Anatomy of Evil (26 page)

The spell was broken then. This thing on the table, sans brain or organs, could no longer be considered a person. It was but clay, fodder for the yawning grave. Brown weighed the brain then and clapped the skull cap back on the empty cavity, and stretched the skin of the scalp back over it. It went back in place, and no one looking at it would think that there was no brain inside it.

Where was her soul, exactly?
I wondered. She was a fallen woman. No doubt Spurgeon would say she was in hell right then. Another favorite of mine, George MacDonald, on the other hand, writer and mystic that he was, believed that after a time of penance, a loving God would take her to heaven. Was there such a place? I’d dearly like to think so, although my closest friend, Israel, had no need for Sheol and such things. Spurgeon or MacDonald? I had been a member of Spurgeon’s flock, but just this once I hoped he was wrong. And I’d like to think he’d wish the same thing himself.

Brown had threaded a needle and was looping stitches across her mottled abdomen. Poor dear. I wondered what she would be buried in. Her clothes must be kept as evidence. I would pay for a nice, plain dress myself, if need be. Bury her like the grandmother she would have been had circumstances not been as they were. Give the old girl some proper dignity in her final departure.

Again, I had that feeling of nakedness. All these men staring solemnly at her exposure. Even death was a kind of nakedness, with no life to clothe her in. Deprived of all dignity, stripped bare of humanity, displayed like something in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors for all the world to see.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I muttered, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t my stomach that wanted to reject this. It was my mind.

Peeping Tom had his eyes put out with a hot poker for daring to look at Lady Godiva, or so the story goes. I understood that now. I didn’t want such a punishment, but understood it nonetheless.

“Phillips,” Brown said.

His assistant brought a canvas sheet stained with fluids from other postmortems and finally, finally, covered her obscene nakedness with it. Her shroud. At last she had earned it.

“I must attend her funeral,” I said to Barker, as the men watching the spectacle had begun to leave.

“I was going to give you the morning off, lad,” the Guv protested. “You’ve been working for weeks without a break.”

“No, sir, I’d rather be there. I must see this thing through.”

“Very well, Thomas. May I accompany you?”

“If you wish, sir. I’d appreciate it.”

We stepped into the hallway and out into the clean air of the autumn afternoon.

“What thought you of your first postmortem? Was it instructional?”

I tried to say something, but three thoughts came at once, like when someone hits random keys on a typewriting machine and they all jam together in the air.

“Well, no matter,” he said. “It was a rite of passage.”

*   *   *

A private enquiry agent, in the course of his duties, is forced to attend a number of funerals. Many enquiries begin with a death, and it builds trust in a client to have an agent attend the service of the person who is often the victim. More than a few end with a funeral, as well, and for various reasons, difficult as it might be, one attends them as well, if for no other reason than to watch a murderer put into the ground for good. I have been to lavish funerals with dozens of carriages swathed in black silk and crepe, and I have been to one where I was the chief and only mourner. Some have been in full sunlight, others in a driving rain, and at least one required a pickaxe to break the frozen soil. Yet, among the many, I still vividly recall the funeral of Catherine Eddowes.

I did not attend the burials of Mary Nichols or Annie Chapman, but I understood they were sparsely attended. Unfortunates tend to shed relatives like a dog does its winter coat, and there are few upright citizens willing to be seen publicly grieving for a known prostitute. Eddowes’s funeral, on the other hand, was a circus. When Cyrus Barker and I arrived the following Monday, the streets were lined with people outside the Golden Lane Coroner Center, and some had let upper rooms nearby to look out upon the spectacle. One would have thought Kate Eddowes a member of one of London’s premier families.

The funeral was to be at Ilford Cemetery, which I must admit was shocking to me. Apparently, Eddowes was to be buried in hallowed ground, in spite of her occupation. Someone, some benefactor, had not only put up the money for a proper funeral, he must have also pulled a few legal strings. She was brought out by City Police pallbearers in a coffin of polished elm with oak moldings, and lain in a glass-sided hearse. A beautiful wreath of white lilies was placed on the coffin. Behind was a mourning carriage carrying four of Catherine Eddowes’s sisters. Whatever they had thought of her life, when she was sleeping rough and giving herself to men for mere pennies, they were there when she was the toast of Whitechapel. Also there was John Kelly, her common-law husband. He was fiftyish, with short, spiky hair and a collar too tight for his neck. If anything he was cowed by the sisters he traveled with and seemed to keep to himself.

