Chapter 15
Bethnal Green was not included among the neighborhoods in my city guide. When I met Sherlock the next morning at the coffee house, he explained why. It was one of the poorest neighborhoods in London, he explained as we waited for Lupin to arrive.
After waiting for nearly half an hour, I started to wonder if Lupin was offended by the way Sherlock and I had departed the day before. But as we waited there for our friend, Sherlock and I decided we must continue to follow the trail of Ophelia’s past to Bethnal Green, even if we had to do it without Lupin.
Sherlock had to argue with the coachman and pay the fare in advance to get him to take us to Bethnal Green. When I had settled in the carriage I asked, “But is it really so terrible?”
“Not in the sense that you imagine,” Sherlock answered.
We plunged into the London fog. It was so thick that it even seemed to dampen the sound of horse hooves on the pavement. The pale sunlight gave way to a mass of uniform, compact gray. I noticed the houses become smaller and uglier, and then all I could see were pale shadows swallowed by the gray, wet, dripping sky.
The carriage left us at a crossroads, where Sherlock chose a direction at random. “Welcome to Bethnal Green!” he said sarcastically.
The only hint we had was a name — Betty. I looked around, thinking it was a hopeless mission.
“Let’s try here,” Sherlock said, taking my hand. We went into a tavern that smelled of rotten cabbage and tobacco and was lit by a forest of candles although it was still morning. It was little more than a big room with a floor covered in sawdust and a few people perched at tables like vultures on branches.
Sherlock tried to ignore them. He leaned against the counter next to some piles of dirty mugs. “I am looking for a woman,” he said to the owner, who was a big, flabby man with a patch over one eye. “A woman named Betty — an elderly lady who had a niece named Olive,” he continued.
The host kept on rubbing an empty mug with a greasy towel and repeated the question to his customers, who gave us hungry looks. I shivered, moving close to Sherlock for some protection.
“Betty, you said?” a bearded man asked while chewing. He had the aura of a gallows bird. “Betty? Perhaps it’s old Betty who is living nearby?” He nudged another customer beside him, then added, “She had a little girl, yes! But then the girl left.”
My heart felt as if it had jumped out of my chest. Could it be that we had a stroke of luck?
Mr. Scapegallows rose suddenly from his chair. “Come with me,” he said as he passed by me. He stank in an unmentionable way. “I’ll show you where she lives. If she is the Betty you are looking for . . .” the man continued.
We found ourselves back in the fog. It wrapped us in its cold, damp embrace once again.
Our guide muttered a few unintelligible phrases and led the way into an alley that seemed like a sewer between two decrepit buildings. “This way, come . . . this way.”
We had just entered the alley when we heard the door of the inn behind us creak open again, at which point Sherlock stopped. “Run away!” he shouted.
Our guide turned toward us, pulling out a knife with a rusty blade. But he did not threaten us in time. Sherlock Holmes pulled a filthy beer mug that he had taken from the counter of the inn out from under his jacket and, pouncing on the man with the knife, hit him in the face. The man shouted, and his accomplice began to run toward us.
“Come! Quickly!” Sherlock grabbed my hand.
We ran away, quickly out of sight in the fog, turning in a completely random pattern through the alleyways and the little muddy streets. Following our instincts, we tried to get out of that hellish area, choosing to go down streets that seemed larger and avoiding buildings that looked as if they might crash to the ground. We slowed only when we were quite sure nobody was chasing us, and we leaned on the scuffed wall of a house, looking at one another.
“We were idiots,” Sherlock said.
“Yes. That was foolish,” I said.
He moved toward me, pushing the hair away from my face. “Are you okay?”
I nodded and then looked down.
“All right,” he whispered, forcing a smile. He took a deep breath and looked around, trying to figure out what part of the neighborhood we were in.
“Do you hear that noise?” he asked me.
I paid attention. It was like the sound of coins clinking together.
We followed the noise through the fog and reached an old beggar woman on a street corner. She was playing with a few coins, dropping them into a tin bowl on the ground.
When she saw us coming, she looked up, smiled in our direction, and suddenly began to rant and rave.
“The devil is out there!” she whimpered, opening a horrible, toothless mouth. “The devil!”
