Into this clamor strode the imposing figure of Assistant Commissioner CID Edward Henry. Though he displayed no identification, Arthur had little doubt as to the man’s position. He stood at least half a foot taller than most of his men, held up by long, skinny legs which stretched into his gaunt torso and angular face. All the man’s features were hard edges, as if his skin had been pulled up against his bones. Thick eyebrows and a compact mustache gave him a pugnacious glare. As he marched authoritatively toward his men, he called out in a foreign tongue.
“Jul-dhee kuro! Jana hae!” said Edward Henry. “What do you have then, boys?”
Each of the dozen constables, plus Inspector Miller, turned to face him. He swept his gaze around the room, from right to left, observing his men as they paused. “It’s Hindi, gentlemen. Picked it up in the Bengal inspector-general’s office. If you’re out to catch a crook, it helps to speak his tongue. Now: Miss Davison’s bedchamber contains two used teacups on her nightstand. You and you”-here he pointed at two of his men-“go apply the powders to those cups when you’ve finished out here. You remember how I showed you? Good.”
Inspector Miller turned to Arthur as both men remained near the doorway.
“You see the burden that’s been placed upon me?” whispered Inspector Miller. “The commissioner thinks he’s some sort of magician. The men all think he’s gone native. And I don’t take kindly to some new recruit getting promoted to CID and barking Hindu hoodoo at my boys.”
At the sound of Inspector Miller’s whispers, Assistant Commissioner Henry turned to the doorway to find Arthur and the inspector waiting.
“Inspector Miller,” Henry said. “It’s a pleasure to see you so far afield.”
Miller stepped into the drawing room, standing unnaturally erect as he approached Henry’s position. Only the couch separated the two men.
“Are you ordering my constables to pour dust all over the scene?” said Inspector Miller.
“Technically,” replied Henry, “they’re my constables. And you’re my inspector.”
“My apologies, gents!” said Inspector Miller boisterously. “I wasn’t aware we’d gone off to the beach for the day, so that we might play about in this blackened sand!” A few of the constables smiled. Most alternated their attentions rapidly between the two men, unsure in whom to place their allegiance.
Edward Henry stared at Inspector Miller for a long moment, matching his glare second for second.
“Did we find any fingerprints on the cups and saucers down there?” Henry finally said, pointing at the messy pile of tea things on the low table by the couch.
“Yes, sir,” said one of the men. “I believe we’ve isolated a few sets of them curvy smudges you told us to get.”
“Brilliant,” said Henry. “Now let us see if we can figure out to whom they belong.”
“They belong to me,” said Arthur.
His voice, unburdened by the tensions of the Yard, burst clear throughout the drawing room. Henry looked Arthur up and down, as if he’d just noticed him there for the first time.
“And your name, sir?” said Henry.
“My name is Arthur Conan Doyle.” Every detective in the room, save for Inspector Miller, registered a look of shock. Inspector Miller smiled, claiming Arthur for his own side in the intradepartmental warfare.
“Dr. Doyle is my guest here,” said Inspector Miller. “He and I were engaged together on another case, the conclusion of which had brought Arthur-pardon, I should refrain from your Christian name in front of the men-had brought Dr. Doyle to this very door.”
“It’s an honor, Dr. Doyle,” said Edward Henry, with a note of genuine awe in his voice. “When I was in India, I greeted the arrival of one of your stories with a full evening alone, locked inside my study, so that nothing would distract me from it. You’ll find no more ready a disciple of Mr. Sherlock Holmes than I.”
“I’ve no doubt,” said Arthur succinctly. “Now. What’s happened here?”
Arthur could feel the scales of power tip as he walked through the drawing room. As he came to the dead body near the window, the men parted in their huddle to give him space. He thought it humorous that between the two accomplished detectives in the room and himself, the untested amateur, it was he who held the men’s respect thanks to the continuing allure of an aged penny dreadful.
“Emily Davison was beaten and strangled,” said Henry. “Most likely sometime last night, or into the early dawn. Her neighbor downstairs, one Mrs. Lansing, came up to complain this morning about a bunch of noises she’d heard the evening before. Gunshots, she said they were. She believes she heard them around six in the evening, though she can’t be sure of the time. She came up to Miss Davison’s flat and found that the front door lock had been shot apart and the door was swinging open from its hinges.” That would be Bram’s work, thought Arthur, though he decided against interrupting Mr. Henry’s monologue. “Mrs. Lansing became concerned, and entered the flat. She found Miss Davi- son’s body, and called for the police.”
Arthur leaned over the body of Emily Davison and was reminded of whale skin. The way a whale’s thick, gunmetal hide punctured by a harpoon just above the surface of the sea spouted blood and water in equal torrents. He had spent a winter hunting whales off the coast of Greenland in his youth. Fifty Scotsmen on a boat, held together by rough language and the strength of their spear arms. By spring they had docked and gone after the smaller meats. They had clubbed seals for a month, chasing the slippery blobs of shiny flesh across the ice floes. Colin, the ship’s foremaster, had slipped on seal brains one morning, landing face-first in the thing’s moist belly. The men laughed, made jokes, and did their jobs. It was rough work.
He’d been with Emily Davison not twenty-four hours before. He had been so justifiably furious with her then, so full of hot rage over her vile bombing campaign-and now she was but this pale white mess on the floor of her drawing room. Her throat was blotched with red and purple, while her face was equally bruised. Her nose was in tatters, split open and smashed to one side. Her eyelids were red and bulbous, like those of a crushed bug. He noticed that a small stream of blood had run from her left eye onto the wooden floor. It had already congealed and dried into a rubbery black pool. The rage that Arthur had felt toward Emily Davison was no match for what lay in the dark heart of the man who’d done this to her.
“There is a collection of dynamite and wires upon the girl’s table,” said Edward Henry. “Hard as it may be to believe, given the look of her, it seems this girl was in the business of making bombs.”
“I know,” said Arthur as he stood to his feet. He would rather not gaze on the body anymore, if he could avoid it.”
The fingerprints my men gather here,” said Edward Henry to Arthur, “we will retain for comparison with the killer, when we find him. I’ve developed a system for classifying all the impressions left by a man’s fingers-we imprint all ten onto a sheet of paper and record their most noteworthy features. When we find ourselves a suspect, we can compare the marks on his fingers to those left upon Miss Davison’s belongings. And if they match, then bus sub hoe guy ya. It is done.”
“A method for preserving and recording the prints of a man’s fingers?” said Arthur. “It sounds terribly impressive. My, it sounds like something my Holmes would have done. But I’m afraid the prints upon those teacups will be of little use to you. As I said, some of them are mine. And some belong to a dear friend, one Mr. Stoker.” Edward Henry looked at Arthur expectantly, at the sight of which Arthur took a deep breath. Again, he had a lot of explaining to do.
In the time it took Arthur to finish telling his story to Henry, the constables completed their measurements of Emily Davison’s body. While Arthur talked, Inspector Miller lit a cigarette and coolly smoked it as he stared out the window. Edward Henry provided little in the way of reaction to Arthur’s tale. Rather, he interrupted only occasionally to ask for clarification on any point on which Arthur had not been perfectly clear. He would nod when he understood, and he would nod a second time to indicate that Arthur should continue. The man’s face betrayed nothing besides a careful and professional consideration of the matter at hand. Arthur couldn’t help but be impressed. If ever there were a Yard man who resembled Sherlock Holmes, it was this one.