The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Whitechapel Horrors (50 page)

The Prince of Wales looked at him imploringly, the tears welling up in his eyes. “Francis,” he said. “Please... please.”

E
DITOR’S
N
OTE

Y
et another gap appears in Watson’s chronicle at this point; several additional pages of his notes are inexplicably missing. Precisely how many, it is impossible to tell, for the pages were not always consecutively numbered or even in sequence. As before, one can only speculate as to whether the absence of this material is due to mischance or design, and if the latter, who was responsible for its removal. Surely suspicion is not unwarranted, for the interruption comes at what is unquestionably a crucial juncture in this account of the Whitechapel murders. And, as we know from other Watson chronicles, during part of the period presumably covered by the missing pages, Sherlock Holmes was also missing. He was absent from London for almost three years, absent and believed dead.
¹⁰⁸

M
ONDAY
, J
ANUARY
28, 1895

“Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution by now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.”

—
The Abbey Grange

T
he news was in all the papers, of course; detailed accounts were to be found on the front pages of every journal in the country. The death four days earlier of Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill, at the age of forty-six, was front-page news indeed, as was only to be expected of the man who some considered “the greatest elemental force in English politics since Cromwell.”
¹⁰⁹

Churchill’s funeral in Bladon churchyard the previous day, and the memorial service that followed in Westminster Abbey, were attended by the highest in the land: By members of the royal family and representatives of the major noble houses of Britain; by cabinet ministers, leaders of both Houses of Parliament, and backbenchers of
every political persuasion; by former friends and colleagues and by former enemies from across the aisle as well.

But Sherlock Holmes remained insensible to all of that. The man’s political importance and his position in society were of no more than incidental interest to him. His preoccupation with Lord Randolph Churchill was for other reasons entirely, reasons that would never appear in an obituary or future biography.

And so it was that when Watson came upon him, the detective was deep in the folds of one of his characteristic brown studies, downcast and contemplative. The good doctor had, by chance, found himself in the vicinity of Baker Street while making his rounds late that cold, gray, drizzly morning, and with an hour or so to spare between patients decided to stop by his old quarters for an unannounced visit. It had been some little while since Watson had last seen Holmes, their relationship having been reduced to infrequent encounters, and though he was a bit concerned to find him appearing drawn and somewhat haggard, he seemed otherwise well and reasonably fit. Aside from a few deeper lines around the eyes and mouth, Watson could detect no appreciable differences in his friend’s outward appearance, joyless countenance notwithstanding. Middle age had chosen to make its initial forays upon Holmes with gentleness and uncommon solicitude, leaving him thus far unscathed and little altered. There was still the same tall, spare frame, the same noble brow and sharp, gaunt visage, the same deceptively languorous manner and antipathetic intensity of gaze and, of course, beneath it all the same keen intellect and restless, probing mind.

Seated moodily in front of the fire in dressing gown and slippers, with one of his commonplace books in his lap and his armchair surrounded by the debris of the morning’s clipped and discarded newspapers, Holmes glanced up with a wan, faintly mocking smile of
greeting as Watson entered. Wordlessly, he motioned him to the teapot sitting still warm on the dining table.

Watson helped himself to a cup and looked around him. Few changes had been made to the rooms they had shared for so long prior to Watson’s marriage some years earlier.
¹¹⁰
All seemed much the same. The old furnishings, the old familiar objects, all appeared to be in their accustomed places. The sitting room was as snug and as warm and as cluttered as it ever was, its homey Bohemian atmosphere permeated with the signal aroma of strong tobacco and pungent chemicals, an ineradicable condition by now, one would think, the not wholly unpleasant odor having long since impregnated the draperies and upholstery and probably even the very plaster of the walls themselves.

There was a permanence to the place and an air of serenity which Watson found both comforting and reassuring. Entering it was like donning a favorite old tweed jacket which, though sagging and worn and hopelessly out of fashion, one would never consider discarding or even altering. It had, after all, taken so long to get it that way.

He sighed. Time, from all outward appearances, seemed to have stood still within these rooms. They had become a fixed point in an otherwise changing world. The twentieth century would soon be upon them, but here, at 221B Baker Street, one was beset by the idea, the irrational conviction, that somehow it would always remain the 1880s.

Holmes waved Watson to his old chair in his usual manner — that air of casual disinterest he adopted when it suited him — but the delighted glimmer in his eye was unmistakable and his spirits perked up markedly at the sight of his friend. “Somehow I knew I would be suffering the pleasure of your company before the day was out,” he drawled, simultaneously subjecting Watson to a brief but intensive scrutiny. “And I see that I must congratulate you on your burgeoning medical practice. Business has picked up prettily since last I saw you, I perceive.”

Watson shot Holmes a startled, quizzical look, causing him to chuckle.

“Tut, tut. It is obvious,” he said, holding up his hand to forestall the question he knew was to follow. “What else am I to think when I spot an almost depleted pad of prescription blanks peering out of your pocket and the day not half gone? — and peering out of the pocket of a handsome new frock coat, I might add. From Shingleton’s in New Bond Street, isn’t it? Ah, yes, I thought so. Quite becoming.”

The expression of pained awareness that came over Watson’s face brought another chuckle from Holmes. “Yes, I know, I know,” he intoned. “‘It is so deucedly simple once explained.’” He gazed upon his friend in a rare display of open affection. “Dear old Watson, you never disappoint me.”

