What Alice Knew (7 page)

Not long after Henry and William left Alice’s flat, Sally entered her employer’s bedroom to announce that Mr. and Miss Sargent were downstairs. “They say to tell you as you don’t have to see ’em if you don’t want, as they don’t want to disturb you if you’re resting.”

It was a typical sort of message from the Sargents, who were always extravagantly polite and unassuming. They had a long-standing friendship with the James family and treated Alice with particular reverence because of their instinctive belief that she was a uniquely gifted person. As a result, even today, when Alice had planned to review newspaper clippings of the murders, she was willing to put aside her work and welcome their visit.

“Show them in,” she instructed Sally, “and bring us some tea.”

A tall man and a small woman with a slight limp entered the room. Emily Sargent ran to kiss Alice and Katherine and then immediately began helping arrange the furniture. She had been the victim of a debilitating spinal disease in childhood and had suffered years of pain, but it did not appear to have embittered her or slowed her down in the least. On the contrary, she was the most loving and congenial sort of person, energetically devoted to her friends, but most devoted of all to her brother, whose talent she worshipped. Everyone agreed that John Singer Sargent’s ability to paint as freely as he did and to shrug off any criticism that came his way was because he had his sister to take care of everything and sing his praises all day long.

Emily also had enormous respect for the relationship of Alice and Katherine and was the one person, even above Henry, they allowed to enter the sickroom when Alice had one of her “spells.” “Emily is a creature who makes me temporarily put aside my spiritual skepticism,” Alice liked to say. “I feel sure she is modeled on the angel you see in the background of those paintings, the one who makes sure that the Lord doesn’t trip on his robe. Of course, John is an angel too.”

Indeed, John Sargent, a towering figure who stooped slightly when he walked, as though not wanting to assert his height too aggressively, had a quality of such gentle goodwill about him that even those of his peers who, for reasons of jealousy or aesthetic prejudice, were scornful of his work, found themselves disarmed when they met him. The Jameses spoke of these friends as one would of family members who had been raised in a different part of the world and spoke a different language. The Sargents were not cerebral people and would as soon listen to music or, in John’s case, paint or play the piano, as talk. Not that he was simple—he spoke half a dozen languages without an accent and knew his way around every city in Europe. But his very cosmopolitanism made him a kind of innocent. Alice’s father had traveled far and wide in search of the proper place to educate his children, finally settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the best he could do, but Sargent’s parents had merely traveled, with no destination in mind, and had never settled anywhere. John Sargent had thus been spared the pressure of expectation that the Jameses had suffered. He had started drawing when he was a boy and simply kept on doing it.

While Emily was occupied with pulling the armchair nearer to the bed and arranging the curtains, John sauntered over, embraced Alice, and kissed Katherine’s hand.

“How is your mother?” asked Alice. She knew that their father had died in April, a loss that both Emily and John had handled with equanimity, as had their mother, though she had maintained the convenient social prerogative of a long mourning. Alice sometimes envied her friends for having a father who had effaced himself so completely during his life that his death was a gentle slipping away. Her own father had been a towering presence, and his death three years earlier had been a crushing, incapacitating blow, not just for her, but also for her brothers, who dwelled on it continually and were constantly trying to get over it—without succeeding.

“She’s getting along,” said John mildly.

“She always asks about you and can’t wait to be in a condition to visit,” added Emily.

It was hard for Alice to imagine that Mary Sargent was not in a condition to visit, and assumed that she was simply not in the
mood
to visit, which was, upon consideration, the same thing.

“Please sit,” said Alice, motioning to the chairs beside her bed.

Sargent lowered himself into the armchair, stretching his long legs out in front of him, while Emily, in her usual compulsion to be helpful, ignored her hostess’s command and began preparing the tea that Sally had brought in.

“I’m afraid you just missed Henry and William,” explained Alice, once the tea had been served. She added casually, “William’s here to help investigate the Ripper murders for Scotland Yard.”

Emily clapped her hands in delight, and even Sargent, constitutionally phlegmatic, opened his eyes in surprise.

“You must keep this entirely confidential,” warned Alice. She knew she could depend on Sargent to say nothing, but Emily, rather like Henry, was an excitable person, likely to blurt things out inadvertently.

“We’ll be quiet as a tomb,” Emily assured her.

The door opened a crack, and Archie peeked in. The boy had reported to the house that morning and seemed to have taken to his new responsibilities with alacrity. He entered the room boldly; he was holding two blankets in his hands. “Sally says as how Madame James might be needin’ a blanket as it’s a bit chill in here today,” said the boy, looking at the group with the unselfconscious gaze possible only in a total innocent. “She tol’ me to bring this wool’un here, but I says as it’s too rough for her ladyship, and the mohair’s the one I’d like.”

“Quite right,” said Alice, casting an amused glance at the Sargents. “Her ladyship prefers the mohair.”

