Sherlock Holmes and The Shadows of St Petersburg

“Care to join us, Watson?”
Needless to say, I readily agreed. “I have no patients today. And the similarities to the case about which I was just reading” - for emphasis, I again brandished the book - “have attracted my interest.”
“No need to carry that thing along,” offered Holmes. “I am certain we shall do quite well without the aid of Mr Dostoevsky.”
Lestrade responded with a look of confusion. Nonetheless, he agreed to convey the two of us to the scene of the murders. A police van waited outside; and after bundling ourselves in heavy coats and marching down the stairs, we climbed into the four-wheeler. At the crack of the driver’s whip, it lurched forward and, rattling down Baker Street, proceeded to turn left into the Marylebone Road and make its way eastward across the city.
* * *
It was a gloomy drive through London on a dimly-lit November morning. Dark clouds covered the sun, and a thick fog hung about us. A journey to the site of two deaths prompts little idle chatter in general, and we three sat with our private thoughts as we plunged onward. In point of fact, as I gazed out the windows of the police van, I fancied how similar were the monstrous images of desperation in the novel I had just finished reading and those depressing scenes that we were now about to face in reality.
Poverty blighted all. The East End attracted the poorest wretches from the various corners of the world - Jews from Eastern Europe most recently. Located downwind from the city and originally established beyond the city’s limits, the area presented the foulest-smelling occupations imaginable. Tanneries and fulling mills poisoned the air; thick fog clogged the atmosphere; dampness from the river extended throughout the backstreets and warrens. Inconsistency reigned. Industries rose and fell; docks opened and closed; workers lost their jobs; beggars roamed the streets; prostitution, thievery, and murder thrived.
Not even the spiritual reputation of the religious could escape the shadow of the East End. The dead man and his wife had lived in a rundown boarding house in Brick Lane in Spitalfields not far from the Whitechapel Road. Though we did not know it at the time - the atrocities performed by Jack the Ripper were still months away - the fact that such unspeakable crimes could take place in this part of the city surprised no one familiar with the area. For generations, a legacy of terror would haunt the inhabitants of the East End.
The uniformed constable standing watch at the entrance to the house in Brick Lane sprang to attention at the arrival of the police van. Following Lestrade, we made our way up the few steps to the outer door. No sooner did the Inspector push it open than we were assaulted by waves of stench - burnt oil, hot grease, overcooked chicken, singed garlic - the residue of foreign cooking, I surmised.
Lestrade made for the stairs, but Holmes paused to have a look about the entryway and the floor round the base of the staircase. In the weak light permeating the begrimed window next to the outer door, Holmes directed our attention to a small closet built into the wall beneath the stairs.
Only after holding up his glass to examine its wooden doorframe did he open the small door to reveal the confines of the tiny chamber. Clearly the domain of the caretaker, the darkened interior could not have been more than three feet square and five feet high. In it were arrayed a broom, a mop, and a bucket.
“Not much room for a hidey, I daresay,” observed Lestrade.
Yet plenty of room, I could not help thinking, for any one of the miserable human beings observed by Dostoevsky who, rather than face immediate death, would willingly choose to spend the rest of their lives stranded on just such a “yard of surface” (as translated by Whishaw; “square yard” Mrs Garnett would more felicitously call it).
“There is space enough in this closet,” said Holmes, “to conceal the vilest of villains.” Then sinking to his knees, he scrutinised the splintered flooring just before the door. “Aha!” he exclaimed a moment later as he rubbed his fingers over the wood. “A spot of blood. Too much unsettled dust and dirt to draw more specific conclusions.”
Now he held up his glass to examine more of the area surrounding the closet. I might have predicted what he would find. In the shadows a few paces to the left of the small door he stooped over and pointed to a tiny box covered in black velveteen.
“A jeweller’s case,” said he, picking it up.
“Blimey,” muttered Lestrade. “My men missed that.”
“Note the finger-marks in blood on the top,” said Holmes. “No doubt they come from the murder scene.” He flipped it open, and the spring-charged lid made a small popping sound as it gaped wide.
Resting inside on a bed of black velvet, lay a pair of gold drop-earrings, both about one-half inch in length and curiously shaped in a figure-eight design. “Infinity,” Holmes murmured. Within each of the twin golden loops was set a small stone of polished black onyx.
“Why,” Lestrade said, “the box must have been dropped by the killer on his way out. Some of his stolen loot.”
“Or perhaps he was hiding in the closet,” I dared venture, “to avoid people on the stairs. He might have dropped it then.”
Lestrade knit his brow at my suggestion, but I was merely repeating the events from Dostoevsky’s novel. There too a pair of earrings is found near the murdered pawnbroker’s flat, stolen earrings inadvertently dropped by the murderer as he takes refuge behind an open door.
“These earrings do not appear to be of especially high value,” Holmes observed, “but quite capable of producing a small sum as a pledge to the pawnbroker.”
Holmes rose and, brushing off his trousers, handed the tiny box to the Inspector “Now, Lestrade,” Holmes announced whilst the policeman was slipping the box into a side-pocket of his great coat, “to