“If the law can do nothing we must take the risk ourselves.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
“The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge”
December 4,1900
Arthur threw the rock as hard as he could against the gray stones of Scotland Yard. With a sharp clack, the rock bounced off the new Yard building and landed ineffectually at the feet of a nearby constable. Seeing the stone below him, the constable looked up to find its source. He saw Arthur backing away along Victoria Street, and as the constable opened his mouth to shout at the strange rock thrower, Arthur turned his back to the Yard and sped off. The brisk walk was a good outlet for his anger, and so he kept trotting west until, just before Westminster, he slowed and began to pant.
No one had believed him. No one had listened. Arthur’s name was more synonymous with the art of detection than any other in London, save that of Sherlock Holmes, and yet still they had not had the slightest interest in a word he’d said. Inspector Miller, in particular, had been the worst offender, given his recent dealings with Arthur. When Arthur had marched into Miller’s office and announced that he’d found the murderer of Emily Davison, Sally Needling, and their friend Anna, the man had calmly set down the report he’d been reading, awkwardly adjusted the pens on his desk, and then launched into a series of polite platitudes which overwhelmed Arthur in their obsequious banality.“We do so appreciate your help,” Inspector Miller had said, before thanking Arthur for all the time he’d devoted to the cause of justice. The Yard knew that Arthur must be terribly busy, what with all of his novelistic work. His generosity in taking so much time away from his writing had been noticed and appreciated. If he wished, a formal letter from Commissioner Bradford himself could be written, signed, and even framed for placement in Arthur’s home. “We value your assistance more than any other man of the realm,” continued Miller’s flattery. Arthur tried to hush him, tried to concern Inspector Miller with the case at hand rather than this disgraceful sycophancy. His ego did not need burnishing, he explained, but his findings deserved a public hearing. And one Mr. Bobby Stegler, of Stegler & Sons Printing House along the Strand, deserved to be clapped in the inspector’s most uncomfortable darbies and led forthwith to the gallows.
Inspector Miller had sighed. He’d told Arthur that after his recent trip to Newgate, it was best for Arthur to abstain from further involvement in this matter. No one wanted another mistake, after all. Why, careers that had taken a lifetime to build might be rubbed out with a single compromising word! If Arthur ended up in Newgate again, Inspector Miller’s own position of influence within the Yard might be shaken. Wasn’t it better for everyone if Arthur simply let the matter slide?
Arthur insisted that he did not know what would be best for himself or for the inspector or for the imbecilic muffs who ran this ragtag institution, but surely the world would be better off with a murderer placed properly behind bars! The man had killed three women. He would doubtless kill more.
Yes, very well, Arthur had been forced to admit that he had precious little in the way of actual evidence. In fact, he had none at all, save the man’s indirect confession, which only Arthur had heard. Moreover, Arthur did grant that the boy had not actually admitted to having killed those girls-but he certainly alluded to having done so. And that must count for something, mustn’t it? Arthur would stake his own life on this boy’s having been the murderer they’d been hunting for.
Inspector Miller had not been convinced. He had not believed. And, so Arthur realized with a growing anger, Inspector Miller seemed to be harboring suspicions elsewhere as to the identity of the killer.
“You went to the home of Sally Needling’s family?” Miller had asked. “You’ve made contact with this other girl-what was her name? Janet Fry? How do you know these young women so well?”
“I don’t,” Arthur had insisted. He’d tried to explain again. But the inspector’s questions revealed something dark and unspoken about the man’s thoughts-he thought he already knew who had killed Emily Davison. And, Arthur realized to his own horror, the inspector thought it was Arthur.
“What are you insinuating?” Arthur had finally asked him.
“Nothing, Dr. Doyle. As I said, it was my pleasure and my privilege to free you from the chains of Newgate the once. But I think no good would be served by my having to do it again.” The sympathetic nod which Inspector Miller had then given Arthur was the most aggravating part. As if Arthur were a co-conspirator in this corruption.