“I knows it!” exclaimed Archie triumphantly, bringing the blanket to Alice and, though Emily seemed eager to take it, insisting on draping it over the bed himself.

“Archie is a new addition to the household,” explained Alice to her guests. “William engaged him to help Sally out.”

“Really?” said Emily. She knew that Sally did not need help.

“These are two friends of mine.” Alice addressed the boy: “Miss Sargent and Mr. John Singer Sargent. Mr. Sargent is a painter.”

“A painter?” said the boy. “I likes pictures!”

“Very good.” Sargent nodded. “Liking pictures is good.”

“What pictures is it the gentleman paints?” asked Archie. “I likes them pictures they paste on the walls to tell o’ what’s playin’ at the music halls. But I don’t know as gentlemen does those.”

“You’d be surprised what gentlemen do,” said Sargent. “Posters are the least of it. But I’m in a different line myself. I paint pictures of real people.”

“Real people?” queried the boy. “Like me?”

“Most certainly like you. You would make an excellent subject.”

“People pay Mr. Sargent a great deal of money to paint their portraits,” clarified Alice.

“I coulden do that,” said the boy.

“Nor would I expect it,” said Sargent. “I don’t paint only for money; I also paint for pleasure—subjects that interest me.”

“Like that,” said Emily helpfully, pointing to a small painting over the table that Sargent had given Alice for her birthday. It was of a young woman in a red cloak standing in the portal of a building.

“Tha’s beautiful!” breathed the boy, gazing at the painting intently. The woman had a dark, delicately pretty face. He moved closer and studied the figure a moment. “She looks like me mum,” he finally said.

“Archie’s mother passed away recently,” explained Alice.

“Poor child!” murmured Emily.

John had risen from his chair and stood beside the boy, looking at the picture. It was one of his gifts to be able to relay sympathy and understanding without saying a word. In the present instance, he focused his attention on the painting, but in such a way as to include Archie in the act of assessment. They might have been two casual connoisseurs touring a gallery together. “The lady was a very interesting subject,” he noted, then squinted a bit. “Don’t you think it looks dull?”

“I woulden know,” said the boy. “It looks beautiful to me.”

“And to me,” seconded Emily.

“I’ll brighten it up with a coat of varnish,” said Sargent, ignoring these opinions, as he would more expert ones, and taking the painting off the wall. He turned to the boy. “A little dressing up always helps.”

“I sees as that’s so,” said Archie, looking down at his own new clothes, which had been bought with Sally at a haberdasher that morning.

“It doesn’t really change what’s there,” continued Sargent sagely, “but most people don’t know that. I’ve made many a mediocre work appear better with a coat of varnish.”

“Nothing you do is mediocre, John,” insisted Emily, turning to Alice proudly. “He just had his portrait of Mrs. Marquand sent over for submission to the Royal Academy show. It’s said to be a masterpiece.”

John waved his hand dismissively. “It’s a flattering likeness, which, to the subject at least, qualifies it as a masterpiece.”

“Oh no,” protested Emily. “You paint your subjects exactly as they are.”

“Yes.” Sargent nodded. “Only six inches taller and with good teeth.”

Alice laughed. “You have, in my opinion, come up with the perfect formula for success as a portraitist. If your subjects are impossibly old and ugly, you make them look like dowager empresses, and if they’re young and vacuous, like blushing roses. How, I wonder, would you paint me? Would you make me wise or beautiful?”

“I would not need to make you either.” Sargent laughed. “You are already both!” He had returned to his chair, although not before producing a farthing and a piece of candy, which he slipped to Archie before he left the room.

“I won’t argue with your flattering assessment of me,” said Alice, “especially since you might have leverage with my brothers. They tend to be skeptical of my wisdom, if not my beauty.”

“Oh, they’ll come around,” said Sargent, stretching out his legs and closing his eyes. “You’ll see to that. Now if you’ll excuse me, ladies, being in the presence of so much wisdom and beauty has tired me out. And since I’m sure you have a great deal you want to gossip about, I think I’ll take a nap.”

When Henry and William returned to Alice’s apartments that evening, Archie was on hand to take their coats. “If you’ll step this way, I’ll show you to the apartment of Madame James,” said the boy with an exaggerated bow.

William seemed nonplussed by this childish formality, but Henry, with a greater understanding of how custom and ritual served to uphold the social structure, responded with a grave nod. “We’re much obliged to you, young man.”

“Archie, get back here and stir the pot!” shouted Sally from the kitchen.

“If you’ll excuse me, sirs, I’m called to duty elsewhere,” explained the boy. “Milady’s chambers is through that door, if you’d be so good as to find your own way.” Having apparently suffered the ire of Sally already and not wanting to repeat the experience, he ducked out of sight.

Henry laughed after the boy left. “It’s a great thing to lift the lower classes.”

“I suppose,” said William doubtfully, “though I suspect it only teaches a more elaborate form of servitude. The whole system offends my ideal of democracy.”

