The Last Sherlock Holmes Story Read online

  ‘You’ll have nothing to complain of on that score. Everything has been done as you directed.’

  ‘Then let us delay no longer. Come, gentlemen! We must not keep Jack the Ripper waiting!’

  It was a cold and blustery night, and we pulled our coats close about us as the four-wheeler Lestrade had brought rolled eastwards through the emptying city. The bleak prospect on every side seemed in complete accord with the nature of our business. The only signs of activity, indeed, were the gangs at work sweeping and sanding the streets for the Lord Mayor’s procession the following morning. Holmes pointed out these festal preparations.

  ‘There is yet another reason for feeling confident we shall see our man tonight. You must have remarked how he craves publicity. How could he pass over the chance to steal the Lord Mayor’s show with a bloodbath in Whitechapel? Every newspaper in the world would put out a special edition for such a story!’

  Lestrade grunted contemptuously.

  ‘To hear you talk, anyone would think the killer was a friend of yours. You seem to know his mind better than he does himself.’

  ‘“Humani nil a me alienum puto,”’ replied Holmes sententiously. ‘As long as you continue to believe, along with Tom, Dick, and Harry, that this affair is merely an English translation of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, so long are you going to remain in the dark. The secret of my success is simply that while everyone else has been wasting their time searching for a gorilla in human form, I have been looking for a man who for reasons of his own has chosen to assume a gorilla costume.’

  ‘Your success!’ cried the Scotland Yarder harshly. ‘That’s a good one, I’m sure. Another success like your last one will cost me my job! Don’t talk to me of your success! I don’t want to hear about it, or your gorillas either! I just wish I had a relative in Whitehall to square things with the bigwigs. Then you might see a thing or two, Mr Sherlock Holmes, and never mind your blessed gorillas!’

  By the end of this speech the little man was almost incoherent with rage. Holmes regarded him icily.

  ‘I really don’t know that that is any way to speak to a superior officer, Lestrade,’ said he.

  Our drive was completed in silence. We alighted at the same police station in Commercial Street which had been the scene of our vigils a fortnight earlier. The building was once more a hive of activity. A fire was roaring in the grate, and Holmes and I made haste to warm ourselves after the draughty cab ride. Lestrade, however, pointedly took himself off to join his fellow detectives at the other side of the room. This group ignored the two of us from the moment we entered the room, although the resident constabulary were friendly enough and pressed mugs of tea on us. But Lestrade’s pique in being forced to cooperate with the hated amateur was obviously shared by his colleagues from the Yard. Holmes took not the slightest notice of their display of ill-feeling.

  ‘I am here to catch a murderer,’ said he, ‘not to fraternise with a class of individuals whose conversational resources generally begin and end with the injunction that anything one says may be taken down and used in evidence.’

  On one wall of the room was posted a large plan of the district, marked with a great number of different coloured lines representing patrol routes, and circles with various symbols corresponding to the specified timings at given points. All this Holmes explained to me as we studied the system he had drawn up. I was enormously impressed by the thoroughness and skill with which the complicated web had been woven. Truly, nothing seemed to have been left to chance.

  ‘With such defences as these, it must be impossible for the killer to strike with impunity,’ I declared.

  Holmes looked grave.

  ‘I sincerely hope he does not agree with you.’

  ‘What? But you cannot wish him to succeed?’

  ‘By no means. But it is essential that he should be drawn into making the attempt. The principle underlying this complex of patrols is to allow him to do just that, and to take him in the act. I might add that formulating it has proved the third hardest intellectual exercise of my life. Without Mycroft’s assistance I should never have managed it in time. We completed the final details only last night. It made for a very tricky piece of applied mathematics, I can assure you. But then the whole case, really, has been of such exceptional interest. It is almost a pity to think that it may all be history by morning!’

  For several minutes I studied the plan in silence. Then I sighed deeply, and smote my palm with my fist.

  ‘How this waiting galls me! If we could only do something!’

