A/N: *chanting softly* sorry sorry SORRY sorry SORRY SORRY sorry sorry sorry
I have been experiencing the most awful writer's block on this story, you guys, and all I can do is apologize. But I FINALLY broke through, I got the next (final!) three chapters plotted, figured out where the hell this is all going, and made myself sit down and write it. You'll probably get the rest of it before the end of August, though I do hesitate to say that because I might jinx it.
Anyway, I'm really REALLY sorry I haven't updated in so long, but I definitely haven't forgotten about this. I've just been focusing on some shorter things.
As always, it means a lot to me if you review with your thoughts, and it might mean you get the next chapter faster, too! Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with this, I love you and you all make me very happy.
Chapter XXI
I awoke a little after eight the following morning. The sound which had roused me must have been part of my dream, I thought, for it had sounded like the whining of a dog.
Sure enough, once I had dressed and ascended the stairs to 221B, a pair of dirty paws pressed against my legs as the creature begged for affection. It was a strange little thing; one ear seemed to be permanently inside-out and its scruffy brown and white fur was matted and muddy. It was too much of a mutt for me to identify any one breed, but it seemed cheerful enough.
I bent down to scratch behind its ear. "Hello, little fellow. What's your name?"
"Toby."
I glanced up to see Holmes standing over me. He didn't look much better than the mutt, what with his muddy clothing and disheveled hair. Despite his ragged appearance, his mood seemed improved from its recent state.
"You don't seem the type to bring home strays," I said as I returned my attention to Toby, who had rolled over to have his stomach petted.
Holmes chuckled to himself. "And yet you can be found lurking about more often than not."
Before I could release my equally witty retort, Watson appeared from down the hall. He too looked like he had been dragged across the countryside all night, and the hunch to his shoulders told me that it had been more taxing on him than on Holmes.
"Good morning Uncle John!"
"Good morning, Mary," he said with a yawn. "Although perhaps I should be saying 'good night,' considering that I am just now preparing for bed."
"Mrs. Hudson told me that woman I saw outside yesterday afternoon brought an interesting case. I take it that's why the two of you are just getting home?"
Watson's eyes brightened as he poured himself a cup of tea from the pot on the table. "Yes, her name is Mary Morstan. Quite an extraordinarily strong woman, I should say. And the case is rather exciting too."
"Ah, but you take more interest in the woman than the case," I teased, earning a scowl and a flush from my friend.
"I never said any such thing."
"That's all right. With the rough night you've had I wouldn't be too invested in the case either."
Holmes had settled into his chair and lit a pipe, which he was now alternating with his cup of tea. "Any progress of your own, Russell?"
"No," I admitted. "Clearly you've made some."
"Some. Watson was invaluable, as was Toby."
"I wouldn't say invaluable," Watson said. He had a tendency to downplay his abilities, I knew, especially when Holmes was involved, but if Holmes had said he was invaluable then I was certain he had been. "Anyway, it's been a very long night. If we plan to continue investigating later in the day, I ought to get some sleep." He drained his tea and replaced the cup on the table before pointing at Holmes. "As your friend and your doctor, Holmes, you ought to sleep too. Lord knows you get little enough without chasing dogs across half the city all night."
Holmes waved dismissively as his friend trudged off down the hallway. I scooped Toby up as I stood—this was something of a feat, considering that he was large and bony and lay limply across my arms, but I held him to my chest nonetheless—and made my way over to a chair, where I sat with the dog on my lap. "Did you forget that we were supposed to meet for dinner last night?"
"No." He set down his tea in order to devote his whole attention to his pipe. "However, Miss Morstan received a letter instructing her to bring two friends and meet a mysterious benefactor outside the Lyceum Theatre at seven yesterday evening. The case seemed urgent."
He continued to fill me in on the mystery of her father's disappearance and the lustrous pearls which she had been sent every year for the last six, then the gruesome murder which he and Watson had discovered and the creosote trail they had employed Toby to track.
"It does sound a very interesting affair," I admitted, stroking Toby's head. "I only wish I had known that you intended to pursue it. I might have accompanied you and offered the lady some comfort, at least."
Holmes sighed and suddenly I could see how weary he was; the exertion had taken its toll on him too, it would seem. "I know, Russell. Please believe that it was not my intention to abandon you—at least, certainly not when we made arrangements. I should have contacted you after Miss Morstan presented her case."
"Yes, you should have." I bent to set Toby on the floor and stood, remembering the repaired locket in my room downstairs. "Fortunately, all I would have been able to tell you was that I had found nothing. Excuse me, I need to get something from my closet." He nodded.
Less than a minute later, I was back upstairs, where Holmes had picked up that morning's Star and was reading it with furrowed brow. "What's wrong?"
He scowled and tossed me the paper. I managed to catch it without dropping the locket and turned it over to see what he had been reading. There, in bold, slightly smudged lettering, was a headline: WHITECHAPEL KILLER STILL NOT FOUND. Beneath that in slightly more reasonable text it said Police Suspect Man With Leather Apron.
"How on earth could—have the police released anything to the press yet?" I stammered, locket temporarily forgotten. The last thing our investigation needed was to have all of London in a frenzy of terror because the press were anxious to sell papers.
"It would seem so."
"Well, what are we going to do?"
"I'm not sure that we can do anything but ask Scotland Yard to keep things a little quieter." Despite his nonchalant words, I could see that the publicity was as unwelcome as it was unexpected.
"Oh, well. I take it that there is not much of anything for you to do on Miss Morstan's case until your irregulars locate the steamer?"
"No," Holmes bemoaned, "I am on a rather enforced leave from the case until we have more information."
