There were no bloodstains anywhere. There was no visible echo of the horrible killing that had happened just two weeks before. And yet, standing there, conscious of all that had happened and of the great mystery before him, Arthur shivered. The air seemed to reverberate with a distant death, like far-off explosions from the war in the Transvaal.
“What’s your story about?” asked the man as Arthur and Bram surveyed the scene of the murder.
“My story?” said Arthur.
“The one you said you’re writing! Is Holmes after another thief? Or is it a murder story? I like the murders the best, if you care for my opinion.”
“I can’t tell you,” said Arthur. “It would ruin the surprise.”
The man laughed, slapping at his thigh. He seemed to be enjoying himself.
“You know what I like to do, when I read your stories?” he asked. “I like to try to guess the endings early. To figure out who’s done it before Mr. Holmes has.”
“And do you manage it?” asked Bram, joining the conversation. “Can you outsmart Sherlock Holmes?”
“Haven’t done it yet,” said the boardinghouse proprietor. “But I have an idea, you know. For how you could bring him back to life.”
“And what’s that?”
“You don’t need a wizard or nothing,” the man said. “How’s about maybe Mr. Holmes didn’t die at all? Maybe he didn’t fall off that ledge into the Reichenbach Falls-what if he faked it? To fool Moriarty, like? And then he’s been in hiding, off on adventures all around the globe. You bring him back home to London for a triumphant return. That’s the way, I’ll tell you. There’s no one wants to think of Holmes as being dead. Sits ill in the stomach.”
“Is that so?” asked Bram, amused by the man’s ramblings.
“Honor bright. You swells, you get so accustomed to your writing you forget to think of how your readers will feel about it. We don’t want to see Holmes dead, no matter how good is the battle that does him in. We want Mr. Holmes to live forever.”
“How about that, Arthur?” said Bram, needling his friend. “How about pushing aside the rock and resurrecting the divine Sherlock Holmes?”
“Do all your rooms have baths in them?” asked Arthur of the boardinghouse owner. “It seems like a fine feature.”
“No, no. Just this one,” said the man. “This was a powder room years back, when the place was built. Now I rent it out for extra. For a higher class of customers, you understand.”
Arthur walked to the bathtub and ran his forefinger along its smooth rim. It felt thoroughly cold, like a windowpane on a snowy day.
“They found her body here?” he said.
“I found her body here, myself. She was laying right in the tub, naked as a baby. Her neck was blue and purple, her eyes all bursting out of her head. Like someone grabbed tight around her tiny throat and squeezed till she was going to pop. The dress was set out on the bed, like it were laid out for somebody to put on.”
“Did you notice the tattoo? On her leg? Shape of a crow, black, with three heads?”
“I saw it, yes, sir.”
“Ever seen a symbol like that before? Something from the hooligans down by the docks?”
“No, no, I can’t say that I have. It was a funny shape, though. Right down on her leg, by her ankle.”
“Was anything else found in the room? Anything to indicate who this poor woman was?”
“Not a whit. Just a pretty white dress and a dead, naked molly.”
Arthur and Bram spent the next few minutes trying to jog the man’s memory for any other clues as to the woman’s identity but found no success. Arthur then led Bram on a hands-and-knees inspection of the floor, to which Bram begrudgingly acquiesced, though he spent the entire search complaining about the layer of dirt that was being applied to his trousers in the process. The owner of the house produced his guest book, in which they found the signature of “Morgan Nemain”- tall letters, pressed deeply into the page with a wide, heavy stroke. While Holmes was an expert in handwriting analysis, able to discern the most telling clues as to a person’s identity from his or her signature, Arthur was not thus skilled. He closed the book silently, resigned to its secrets.
Finally, and with heavy feet, Arthur and Bram left the boardinghouse. Arthur in particular rejoined the frantic thoroughfares of Stepney in a sour mood. This had not gone as planned.
“Well, are you all done now?” asked Bram. He was waiting for an opportune moment to tell Arthur that they were headed in the wrong direction. “Have you had your fill?”
“I won’t pretend that the day has gone as I had hoped,” said Arthur. “Indeed, this puzzle seems ever darker. My Sherlock had his data with which to work. And what do we have? A dress. An eyewitness who only saw the murderer from behind. A nameless woman of the evening. There must be tens of thousands of them on this block alone. I say this is a mite outside the realm of Sherlock’s adventures.”
Bram thought for a long moment and then made a very fateful decision.
“Arthur, I don’t like that you’re doing this, and for my own part I would very much like simply to return to my theater in peace, inasmuch as the theater can ever be described as being ‘at peace.’ I believe that you’re jiggling the lid of Pandora’s box and that once you become involved, you have nary a notion of what might pop out. Look at where you are right now. This is not a place for you. You’re too good a man, Arthur. Others of us…” Bram paused for a long moment. “Well, not everyone is so good a man as you.”
“Thank you,” said Arthur, regarding Bram fondly. “But, though I don’t yet see the way forward, I am too committed to turn back now.”
“Very well,” said Bram. “In that case I have precisely two things I need to tell you. In two distinct ways you’re headed in the wrong direction. First, literally, we are walking north, and Blackwell Station is behind us.” Arthur looked up for confirmation of this, and, finding none, he nodded before turning about and walking back the way he’d come.
“Second,” continued Bram as he turned and walked beside Arthur, “the dead girl was not a prostitute.”
At this, Arthur stopped abruptly.
“Whatever do you mean? She was found in that house, with a man-”
“Balderdash,” said Bram. “What East End prostitute owns a clean white wedding dress? Which of them owns a clean dress of any kind? It’s grim work, and not the sort that tends to induce sartorial cleanliness. That horrible little man we were speaking to said that she burst into his boardinghouse, face bright with smiles, and then paid her nightly rent up front. The gentleman followed a few minutes later. If she were whoring, pardon my language, she would have paid the rent with his money. Now, tell me, what sort of prostitute takes her gent’s money in advance and goes blithely into their flophouse to pay for their hours together? If she were on the clock, so to speak, I tell you she’d have stolen the money and snuck away as soon as the man took his eyes off her.”
Arthur thought about this deeply. If the dead girl was not a prostitute
“If not… Well, if not that, what was she, then?” asked Arthur.
“I can’t say for sure,” said Bram. “I don’t possess the deductive faculties of which you’ve written so eloquently. But I can’t understand why no one seems to think of the obvious.”
“The obvious?”
“Yes. That she was exactly who she said she was. A bride.”
“If she was a bride,” said Arthur, putting it all together in his head, “then he was…”
“Yes,” said Bram, leading him through the York Street square, ensuring that Arthur, adrift in his head, wasn’t hit by a passing hansom. “Then the murderer was the man who’d married her.”