The Sherlockian

CHAPTER 33 Newgate

November 13,1900, cont.

The stench of Newgate Prison wet the tiny hairs on the inside of Arthur’s nose. Given his social stature, the prison’s governor had granted him a private cell. The knowledge that this must have been the largest and best maintained of all the cells in Newgate only served to further horrify him. The room was eight feet by twelve, with a barred window at the far end, facing the central yard. Yet as Arthur was on only the second floor, not much light got through the thick bars. A water tank and a washbasin lay beneath the window, accompanied by a rolled-up set of bedding. There was no table in the cell, but merely a single shelf, on which rested a plate, a mug, and a Bible. On the opposite side from the window, Arthur could see out the cell doors to the gallery. When he pressed his face against the bars, he could see cell after cell in neat little rows, like hedges stretching into the distance. Arthur could not see the end of the cells, or any of the floors above or below his. There was a skylight at the roof of the prison gallery, and yet little light from that made it to Arthur either. The gallery smelled like a rotting corpse and sounded with the wails of men halfway to death themselves.

Arthur thumbed through a Bible to pass the time. It was the King James Version, and so stained with filth as to be barely readable. He wondered if it would provide him some comfort in this moment of need. Might he open the page to a trenchant aphorism that would buoy his soul from the crushing iniquities of the prison? The first words he saw, when he let the Bible fall open, were these: “I am a victem of yer sweet smell’d cunt.” Some previous inhabitant of these quarters had scrawled the words into the margins, as if they were a scholar’s commentary upon the text. Arthur glanced down at the cheaply printed verses. He was treated to the bit in Joshua where the children of Israel are circumcised for the second time. “And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at the hill of the foreskins,” Arthur read. He was unsure as to whether the misspelled commentary was supposed to refer to this specific verse or whether it was more a general statement of the man’s attitudes on the day he’d written it. After thinking upon this matter for a minute, Arthur realized that he did not much care. For the Bible or for his fellow prisoner.

The day wore on, and he did not speak to a single inhabitant of the nearby cells. When the men were released into the yard, for some sort of recreation, Arthur was purposefully kept inside his cell by the guards. “You’ll find it safer here,” a guard told him as he unlocked the cell beside Arthur’s while leaving his door untouched. Arthur was not in a position to disagree.

While the other prisoners frolicked in the yard, the governor of Newgate came down to see him personally. “Terribly sorry about all this,” the man said. “Inspector Miller sent word, and he’ll try to have you out by nightfall. Can we fetch you anything to help you pass the time?” Arthur thanked the man for his sympathies but said that he had all that he required. The governor offered to assist him in sending a message to his family-“I’ll take it down to the GPO myself,” he said-but Arthur wouldn’t hear of it. He would rather that Touie and the children not learn about this particular adventure. The governor said that he understood.

“I’ve a family, too, Dr. Doyle. My good wife, Shelly, and my boy. Terrific lad. His name is Arthur, too. Funny that!”

“Yes. I appreciate your discretion,” said Arthur, well aware of where this discussion was headed. He had learned, over the years, that as soon as any man made even the briefest mention of his “terrific lad,” Arthur should begin to search around for a pen forthwith.

“If you don’t mind, sir,” said the governor. “He’s a great admirer of yours, my boy is. And… well, of course I am, too. If you wouldn’t mind, if it’s not too much of an imposition…”

“Oh, just give me the bloody book,” said Arthur. He signed a copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes for the governor and then signed a copy of The Sign of the Four as well. Elated at his good fortune over having Arthur Conan Doyle as a day prisoner, the governor left Arthur alone with a firm handshake for a farewell. As the man strode through the galley of his prison, Arthur could hear him whistling.

The sun had just set when Arthur was released. Though the guards were surprised to loose a prisoner at this late hour, they quickly fell into line upon receipt of his release papers. One even bowed to him as the man opened the sturdy central gate and let him out onto the noisy streets.

Bram Stoker and Inspector Miller were waiting together on Newgate Street to greet him. Both embraced Arthur warmly, and Bram had even brought a flask of gin for the occasion.

“If the inspector here doesn’t mind, I thought you might be in need of a drink,” said Bram as he passed the silver flask into Arthur’s dirty hands.

