What Alice Knew (10 page)

The next morning, William and Abberline met, as agreed, at Paddington Station before sunrise. They had both brought their breakfasts, wrapped in brown paper, thus revealing a similarity in habit that made them glance with amusement at each other.

When William had proposed that they visit the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, the inspector had initially demurred. “I’ve sent many a man there,” he said, “but I don’t see what kind of good it would do talking to any of them.”

William argued otherwise. He had read in the police reports that one of the early Ripper suspects, John Pizer, known throughout the East End as Leather Apron, had been sent to Broadmoor. Even after the police had verified Pizer’s whereabouts at the time of the murders, there were people in Whitechapel who remained convinced of his guilt; after all, they said, the devil could be in two places at once.

“So you want to interrogate a criminal because people associate him with the wrong crimes?” scoffed Abberline.

“I do,” William replied seriously. Indeed, this was precisely the point as he had worked it out.

He had been cultivating an idea on the subject for some time. The perverse impulses that resulted in criminal behavior must, he believed, have utility for the criminal, as a response to trauma or stress that might otherwise be insupportable. The key was to find the context in which the behavior appeared logical, even necessary. William looked down at his fingernails, which had been bitten raw. Wasn’t his compulsion a kind of perversion, developed to keep his demons at bay? In cases of sociopathic perversion, like that of Jack the Ripper, the principle was the same. The murders, in this sense, were like nail biting, only on a spectacular scale, a means by which the killer protected himself against some profoundly debilitating pain.

This idea was behind his determination to speak to Leather Apron. He not only wanted to study the man who had been mistaken for Jack the Ripper; he wanted to ask him for his help. Wouldn’t someone who had terrorized women be in the best position to understand what might propel someone else to do the same? Wouldn’t such a man, mad though he was—indeed, in being mad—know more about the twisted motives of the Whitechapel killer than the most seasoned policeman or psychologist?

These were William’s thoughts, but all he said to Abberline was, “We might learn from one madman how to catch another.”

The inspector surprisingly acquiesced. There was trouble at headquarters, he muttered, and he might as well get out of the office. A trip to Broadmoor would at least be a diversion, if not an especially pleasant or productive one.

As they sat together on the train, finishing their breakfast, Abberline pulled an envelope from his pocket and handed it to William. “This is as good a time as any to show you this,” he said. “It was delivered to headquarters yesterday.”

William looked at the envelope. It was postmarked East London and addressed: “The Boss, Scotland Yard, London City.” Previous Ripper letters, he recalled, had been addressed to “The Boss” at the Central News Agency. He opened the envelope and extracted the paper inside. The writing was a raggedy scrawl.

Tell your professer to keep his nose out or be sory for it.

My minds not disesed but he can get the knif too

if he dont watch out—ha ha.

William stared at the message. “Is it authentic?” he asked softly. He had a sudden recollection of the shove that had sent him careening in front of the curricle on the way to Sidgwick’s club.

Abberline shrugged. “There are points in common with some of the other letters. The paper has the mark of Pirie and Sons, for example. But then, Pirie is a popular stationer in London; no need to make too much of that. And previous letters have been publicized enough to explain the similarity of locution. It’s odd, regardless, that you’re singled out for a joke of this sort. Who do you know who’s aware you’re investigating this case and might have let the word out?”

William furrowed his brow. There were, he realized, plenty of people; Sidgwick and Mrs. Lancaster, to begin with. The Sargents. His brother, Henry, with his general tendency to blab. And something might have come out from their visit to the East End.

“The letter most likely comes from a colleague of yours,” explained Abberline, “perhaps a rival in your line of work, who’s having malicious fun at your expense.”

William could not imagine a colleague doing such a thing, except possibly one of the French.

“As I say, it may be a nasty joke,” continued Abberline, “and chances are, it is. But my advice, Professor, is to take care. Our man is a lunatic, but a cunning one, and if he has his eye on you, I’d make a point to keep out of his way.”

The Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum was located in a remote terrain on the edge of the Berkshire Moors, thirty miles outside of London. Its only neighbor was an orphanage for wayward boys, society favoring the placement of the madman and the orphan conveniently out of sight of meddlesome politicians and reforming ladies.

The asylum itself was a massive stone structure in which two broad turrets flanking an archway seemed to stand open, like a giant maw, to swallow its occupants. The building’s placement in the ancient moor and the worn look of the gravel path leading up to it made William feel the weight of entrenched and unchanging experience. He could imagine written above the wide arch the lines from Dante’s great poem: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

Yet Abberline explained that the asylum had been built relatively recently, after a group of altruistic ladies got it into their heads to visit the Bethlehem Asylum in London. The conditions at “Bedlam” had appalled the ladies, and a wave of reform had followed. The result was the construction of more humane asylums like Broadmoor. Of course, a humane asylum was a relative thing. Broadmoor was not squalid or unhealthy in the way that Bedlam had been. There were provisions for proper exercise, diet was regulated, and sanitation was modern enough, but that was the end of it. If the bodies of the inmates were treated better here, their souls were no better tended than they had been before.

Entering through the vast portal, William and Abberline were met by a burly guard who instructed an orderly to take them to the director of the asylum. The orderly had sloping shoulders and a lazy eye and looked to William exactly the way an orderly in a lunatic asylum should look. If, as he had written, “to laugh was to be happy,” then perhaps “to have a lazy eye was to be a lunatic,” or at least, an attendant of lunatics.

They followed the lazy-eyed attendant through a large courtyard, where in one area, a sullen group of men were in the process of taking exercise. Under the supervision of another burly attendant, the inmates were linked arm in arm, walking in rote fashion back and forth. At intervals, someone would break off from this chain and loiter in a corner, at which time the attendant would walk over and strike him on the back of the legs so that the man would scurry back to rejoin the group.

“Do they engage in corporal punishment here, then?” asked William. “I thought it was a humane institution.”

Abberline grunted. “A swat on the legs is humane enough when compared to being pummeled senseless, and I suppose they do that too if they feel the need.”

William stood for a moment watching the inmates, their heads bowed, walking back and forth in a patient shuffle. Were they in identical states of torpor, or were they merely resigned, after months or even years of this routine, to submerge whatever sparks of selfhood they had into private reveries? Once again, he was bothered by the basic philosophical paradox of where the individual began and ended, of how social conditions and personal habits shaped the self, and how the worst aspects of character could be imposed on an individual as the result of the best intentions.

He and Abberline were finally led into a room that had been equipped with some of the amenities of normal society. An effort had been made to add color in the way of a carpet and a variety of bric-a-brac, but the effect was unwelcoming. The room was too large for its furnishings, and a quality of emptiness and desolation prevailed.

In one corner were several armchairs positioned around a low table. In the other corner was a large desk, strewn with papers and files, and behind the desk sat a scholarly-looking man of about William’s age, who rose as they entered and stiffly put out his hand. “Henry Maudsley,” he said. His handshake was overfirm in the manner of someone used to controlling situations, or at least determined to do so.

William felt a leap of pleasure at hearing the name. Henry Maudsley was a respected figure in the field of psychological research, someone allied with the materialist school, which believed that abnormal mental processes could be entirely explained by physical causes. Although William faulted the materialists for refusing to consider nonphysical aspects of mental illness, he valued their work for supporting the connection of mind and body, albeit from one direction only.

He therefore shook Maudsley’s hand with enthusiasm, and in introducing himself, expected that his host would respond to his name with equal pleasure. Maudsley, however, merely nodded and set about explaining his presence at the asylum with a pontifical air. “I am here at Broadmoor on an interim basis, following the retirement of the venerable Dr. William Orange. I find that the institution provides ample subjects for my research.” Abruptly turning to William with an accusatory air, he then said, “You hold to a nonmaterial view of mental debility, don’t you, Professor James? I reject that. My latest research, in keeping with Darwinian principles, shows that lunacy is the result of neurological deficiencies—debilities of mental process that cause images and ideas to take distorted and unnatural forms.”

