Story: "Hot Knife"

BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 1893

“Mr. Sigerson.”

“Ms. Borden.”

The tall, thin man shook the small woman’s hand.

In the women’s section of the Taunton Jail in Bristol County, Lizzie Borden’s jail cell, located at the south side of the jail, had one grated window and an iron-barred door. The walls of the cell were whitewashed. There was a bed on its iron bed-stand, a tin wash basin, a straight backed chair for the visitor, and a rocking chair, where Lizzie Borden now sat down and fixed her sharp, grey eyes on her guest.

“My attorney, Mr. Robinson, indicated you are with the Pinkerton Detective Agency, Mr. Sigerson.”

“Dat is right, I am vit Pinkerton,” said Sigerson, in a sing-song-y Scandinavian accent. He sat down in the straight-backed chair.

“Mr. Robinson says you are to serve as an expert witness for the defense.”

“Ja, I speak to the hatchet that vas found in the basement.”

“Of which I know nothing. So I am afraid I cannot provide any information.”

“The prosecution vishes the jury to believe that this hatchet vas used, by you, to kill your father and stepmother.”

“I am innocent of the crime.”

“Precisely so. But vat the prosecution vill say to the jury, is that the murder veapon, it vas hidden in the basement of your house in Fall River. They vill say that the handle vas broken, and a part of the handle vas removed to conceal the blood of your father and stepmother splattered onto it ven you svung the axe. They vill say in order to hide the murder veapon in the basement, the killer must be familiar vit the home.”

“That does not follow.”

“I agree,” said Sigerson. “It is not logical reasoning. A stranger could have hidden the hatchet. But better yet if ve can prove to the jury that this hatchet could not be the murder veapon, especially not by you, ja?”

“Yes.”

“I have examined the hatchet,” said Sigerson, consulting his notes. “I reported my opinion to your attorney that I may be able to prove that the hatchet could not have been used, by you, to kill your stepmother, Abby Durfee Borden, specifically. But in order to prove this point. I need, from you, one piece of information, please.”

“I will answer any question truthfully, to the best of my ability.”

“According to the forensic investigation, Abby Borden vas facing her killer at the time of the attack. The first strike vas on the side of the head, making a cut just above the ear, and she fell face down on the floor, vich created a contusion on her nose and forehead.”

“Terrible!” Lizzie Borden shook her head.

“You are right handed?”

“My right hand is my dominant hand, yes.”

“And yet, you cut Elizabeth Stride’s throat from left to right.”

“Yes, standing behind, that is the natural —”

Her eyes turned shrewd.

“You caught me out,” she said. “That was slippery of you.”

“So,” the man who called himself Sigerson said, “it is as I suspected.”

“Yes, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.” Lizzie Borden’s voice was suddenly deeper. “It is as you suspected, ever since that cold, foggy night in London, more than two years ago.”

* * *

LONDON

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1891

From the journals of Dr. John Watson.

Last evening was bitter cold, and I had just settled in before the fire to read the latest medical journal when I heard an insistent knock at the door.

I opened the door to find a man, snow falling on his black suit and hat. He was in his late forties, of middle height, compact build, with side whiskers and mustache. He looked familiar to me.

“I am Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline,” he said, and I recalled the name as well as now recognizing him from the drawings in the newspapers. This was the detective in charge of the Whitechapel murder cases that had come to an end more than two years ago, though as yet unsolved. More recently Abberline was the lead investigator on the sordid affair of the Cleveland Street Scandal.

“I have come directly from your friend, Sherlock Holmes,” Abberline said. “He is asking for you most urgently. He requests you to come to his rooms tonight.”

Though it was now past ten in the evening, Mary, my wife, was still out at one of her charity events, so I hastily scribbled a note to her before leaving with Abberline.

At 221B Baker Street, I began fumbling for my latch key — which I still carry all these years after I moved out from the rooms Holmes and I once shared — but before I could get the key out, Mrs. Hudson opened the door.

“I am so worried about him,” she said as she led me and Abberline up the stairs. “You’ll soon see what I mean, Dr. Watson.”

I found the familiar rooms in the disarray I had often observed when Holmes was fully consumed with a particularly challenging case.

I now understood what Mrs. Hudson meant when she said that she was worried about him. Holmes looked quite ill. He had a ghastly pallor and seemed much thinner than I had last seen him which was only a few weeks ago. I noticed the syringe and the seven-percent solution of cocaine.

