“None,” I said. “And no bloodstains.”
“And square-toes used his own blood to write RACHE—or most of RACHEL—on the wall at a height which again suggests he is a very tall man. And the fact that he wrote in his own blood, not his victim’s, again suggests the lack of a secret society in this case. At present, I have no idea how he compelled Mr. Drebber to swallow a strong convulsant poison without laying a finger on him, but he clearly did. We will assume for the moment that his powers of persuasion are remarkable. Let us find out about Mr. Drebber’s belongings.”
He came and knelt across from me and began a catalogue that had Lestrade scribbling frantically to keep up. “A gold watch, fifteen-carat, Barraud’s of London, Number 97163. Not new, but in good condition. Gold Albert chain, probably twenty-carat, very heavy and solid. Gold ring with Masonic device—there’s your secret society, Lestrade.”
“Very funny, Mr. Crow,” the detective said sourly.
“Gold pin, fifteen-carat, bulldog’s head with ruby eyes. I can’t say I care for it. Russian leather card case, with cards of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, matching Dr. Doyle’s identification, so that’s convenient. No purse, but loose money”—he counted rapidly, long fingers dipping in and out of Drebber’s clothes as easily as a pickpocket—“seven pounds thirteen. Pocket edition of—oh dear—Boccaccio’s Decameron, with the name Jos. Stangerson printed very legibly on the flyleaf. Two letters, one to E. J. Drebber, at the American Exchange, to be left ’til called for, the other to Joseph Stangerson, the same. Both letters are from the Guion Steamship Company about the sailing of the Lone Star from Liverpool. Clearly Mr. Drebber was making his way back to the Colonies. I imagine, Lestrade, that Mr. Stangerson will be endeavoring—possibly with a new sense of urgency—to do the same.”
“We’ll cable Guion,” Lestrade said. “The Lone Star can watch for him.”
“Could square-toes have been Mr. Stangerson, Dr. Doyle?” asked Crow.
“Not if he was a noticeably tall man,” I said. “Stangerson was shorter than Drebber, and I can’t somehow see him wearing square-toed boots.”
“Pity,” said Crow. “It would make this a tidy murder instead of the messy sprawling thing I fear it is.” He was straightening the dead man’s clothes—as best he could given the corpse’s contorted position—and all three of us heard the distinct metallic clunk of something hitting the floor.
Crow pounced on it, as swift as a cat, and then sat back on his heels with an expression of blank astonishment. “What in the holy…” He extended his open hand to me—and to Lestrade, who was by now breathing down the back of my neck. The thing on his palm made no sense for a moment and then I was able to resolve it: a feather. It looked like one of Crow’s pin-feathers, or like the husks of them he molted, except that it was made of gold.
Lestrade and I both flinched back from it. Lestrade said, “Is that…?”
“Yes,” Crow said. “It’s a dissolution feather. A real one.”
“But how…” Lestrade said helplessly. I knew a little about dissolution feathers: when an angel’s habitation was destroyed and the angel itself was dissolved, rather than Fallen or made Nameless, there might be left behind one or perhaps two feathers, transmuted by the forces of dissolution into gold. There was a fashion among the wealthy for young women to carry replicas as tokens of virginity. On her marriage, a girl gave her feather to her younger sister or her best friend. I found the tradition unspeakably macabre—but finding a true feather of dissolution on Enoch Drebber’s body was far, far worse.
Crow was still completely bouleversé. Lestrade looked as baffled as a bulldog trying to understand a doorknob. He said tentatively, “That seems an unlikely thing for this gentleman to have.”
“I don’t think he did,” Crow said. “I mean, I don’t think it was his. It wasn’t in one of his pockets, just caught in the lining of his coat. I think his murderer dropped it.”
After another long silence, Lestrade said, “I’m not sure that’s any better.”
“He leaned over his victim. To gloat? To be sure he was dead? And it must have fallen out of his pocket.” Crow considered a moment and said thoughtfully, “He’ll be horrified.”
“But what kind of murderer carries a dissolution feather?” protested Lestrade.
“This one,” said Crow. “Who was it who found the body again?”
“Constable John Rance 299P,” said Lestrade. “Why?”
“There’s something I want to ask him.”
“He’s off duty right now.” Lestrade consulted his notebook. “He’ll be in the Camberwell Division dormitory, but have a heart, Mr. Crow, and let the poor man get some sleep first.”
“Ah,” said Crow, who obviously hadn’t thought of that. “Yes, of course. I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Anyone he encountered would be long gone.”
“What on Earth are you talking about?” I said. I was fairly sure he wanted to be asked.
“A dissolution feather isn’t the sort of thing a man carries around as a casual trinket. It must be important to the murderer somehow. Vitally important. When he realized that he’d lost it, I don’t think he’d be able to keep himself from coming back to look for it. But we know Constable Rance found the body while it was still warm. And the feather is still here. Therefore, we know the murderer must have discovered the law already in possession of No. 3. And it seems certainly worth inquiring whether the worthy constables might have discovered him.”
Lestrade made a noise that was probably intended to convey that he himself had been about to say the exact same thing.
“In the meantime, however,” Crow said, “it might be a very good idea to find Mr. Joseph Stangerson. For whether he knows it or not, I fear he is in a great deal of trouble.”
7
The Constable’s Story
On our way back to Baker Street, Crow bought every newspaper he could find, and he spent the afternoon collating accounts of the murder in George Yard, ferreting out every fact possible and making a neat tabulation of the number of newspapers in which any particular item of information appeared. The process was instructive to witness: the range of facts presented by the newspapers was quite astonishing, as was the degree to which they cribbed from each other.
“There’s only so much news to go around,” Crow said. “They all circulate and recirculate it endlessly. You have to read quite carefully to glean any new facts.”
I looked at the stacks of newspapers once again flooding our sitting room and could only agree.
“I find it abominable,” he added after a moment, “that they can’t discover this poor woman’s name.”
Names, of course, are of the most desperate importance to angels; they don’t properly exist without them. For a moment, I imagined the dead woman in Whitechapel as one of the Nameless, and then shuddered at how accurate an image that was for the wretched people of that district. Certainly, most of them had no one who cared whether they had a name or not.