City of Darkness (City of Mystery) (6 page)

“It is a daunting task, is it not?”
Abrams said, as if reading his mind.  “Within the confines of Whitechapel there
are 233 lodging houses with over 8000 occupants, an estimated 1,200 of them
making their living as prostitutes.”

“Over a thousand women?” Trevor said
with surprise.  He wouldn’t have guessed as third as many.  “Abrams, you’re a
marvel.  Wherever do you get all your statistics?” 

“Home Secretary report, Welles. 
Released last week.”

Trevor stopped on the sidewalk, so
abruptly that the man behind him bumped into him with a low curse, and dug his
journal from his pocket.  “233 lodging houses?”

“Sixty-two of them established
brothels.  I say, Welles, you’re a marvel in your own right.  You don’t go
anywhere without that little notebook of yours, do you?”

“Where do you keep your reports?”

Abrams tapped his temple lightly.

“Bully,” Trevor said stiffly. “But I
want to make sure I don’t forget anything and a case like this has so many –
where are we going, by the way?”

“I’m visiting the mortuary to have a
look at Annie Chapman,” Abrams said.  “And since you’re walking with me, it
would appear that you’re headed there too.   She’s set to be buried tomorrow
morning, and seeing them off is a bit of a ritual with me, I suppose.  There’s
nothing to be done with it, of course, but I can’t seem to resist paying my final
call.” 

“You’ve never worked with a partner,
have you, Abrams?”

“Never saw the need.  He travels
fastest who travels alone, as they say.  And you?”

“Never saw the need either.”

“I suppose your little notebook is
your partner.”

“Scoff if you will, but if there are
over a thousand prostitutes in Whitechapel, each with a hefty number of
clients, how many interviews do you think we’ll have to conduct before this
matter is brought to an end?  Look at the crowd of people on this street, the
number of possible victims, the number of possible suspects.  How are we to
determine where a random killer will turn next?”

“I don’t know,” Abrams said, his
shoulders drooping a little.  “I suppose if a man’s a hunter, any bird in the
sky will do.  Ah, here we are.” 

Trevor and Abrams entered a plain
gray stone building beside the graveyard and followed the dull sound of
hammering to the back of the hall. “What can I do for you?” asked a voice
slightly muffled by the pounding.

“Abrams and Welles of Scotland Yard,”
said Abrams.  “Here to see the remains of Anne Chapman.”

“Remains is right, Detective” said
the man, stepping out from behind his work bench and gesturing with his hammer
toward a doorway.  “Poor Dark Annie was butchered sure enough.  She’s in the
pine box in the back.”

Trevor walked into the second room
where a man he supposed to be one of the coroner’s assistants was bent over a
coffin.  Why they had done their examinations here, in this ramshackle
mortuary, and not at Scotland Yard was a mystery to Trevor and he wondered if
the case was truly receiving the attention it deserved.  The assistant seemed
to recognize Abrams and Welles as detectives, or perhaps he had overheard the
conversation in the hall, for he stepped back from the body smartly, in an
almost military manner.

Trevor walked over to the humble
coffin and paused for a moment.  He gave a nod of credit to the assistant, who
was now setting up a camera on a tripod, for the expression on the ashen face
was peaceful and Annie Chapman was neatly dressed, her body giving little
evidence of the violations of two nights before.  Her eyes were shut and her
arms had been neatly crossed over her chest.

“Where would you drain blood from a
body?” he asked the assistant.

The young man turned clumsily from
the camera, startled at having been addressed.   “In the mortuary at Scotland
Yard, Sir.”

“No.  No, I mean what parts of the
body?”

“Throat, wrists, behind the ear.“

“Then I regret I must spoil your
admirable work,” Trevor said, reaching into the coffin and seizing one of the
woman’s waxy white hands.  He turned it over and there, just as he predicted,
was a tiny aperture in her wrist.