“If you think I killed Emily Davison,” Arthur had said furiously, spitting the words wetly from his mouth, “then you had better lock me up this very instant. Do not dare let my station in life deter you from bringing the full weight of the law down upon my back, do you hear me?”
The inspector had demurred. He’d defused the situation quietly and then had a constable show Arthur to the door. Arthur had been sputtering with rage when he grabbed the rock from the dirty cobblestones along Victoria Street and pitched it at the ugly stone face of British justice.
He found Bram less than three-quarters of an hour later in one of the Lyceum’s basement dressing rooms. Arthur entered to find Bram polishing the mirrors himself, wiping them clean with an old rag and a stick of Lever Bros. Sunlight Soap. Bram’s sleeves were rolled past his elbows as he scrubbed the soap streaks from the brilliant surfaces. The electric bulbs which surrounded the mirrors were reflected in the newly clean glass, doubling their brightness and making it appear, for an instant, as if the entire mirrored wall were constituted only of bursting flame.
Bram turned to face Arthur, setting down his rag.
“I’d know that face anywhere,” said Bram. “Welcome back, Mr. Holmes.”
Arthur did not smile. Rather he unburdened himself upon his friend, sharing the events of the past few days in detail, and in a rueful tone. When Arthur had finished, Bram scratched at his bushy red beard thoughtfully.
“The boy,” said Bram. “Bobby Stegler. He just let you leave? After he’d near confessed to you? He let you walk out of there in one piece?”
“Yes,” said Arthur. “Don’t you see? Once he knew who I was… well, he’d thought he’d found a fellow in his cause. And for my own part, I didn’t see much point in disabusing him of that notion. Strange, damn it. Everyone thinks I’m on his side. Inspector Miller thinks I’m trying to help him cover up my own crimes. And Stegler thinks I’m working to help him cover up his own.”
“So then, whose side are you on really, Arthur? That of justice? That of law?”
“No. Emily’s. Sally’s. Anna’s. I’m on the side of the girls.”
“Well then, what do you think your girls would have you do now?”
Arthur considered the question, turning to face both men’s reflections in the dressing-room mirrors. He noticed how well his own mustache had grown back, how quickly his visage had again taken on the form of a proper man’s. A strange image appeared in his head. It was of his own wedding day. Except that Arthur was not wearing his black tuxedo. Rather he was wearing a sparkling white wedding dress. He imagined himself stitched all in white silk, a flowing train following behind him as he walked blushingly down the aisle toward his betrothed. He imagined the smile on his face, the exuberance of a bride on her wedding day.
Arthur noticed Bram regarding him curiously, and he shook himself from this vision. What a queer thing to imagine!
“I think,” Arthur said at last, “that these girls would have us see to it that their killer was brought to justice. At any cost. Any cost at all.”
Bram stood and began unrolling his sleeves. He fastened the buttons on his cuffs one by one before he spoke again.
“Very well,” said Bram. “Then I am with you.” He took his coat and slid it over his outstretched arms. “Whatever that cost might be.”
December 6, 1900
Arthur and Bram stood on Bridge Street, just across from the Jews’ Burial Ground. Though it was quite dark, they could still make out a few of the tallest headstones, chipped and ragged, illuminated by the lights of the workhouse behind them. They heard the groans of drunks from somewhere beyond, and from the large road they heard the faint pitter-patter of prostitutes’ feet along the dirt. Arthur had not planned this return to the East End, to be sure. But now that he was here, and had been venturing here for the past two days, he realized that of course there was nowhere else for this matter to properly end.
