turned a corner, and as both the east and the westerly branches turned yet again within a few yards, my only option seemed to be mere guesswork.”
“You never guess.”
“No,” he acknowledged, with the hint of a smile, “nor did I in this case. I listened. I could no longer hear him running. Soon I realized that the creature could have made his escape through a door and out the back entrance, which would explain the lack of audible footsteps. In any event, I could not wait indefinitely, so after a brief perusal of the area, I grudgingly turned back the way I had come.
“It was as I passed the lintel of a deep doorway that the glint of a knife caught my eye, and the unfortunate incident occurred which you are working to correct. He’d stopped just before the crossroads, not after, and I curse my own stupidity for not having noted the absence of footfalls a moment before. I am possessed of quite rapid defensive reflexes, however, and diverted the blow effectively.”
“You are very seriously injured, Holmes!”
“As the knife was aimed at my throat, you will concede I could have done worse. In any event, before I could rally, he was off again. I followed him, then began to feel I was not at my best and made my way back here.”
“Indeed, you are hardly at the top of your form,” I agreed, finishing the final knot of a makeshift brace and thanking my stars that in Afghanistan I had frequently done without proper medical supplies. “That is all I can construct for the moment. Slip your arm into this sling and we are off to hospital.”
“Yes to the former and no, I think, to the latter. There is work still to be done. Have you any cigarettes about you? I’ve lost my case.”
I opened my mouth to protest and closed it again, knowing I could no more drag Sherlock Holmes away from a murder investigation than command the world to spin in the opposite direction. Constable Lamb, who had been taking notes, rose to his feet as I passed my friend a cigarette and struck him a match.
“By the way, Mr. Holmes, how came you to suspect something was amiss?”
“Watson did not tell you? A pony on the street reared up and refused to approach the passage.”
“Many ponies are skittish and dislike entering new territory if it is dark.”
“Yes, but this pony was going home. Its master’s reins lay slack in his lap; therefore, the pony stopped upon seeing something unusual which it did not like.”
“I see,” said the constable, somewhat dubiously, I thought with irritation. “And the murderer—would you describe him?”
Holmes closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. “The damnable luck is that I never once caught a glimpse of his face. He had wrapped himself about the neck and mouth and ran with his head down. He wore an overcoat, British cut, dark material, heavy shoes, and a worn cloth hat. He was clutching a parcel wrapped in newspaper, not heavy, under his left arm. Did you see him clearly, Watson?”
I somberly indicated I had not.
“So, Mr. Holmes, you and your friend here maintain that, although you confronted this fellow on two separate occasions this very night, you would be unable to identify him? I mean to say, it seems very unlikely, does it not?”
“Well, Officer,” my friend replied, crushing the remainder of his cigarette underfoot, “I suppose I must ask whether you find it likely that a man would take up tearing apart street women as a hobby. We appear to have quit the realm of likelihood, have we not? Come, we are losing time. Where strength has failed us, let us see what we can accomplish through reason alone.”
CHAPTER NINE The Double Event
It must have been well past two by the time we approached the grimy passageway where the body remained. Holmes looked ghastly but frenziedly determined. The constable frequently attempted to catch my eye, I suspected with the idea of removing Holmes from the scene, but he met with a stony and unflinching profile.
“Has anything been touched?”
“We have searched the surroundings for accomplices. The scene remains as it was when the Yard took possession.”
It is perhaps irrelevant, however pressing it seemed to me at the time, to say I had developed a headache the likes of which I had never before experienced. In my dazed state, I failed to observe my companion’s machinations with any exactitude until he approached the constable with fiery resolve in his slate grey eyes.
“The deceased is between forty and forty-five years old, though hard living has made her age more difficult to ascertain. She is a smoker, she went with her killer willingly into this byway, she makes occasional use of a padlock, she is not an absolute drunkard, she had experienced more than her share of violence before this event, and she consumed a bunch of grapes with the man who killed her. He, by the by, is right-handed, five foot seven, intimately acquainted with the district, and an Englishman.”
Constable Lamb blinked once and then narrowed his eyes. “In the absence of my superiors, I must record the evidence behind your…assertions, sir.” He rested his case, seemingly pleased by his own propriety.
“Must you indeed?” Holmes said lightly. “She is a smoker, because she retains in her hand a packet of cachous.* She went with her killer willingly because she would have dropped them had she fled. In addition, I happen to have seen this woman some little time ago at a pub, and she was not then wearing a red rose with white maidenhair fern pinned to her jacket. The killer courted her briefly—you may observe the grape stalk yourself just beside the body—and led her into this alleyway. She or someone she knows must own a padlock, for what other lock could possibly fit the key I have discovered upon her? She once before was the victim of a violent individual who tore an earring from her lobe, and were she an utter drunk, she would doubtless by now have pawned one of her two combs.”
“I don’t see what’s so dashed clever about any of that,” muttered Constable Lamb, jotting down notes as quickly as he was able.
“Yes, I would be very much surprised to learn you could see anything at all.”
“Er…,” faltered the constable. “Yes, Mr. Holmes. If you would just wait for my superiors—”
“I should be all too gratified if you had any, but I fear—”
“They are approaching, I think, sir.”
Constable Lamb was correct. A very distraught Inspector Lestrade bore down upon us, nearly at a run. Behind him stood a hansom cab as well as a police carriage emitting further reinforcements from the Yard.
“Sherlock Holmes himself!” the trim inspector snarled, clearly delighted at the opportunity to vent his fury. “I have no reason to question why you are here. I am grateful—indeed, deeply grateful. For if you were not here, how would I go about explaining two murders in one night? Two murders, all within the space of a half mile!
Who could explain such a thing if not Sherlock Holmes, the crack private theorist?”
“Two murders certainly demands an explanation,” my friend replied, but I would be guilty of perjury were I not to report that he started visibly at the news, while I inhaled an unabashed gasp of amazement.
“What the devil has happened to your arm?”
“Return, if you will, Lestrade, to the scintillating topic of double murder,” Holmes shot back bitingly, his deeply rooted nonchalance shattering beneath the force of his alarm.
“Oh, it is of considerable interest, without a doubt,” sneered Lestrade. “Two murders certainly, to the minds of the official force, grow in consideration if they are committed within an hour of each other, not to mention a bloody twenty minutes’ walk!”
“Oh, yes?” was all my friend managed to stake upon a reply.
“You may ‘oh, yes’ all you like, Mr. Holmes, but you must know perfectly well that the murder you are presently investigating is neither the more revolting nor the more pressing of the two.”
Doubting my companion’s capacity for speech, I interjected, “We discovered this crime in progress. What has the killer done since we interrupted him?”
Lestrade looked as if he were about to swallow his own head, such was his confidence in Sherlock Holmes’s omniscience. “Don’t set yourselves against my nerves,” he snapped. “You mean to tell me you’ve heard nothing of
