Tales of Jack the Ripper (26 page)

He puffed himself up as if pleased to see the shuffling corpses. He seemed to be thrilled to have the opportunity to greet them by name as they approached the bed.

“Ah, there you are! Good evening to you, sweet Mary Ann! And how delightful to see you, old Annie, standing there with Elizabeth close beside. Oh, and we mustn’t forget
you
, Catherine, you old slag! Draw closer to the light, my dear, so I might get a better view of your wretched self.”

He tilted his head slightly, searching deeper into the pitch surrounding him. He gently beckoned, “Mary? Mary Kelly? Come now, don’t be shy! Hurry along and join the others!”

From the furthest corner of the room came a muffled, sloshing sound. In the adjoining room, Sir Charles and Setlock, still faithfully maintaining their vigil, leaned away from the forbidding noise and accompanying odor. That very morning, they both had viewed the remains of Mary Kelly, all laid out on a slab in the morgue. Little beyond the general body framework and bones testified to the fact that only the night before, this had been a vital human, an attractive woman who loved to drink, sing and dance. The attendant mortician had claimed he had never witnessed a more “brutal job” in his decades-long career. There was no mistaking either the identities or the condition of these once-women. The bizarre dialogue between their informant and her supposed son might be dismissed as shared delusion, but—
this!
Uncle and nephew alike fought to retain consciousness as their minds sought to shut down in a faint, unable to accept the truth of what clearly confronted them.

Arthur openly relished the opportunity to revisit his most diligent handiwork. He smiled warmly as the carcass hobbled closer, balancing on the sole leg Arthur had left semi-intact, her face and torso all but denuded of any actual features and flesh. “
There
you are,” he cried, “how kind of you to drop by for a visit!”

When they had all gathered near, Arthur’s mother insisted on returning to intrude on the reunion. “Ye’ve answered me fair enough, but these ladies can’t rest till they knows what they done to you to make yer treat ’em so ’orrid. They can’t speak their own peace; you saw to that. Now don’t be shy. We’re all anxious to hear your reasons!”

Arthur rose to the occasion. “I must say, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’ve all come here together just to visit me. Much easier than trying to explain my actions to each of you, one at a time. It’s all rather simple, actually. I’m sure you overheard the exchange I just had with my mother. If you think back, all of you were well acquainted with her, except for Miss Kelly, of course. The rest of you may not recognize me now, but you knew me when I was just a wee nipper. I had the privilege of knowing some of your darling little brats as well. One day, I overcame my shame and told the others what my loving mother had done to me. One by one, all the others had similar tales to tell.
Your sons and daughters
, damn you all! That’s why I chose you specially for my carve-ups. No one who treats children like that deserves to live.

“As for the unfortunate Miss Kelly here, she looked uncannily like you, Mum. So much like you that I couldn’t help wanting to know more about her. And it proved quite interesting. Not only was I gob smacked to discover she occupied the very same room I’d once shared with you, but I learned she’d subjected her own little ones to the same treatment I endured.

“I’ve never fully recovered from all that I suffered, nor have hundreds of others who’ve been forced to tolerate the same. When I grew to manhood and my own desires began to appear, I could only greet them with horror. Every arousal immediately sickened me. Marriage was quite out of the question. Finally I reached the bitter conclusion that the only way to divorce myself from sexual desire was to castrate myself. I paid a failed medical student desperate for money to assist me. I was well aware I should bleed to death should I undertake the procedure on my own. In this way I survived, freed forever from all revolting temptations.

“Some time after, it came to me that there just might be a way for me to bring about change for the better, not only for the offspring of cold-hearted whores like yourselves, but also for those poor souls forced to live in filth on the streets, starving. I knew I’d have to do something the country could not ignore, something to shed light on all of these problems. A light so bright the world would be outraged to learn of the horrors not only permitted but regularly encouraged in the very capital city of the British Empire. I soon saw the best way to do it was to commit crimes so appalling that fear and scandal would spread far and wide. I harbored no desire to inflict pain upon innocent people, so I turned to those already deserving punishment. You ladies were the first to come to mind. I’d already killed my mother, so I sought out any of her old cohorts who might still live in Whitechapel or Spitalfields. I sought you out and ended your lives, one by one, thrilled to see the excitement grow with each death. I didn’t especially want to make you suffer, so I didn’t take the knife to any of you until you were dead and beyond all pain.”

In the next room, Setlock and his uncle listened in stunned silence, struggling to keep up with what they were hearing, all thoughts of note-taking forgotten in the moment.

“Newspapers across the world eagerly published sketches of the crime scenes and even of your corpses, enhancing every gruesome detail. I intentionally increased the mutilation with each murder, adding volatile fuel to the flame. But I limited myself to five murders, lest I should come to enjoy it. The newspapers portrayed me as a demented sexual pervert desperately seeking more intense thrills with each additional death, but such was very far from the truth. I swear to you I didn’t enjoy what I did in the least.”

It was plain to the policemen that Belmont had long rehearsed this diatribe, as if bursting to tell someone his astonishing secrets. And now he was taking full advantage of the opportunity.

“It seemed I was well on the way to achieving my goals as I exposed fair England’s darkest shame to the eyes of the world. I needed only one more victim, one final killing that would be far more scandalous and unpalatable than its predecessors. Well, as impossible as it sounds, it’s already begun to work, so my work is done. As long as Jack the Ripper is never found, the fear and the shame will force Her Nibs up there in Buckingham Palace to make this a decent place to live, where the laws are enforced and prostitution is illegal. If there were no prostitutes on the street, there would be no need for the police to waste their time trying to protect them.