“Thank you for coming, Watson,” he said, his voice low and hoarse, but with a fevered intensity. “It must be tonight. It must be tonight, you understand?”

“What must be tonight?”

“The next murder. It must be tonight.”

He was standing over his work table, leaning on it with knuckles turning white from the clamped grip he kept on the table’s edge. On the table were four large volumes of open books, an astronomical chart spread out, containing scribbles in Holmes’s handwriting, but in an unfamiliar language. There were bundles of what appeared to be thin, wooden sticks or twigs, alongside multiple coins of different denominations. Affixed to the window above the work table was a map of London with a number of small pieces of paper pinned in various spots on the map.

“Yes”, he said again. “It must be tonight.”

With that he sank into the chair at the work table and closed his eyes. His left hand was clenched in a fist. His right hand was on the table, and I noticed the tremor that ran through it like a pulse, the fingers twitching.

“How long has he been like this?” I asked.

“He has been working in this state for the last seventy-two hours,” Abberline answered, “only taking small meals brought by the excellent Mrs. Hudson, but even through the meals, he has kept working.”

“What case is he investigating?”

Holmes opened his red-rimmed eyes.

“Why, Saucy Jacky,” he said, “that fiend, the Leather Apron, yes, none other than Jack the Ripper.”

“The Ripper,” I said. “The Whitechapel murderer has not struck since late in the year 1888.”

“Not as far as the public has been allowed to know,” said Abberline. “At the advice of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, consulting with Scotland Yard, for the last twenty-seven months, none of the Ripper murders that have occurred were reported in the newspaper. Not since November of 1888, after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. That was when I convinced my superiors we needed to bring in Mr. Holmes. Since then we have seen to it that the murders have gone unremarked by the Fleet Street journalists.”

“How many murders?” I said.

Holmes motioned to the map of London.

“There,” he said. “You see them all. You could count them, or just read the most recent note which is marked with a red pin.”

I leaned in closer and examined the small piece of paper affixed to the map with a red pin. On it, in Holmes’s small, neat calligraphy was the number ‘36’, the initials ‘J.S.', the date 'January 25, 1891', the words ‘Sunday’ and 'Full Moon'.

“Thirty-six murders,” I said.

“I count Mary Ann Nichols as the first victim,” said Holmes, “August 31, 1888, a Friday. Then Annie Chapman on September 8, a Saturday, and Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, both on September 30, a Sunday, and Mary Jane Kelly on November 9, again a Friday. A total of five that are known to the public, committed over a duration of ten weeks. Since then, as you can see, there has been a further thirty-one murders for a total of thirty-six. There are some repeated patterns. For example, each of calendar years 1888, 1889, and 1890 had 13 murders. This year, there have been two, so far. Therefore we would expect a further eleven murders in 1891, if we cannot put a stop to him. He likes autumn and winter, with all the killings committed from late August or early September through late February or early March. He sometimes repeats a pattern of Friday, then Saturday, then Sunday, then back to Friday again, as with the original five victims in 1888. But other times he breaks this pattern, and I have not been able to establish a firm correlation to anything such as the moon cycles or the astrological movement of planets.”

“So you have been on the Ripper’s trail,” I said, “for twenty-seven months, thirty-six cases.”

“Or, rather, one long case, with thirty-six events.”

“And during this time, you and I have been on the adventures of the Engineer’s Thumb, the Crooked Man, the Boscombe Valley Mystery, the Man with the Twisted Lip, the Second Stain, the Naval Treaty, the Hound of the Baskervilles, and most recently, the Red Headed League.”

“You have an astonishing recall,” Holmes said. “to recite them so quickly, in the proper order, without referring to your notes. Your excellent memory is why you are such an invaluable aide and a precise and trustworthy Boswell.”

“And in the time when we have jointly pursued these eight cases, you were chasing the Ripper with Mr. Abberline, with not so much as a word.”

Holmes waved me off with a tired gesture.

“It was necessary to keep this an absolute secret,” he said.

“Even from me?”

“Even from you, my dear Watson.” He leaned back in his seat. “But what is important now is that I am certain that he will strike again tonight, and furthermore, I believe I know the general area. These,” he grabbed a handful of the thin wooden twigs from the table, “these have informed me.”

“The twigs told you?”

