Sherlock Holmes and the Sixty Steps, page 10
“Well, that is some consolation,” I replied.
“What was the actual cause of death?” asked Holmes.
“Here, I’ll read it out:
‘I beg to report that I have read the notes of the murder, I have also made a post-mortem examination, at 7:40 this morning of the mutilated partial remains of the man found yesterday inside the derelict church in Fournier Street. All the circumstances surrounding the murder lead me to form the opinion that the limbs and head were removed after death. The separation was conducted by a person lacking not only in basic anatomical knowledge but lacking even the knowledge of a butcher or horse slaughterer, though the instrument used must have been something like an exceptionally large and strong butcher’s knife. There appears to be no evidence of struggling; death has not been caused by any injury visible on the corpse, nor, by an examination of the stomach contents and major organs, by the administration of any known poison. I cannot form any definite opinion as to the time that had elapsed between the murder and the discovering of the body, but it is certain that the man must have been dead more than twelve hours and the contents of the stomach would indicate that no food had been digested since the previous evening.’
“Impossible to say, therefore, what the cause was,” Lestrade went on, “but since there was no poison and the major organs were intact, the likelihood is a blow to the head or strangulation. My colleague, Mr. Gregson, and I had a little discussion about this earlier today. We agreed on one point: you don’t normally find male victims dismembered, that’s quite unusual; severed head, yes, to avoid identification, but rarely cut up like this. Sadly, gentlemen, it’s usually a certain poor unfortunate class of woman that this happens to, and you will no doubt recall what the press called the Thames Torso Murders from seven or eight years ago – they were all women, and going further back the Whitechapel case.. Now, I’ve brought the list of persons recently gone missing, as you asked. It’s surprising the number of reports we get in a week.”
“Yes,” replied Holmes distractedly, “we shall never know how many murders go undetected and how many murderers go unpunished. London is, amongst many other things, a city of the disappeared.” I forbore to add, thinking of his own case, “and of the reappeared.”
“Leaving aside the obvious cases,” said Lestrade bringing us back to earth, “people whom we know are fleeing from justice or from debt, or the ones who’ve eloped with the barmaid from the Rose and Crown – most of the missing people, perhaps ninety-per-cent, are never found alive. A large proportion are fished out of the Thames, and the Regent’s Canal gives up about half a dozen a year, though it can sometimes take a few weeks, sometimes even months, for the bodies to show up in the river due to the tidal movement, by which time proper identification is well-nigh impossible.”
“Indeed,” I said, “as a medical student I was shown The Book of the Dead in the River Police Office at Wapping; it tells a heart-rending tale.”
“Three middle-aged men have gone missing in the past couple of weeks: There was the sudden disappearance of Major Maurice Cholmondley of Bleeding Heart-yard, Holborn, who was last seen a fortnight ago in the buffet at St. Pancras Station on his way, allegedly, to a hunting party in the Peak District; he was unmarried with no family, and no debts to his name, at least no official ones. Tenor with St. Etheldreda’s Church choir, seems to have been a steady enough character, excellent record in India, no insanity or scandal in the family. Vanished without trace.
“Then there is Dr. Sinclair, the celebrated academic and eccentric, of Hackney Wick. He is an authority on the pagan religions of the ancient Britons and carries on the work begun by the Reverend Duke on the alignment of prehistoric monuments and medieval churches,” he shrugged comically, “well, it takes all sorts. Sinclair is known to have a fervent interest in the mystic arts, and he was last seen leaving John Watkins’s occult bookshop in the Charing Cross Road one day last week. We’ve had our eye on him for some time. He’s a member of The John Bellingham League–”
“John Bellingham?” I said in surprise. “The fellow who assassinated the Conservative Prime Minister?”
