Encounters of Sherlock Holmes Part 4

Further down the platform from us, several cl.u.s.ters of mourners stood about. Most were in some form of mourning, though some of the dresses looked freshly dyed. There were but two of these impoverished grievers per coffin, and I realised that these would be the pauper burials and the bereaved were reliant on parish travel warrants to follow their beloved to their rest. Unlike our own cla.s.s, these disparate parties were offered no privacy and were all on the platform together.

Our second-cla.s.s carriages were rather busier, with mourning parties ranging from half a dozen to a score embarking on the journey. All were dressed in fresh attire from Jay's outfitters, with only the children exempted from the donning of full black. In some parties, the widow stood out most with her thick veil obscuring her face and her long weeds announcing her status. In one party, there was instead a widower and I saw the undertakers loading both an adult and a child coffin into their section. I was reminded briefly of my own loss, and that sorry procession through Kensal Green.

The journey itself was uneventful. I watched as the scene beyond our half-lowered blind changed from the squalid, soot-blackened backs of slum housing to neatly trimmed suburban villa gardens and then fields and woodland. Outside the city, a frost still glistened in the shadows and the air was sharper. This was a very different journey even from that up Swains Lane in Highgate or along the Harrow Road in Kensal Rise. Certainly, this world was Elysian when compared to the horrors of the old enclosed churchyards in the centre of the city, where bodies had piled so deep that the very height of the ground was raised up to the windowsills of the houses that overlooked them.

The train jolted as we went over the points onto the spur line into the cemetery, lifting me out of my reverie. We went slowly along this section, allowing any pa.s.sengers able to raise their eyes a first view of this modern Necropolis. A laurel hedge ran alongside the train, so that it did not intrude too egregiously on the landscape. Beyond that were gently sloping lawns and curved paths, interspersed not only with recent planting but also with copses of the ancient woodland the cemetery had been built in.

The station buildings formed three sides of a square, with the platform as the fourth. The train drew up alongside so that the funereal wagons came to a halt alongside the two spurs of the buildings, where the platform had been slightly raised. As we pa.s.sengers disembarked and were guided towards the appropriate wing of the premises, based on the cla.s.s of funeral we were attending, the stationmaster and his porters unloaded the grim cargo and took the coffins into the waiting rooms.

Throughout, Holmes was looking around himself and playing the role of a man half-parted with his senses through grief. It was a very convincing guise that enabled him to show curiosity in the surroundings without raising suspicions. My discomfort at his dissembling, for its part, must have looked like a friend uneasy at such a public display.

Our coffin was soon taken from the waiting area in the station up a slope to a plot in the conformist section. My unease continued as the appointed curate ran through the shortest ceremony we could have chosen, and laid to rest someone we had never known in life into the frosty ground. To date I had seen nothing untoward or unusual, save our own fraudulent loss.

We returned to the south station, where the stationmaster was at work in the yard against the building, chopping wood to feed the fires that burned in every grate. His wife, a thin, quiet woman lacking the vitality of her counterpart to the north, was offering a warm luncheon of soup, bread and beer in the bar. The train crew stood at one end, nursing their small beer and eating large hunks of bread. There was just one other occupant, a widow already seated by the fire, when we walked in. Her face was veiled, but her hands trembled as she raised a small gla.s.s of sherry from the table. More mourners arrived hard behind us, and the room soon became hot and musky.

"Excuse me," Holmes asked the stationmaster's wife, "what time does the train return to London?"

"In perhaps another three-quarters of an hour," she replied.

"Would we be able to walk to the other station in that time?"

"Why, yes, if you wish it. Sometimes people need some air, don't they, afore they go back to the city? The train don't wait, though. If you miss it, you'll need to walk on to the LSWR's station by the village and pay for another ticket."

Holmes thanked her and we set off down the road.

Holmes walked in silence, and I knew he would not want my questions at this stage. He was gathering evidence, or working through the details he had already seen. Instead I admired the sylvan scene around us.