“Yes,” Holmes said. "These ‘twigs’ as you call them, are yarrow stalks. When I manipulate these bundles of stalks in prescribed ways, I am able to generate patterns called hexagrams, which I can then look up in this reference volume, called ‘The Book of Changes’. "

I looked over at Abberline who maintained a stoic expression.

“And what do the yarrow stalks tell you,” I asked.

“I received Hexagram 62, ‘showing the dancing bird of paradise’,” Holmes said, “then Hexagram 2, ‘furthering through the perseverance of a mare’, and Hexagram 40 ‘gaining a golden arrow’. This, together with the fact that the pattern that has formed on the map of London — when connecting the prior locations of the killings — is that of the ‘Dpal Be’u’, the ‘Endless Knot’, one of the ‘Ashtamangala’, the ‘Eight Auspicious Symbols’ of Tibet, tells me where the murder will take place.”

Holmes stood up, grabbed a yellow pin from the pin cushion, and placed it on the map, his hand shaking. Then he sat down again and closed his eyes, apparently exhausted from this simple movement.

Abberline leaned forward to inspect the location of the yellow pin on the map.

“Swallow Gardens,” the Detective Inspector said. “Near the Tower of London. I am familiar with it. In spite of the name, it is not a garden. It is simply a thoroughfare running between Leman Street and Mansell Street in Whitechapel.”

“Swallow,” I said, “I suppose that is the bird in the first hexagram?”

“Once again your ability to perfectly recall what you have heard is astonishing,” said Holmes. “Yes, the first hexagram along with the pattern of the endless knot on the map, is what gives me Swallow Gardens. The second hexagram with its reference to the ‘mare’ tells me that a horse is involved, and I venture to say that since we are now nine days into the Tibetan lunar new year in the year of the Iron-Rabbit, the hexagram wants me to see an iron horse. That is, a locomotive.”

“The London and Blackwall Railway goes through this part of Whitechapel,” said Abberline. “Right through Swallow Gardens.”

“What the third hexagram means by the golden arrow, I could not venture to guess,” Holmes said. “Although I suspect it will become clear when you are at the site in Swallow Gardens.”

“At the site?” I said.

“Yes, dear Watson, you must go there now, along with Detective Inspector Abberline. I, myself, cannot,” he gestured feebly towards his syringe and seven-percent solution of cocaine, “in my present condition. But I need the eyes and ears of my Boswell on the scene. If you can catch Saucy Jacky, do so. If he manages to escape, you will need to report every detail. We are closer now than ever before. This may be the night Jack the Ripper’s bloody trail finally comes to its end.”

* * *

It was after midnight, and so Friday 13th, when Abberline and I left Sherlock Holmes and hailed a hansom cab.

By the time we arrived at Swallow Gardens, a thick, yellowish tinged winter fog had descended, a real pea-souper. It was hard to see even a few feet.

“Well, how we are to spot Holmes’s ‘golden arrow’ in this, I do not know,” I said by way of conversation, the fog emanating from my mouth merging with the fog all around us. “And far less how we shall catch our man.”

“We shall take it step by step,” Abberline said, “as a constable on a beat.”

“I suppose you were,” I said, “a constable on the beat, when you first joined the Metropolitan Police.”

“I was,” Abberline said, “for my first two years, before I was made Sergeant. I still remember the tricks of the beat constable’s trade. One of them being that, especially on a cold night, we keep moving.”

I took his meaning, and so we began our slow, step-by-step progress, starting at the intersection of Leman Street and Swallow Gardens — where our hansom had let us out — as we headed from east to west on the thoroughfare, towards Mansell Street.

Swallow Gardens was deserted, it being so late at night, so all we heard was the sound of our own footsteps. We both carried lit lanterns, but could only see a few yards ahead through the cold winter fog.

“Ah, I think I see the spot,” I said. Out of the fog, a railway arch had appeared before us. “Not so much the arrow, as the bow. Do you see what I mean, Abberline? As in the arch of the bow when it is drawn and aimed at the sky.”

Abberline agreed this was the likely answer, especially as the railway would carry the iron horse of the locomotive directly above the arch, so that at this one spot we had the intersection of Swallow Gardens, a locomotive, and an arch resembling a bow aiming at the sky. The imagery of the ‘bird’, the ‘mare’, and the ‘arrow’ from Holmes’s hexagram divination all converged in this one place.

