The Cthulhu Casebooks Page 5

  “Might I ask why you didn’t involve the police? Did you not go to them with your theory about the deaths and recruit their aid? The addition of several dozen constables would have made your ‘net’ that much broader and more tightly meshed.”

  “Ah, the police,” said Holmes. “There are a couple of Scotland Yarders with whom I have forged promising but as yet tentative bonds: a Tobias Gregson and one G. Lestrade. The ‘G’, I believe, stands for Gabriel, so it is perhaps unsurprising that he prefers to be known by the initial. I plan to cultivate those relationships to my advantage, for the two of them have displayed an intelligence signally superior to that of their brethren – although that is not saying much, given the dull-wittedness of the average copper. They are also excessively rivalrous of each other, which amuses me. But to answer your question, I tried and was rebuffed. I knew I was right, but to the police I seemed to have only a theory, as you say. And a theory without hard evidence to back it up is as substantial and credible as a fairy’s gossamer wing.”

  All was not lost, however, because the following day, after Simple Simeon’s body had been found and removed and the attendant hue and cry had abated, Holmes was able to visit the scene and make a thorough search. He went over the back yard, the passage and the ambit of the boarding-house on his hands and knees, scrutinising them with a tenacity that would have done a terrier proud. Lo and behold, he unearthed what he was certain was a clue left behind by the killer: a gold cufflink that had been trodden into the mud between two cobblestones. He knew it could only have been deposited there in the preceding twelve hours because the weather had been dry for over a week beforehand. Rain had fallen during the small hours of the morning of the 3rd, but until then the mud would have been hard and the cufflink would not have become embedded in it. It would have lain on top for all to see, and being gold – twenty-four-carat gold, no less – it would not have remained there long; a passer-by would have snatched it up and taken it to a jeweller or pawnbroker.

  “Not handed it in to the Lost and Found at the nearest police station?”

  “In Shadwell? I hardly think so, Watson. The cufflink was the property of a gentleman, that much was clear, which ruled out its belonging to a Shadwell native. Not just any gentleman, either, but a doctor.”

  “How the deuce could you tell?”

  “Elementary, my dear Watson,” Holmes said, uttering that now celebrated phrase for the first and last time in my hearing. “It consisted of two oval discs connected by a short chain, and once I had wiped the mud off, I could see that on one of the discs was engraved the Rod of Asclepius, the symbol of your calling.”

  This gave Holmes the occupation of his potential suspect. Better yet, on the other disc was engraved a pair of initials: V.S.

  “I have the very item here, should you wish to take a look at it,” he said, and he went to his writing desk and retrieved the cufflink from a drawer. It was just as he had described it, and seemed to me exactly the sort of thing Stamford might have worn, although I could not profess for certain that I had ever seen such cufflinks on his person. Perhaps they had come his way after graduation. I could imagine his father bestowing them on him, a gift from a proud, moneyed parent to commemorate his son’s success in obtaining his degree.

  So now, Holmes went on, he knew he was looking for a doctor with the initials V.S. Thereafter it was merely a case of consulting the register of licensed medical practitioners held by the General Council of Medical Education and Registration. Within a short while, having gone through the “S” section of that thirty-thousand-strong list of entries, Holmes emerged onto Soho Square with a handwritten list consisting of half a dozen names and their respective work addresses. These he whittled down by excluding any who lived a significant distance outside London. He doubted someone would commute a hundred or more miles into the capital purely to commit murder.

  By that expedient he narrowed the sphere of focus to three candidates, whereupon he set about reconnoitring each one, stalking him like game. He was able to eliminate a Harley Street clinician specialising in disorders of the digestive tract. The fellow was in his sixties and frail in physique and bearing. To Holmes’s mind the killer was young and healthy, the sort unafraid to brave the wilds of the East End where danger lurked round every corner for the unwary and the vulnerable. Similarly, he discounted a surgical resident at St Thomas’ Hospital in Lambeth. Although the man was only in his early thirties and a keen golfer and swimming enthusiast, very much fitting the image that Holmes had formed of the culprit, never once did he wear cufflinks. He favoured button-cuff shirts exclusively.

