Anatomy of Evil (24 page)

“Here now,” he said. “You boys are off your pitch. This is a City murder. Off with you.”

Abberline looked in both directions, then stomped his foot and cursed. We had strayed just a street or two out of his jurisdiction, but those few feet made all the difference in the world. We might as well have been in Glasgow for all the authority he had here.

“Oh, come on, McWilliams,” the inspector nearly pleaded. “It is obvious that the two murders are connected by the same killer. Your department needs to work with Scotland Yard on this case.”

“It is not obvious at all,” McWilliams replied. He was a very elegant-looking man for an inspector, dressed more like a banker, down to the rolled-up umbrella. He was all patience, where Inspector Abberline had none. “This might just as easily be a new murderer working within the City, who was inspired by your Ripper killings.”

“We need to investigate this crime scene!” Abberline insisted.

“Beggar off. I’m not one of your subordinates to order about.”

“Look, look,” Abberline said, trying to sound reasonable. “We’ll share information. I’ll tell you what I found in Dutfield’s Yard, and you tell me what happened here.”

“Why should I care what happened over in bloody Dutfield’s Yard? That’s your case, not mine. I’ve got my own work to investigate, thank you. Now if you gentlemen will kindly go back to where you came from, and be about your business, I’ll be about mine.”

I thought Frederick Abberline’s cheeks had grown a dusky red and he looked about ready to strangle his equal from the City Police. However, just then a constable came up and whispered in his ear. He was too far away for me to hear, but Barker was nearby and he has excellent ears.

“All right, lads!” the inspector bawled. “You ’eard the man. Let’s be about our business!”

He turned and began to leave. Something else must have occurred for him to give up so easily. He wasn’t leaving at all, but going to another destination. McWilliams watched him through narrowed eyes. I was passing the Guv when he seized the cuff on my coat, arresting my progress. As nonchalantly as possible, I circled around him and came up on his right shoulder. I was not dressed in my uniform and there was no indication I was with Scotland Yard. We watched Abberline and his men leave.

“Cyrus,” McWilliams said, coming up to us. “You’re keeping low company these days.”

“I go wherever the tide takes me, James. You know that. Wouldn’t it be a peach if the City Police caught the Whitechapel Killer and wrapped it all up in a neat bow for Her Majesty’s government?”

“You know, the thought had occurred to me, as well. It would certainly be a feather in my cap. That’s how a chap gets the word ‘sir’ put in front of his name.”

“Precisely. Do you gentlemen need any help? You look as if you have everything in order.”

“We’ve got this locked tight, thank you,” McWilliams said.

“Do you mind if we observe? We shall not disturb any evidence. Feel free to tell us to push off if you’ve a mind.”

“I’ll give you five minutes, but not six. Fair enough?”

“You are the soul of generosity, James. This gentleman is my assistant, by the way. Thomas Llewelyn. Thomas, Detective Inspector James McWilliams.”

We did not shake hands, but both touched the brims of our bowlers in acknowledgment. His was beaver skin, while mine was felt, but I was trying to fit in among the men at Scotland Yard, not their more well-bred brethren in the City. Then the inspector returned to his work. Despite his air of patience, he had work to do. We all did.

The artist had been sketching the entire time. I moved behind him enough to see what he was working on without crowding him. The body was now not only fully sketched out, but nearly finished in various-colored inks. Needless to say, red was the predominating color. It was a lurid little drawing, one that no newspaper could print, but it was accurate. I could see a need for an artist at Scotland Yard itself, creating images based upon witnesses’ descriptions, as well as drawings of victims and their positions. I chanced to look over at my employer. The Guv was down on the ground, resting on his haunches, examining the body as intently as the artist. He was studying the mutilations on her face. Had the killer tried to carve letters into her skin? The vertical slash could be an
I,
and the cut in each cheek a
V,
but then they could just as easily be Roman numerals. The meaning in either case was obscure, known only to the madman who dared use a woman’s face for parchment. I glanced down across her form, but she had been so ferociously stabbed that all was soaked in blood. I looked away.