  ‘As a matter of fact, we can,’ murmured Holmes.

  ‘When a crime is reported, yes! Until then we can only wait on the murderer’s pleasure. He might be anywhere out there.’

  I waved at the map on the wall. Holmes took a sheet of paper and a pencil from the table.

  ‘He might be, yes. But I have an idea I know just where he is. Look at this.’

  He passed me the paper, on which he had drawn this design.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ enquired Holmes with a smile.

  ‘It looks like one of those beastly things we had to copy at school. Some ancient Greek thought them up as a punishment for innocent children.’

  ‘I take it you are referring to Euclid’s theorems in plane geometry. The comparison is flattering – indeed not un-apt – but my little sketch has no musty schoolroom smell about it. It is simply a diagram showing the position of Moriarty’s last four murders. The letter N indicates the point where Nicholl’s body was found; C similarly stands for Chapman, S for Stride, and E for Eddowes.’

  ‘And X, I suppose stands for the unknown – the next victim. But how can you tell where to place it?’

  ‘Ah! Let me just turn the figure slightly this way, like so. Now what do you see?’

  For a moment I simply stared stupidly at the paper. Then, all at once, I had it.

  ‘It is a letter M!’

  ‘Exactly, Watson. It is a capital M. M for murder. M for –’

  ‘Moriarty! My God, Holmes, do you mean to tell me –’

  ‘That he is inscribing his initial upon the face of Whitechapel in human blood! You may remember that a letter M was found scrawled upon an envelope beside the body of Chapman. His first thought, no doubt, was to leave some such clue at the scene of each murder, like an artist signing a canvas. Then a bigger and better idea occurred to him – an idea which exemplifies to perfection the qualities of twisted humour, bestial genius and absolute egotism of which his character is composed.’

  I looked again at the design.

  ‘It’s a trifle lopsided, isn’t it?’

  ‘Indeed it is, though through no fault of the Professor’s. In fact the distortion of his initial sheds yet more light on that message on the wall. For this too, “the Jews” are to blame. The sites of the first three killings were perfectly calculated. There can be no doubt that each crime was coldly premeditated. You will note that the trio forms an equilateral triangle with a side of exactly one kilometre. To complete his design, Moriarty needed to create a second triangle identical to the first and sharing a common apex – the yard in Berner Street where Stride was killed. The result would have been a huge letter M, each stroke being one kilometre in length. The fourth murder was therefore meant to take place in the lower Minories, close by the Blackwall railway line. A fifth killing in the Brush-field Street area would then have completed the figure, as Moriarty would have lost no time in pointing out to the press. However, this ingenious and ambitious undertaking was irreparably damaged when he was forced to extemporise his fourth killing. Mind you, he did not do at all badly, all things considered. Mitre Square is almost exactly one kilometre from Berner Street, but unfortunately it is a little too far north for him to be able to complete his initial as he wished. He will have to settle for an M that is decidedly bent, though still recognisable, and to achieve that he must stage his fifth murder somewhere in the streets not far to the south of this station, by the new market. That is where I
expect him to strike, and that is where I shall go to meet him.’

  ‘Not without me!’

  ‘My dear fellow, if you wish to accompany me –’

  ‘I insist upon it.’

  ‘I expected as much. One moment, whilst I invent some suitable tale to tell Lestrade.’

  ‘Tell him the truth.’

  ‘Oh, he would never believe that!’

  It was shortly before midnight when Holmes and I emerged from the police station. For the next hour I found myself being led through a warren of lanes and alleys whose existence I had until then only read about. Our previous forays had all been made by carriage, and had been confined to the main thoroughfares. Now for the first time I saw in detail and at close quarters the milieu which Jack the Ripper had chosen for his ghastly sport.