She pointed to a window across the street. The milky, flickering light that came from inside was frightening.
Then the old woman grabbed at me, and suddenly my wrist was locked between her skeletal fingers.
“He has no face!” she shouted, pulling me toward her. “With his cloak and that hat from hell! He has no face! Only a big red spot! It’s the devil!”
I found myself a few inches away from her wide eyes, and I let out a scream. Sherlock intervened to release my wrist from the woman’s grip, shouting, “That’s enough, old fool!” Then he grabbed me by the shoulders, hugged me, and led me away — far from the fog and the madness that seemed to hover like a curse among those decrepit houses.
We wandered around until Sherlock found a carriage. We hopped in eagerly, and Sherlock ordered the coachman to go to my hotel. I sat back and finally began to breathe again. When the carriage arrived at the Claridge’s, Sherlock and I said goodbye.
I was relieved to sit down to lunch with Mr. Nelson. The waitress served me a delicate filet of sole with a side of golden potatoes. I could not help but smile, thankful for the company of Mr. Nelson, the news of my parents’ return, and especially the bright, artificial light that shone down on us in that warm, welcoming, and luxurious hotel.
* * *
Later that day, I discovered that Lupin was not at all angry with us. We hadn’t heard from him because he had received permission to visit his father. The visit had exhausted Lupin. A meeting that was supposed to last little more than fifteen minutes had lasted the whole morning.
That afternoon, the three of us met at the Shackleton Coffee House. I was very happy to see Lupin and hugged him hard.
There was an eerie feeling in the air. The city outside the windows of the café seemed immense and dangerous. Lupin’s mood seemed to fluctuate between moments of genuine despair and near euphoria as he told us about meeting with his father.
He repeated, word for word, the conversation he had with his father. Only at the end, when Sherlock stood up from the table to order another cup of cocoa, did Lupin reveal that his father had given him a more accurate description of the Spaniard.
“He was very tall, as we know, and he was wrapped in a very long cape, with a wide-brim hat that hid his forehead and eyes, and a long, red scarf that he lifted up to his nose,” Lupin said.
“What a striking image!” I muttered. “Did you hear that, Sherlock?”
Sherlock sat between us, and I invited Lupin to repeat the description of the Spaniard. As soon as he heard it, Sherlock’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“Has he . . . has he really told you so? W-with those exact words?” Sherlock mumbled.
“Sherlock? What’s wrong with you?” I asked him, alarmed.
He frantically pulled a handful of coins out from his pocket to pay the bill and said, “We have to return to Bethnal Green! Immediately!”
“Don’t even think about it!” I said.
Lupin grabbed Sherlock’s sleeve — or at least he tried to. But with a rapid movement, Sherlock pulled away and went out into the dim light of the cloudy afternoon, shouting for a carriage.
“Why does he always act like this?” Lupin asked as he stood up. “Couldn’t he try to tell us what he’s thinking before he departs at lightning speed?”
I didn’t answer him because I was too distracted just then. “I’m not going back there,” I muttered, thinking back to Mr. Scapegallows, the muddy alleyways, the bare branches that emerged like skeletons in the fog, and that madwoman who was talking nonsense about the devil on the street corner.
I had no intention of returning to Bethnal Green, but I followed my two friends out of the café anyway.
“Sherlock!” Lupin called after our friend. “Can you please tell us what is on your mind?”
Sherlock turned to look at us with the same glinting eyes that I had seen at the Port of Dover. “We need to find that woman again. The beggar!”
“WHAT?” I exclaimed. “Sherlock! You —”
He faced me. “Do you not understand, Irene? She saw him! He entered that house with the light flickering in the window. That beggar saw the Spaniard!”
I could not follow his reasoning. I shook my head in disbelief. “Sherlock, I — I mean . . . that woman is crazy! She might not even know her own name!”
Sherlock stopped a carriage with a gesture of his hand and went to open the door, continuing to look me straight in the eyes. “I’m not asking you to come with me, Irene.”
I felt fear and pride fighting furiously in my mind. Pride finally won. I stared into the eyes of my friend. “There is no need to ask me anything. Let’s go!”