  Just one prospect remained, the likeliest of them all: Valentine Stamford.

  Stamford’s history in the time since I had known him at Barts might kindly be termed a chequered one. He had carried on at the hospital after I left, but increasingly he had fallen foul of the administration. His work became lackadaisical, his attendance irregular, his manner often petulant. In the end, after a patient in his care died from gangrene of the bowel following an appendectomy, the board of governors had no alternative but to discharge him. The complication itself was not unusual or wholly avoidable after such an operation, but the death would have provided the governors with a legitimate excuse for dismissal.

  It cannot be confirmed that Stamford’s opium addiction had already started around this point, but on the balance of probabilities it seemed likely. The poppy, Holmes opined, could ruin a man and destroy all nascent promise as surely as a bullet to the head.

  With a black mark against his name in the records of the General Council, Stamford was unable to find employment at any of the main accredited hospitals, and wound up plying his skills at a voluntary hospital attached to a workhouse in Mile End, St Brigid’s House. That charitable institution offered treatment to the destitute at no cost, funded by donations and subscriptions from wealthy, philanthropic benefactors. Its staff were badly paid, their ranks bolstered by doctors from other hospitals giving up their free time and some fulltime staff like Stamford of independent means – in his case, a small income from a family trust – who could for that reason survive on a negligible salary. St Brigid’s House could not afford to be choosy about whom it hired, and so even a disgraced doctor was welcome within its walls.

  Evidently Stamford was trying to redeem himself by continuing to heal the sick, even if it meant living in straitened personal circumstances and working in unsanitary conditions with patients from the undesirable end of the social spectrum whose primary complaints were typhus, consumption and venereal disease. Yet the lure of opium must have persisted, and now, with his relocation to the East End, temptation was right on his doorstep. Gong-Fen Shou’s opium den lay but a short walk from the hospital, and Stamford began making that journey all too frequently.

  This much Holmes was able to extract from a nurse at St Brigid’s, an Irishwoman with a penchant for stout and a tongue that loosened further with every pint he bought her. She recognised the signs of addiction to opium, having seen them in enough patients, and although many times she tried to persuade Stamford to abandon the narcotic, her pleas fell on deaf ears. He was tethered to the pipe and the entrancing dreams it brought as tightly as a dog to its master. Even had he wanted to slip the leash, his physical craving and the pangs of abstinence would not let him.

  As of August, Stamford had relinquished his post at St Brigid’s and disappeared from view. Holmes had the devil of a time tracking him down and spent most of November engaged in that task, but eventually, as the month was in its final throes, he found him. His home was now a shabby two-room apartment under the eaves of a terraced house on York Road, backing onto the Blackwall Railway line. From there he went out only to eat, visit the bank to withdraw money, and go to Gong-Fen Shou’s.

  “I began keeping careful watch on him,” Holmes said, “monitoring his comings and goings, traipsing after him night and day. The new moon was fast approaching, and I planned to intercept him in the commission of his next attack, red-han
ded.”

  “Which you would have done tonight,” I said, “had I not unwittingly interfered.”

  “It was damnable luck. The girl at the pub was sure to have been his fifth victim, but now I have no proof of it. He was importuning her, of that there is no doubt, but short of actually seeing him attempt to inflict harm on her, I cannot aver that his intentions were anything other than those that men customarily harbour towards her kind.”

  “She did not end up like the other four,” I said. “That is something.”

  “But there is another potential victim out there somewhere, Watson. There must be. The new moon is upon us, and Dr Stamford must make his offering to it, pay his obeisance to it, or whatever his obscure purpose is, even if he is delayed by a day.”

  “What does he do to his prey?” I asked. “What kind of death does he wreak on them, that renders them so emaciated in appearance?”

