A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper (15 page)

As I walked back into the study, the atmosphere within the room suddenly felt heavy and oppressive, as if a presence I couldn't explain hung in the air. I hadn't noticed it before, it was quite strange, I hadn't experienced anything like it previously. It was almost as though, in the time I'd taken to speak to Mrs. Armitage and make my coffee, the room had been invaded by some all pervading aura, a sense rather than a being. I was being stupid, spooked and anxious by the content of the journal, that was all. Stupid or not, the feeling was quite real and unnerving, and despite the sunlight pouring into the room through the study windows I switched on the desk lamp, its warm radiance casting a comforting glow across the desktop. I opened the upper lights of the windows to allow some fresh air into the room, and took my place at the desk once more.

If the sound of the doorbell had been my first surprise of the day, the second wasn't far behind it. As I turned the page of the journal, expecting to find The Ripper's next entry before my eyes, imagine my astonishment when instead I found, tucked between the previous page I'd read and the next entry, a page of old, good quality vellum inscribed in my great-grandfather's hand! It was smaller than the pages of the journal, thus ensuring it had stayed neatly in-between the pages, undisturbed, probably since my father had first read the journal.

It was undated, and addressed simply to 'My Son'. That would of course have been my grandfather. The handwriting was neat, very neat, as I thought befitted a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. My great-grandfather had written as follows:

My Son

I write this after the event. As such, it is easy to say I should have acted sooner, but at the time I thought my diagnosis was correct, and that I was acting in the interests of the patient, the man who wrote the journal you are now reading. I have placed this note at this point in the journal for it is at this time by the journal's own chronography that I became involved in these tragic matters. I wish that I had had a little more foresight at the time, but, the past is history, and cannot be changed.

It was on or about the 23rd day of September in the year of our Lord 1888. Yes, the 23rd, I'm sure of it. I was at my practice in Charles Street, between patients, when there was a loud knocking at my door. I was visited by two representatives from the Charing Cross hospital, who had called to request that I visit there as soon as I possibly could. It appeared they had a patient, recently admitted, who was in a state of much confusion, almost delirium. He had been taken to the hospital by a police officer after being found wandering around in daylight hours displaying signs of being highly disorientated, perplexed and disturbed. He seemed not to know who he was, where he was, or where he had indeed come from. He could recall nothing of his recent movements nor where he lived, so had been removed to the infirmary where he was seen by the doctors there. Though he could speak little, he had managed to give them my name as being of his acquaintance, and, with no other means of identifying him and being unsure of what exactly ailed the man, the doctor in charge of his case, a Doctor Silas Malcolm, had sent them post-haste to my door with this urgent request to attend upon him.

Now, Silas Malcolm was known to me from my days at Lincoln's Inn Fields. We had studied together for a time and qualified as surgeons at about the same time as I recall, so it was natural that I should grant his request for assistance in this case.

Imagine my surprise, my son, when I arrived at the hospital and confronted the patient. I had last seen him some weeks earlier, certainly not long ago, and was appalled at his state of collapse. Silas Malcolm greeted me cordially, and, after I confirmed that I did know his patient, he ventured his opinion that the man was suffering from a brain fever induced by over indulging in the use of laudanum. I agreed, explaining that the patient, (I shall not name him here), had spoken to me privately some time ago and had indicated he was suffering from severe headaches and tiredness. I had suggested a regular small dose of laudanum may prove efficacious. It seems, however, that the patient had taken my words far too much to heart and had become addicted to the drug.

It was the following day before the patient was sufficiently coherent to speak lucidly to anyone, and he was somewhat surprised, though obviously pleased to see me at his bedside, when I visited the ward after my own surgery was over. He was still in a state of some confusion, believing he had been on a journey by train, though he could not remember where to, and obsessed with the thought that he had killed a girl. He said his mind was 'full of blood' and that he could not close his eyes without seeing the blood of his victim 'seeping down the drain'.

