The Sherlockian

CHAPTER 39 The Printer

December 3,1900

The chain of reasoning which led Arthur from Bram’s house on Saturday to the storefront of Stegler & Sons Printing House, along the Strand, on Monday was quite simple. Indeed, by the time Arthur stepped up onto the small front stoop of the printing house, he was genuinely surprised that it had taken him this long to arrive.

To be sure, there had been detours in his investigations. When Arthur decided, after leaving Bram’s study, to reopen the case, there was an initial period of uncertainty and of concern over his powers of deduction. Now that he had resolved to find Emily Davison’s murderer… well, how did he intend actually to go about it?

He laid the facts at hand out before him. They were as follows: A gentleman, described only as being tall, in the possession of a long black cloak, and speaking in a high-pitched voice, proposed marriage to, and then married, and then murdered, two members of the Morrigan, Sally Needling and the mysterious Anna. He committed these crimes months apart, and both marriages were conducted in secret. One had to assume, and Arthur certainly did, that these marriages must at first have been secrets even between the young women in question. Some months later this man had snuck into Emily Davison’s home and savagely beaten her to death. Odd, Arthur thought, that this crime did not fit the pattern of the others. Did he first woo Emily Davison as well? Arthur could not imagine the girl he’d met having fallen under the spell of this man, whoever he might be, as her compatriots had. So who was he?

Arthur spent a morning entertaining Janet Fry’s suspicions about Millicent Fawcett, but the more he thought about it, the less convincing he found that argument. First, there was the issue of the bridegroom who’d accompanied the girls to their death. Yes, she could have employed an accomplice, but even if Arthur were to grant that Millicent Fawcett had a murderous bone in her body-and he certainly did not feel comfortable doing so after her performance at the suffragist lecture-would she have chosen bloody violence?

A man had composed these murders, Arthur was sure of it. He knew something that Janet did not. He had looked upon the bloodied, beaten corpse of Emily Davison, and he had seen the anger that had been inflicted on her body. Only a man who hated women with a passion that Arthur could just barely fathom could wreak such violence.

Arthur possessed few clues as to the man’s identity, if any. But, he reasoned, perhaps more than clues, more than evidence, reason itself could see him through.

The murderer would have had to know all three girls, which meant that he would most likely have known about their secret organization. Two could have been coincidence, but not three. He could not have known the group well, however, or else they could hardly have kept their respective engagements to him a secret. He could not have been their friend, exactly, but he was someone who had some contact with them.

It took only a few brief hours of concentration upon the subject before the answer revealed itself to Arthur, when he glanced down at his one memento from his investigations-the pamphlet, printed on cheap paper, of the three-headed crow.

The paper was still in his pocket when he marched down the Strand and ascended the front steps of Stegler & Sons Printing House. To be fair, this was the sixth printing press Arthur had visited that day. But from the moment he opened the door and entered the noisy shop, he had a feeling that he’d found what he was looking for. The large presses clanged metallically, grinding out books and pamphlets and posters on sheet after sheet. Arthur regarded the massive machines and thought of Blake’s “dark Satanic mills.” Funny, to think of them serving the distribution of information, of sending out the written word. There was something menacing about each slap of the press upon the flat papers. The unyielding smacks called to mind the image of Emily’s body, beaten blow by blow into the floor.

But Arthur’s incubating sense of suspicion did not become full grown until he was greeted by the shopkeeper. A boy of no more than twenty, he stepped from behind one of the presses, lifting his head to the light to reveal the handsomest face Arthur had ever seen on a man. His blond hair fell delicately over his brow, toward his shimmering blue eyes and a small, evenly sloped nose. Even Arthur, no expert on the subject of men’s faces, was taken aback. The boy raised his hands in greeting, and Arthur saw that he wore two ink-stained gloves. Blotches of ink had spread to his shirt, and when Arthur stepped closer, he could even make out a sprinkle of purple ink on the boy’s unshaven chin.

“Help you, sir?” said the lad in a delicate voice. “Pardon my hands. I’d give you a shake, but I’m afraid it’d ruin your suit.”

Arthur was charmed. And, upon recognizing how charmed he was, he became terribly frightened. He knew that he’d have to be very cautious about how he proceeded. His eyes on the boy’s dirty hands, Arthur removed the flyer from his own coat pocket.

