Chapter Ten

The Charles Oyster House was bustling with it’s typically eclectic clientele - dock workers and tradesmen bellied up to the bar, or slurped the Tavern’s signature stew at long tables and benches arranged by the fire. In a side dining room the shopkeepers and bank clerks sat at round tables playing cards in a haze of tobacco smoke. Barmaids and busboys wove their way around and through the patrons, delivering pints and crude japes to the generally jovial crowd. 

Pastor Lestrade stopped at the bar. We couldn’t hear his exchange with the barkeep over the din, but his gesture to the stairs was clear enough.  Scarlett and I followed in Lestrade’s wake as he pushed his way through the crowd. My heart beat fast in my chest as we ascended the stairs, a feeling of foreboding coming over me that would become all too familiar in later years, but was fresh and ominous on this first dark night of adventure.

We stopped at the top of the stairs, staring down the long, gaslit hallway at the series of doors. I opened my mouth to ask what we were to do next, when we heard a crash and a gurgling moan coming from the third door on the right.

With three long strides Pastor Lestrade was at the door, pounding.

“Stangerson? Are you in there?  Open the door!”

The only response to Lestrade’s cries was the sound of more scuffling, and a wheezing cough that set off all the alarms in my medical mind.

“Whoever it is, I must get to him now!” I cried.

With a grim nod, his face glistening with perspiration, more from stress than from exertion, the good pastor laid his shoulder to the door, and prepared to break it down.

“One moment, please.” Holmes said. Her voice was an odd oasis of calm, and I was about to scold her that we had not a single moment to lose, when, from the folds of her skirt she produced a long slender metal implement, jagged on one end and hooked on the other. With it, she worked at the lock for a fraction of a second.  It yielded almost immediately to her expert hand, and we were through.

“By God!” Lestrade cried.

A man, Stangerson by the look of him, was flailing on the ground, clawing at his neck, his nails leaving red bloody scratches as he struggled to breathe.  His lips were blue against the dark purple of his flesh, his eyes red and bulging. I crouched to him, and with all my strength, hauled him into my arms. I stared into those eyes, instinct and muscle memory taking over.

 I could not tell you how many men had died in my arms up to that point, but suffice it to say I know well that look of panic and fear.  As a doctor, I knew I could do nothing for him.  Instead, I did what I could as a woman and a human being, and gazed back into his eyes with kindness, whispered words of calm and comfort. He locked into my gaze, searching, I knew, for hope, until at last his breaths grew ragged, and then ceased altogether. For another moment, he stared unseeing. I held him like a child until the spark of life winked out, and his body went slack in death.

From the other side of the small bedroom came a clatter and a crash, and a man burst from the small closet on the other side of the room, sprinting out the open door and into the hallway. Lestrade and Scarlett had been held in rapt attention by the death of Stangerson, but sprang into action, dashing down the hall.

I moved the dead weight of Stangerson’s torso off my lap, and rose to follow them.  Before I got into the hallway I heard another loud commotion, and sped to the stairs.  At the top I stopped in my tracks and stared down at the most bizarre tableau.

Lestrade and a Black man I did not recognize, the man from the closet, were lying on the bare wood floor, gripping each other’s lapels and staring up at the 4 policemen who had surrounded them, billy clubs aloft and ready to strike at either at the slightest movement. With a sickening drop in my stomach, I recognized Detective Gates, a disgusted look on his face as he listened to the bartender. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but the barkeep’s gestures told the story as he pointed to Lestrade and Scarlett, then up the stairs, and then, to my dismay, pointed directly at me.

Detective Gates barked at his men, and one of the four broke off and passed me roughly as he ran down the hallway.

I stood in a daze, there at the top of the stairs, my thoughts and emotions a whirlwind. 

Rough hands gripped my upper arms from behind, rousing me from my daze, and I yelled,

“What are you doing?” as I turned to see the young officer, his face hard.

“Be silent, woman, if you know what’s good for you.” He said, giving me a little shake for emphasis.

“What’s going on” Gates yelled out to the officer that held me.

“There’s a dead man up here, sir.” 

“Detective Gates!” I cried, “You must listen, we’ve…”

“Shut up!” Gates barked at me. He ascended the stairs until he could look me level in the eyes, his face so close to mine I could smell his stinking breath.

“You and your husband were warned about interfering in my investigation.  Seems like you lot,” with a sneer and a nod back down at the dining room he included Lestrade and Scarlett in my number, “need to learn where you belong.”

Gates turned to the other officers.

“Boys, we’re taking all these murderers downtown.”