William bristled. He had hoped to find common ground with Maudsley, despite their differences in approach, but the man’s confrontational manner put him on the defensive. He began to argue, somewhat shrilly, that social, cultural, and indeed spiritual factors certainly
did
contribute to mental illness.

Abberline intervened. “We are here to meet with an inmate by the name of John Pizer,” the inspector said curtly. “As you may know, he was an early suspect in the Whitechapel murders and would have been hunted down and torn to pieces had he remained in the community. Fortunately, he also happened to be mad. It’s a dire state of affairs when we have to send people to a lunatic asylum for safekeeping.”

Maudsley seemed to become more reasonable in the face of this professional exposition. He pulled out a file from the cabinet near his desk and read aloud, “‘John Pizer. Age: thirty-two years. Residence: East End, London; specific address unknown. Trade: Boot maker. Diagnosis: Mania alternating with melancholia. Treatment: Spinning, blistering, immersion in cold water.’” Maudsley glanced up. “That was the treatment prescribed by Dr. Orange; I have discontinued it.” He closed the file. “It’s a fairly routine case of mental imbalance. The patient has periods of lucidity but is given to unpredictable ravings and disorientation. No doubt there are lesions on the brain. But you’re welcome to speak to him if you think it will do you any good.”

He took a set of keys from his desk drawer and led the men from his office. As he approached the doors that led to the patient area, he paused. “I should like to take a detour before we proceed and have you visit someone you might find of interest. He’s mad enough, but he hardly fits the conventional mold of the madman.” Maudsley addressed William now with more consideration than he had shown formerly. They had reached the end of the corridor, and he motioned to a door. “We don’t bother with the locks in this case. This man poses no danger. He killed someone years ago, but here, as you’ll see, he’s found a modicum of peace.”

He knocked on the door and then opened onto a spectacular scene. The room was far more spacious than expected; in fact, it was two cells, the wall of the adjoining one having been removed to accommodate the prisoner’s needs.

In a small corner area was a bed and the accompanying hygienic necessaries, but by far the larger space was occupied with an oak desk, positioned in front of a window and affording a lovely view of the moorland. On either side of the window were bookcases, reaching to the ceiling and crammed with books, and above the desk was a cabinet made up of small cubbyholes. William could see that each cubbyhole was marked with a letter of the alphabet and was crammed full of papers. Books of various sorts were also piled on the floor, some open, some with multiple markers inserted in their leaves. The effect was of a vast and complicated scholarly enterprise. It reminded William of his study at home, though his own space, he acknowledged to himself, was not as well organized.

It took a moment, amid the great volume of books and papers, for the figure of a very thin man in his fifties with white, flyaway hair to come into view. He was hunched over the desk with a lamp at his elbow that infused the room with a strong odor of camphor. He had his spectacles low on his nose and was reading intently from a large book, which William saw had to do with the etymology of birds.

“William Chester Minor,” said Maudsley, “our resident lexicographer. William James, professor of philosophy and psychology at Harvard College.”

Minor looked up. “Professor James!” he exclaimed. “
Psychic
,
psychologist
,
psychosis
,
psychological
,
psychosomatic
—all words gleaned from your papers and relayed to my correspondent, Sir James Murray, editor of the
Oxford English Dictionary
, currently in the process of being compiled, and for which I am an indispensable resource. I also understand that I am afflicted by a debilitating psychological disorder, for which work on the dictionary, intense and unrelenting, has been a soothing and reclamatory activity.”

“You have medical training?” William asked. He sensed that the man understood his own affliction in a way that a mere layman would not.