"Watson, as a doctor you must sign a deal of death certificates?" he suddenly asked.

"Of course, it is part of our duty to ascertain the person is indeed dead, and what the causes of that death are."

"And no funeral can take place without a certificate?"

"Certainly not. Only a medical professional can be certain all life has indeed left a body. Without our confirmation, it might be possible for someone who has fallen into a deep coma to be mistakenly buried."

"Ah, the fear of being buried still alive. Tell me, have you ever heard of such a thing? From a reliable witness?"

"Never from a reliable person. It is always possible that death could be mistakenly identified, but our custom of laying out the body and waiting for a few days before the funeral prevents any such horrific confusion."

We were approaching the north station, for dissenters and nonconformists, and Holmes rea.s.sumed his faux-distraught air.

"Watson, I telegraphed Mrs Perkins last night and told her we would be here today. Pray do not show any signs of recognition, as I have asked her to do likewise."

We entered the bar, and looked around. Unlike the other station, this one contained a range of different att.i.tudes to death. A Roman Catholic family took up two settles, arrayed in mourning, wearing crucifixes and holding breviaries. A smaller group of three Quakers stood nearby, in plain garb, wide-awake hats still on their heads. As at the south station, there were a handful of pauper mourners who sat in a separate section. Unlike the other station, there were no employees of the Railway.

Mr Perkins was a broad-shouldered man with dark whiskers and rolled-up sleeves. As with his wife's false mourning colours, he wore a mourning band around his upper arm and maintained an air of courteous respect. He accepted my friend's claim to have walked from the other station but quietly requested sight of our mourners' tickets before serving us.

The return train was due imminently, so Mrs Perkins began to speak quietly to each group, asking them to move onto the platform. She did her best not to react when she reached us.

As the train pulled in, its locomotive pushing it in reverse back towards the mainline, Holmes' air of distraction increased. As I moved towards the part of the second-cla.s.s carriage with the Langhurst name on it, I realised he was not beside me. Instead he was opening the doors of each compartment of the carriage, apologising profusely and continuing to the next.

"What are you doing?" I asked, taking him by his arm, for he was receiving startled responses from the occupants of each compartment whose private grief he was so abruptly interrupting. Having disturbed each compartment, he allowed me to guide him to our own, and sank back into the corner seat with a smile on his face. He pulled our door to and lowered the blinds entirely.

"Watson, I think I have it. When we get back to the city, I will need you to apply some of your forensic skills to the books of the Necropolis Company."

"But, Holmes, Mr Arrowsmith has already a.s.sured us the paperwork is in order."

"I'm counting on that very fact, my dear fellow. I need you to look at the names on the death certificates."

"And what will you be doing?" For I had guessed at once that he would not be joining me in going through the papers, but was in one of his adrenaline-inspired enthusiasms.

"I, Watson, will be following the spare body."

At the London terminus, I set to work with the ledgers for the last six months of funerals. The Company had performed some five hundred and sixty-two funerals in that time, to a wide range of clientele. Holmes had tasked me to first look at the records for that very day, to see if any funerals had not been accompanied by mourners. There were two such ceremonies besides Mrs Langhurst: a slum-dwelling elderly pauper of the rookery at St Giles-in-the-Fields, and an office manager of some seven-and-twenty years from the parish of St Saviours, Southwark. Both had been conformists, and neither had been accompanied by any living soul down to the gardens of rest.

As Holmes had requested, I noted the names of the doctors who had signed the death certificates. Without sight of such a certificate, the Company would not perform a funeral, and they were meticulous in recording that they had followed due process. I then began to look back through the ledgers to find other funerals without mourners, and to note any where the doctor matched those from today. It soon became apparent to me that Dr P- of Lambeth frequently appeared in my annotations, and had a greater proportion of such funerals than any other doctor whose patients chose the Brookwood Necropolis for their final resting place.

Before I could speculate on what this pattern might indicate, Holmes reappeared. He had some colour high in his cheeks, suggesting he had run part of the way back from wherever the trail had taken him. A messenger boy straggled behind him.