We turned. Another constable was running toward us.

“Now what?” Barker suddenly demanded.

The sergeant halted in front of Barker and saluted him. “Beg pardon, sir, but you’re wanted in Goulston Street. The commissioner is asking for you directly.”

“Commissioner Warren is here in Whitechapel?”

“Yes, sir, with Chief Inspectors Swanson and Abberline.”

“Is there another body?” he asked grimly.

“No, sir. A message. A message from Jack the Ripper himself. They’re arguing over what to do with it.”

“That can’t be good. Well, lead the way, Constable. We haven’t got all night.”

We were following the steady clop of the sergeant’s boots ahead of us. Goulston Street looked deserted, but when we got closer a knot of people were standing about and being warned to give way by a sergeant. We were led through the crowd to a doorway. The first thing I noticed was a rag on the pavement, a bloody rag. Then someone flashed a bull’s-eye at the wall by the entrance and I saw the words in a childish scrawl too high to have been written by a child.
The Juwes are the men who would not be blamed for nothing.

I tried to work it out. It wasn’t clear. If the “Juwes” were not blamed for nothing, then they must be blamed for something, if I read it right. Was he blaming the Jews for the murders? But if he were a Jew, there would be no reason for him to blame his own countrymen. Was it a false message and he was trying to blame the killings on someone else? Barker and I stood and puzzled over what the message was trying to say.

“At least wait until the photographer gets here and records the image, sir,” Donald Swanson was saying to the commissioner, who had a face like thunder, as they say. Abberline seemed just as anxious to stop Charles Warren from doing something precipitate.

“I’m sure it won’t be more than a couple of more minutes!”

“My mind is made up! It is too dangerous. Suppose word gets out in the district? We could have a riot on our hands, broken shop entrances, tar and feathering, even a hanging. No, gentlemen, I’m sorry. I will take full responsibility!”

So saying, he raised an arm and wiped the chalk message from the wall with his sleeve. Swanson and Abberline groaned simultaneously. The commissioner stood there, the sleeve of his black frogged jacket white with chalk, and a dazed expression on his face, as if shocked at his own audacity. Before we could even react a man appeared with the long-awaited camera. Abberline smacked his own forehead in anger.

“Sergeants, disperse this crowd!” Warren shouted at the men guarding the entrance.

“Shall I get a photograph of the entranceway?” the photographer asked.

“Why bother?” Swanson asked. “Next time, do try to run a little faster.”

I stepped forward then and was repelled by a strong odor in the entrance. It made me step back.

“Offal,” Barker said in my ear. “Offal and blood on the rag. I suspect the cloth was part of the last victim’s apron. He must have carried the organs away in it or used it to wipe his hands afterward.”

“He’s getting worse each time, sir,” I said.

“Perhaps.”

“Is there any chance he will stop here?”

“I wish there were, lad, but I fear it will only become worse.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Later that morning I arrived at my locker to find a new jacket and trousers hanging on the hook. It was new material, well stitched, and when I reached into the collar looking for some sign of its origin, I saw a label that read K & R Krause Brothers. They were Barker’s personal tailors. He must have grown tired of seeing me in ill-fitting trousers and a tunic at least a decade old. I tried it on. Of course, it fit perfectly. The special constable badge was sewn on the shoulder, and there was a proper pair of boots for me to wear with them. My concern was that it all would look too new, and I’d be chaffed for looking too spotlessly neat, like a painted tin soldier, with rouge on each cheek.

I needn’t have bothered worrying. As it turned out, the Yard was too dispirited to pay any attention to what I was wearing. The Ripper had struck again the night before—twice—and all the patrols in the area had done little good for the victims. Everyone looked angry, and with good reason. The newspapers were full of articles claiming we were shirking our duties, and about as effective in saving local women from harm as a knitting circle. Meadows intimated to me that he anticipated some kind of stirring speech from one of the DCIs, if not the commissioner himself. Not a public one, mind, but within the office, offering encouragement and a renewed vow to track down this killer together. I would have appreciated hearing such a message, feeling a bit dispirited myself, but as it turned out, we missed it. The palace had called for our immediate presence there.