Minor, whose hands had been rifling nervously through the pages of the book before him, paused a moment and then spoke in a surprisingly measured, thoughtful manner. “Yes, I am a trained physician. The training itself posed no problem. Indeed, I was a superlative student. My difficulty came with the practice. There, you see, there were problems of another dimension. In the end, I found them insuperable.”

William gazed at Minor with fascination. “The human dimension,” he murmured.

Minor’s hand shot to his forehead, as though he had suffered a sudden pain there. “It requires a kind of…thought. I must confine myself to the rote and the methodical, that which imposes order on that great furnace that produces our souls, be they our souls or merely the engines of our being. I cannot rest if I think on it. I cannot think on it, or I go mad.” His gaze remained fastened on William as he spoke, as if to say,
You understand
.

Indeed, William did. His own work on mental process, a huge enterprise on which he had been laboring for years, was a compendium of sorts, a way of organizing the chaos of mental life for the underlying end of preserving his own sanity. He knew to be true what Minor said, to think too much outside established forms and habits was to see the chaotic—and demonic—potential of the mind and be catapulted into the abyss.

William felt himself recoil at the kinship he felt with Minor, who, reciprocally, seemed disturbed by the human connection he had fleetingly established with his visitor. The calmness with which he had spoken began to give way to physical signs of distress. His shoulders twitched, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair until, finally, shaking himself, as if throwing off a confining garment, he ducked his head and returned to his books.

“He is helping compile a dictionary?” William whispered to Maudsley as they backed away from the desk.

“It appears so,” said their host. “There is regular correspondence between Minor and this Dr. Murray. I wonder if Murray knows he is writing to an inmate in a lunatic asylum. His letters are simply addressed to Broadmoor, Crowthorne.”

“And you see no reason to illuminate him on the matter?”

“No. The work should speak for itself.”

William nodded in agreement and continued to gaze around the room, impressed by the care and method with which Minor had organized his materials. He would have liked to examine some of the bits of paper in the cubbyholes, but Abberline was looking impatient.

Leaving Minor’s room, they climbed the stairs to the floor assigned to prisoners believed to be dangerous. The atmosphere here was different from below—the air hot and stale, and the cells arranged closer together. Sharp, unsettling eyes peered out through some of the barred windows; invectives were hurled at them as they passed, and behind some of the doors, loud shrieks were punctuated by angry, garbled speech. Occasionally guards would enter a cell; there would be a few heavy thuds, and then silence.

“We put Pizer up here,” explained Maudsley, “less because he has proven to be dangerous than to protect him from others. He nodded to Abberline. “As you mentioned, many still hold to the idea that he is Jack the Ripper, though he’s been under lock and key since the second murder. The poor man—and I use the adjective with a certain latitude—is the victim of a kind of thinking that keeps half our population mired in falsity and superstition. They hit on an explanation that supports their prejudices and, despite all proof to the contrary, are unwilling to let it go.”

William nodded. In this, he and Maudsley were in complete accord.

They came to a cell at the end of the corridor. Maudsley knocked and then turned the key. A man of short but powerful build was sitting on the cot in the corner of the room. He had a broad, flat face and a shaven head with small eyes. His lips were closed in a thin, straight line, except when they twitched spasmodically to reveal a set of even yellow teeth. He did not look at the visitors directly. His gaze moved restlessly about the room.

It seemed to William that the man resembled a snake. He had a feverish alertness and a hard, coiled muscularity. He was not a prepossessing-looking individual, but confined to the small space, there was something profoundly vulnerable about him, much as a beast in a cage seems vulnerable in its uncomprehending captivity.

Maudsley introduced the visitors, but Pizer made no acknowledgment. He sat unmoving, only his eyes continuing to dart about the room.

“Perhaps if I could speak with him alone,” suggested William. It occurred to him that the presence of three men, one a police inspector and one the head of a lunatic asylum, was not conducive to intimate chat.

Maudsley considered this request and then nodded. “We’ll wait outside with an ear open in case you need us,” he said, and he and Abberline left the cell.