Dust and Shadow

We thus found ourselves seated upon a pew in the well-kept but achingly bare room the Quinns shared. Similar pews lined the other three walls, scorched in places as if rescued from a fire, and a statue of the Virgin Mary whose cloak had half burned away sat majestically in a corner.

“Yer wondering at my furnishings,” Mrs. Quinn observed. “There was a great fire at one of the chapels hereabouts some years ago, when Mr. Quinn was still alive. Much of it was piled up for burning, but my Colin, he said the Lord would be grieved to see us wi’out so much as a stone to sit on, and here He’s provided us wi’ benches that would remind us of His goodness every day.

“Wi’out Mr. Quinn these five years, times has gotten steadily worse, and I’d taken the notion of bringing in extra lodgers. God forgive me for saying since his death this house has seemed as cursed as any I’ve ever heard tell of back home. The first family lived happily enough upstairs before their eldest daughter took sick. The Connellys they were called, the six of ’em. Wasn’t long before Katie’d spread the pox to the others, and it was all I could do to keep ’em supplied with hot water and linens wi’out exposing our family to the sickness. After four of ’em had died, the other two just disappeared into the night. I’ve been wanting to rent the room again, for it’s months since they’ve gone, but the notion of cleaning it is a hard one, for I’ve more knowledge of how these things are passed than most, and I’ve a mortal terror of taking sick with Tim and Rebecca to think of.

“The other chamber was near enough destroyed when a kerosene lamp fell from a table, but I still had the attic room, and last August I rented it to yer friend, Johnny Blackstone, just after the Connellys all vanished. I think he liked this house, for it was so easy for him to be alone, and I hardly ever saw him from one day to the next. Whenever we did meet, often as not I’d have the little ones in tow, and he’d laugh at the sight of ’em. He’d leave treats for ’em at the foot of the stairs—harmless things, boats he’d made, and paper dolls and the like. But he always seemed in a hurry to be quit of us and would strike off for one of his dens, or run upstairs to smoke that foul pipe of his, and so it was that when he died last week, I never noticed for well-nigh three days’ time. God forgive me for it.”

“How did he die, Mrs. Quinn?”

“He hanged himself, Mr. Escott,” she replied, her round hazel eyes brimming with tears.

Holmes and I regarded her with unfeigned horror, but she swiftly recovered her self-possession.

“The parish men took his body and performed a pauper’s burial. I cast about a bit for any as knew him, but when none did, I came to think how he’d been behind in his rent, and the washing I take in hasn’t been near enough, and winter just beginning. I pawned the lot of his things today when I’d done delivering my washing, Mr. Escott. All but the blanket, for we need another one.”

“Mrs. Quinn, though I don’t like asking you to think on such things, was there any sign of why a young fellow like Blackstone might have taken his own life? Something in the lot you pawned, for instance?”

“There was nothing like that save for a letter. I believe it’s for his sister. I’d have mailed it sooner, but I’ve only just gotten the postage from the goods I pawned.”

She brought the letter and placed it upon the table. Holmes did not so much as glance at it but regarded Mrs. Quinn with an admirable display of buried grief.

“Forgive me—Blackstone’s death has come as a powerful blow to us, you must understand. That he had fallen upon evil days I knew, but that he ever entertained the notion of taking his own life…well, my mate may be beyond help, Mrs. Quinn, but I can at least set his affairs in order. What did he owe you beyond what you took in from pawning his goods?”

“Three and sixpence, Mr. Escott.”

“Here is a crown, then, for his rent and the interest. As for his goods, you’ve saved us from dealing with them.” As we arose and shook hands with Mrs. Quinn, Holmes’s eyes at last fell upon the letter. “Might I have the honour of posting this, Mrs. Quinn? Surely all the proceeds from his kit ought to be your own.”

“I should be glad if you would do so. Thank you both for yer kindness. I am sure Mr. Blackstone sees it and is grateful.”

We took our leave of Mrs. Quinn’s ruinous house, the outside air tinged with spent powder and woodsmoke. My friend tucked the letter in his inner pocket, and we marched without a word exchanged between us back to Scarborough Street and up the precarious stairs to Holmes’s room.