Arthur regarded the Stegler family’s staunch two-story in front of him. He and Bram had found the house easily, by a simple search of the public records regarding the Stegler printing business. Over the last two days, they had kept watch over the property. In a small black notebook, they had kept track of the identities and schedules of each resident of the house. First there was Bobby, who left the house early every morning to attend to his duties at the family press. Bobby’s father, Tobias, left each day a bit later in the morning, stopping in on the press and then on other errands in regard to his business. Bobby’s sister, whose name they learned was Melinda, lived in the house as well and seemed to be at home most of the day, watching after the various servant girls who came by and attending to some of the chores herself. In the evenings she would dine out with friends. These three characters made up the sum of the house’s residents-a search of the death notices revealed that Bobby’s mother had passed many years ago, when he was just a boy.
Arthur had followed Tobias Stegler the day before, and to Arthur’s shock he learned that the man owned a number of houses on Watney Street, near Whitechapel, including the one that had been rented out secretly as a boardinghouse by its caretaker-the one behind which the body of Sally Needling had been found. When he’d seen Mr. Stegler give a few raps on the outside of that house’s door and then saw the lady of the house answer, Arthur had almost lost his wits with surprise. The last time he’d seen this woman, she had been disconsolate, sitting on the narrow staircase of her black-market boardinghouse and crying over the body she’d found and robbed. And here she was calmly opening the door for her landlord, the father of the boy who had done that very murdering. Arthur remembered her fear, he remembered that she’d been keeping the business she ran from this house secret from the landlord-from the man he now knew was Tobias Stegler. Arthur watched as she passed Mr. Stegler a clump of bills and sent him on his way. He never entered the house, as he was seemingly content to have collected his rents and saw no need for further inquiry into the state of his property.
Clearly, this was no coincidence. But it took an hour of talking through the situation with Bram, later that night, before Arthur figured out what it meant. Tobias Stegler did not know about the boardinghouse being run out of his property, they reasoned. If he did, then the woman of the house would have had no cause to respond to Arthur’s threat, all those weeks ago, that he would tell her landlord of her secret. But, they also reasoned, somehow Bobby Stegler did know, and he’d used this to his advantage. He knew that he would need an out-of-theway place, a quiet boardinghouse without a lot of guests, to bring his first victim. When he learned, probably through some simple accident, that one of the women his father rented to was secretly keeping lodgers, it only made sense for him to make use of it. He would not, however, have risked a second trip to the same house, for his second victim. He had gotten lucky enough that the woman hadn’t recognized him once-though as far as Arthur and Bram could tell, she might not even know the boy’s face.
If Arthur had harbored any doubts as to Bobby Stegler’s guilt in the murders, this revelation eliminated them. Bobby had particular means to have committed these crimes, he had the opportunity, and he certainly had a motive, however perverse it might be. What the boy had done was more evil, Arthur knew, than simple murder. He had toyed with his victims first; he had seduced them, he had said he loved them, he had made them feel love, and then he had strangled them in dirtflecked bathtubs. He had not simply slaughtered these women; he had first violated their womanhood. He had cruelly struck each woman at the core of her female being. It was worse than murdering a man. And it was worse even than simply murdering a woman. He had struck at the entire womanly sex.
Arthur and Bram waited until the house was empty. At 8:30 p.m., as expected, Bobby’s sister, Melinda, left the house for an evening rendezvous with her girlfriends. Bobby had not yet returned from the printing house; the past two nights, he had not returned until after ten. Tobias was out at this hour as well, dining with another neighborhood landlord. The house was dark, and perfectly still. This was as planned. As Arthur and Bram watched Melinda Stegler turn the corner on to Harford Street, they each finished a final cigarette of the evening and stepped across Bridge Street, toward the house.
They had discussed their plan at length, and so as the men stepped around the house, to the back, neither needed to speak a word. The back door was cheap and thin, probably held shut with only a small lock, but they went for the window next to it. As Arthur raised his booted foot and kicked straight through it, the glass broke easily. Amid the squalid noise of the East End, the sound of shattering glass blended into the din. One more violent crash hardly added to the neighborhood’s clamor.