“But only,” Abberline said, “with quite a bit of imagination, and perhaps, I shall admit, a large pinch of wishful thinking. Were it not at the direction of the great Sherlock Holmes, I should say this was a fools errand. As it is, after thirty-six unsolved murders, I am willing to try anything to prevent the thirty-seventh. Even following the mysterious directions of wooden sticks.”

“Yarrow stalks,” I said. “I fear that back at Baker Street we were witness to the ravings of a great but feverish brain, perhaps addled by overuse of cocaine, and that tomorrow Holmes will realize that he did, indeed, send us on a fool’s errand. But here we are. So let us resolve to make the best out of the cold night’s wild-goose chase.”

We walked through the railway arch, shining our lanterns all around, but seeing no-one there. The roadway under the arch was partially taken away and boarded up from the crown of the arch to the ground. There was only a narrow passage remaining, barely broad enough that Abberline and I could manage to walk side by side without touching shoulders.

Once we were out to the street on the other side of the arch, Abberline said: “Since we do not know from which side of the arch the victim and the fiend may approach, I propose that we separate. I will go back through the arch and take up a position where I can see anyone coming or going on that side, and you do the same on this side.”

I readily agreed, and as Abberline disappeared back into the archway, I extinguished my lantern, and found a place in the shadows where I could still make out the railway arch through the fog, aided only by the street gas-lamp just outside the archway.

I stood there in the cold — marching in place, slowly and quietly, to keep warm, as I had learned to do while standing guard in the Afghanistan winter — watching the archway, for nearly two hours.

Then, through the fog and the snow flurries that had started fifteen minutes earlier, I saw a woman making her way towards the archway, perhaps a prostitute, looking for a place to sleep rough in the cold night.

I came out from my hiding space so I could keep a closer eye on the possible victim, and then —

* * *

I came to.

Bright light.

A soft couch beneath me.

I opened my eyes to find myself in the familiar surroundings of the Baker Street apartment.

Abberline and Holmes were standing over me.

I had the most frightful headache

“I fell,” I said. “The fog, the snow, the slippery street.”

“Yes,” said Holmes. “I was there. I saw it happen.”

“You were there,” I said, confused. “But, last night … you were unable to go.”

“So I led you to believe,” Holmes said. “I was not nearly as feeble as I let on. I followed you and Abberline coming down from the other end, from the west, from Mansell Street, where you and Abberline approached from the east. I made it in time to see you take up your hiding place in the shadows, Watson, and then saw you go down as you attempted your pursuit of the killer. You startled the killer in the act, and he came straight at me, knocked me aside and fled past me. I, however, whirled about, fired, and got four rounds dead center in his back. You know my accuracy with the gun, Watson. Yet he was able to limp away. Both Abberline and I were in hot pursuit. But the Ripper got away from us in the fog.”

“And the woman?” I said.

“Dead.” It was Abberline. “Throat slashed from ear to ear. She was still alive when Police Constable Ernest Thompson found her in a pool of her own blood inside the railway arch. He reported that she opened and shut one eye. But she died shortly thereafter. Her name was Frances Cole.”

“The Ripper’s thirty-seventh victim,” Holmes said. “But she will be his last.”

“You are quite certain?”

“I concur,” Abberline said. “Simply due to the tremendous amount of blood found at the site where Mr. Holmes indicated the shots went into him, and the blood trail leading away from that site, indicating that the wounds continued bleeding profusely. We estimate that the blood found at the site was in excess of two pints, with another pint of blood in the trail leading away. In addition there would certainly be internal bleeding from the multiple gunshots. We have alerted all the hospitals, so we will catch him if he seeks help there.”

“I predict you will not find him at a hospital,” Holmes said. “But I agree, a body cannot survive such a massive loss of blood at one time. Jack was mortally wounded last night, and we will never see him again on these shores.”

“Yet, we will not know who he was,” I said.

“The case,” Holmes said, “will remain unsolved.”

So I do not know where to put this in the case files. It was certainly the most unusual adventure for me, as it was perhaps my own poor showing in the affair, slipping and falling, that caused the anticlimactic ending to the famed case of Jack the Ripper.

* * *

BRISTOL COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS

FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 1893

“You can drop the Norwegian accent now,” Lizzie Borden continued in that deep, harsh voice. “I knew who you were from when first you entered this cell.”

“Naturally you did,” Mr. Sherlock Holmes said in his own voice. “But did you know that I know who you are?”

“Humans,” she said. “How little you understand. Your mind is wide open to me.”