  “I have no idea,” Holmes said. “I do not have sufficient data concerning the method of murder, although I do have some thoughts in that direction.”

  “Won’t you share them?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What, then, was the purpose of your article in the Police News? How did that further your aims?”

  “Ah-ha. I was trying to unsettle Stamford, that’s all. There he was, reckoning he was getting away with his crimes, secure in the belief that his pattern had not been detected. I hoped he might read the piece, or get wind of it from an acquaintance, and it would rattle him. It would make him clumsier, less assured. It might even provoke him into precipitate action, meaning he would be easier to catch in flagrante. I’m not sure I didn’t accomplish that goal. The girl at the pub was, unlike his previous targets, a known quantity in the area. She had friends, if you can call the two Lascars that. She was not quite as solitary and indigent as the others, and moreover he sought her out in public, before dozens of witnesses. That smacks of a recklessness he has hitherto not shown.”

  “And the shadows you wrote about? They, I take it, are pure fiction.”

  “Yes and no. During my peregrinations around Shadwell I have heard about them more than once. They seem to be a recent addition to the folklore of the place, and therefore are often talked about by virtue of their sheer novelty. I included them in the article simply to add colour and spice and make the piece as a whole more intriguing, as well as more attractive to the editor. There is no correlation between them and Stamford’s activities, I can assure you of that, mostly because he is real and they are not.”

  “What’s next, then?” I said. “Presumably your pursuit of Stamford continues.”

  “Naturally, but not tonight. It is late and he will have gone to ground. If he has any sense – and he is, if nothing else, cunning – he won’t have returned home to his lair. He will be somewhere else. Where, I cannot say. But I shall pick up the scent again tomorrow. And you, Watson, are exceedingly tired.”

  I could not deny it. I could not restrain an enormous yawn.

  “That or I have bored you unduly,” he added.

  “Not at all. But I ought to be on my way. It’s getting on for two o’clock and my digs in Norwood are some distance from here.”

  “Why not stay the night? There is a second bedroom, and Mrs Hudson insists on keeping the bed made up in case I have a guest. It’s modest but comfortable. You would be more than welcome. I can even lend you a pair of pyjamas.”

  I did not much fancy sallying forth into the dark at such an hour. The cognac had made me groggy and slothful. More relevantly, after my failure at the nap table I had no money left for a cab. The second bedroom sounded enticing, and I accepted Holmes’s offer.

  As I lay beneath the covers, I mused on the evening’s events and the stranger into whose fantastically complex life I had strayed. I felt like some explorer who has stumbled into uncharted territory, with no map to guide him. At the same time, in that small, cosy room, I felt quite contented, almost as if I had come home.

  I AWOKE TO THE SMELL OF A DELICIOUS COOKED breakfast and came out into the sitting room in a borrowed dressing gown to find a compact, fastidious-looking lady of a certain age decanting said meal from tray to table.

  “You must be Mrs Hudson,” I said.

  “And you Dr Watson,” she replied. “Mr Holmes informed me that he had an overnight guest of that name. I trust you slept well.”

  “Like a log,” I said with mild surprise. A full night’s sleep had lately become a rarity. All too often, troubled dreams would rouse me from my slumber and leave me sweating, with a palpitating heart, wakeful until dawn. Plainly the cognac had had a sedative effect on me, but perhaps so too had the alarms and excursions of the night before, wearing me out. “Where is Holmes? Is he yet to rise?”

  “Oh no,” said Mrs Hudson. “Up and abroad long since. I heard him leave by the front door shortly after seven.”

  It was now nearing nine.

  “Do you know where he has gone?”

  “He didn’t say. He seldom does. He simply left me a note telling me about you and asking me to extend you every courtesy.”

  “But he’ll be back soon,” I said. “Hence the breakfast.”

  “No. I have no idea when Mr Holmes is returning. He keeps all manner of peculiar hours. I have grown accustomed to that, if not tolerant. The breakfast is for you.”