Though I could see from the detective’s first glance at the address that something deeply troubled him, he proceeded with mechanical aplomb, carefully slitting it open only after he had exhausted the envelope. He glanced at the handwriting within, then promptly passed it to me and sat upon the orange crate with the tips of his fingers pressed before his nearly closed eyes.

“Read it.”

The message, written in a great, driving script on four one-sided sheets, went as follows:

My dearest Lily,

You must be very angry with me for having hidden myself away all this time, but I fear once I have told you the reason for it, you’ll be glad enough never to lay eyes on your brother again. How I’ve missed you, and Peter, and the little ones. Whatever you do, please don’t tell the children of this letter. Say I had to go back to war. Say anything. I couldn’t bear it if they were afraid of their uncle, even after the evil I’ve done. The thought that they will remember me as the man I wished to be always—but you won’t tell them, Lily. That’s a comfort to me. Maybe it’s the only one I have left.

You remember, when we were young ourselves, once in a great while I lost my wits a little. I even struck you, my darling sister, as hard as ever I could, and you only six at the time. Can you remember it still? Your lip bled and you hid from me, and after father dealt with me, I spent every spare hour in the barn for a week making you dolls out of straw so that you would forgive me. I swore I’d never fall into such a rage again.

There was a fellow in Egypt—never mind him, he came out of it all right, but we had been mates and it was never the same afterwards. And another chap after we’d come back to Plymouth who tried to cheat me at cards. I thought the opium helped make me quieter, but soon enough I saw it wasn’t any real good.

I’ve come to the part I would rather cut off my arm than tell you, but if you’re ever to forgive me and still think of me with kindness when I’m gone, you have to know the whole truth of it, for I can’t bear any more of this sham. There was a girl. We’d walked down an alley together and had hardly been there ten minutes before it happened. She said something wicked to me—no woman ought to say such a thing to a man. I was drunk, and all I could feel was that black rage burning a hole in my chest, and by the work of some devil, my bayonet was in my hand. It was over in a moment. She looked almost sad at what I’d done. I heard the sound of footsteps coming toward us, and I didn’t stop running until I fell in a ditch, where I lay until morning, and a ditch is where I’ve lived, body and soul, ever since.

I don’t deserve to see you again, and I can’t be trusted with the girls. Maybe I’ve spent time enough in a deep enough Hell since it happened that God will forgive me—or maybe there’ll be nothing anymore, just quiet, and maybe I want that most of all.

Johnny

We sat in silence for some time. I knew nothing of what Holmes was thinking, but my own mind was in a whirl. It was a terrible admission, a nightmare of guilt and self-recrimination, but knowing as much as Holmes and I did, also grossly inaccurate. Could Blackstone have fallen into such a murderous trance that he had forgotten stabbing Martha Tabram beyond all bounds of sanity? I reminded myself that his sister’s opinion was paramount to him, but it beggared belief that he would admit to a murder and then promptly obscure the manner of it.

And where, if his deranged mind even knew of them, was mention of the other killings? My friend had hinted at every opportunity that he thought this man Blackstone to be none other than Jack the Ripper. His insistence that the Tabram case was our starting point, his preoccupation with uniforms, his tolerance of Dunlevy’s spying, the very weeks he had spent in the East-end: all pointed irrevocably to Blackstone’s assumed guilt. But if he had been the culprit, were our troubles now at an end? If all five grisly murders were upon his shoulders, the confession I still held listlessly in my hand was nothing more than a monstrous lie, or else the ravings of a man so delusional that he had forgotten the bulk of his wrongdoing. So much was clear to me and yet allowed room for still one more intolerable scenario to present itself. Suppose that Sherlock Holmes had been wrong?

I stirred myself to regard my friend, who remained in the exact posture he had assumed when I began the letter. Relaxed and immobile, he could have remained perfectly still, perhaps for hours, outwardly catatonic while his mind grappled rarefied data into hard fact. Instead, he spoke.