The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors (42 page)

Holmes was in a reflective mood for some little time after the visitor had departed, but he broke his silence by and by and shared his thoughts with Watson. “This fellow Stephen intrigues me,” he said from behind a thick haze of pipe smoke.

“So I gather.” Watson peered at him over the top of his newspaper. “A strange companion for a royal prince, I should think.”

“Rather.”

“He sounds thoroughly disagreeable.”

“Thoroughly.”

Watson studied him for a moment. “Yet, it seems you still have some questions in your mind about him.”

Holmes nodded. “A few.”

“Do you think Captain Burton-FitzHerbert was exaggerating in his assessment?”

“No, not at all. To the contrary. I’ve made some inquiries about him on my own — that’s what I have been doing the better part of the day, in point of fact — and, I must say, that if Mr. James Kenneth Stephen has any likable traits, he has managed to keep them well hidden from the
rest of humanity. Among other things, he has the reputation of being a virulent woman-hater. He doesn’t merely dislike them, you understand: He positively
hates
them, and makes no efforts to hide it. His poetry — what little I have been able to find of it in the book stalls and library — reflects this most graphically. It also reflects something else, if I am any judge: He would appear to be a thoroughly degenerate individual whose attitudes and perceptions are of such a disagreeable nature that it would come as no surprise at all to learn that murder and mutilation were numbered among them. Indeed, from what I can gather — and it is an opinion shared by more than a few of the people I have interviewed who know him intimately — from what I gather, he may be quite mad.”

Holmes put his pipe down and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Moreover, he is known to be a frequent visitor to some of the more odious homosexual fleshpots of the city, one or two of them located in Whitechapel, so he is no stranger to the district and no doubt is quite familiar with its geography. He would appear to be a very prominent suspect, indeed.”

Watson put his newspaper down. “You don’t seem to take much satisfaction in that knowledge, Holmes. Nor do I see you racing for your hat and coat to do something about it.”

Holmes did not reply right away, but gazed down at his feet, lost in thought. “What? I’m sorry, old chap. Did you say something?”

“Only that you don’t seem to be very much in a hurry to have him taken into custody.”

“Who?”

Watson became exasperated. “The Ripper, Holmes — this fellow Stephen!”

“Stephen? Oh, he is not the Ripper. Whatever in the world made you think that he was?”

W
EDNESDAY
, N
OVEMBER
7, 1888

“We must begin from a different angle. I rather fancy that Shinwell Johnson might be a help.”

—
The Illustrious Client

I
f there were any merit, any scientific basis in fact to the theory that the use of tobacco somehow stimulated the brain and thus increased man’s capacity to solve difficult problems, Holmes during those few days should have been able to unravel the mysteries of the universe. He spent the greater part of his time enveloped in dense, odoriferous clouds of smoke, seldom moving from his chair and seldom removing the pipe from his mouth. It was to little avail.

Though several ounces of his favorite black shag had been expended, and the sitting room’s atmosphere made no sweeter in the process, he came no closer to finding answers to the questions that plagued him. If anything, the questions multiplied in his mind and became more perplexing.

Watson? He was at a total loss. He did not have the faintest idea of what to make of recent events. It was beyond him. Holmes’s bewildering
statement that James K. Stephen was not the Ripper had set his mind on endless trails of speculation, trails that twisted and tangled and got him nowhere, leading him ever deeper into thickets of confusion. If Stephen was not the Ripper, who, then, was? And if Stephen was not the Ripper, why, then, was Holmes so interested in him?

Holmes, of course, would provide him with no further enlightenment — that was a foregone conclusion. He rarely revealed his thoughts until they were totally clarified in his own mind, until he was satisfied that any ideas that resulted were valid and any judgments that were made were correct. And besides, like the stage conjurer who delights in mystifying his audience by drawing out the suspense, the
artiste
in him required just the right moment to perform his sleight-of-hand, the perfect time to make the dramatic gesture.

Meanwhile, Captain Burton-FitzHerbert, true to his word, made a concerted effort to obtain the information that Holmes had requested, but he was unable to come up with anything very helpful. For the most part, he could confirm only what was already known, that Mr. James K. Stephen was a particular friend of Prince Eddy’s and an almost constant companion during the prince’s private moments in London, the two appearing to be all but inseparable. Sometimes they were joined by others of a select group in attending the theater and dining at one or another of the city’s more fashionable restaurants: the Café Monico, the Criterion (the “Cri,” as it was called by habitués), the Café Royal in Regent Street’s Quadrant, or Florence’s at Rupert and Coventry Streets, the latter two known to be popular with Oscar Wilde’s set. Sometimes they were entertained at small dinner parties in private homes. And, reported a stone-faced Captain Burton-FitzHerbert, sometimes they paid a visit to a certain address in Cleveland Street off Tottenham Court Road, that same homosexual establishment which Holmes had placed under personal surveillance.

That the captain was most uncomfortable in divulging this last bit of information was evident. “Atrocious bad form,” he muttered — his way of letting it be known that he was not at all happy to be discussing matters that any proper gentleman would consider inappropriate under any circumstances. He was doing so only because he was instructed by the Prince of Wales to cooperate fully with Holmes, and he wanted that made abundantly clear.

Curiously, Holmes displayed little interest in the information the Guards officer had to impart, hardly questioning him at all as to the details. To Watson, who was listening quietly in the background, Holmes seemed more interested in the sources of Burton-FitzHerbert’s information than in the information itself. He questioned him closely about the identity of his informants.