“Yes, they have a society that honours his memory once a year for, as they would have it, ‘rendering an important service to the country’!” Lestrade chuckled. “Sinclair was one of its founders and wrote its constitution. A bit cracked, but he seems perfectly harmless. I’ve kept the best one to the last, gentlemen. The third, and most recent, disappearance is a Mr. James Phillimore, a retired accountant and something of a recluse, with no known relatives in London. Another complete eccentric, he left Bavaria some thirty years ago after doing his military service and had anglicised his name from Jacob Pflaumer; he was last seen on Friday morning by a neighbour, a respectable furniture dealer, Julius Malden, who keeps a warehouse in Princelet Street, near Phillimore’s flat which was in Spelman Street.”
“Aha! A mere street away from where our torso was found?” said Holmes.
“Exactly. Malden says that on the day that Phillimore was last seen, he, Malden, had stepped outside the warehouse to smoke a pipe; he then wandered down to the street corner to stretch his legs, where he met with an old acquaintance outside the Alma public house, and they stopped to talk. They both saw Phillimore come out of the house at number sixty-four, gaze up at the sky as though to gauge the weather and then promptly go straight back inside, presumably to collect his umbrella. Malden finished his pipe whilst talking to his friend, but neither can remember seeing Phillimore coming out again; in fact, he has not been seen since. But here’s the oddest thing– I often think over your little sermons, Mr. Holmes, and I know you reckon we fellows at the Yard don’t pay enough attention to apparently trivial details, but last Friday, the day that Phillimore stepped back inside to collect his umbrella–”
“It had not been raining, nor had any rain been forecast.”
“You don’t miss much!” Lestrade laughed. “I should say, of the three, Phillimore looks the most obvious candidate going by the description: There’s his age, his general build, and skin colouring for the other two are English.”
“Possibly. There is the question of motive, however,” said Holmes.
“We know about a certain type of killer who will select a victim at random, rather than out of personal animosity – for no logical reason whatever. Sheer sadistic pleasure. With that kind, it’s the lack of any connection with the victim that makes them so hard to trace.”
“Very true. You say Phillimore was a recluse.”
“A very eccentric one, as I said; some of these reclusive types often turn out to live quite, ahem, colourful lives, which is one reason why they seek obsessive privacy. We have some files down at the Yard, Mr. Holmes, that would turn your hair white to read them. This Phillimore may have a darker past than his neighbours suspected. You see, we entered his rooms after his reported disappearance and found some very odd things.”
“What sort of things?”
“He had a collection of old newspapers, journals, and books in something like twelve different languages, ancient maps marked with strange symbols showing obscure journeys around some of the queerest parts of London. Quite the strangest of the lot, though, were his papers on the Qabbala, an ancient Hebraic mystical tradition which claims to be able to turn base metal into gold and bring inanimate objects to life. This may be some sort of link to this Machzikei crowd.”
“How, precisely?” asked Holmes.
“The ‘upholders of the law’ they call themselves, they are very strict. The fact that the body was left in their synagogue could be the result of some internecine dispute or punishment for transgressions,” replied the inspector. “It certainly seems an incredible coincidence.”
“The annals of murder, my dear Lestrade, are positively riddled with coincidence; the difficulty is in distinguishing between those which are genuine and those which point to the solution.”
“In the absence of any other clue, I think it is a reasonable assumption.”
Holmes shook his head. “I cannot agree; for one thing, it has not yet been consecrated as a synagogue,” he said. “Secondly, what do we know of the Machzikei? Is this how they settle disputes – by dismembering corpses? It stretches credulity.”
“We know extraordinarily little about these foreign groups,” said the inspector doggedly, “or what might make them resort to murder. Perhaps Phillimore had broken some sacred taboo or violated the code – you remember what happened to Molesey a few years back when he fell foul of the Bessarabians.”
“But this is no ordinary murder, after all. And why should his assassin involve me in the case personally?”