  At the time, the popular impression of the murderer was of a great strapping brute swathed in black who skulked through deserted and fog-bound streets until he met up with the one unescorted and attractive female who was also abroad. The passing years have added their seal of authority to this notion, and today no one thinks to question it. As one who was there, I must protest that it is a complete travesty of the actual circumstances, and one that considerably devalues their real horror. What lent these crimes their almost supernatural aura was the fact that they were committed on perfectly clear nights, and in streets that were if anything busier and better lit at that hour than most others in the city. The lighting was largely provided by the lodging-houses. These huge brick barns, containing hundreds of beds to rent by the night, each carried a lamp suspended above its front entrance as a beacon to guide the footsteps of its patrons, who, coming and going as they did at all hours, in turn accounted for the relative busyness of the streets compared with those of more respectable and better ordered districts. Throughout the night this tide of humanity, though it might slacken, continued to run. No sooner did the beer-shops let out than the lodging-houses took in, and at all times there was the constant trickle of those too poor to hire a bed, those in search of the bars that never closed, those too drunk to find their way, those too exhausted to care, those in fractious mood, and those bent on larceny or worse. And finally – as impossible to forget as they were to ignore – there were those women whose labours began when their honest sisters sought their rest, and whose trade was plied in the hours when conscience slumbers and shame hides its face.

  I have no family to consider, so there can be no harm now in confessing that I sowed a few wild oats in my youth. Medicine is not a subject one can study from an ivory tower. The facts of life and death pass daily before one’s eyes, and the result for the student body is a certain communal moral laxity which, precisely because it is communal, remains essentially innocent. In a word, it was a question of going along with the other fellows or being taken for a nancy-boy. Then, too, we were in London, where anything may be had for a price – and in those days the price was generally not exorbitant. The upshot, at any rate, was that I had seen something of life as it was lived in that warren of streets off the Haymarket. But despite this, I found myself utterly unprepared for the scenes to which I was exposed as Holmes and I mingled with the unfortunates of Spitalfields that night.

  God knows, they were pathetic creatures! On their faces one could see limned every last extreme of illness, deprivation, hopelessness, and vice. It was impossible to hazard a guess at their ages. I asked one, who looked older than the city itself. She told me that she thought she might be thirty-two, and then made a suggestion so indescribably filthy that I cannot bring myself to set it down. I was to hear many more such expressions that night, but I never grew hardened to them. During my spell in Afghanistan I occasionally overheard talk in the mess concerning the abominable practices of some of the heathen superstitions, but never in my life had I expected to hear such language on the lips of an Englishwoman, however reduced in circumstances. I believe, however, that the greater number of the unfortunates in Whitechapel at that time were not in fact English at all, but of Celtic or Continental origin.

  As Holmes and I moved ever deeper into this labyrinth of sin, it began to seem that we had been mysteriously spirited out of London and set down in some limbo inhabited by alien beings. We found ourselves continually the objects of immoral propositions, and since Holmes thought it expedient to question the women and to warn them, we were unable to dismiss these with the contempt they so richly merited. We had to stop, to listen, to look. And while my friend questioned the women verbally, I for my part tried to read the riddle of their faces. Ever since first hearing about the Whitechapel murders I had, like everyone else, envisaged the victims as being people of my own kind. One reads an empty name – Annie Chapman, or Elizabeth Stride – and fills in the features of the women one sees every day. It is a natural trick of the mind. But now, face to face with the type of the Ripper’s prey, I found any such identification both impossible and absurd. Whatever else one might feel about these hags, one thing was absolutely clear – they were not as other women, or even as other people. Rather they were another species altogether. To my amazement and dismay, I found that the moral fury with which I had burned on learning of Moriarty’s atrocities was now sensibly subsiding under a choking layer of cold indifference. I found myself posing terrible and unanswerable questions. What did it matter? What difference did it make whether the Ripper picked on this one, or that, or none, or all of them? No one would miss them. No one would care. No one – not even themselves – would regret their passing. Most were already dying by degrees of disease and inanition, and the Ripper’s knife would be infinitely quicker and more merciful than the agonies that would attend their natural deaths.

