CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Case and the Heart
Within half an hour we were soaked and chilled, and my leg ached dully as we made our way down rain- washed alleyways, the sound of our footsteps obscured by the storm. Fewer locals were about in that night’s elements than was usual, though people did continue to hurry past, shawls and scarves wrapped tight about their heads, sloshing the eddying mud beneath their feet.
“Curse this weather,” Holmes muttered fiercely after our first rendezvous with Lestrade and Dunlevy had ended, propelling us back into the rain. “It is hardly possible to identify a man at three yards in this wet, let alone that the garb necessitated by such conditions lends itself perfectly to concealment.”
“There are plainclothesmen enough to cover every passage. He can do nothing without being seen, if he ventures out on such a night at all.”
“He will be here.”
“But taking into account this gale—”
“I said he will be here,” Holmes repeated fervently. “No more words. We must have all our wits about us.”
Four o’clock came and went, marked by a lessening of loiterers as the weary plainclothesmen made their way home for a bath and an hour or two of sleep before the Lord Mayor’s Show recalled them to duty. The streets began to fill with scattered workmen and unfortunates, ducking into gin shops before the break of day.
Holmes and I met with Lestrade and Dunlevy at the Ten Bells for the final time at six o’clock that morning. We each allowed ourselves a glass of whiskey, clutched in fingers stiff from the cold. No one spoke for a time. Then my friend rose from the table.
“We must search every alley and courtyard.”
“We have missed nothing, Mr. Holmes,” moaned Lestrade. “If anything, we have stopped him entirely.”
“Nevertheless, I will satisfy myself that it is so. The shifts he indicated are over; we may as well go together. If anything has happened, it is too late to prevent it.”
We stepped out of the Ten Bells into Church Street and made our way down the road. Holmes strode avidly into passages, but Dunlevy, Lestrade, and I were by then so disheartened that we made scant effort to follow his every darting movement. Dawn’s cold grey light had just begun to soften the edges of the gleaming brick buildings when we passed a whitewashed entrance to yet another anonymous courtyard. My friend plunged into its depths while we waited on the street.
“I shall need a warm breakfast and a cup of tea if I’m ever to make it through this day,” Lestrade lamented.
“You’re to be in attendance at the Lord Mayor’s Show?” I commiserated.
“I am indeed.”
“My sympathies, Inspector.”
“It’s not the first sleepless night I’ve had on account of Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”
“Quite probably we have foiled an evil design by it. I can at least remind you that Holmes is the last man to mire himself in chimera.”
“That may be so, Dr. Watson,” Lestrade muttered sourly, “but he mires himself deep enough in theory that it’s a wonder he finds his way out again.”
“What’s keeping him, I wonder,” Dunlevy yawned.
“Holmes!” I called out. There was no reply. I passed through the shabby arch leading to the court, where entrances to tenements lined the constrictive corridor. The second door on the right stood open, and when I saw no sign of the detective at the end of the passage, I entered it.
In all my ensuing years of friendship with Sherlock Holmes, excepting that particular morning, we have never once spoken to each other of that room. On the rare occasions since that day I have pictured hell, I have seen that chamber. Cracks in the masonry showed through the dank walls. There was a candle resting on a broken wineglass, a fire dying in the grate, and a plain wooden bedstead standing in the corner. The metallic smell of blood and offal saturated the air, for on that bed lay a body. More accurately, on the bed and on the table lay various pieces of what had once been a body.
Holmes was leaning with his back against the wall, his countenance deathly white. “The door was open,” he said incongruously. “I was passing by, and the door was open.”
“Holmes,” I whispered in horror.
“The door was open,” he said once more, and then buried his face in his hands.
I registered footsteps behind me. “What the devil are you two—” Lestrade began, and then a choked cry escaped his throat when he saw what had been done.
“He could not work out of doors,” I stated. “And so, he took her to her room.” I forced myself to stare at what had once been her face, but very little apart from the eyes had been left intact.
The inspector gripped the wood of the doorframe unsteadily, all the blood draining from his features.
Dunlevy entered slowly, like a man sleepwalking. “Dear God in heaven,” he whispered in a breaking voice. “He has torn her apart.”
“You must go,” said my friend without moving, his face still covered by his hands.
“What?”
“You must send a telegram to my brother. His name is Mycroft Holmes. Tell him what has happened. He lives at one eighty-seven Pall Mall. Tell him what you see.”
“Mr. Holmes—”
“Go quickly, for God’s sake! The stakes are incalculable!”
Dunlevy ran off into the rain.
My friend forcibly pushed himself away from the wall and commenced examining the contents of that abominable bedchamber. I stood stupidly by the door for several moments longer before making my way to the body and staring at the various piles of flesh which had been removed and rearranged.
Lestrade joined me. “What do you make of it, Dr. Watson?”
“It is impossible to know where to begin,” I replied dully. “I saw something like it once, in a gas explosion.”
“The door was open, you say, Mr. Holmes?”
“Yes. It has been open for perhaps twenty minutes.”
“How can—”
“The amount of rain which has saturated the floorboards.”
“Ah. Anything of interest in the fireplace?”
Holmes turned from his work with an expression of furious impatience, but a second sharp cry from Lestrade arrested whatever rebuke hovered upon his lips.
The inspector had unthinkingly plucked a gleaming silver object out of the tissue heaped on the table. The thickened blood dripped from his hand as he stared at it.
“What is it, Lestrade?”
Lestrade merely shook his head and continued peering at the thing.
“I believe it is your cigarette case, Mr. Holmes,” he said in a very small voice.
Holmes released a short breath as if he had been struck in the chest. The inspector began absently polishing the blood off with his pocket handkerchief. “Initials S. S. H., I see. Yes, it is undoubtedly yours. You lost it the night of the double murder, is that not so?” He offered it to Holmes on his right palm. “Take it.” Wiping his hands mechanically, Lestrade furrowed his brow in thought. My friend turned the case over in his delicate fingers as if he had never seen it before.
At length, Lestrade spoke more forcefully. “Have you nearly finished in here, Mr. Holmes?”
My friend shook himself. “I require a few minutes more.”
The inspector nodded. “Very good. Then, Mr. Holmes, I think you had better leave. Yes, I must ask you to