“So there you have it, my dears. My wind is long indeed, but I want you to know that you didn’t die in vain. And, for what it’s worth, I will kill no more. I plan to sell all of my business interests and donate the proceeds to charity before leaving the country. Don’t know where I’ll go; it makes no difference really. I deserve to die for what I’ve done, I know, no matter my motives, but I haven’t the courage to do myself in. So I’ll go away. No one will ever know whether I’m still out there lurking in the night, set to kill again. If they know I’m gone, there would be no further improvement as the fear and shame would soon subside.”

The women, the ghosts, were fading from sight, their features blurring as if, having heard all, they could move on to wherever their tortured souls were destined to go.

A sudden sound of breaking glass caused the two men nearly to jump out of their seats. They kicked the door wide open, scanning the room.

Arthur, they realized, had knocked the hurricane lamp from the night stand by the bed. It appeared he had done it purposely. The resulting splatter of oil and flame set the bed clothes and rug afire instantly.

The pair burst in to the room, determined to drag the murderer away from the surge of flames already consuming much of the room.

“You!” Arthur screamed. “You, whoever you are, if you’ve been listening, then you know who I am and what I’ve done. Get out! Leave me to the fate I deserve! Whatever the truth, the world must believe Jack the Ripper has never been captured or killed. Save yourselves and save my soul by allowing my plan to bear fruit! For the love of God, I beg you! This house is isolated; there is no danger the fire will spread. When they find bones in the charred ruins, they will deem them to be those of a simple businessman, no one of real note. Now go,” he ordered, “that the legend may live on!”

Setlock looked to Sir Charles.

“He’s right,” Sir Charles told him. “By God, he’s right. We need to turn around and leave all this behind, putting it out of our minds as completely as possible.” They hurried out of the growing inferno, making sure they were not seen by anyone. Nor, for that matter, did they actually see what may have become of Arthur Belmont.

For Joe and Kat Pulver, the Beast and his Beauty

A Pretty for Polly

Mercedes M. Yardley

“Dear Boss,” he wrote in his careful, exquisite hand. “I keep on hearing the police have caught me…”

Time. Care. Dipping the pen in the ink pot again and again. Making love to the paper with his words. Handwriting perfect. Everything, perfect.

“I am down on whores and shan’t quit ripping them…”

He was a man of precision. A man of great attention. Spectacles always clean, shirt always tucked neatly. It was all about appearances, wasn’t it? To show your esteem? To show your respect?

Even a prudent man has demons. Even a quiet man has something sinister inside. He never would have believed this, but then, that was before.

“Daddy?”

“What, Polly?”

“Mama said I should run in and tell you goodnight.”

He turned away from his letter, stopping the ink pot. He opened his arms and his little girl ran into them.

“Be good, my darling one. Dream of sweets.”

“I will, Daddy.”

She was ribbons and lace and sleeping slippers. Smelling clean after her bath. He slipped her a candy from the drawer of his desk, and put his finger over his lips slowly. She smiled back, and flew to the door like a bright bird.

“The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly, wouldn’t you?”

A promise is a promise is a promise.

He was good at keeping promises.

Three days later. One night, two women.

The first? Ah, what a disappointment. He was almost immediately interrupted by a man in a carriage. As he fled, he regretted the sloppy slash and dash. Regretted the way it left him numb.

He felt tears in his eyes but didn’t wipe them away, and they didn’t fall.

He made up for it with the second woman. Took the time. Explored her face and body with his knife, more deeply and in depth than any lover. Kept his promise, as he is wont to do, and left her earlobe barely attached.

He hovered in the dark alleys of the East End, his coat neatly buttoned. His eyes full of shine. His knife tucked securely in his belt, the blood going brackish and ugly on it, but he didn’t want to clean it, not yet. It was proof. It tied him to her.

Find me,
he thought.
Just find me. Here I wait.

The police ran around in a shiny-booted panic. Ran past him, several times, even. Each time, his mouth parted in breathless hope, his eyebrows arched in expectation.

“I have a daughter,” he said calmly to one as he scurried past. “She deserves better.”

The policeman cast him a look over his shoulder, but that was it. That was all.

The London fog rolled past. Like a man shunned for an invitation, a husband whose wife didn’t look up when he entered the room, he felt small.

Time passed. He cleaned his knife thoroughly with a rag. Tossed the bloody scrap on the ground. The rag catching the moonlight like something ghostly, the remnant of a person once special to somebody. He waited some more.

Nobody came.

He walked slowly home.

They never found him. They never found him even though he
stood
there, even though he
waited.
Time to up the ante, to force them to look in a way that they hadn’t been looking before.

A box. Small and precise. Something imprecise inside. Something that had been a treasure, something necessary and functioning, but now it was nothing.

His hair fell over his eyes. He pushed it aside.

“Sor,” he wrote. His penmanship was long and loopy, scrawled and uneven. Ink dripped on the paper and he cursed gently, tried to wipe it away. “I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you…” He frowned at the words. Was this how he spelled that? Why did everything look so odd? He was a gentleman of education, of taste, but this looked like it was written by another hand, by another man or monster entirely. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. Shut his eyes, hard, and thought of his schooling, of his business, of the successes that he had earned for himself. He was that man. This was only a letter. It is easy for a man of learning to write a simple letter.

He dipped his pen in the ink pot and touched it to the paper.

“…tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise.”

He steepled his fingers and put them to his lips.