It took Sherlock Holmes exactly five days to complete the affair of the second cellist, and once concluded, my friend had the thanks of the premier branches of the British government, of which his brother Mycroft was a pivotal member. My own knowledge of Mycroft Holmes’s exalted occupation was at that time a closely kept secret, for he occasionally engaged his brother upon nationally vital inquiries about which neither Sherlock Holmes nor I ought to have had the slightest inkling. I regret to say, however, that when nothing but the most pedestrian of wrongdoing took place in the following weeks, my friend lapsed into that melancholy torpor which made my own life, not to mention that of our landlady, Mrs. Hudson, taxing in the extreme. Holmes ever maintained the opinion that we should abandon him entirely when such a fit was upon him, but as a medical man, I dreaded the sight of his tiny, impeccably kept hypodermic syringe and that momentous stop at the chemist’s which promised that my friend would commence to ruin himself for a matter of days or weeks if I did not take any steps to circumvent him. In vain I scanned the papers, and in vain I attempted to convince Holmes that a woman ought not to be stabbed so very many times, Whitechapel or no. At length I found myself longing, fleetingly and against the dictates of my conscience, for the advent of some sensational misfortune.
I rose early that fateful Saturday, the morning of September the first, and as I sat smoking a pipe after breakfast, Holmes strode into the sitting room, fully dressed and in the process of reading the
“Good morning, Holmes,” I remarked, just as our sitting room seemed in danger of disappearing under the crackling storm of newsprint.
“I’ve been out,” he replied.
“Yes,” I returned dryly.
“I hope you have already broken your fast this morning, Watson.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“It appears that the defilement of corpses is a growing industry in Whitechapel. They’ve found another one, my dear fellow. Abdomen apparently slashed after she was murdered.”
“What was the cause of death, then?”
“Her neck was nearly severed.”
“Good heavens. Where was she found?”
“In Buck’s Row, it seems, which arrested my interest immediately. I imagined the other matter a bizarre aberration, but here is another on its heels.”
“The first was bad enough.”
“That girl’s name was Martha Tabram, and the early report had it wrong: she was stabbed a grand total of thirty-nine times,” he stated dispassionately. “Yesterday morning’s victim, whose name was apparently Mary Ann Nichols, by all accounts was partially eviscerated.”
“Dare I hope you shall look into the matter?” I asked.
“It is hardly within my purview to do so when no one has consul—”
At that moment, Mrs. Hudson entered and surveyed our newly adorned furnishings with silent cynicism. Our landlady was not in the best of spirits, for Holmes in his devil-may-care humour had used the berry spoon to dissolve chemical elements over his burner, and the disagreement this activity had caused had not yet resolved itself to her satisfaction.
“Gentlemen to see you,” she said from the doorway. “Inspector Lestrade and one other. Will you be requiring aught from my cupboards, Mr. Holmes, or have you everything you need?”
“Ha!” Holmes exclaimed. “Lestrade occasionally evinces the most impeccable timing. Indeed no, Mrs. Hudson, I’ve sufficient cutlery for my purposes. I shall ring if I want anything in the way of a pickle fork. Do show up the inspector, if you will.”
With studied dignity, Mrs. Hudson exited. A few moments later Inspector Lestrade and an associate entered the room. Holmes often had occasion to bemoan the intellect of our hatchet-visaged friend, the lean and dapper little inspector, but Lestrade’s diligence commanded our respect even when his utter lack of imagination strained the independent investigator’s nerves. On this occasion, Lestrade looked as rumpled and anxious as I had ever seen him. His companion was dressed in dark tweeds, his beard modestly trimmed beneath a more impressive moustache; he had a pale, retiring aspect, and his eyes darted shyly between Holmes and myself.
My friend took them in at a glance. “How are you, Lestrade? We should be delighted to offer you both coffee, or something stronger if required. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Doctor…?”
“Llewellyn. At your service, sir,” our visitor replied with evident disquiet.
“Dr. Llewellyn, I assure you I am at yours. You will excuse my use of your prefix—you have recently sustained some slight injury to your right hand, and the way in which the dressing is fastened leads me to believe it was secured entirely by the aid of your own left appendage. And yet, the cloth is not of a variety to be found outside a medical facility. I should be shocked to learn our local surgeons have grown so slovenly as to require a gentleman to secure his own bandages.”
“You are correct on all counts, sir—how very extraordinary.”
Holmes nodded briefly. “This is my friend and colleague Dr. Watson.”
“I am glad to meet you. I am glad to meet anyone willing to get to the bottom of this horrid affair.”
Holmes waved Lestrade and our nervous new acquaintance to their seats, the backs of the furnishings still entirely wreathed with newsprint. My friend then threw himself into his own armchair.
“You are here about Buck’s Row, I imagine,” he remarked. “You were knocked up yesterday, Dr. Llewellyn?”
“My surgery is at one fifty-two Whitechapel Road, some few minutes’ distance,” he acknowledged. “I was summoned at slightly before four yesterday morning. I completed a postmortem examination just now.”
“One moment, if you please. Lestrade, while I am delighted to see you, as ever, why in God’s name have you waited an entire day to consult me?”
“I’ve only just been reassigned two hours ago!” Lestrade protested. “Inspector Spratling began it, then Helson. I wasted no time in bringing Dr. Llewellyn round.”
“My abject apologies, Inspector.” Holmes smiled. “Your haste was not lax; it was unprecedented.”
“No more unprecedented than the corpse. If you had seen what I did at the morgue this morning, what Dr. Llewellyn here saw yesterday…” Lestrade shook his head. “Your methods may be unconventional, but we need an end to this case as quick as is possible. There’s something about it that’s very queer, Mr. Holmes, and correct me if I’ve the wrong end of the stick, but that’s where you tend to come in.”
Holmes settled back in his chair, half closing his eyes. “Very well, then. The story, as it happened to you, Dr. Llewellyn.”
“Well, Mr. Holmes,” Dr. Llewellyn began hesitantly, “as I have said, I hold a medical practice in Whitechapel Road which I obtained after I finished my studies at the University of London. That main thoroughfare is quite respectable, and to a great extent, the same ailments parade across my consulting room from day to day— influenza, rheumatism, agues—the most peaceful of maladies. However, living in London’s East-end as I do, I occasionally find my work to be of a more unsettling nature. A regular patient of mine once burst into my offices with a nasty knife wound, as he’d forgotten himself and wandered into a corner where some roughs thought his pocketbook worth trying for. I suppose that the immediate proximity of the slums would be all too obvious if I ever had cause to treat any of my poorest neighbours, but I fear they haven’t the means. In the case of disease, they consult quack street doctors for penny compendia of gin or of laudanum. And in the case of injury, as their wounds were often got through misadventure, many deem it safer to suffer in anonymity than to risk dealing with police.
“That terrible murder in George Yard Buildings three weeks ago left a strong impression on my mind. We all were shocked by the ferocity of it. I cannot convey to you my horror at what I was called upon to witness yesterday.”
Holmes held up a cautionary hand. “Please,” said he, “everything just as you saw it.”
“Buck’s Row is one of those sordid pitch-black byways of which Whitechapel boasts so many once the main road is abandoned. The body was situated at the entrance to a stable yard beneath a decrepit gateway. I saw nothing out of the ordinary save the body, but the inspector may have more to say on that subject.”