“See this, Abrams, unmistakably a
hypodermic needle,” he said, forcing himself to shrug, although he was so
excited it took all of his control not to tremble.  “Now we just have to find
the bastard who drained her blood.”

“It was me, Sirs,” said the mortuary
assistant. 

Trevor looked up.

“When we embalmed her, Sirs.”

Abrams gave a soft laugh and Trevor
felt himself flush.

“And did you happen to notice,” he
said, in what he hoped was a cool and level voice, “if there were any such
apertures when you began?”

“Doctor Phillips reported she was
very nearly drained when they found her,” Abrams said, by way of explanation,
but the young man still seemed confused.

“When doing your embalmations, your…
your preparations for the coffin, you didn’t stop to wonder at the absence of
blood?” Trevor asked, his voice revealing more exasperation than he intended.

“The incision in her throat, Sir, six
to eight inches long and three deep –“

“Quite,” said Abrams, shooting Trevor
a warning look.  A case could be made that the woman’s near-decapitation,
followed by a bumpy cross-town transit in a cart, was a reasonable enough
explanation for the fact she’d arrived to the mortuary almost bloodless. Besides,
they wouldn’t aid the investigation or win any friends by snapping at the
assistants of powerful men.

Trevor sighed and looked down at the
pale hand in his own.  Phillips had scolded Eatwell for not better training the
bobbies and yet it appeared he also chose his own assistants more on the basis
of their silent efficiency than for their curious minds.  But he supposed it
wasn’t this boy’s task to look for needle marks on a corpse, any more than the
bobbies could be blamed for the manner in which they swarmed the crime
scenes.   The men on top liked their underlings physically strong and mentally deferential,
quick to do whatever task they’re ordered but unlikely to ask troubling
questions along the way.  No one knew that better than him.    

“But see here,” Trevor said, still
staring down at the woman’s hand.  “There is something. Under the fingernail.”   

Abrams handed Trevor a pencil and all
three men held their breath as he carefully used its tip to remove a raveled
red fiber.  Trevor held the thin piece up to the light to examine it better and
slowly, carefully untangled a red thread about an inch long. 

“From the clothes of the killer, perhaps,”
Trevor said.  “There may have been a struggle and she grabbed at him.  Tore at
a shirt or scarf.”  He removed the journal once again from his breast pocket
and carefully laid the red thread between two pages, then reached back over
Annie to get a better look at her other hand.

“I assure you, Detective, you will
not find a pulse,” came a familiar voice from the doorway.

“Doctor Phillips,” Abrams said,
extending a hand.  “We got here just in time to see you photograph the
retinas.”  The two men chuckled and, noting Trevor’s uncertain expression,
Abrams explained.  “This morning The Star ran an article suggesting the police
photograph the dead women’s eyes.  Apparently there’s a theory floating around
that the last image one sees before death is forever seared into the retina.”

“Would that it were that easy,” said
the doctor.  He motioned to his assistant, who was waiting with the camera. 
“Go ahead, Severin, take your picture.  Eyes closed, of course, the detective
was just having his little joke.  What were you doing with her hands, Welles?”

“In the morning meeting you said the
victims may have been strangled or smothered first, which allowed for so little
blood.”

Phillips nodded.

“If I was being choked, I would at
least try to lash back at the assailant.  I would grab or scratch at anything I
could reach, just out of desperation.  A simple reflex, wouldn’t you say?”

“And your point?”

“Just this.  Did you examine the
hands of both victims?  Did you noticed if these women had anything under their
nails indicating they fought back?  Was there blood, or hair, or skin found?  Could
they have scratched or wounded the attacker?  Anything?”

The pop of the camera made them all
jump and Phillips blinked, perhaps in anger or perhaps just because of the
flash.  “Young man, are you seriously questioning my ability to do an autopsy?”