All these things I put down to the hallucinogenic effect of his laudanum overdose, blind fool that I was! I reassured him that he was suffering from a minor and temporary form of dementia brought on by the use of too much laudanum, and that he would be well again in a day or so. Doctor Malcolm had prescribed a series of purgatives which were rapidly driving the laudanum from his system. I assured him that I felt he would be allowed to leave the hospital within two days.

Why did I not believe him? Why, my son, why? Perhaps if I had, so much pain could have been avoided, and less blood spilt upon the streets of London. But I did not believe him, and I will always have to live with that knowledge. You may ask why I took such pains to visit this man who I have not named, to take an interest in his well-being. I tell you now my son, that if I had my time again I would have turned him away when I first set eyes upon him some few months ago, at my club. He approached me there and asked if I knew him. I did, of course, not from his own countenance, but from his eyes. He had the eyes of his mother you see, and I have never forgotten that grand lady who gave birth to him all those years ago. In deference to her memory I was civil enough to him, and treated him as kindly as I could, and thought him a fine young man for the most part.

I know you must wonder at my words, who he was, who his mother was, and perhaps I shall reveal that to you in time, but not yet. For now, be aware that there are reasons why I keep this to myself. Continue with your reading of his journal my son, and I shall tell you more later, this I promise.

The note ended there, a tantalizing end to a puzzling statement. In truth I felt as though my great-grandfather's words had raised more questions than they had provided answers, though at least now I was sure of a genuine and solid link between great-grandfather and The Ripper. As for this woman, his mother, could she have been a paramour, a lover of great-grandfather before or maybe even during his marriage to my great-grandmother? Is that why he refused to name her? Could The Ripper have been his son, an illegitimate ancestor of mine? The thought made me shudder, for, if that were true, then the blood of The Ripper could be flowing in my veins at this very moment, for we would both share the genes of great-grandfather. I thought I knew everything about the history of my family, but perhaps there were skeletons in the cupboard of which I had never been made aware. I was quite afraid at the thought that I may be about to find them out.

Whatever sense of foreboding I had felt up to this point now doubled in intensity. Whatever the truth of the matter, whatever revelations remained hidden within the as yet unread pages of the journal, I sensed that my peace of mind, such as it was, would never quite return to the state of equilibrium it had enjoyed before I ever set eyes on this document of evil and sick depravity. I wondered where this strange journey was taking me, for though in truth I had not set foot out of my house since returning home with the journal, psychologically I had been transported into the dark and gloomy world of Victorian Whitechapel, been witness to mind-numbing acts of macabre and vicious murder and mutilation, had travelled to the Edinburgh of the nineteenth century to observe yet more scenes of untimely and ferocious killing, and now, my mind was besieged by thoughts that Jack the Ripper may in some way have been a relative of mine.

My palms were sweating, my brow deeply furrowed, and my heart was thumping in my chest. I felt as if an explosion of previously untapped deep emotions had suddenly released deep within my soul, and, despite my attempts to convince my mind that all was normal, that nothing had changed, I felt the beginnings of what was to turn into the longest and most fearful living nightmare I could have envisaged for myself. Believe me when I tell you that Hell exists in many different forms. In the words of his journal The Ripper felt he was already there, and my own descent to that fearful place was only just beginning!

Of Journals and Journalism

As the words of my great-grandfather's note began to sink deeper into my consciousness so the feeling grew within my own mind that I was faced with innumerable questions, to which I had precisely not one answer. Firstly, there was not one piece of information in the note that explained exactly where the Ripper had been found wandering incoherently around the streets of London. Nor was there anything that provided me with an explanation as to when or how this sudden seizure of disorientation and partial memory loss had begun. Had he started to hallucinate whilst travelling back to London on the train? Had he reached his home first, only to succumb to this strange and sudden reaction on leaving the house at some time afterwards?