  Such were my thoughts, such the grim message I read in those battered features where nothing lived but the blind unreasoning instinct to go on living, even though life could mean nothing but pain.

  It was past one when we returned, cold and weary, to the police station. My leg was starting to trouble me, and I was glad to be able to rest by the fire with a warm drink. Holmes had grown increasingly taciturn as our patrol had continued. Now he sat sullenly at the table, studying the plan affixed to the wall. At length I went over to join him. One odd thing I had noticed was that throughout our wanderings in Spitalfields we had hardly encountered a single policeman. I attempted to question my friend about this, but he only murmured something about ‘the open door of the trap’. Lestrade, meanwhile, was as voluble as Holmes was reticent. He harped on and on in a carrying voice about the waste of time and money caused by this fruitless patrolling, and opined that such was invariably the result when pen-pushers started meddling in the affairs of the police. To all of this the assembled detectives added their vociferous assent. Suddenly Holmes sprang to his feet, took his coat and hat and walked out. I hurried after him, but he was moving so quickly that we were in the street before I caught up to him. To my chagrin he attempted to repulse me.

  ‘Stay behind, Watson! I can see your leg is giving you pain.’

  ‘It’s nothing. I am quite used to it by now.’

  ‘But I really have no need of you, my dear fellow. Must I be blunt? You can be of no assistance.’

  But I was not to be put off this time.

  ‘I am coming, Holmes, and that is final! If you think for one minute that I could sit there listening to Lestrade and drinking tea, while you are out here facing –’

  ‘Oh very well then. Suit yourself. But we must make haste! Moriarty is already on the prowl. I can sense it!’

  The wind whipped a light rain into our faces. Holmes was walking at such a pace that I had the greatest difficulty in keeping stride with him. His eyes darted restlessly from side to side. His hands were tightly clenched and his whole frame seemed to tremble with agitation. Then, quite suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks. He gazed into the darkness ahead of us. I looked, but I could see nothing remarkable. Then I realised that his fit was one of abstraction.

  ‘Twice, Watson!’ he said in a voice of quiet wonder. ‘
He must kill twice on the same spot!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ha! A pretty problem! This evening’s victim, and the one we robbed him of last time. But he will have to kill them both on the same spot, or he throws his initial out. A pretty problem indeed!’

  I paused to consider the question, but my companion was already yards away and moving almost at a run. I hurried after, but no sooner was I abreast of him than he once again pulled up short. We had reached a corner. A large church in the Classical style stood opposite, looking sadly out of place in this neighbourhood. Holmes’s bony fingers encircled my wrist and pulled me back into the doorway of a public house. A moment later I heard the footsteps. Holmes’s whisper was barely audible, yet I rocked on my feet as though he had struck me.

  ‘It is he!’

  The next instant a figure passed swiftly by our hiding-place. It was too dark for me to make out anything of his features, but by the same token Holmes and I escaped his notice. He crossed the road obliquely and disappeared into the street opposite without for a moment slackening his pace. As soon as he was out of sight, Holmes grasped my shoulders urgently.

  ‘There’s no time to lose!’ he hissed. ‘I will keep him in sight. Do you return to the station and alert Lestrade. He has his orders. But for God’s sake hurry!’

  With that he was gone. I am by no means clear about what happened next. The facts are plain enough – as I turned away to do Holmes’s bidding my foot landed on the edge of the step on which we had been standing, wrenching my wounded ankle. The pain, though brief, was intense. When it passed I set off with all the speed I could muster. But instead of making for the police station, I went after Holmes and Moriarty. My decision deliberately to ignore the orders I had been given was completely spontaneous, and I would be hard put either to justify or explain it. Perhaps I had simply been deceived too many times lately by Holmes’s stratagems, and had grown suspicious. At all events, my only thought now was to stick by my friend, whatever he was about. Moriarty might indeed be the devil incarnate, but I had no doubt he would stop a revolver bullet the same as any other man.