"In that case, and since I know you have no intention of sleeping, I won't worry about taking your time to present you with this." I let the locket swing free from my grasp to dance on the end of its chain. The curtains were partially drawn in sympathy of tired eyes but it still sparkled merrily in the low light.
Holmes reached out to brush the silver with his fingers. "The locket? But it was destroyed when—in January."
"I can't take all the credit," I explained, handing it to him for closer examination. "Or any of it, really. Mrs. Hudson had it repaired as a sort of gift." I remembered how she had joked about it being a wedding present and felt a flush on my face.
It was difficult to read my friend's expression while he inspected the craftsmanship of the necklace's repairs. Once he had opened it and pressed it to his ear and heard the soft mechanical beat of its gears, he nodded and handed it back to me. I accepted it but froze, unsure. "But Holmes, this was your mother's. Last time I had it..."
"It was a gift," he said firmly. "It belongs to you now."
I splayed my fingers in the delicate chain and looped it over my head. The clock itself dropped back to its familiar place over my breastbone, where its second tiny heartbeat could be felt even through my dress. A deep feeling of reassurance spread over me and I smiled. "Thank you, Holmes."
"You're welcome, Russell."
The next three days were something of a blur. First Holmes became the bundle of suppressed energy he always did while awaiting information on a case, and with Watson frequently absent—visiting Miss Morstan, I suspected—I could only find pleasant company outside the flat. I wandered aimlessly in the streets and even shopped and cleaned for Mrs. Hudson when my own whimsy was exhausted. Then Holmes and Watson were off on the trail once more, leaving me to clean 221B in their absence. My old habits were soothing if not particularly enjoyable.
Dr. Watson became engaged to Miss Morstan—"Why Uncle John, my congratulations! Goodness, this is all very sudden, but my congratulations to you both, I so look forward to meeting the lovely lady."-and Holmes sulked for the evening. He too expressed his approval, of course, for how could he not support his closest friend? "But love is an emotional thing," he added, "and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things." After this remark he threw me the sort of sideways glance that left me unsure whether or not he meant this sarcastically. It did seem like the kind of phrase Watson might attribute to him merely for oddity of character. I did think, however, that he did not enjoy the prospect of "losing" Watson to the domestic life he so despised.
The next day Holmes was tied up in the last dregs of Miss Morstan's case, which meant that, when the urgent telegram came through that there had been another murder in Whitechapel, I went unaccompanied to the scene. There was no denying that it was the same culprit; indeed, the body of Annie Chapman was even more grisly and disfigured than that of Mary Anne Nichols. But I could find nothing new at the scene, and neither could Holmes when he came to follow up later in the evening.
This time, at least, I avoided any inconvenient fainting spells.
September bled by, equal parts frenzied research and disappointed inactivity. Some time after the capture and release of the first suspect by Scotland Yard, I got up the courage to look inside a long-untouched drawer of Holmes's desk when he was out at a musical performance. Not only had he evidently used the cocaine since I had last seen the bottle, but it had been emptied and replaced by a new one. Thinking back, I had not seen Holmes with his shirtsleeves rolled up since my return to Baker Street. It's been three years, Russell. Did you really believe that he wouldn't touch it in all that time? Although I made no comment to him, I was sure that he would realize I had been poking my nose where it wasn't wanted. I never opened the drawer again.
On September 27, Scotland Yard called us in to inspect the curious little envelope received by the Central News Agency that day. It was crumpled and worn and lettered in red and contained a note that would become almost as famous as Holmes himself:
Dear Boss,
I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping when till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn't you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife's so nice and sharp and I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck.
Yours truly
Jack the Ripper
Dont mind me giving the trade name
My stomach turned at the callous, enthusiastic descriptions of torture and murder. Holmes snatched the first page out of my hand, muttering about could be a fake, after two murders it's certainly not a secret and it might fit the pattern for our man, but why would he send it to the Central and not to me while I turned the second page sideways to read the post script:
PS Wasnt good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands
curse it
No luck yet. They say I'm a doctor now. Ha ha.
It was the little chuckle at the end which made my anger boil over, I think. Even the bodies themselves did not fill me with fury like the words of whatever maniac had put them there.
"Do you really think there's someone in London with a bottle of congealed blood and red-stained hands?" I asked Holmes, pulling him out of his muttered commentary of the letter. "Would it be worth scouring Whitechapel again?"
"I'm afraid I don't think so, Russell. If anything we should be analyzing this letter. There's a very real possibility that it's a hoax, I'm afraid, but if it is real then it's the biggest lead we have right now."
Three days later, two more bodies were found, even more brutally mutilated, within an hour of each other. The next day the police released the contents of the "Dear Boss" letter to the public as the papers were still swamped with the rush to cover the murders. The letter gave us nothing, and neither did the scenes of the next two deaths.
A terrifying serial killer was on the loose in London. The city turned to the police and the police to the great Sherlock Holmes, but the reality was that we were going nowhere. Even Watson could only devote so much of his time to helping, so busy was he with preparations for his own wedding. The papers inflamed every little hint and rumor so that you scarcely heard anything but panicked whispers among the populous. Holmes rebelled against his powerlessness in every way he knew how, much to the unhappiness of the rest of us, and I went word by word through every clue we had amassed about the case. Nothing helped—if it wasn't Moriarty and Sidney wasn't the mastermind, I could find no other directions to look. All we could do was wait for another strike and hope our killer would make a mistake.
Jack the Ripper was running circles around us.
A/N: If you're interested, there are lots of places you can read more about the Jack the Ripper murders and letters. At this point I can say that because it won't spoil anything else. If you see a link to crime scene pictures, they are obviously VERY graphic, so please use caution. Thanks!