after all, and their wait at the cab stand was happily a brief one. They were back in their rooms in Baker Street within the hour, seated before a cheerful fire in their accustomed places, sharing a hot pot of Mrs. Hudson’s tea, which Watson insisted upon lacing liberally with rum.

“Of all of the countless nostrums that have proven to be totally
worthless in preventing or curing a cold,” he proclaimed, “I find strong spirits to be utterly essential.”

Alerted by wire of their coming, Mrs. Hudson had prepared an early supper that did her proud, and to which they in turn rendered swift, unmerciful justice — not to mention what penalties they imposed upon a perfectly respectable bottle of Médoc. They retired to their beds early that cold, wet night, their stomachs too full for prudence or comfort, but their feelings of well-being complete.

When Watson awoke the next morning, he found that Holmes was already gone — “Gone with barely a gulp of coffee,” Mrs. Hudson reported disapprovingly. “‘E took ‘is egg, slipped it between two slices of toast, ‘nd popped it into the pocket of his ulster. ‘E was off before I could say ‘boo,’” she said. “Now, really!”