“It is just the very same trait that compels these characters to send letters to the official police, boasting of their actions and defying us to catch them. There have even been cases where they have warned us in advance what they intend to do next – we’re always just too late to catch them red-handed. Some of these gentlemen are very clever, even if they are insane. If they get satisfaction from goading Scotland Yard, then think how much more they would get from baiting the renowned Sherlock Holmes! Phillimore certainly didn’t lack any education, and you thought the sender of the letter was an educated man – isn’t that another link between killer and victim?”
“He was certainly educated enough to be familiar with Horace. Yet apparently not affluent enough to use decent stationery.”
“Some of Phillimore’s indecipherable scribblings were in a language and an alphabet that no one has been able to identify, and which he appears to have invented himself. And his rooms showed that he was living in dire straits: there you have it, erudition and poverty.”
“You have an answer for everything,” said Holmes judiciously. “Very well then, suppose we take it to be Phillimore as a working hypothesis… ah, I believe our next instalment is about to materialise,” said Holmes, as the page interrupted us bearing a small sheaf of letters.
“Thank you, Billy, I was expecting this one.”
My friend quickly selected a small white envelope from the pile.
“You may have the honour this time, Inspector.”
Lestrade examined the envelope carefully before opening it.
“Surrey again; Woking, this time,” he said. “Postmarked yesterday at eleven-twenty. I should think it was a hoax if I didn’t know it was from our suburban murderer.” The inspector tossed the white sheet on the table, shaking his head in perplexity. The paper’s watermark and the handwriting were identical to the previous note, and it read:
“Here, they groan’d aloud.”
“I notice he gives no time on this one,” said Lestrade.
“By which I take to mean that the goods have already been delivered,” I replied.
Holmes nodded grimly in agreement.
“But what does it mean?” asked Lestrade. “He says ‘they’ – do you think there has been more than one victim?”
“It is something we cannot rule out at this stage,” replied Holmes bleakly.
“Another corpse! Good Lord, I hope we are not going to have a whole string of them as we did over the Soho business,” I said.
“Or in ’88, which was even worse, for we never got the man, though we knew who it was. Is this a reference to the victim’s groaning? Does he torture them before killing them?”
“It is impossible to say, though it may be nothing quite as literal as that. What do you say, Watson?”
“I saw no signs of any torture or mistreatment on the torso we found, but who knows what we may find on the limbs or head. Our man is certainly flaunting his learning,” I replied.
“Indeed. The quotation, though, is quite straightforward,” said Holmes.
“From Blake, is it not?” I asked.
“Yes, it is about Druidic sacrifice: ‘they groan’d aloud on London Stone, they groan’d aloud on Tyburn’s brook.’ Therefore, the allusion could be to the stone or the brook. The Tyburn brook is now culverted over, of course, and runs below ground but the reference may well be to Tyburn as a place of execution: ‘Albion’s Fatal Tree.’”
“Tyburn? That’s near to where Marble Arch is today, isn’t it?” said Lestrade. “Yes, the Tyburn Tree and public executions – I know my criminal history! It must be there that he means surely.”
“Not necessarily; you see, Blake envisaged the London Stone as a Druidic altar of human sacrifice so it could be either.”
“Highly appropriate! But there are no Druids nowadays, and what on earth is the London Stone, and more to the point, where is it?” asked the inspector.
“You have never heard of the London Stone?” asked Holmes in surprise.
I must confess that Holmes continually astounded me, not so much by the breadth of his learning – for although a true polymath, his lacunae were as remarkable as his store of knowledge – but more by his accumulation of out-of-the-way facts. I mused, however, as I recalled his words on the subject of Scotland Yard detectives: “Given that their profession is one of, essentially, constant inquiry,” he had once said, “policemen are generally remarkable for their complete lack of curiosity.”
“It is a block of limestone forming part of the foundation of ancient London, thought to date from before the Roman occupation to the time of the Druids,” Holmes continued. “It was believed to have had some military significance, perhaps as the exact centre of what was then Londinium.”