Arthur stepped through the window, and Bram followed close behind. Their boots crunched the glass underfoot as they walked through the kitchen. Their earliest reconnaissance had told them that Bobby’s bedroom was on the second floor, and they wasted no time in heading straight for it. They knew what they were here for. They had abandoned all caution to get it.
The staircase creaked with the weight of two bodies on it. The house was of poor construction, and the wooden boards felt as if they might snap at any moment. Arthur’s boots left a trail of tiny glass shards as he walked, a line of glinting sparkles from the kitchen to the second-floor bedroom and into the mouth of hell itself.
When both men had entered Bobby Stegler’s quarters, they shut the door and lit the single gas lamp upon the wall. A narrow four-poster bed rested, unmade, in one corner of the room. Two broad chairs sat across from it, as if ready to entertain guests. But, judging from the messy piles of clothes which covered them, Arthur found it unlikely that many guests came up here. The sloppiness of the boy’s room pointed to a loneliness within him-as if he could allow his private quarters to be in disarray because he would never, at any point, need to share them. Did this raging child have friends? Did he have cricket with the other boys his age? Had he ever felt love? Had he ever looked into the face of a woman and known that tender feeling, that warmth which spread from belly to beard? Had his hands ever quivered as they touched a young girl’s glove? Had he ever bit his lip to keep from crying out with joy as he bent over to kiss a woman’s hand?
Arthur looked at the messy sheets of printing paper on the small desk, he looked at the ink-stained clothes strewn haphazardly across the floor, and he knew that Bobby Stegler was not a man. He was a beast. And Arthur would see that he was put in a cage where he belonged, to live out his miserable days until his death, when his heart could be cut from his chest by a doctor’s scalpel and that black, wrinkled organ could be placed in a jar for the edification of future generations. “This is the cold heart of a dead man,” the typewritten sleeve on the bell jar would read, “and this is what it looks like when a heart dies years before its owner.” In the bright twentieth century, when reason ruled the world, this boy would serve as a reminder of the dark years that had passed, and of the generation-Arthur’s generation-which had led them all from superstition into the brilliant rationality of science.
But first he would need to be caught. And so Arthur and Bram got to work, silently and methodically. They searched the clothes, the bed, the desk, the chairs, and into the tight closet. They searched for evidence. Arthur hoped to find the wedding allegations-this boy would be arrogant enough, proud enough of his villainy, to have saved them, Arthur suspected. And with the allegations in hand, the Yard would have to listen to him. Failing that, they hoped to find letters from any of the dead girls written to Bobby Stegler. Or perhaps proofs of the girls’ pamphlets, which would at least prove that he knew them. There were a dozen possible pieces of evidence they might find here, and they needed only one.
When the first sweep of the room produced nothing of interest, they searched again. The minutes wore on, and Bram began to express concern about the hour. At some point one of the inhabitants of the house was bound to return. And it wouldn’t do for Arthur and Bram to be caught ransacking their home.
But Arthur would not leave. He would not think of it until something useful had been discovered. He had followed his scarlet thread of murder too far to stop here, or even to come back and try again at a later date. This would end tonight, and by the morning, so help him, Bobby Stegler would be in the care of Inspector Miller and his men.
The search continued.
“We must leave, Arthur,” said Bram as his impatience grew. “What if Tobias returns? Or the sister?”
Arthur pulled back his coat, showing off the revolver strapped to his waist.
“Then we will explain the situation fearlessly and be on our way. What are they going to do to us? Call the Yard? I’m sure Bobby Stegler would appreciate having the Yard men sniffing about his quarters.”
“I have no natural aversion to breaking and entering, don’t misunderstand. But we have to be discreet about this, don’t you think?”
“I think,” said Arthur, “that we have to find something that we can use here. And this jabbering is not going to help us do it.”
He turned from the desk before him to the windowsill. A few used, broken pens lay on the sill, and one had even dripped ink onto the white paint. Arthur touched at the pens and then raised his head to the window, where he found himself inches away from the smiling face of Bobby Stegler.
