The Sherlockian (20 page)

“Yes, yes, of course, George of all people would attract such stories. Bit of an Orientophile, that boy. But behavior befitting the rude men who work on the seas, and the rude heir to Wales, is not necessarily behavior befitting a solicitor’s daughter from West Hampstead. If Sally was inked, she was inked in secret.”

Arthur thought that Bram seemed impressed by this reasoning, but that he was doing his best to conceal it.

“Why, she’d go to the docks, of course,” said Bram. “She could have anything she liked done in secret by the river. This neighborhood’s reputation, in matters as unladylike as these, precedes it.”

“Very good,” said Arthur. “Precisely.”

At this, Bram made a strange face, though Arthur had no idea why. He was too busy enjoying the requisite pedantry of detective work. This was ever so much more thrilling than his day at the Yard, sifting through papers. To discover something for oneself was exciting, of course, but to then explain it to a mystified audience . . . Well, a detective needs an audience. Arthur felt that he understood his old Holmes more and more with every passing day. “Now then, our girl is off into London, headed for the docks. Where does she go?”

“The closest stations are the Shadwell and Fenchurch stations on the Blackwall line, or, better yet, Wapping Station on the East London line.”

“Indeed you’re right,” said Arthur. “That’s how a city dweller would get there. But Sally Needling wasn’t from the city, was she? To make it to the Blackwall line, she’d have had to muck about between trains at Cannon Street. Frankly, it’s confusing, even for someone like me. And she doesn’t know the docks at all. She’s a simple country girl. Don’t you think she’d have taken the simplest route possible to any stop that read as next to the London docks on a rail map?” Arthur produced a rail map from inside his coat pocket and stretched it out between his hands. “See here! She’d have taken the Great Northern to King’s Cross, obviously. Then she’d have taken the Metropolitan line here, to Aldgate.”

“But the Mark Lane station is closer to the docks.”

“Yes, but would she have known that? I suspect not. Examine this map.” Arthur stopped walking and turned to face the wall of a tavern. He spread the map flat against the wall with his palms. Inside, he could hear the clinking of pint glasses and the squeaks of boots on beer-sodden boards. It was a tuneful clatter, a song beaten out every afternoon by a drunken rabble on dirty glass and crumbling wood.
The Ballad of the Midday Bitters,
Arthur thought.

“Does it not look,” he continued, “from the way the streets are drawn, as if it would be easier to get to the docks from Aldgate Station than Mark Lane? You and I know that in the world as it exists, Mark Lane is closer. But in the world as Sally Needling understood it, Aldgate is the nearer. She’d have looked at this great, wide street right here—the Commercial Road—and decided it was an easier route than the crisscrossing mess she’d have had to dodge through by the Tower. So she’d walk east from the station, to the Commercial Road, and then turn right onto Leman. She’d approach the docks this way, right from Wellclose Square. Come along!”

Arthur hurried, dragging the rail map through the air behind him like a kite. Bram followed along as Arthur dodged his way between the pickpockets and the whores, south toward St. George. As he ran, Arthur observed the shop fronts they passed: tobacconists, public houses, shipping offices, boardinghouses. As they neared Wellclose Square, Arthur veered off east, but a tap on the shoulder from Bram put him back on track to the south, toward the docks. On the corner of St. George and Well Street, just below the Wellclose Square, he found what he’d been looking for: a Far Eastern spice merchant.

“Tang Spice,” read the hand-carved sign out front. “Import and Export.”

“Aha!” cried Arthur. “Perfect. What does Sally know of tattooing, save that it is an art cultivated in the East? She’d certainly have gone to an Eastern shop to procure its services.” He pulled open the crooked front door and entered the spice merchant’s shop. Instantly a host of smells washed over Arthur and Bram as they stepped past the doorway. Neither man had the faintest clue as to the origins of these intoxicating scents. Strange perfumes clogged their nostrils and lightened their heads. The sensation was dizzying, but oddly pleasurable.

A small Chinese man, old and frail, appeared from a back room. He had a single scrap of white hair atop his head, and he wore a dirty robe, stained with streaks of bright orange.

“Sirs,” whispered the old man. “How do I help?”