Within no time at all the two of them, eminently comfortable in each other’s company, were deep in conversation — that familiar, easy communion of old that only intimate friends of long standing can ever know — and once having attended to the mundane essentials of their workaday lives, exchanging mutual assurances as to each other’s health and general well-being, their talk inevitably turned to the major news item of the day, and, of course, to those related matters that had so occupied their energies seven years earlier, thoughts of which had unconsciously, though inexorably, drawn Watson back to Baker Street.

It had been some little while since the topic had last come under discussion between them, as if there had been a tacit understanding that it was best left alone, best not even thought about. Watson could not help but recall that the previous occasion had been under remarkably similar circumstances, the death of another highly prominent figure. How vividly he remembered that day, one of those rare days in every lifetime that are so unforgettable: How he drifted awake to the sound of church bells mournfully tolling and the urgent cries of newsboys in the street. The jolt of sudden awareness, the sharp stab of sudden, unknowing fear.

It, too, was a day in January, almost exactly three years before. Even now he could clearly visualize the black-bordered front page of
The Times
, rushed upstairs to him on that cold blustery morning, bearing the news: The death, from pneumonia brought on by influenza, of His Royal Highness, Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward of Wales, Duke of Clarence and Avondale and Heir Presumptive to the throne of England. Prince Eddy was dead. It was indeed a day forever fixed in Watson’s memory.
¹¹¹

All of Britain had been plunged into mourning, for the slender, doe-eyed young prince, who had celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday less than a week earlier and whose engagement to be married had only recently been announced, was a highly popular figure.
¹¹²
People in the streets were genuinely grieved by his untimely death. Was he not, after all, the very embodiment of what a royal heir should be? — dignified, wholesome, regal, and dashing in his hussar’s uniform, in every way an ornament to the British nation: A fitting symbol to rally round in times of crisis, a wellspring of pride and majesty in times of tranquility. What a welcome change from the wearisome image of his royal grandmother in her perennial widow’s weeds, and his overstuffed, self-indulgent father with his prodigious appetites and unseemly aging-playboy ways. How shocked the nation was by his passing, how deeply, truly saddened.

Watson shook his head at the memory of it. For him, the death of Prince Eddy held a different meaning, of course. Never would he be able to hear the name spoken, never would he be able to visualize that insipid face, those languid, vacant eyes, without experiencing a chill of perfect, unreasoning horror.

He shivered slightly, and then sighed. Numerous pages had turned since that grim, cold day spent in the East End following the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, and much had happened in the intervening six years. He and Holmes had shared so many adventures and had such
a multitude of memories to look back upon that he found it daunting just thinking about it.

Watson stole a glance at his friend, sprawled listlessly across from him in his armchair, his dressing gown draped loosely about him, his gray eyes bleak, his manner once again distant and withdrawn.

Of the countless cases in which he and Holmes had been involved over the years they had known each other, many had been difficult and demanding, many profoundly complex, but none —
none
— had ever been so challenging, so bewildering, so frustrating, and so frightening as the Whitechapel affair. And none had ever been so upsetting to Holmes personally.

Holmes chanced to look up at that instant and smiled softly as their eyes met. “I must confess to you that it was the most unpleasant, most burdensome business I have ever been involved in,” he said as if reading Watson’s very thoughts. He nodded to himself. “Burdensome and painful. Most terribly painful, as you surely realize.”

Watson nodded also.

Holmes’s thin lips compressed. “It must never get out, you know. Any of it. Even a simple mention of my involvement in any aspect of the case would be unwise. So far my name has been kept out of it, and it is best that it remain so. Should I, or you, for that matter, be in some way connected to the business — even at this late date — it might cause some inquisitive journalist to start sniffing about, digging up bones best left undisturbed. Aside from the national scandal it could precipitate, we have our own reputations — indeed, our own tender necks — to worry about, remember.”

Watson, frowning, nodded again. “Of course I realize that. Yet...”

Holmes raised a finger and smiled knowingly. “Yet you cannot help but wish the story could somehow be told.”

“That’s it, of course. It is terribly frustrating to find oneself sitting
atop of what is surely the most compelling mystery of the age and not be able to tell it. I know that’s out of the question completely, given the harm disclosure would cause. Still, it is only natural that I regret being unable to reveal the facts of the matter. It would go down as your most famous case if it ever saw the light of day.”

Holmes’s jaw tightened and his eyes became hard. “It would go down as my most infamous debacle, you mean! And, apart from everything else, would hold me up to personal ridicule, though that hardly matters.”

Watson raised his eyebrows. “Ridicule? You? Nonsense.”

Startling Watson, Holmes sprang to his feet and began to pace the room, highly agitated. “It would be nothing less than I deserve, after all. The whole affair was shameful — absolutely shameful! Not least of all my participation in it!”

Watson looked at him in surprise. “Shameful to Scotland Yard without doubt — and to the Home Office, too, for that matter — but why to you? Surely you have nothing to condemn yourself for.”

Holmes’s eyes flashed. “For God’s sake, Watson! I assisted in a conspiracy to secretly and unlawfully confine an heir to the throne of the realm! I concealed evidence in a murder! I committed several violations of the Criminal Acts, any one of which would see me in the dock at the Old Bailey and earn me a prolonged holiday at Her Majesty’s expense. And you don’t even know the worst of it!” He threw up his hands. “Good Lord, you don’t even know the
half
of it! Which is probably just as well, for whilst it is a weight I would willingly unload from my conscience, it is not knowledge I should wish anyone else to be burdened with. Certainly not you!”