Free Castle Rouge by Carole Nelson Douglas Page A

name for a story of mine.”
    “Of yours, or of mine?” Holmes asked acidly.
    “Of…yours, of course. All stories of mine are…yours.”
    “ Hmmm . Not as flattering as you might think, Watson. I distinctly forbid you to concoct any ‘story’ of this case. It is too awful to perpetuate in all its gory glory. At any rate, too much time has already been wasted on Leather Apron. But back to twenty-nine September, 1888. Sometime before midnight, Matthew Packer sold fruit to a man and a woman from his front room at forty-four Berner Street.”
    “Next-door to the murder site we now stand near!”
    “Indeed so, Watson. No one is more quickly attuned to the nuances of street addresses than a doctor who is called out frequently in the night. In this instance I detect a clear superiority to the mere olfactory skills of Toby the bloodhound.”
    I knew that if I could view Holmes by a paraffin lamp I would see the twinkle in his eye as he so gently paid me back for my peevish complaint of a while previous in Baker Street.
    “Poor old Packer!” he went on. “His testimony wavered like his aged hand. Although he identified the woman as Long Liz and described a man of thirty to five-and-thirty years as her companion, a dark-favored man of medium height, it remains a questionable sighting.”
    Holmes drew deeply on the pipe, expelling enough smoke for a miniature steam engine before he continued. He turned and looked down the street.
    “The next witness is the only one to have heard a soon-to-be-dead woman speak. He was William Marshall, another laborer, and he was standing outside of his lodgings at sixty-four Berner Street when he noticed a couple standing outside next door. He remarked that neither appeared to be drunk but that the couple kissed. This appears to have been common behavior in the neighborhood. He reports that the man—middle-aged, stout, and clean-shaven, about five-foot-six—commented “You would say anything except your prayers,” then walked the woman down the street toward Dutfield’s yard.” Holmes nodded to the gate across the way from us.
    “It sounds as if he knew her, Holmes! That is an accusation, and people seldom accuse strangers.”
    “Apparently, however, there are no strangers in Whitechapel, with all the willy-nilly kissing.”
    “Was there anything unusual about this last man, other than his age? The other suspects have been decidedly below five-and-thirty, and I assume middle age refers to five-and-forty, or fifty or so.”
    “Yes, I find this fellow of particular interest and not only for the cryptic quality of his remark. He was quietly, clerkishly dressed: cutaway coat, dark trousers, peaked cap; nothing that would attract attention, although the nautical touch of the peaked cap is out of character and strangely sinister.”
    “Do you think so, Holmes?”
    He shrugged and sucked upon the pipe stem again. I had the sense that I had just proven my only human intuitions again but could not see how or where.
    “There was, however, a disappointing lack of facial description because William Marshall did not see it, no doubt because of an excess of kissing.”
    “Holmes, a kiss in Whitechapel is like a handshake elsewhere in London. It begins a bargain instead of seals it.”
    “I can only rejoice that I have been spared making that bargain. The clock is moving toward my appearance on the scene. It is now half-past twelve and Long Liz Stride, all five-foot-two of her, is still making herself puzzlingly public on the street. PC William Smith notes on his rounds that about where we keep watch now, Watson, opposite where her body would be discovered an hour later, a man and woman stood. He identified the woman as Stride, but was the first to notice a red flower on her jacket.”
    “And I suppose it is some damned different fellow with her.”
    “Ha!” Had we been at home in Baker Street, Holmes would have leaped up and begun pacing with excitement. “Five-foot-seven, Watson.