“Good afternoon, then,” Arthur said. “We’ll exchange a proper handshake at a later date.” He gave his friendliest smile. “I’m here to find the printer of this sheet. Might you have printed this here? It would have been some months ago.”

Arthur held the image of the three-headed crow up to the light. The boy looked at it expressionlessly. If he recognized it, he gave no indication of doing so.

“What’s that, then?” said the boy.

“Hell if I know,” said Arthur.

“Then why’re you inquiring about it?”

Arthur paused. Yes. The boy was playing dumb, but he was not particularly good at it. Arthur considered how next to approach the matter. Not like a detective, he reasoned. Not like a member of the Yard. What this boy needed, Arthur guessed, was a sympathetic ear.

“Bunch of bloody dollymops have been leaving them around my shop,” said Arthur. “I run a butcher’s, down in the East End. I put up some literature in the windows, and it seems they didn’t take kindly to it. So wherever I turn now, these infernal pictures keep popping up in my property. They even found my flat and left some papers there. It’s frightful, don’t you think? I want to see these cunnies punished.” These last words left a bitter taste on Arthur’s tongue after he’d spoken them. But he knew of the rage within this boy, and he knew that he needed to tap into it. They would be brothers in misogyny before the evening fell.

The boy smiled again and removed his gloves. He placed them atop one of the printing machines and held out his clean hand for a shake.

“My name is Bobby,” the boy said. “Bobby Stegler. This is my pop’s shop, I just help out.”

Arthur reached out and shook Bobby Stegler’s hand.

“Andrew,” Arthur said. “Andrew Greenleaf. Pleased to meet you.”

“You know these girls, then?”

“Afraid I do,” said Arthur. He let go of Bobby’s hand and gave him a look of playful suspicion. “Say, I’m willing to bet that you know a little more about them than you’re letting on, don’t you?”

Bobby Stegler lowered his head sheepishly. “If I was to say that I printed those papers, sir, and know a thing or two about these girls’ organization, would you hold it against me?”

“Not if you could tell me who they are,” said Arthur.

“Bunch of rabble-rousers, really. They’re part of a group, those girls, agitating for-can you believe this?-granting woman suffrage.”

“Yes, I know. They told me as much. Can you imagine?”

“The downfall of the empire, it would be,” said Bobby Stegler.

Arthur gave the boy a hearty pat on his shoulder. “Finally!” Arthur exclaimed. “A man who understands reason! I’m afraid their cause is growing frightfully popular of late.”

“That’s why something needs to be done about it,” said Bobby.

Arthur looked the boy dead in the eyes. It was time to see what he was made of.

“And will you?” Arthur asked. “Will you do anything about it?”

The boy smiled mischievously. “When was the last time those girls came around your ‘shop’ anyway?” The lad had accented the word ‘shop’ strongly; Arthur was not sure what he was getting at.

“I’ll admit, they haven’t come around recently. Might you have had anything to do with that?”

“Not sure what you mean, sir,” said the boy. He paused. He looked as if he were waiting for Arthur to say something.

“If you’ve a mind to take care of these girls,” said Arthur, “I might have a pair of hands that could help you.”

“What’d you say your ‘shop’ was, again?”

“Just a simple butcher’s, like I said.”

The boy returned Arthur’s pat on the shoulder. But this one was harder, sharper. There was a lot of strength in the boy’s arm.

“Oh, come off it,” said Bobby Stegler. “I know who you are! What did you say, Andrew Something-or-Other from the East End? Really now. Don’t think that the great Arthur Conan Doyle could walk into my printing house and I wouldn’t put the name to the man’s face!”

Arthur blanched. He had not expected to be so well known among the murderers of London.

“You’ve made a mistake, boy,” he said lamely.

Bobby Stegler was having none of it.

“It’s all right, Dr. Doyle. You can come level with me. You don’t know what an inspiration you’ve been. Your speeches against the suffrage. Tops. And your stories. They’ll show a man what his place in the world is, won’t they? Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have listened to any of that feminine mewing.”

For the first time in a great while, Arthur felt truly ashamed. Is that really what people took from his stories? Is that what they said?

“Please, take a seat, sir,” said Bobby. “We have a lot to discuss. You see, you and I are on the same side. And I think we could help each other out quite a bit.”