“Most certainly,” said Inspector Miller. “Please. You’ve been through a great ordeal.” Arthur was not the sort who was prone to public drunkenness, nor had he been craving the taste of liquor. And yet, as he felt the cool flask in his hands, he became instantly grateful for Bram’s considerate forethought. Arthur drank deeply and felt warm as the chilled gin tinged his gullet.

“Assistant Commissioner Henry has been reprimanded for his hasty actions,” continued Inspector Miller when Arthur had finished. “This should set back his takeover of the CID at least a year, if I have anything to say about it. The commissioner himself asked that I pass on to you his deepest sympathies and his solemn promise that no record of this… incident shall be kept in the Yard’s records. We had to generate a bit of paperwork for Newgate, but I’ll see to it that it’s burned by the week’s end.”

“Inspector Miller here has been most helpful on the matter of your release,” said Bram. “He contacted me this morning, and has been working tirelessly for your benefit.”

“Thank you both,” said Arthur. He took another swig of gin.

“Where shall I take you?” offered Bram. “I’d suggest your home for a hot bath, or mine for a hot toddy. But knowing you, I suspect you’d like to get right back to your case. To sniff out the murderer of Emily Davison and all that.”

Arthur smiled. Bram was such a dear friend, and he knew Arthur’s mind as if it were his own. And yet, right then, Bram could not have been more incorrect as to Arthur’s wishes.

“Thank you, no,” said Arthur. “The late Miss Davison, and her dead friends, can rot away in their graves as they please. It’s no business of mine. But, Bram, I think this gin was the best idea either of us has had in months, and I will require some more of it before I retire. Come! To the nearest public house! We’ll drink ourselves to sin and stumble home when we start seeing double.”

Both Bram and the inspector made curious faces.

“Arthur, this is most unlike you,” said Bram. “I vaguely remember your giving me some long-winded speech a few weeks back: Justice something something, or truth something something, I don’t quite recall the details. But it was awfully earnest.”

Arthur laughed bitterly and dove snout-first into the flask.

“You know, they say that gin is the curse of the poor,” he said. The alcohol had somehow already made it to his stomach, and he seemed drunk. “But I think it may be the other way about-the poor are the curse of gin!” Arthur laughed, only to himself, and finished the rest of the flask in one gulp. He dropped it onto the street.

“Well then,” said Inspector Miller politely, “I’ll leave you two gents be. Good evening.”

Arthur bowed regally to the inspector, while Bram grasped him in a sturdy handshake. When the inspector had gone, Bram turned to his drunken friend.

“Arthur, this is embarrassing enough as it is.”

“Is it? Are you embarrassed?” Arthur lurched in the general direction of St. Paul’s. “I’ve been near blown up, I’ve been to the Sodom of Whitechapel and the Gomorrah of the docks, I’ve had a revolver pointed at my head, I’ve been arrested by the Yard and sent to waste away in the mire of Newgate Prison. And what have I to show for it all? Three dead girls. I looked into the bloody, beaten face of Emily Davison, and do you know what was there? Nothing. Not a damned thing. There is nothing at the bottom of the rabbit hole, do you understand? She wasn’t killed for a reason, Bram. None of them were. She wasn’t murdered for love, and she wasn’t murdered for coin-she was murdered for the sake of murder itself. What am I to do with that? How does one investigate that? And what would I hope to find? From dead girl to dead girl, I can trace the sins of London, but to what end?” Arthur’s eyes had swelled. He sat down in the dirt and let his head hang between his knees.

“Look up there,” said Arthur, pointing at the southern sky. “We’re fifty paces from St. Paul’s Cathedral. And we could have our veins overfilled and bursting with medical opiates in a quarter of an hour if we chose to. There was a civilization here, once. There were a thousand years of progress, building from the muddy soil to that spire. There were rules. There was order. There was Britain. I had actually believed that I was helping, can you imagine that? With those stupid stories. That we lived in an age of transcendent reason. That the pure and brilliant light of logic was on its way, to shine over the pallid city and sweep us into the white future of science.” Arthur spit forcefully into the dirt. “Horseshit. You were right from the beginning, you always are. This has been a great mistake. And now I am finished with it. All of it. No more playing detective, I promise you. The dead can keep their secrets. We the living wouldn’t know what to do with them anyhow.”

Bram Stoker said nothing, but merely placed a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and squeezed as tightly as he could.