Dust and Shadow

I smiled cautiously. “Do you mean a silent trek, or an explication of every passerby we happen to encounter?”

“I leave it to you.”

I considered the question. “Your deductions are always of the greatest interest to me.”

“In that case, I have no choice but to hone my skills,” he replied with a shrug.

“Will a bite of supper be involved? For the both of us, mind,” I added emphatically.

“It is entirely possible,” he granted. “If we are agreed, let us be off. ‘Beneath is all the fiends’. There’s hell, there’s darkness, there’s the sulfurous pit…’”

“My dear fellow, I don’t imagine Shakespeare intended that speech to describe the view from our window. He had never seen it, after all.”

“Hadn’t he?” Holmes smiled. “Then I suppose you’ll have to do in his stead; you’ve a penchant for the dramatic as well. Let me know when you’ve worked out something better. Come along, my dear fellow.” He disappeared down the stairs.

Acknowledgments

My thanks are first owed to my parents, John and Vicki Farber, whose interest in literature in general and the Sherlock Holmes mysteries in particular led directly to my having the gall to write this book in the first place. They should also be credited with my having the gall to think I can do any thing I set my mind to, which is uncommonly kind of them. Key credit must also be given to my late uncle Michael Dobbins, who once gave a ten-year-old girl his hardback red suede copy of the Adventures and the Returns. He is missed and will be remembered.

Credit for Fight Choreographer, and President of the Department of Sticking to the Plot for the Love of All That’s Decent, goes to Johnny Farber: my brother, my first editor, and my first collaborator. I would pay him, but I probably couldn’t afford him.

To my actual editor, Kerri Kolen, and all the team at Simon & Schuster including Victoria Meyer and the band of talent who have made my book what it is, thank you from the bottom of my heart. My vague notions of the concept “editor” were blown to smithereens by Kerri, who is unfailingly kind while she is being critical. I couldn’t have asked for a more sensitive and forthright commander in chief.

Dan Lazar’s dedication is, as far as I am concerned, the gold standard for agents. If he ever sleeps, I haven’t seen it, or at least he sleeps about as much as Sherlock Holmes does. Josh Getzler, also of Writers House, was the first person who ever laid eyes on my book who felt inclined to do something about it. They are both impossibly good to me, and Dan deserves a medal.

My love of Sherlockiana is deep-rooted, but a few scholars must be singled out for mention. William S. Baring-Gould’s annotated collection was an invaluable staple, drawing from Sherlockian luminaries too numerous for me to list. Likewise Leslie Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes provided answers of all varieties, and I am grateful for his scholarship, as well as that of all those authors cited in his work.

My most grateful thanks are due to the Estate of Dame Jean Conan Doyle, and in particular its representative Jon Lellenberg, for their invaluable assistance and support. As a lifelong admirer of the world of Sherlock Holmes, their blessing is a prodigious honor. I hold the highest respect and love for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters, and the Estate’s encouragement of my project has meant more to me than I can express. In addition, I am in debt to the vast international web of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, whose generosity and heartfelt enthusiasm continually astonish me. They share their lives with me, and that is what writing new tales of the Great Detective is about. As John le Carre said, no one writes of Sherlock Holmes without love.

There are a great many Ripper scholars whose research was mined for this volume, and they deserve far more than my thanks. To be specific where specificity is due, Stewart Evans is the sole reason this book appears remotely free of error, and any remaining mistakes fall squarely on my own head. Donald Rumbelow, Martin Fido, Paul Begg, Keith Skinner, Philip Sugden, Stephen Knight, Philip Rawlings, Peter Underwood, Peter Vronsky, Scott Palmer, Roger Wilkes, Patricia Cornwell, James Morton, Harold Schechter, Jan Bondeson, Colin Wilson, Andrew Maunder, Brian Marriner, Paul H. Feldman, Melvin Harris, Paul West, Peter Costello, Nathan Braund, Maxim Jakubowski, Eduardo Zinna, and the press reports archives of the comprehensive www.casebook.org were critically helpful to me in grasping the details of these still-harrowing crimes.

I would like to thank the New York City restaurant Osteria Laguna for firing me, leading to a series of events without which I would never have written this book.

Finally, thank you, Gabriel. You inspire me. Your willingness to expand the realm of the possible makes me fight all the harder. Thank you for believing in this book.

^* The group of street urchins often employed by Holmes to elicit information.

^* William Burke and William Hare sold the corpses of their seventeen victims to Edinburgh Medical College between 1827 and 1828. The murders led to the legalization of obtaining cadavers by other means.

^* At the time, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, whose actions during the “Bloody Sunday” riot in Trafalgar Square in 1887 were much deplored by liberals.

^* Latin, “She flies with her own wings.”

^* A glass of gin.

^* To “voker Romeny” was to speak the language of London’s destitute, also known as Thieves’ Cant, which Sherlock Holmes would likely have employed very often in a professional capacity.

^* A sovereign; Holmes is offering her as much again if she meets them at the rendezvous point.

^* Lozenges used to freshen the breath.

^* Heavy, polluted fog.

^* Jean-Martin Charcot was a French neurologist whose work in the fields of hypnosis and hysteria broke new ground in the burgeoning field of psychology. Sigmund Freud studied under him in 1885.

^* Penned by Carl Wernicke, Wilhelm Griesinger, and Richard von Krafft-Ebing, respectively.