“Drunk,” Barker said to me.

“Kelly?”

“The crowd. Part of it, anyway. There was a wake last night in many of the public houses. Many stayed up all night.”

I looked closer. Some of the men had donned morning coats and crepe-lined top hats, but they had been put on hastily over their normal clothes. The women had fetched bird-covered hats and bonnets from closets, and knit shawls, but had not polished their shoes. Some of the clothes they wore seemed theatrical, as if pinched from a costumer, and much was mismatched, as if it were the best they could do at short notice. Jenkins had coordinated with Mac to have our mourning apparel brought to our rooms. I felt overdressed, but I had promised myself that I would be there and prepared.

“Don’t begrudge them, lad,” Barker said, as if divining my thoughts. “They have their own ways of mourning here in the ’Chapel.”

A third vehicle came up behind the coach. It was a brougham for members of the press. The reporter Bulling was there, his face red with drink, and not the only one, too.

At a signal, the front carriage driver gave a click of his tongue and the lead horses tossed their black-plumed heads and began to pull. The procession gave a ragged cheer and began to move. We walked with the crowd, since we were not a part of the City Police, represented by Superintendent Foster and Inspector McWilliams. A body of constables kept order merely by their presence and the solemnity of the occasion.

The route to the City of London Cemetery was by way of Great Easter Street, Commercial Street, Whitechapel and Mile End Roads, until it reached Ilford. The crowd were old and young alike, including babies bawling in their mothers’ arms. Some had known Kate, most had not, but were paying their respects, and some had come simply out of curiosity. I looked about and wondered if the Whitechapel Killer himself was here. One would think he could not stay away from this display of his own handiwork.

“They must be joking,” Barker rumbled, breaking into my reverie.

“What now?”

“Look ahead.”

I did. There was a wall of constables stretching across the street. Scotland Yard men. Would there be an altercation here, between the Yard and the City men? No, as we approached, the Met came forward while the City retreated, staying within the City limits. They would not cross over and see the woman to her grave, and neither would the constables from nearby “G” Division step into their territory.

“Stupid,” I said.

“‘Call no man fool,’” Barker quoted from the Psalms. “Once you start, you will never stop.”

As we passed the white chapel of St. Mary Matfelon Church, the crowd swelled as the mourners waiting there mingled momentarily with the participants. Those who had come to pay their respects here gave the procession a gravitas it greatly needed. Some of the women were actually crying, and I suspected they were Eddowes’s true sisters, those of her profession that had been with her every day, commiserating with her struggles and few momentary pleasures. I saw one of the constables reach out with a gloved hand, and pat a weeping woman on the shoulder. There, unheeded by anyone but me, was one of Scotland Yard’s finest moments.

It was a long walk, snaking through the entire district that the Ripper prowled, and many walked in pinched and broken shoes, though no one complained. It was an event people would remember in their old age. “Was you there at Old Kate’s funeral? That was something worth seeing, was it not?”

When we finally reached Ilford and Forest Gate, there were hundreds more mourners already waiting at the cemetery for our arrival. It was a crush. The two crowds merged and without the presence of the police there might have been chaos.

“Shall we observe at a distance, Thomas, or do you feel the need to be graveside?”

Just then a man carelessly clipped my ear with an elbow.

“At a distance would be fine,” I said.

We let the procession continue to the Church of England portion of the cemetery, which was full of falling leaves, reminding me of the changing seasons. A breeze blew through the cemetery, sending leaves cartwheeling over everything. It seemed very apropos. The dead leaves would soon cover the dead woman’s grave.

A chaplain in his long surplice read a ten-minute speech, not quite eulogy, nor yet sermon, either. What does one say over the coffin of an unfortunate? One cannot act as if she was virtuous, but on the other hand, only the most hard-hearted of clergymen would dare say anything derogatory in front of this crowd.

