Only when I saw the blade, the briefest flash of light catching its edge, and knew it had been used to lay Barrows low, did I find my voice.
“Halt!” I declared, wrenching out my pistol. “In the name of the law!” I fired and my shot struck him in the shoulder, but he barely flinched and was quick to take flight. I plunged into the fog, pausing only to look upon the ruin of poor Constable Barrows, who lay dead, mired in his own blood.
I got as far as Fenchurch Avenue when I realised the Peeler was gone. As Metcalfe and the others reached me, I heard the whistles, desperate and reminiscent of screams.
Holmes and Watson were kneeling by the body of Constable Barrows as I trudged back down Billiter Street, my feet leaden.
“He was just a lad,” I whispered.
“Slit across the throat, I’m afraid, Inspector,” said Watson as he gently pulled aside the boy’s collar to expose the savage gash.
“But that’s not all, I think,” said Holmes. He held up Barrows’ left hand. “Skin under the nails…” he added, before pressing the fingers to his nose and inhaling deeply.
“Christ, Holmes…” I said, dismayed at such desecration.
“Pungent, Inspector. The likes of which we have encountered before, and quite recently.” He stood up and began to cast about, sifting through the detritus of the street.
“Holmes, what the devil are you up to?” asked Watson.
I shared the doctor’s incredulity and was about to protest when Holmes proclaimed, “Ha!”
He held something in his right hand, which looked like a scrap of cloth. It was only as he brought it closer that the grimmer truth of what it really was became obvious.
“Merciful God…” hissed Watson.
It was a face, or at least the peeled skin of a face. I recalled the pale complexion and ill-fitting nature of the Peeler’s flesh and realised he had been wearing this skin like a mask.
“A simulacrum to hide his identity and torn loose when he took flight,” said Holmes.
Watson shook his head. “And yet, the lad still has his face. If this is what he came for…”
“And more besides, Watson,” said Holmes. “Our man has some skill with a blade, a paring knife or some such. The cuts on all of his victims were rough but swift, hardly the act of a surgeon but more in kind with a butcher or tanner. How long, Inspector, did you hear the screaming?”
“A few minutes, no more.”
“More than long enough for our Peeler to do his work. But, instead, he was given pause.”
“What does it mean, Holmes?” I asked. “Tell me it means something, and that this poor lad’s demise has not been for naught.”
“See here…” Holmes crouched again to turn Barrows’ head to the side and expose the scarred side of his face. “Flawed. And here,” Holmes went on, pulling open Barrows’ shirt where it had been torn. “Scarring also.” He looked again at the horrific mask, the skin, I now realised, had come from the dead porter. “The late Jeremiah Goose, his death mask entire.” His gaze then flicked to Watson. “I can think of only one reason for such scrutiny and discernment. Watson, if you please, would you surrender your gloves.”
The doctor got to his feet and looked at his hands.
“What for, Holmes? It’s freezing out here in this fog.”
“Your gloves…” Holmes repeated, “if you please.”
By now, several of my men had gathered at the scene. Metcalfe was doing his utmost to marshal them, but curiosity had gotten the better of some. A few carried lanterns and tried to shine a light on poor Barrows so the detective could do his work.
Watson did as he was asked, carefully removing the garments and handing them to Holmes who promptly threw them into the gutter.
“Holmes! What the devil are you–” Watson began, but Holmes had already snatched a lantern from one of my constables and smashed it against the doctor’s gloves. I have never seen Watson so apoplectic. “Good God, man! They were almost five pounds from Savile Row!”
Oil and flame eagerly spread across the leather. The fire quickly took hold, blackening and curling the leather and giving off a most noxious stench. I knew the smell, a noisome odour. It reminded me of the workhouse fire at Lower Thames Street and the men and women I knew had been trapped inside, cooked alive. Watson knew it too, I suspect. A man who had spent any time on a battlefield will be all too familiar with the reek of burning human skin.
“Good God,” said Watson, paling as he pressed a hand against his mouth, “is that…?”
“Long pig,” Holmes replied, nodding. “Indeed, they have been fashioned from human skin. We should speak with your tailor, Watson, though I suspect I already know the name of his supplier from Bermondsey.”
Watson appeared only to be half listening. “The sheer devilry of it,” he breathed, transfixed by his burning gloves.
“Rest assured, justice will find him, Doctor,” I replied, “Then, it’ll be the noose for this fiend.”
Holmes’s prediction about the Savile Row tailor was accurate, and not long after dawn, I brought an army of constables down on Bermondsey and the tannery of Jacob Wainwright. Holmes and Watson had joined us, observing a grim silence. I crossed the threshold to declare, “Jacob Wainwright, you are under arrest!”
No answer came, and the darkness inside the tanner’s warehouse made it hard to see much of anything beyond the shapes of hanging hides. The stench was palpable enough, though. I had drawn my pistol and used it now to urge my men inside.
“Find him, and take him. Alive, if you please gentlemen. I have questions I will have answered.” Over thirty constables rushed into the tannery, brandishing their truncheons. “I’ll have this dog, Metcalfe,” I swore to my sergeant. Before Metcalfe could reply, a shout from within got the sergeant running and me with him. One way or the other, I would get Wainwright to talk, and there would finally be justice for the dead.
The hanging body put paid to that belief. Stabbed through the chest and hung up on a hook like the rest of the meat, I did not need Metcalfe to lift the dead man’s chin to know this was Wainwright.
“He’s dead, sir,” said Metcalfe.
“This is him, isn’t it,” I said, not needing to be a detective the calibre of Sherlock Holmes to realise this was the Peeler’s doing. Wainwright’s feet dangled over a foot off the ground, and with the strength it would require to impale a grown man like that…
Holmes agreed. “It can be no other, Lestrade.”
As he crouched down, ferreting for something beneath the hanging body, I heard Watson enquire, “What is it, Holmes?”
“Burnt offerings, Watson,” said Holmes, holding up a scrap of blackened material to the meagre light before showing it to me.
“He had some kind of fire? I don’t see the significance.”
“Did you find anything resembling a lockbox or perhaps a safe?” asked Holmes.
I frowned. “Nothing of the sort.”
Holmes did not elaborate, but instead gestured to the scrap of material. “If you’ll permit me, Inspector Lestrade?”
I couldn’t care less. “Be my guest, Mr Holmes,” I said, and turned to Metcalfe and my waiting constables. “Tear this place apart. If there’s anything that will help us stop this man, I want it found!”
The tannery yielded nothing but the skewered remains of Jacob Wainwright, certainly no lockbox or safe, and, as his body lay in the grim accommodations of the Scotland Yard morgue, I began to believe we might never catch the Peeler. Surely now, with Wainwright dead, he would go to ground, and we might never learn his true identity or the reason, if one existed, for his crimes. I could only assume Wainwright had been his accomplice, for surely there could be no other explanation, and the Peeler had turned on him and ended any chance we might have to question him.