“I hope you’re able to help me quite a bit,” said Arthur quickly. “Do you by any chance work with ink?”

The old man frowned. “Ink? I do not import the ink from China, sirs.”

“Not to import, my good man. Rather, to burn it into my skin. I would like a tattoo, you see, and I’m sure that in your days you’ve drawn more than a few for a lost traveler.”

The old man’s frown remained for a moment and then dissipated into a shrug.

“Afraid, good sir,” he said, “that you are in error. Here I sell spice. Not the skin paintings.” He raised his bony right hand, which shook as he raised it. He held his arm straight out, and Arthur could see the twitching of the man’s fingers. “Afraid I could not draw one, if even I attempt it.” Finally the man lowered his hand.

There was no way this man could hold a hot needle steady enough to ink a tattoo without forever scarring the customer.

“Pardon me,” said Arthur, the excitement puffing out of him through a deep sigh. Without another word, he led Bram outside the shop. Though they had been inside for only a short while, they each felt a shock of daylight and fresh air as they stepped back on to the street. The spice smell tingled Arthur’s nose hairs as it was sucked away by the wind.

“But I would swear,” he said after a moment, “that they must have come by here. They
must
have, Bram, it’s the only path that makes sense!”

“She might have found a willing tattooist in any public house between the river and Whitechapel Road,” replied Bram. “Or she might have asked any passing sailor on the street to perform the service. There’s no way to deduce where she went, my friend.”

Arthur considered the problem deeply. Was Bram in the right? Was there truly no way, given the faint information they had, to deduce the thoughts and actions of those girls? If that was true, then the whole process of detective work that Arthur had described in two dozen ripping tales was fraudulent. He had everything he needed to piece the matter together, Arthur felt so in his bones. If he could not do it, then he wouldn’t merely be a failed detective—he’d be a failed writer as well. He and Holmes would go down as charlatans together. Arthur’s “science of deduction,” the ability to reason one’s way through the darkest horrors of the human experience, would prove but a dreadful sham. A penny lie, and not worth so much as that.

Another strange thought came to Arthur’s mind as he stood on St. George, just below the Wellclose Square. Was this how it felt to be one of his readers? To be lost in the middle of the story, without the slightest of notions as to where you were headed? Arthur felt horrible. He felt as if he had no control of events as they unfolded. What trust his readers must put in him, to submit themselves to this unnerving confusion, while holding out hope that Arthur would see them through to a satisfying conclusion. But what if there were no solution on the final page? Or what if the solution were balderdash? What if the whole thing didn’t work? His readers took a leap, did they not? They offered up their time and their money. And what did the author promise them in return?

I am going to take care of you, he wanted to say to them. I know it seems impossible now, but it will all work out. You cannot see where I’m going, but I can, and it will delight you in the end.

Trust me.

And so many had honored Arthur with their trust.

He took the map from his pocket. He pulled it wide and sat down on the curb.

Bram gave a look of displeasure. “Arthur, it must be filthy down there—”

“She hadn’t a clue where she was going, man! That’s the key. If you knew nothing about this area, where would you go?” Arthur traced his fingers across the map as if it were written in braille.

“We walked directly from the Metropolitan Station to the docks, and I didn’t see any other spicers along the way.”

Arthur looked hard at the map.

“We walked to the docks directly,” he said. “Directly! That’s it!”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“We walked to the docks directly, by taking the most direct route, because
you
knew how to get here! But Sally would not have known the most direct route. Remember how I stopped at Wellclose Square and started off to the left?”

“Yes,” said Bram, beginning to put it together himself. “The street opened out that way. But it doesn’t actually lead toward the docks, it only leads east and back up to Cable Street.”

“But I didn’t know that!” said Arthur with great excitement. “Without you there to correct me, I would have headed into the square!”

He leaped to his feet. He was almost run over by a broad four-wheeler as he dashed into the street. The baying horses missed him by only a few inches. The carriage driver shouted something that sounded like an obscenity, though Arthur wasn’t paying enough attention to hear precisely what the man had said. He turned around and raced back north up Leman Street, away from the docks. Bram ran just behind him.