“Who’s paying for all this?” I finally asked my employer.

“The City officials have waived the fees for her burial. The rest was donated by a local churchman.”

“‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’” I heard the chaplain’s voice travel on the wind with the dancing leaves.

“God rest her soul,” Barker added.

“‘Flights of angels, sing thee to thy rest,’” I said to myself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Scotland Yard is famous for its staunchness, its gravity, and the seriousness with which it handles every complaint. Without question, it is the best police force in the world. That motion having been put forward and seconded, there is occasionally an atmosphere as if they were a group of boys at play. One must understand that there were no women working there to scrutinize behavior for its gentlemanliness, and though some denizens had crossed the fifty-year threshold and were in their dotage, the median age was about twenty-five.

We were in the Records Room on the morning of the second of October, looking over the latest arrest records in connection with the case, when somewhere in the hallways a voice called out, “Oy!” Aside from being a beloved Yiddish term of surprise, it is often used in the Yard, its meaning being a combination of “Stop what you are doing,” “Come to my aid,” and “You’ve got to see this!” It is the vocal equivalent of the police whistle.

Barker and I debated whether to go to the aid of whoever made the call. After all, there was a beehive of constables there ready to handle any emergency. Then a few ran down the hall past our door. Immediately, we were on our feet. A prisoner had tried to escape, I thought, or a fight between suspects or witnesses had broken out; those were the only reasons I could conceive on the spur of the moment. By the time we reached the door, more officers shot past, and I realized something of sufficient magnitude had occurred that it was siphoning men down the hall. Just because the Guv and I were new did not mean we would be caught flat-footed. We sprinted down the now congested hallway. Men were jostling to get ahead of us, but the Guv has a way of swinging his elbows as he runs that make him a danger to one’s eyes and throat. Most gave way.

We turned into the main hall of “A” Division, expecting to find a riot in progress, but instead, everyone inside the building was funneling out the front door. Had a bomb threat been made? Was Barker right that the populace wouldn’t stand for the Yard’s methods and had come to protest? No, everyone running out the door was turning right toward the Embankment and following after the man in front of him. We could but do likewise.

Reaching the corner of Great Scotland Yard and Northumberland Street, we passed through a makeshift barrier and into the geometric grid of bricks and blocks that formed the skeleton of the New Scotland Yard building. Designed by Norman Shaw, it was intended to replace the poky and disorganized halls of the old building with order and ample space for all possible future needs. What it lacked in space beside the river and Great Scotland Yard Wharf, it would make up for in height. I understood it would be five stories tall. When finished, it would dwarf all the buildings nearby, but that was still a year or two to come. We ran among the brickbats and pallets trying not to trip, and to avoid puddles which had formed in the sandy soil. It slowed my progress, because I knew this group of philosophers would jeer and laugh at the first man who tripped and fell.

Ahead, most of the residents of Scotland Yard had settled in a ring around a half-built structure, taking turns stepping down into a recently finished basement. We waited our turn, and when we finally reached the room squeezed in, having no idea what to expect.

The small, unfinished cellar was packed with men standing shoulder to shoulder, lit by a single dark lantern in the middle. We shuffled forward until we could see. There was a bundle on the floor, originally swathed in black cloth and rope, but now lying exposed. It was a torso; pale, naked, headless, and limbless. A female torso.

The Ripper had left us a present on our very own doorstep, just to prove to us and the whole world that he could do it and get away with it. If Barker weren’t there, and him such a Puritan, I’d have let out a few curses in frustration.

The victim appeared to have been young and well formed and the skin so pale as to remind me of a mermaid. The limbs had been sawn with some degree of precision. As we watched, one of the chief inspectors came out with a length of canvas and covered the body in preparation to carry it to a hand litter left behind in the street. We watched in fascination as he tried to lift it. It slipped out of his hands and struck the ground with a squelching sound that rather made me queasy. Two attempted it next, and found it no easier to grasp than the one. Finally, a third joined in and rolled the partial body into a makeshift sling held by the others. Some of the men were assigned to examine every inch of ground from the old building to the water for clues.