"Where is Mr Arrowsmith?" he asked.

"In his office, I believe. What have you found out?"

"In a moment. Tell me, did your search uncover a single name?"

"Yes, Dr P- of Lambeth."

Holmes added the name to the piece of paper in his hand, and bade the boy to race across to Scotland Yard, just across the bridge from us, and deliver it to one Inspector Bradstreet. He then hastened me from the ledger room towards Arrowsmith's office. Arrowsmith was sat at his desk, looking over some papers when Holmes brushed past his clerk and shut the door.

"Well, I had found out why your clerk counted more people coming back than leaving. I'm afraid I have had to involve the police to prevent the criminals fleeing. Moreover, I will need to ask the police to interview some of the Company, so I must ask you to remain silent for another hour. I hope we can minimise the interest of the press, or at least ensure no censure attaches itself to your Company. Have I your word you will tell no one for another hour?"

The man looked shaken, as well he might. This had been the very scenario he had hoped to avoid. "Can I at least warn my fellow directors?" he asked.

"Absolutely not! I fear complicity in these crimes includes one of them. I recommend you spend the next hour preparing a statement to offer any journalists who ask for your view. Come on, Watson, we need to reach Victoria before the hour is out!"

Out on Waterloo Bridge Road, Holmes had a hansom cab waiting, and hurried me into it, calling the driver to make haste to Victoria station on the other side of the Thames. As we jolted across the bridge and turned into Westminster, Holmes explained what he had uncovered.

"My theory formed when a study of the line indicated that people could only board the Necropolis train at the cemetery. There are no other stops along the route. It would also make no sense to travel to London from a home in Surrey with no option for returning. What purpose would the minimal saving on fare serve?

"So I began to think the real fraud must lie in the number of bodies going out. I made a careful inventory of the number of coffins and mourners who travelled this morning. I also noted that the coffins are transported on biers rather than carried by pall bearers."

"So there are fake bodies going out? But why? And how can that result in extra pa.s.sengers back?"

"Think, Watson! Consider what I asked you to look into..."

The cab turned the corner by the Houses of Parliament and onto the long straight road to the station.

"There had to be a doctor falsifying the death certificates," I reasoned aloud. "So that's how Dr P- was involved! But to what end?"

"To receive a percentage on a fraud, of course. Did you note the widow at the south station? Did you perceive that her face was entirely obscured by her veil? That is, of course, not uncommon when a woman is in full mourning. I also perceived that she had not been on the train out. As I was checking the compartments when we reboarded the train, I surprised her sitting in rather a masculine pose."

"I'm afraid I don't follow. This false widow was... what?"

"She was one Albert Richards, late of Falcon Court, Southwark. I followed him from the Necropolis station and observed him return to his home. A talkative neighbour informed me both that Mr Richards had died, despite the best efforts of that lovely Dr P-, and that his widow had received a goodly payout on the life insurance this very day and was packing up the family to move to her cousin's house at Whitstable in Kent."

We had reached the giant terminus of the London Chatham and Dover Railway, and the cab had slowed in the melee of other vehicles attempting to draw up under its canopy. Holmes spotted some of Inspector Bradstreet's men and leapt out to race after them.

I flung some money at the cabbie and ran after Holmes as he weaved through the crowds. The boat trains to Dover were due to depart in another fifteen minutes, so there were many pa.s.sengers looking for their platforms, and porters with trolleys stacked high with luggage. A half-score of uniformed policemen were closing in on a family all attired in mourning, save the father. He was looking around with a wild cast in his eyes, searching for a way to evade Bradstreet's men. He made a break for it, his wife calling for him not to, and was brought down quickly.

My conversation with Holmes had been interrupted when we reached Victoria, so I took it up again with him that evening.

"I am still unclear on why they went to the effort of travelling out to the cemetery, and what the strange noises were that Mrs Perkins recounted to us."

