Slowly, I climbed the darkened stairway to the fourth storey. Accompanied by the muffled shouts and cries of various inhabitants, I located the door, which Charlie Duffle had identified as belonging to Roderick Cheek, and knocked smartly upon it.
Though no sounds came from within, the door creaked open at my touch. Thick grime clung to the window glass; but with no curtains to block the light, a few feeble rays did work their way into the room. I could not help musing that the small area they illuminated resembled the claustrophobic confines of Raskolnikov’s tiny flat. Dostoevsky had described the latter as “coffin-like”. Confining rooms cramp the spirit, he maintained.
Though I remained standing at the portal, I could readily see that the contents were equally Spartan: a wooden table and chairs to the left, a small bed against the back wall, a chest of drawers and a small rickety shelf full of books to the right. Mildewed strips of what once might have been yellow wallpaper curled down at varying lengths from just below the crown moulding at the ceiling.
Upon the bed were heaped piles of old clothes and blankets, and it took a few moments for me to discern some movement beneath them.
“Will - William, is that you, mate?” came a muffled voice at last.
“No,” I said, entering slowly, “I am afraid I am not William. I am, in fact, John Watson, a medical doctor.”
A drawn, pale face burrowed up from under the blankets. Thanks to the photograph I had brought along, I concluded that in spite of a week’s worth of beard, dark lines in the forehead, tangled hair, and deep shadows beneath glazed eyes, the face did indeed belong to Mr Roderick Cheek.
“Has - has William sent you? He knows I’m not well.”
I took a step towards the bed in the same manner I would approach a patient. “What is wrong with you?” I asked.
“I’m burning up, Doctor. I - I have some sort of fever.”
I stood next to the bed now and, applying the back of my hand to Roderick Cheek’s perspiring brow, was immediately convinced that he had accurately diagnosed his condition. A metal cup and glass water-pitcher had been placed on a chair next to the bed. I filled the cup with water and placed it in his shaking hand. He raised the cup to his lips and slowly drank.
I waited for him to put down the cup, and then I spoke of my true intentions. “I’m afraid, Mr Cheek, that you have welcomed me under false pretences. I have not come here to examine your health.”
The ailing young man struggled to sit up. With his feverish eyes, he examined me closely. “Then what - what are you doing here?” he demanded.
The very question I was asking myself. What could I hope to determine by questioning someone in so sickly a condition? “I am the associate of Mr Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective. Perhaps you are familiar with his name.”
Exhaling and falling back against a limp pillow, Cheek shook his head. “Never heard of him. What’s this got to do with me?”
“Your sister came-”
“Priscilla sent you?”
“Your sister is deeply concerned about your welfare, Mr Cheek. She asked Sherlock Holmes to find out where you were living. She wishes to help you.”
“I’m done with her!” Cheek fairly shouted. “For my sake, she insists on marrying a fool of a banker. She wants his money to enable me to succeed. I shall not allow it!” He screamed and shuddered at the same time.
Whatever his strategy - if strategy it even was - his histrionics needed to be reined in. The issue that kept gnawing at me would be the very thing to sharpen his focus. “Do you know a pawnbroker called Gottfried?” I dared to ask.
“Samuel Gottfried?”
Obviously, he did know the man.
Roderick Cheek paused to collect his thoughts. “I-I know him. He lives nearby. In Brick Lane. I’ve pawned a few items with him. I - I think he still has the watch my father gave me. Why do you ask?”
“Monday night.” said I calmly, “Mr Gottfried was murdered.”
Cheek’s expression remained quizzical though perspiration covered his brow. He said nothing for a few moments, as if trying to come to grips with what I had told him. “And why,” he asked at last, “have you come here to report this to me?”
“You were a client of the man,” I said. “Associates for Sherlock Holmes-” (my friend’s euphemism for “children” seemed reassuringly official) “-reported to me where you live, and I am here to investigate.”
“Investigate? Investigate what? This is the first I’ve heard of any such murder.”
“And Monday night? Where were you?’
Cheek sighed. “Like any night lately - here in bed. Look at me. I’m not well, I tell you.”
I looked, but my mind was already racing ahead to the key question. If I was not the one to ask it, who would? “Tell me, Mr Cheek, have you ever read the Russian novel, Crime and Punishment?”
“Crime and Punishment? Dostoevsky?” He pulled up the dark-blue blanket to mop his forehead. “Why, yes,” he said. “In school. A year ago. For a tutorial in Russian literature. But why-” here a smile broke through the man’s illness - “oh, I see. In the novel, Raskolnikov murders his pawnbroker, and you’re wondering if... Hold on - Raskolnikov murdered the pawnbroker’s sister as well. Who else besides Gottfried was killed?”
“His wife,” I said. Holmes would have noted that it was Cheek himself who suggested a second victim. Cheek’s next admission seemed even more incriminating.
“With an axe, no doubt.” He followed this observation with a high-pitched laugh.
The synchronicity was unnerving. Though Cheek had offered no more information than the novel itself provides, Dostoevsky’s killer spends much of the time after
