What Alice Knew (4 page)

It occurred to him as well that Catherine Eddowes might have been such a child as his sister, a little girl who tagged behind an older brother, pushed aside when other, more enticing forms of entertainment diverted his attention. Girl children were often neglected and ignored, so it might have been with Katie Eddowes (hadn’t the sign referred to her that way?), but with the added element of poverty to degrade her. As she grew older and began to develop as a woman, she would have been drawn to men for money and a fleeting sense of intimacy; the inevitable abuse would have followed. In her squalor and desperation, she would have turned routinely to strangers, and finally, to one who might have seemed kinder and more interested than usual. This man would have led her into a dark alley, where suddenly, his gentleness disappeared: a vicious look in the eye, a glint of a knife, and then the sudden pain of being cut, before the blankness of unconsciousness set in.

An imagined life and death for this woman flashed through William’s mind, and he recalled the placard over the pail: “Arms for her chilren.” If she had had children, where were they? Would they know that their mother was a grotesquely stitched corpse hanging from a hook in a London morgue?

He sat back down on the chair, leaning forward, his head in his hands, knowing that he was close to being sick.

Abberline stood respectfully silent for a few minutes. Finally he spoke in what was a surprisingly passionate tone for a man normally so formal and inexpressive. “It makes you wonder about the nature of human beings,” he said. “Made in the image of the divine, they tell us in church, but no God made the one who did this.”

William looked up. For all the disgust he felt at the image before him, he was roused to oppose Abberline’s words. “I must differ with you there,” he asserted with surprising force. “It is my conviction that a divine spirit exists in us all, which transcends—even redeems—such viciousness.”

Abberline gave a dry laugh. “I’d like to believe you,” he said, closing the curtain on Catherine Eddowes’s corpse, “but I can’t say I do.”

Had Philip Wilkinson
—Henry crossed out “Wilkinson.”
Something more Dickensian
, he thought.

Had Philip Wiltingham not been sent to Algate Market
(check spelling)
by his wife
…No, not his wife. That would suck the life out of the character before the story got started.

Had Philip Wiltingham not been sent to Algate Market
(check sp)
by his sister
to buy the lamb chops for her dinner party that night, and had he not ducked into the building when he saw Joseph Donner
(Donning? better),
an insufferable bore to whom he had lost fifty pounds at cards
…too much information there, about the losing at cards.

Had Philip Wiltingham not been sent to Algate Market
(check sp)
by his sister
to buy the lamb chops for her dinner party that night, and had he not ducked into the building when he saw Joseph Donning, an insufferable bore to whom he owed fifty pounds, approaching in the other direction, he would never have found the body.

Henry paused and took his watch out of his pocket. It was after seven o’clock, time to prepare for dinner at…he must check his date book to see where he was invited to dinner that night.

He put down his pen and surveyed the parlor of his flat, where his desk had been set up in the corner. The room was to his liking, with its silvery damask chairs, pale gray wallpaper, and long, elegantly draped windows.

He got up and crossed the room, touching the peonies in the vase on the mantel and straightening the bust of Benjamin Franklin that William Dean Howells had sent him as a reminder of his American roots. It was dusty, Mrs. Smith being remiss again. He proceeded to his room, passing the spare room that William was occupying during his stay. He could see that clothes were strewn on the floor and the daybed was unmade.

He went into his dressing room and rinsed his face in the china bowl with its sprinkling of wilted rose petals (not replaced, he was dismayed to note, since the morning). He changed into his dress shirt, taking care with the fastening near his neck where he had once pinched himself and drawn blood. He chose a dark gray waistcoat, black trousers, and a pearl gray cravat. He recalled the charcoal striped trousers from the other night, which he had to discard in the trash bin behind his building. No need to think about that.

He knew that Mr. Smith, retained in the combined role of valet and butler, ought to be on hand to help him dress. There was no denying that the two who served him, for all their exemplary qualities, were not up to par when it came to doing what they were hired to do. Secretly, however, he was pleased for the opportunity to dress himself. It was an aesthetic pleasure to put his outfit together—an elegant, leisurely assemblage of pieces, not unlike the assemblage of words in the construction of a well-turned sentence.