“More importantly, did you know that I suspected my dear friend, Watson, of being Jack the Ripper?”

“Knew? I was the one who gave you all the clues you needed. I made it almost too easy for you.” The voice emanating from Lizzie Borden was now that of John Watson. “Yes, I knew that you believed Watson was the Ripper. And yet you refused to act upon it.”

“True,” said Holmes. “All the clues were there. The anatomical knowledge required to remove the organs of the victims, making it clear that the killer was almost certainly someone in the medical profession. The name ‘Jack’ a diminutive of John. And, of course, I was privvy to the fact that Watson was away from our shared rooms on every instance of the original five murders, and with no explanation for his absence. So, you wanted me to know. Why? So that I would be forced to solve the problem and send my friend to the gallows in disgrace and infamy.”

“That would have been delicious.” The voice again that deep, raspy, growl. “But you thwarted me.”

“I did not act against John Watson,” Sherlock Holmes settled back in the chair, placing his fingertips together, “because, in spite of the physical facts, you see, there is also a matter of motivation, of human nature. I know John Watson, know his nature. His mind is wide open to me. Perhaps not in the same way you say human minds are wide open to you, and I assume you mean, to your kind.”

“And what, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is my kind?”

“The Tibetans call your kind Èguǐ, or the ‘Hungry Ghost’. A demonic presence. Do you have a name, so that we can converse as gentlemen?”

“Here in the Occident, I have been called Asmodeus.”

“Very well, Asmodeus,” Holmes continued. “I knew John Watson must be the Ripper, all the clues were there. Yet I knew, with equal certainty, John Watson could never be the Ripper, it was against his nature. John Watson’s hands were committing the murders. John Watson’s mind, his soul, his nature could not commit these acts. Therefore there was another spirit animating John Watson’s body.”

“That is quite the leap of logic.” This time it was the voice of Sherlock Holmes himself, perfectly mimicked by the demon, emanating from Lizzie Borden’s lips.

Holmes smiled. “As you have heard me say many times, during the time you possessed John Watson: Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

Lizzie Borden yawned. Rather, Asmodeus yawned with Lizzie Borden’s mouth.

“Your endless repetitions got tiring, I must admit. Next will you say ‘Elementary, my dear Asmodeus’?”

“You know quite well I have never uttered that particular phrase,” Holmes said. “Once I had the concept of a demonic possession,” he continued, “it was a matter of delving deep into a topic that was admittedly foreign to someone like me who has made it my profession to rely exclusively on the rigorous deductive reasoning from facts. To gain a deeper understanding of the human mind, I consulted with a German philosopher, Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano, a former catholic priest, whose seminal works in the new science of psychology has been essential reading. Through Brentano, I consulted with two of his promising young pupils, Sigmund Freud and Rudolf Steiner. I also found the traditional Tibetan shamanic practices, along with that of the Chinese divination ‘I Ching’ most profitable.”

“All that mumbo jumbo about the yarrow stalks.” Asmodeus used John Watson’s voice again.

“Finally, in 1891,” Holmes said, "I saw the pattern so clearly that I could with certainty predict the date and place of the next murder, and I knew this would be my opportunity to catch Watson — that is, catch you, Asmodeus — red handed.

“When the woman, Frances Cole, approached the railway arch, Watson did not slip and fall, as he erroneously surmised. You possessed him, and he therefore had no memory of what actually happened.”

“Yes, I remember. I was there.”

“Until you were no longer there, Asmodeus.”

“Clever of you to threaten me with the phurba.”

“You mean this,” Holmes pulled the brass-and-iron alloy knife from his inner pocket.

Lizzie Borden recoiled. “Mr. Holmes, what are you doing with that knife?" It was Lizzie Borden's own voice this time. "Are you here to assassinate me?”

“You slipped up, Asmodeus,” Holmes said. “Ms. Borden knows me only as Sigerson, not as Holmes.”

“Well, you get my point.” It was again the deep demonic voice. “You caught me unawares at Swallow Gardens in 1891, and so I reacted hastily to the threat of the phurba. On reflection, I know that the phurba is an empty threat, as you would not kill innocents, such as Lizzie and Watson.”

“And yet, I exorcised you from Watson that night,” Holmes said, “merely by the threat of the phurba. I regret I did not get there early enough to prevent the death of Frances Cole.”