"You said it yourself, when we were at Brookwood. We have the custom in this country of leaving the coffin unsealed until it takes its final journey. Generally, the undertakers will screw the coffin lid on themselves. So there had to be a body. The other Company director could not draw too many of his employees into the scheme, since that would diminish his percentage of the payout. So instead Dr P- supplied a drug to induce the appearance of death. From the description, I suspect it was a combination of laudanum and a barbiturate which would slow the breathing sufficiently for it not to be visible, and reduce any involuntary eye movement.

"What the director did do was introduce the use of the papier-mache 'earth-to-earth' design, which you'll have noticed each of the suspicious funerals had as their box of choice. By their very design, these coffins could easily be pierced to create airholes, ensuring the false corpses could breathe during their final journey, and were built to quickly decay "At the station, Kitching would ensure the coffin was placed in one of the private waiting rooms, enabling the erstwhile corpse to slip out and be disguised prior to returning to London. The simplest disguise, and one that would not draw attention on a train from a cemetery, is, of course, a widow in full weeds whose face is obscured. Such was our false widow. It was then a simple matter to replace the man's weight with wood and to go through the pretence of a funeral."

"And the noises?"

"Most of the men taking advantage of this scheme had to return to London, either to collect their money and their families or to start a new life in a different part of the city. I suspect a handful, however, were no mere insurance fraudsters but criminals of a more serious bent who had a need to escape the city entirely without notice. Rather than taking the railway back, they will have walked the same road we did in order to reach the nearest mainline station, and thus make their way further afield without returning to a city whose constabulary were watching for them."

I contemplated what it must have been like to take those journeys, even drugged half insensate. Perhaps the drugs themselves had made the journey yet more disorientating? How desperate must these men have been to put their trust in Dr P- and his escape route? How often must they have hoped or prayed that the stationmaster would unseal their coffin and free them from its claustrophobic embrace? And how much had they dwelled on the fear that they would not be freed, would not step back onto the train but would instead feel the heavy thump of soil on the lid above them?

"Holmes," I said. "Do you think all the men who undertook this plan were safely delivered from the grave?"

Holmes steepled his fingers and looked at the ceiling. "We must surely hope so."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Mags L Halliday writes historical science fiction and fantasy, including the steampunk novel, Warring States, set during the 1901 Boxer War in China. Her most recent work includes an essay in Chicks Unravel Time (Mad Norwegian Press), and a daughter (still a work in progress). More details are available from www.magslhalliday.co.uk.

THE DEMON SLASHER OF SEVEN SISTERS.

BY CAVAN SCOTT.

Henrietta Stead was many things to many people. To her father she was a disappointment. To her sister she was an embarra.s.sment. To Bramwell Applegarth, distinguished editor of The London Examiner, she was an irritant and to me, well, a man is allowed his secrets, isn't he?

To Sherlock Holmes, however, she was always the woman; the woman who nearly bludgeoned him to death, that is.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd meet the celebrated consulting detective, let alone almost find myself an accomplice to his murder.

I'd read about the great man. Who hadn't? The papers were always full of his exploits and I never missed any of Dr Watson's little melodramas in The Strand. Violence, jeopardy and derring-do, just the thing to get a chap's pulse racing.

Of course, violence, jeopardy and derring-do were the last things I wanted when I became a journalist. Yes, there were newspapermen who thrived on such experiences, I just wasn't one of them.

I became a journalist for the money.

There, I've admitted it and even today I am not ashamed. Not everyone read the news for grisly murders, blazing conflagrations or political wrangling. Many of our readers headed straight for the gossip columns. They wanted to wallow in the scandal and intrigue of high society; to be t.i.tillated by the hypocrisy, illicit liaisons and outright debauchery of those who ought to know better.

No matter what my colleagues at The Examiner thought of our more sensational, and sometimes downright steamy, content, my column helped keep our circulation figures healthy and Mr Applegarth off our backs. It may not have been one of the most honourable ways to earn a living, but as long as there were loose-lipped servants or unscrupulous socialites in the city, my position at The Examiner was secure. I'd spent long enough waiting on the great and good of London. Now they would serve me.