He chose the silver cuff links that had belonged to his father. He had worried that William would want them, but William did not appear to care. As they moved into middle age, his older brother had become even more oblivious, if possible, to everything except his work and, at sporadic intervals, his family. The patterns of their boyhood had persisted but mutated as well. William had always been the more daring and insouciant of the two, but Henry, once timid and negligible, had come into his own. He was proud to think that his brother occasionally took notice of how well regarded he had become in certain circles, how nicely his particular brand of courtliness conformed to the manners of the British gentry among whom he had chosen to live.

He heard the door open and a rustle of garments in the front hall. Mrs. Smith had come in. He glanced at his watch…late again. He must have a talk with her about her laxness with regard to hours—and other things. As for her husband, his chronic absence was certainly annoying, especially since he was being paid a considerable stipend to be present.

Henry walked tentatively into the front hall, where Mrs. Smith was busily hanging up her mackintosh and shaking out her umbrella. The umbrella was leaving a large puddle near the door.

“Don’t worry, sir. I’ll mop it up,” said Mrs. Smith cheerfully. She was always promising to do things that she never got around to doing.

Henry looked at his watch and coughed. “Your husband is…indisposed?” he asked.

“He’s walking Mary home,” said Mrs. Smith blithely. “Worries himself sick with that Jack the Ripper loose. Can’t say I’m not without worries myself. Mary’s the age he likes, you know.”

Henry considered this. “Doesn’t Mary live in Lambeth?” he asked. “This Ripper creature…operates…in Whitechapel.”

“For now he does,” said Mrs. Smith, “but he’ll be in Lambeth soon enough. He’ll be wanting a wider berth.”

Henry nodded at this geographic logic. “But he’s killing women of a certain type,” he added. “Mary’s not…” He paused. Perhaps Mary was. He didn’t know much about Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s daughter beyond the fact that she was often their reason for being elsewhere. He had met her once. She was a blowsy, unkempt young woman; the word “slatternly” came to mind, which was why he had stopped himself so abruptly in noting that Jack the Ripper’s victims tended to be of an unsavory sort.

“For sure, he’s killing off those types now,” said Mrs. Smith, as though she had access to the modus operandi of the killer. “They always start low and work their way up.”

“Ah!” said Henry, wondering how far up Mrs. Smith imagined Mary was.

“These sorts aren’t easily satisfied,” Mrs. Smith continued sagely. “There’s the lustful part, of course, but they don’t go after us women just for that.”

“No?” said Henry. He was uncomfortable with the line the conversation was taking but still eager to hear more.

“No,” asserted Mrs. Smith. “It’s for we’re weaker and more sensitive-like, as sets ’em off. I once been with a man who beat me most every night, not ’cause I did him no harm, but as he thought to be rid of his own weakness that way. Couldn’t be the man he wanted, so he blacked my eyes to make him feel strong. Thank God I got away afore he killed me. Mr. Smith’ll drink himself to a stupor, but he don’t see no need to beat me, God bless ’im.”

Henry coughed uneasily, wondering if he was expected to praise Mr. Smith for this. Still, there was something to what Mrs. Smith said. “Manliness”—he disliked even the term—had always been a source of frustration and difficulty for him. He had found ways to cope, but he supposed there were others whose resources were less…developed.

“It’s an interesting observation, Mrs. Smith,” said Henry, nodding absently. “I’ll have to tell my brother to consider it in his investigation of the case for Scotland Yard.” He spoke without thinking, instinctively trying to assert his authority, only to realize that he had been dreadfully indiscreet; this was hardly a matter to be shared with a servant, or with anyone for that matter. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? Mrs. Smith’s eyes had opened wide in hearing of William’s involvement in the case, and Henry hurried to change the subject. “I’ll be going out now, Mrs. Smith. I don’t know when my brother shall be back, so please have his room made up as soon as possible.”

“I was just about to do that,” said Mrs. Smith with a touch of huffiness. “By the by, sir”—she resumed a more congenial tone—“there’s a note dropped off for you yesterday by Mr. Wilde’s man. I kept it with me for safekeeping.” She reached into her pocket and drew out a small envelope, which she handed over with a flourish.

Henry removed the note from the envelope. It was an invitation to a dinner party next week at Wilde’s club. At the bottom was a scrawled message. “Surprise guest!—and music hall turns, as promised.” What was that about? Oscar was always making allusions to things one was supposed to know, but didn’t. Though, of course, he would accept the invitation. Whatever surprises Wilde had in store, there was also sure to be good conversation and good wine—both tended to flow copiously in Wilde’s proximity.