  “For me?” I eyed the fried bacon, poached eggs, buttered toast and steaming coffee with unalloyed greed. I could not think just then of a better way to start the day.

  “Yes, so sit down and eat up,” Mrs Hudson said, and I gladly did as bidden. There was even The Times to read, neatly folded by my place setting. It was a kind of heaven.

  Holmes came in whilst I was finishing my toilet in the bathroom, using supplies furnished by his redoubtable landlady. He revealed that he had been to Stamford’s apartment on York Road in order to ascertain that he was correct in his supposition that Stamford had not returned there last night. He had not. None of his fellow tenants in the house recalled hearing his tread on the stairs, and his rooms were empty, the bed made and unused.

  “How do you know that?” I asked. “About the state of the bed?”

  “How else?” Holmes said with a nonchalant shrug. “I picked the lock on the outer door and had a look for myself.”

  “Picked the––? But that’s a felony, surely. Breaking and entering.”

  “The commission of a minor offence is justified if it is part of an attempt to thwart another, far more serious offence, Watson. You must see that.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose. All the same…”

  “You had a pleasant breakfast, I trust?” he said, changing the subject as abruptly as a signalman changes points on a railway track.

  “Very pleasant. I ate with gusto.”

  “The crumb of toast still adhering to your moustache testifies to that. I myself have not breakfasted yet. Mrs Hudson!” he called down the stairs. “Two kippers and a boiled egg, if you will. There’s a good woman.”

  While waiting for the food to arrive, Holmes slipped a hand into his pocket and took out a gold cufflink. It was the twin of the one he had produced last night, right down to the engraving on both discs.

  “Holmes,” I said, aghast. “You didn’t…”

  “Afraid so,” he said, setting the second cufflink down on the writing desk beside the first. “I shall have to add larceny to my catalogue of crimes. I found it on Dr Stamford’s bedside table.”

  “Well, that would seem to clinch it. He was at the scene of Simple Simeon’s death.” I said this reluctantly. A part of me was clinging vainly to the hope that the Stamford I had known, the raffish student, had not degenerated into a monstrous murderer.

  “At the very least it confirms that he lost the other cufflink there,” Holmes said, “although he may have done so after, not during, the event. What if he was amongst the crowd that gathered to view the body? What if that is his only connection with the death? One must at least consider these possibilities.”


  “You seem unwilling to give them much weight, though.”

  “Very little. The odds in favour of Stamford’s guilt are overwhelming.”

  Presently Holmes’s breakfast was brought in, and not long after he had set to work on the kippers there was a knock at the front door and we heard Mrs Hudson go to answer it. Only a few moments passed until she bustled into the room, ushering before her a tall, white-faced, flaxen-haired man with fat hands and a gallant, capable air.

  “Inspector Gregson,” she announced, and withdrew.

  I recalled Holmes mentioning a Gregson last night. Here was one of the two Met policemen he rated marginally above the rest, the pick of the herd.

  Holmes greeted the official cordially, inviting him to sit. “I would enquire if you would care to partake of coffee, but you appear already to have had your fill of it for today.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Coffee leaves distinct traces on the breath, of course, and I am picking up a strong aroma of it on yours, suggesting you have drunk at least two cups so far, if not three. Then there is the small brown stain on your shirtfront, which looks comparatively fresh and is unmistakably coffee-coloured.”

  Gregson glanced down at his chest. “Ah.”

  “Yes. To have spilled coffee on yourself is a sure sign that you have overindulged. The hand begins to shake as the caffeine takes hold. Cup misses lip. Sartorial besmirching ensues. I would propose a glass of water instead. Your stomach will thank you for it.”

  “I shan’t, if it’s all the same to you, Mr Holmes.” Gregson looked at me. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Mr…?”

  “Dr Watson,” I said, shaking his hand.

  “Pleasure.”

  “The pleasure’s all mine. And now, with the utmost respect to the both of you, I shall take my leave. You have some matters to discuss which can be none of my affair, and I must not impose on Holmes’s hospitality any longer.”