The last entry in the journal had been dated the 20th September, and my great-grandfather's note was dated the 23
^rd
. I presumed from his words that the patient had been admitted either one or two days before that date, so perhaps the Ripper's collapse had occurred on the 21
^st
, which was almost certainly the day he had returned by train to London. At the latest he would have been admitted to the hospital on the 22
^nd
so there wasn't quite the gulf of blank dates that there could have been. It did explain why there were no journal entries for those dates. It wouldn't have been possible for him to access his journal if he were lodged in a bed in a hospital ward.

I must admit that I was wholly intrigued by the references to the Ripper's mother. Who could she have been? If she weren't a secret lover or a relative of my great-grandfather, then what would have induced this feeling of responsibility toward the man in my ancestor? Was it logical to assume that the man was the bastard child of an illicit relationship between great-grandfather and this mystery woman? Of course not, I told myself. There could have been many reasons for his feelings of benevolence towards this young man, though I admit that for the life of me, at that moment in time, I couldn't think of any! I suddenly realised that I'd thought of the man as being young. Why? Great-grandfather hadn't mentioned his age, only that he reminded him of his mother, yet, somehow, I had the feeling I was right. Jack the Ripper was a young man, probably younger than I was at that time, I just knew it, without any concrete evidence to hand, I just knew.

My research notes were lying on the desk in front of me, where I'd left them in readiness for my current excursion through the pages of the journal. Suddenly something on the uppermost page seemed to leap up from the paper and strike me straight between the eyes. It was a date, the 30
^th
September, 1888. It was, of course, the date of the so-called 'double murder', when both Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes would meet their horrific ends. Yet, there was something else, I couldn't think of it at first, but there was a significance about that date that was eluding me for the time being. I wracked my brain, but it wouldn't come, no blinding revelation or realization sprang to mind. I would have to hope that my memory would click into action before long, and that the significance of the date would reveal itself to me.

I suppose it was the lack of a good night's sleep, for, even though it was still quite early in the day, I suddenly felt my eyes becoming heavy, my thoughts seemed slurred, as if I were caught in a whirlpool of sudden drunkenness. I shook myself in an attempt to clear my head. As I did so, I thought I heard a sound behind me, a sort of quiet rustling, as though someone was treading on dry leaves. I turned quickly, knowing logically there was no-one there, yet at the same time my illogical fears and tensions were such that I just had to check I was truly alone. I was, of course.

The uppermost thought in my mind at that time was simply; was it possible to be alone and yet not alone? Anyone who's been in love will probably recognize that concept, the feeling that no matter how far apart they may be, two lovers can yet feel as though together across the miles. Unfortunately for me, the feeling in my mind wasn't one of togetherness with Sarah, that most beautiful lady with whom I shared my life, and who was many miles away at her sister's house; no, my feeling was one of togetherness with the malevolent force that I felt was somehow contained within the words and pages of the journal. Like a cancerous mass of gargantuan proportions, the sensation weighed me down, my mind was clouded by thoughts of death, of a crazed madness running out of control, toward an inevitable climax of destruction; but whose, his or mine? His destruction of course had been a fact of history. It was over a hundred years since the series of murders he'd perpetrated had taken place, and Jack the Ripper, whoever he may have been, was by now long dead. So, why was I asking the question? Was it possible that my own mind was becoming scarred and twisted in some way by the words from those aged pages, from the paper itself, strangely warm to the touch, and horrific in content?

I shook myself once more in an effort to dispel the daydream, the feeling of other-worldliness hanging over me, hanging over the entire study, hovering just below the ceiling, a cloud of depression and fear, of evil intent and malevolent purpose. Why didn't I just give up, throw the damned journal in the waste bin, or better still, take it into the garden and burn it? I couldn't. No matter how much I may have wanted to dispose of it, to read not one more single page of the depravities committed by the Ripper, I was somehow being driven by a compulsion I couldn't deny, as though a will stronger than my own was invading my body and mind.