“Will you be dining at home tonight?” asked Mrs. Smith obsequiously.

She knew he was not dining at home, thought Henry; he had said he was going out and was dressed for the purpose—without the help of Mr. Smith, he noted to himself. But his mood had improved, and he was willing to play along. “No, no, not tonight,” he assured her. “But please prepare something for my brother. No need to make a fuss. Professor James is parsimonious in his diet.”

“As you like, sir,” said Mrs. Smith, as though she would have been glad to prepare an elaborate meal. “I’ll go make up his room now if you’ll excuse me. I hope I’m not being forward to say this, sir, but it’s a shame the professor don’t share your habits.” She cast a sly glance at Henry, who could not hide that he was pleased by the remark. He had always been neat, where his brother, to be frank about it, was slovenly.

After Mrs. Smith left the room, Henry took a cloth from the kitchen and wiped up the puddle from her umbrella. He then went to his desk, glanced down at the sentence he had written, crumpled the paper, and threw it in the basket near his chair. Why should he write about something like that? He had been instigated to do so because William was being so smug about working for Scotland Yard. And there was the lady at Gosse’s (was it Gosse’s?) who had encouraged him. His mind veered off. The ghastly events of that night remained cloudy in his memory. It was fortunate that his consciousness had been muted by drink (the irony of this was not lost on him), and that he was free of any vivid recollection of pain or fear that might have derailed his social relations or, worse, his work.

Yet something from that night nagged persistently at his memory. It was not the attack itself but something that had occurred earlier. He closed his eyes, trying to remember, but all he could summon up was a blur of faces around a table. If there was a germ there—the kind of hint that so often sparked his stories—he could not recall what it was.

No, he would not write about murder, but he would take an interest in the case and help where he could. The observations of Mrs. Smith had left an odd resonance. He felt a vague kinship with the murderer—he had felt this before, but when?—a sense that the impulses that drove this deranged creature to kill were not so very different from those that drove him to write. He had learned early on how to transform frustration into a fantasy of fulfillment, to turn life into art. To catch Jack the Ripper, he understood, was to effect a reverse transformation, to uncover the frustrated desires that found their perverse fulfillment in murder.

William and Abberline were seated in a small cubicle in Scotland Yard, where they had repaired following the viewing of Catherine Eddowes’s corpse. It had been Abberline’s idea to review the photographs of the other victims in the hope that William might see something of value that had been missed by the police. The inspector had become convinced that the key to solving the case lay not in material evidence but in something more ineffable—what was called, in certain circles, “the psychological aspect.” It had been his idea to consult William, a suggestion agreed to by Sir Charles, a man always willing to be accommodating so long as he did not have to do any work himself.

Abberline took a folder from the cabinet and opened it on the table where he and William were seated. The folder contained photographs of the Whitechapel victims. There were two photographs included for each of the four murders: one of the victim found at the scene and one of the victim on a slab in the London morgue.

The first set of photographs was of Martha Tabram, killed August 7. In the one taken at the scene, the woman was sprawled on the ground, so drenched in blood it was impossible to tell where she had been stabbed. In the second photograph, one could see clearly the crazy quilt of jagged slices to her abdomen.

“I’d like to eliminate this case from our investigation,” said Abberline, pointing to the second photograph by way of explanation. “The stab wounds to the stomach are not symmetrical, as in the subsequent cases, and the weapon used appears to be a bayonet rather than a knife, which produces neater incisions. Finally, the throat wasn’t cut, which appears to be the cause of death in all the other cases.” He jabbed his finger at Tabram’s neck with a certain violence, which indeed showed no mark, though the face itself was contorted in a terrible grimace. William looked away for a moment as Abberline continued. “There’s a determination to see Tabram as the first Ripper murder, perhaps to ratchet up the number of his crimes, perhaps to alleviate the need to seek out another killer. It’s an ongoing problem. The public, and many in authority as well, try to press into service acts of violence that are clearly the work of other hands. Pin it on this Ripper fellow and be done with it.” He snorted contemptuously, as though familiar with the rationalizations and dodges of his colleagues.

William felt compelled to add another perspective. “It’s human nature to want to find pattern,” he noted. “Once we begin to think there is one, we are likely to see it reinforced. It’s the drive to create order out of chaos.”