In the center of Wellclose Square, the Danish Church rose two stories above the Neptune Street Prison to its left. A flophouse for sailors, run by the Methodist Mariners Church, lay east of the square, beside the London Nautical School. Looking over the run-down inhabitants of the square, Arthur couldn’t help but think that the whole of the East End conformed to the square’s odd architectural organization: church, then prison, then slum; church, then prison, then slum.

Between the throngs of dark-faced sailors, Arthur spied another Oriental shop across the square. He ran to it eagerly.

But inside, he found the shopkeeper little more help than the previous one. Though of Eastern descent, the man did not administer tattoos. Arthur left dejected, again shaken in his faith.

“I cannot bear it, Bram. We reasoned it out. My logic is incontrovertible. The steps, as I’ve described them, are orderly and sequential. As sure as two and two make four, Sally Needling came into this square. It is too reasonable to be untrue.”

Arthur sat down again on the cold dirt. He leaned back against the side wall of the mariners’ boardinghouse. Two small windows dotted the wall above his head. They were surrounded by wooden placards announcing the rules of the house: “All sailors welcome,” said one. “Orientals welcome” and “Alcohol is forbidden on the premises,” said others. A warm glow came from inside, illuminating the placards and casting a red backlight on Arthur’s hat.

Bram stood before Arthur and gave him a pitying look.

“I’m sorry, my friend. Perhaps reason ends at the Tower, and in the slums of East London we have only madness to guide us.

“Let us go back home,” Bram continued, “and get a good night’s rest. You look exhausted. Perhaps tomorrow some thought will have burst into your mind which—” Bram stopped speaking. His next words appeared caught in his mouth, before he then swallowed them back down. He had the queerest expression on his face that Arthur had ever seen.

“Bram? Is something the matter?”

“Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.
Fuck.”
Bram looked positively bewitched.

Arthur sighed, leaning his head against the wall and folding his hands across his lap.

“I’m aware that we’re among sailors here,” he gently chastised his friend, “but that hardly means you have to speak like one.”

Bram responded with a cackle. Arthur was growing concerned. Had Bram suddenly lost his wits?

“I can’t believe my own eyes,” said Bram through his laughter. “Arthur, stand up.”

With a shake of his head, Arthur ascended to his feet. He dusted the dirt off his coat with a few pats of his hand.

“Now, turn around.”

Arthur turned around and faced the wall of the mariners’ flophouse.

Not six inches from his face was a pen-and-paper drawing of a threeheaded crow. It was tacked to one of the wooden placards on the wall, the one that announced “Orientals welcome.” The drawing was identical to the one Arthur held in his coat pocket.

“I would very much like to see Sherlock Holmes do that,” said Bram slyly. Arthur grinned, feeling devilish in his victory.

“Come along,” he said quietly.

Arthur led Bram around the Methodist Mariners’ boardinghouse until he found a side entrance, away from the church. A few other placards adorned the outer wall of the building. They were drawn in Oriental characters, each shape a complex array of interlocking strokes. Arthur was reminded of the hedge maze in front of Alnwick Castle.

“They’ve a separate house set up for the Oriental sailors,” said Arthur slowly as he realized what he’d found. “They can stay here for pennies while their ships are docked. And so a little community has formed. The sailors can trade goods with each other, alcohol and tobacco, opium and fresh pipes. And, naturally, they’ve a tattooist in residency.”

Arthur entered the building and was greeted by a wall of noise. Sailors from every port of the Orient shouted at one another in tongues, belting out foreign curses and dissonant chanteys. In one corner, a pile of men lay stacked, as if in a tin. Some puffed opium from three-foot pipes, while others had already fallen unconscious and lay across the floor or on the legs of their fellows. Two massive, bald Orientals held bottles, from which they drew a viscous liquid into glistening syringes. The bottles were small and bore the label “Friedrich Bayer & Co.: Pure Heroin for the Alleviation of a Child’s Bedtime Cough.” A nearby group was engaged in similar activities with a heavy jar of morphine. Arthur surveyed the state of international relations: Heroin from the Germans, morphine from the English, opium from the Chinese, and all traded freely until everyone drifted unconscious into his own sweet and vivid chimeras.