Arthur froze and caught his breath. For a second he was motionless, watching what could only be a specter in the window. But as the boy’s smile widened and the window was pulled open from the outside, Arthur realized that there was no ghostly presence at work. The boy was sitting on a tree branch outside the window. For all Arthur knew, he might have been watching them the whole time.
Arthur stepped back as Bobby Stegler stepped into the bedroom through the open window.
“As soon as I saw the light on, from the street, why, I knew it was you!” said Bobby. “I just knew it!” He closed the window behind him and looked at Bram.
“And you would be Mr. Stoker, wouldn’t you?” continued the boy as he moved the blond hair from his eyes. “I’ve been looking after you two. It seems you’ve been looking about for me, too!” Bobby laughed then, and the sound was hideous.
Arthur drew the gun from his waist and held it in front of him.
“Be quiet,” said Arthur, “and be very still, do you understand? Or I will shoot you here and now.”
The boy smiled again and looked over at Bram.
“If Arthur doesn’t,” said Bram as he pulled a revolver from his own coat, “then I most certainly will.”
“Oh, ho,” said Bobby, “my two detectives! You’ve really taken your roles quite seriously, haven’t you? But come off it. You don’t want to shoot me, not after everything I’ve done for you.
“Why, Arthur, don’t look at me so! I’ve saved your life! Frankly, don’t you think we should be sharing a pint o’ bitters and laughing over our good fortune? Those bleeding cunts were going to kill you. I know about the letter bomb. Didn’t find out till I’d already had my way with that last one, mind you. I can’t give myself too much credit. I didn’t kill them to save your life, but by the by, as I’ve killed, so I’ve without a doubt saved you!”
“They weren’t going to kill me,” said Arthur. “Not really. And I won’t defend them, all right, I won’t defend the horrible things those girls were planning. But you… What you’ve done is infinitely so very much worse. You murdered three innocent women.”
“Innocent?” Bobby Stegler’s face lit up with incredulity. “You can’t mean that. Innocent? Three queer dollymops with a boxful of dynamite? You must know they were… well, I think they loved each other. I mean, I think they loved each other, as if one were a man! Emily Davison and Janet Fry most certainly did. My God, can you imagine? They were horrors, those hairy cunts. And they were out to remake the world-our world-in their hairy-cunted image.”
As Arthur held the revolver in his hand, he felt a shaking in his arm. He felt himself twitching. He imagined the faces of those dead girls-sweet, pale, and mutilated. More than anything else he had ever wanted, he wanted at this moment to pull the trigger. To see this ugly thing before him smitten from the face of the earth.
“Arthur,” said Bram. “Don’t.”
As usual, Bram could read his thoughts exactly. Bobby Stegler looked back and forth between the two men, and something new registered on the boy’s face. Curiosity. As if it had never before occurred to him that Arthur might actually fire the revolver.
“Oh!” Bobby said. “Are you going to shoot me? I mean, you’re honestly thinking about shooting me? I just can’t… My!” He pressed his hair away from his face again and scratched at his scalp. “Seems rather unlike you, doesn’t it, Dr. Doyle? I mean, I don’t have a weapon on me. Unarmed and all that. Not a threat to your person. You’d be killing me in cold blood like, wouldn’t you? The storyteller has a gun, and he’s fit to use it. Well then. All right. It’s up to you then, I suppose. What are you going to do now, Dr. Doyle? Are you going to shoot me? Or are you going to tell me a story?”
Arthur looked deeply into the boy’s clear blue eyes and scanned the contours of his handsome face. Arthur could hear something, faintly, in the distance. A rushing sound. A crash of water against rock. He wasn’t sure if it was real or not, but he heard it all the same. Torrents of water rushing over a cliff. He tuned his ears to the noise and recognized the tone. He steadied his hand and listened to the sound, from the back of his mind, of the Reichenbach Falls.