“These notes raise almost as big a puzzle as the murder itself,” said Lestrade, looking at Holmes in mixed incredulity and admiration.
“The London Stone is also rumoured,” I put in, thinking of the missing Dr. Sinclair’s interests, “to have had occult connections going back beyond mediaeval times.”
“I have no doubt,” said my friend acerbically, “that in a hundred years’ time some future Dr. Sinclair will draw a line connecting all the District Messenger Offices in London, discover a pentagram, and assert that there had been some occult significance in their location. Now, to return to our practical problem: the London Stone is presently encased in the south wall of St. Swithin’s Church.”
“The one in Cannon Street?” asked Lestrade.
“Yes, no doubt you have walked past it many times without realising it.”
“Then it’s either there or at Marble Arch we need to be.”
“That is my interpretation, and so it will be quicker to divide forces. I shall send Billy for two cabs right away: one to take you and Watson to the Arch, and I shall make haste to the City on my own.”
We set off in our respective cabs on this grisly reconnaissance, the inspector and I following Holmes as far as Oxford Street, whereupon his hansom bevelled off in the opposite direction towards the City. The thick fog had again descended on the city streets and our cab crawled slowly through the murk. Lestrade and I considered where we should direct our search once we had arrived at our destination, but we were unable to come to any definite conclusion. We soon stood at the front of the great marble edifice, then passed beneath the keystone of the central arch. A crowd was milling around the newspaper boys who were bawling out the headlines of the “Torso” story in the midday editions, and a costermonger was packing up his barrow at the finish of the morning’s business. Surveying the scene, we saw nothing resembling the package which we were expecting. Off to our left, however, was a stone terrace fronted with seating. Behind this was a shallow raised area where low, thick bushes grew. Lestrade nodded in this direction, and we strolled across and climbed through.
“Seems as likely a place an anywhere else,” he said, but despite combing the area for a quarter of an hour we did not find what we were looking for. We withdrew, to some queer looks from passers-by, and I noticed immediately that the costermonger had abandoned his barrow.
“Under the cart,” I said, pointing. “Look! He has left something behind.”
There was a bundle wrapped in brown paper beneath the axle of the cart. Lestrade knelt down and slashed at one end with a penknife; as the package unfurled, we saw that it contained a hirsute male arm. It was a hundred to one that the limb was from the torso which Holmes and I had found the previous night. I hurried off to fetch a uniformed constable and caught one easily enough by Hyde Park Corner. Once Lestrade explained to him how he should deal with the incident, we made straight for the City to inform Holmes of our find.
It turned out that we need not have rushed, for a similar discovery to ours had been made just before Holmes had arrived at Cannon Street, parcelled up in the same way as the arm and torso we had already found. It had been spotted in a dark corner of St. Swithin’s church just prior to the midday service by the warden who raised the alarm at once. The morning newspapers had been full of the “Torso in the Transept” case – albeit, as Holmes, ever pedantic, pointed out, the church in Brick Lane had no transept – so that the warden had entertained little doubt as to the likely contents of the strange bundle and had called the police immediately. The City constable, Humphreys, who had been summoned to the scene of the outrage was overwhelmed. Before the poor man had had time to collect his thoughts far less report the discovery, the celebrated Sherlock Holmes had descended upon the scene, soon followed by Scotland Yard. Humphreys, in turn, had called in his inspector from the City force. Lestrade’s condescending demeanour towards the City men, and his pompous remarks to them about “prior information received from an exceptionally reliable but completely confidential source,” were almost comical to see and hear. The policemen and I waited and watched as Homes took a brief measurement of the arm and then made a quick note in his notebook.
“Well,” said Lestrade with a wry smile when Holmes was finished, “the doctor and I have our own little tale to tell. To put it shortly, our suburban friend delivered the other arm to us in a nice little parcel up at the Arch. I had to send it to the city morgue so you had better come along with me and examine both arms there, though I suspect they will merely confirm what we already know.”