Abberline, disinclined to this more forgiving view, had moved on to the photographs of Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly, murdered August 31. He pointed to the relevant points in the morgue shot, speaking with authoritative coolness (William imagined Abberline had gone over these photographs many times already and had become numb to their horror). “Throat cut in simple execution style, symmetrical wounds to the stomach, opening of the abdominal cavity and exposure of the viscera.”

He flipped to the third set of photographs of Annie Chapman, killed on September 8. “Throat cut. Symmetrical abdominal cutting. Exposure of viscera. Uterus removed.” He paused to editorialize. “Our killer is becoming more ingenious…and more invasive. But the pattern, as you see, remains similar to the Nichols case.”

He moved on. “Elizabeth Stride, killed in the early morning of September 30. Throat cut. That’s all.” He gave a dry laugh, as though struck by the irony of referring in such a way to a cut throat. “It might not seem to fit the pattern,” he continued, “since there are no other mutilations, but it’s clear that the murderer was interrupted in his work. Note the state and disposition of the body.” He turned to the photograph taken in the morgue and pointed to where the victim’s dress was ripped but not torn off the body, and then shifted to the photograph at the scene, where the body was shown slumped, face forward, suggesting it had been pushed down in haste. “What also supports this hypothesis, of course, is that the Eddowes’s murder occurred less than an hour and a half later. Frustration at the earlier interruption would also account for the level of brutality here.” He displayed the photograph of Eddowes on a slab in the morgue, which had been taken before the stitching up of the wounds. The head was twisted to the side, almost severed from the trunk; great flaps of skin were exposed on the face; and the abdomen was a thicket of standing flesh. The killer had carved up that area of the body with frenzied completeness.

Abberline droned out the details. “Throat cut, extreme and symmetrical cutting of the abdomen and the face, uterus and kidney taken away, left ear partially severed—something new there, suggesting that our murderer may have in mind additional variations to come.” He had spoken without emotion, but a sigh escaped him at the prospect of what those variations might be. He quickly resumed his professional tone and moved on to conclude, “There are marked similarities in the pattern of cutting in Nichols, Chapman, Stride, and Eddowes, not to mention affinities in their age and occupation. They were all in their late thirties and early forties, all prostitutes. All were in dire physical condition, not necessarily underfed, but unhealthy. Our man likes to prey on weakness.”

“Did the murderer commit on them acts of a…sexual nature?” asked William carefully. He was prone to prudery, despite his medical training, and had noted that his European colleagues were less tentative on this score.

Indeed, Abberline responded bluntly, “No. The women were found in suggestive positions, legs exposed and spread, but there was no indication of sexual intercourse, neither in vaginal tearing nor in the presence of the expected fluids.”

“What you describe seems to suggest a desire to possess and penetrate these women, but apparently not in the sexual sense.”

Abberline nodded. “Possibly a case of severed or maimed organs on the part of the killer.”

“Perhaps,” mused William, “but my sense is that he would not commit these acts unless some additional expressive route were inhibited or blocked. The form of the killings is indicative of more than sexual frustration. Or sexual frustration instigated by something else.”

He gazed down at the photograph of Catherine Eddowes, with its grotesque flaps of skin, and thought of the stitched image he had seen in the morgue. Somehow the photograph was even more disturbing than the actual body. It was not a sharp image, yet the graininess contributed to the horror of its effect. He was reminded of the mourning photograph taken of his son Hermie before the burial, a carefully staged shot of his little boy tucked into bed, just as he might have been after he had been kissed good night. That picture, meant to be a beautiful keepsake, had given William terrible dreams, and his Alice had finally hidden it, for fear that it would precipitate another breakdown.

A photograph was a kind of haunting, he concluded, a representation of a reality not literally present. And the photograph of a dead person was a double sort of haunting. As for these murdered women, their photographs were also testimony of their society’s neglect and abuse. Strangers would look at them years, perhaps even decades, hence and be haunted by them. It was a grotesque sort of immortality.

He was flipping back through the pictures, musing about these things, when a young officer entered the room, walked quickly over to Abberline, and whispered in his ear.

The inspector’s face grew taut as he rose quickly from the table. “There’s been another murder…or at least, the suspicion of one. I try not jump to conclusions, but it’s imperative to investigate. You’re free to come along.”

He was already halfway out the door before William grabbed his hat from the hook and followed rapidly on his heels.