“He found a thread,” Abrams said,
both his expression and voice utterly devoid of emotion.   He was once again
leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and head tilted in an
absurd parody of the dead woman’s position.  Isn’t he the cool one, Welles
thought.  Slight in build and with those thick eyeglasses he truly does look
more like a scholar than a detective - but a bit of a dandy too, his
shirtsleeves always clean and his tie knotted just so.  Never puts himself on
the line with a theory, at least not when a superior is in earshot.  And yet
he’s always there, observing everything.

“A thread?” Phillips asked.  “And you
think you can follow it all the way to our killer?  The men who found the body
tried to lift it, Detective, then thought the better of it and wrapped her in a
blanket.  By the time I got to that shed she was covered head to toe in fibers
and there is nothing to suggest that any of them came from the killer.”

“But this one was under her fingernail,
Sir.  Not just lying on her chest like it came from a blanket used to move her
but dug in, as if she’d grabbed something and held on.”  Trevor opened his
notebook and removed the fiber, holding it delicately between two fingers, but
the doctor shook his head.

“Even if she did manage to grab the
clothes of her assailant, that would tell us nothing.  A red thread.  A man
with a red scarf or coat.”

“But Nichols and even Martha Tabram,
Sir, meaning no disrespect, but did you check their hands? If something similar
– “

“Enough, Welles.  Tabram and Nichols
are in the ground and this poor woman will follow them there in the morning. 
Take advice from someone who has been dealing in police affairs for forty
years.  Do not make waves or go over the heads of your superiors.  Follow
procedure, or you will find yourself walking the streets again as a bobby.”

“But Sir, I feel I owe – “

“Of course you do,” Phillips said,
his expression softening.  “You haven’t seen as many dead bodies as I have.  Of
course you feel you owe them something.   Some sort of justice or redemption. 
But if you carry these feelings too far they will draw you from your true
purpose, which is the protection of the living, not vengeance for the dead.” 
The doctor took a final look at Annie Chapman’s face as his assistant lowered
the lid of the coffin, moving so slowly and carefully that it closed with only
the softest of sighs.  “And if it provides you any consolation, Chapman most
likely would have been dead within the year of natural causes.  From the
condition of her liver, I’d say she liked her drink.”

“Who is claiming the body for burial,
Doctor?” Abrams asked. “Do you know?”

“Her children, Detective.  A son and
a daughter, both grown.  Yes, they have families, these women,” Phillips said
more sharply, as if Trevor or Abrams had contradicted him.  “Everyone has a
family, even them.” 

Trevor and Abrams said their goodbyes
and returned to the street.  They walked a  without speaking and Trevor, his
face still red from the lecture Phillips had given him, was aware that he
taking such large strides that the far shorter Abrams was almost trotting to
keep up with him.  “Procedure!” he finally said.  “You’d think the doctor, of
all people, would understand.  All those bobbies who bungled the case to begin
with were only following procedure.  Bloody idiots! And why did they examine
the body in that dismal shack, rather than taking her to Scotland Yard?  Why
didn’t the man who embalmed her take note of any other needle marks?  Did you
see the way he looked at me when I asked a simple question?”

“I imagine the bobbies took her to
the nearest police mortuary,” Abrams said, struggling for breath.  “And the
assistant was Polish or Czech or somesort, judging by his accent.  He may not
have even understood what you were asking.  You’ve got to…”

“Be more politic?”

“It wouldn’t hurt.  Let me buy you a
drink, Welles.”

“I don’t need a drink.”

“I think you do,” Abrams said.  “And
don’t make an enemy of Phillips.  He’s one of the good ones.  He caught your
meaning, even if he pretended not to.   Next time he’ll take special note of
the hands.”

Trevor slowed down and looked Abrams
right in the face. “You’re that sure there will be another?”

“Without question.  I’m afraid our
boy is just getting warmed up, that it took him two or three tries before he
figured out how to make things interesting.  And now that he has our attention,
he won’t want to lose it.  Phillips thinks so too, for what it’s worth, that’s
why he told us to keep our focus to the living.”