The chain of events that led to the near demise of Sherlock Holmes began on 21 October 1902. It was late afternoon and I was putting the finishing touches to my next column. I have to admit I was struggling to concentrate. My head was pounding thanks to the flagons of mild I'd been forced to consume the night before. I'd known that if Albert Wilkes became merry enough, the most indiscreet butler in Belgravia would soon start spilling his mistress's secrets. I'd just not prepared myself for the man's tolerance to alcohol: he had the const.i.tution of a particularly resilient ox. Thankfully, by the time I helped the old soak home - a task all the more difficult as I was seeing double myself - I had my story. Lady Mary Crawford would wake red-faced in the morning and her lover would probably be looking for a new position. All I had to do was make sense of my increasingly erratic notes.

I was reaching the end of my report when something slapped down on my desk, causing me to start.

"Have you read this?" Henrietta stood in front of me, cheeks flushed with excitement and hazel eyes dancing. I recognised that look. I should, it had got me into enough sc.r.a.pes in the last few months.

I picked up the periodical she had tossed before me. "The Adventure Weekly?" I remembered the infamous little rag from my Chester Place days, one of the other boys had positively devoured each number, but I had no idea it was still being published. A quick flick through its badly printed pages told me that nothing had changed. Tales of murder most horrid and terror to curl your toenails. All pretty lurid stuff. "What's a well-to-do young lady like you reading a penny blood like this, Hettie? Need a little more excitement in your life?"

"If I were that well-to-do I doubt I'd spend so much time in your company, George Rayne," she shot back, a familiar smile tugging at the corner of those devastating lips. "Look at the cover."

I obliged and flipped back to a garish ill.u.s.tration of a maiden in distress-pretty standard fare for the Weekly. A monstrous figure was looming out of the shadows, arms raised, ready to bring b.l.o.o.d.y death raining down on its terrified victim.

"'The Demon Slasher Strikes Again,'" I read, putting on my best music-hall voice, "'The Terror of Tottenham'. Yes, very good. Worthy of d.i.c.kens himself."

Hettie s.n.a.t.c.hed the magazine out of my hands, her pretty face creased in a frustrated frown.

"You must have read the reports," she snapped, "of the Demon Slasher?"

"Of course I have. Applegarth's been running them every day for a fortnight. 'Mysterious Stranger Stalks Seven Sisters', 'Plucky Hero Slashed by Hideous Phantom'. I'm not surprised The Weekly has picked up on it. It's Springheeled Jack all over again."

The first attack had hit the headlines two weeks previously, on a cold Thursday evening. Hilda Gledhill, a twenty-four-year-old washerwoman, had been returning home from work when she'd heard a noise behind her. She'd turned to see a man towering over her, obscenely long arms raised above his head. She screamed, barely noticing the flash of a blade before it was too late. The razor had sliced across her front, cutting through her clothes and opening her chest. Hilda had fallen back in fear, convinced she was about to meet her maker, but the stranger had leapt over her cringing body and fled into the night, leaving nothing but maniacal laughter hanging in the air.

The following night another woman, Mary Waddington, was a.s.saulted in the adjoining street, again by a razor-wielding rogue wearing a long, heavy greatcoat. For the next week not a night pa.s.sed without a fresh appearance of the fiend the papers were soon calling the "Demon Slasher". I glanced down at the ill.u.s.tration of the brute on the front of The Adventure Weekly. The artist had perfectly captured the grisly description given by the phantom's many victims. A tall, gaunt fellow with ghastly features: a thin cruel mouth, a nose worthy of Mr Punch and wide owl-like eyes that seemed to burn with infernal fire.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Where you and I have index fingers, the monster was said to have long, curved blades. No wonder the poor people of Seven Sisters had begun to live in terror of nightfall, although none of this explained why Hettie was so agitated.

"Don't you see, George?" Hettie said, a worrying glimpse of eagerness flashing across her eyes. "This is my chance."

"Your chance for what, exactly?"

"To prove my worth to Applegarth once and for all."