His major source, as it turned out, was a none-too-circumspect coachman by the name of Netley who was usually to be found hanging about in the Royal Mews near Buckingham Palace. Netley was not a regular palace coachman, but belonged to a pool of spare drivers who were taken on as needed during particularly busy times, or as substitutes for staff coachmen who were ill. Generally members of this pool drove for lesser palace aides and royal messengers, but now and then, when things got really tight, Netley was assigned to younger members of the royal family or their visiting cousins from the Continent. On more than one occasion, he drove for Prince Eddy, and on more than one of those occasions, Prince Eddy was accompanied by one Mr. James Kenneth Stephen.

The coachman, highly flattered that a Guards officer and royal equerry would grant him anything more than a sniff and a nod, let alone actually initiate a conversation with him, was pleased to share his store of knowledge with Captain Burton-FitzHerbert, a store that was not inconsiderable. What Netley had not amassed through
personal observation (and he was a most ardent observer), he learned secondhand from his colleagues who, it seemed, gossiped among themselves incessantly. The prattle in the mews “flowed as freely as feed grain from a split sack,” noted Burton-FitzHerbert with a smug little smile, savoring what he considered an uncommonly clever turn of speech. Yes, he said, many a choice tidbit made the rounds of the tack room, along with the saddle soap and metal polish, and in the stalls while the lads attended to their equine charges, and in various palace courtyards while they loitered about waiting for their human ones.

And that basically was it. Aside from the stable gossip, Burton-FitzHerbert was able to provide little else. However, he did give Holmes a short list of recent dates when Prince Eddy had been in London, a list that Holmes glanced at only briefly before placing it into the closest handy depository, a copy of
Burke’s Peerage
, which happened to be on the table next to his chair.

But it would seem that Burton-FitzHerbert had failed to come up with the information Holmes was most interested in obtaining, for Watson could not help but notice the look of disappointment on his face after the military man had departed.

“Really, Holmes, I don’t know how you expect people to gather intelligence for you when you won’t even let them know what they’re looking for! There is such a thing as being too secretive.”

Holmes favored him with a wintry, thin-lipped smile. “Oh, I don’t know. One can never be too circumspect. If I tell our young friend what it is that I am looking for, there is always the danger he will let it slip to someone else, and that would never do. But if he were to come upon it in the natural course of events — even without knowing what it was — it is the kind of thing he almost certainly would report to me without being prompted, and very likely without recognizing the full extent of its importance. And that would be most desirable. I find that a secret is
best kept by keeping secret the fact that it is a secret.” He reached for a fresh pipe.

Watson considered him for a brief moment. “Came upon what?”

“Hmm?”

“You said that if he were to come upon it, he would tell you even if he didn’t know what it was. Exactly what is it that you wish to know?”

Holmes shot him a sidelong glance, but did not reply. He smiled faintly at Watson’s expression of annoyance.

“In any event,” he said, reaching for the Persian slipper in which he kept his tobacco, “it is of little consequence.”

But his manner belied his words, for he once again retired to his chair to brood, long legs outstretched, chin on chest, billows of smoke rising in splendid puffs from his great yellowed meerschaum.

There was much to brood about. To begin with was the fact that the murderer knew that he, Holmes, was involved in the investigation; it was unlikely it was sheer guesswork on the man’s part. The only possible answer was that he was close to someone who had reason to know and who willingly (but in all likelihood, unwittingly) shared that information with him, someone who was either with the police, the Home Office, or, less likely, connected to the prime minister or the Prince of Wales — or, least likely of all, connected to Mycroft.

Holmes shook his head silently. No, the latter notion was totally out of the question. Mycroft’s secrets were inviolate. He rarely confided in anyone, and then only if there was good and sufficient reason for the individual to know. In that respect, he was not very much different from any other government bureaucrat. He had a positive dread of sharing information on any account, whether it be sensitive or not, for he believed almost devoutly that to know something that somebody else didn’t was, to put it crassly, money in the bank.

It had to be some other source — a source that perhaps Lord
Randolph Churchill had access to as well, for he also appeared to have knowledge he should not have. No matter how good his connections and channels of information, there were certain things he could not possibly know and yet did, and Holmes was as much confounded by this as he was by anything.

Little wonder that he had remained the better part of the past few days burrowed deep in his chair, pipe rack and tobacco slipper close at hand. To Watson he seemed depressed and discouraged — understandably so. He was no further along with his investigations than he had been weeks earlier. Indeed, the new disclosures served only to confuse matters further, adding, in his words, “layers of mist to the haze that already enshrouds the fog.”

As if in sympathetic response, the room filled with a haze of his own making, and he withdrew behind it gratefully, as if behind a protective curtain that insulated him from the routine annoyances and petty disturbances of life around him.

But not all of Holmes’s time in that period was spent in quiet contemplation. It had been anything but a tranquil period at 221B Baker Street. There had been an almost constant procession of visitors — incessant comings and goings and telegrams at all hours of the day and night. It was a period of activity that had all but driven poor Mrs. Hudson to distraction, and, had it not been for the timely addition of Billy to the household several days earlier, all of the bustle and bother would have surely been beyond her endurance.

Billy was young and energetic; a flight of stairs meant nothing to him. He scampered up and down with the ease of a mouse, and even several dozen ascents and descents a day (and there averaged at least that many during that period) failed to sap his energy or diminish his enthusiasm. He was like a puppy’s tail that never seemed to tire of wagging, a poor working-class lad with large dark eyes and small
prospects, eager to please and do well, puffed with a newfound pride, his neck and hands scrubbed unaccustomedly clean, unruly hair newly clipped and, if not totally subdued, at least reasonably amenable to the blandishments of hairbrush and pomade, the brass buttons of his tunic shined to a fare-thee-well, almost as bright as the glitter in his eye, almost as shiny as the apple glow of his cheek.
⁸⁸