Once we had secured a hansom and were bowling west toward Buckingham Palace, I looked over at my employer. He wasn’t dressed as formally as on our first visit, but I noticed he was better dressed than on an ordinary day. He wore a blue anodyne tie in a paisley print under his wing-tipped collar and his waistcoat was of gray kid.

“You were expecting a call from the palace?”

“I anticipated it, if that’s what you mean.”

“I hope the Krause brothers did not work all night on my behalf.”

“No, I ordered it last week, having seen the state of your uniform, and its arrival this morning was merely coincidental.”

“What sort of reception do you anticipate we shall receive?”

“The message Mr. Ponsonby sent merely said, ‘Come at once.’ I conjecture that the royal family is in an emotional crisis over the double murder last night. Unfortunately, being the official liaison between them and Scotland Yard means that we will be held responsible for every shortcoming of the department, real or imagined.”

“He’s going to yell at us,” I said.

“I have no doubt.”

I sighed. The morale at the palace didn’t look any better than that of the Met. The butler at the front door seemed preoccupied and did not speak as he led us to the Private Secretary’s office. Inside, Sir Henry was in a dour mood.

“Her Majesty has been extremely upset all morning. She has received several messages from the public concerning the killings last night. We anticipate hundreds more shall be arriving in the afternoon post. The sovereign’s public demands that she do something about the women being slaughtered in Whitechapel. Her first wish is to take Scotland Yard to task for doing little in the face of such horrible murders.”

“It is hardly little, Sir Henry,” Barker said, unperturbed by the Queen’s demands. “We have denuded the West End of officers in order to send them into Whitechapel, to patrol in pairs. There are three times the number of constables walking a beat there now.”

“And yet one man passed through your sieve like water and killed two women!”

“Had we caught him already, it would have been nothing but happenstance. The political and social need to catch him does not equal our ability to track him because he has no sign or mark upon his person indicating whom he is. I could have seen the Whitechapel Killer myself this morning, or have even spoken to him, without realizing his identity. We are fortunate, indeed, that a multiple or compulsive murderer such as this is exceedingly rare.”

Ponsonby continued to look truculent. I wondered what browbeating he had been given that morning by the Queen, and what promises he had made to her.

“The newspapers claim you have done nothing.”

“Obviously, we do not let them look over our shoulders, so they cannot see the number of suspects we have investigated and eliminated in the past month. Nor can they see the effect of having constables in nearly every street. Many criminals have moved to Poplar or Bethnal Green where there is a lower concentration of police officials, but not the Whitechapel Killer. In spite of the much greater chances of being caught, he has returned to the same area to kill unfortunates over and over. He has a mania. He cannot stop the killing, and therefore, he will inevitably be captured.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” Ponsonby said.

Cyrus Barker began counting on the fingers of one hand. “When Mary Ann Nichols was killed, nothing happened beyond the standard investigation, because as gruesome as her killing was, there was no sign that it was anything but an isolated incident. With Annie Chapman’s death, however, we realized we had a multiple murderer on our hands, and dispatched dozens of constables into the East End. Yesterday the killer struck again, but seems to have been interrupted in the act. This might have been enough to discourage another murderer, but at that point he had to kill again, either out of a compulsion or an inflated sense of self-worth. He did so at great risk to his freedom. He was probably surrounded by officers in all directions last night.”

“And yet he succeeded.”

“You must understand, the Yard has never faced such an adversary before. There are no procedures on what to do, but we are adapting our methods almost daily and noting what to change afterward should this happen again. Isn’t that correct, Mr. Llewelyn?”

“I’m running out of pages in my notebook, sir,” I said.

“On behalf of the Met, Sir Henry, I apologize if our actions have caused you to receive any criticism that was meant for our shoulders.”

“Her Majesty is a woman of strong opinions, as is fitting for a monarch of the Empire. This matter has affected her greatly, both because of her sex and the letters she has received today from her subjects in Whitechapel. She asked me to read one. I promise you that the woman who wrote that letter was actually in fear for her life.”