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jealous lover, or a gang, or one of her clients who’d fallen into a drunken rage.”
    “You are probably right. However, I beg that you will humour me far enough to fill me in on the details of both crimes.”
    Lestrade shrugged. “If Tabram is of interest to you, of course I’veno objection. It shouldn’t be difficult for me to gather up the papers. I can have them for you this afternoon.”
    “I shall cast an eye over the evidence immediately.”
    “You have full access, Mr. Holmes—just mention my name at the morgue or at the crime scene. I shall see you both at the Yard.” The inspector nodded and made his way out.
    My friend crossed to the mantelpiece, shook a cigar out of an empty bud vase, and commenced smoking with the deepest absorption. “This Tabram murder is a very curious affair,” he commented.
    “You mean the Nichols murder?”
    “I mean precisely what I say.”
    “You thought little enough of it before, Holmes.”
    “I expected every morning to read that they’d solved it. Men do not often stab helpless females thirty-nine times and then disappear into the ether. The motive behind such an outrageous act would necessarily be sensational.”
    “And such women necessarily have a great many associates, most of them untraceable,” I pointed out.
    “That is obvious,” he retorted. “It is also obvious that the district of Whitechapel offers a great many natural advantages to the predator. Once the sun has fallen, you can hardly see your hand before your face, and the slaughterhouses allow blood-spattered men to pass without remark. What is less obvious is whether we have anything to fear from the proximity, in place and in time, of the two deaths.”
    “It is certainly a distressing coincidence.”
    Holmes shook his head and reached for his walking stick.
    “One viciously maimed corpse is distressing. Two is something else entirely. I fear we have not a moment to lose.”

CHAPTER TWO
The Evidence
    The body of Polly Nichols clearly demanded our immediate attention, so we at once made our way by cab to the mortuary shed at Old Montague Street Workhouse Infirmary. As we clattered roughly toward the East-end of London, the buildings grew steadily smaller, their façades coated with decades of sooty atmosphere. When we reached Whitechapel Road, however, I was struck as always by the headlong commotion of the place. A preacher stood shouting at a knot of jeering locals, fighting to wrest their attention from a gin palace on the one side and an equally vociferous peddler of men’s work shirts on the other. Light and dust sparkled from the backs of loaded hay-wains, and dead cattle swung from hooks above carts filled with fresh hides. But despite the thriving dynamism of its widest thoroughfares, I never failed to be shaken by the misery evident as we turned off the main road into narrow, shop-lined byways and passed snarling youngsters fighting over a street corner from which to sell matches, and staggering drunks of both sexes propped against doorframes in the early afternoon.
    The mortuary shed was by its very nature a dismal place, frequented only by those whose sole recourse was to indenture themselves to the parish disposing of human remains, and characterized by its utter unsuitability as a medical facility. Lestrade had sent warning of our imminent arrival, so immediately upon locating the hodgepodge of wooden slats, we witnessed firsthand the sight that had so upset Dr. Llewellyn.
    Across the crude wooden slab of an examining table lay a woman slightly more than five feet tall. Though her face was small-featured with high, merry cheekbones and a sensitive brow, it was etched deeply with the coarseness of care and toil. Her neck was indeed nearly severed and her abdomen opened in bestial, purposeless lacerations.
    I began to inquire whether anything stood out to Holmes’s sharper eye, but suddenly he dived toward the corpse with a cry of impatience.
    “We have arrived too late after all!