He placed the Tibetan ritual knife, the phurba, on his thigh with the point towards Lizzie Borden.

“Once you were driven from Watson’s mind,” he said, "you may not have known exactly what happened, so let me enlighten you.

"I made a show of firing my gun four times — into the air. Detective Inspector Abberline heard the commotion and came through the arch, joining me in pursuit of the non-existing ‘Jack’. Watson was lying unconscious on the ground as a result of the exorcism.

“Before I fired my gun, I had staged a massive amount of blood in a pool along with a trail of blood leading away from the site. It was my own blood, you see, which I had drawn over a period of many weeks. This was the reason I had a ghostly pallor. It also made it easy for me to act the part of being a near invalid, as I was, in fact, quite weakened from the blood letting.”

“Clever. But you didn’t realize that I was still there.”

“No. Though I knew of your kind’s ability to leap from one mind to another, I had reasoned there were no other living minds there, since once you were exorcised you could not return to your prior host, Watson, and my own mind was protected by the phurba. After the fact, I deduced that you leapt from Watson into the dying — but not quite yet dead — Frances Cole, and from her you must have leapt to Police Constable Ernest Thompson who found her dying at the scene, as he was the only other living mind nearby when she died. And from there, I can surmise you made at least one, possibly many more leaps until you were able to make your way across the Atlantic Ocean on a liner.”

“It is so wide open here,” Asmodeus said. “So spacious, and so much violence, so little restraint. The New World is a delicious smorgasbord of mutable minds. Fresh meat.”

“While you were preying on the minds in America, I staged my death at Reichenbach Falls,” Holmes said, “so that I could continue my search for you without Watson or anyone else involved and endangered. During this time, I have spent two years in Tibet under the guise of being a Norwegian explorer named Sigerson. I lived for some time in Lhasa, where I spent several days learning from the head Lama himself.”

“And now you have found me,” Asmodeus said through Lizzie Borden’s lips. “But why? I know your mind, and you are not a killer. I will not leave Lizzie’s mind willingly. To drive me out with the phurba you would need to kill her or at least harm her greatly. I do not believe you will do so.”

“You are right,” said Holmes. “I have a quite different approach. An offer.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” said Holmes. “I am here to offer myself.”

“A trick.”

“No,” said Holmes. “You are quite right that I will not harm this woman you have possessed, who you have made to kill her own father and stepmother. But I cannot let you go on. I will make a bargain with you.”

“I love bargains. They usually work out in my favor. What do you want: fame?”

“I have fame.”

“Fortune?”

“I have no need of fortune.”

“Then, what?”

“Knowledge. That is what I crave. Knowledge of the human mind.” Holmes leaned forward in his chair, eyes burning. “I already know all about facts, logical reasoning, but as yet I have only begun to explore the mysteries of the human mind. As you said, human minds are wide open to you. That is what I want, to see human minds laid bare, to understand the depths of human nature in all its aspects, good and evil.”

“That, I can give you. But will you pay the price?”

“I will pay the price.”

“But do you know the price? I wonder. You will find that your mind will also be open to me. And that will feel … hmmm … how to put it — I’m a hot knife, you’re a pat of butter.”

“I will pay the price, on one condition.”

“Ah, conditions, the fine print. Well, I have some of my own.” Asmodeus waved Lizzie’s hand. “But those you will discover in time, more so in eternity. What are your conditions, Sherlock?”

“Only the one. As long as you possess me, for the entire remaining duration of my earthly life, you will not kill nor harm anyone by my hand.”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“That’s it, take it or leave it. That is the only way you will have me. And I do believe you want me.”

“Oh, yes. You, Sherlock Holmes, will be a great trophy and an everlasting meal for me.”

“Then,” said Holmes, “the bargain is struck. I will do the deed and say the words.”

“Do it!”

Holmes raised the phurba and drove the point of the knife deep into his own thigh, slightly above the knee.

Lizzie Borden was out of her chair, her face contorted, as she said, in Asmodeus’s guttural, demonic voice:

“Say the words!”

“Come in, I invite you,” Holmes’s voice was hoarse, weak, but determined. “Of my own free will do I invite you.”

* * *

Lizzie Borden came to.

The man, Sigerson, had left. She vaguely remembered his assurances when he left that the jury would find her innocent. Then she had fallen asleep.

On the floor, near the chair where Sigerson had sat, she found a small spot of blood, a study in scarlet.

— THE END —