“Your ideal of democracy would not work in this country. Your cutlery would be stolen and your daughter carried off before you had a chance to launch one of your progressive schools.”

“A rather cynical way of looking at things.”

“Not cynical; realistic. You speak continually about the importance of context. Well, context works in social settings as well. One doesn’t apply democratic ideals without an understanding of the history and customs of a people. Here, change happens incrementally, and giving the boy a uniform and a chance to stir the pot in Mayfair is a great leap forward from pilfering and worse in the East End.”

William did not argue.

When they entered Alice’s bedroom, their sister was sitting in her bed, munching on a piece of celery. “It’s supposed to be good for the digestion, only I hate it,” she grumbled, at which she threw the celery across the room, where Katherine, who had been sitting reading a newspaper, calmly picked it up.

“I hope your visit to the East End was productive,” continued Alice, as though throwing celery were a perfectly normal part of her everyday activity.

“I’m afraid we didn’t learn much,” said William, “though we had one intriguing interview with a woman who knew the second victim, Polly Nichols. She said that Polly used to visit a gentleman a few times a week in the area.”

“But isn’t that what such women do?”

William cleared his throat; his sister’s directness still embarrassed him. “Not insofar as Polly told our witness that she was being paid to do something else.”

“And what was that?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t know.”

Alice looked annoyed. “Then you ought to find out, hadn’t you?”

Before more could be said, Sally entered the room with a large casserole dish containing the oysters with mushrooms, and some time was spent ladling out portions.

As they were being served, Alice turned to Henry. “Did you write anything interesting this afternoon?” she asked politely.

“As a matter of fact,” said Henry, pleased to expound, “I have begun a new project, the dramatization of one of my works.”

William made a slight choking sound, and Alice shot him a look. “A play, how nice.” She nodded. They ate without speaking for a few moments, until finally, Alice broke the silence, speaking to William of what clearly interested her most. “I assume you spent your afternoon at Scotland Yard examining the letters. Did you bring them for me to look at?”

William put down his fork and took a sip of wine. As he did so, he touched his jacket pocket in a reflexive gesture.

“You have them!” exclaimed Alice. “They’ve let you borrow them!”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” said William, bringing his napkin to his lips and opening his eyes in mock innocence.

“You see how he gives himself away?” Alice directed herself to Henry. “He can’t lie. He’s afraid he’ll go to hell if he does.”

Henry shook his head. “I don’t think that’s it. He tries to lie, except he’s bad at it. It’s why he could never write fiction—and doesn’t appreciate mine.”

“Enough!” interrupted William. “I admit I have the letters, or at least a few of them. Abberline’s men went through the lot and identified those they felt to be authentic. I’ve been given permission to examine them at my leisure. Obviously they’re confidential.”

“Phooey,” said Alice, waving her hand. “Let me see them!”

“I really can’t do that. The letters were released to me as a special consultant to the police commissioner.”

“And I am a special consultant to
you
,” declared Alice, “and a highly sensitive one. If you don’t show me the letters, I’m sure to get a headache and have a fainting spell.”

William gave his sister a withering look. “That’s…beneath you!”

“No, it’s not!”

He paused and, still glaring at her, took an envelope out of his pocket and handed it over. There was silence for a few minutes as Alice perused the letters while Henry peered over her shoulder. There were a dozen or so assorted sheets, some on full pieces of vellum, some on scraps of paper or postcards.

“Why do you assume these are authentic?” Alice finally asked.

“It’s not a definitive assumption. There are a hundred or so letters received at Scotland Yard and the Central News Agency alleged to be from Jack the Ripper, and more come in each day. Abberline has confided that at times he wonders if
any
are genuine. But the experts he has employed believe that these, at least, have a claim to validity by virtue of their content and style.” He leaned forward, extracting a sheet from the group. “This one, for example, dated September 25 and postmarked September 27, was addressed to the Central News Agency, forwarded to Abberline, and not published until October 3.”

Alice took the letter from him. It read as follows:

Dear Boss

I keep on hearing the police

have caught me but they wont fix

me just yet. I have laughed when

they look so clever and talk about

being on the right track. That joke

about Leather Apron gave me real

fits. I am down on whores and

I shant quit ripping them till I

do get buckled. Grand work the last

job was. I gave the lady no time to

squeal. How can they catch me now.

I love my work and want to start

again. You will soon hear of me

with my funny little games. I

saved some of the proper red stuff in

a ginger beer bottle over the last job

to write with but it went thick

like glue and I cant use it. Red

ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha.

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. Keep this letter back till I

do a bit more work then give

it out straight. My knife’s so nice

and sharp I want to get to work

right away if I get a chance.

Good luck.

Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

Don’t mind me giving the trade name.

And at a right angle to the note was written at the bottom:

wasn’t good enough

to post this before

I got all the red

ink off my hands

curse it.

No luck yet. They

say I’m a doctor

now ha ha.

“The reference to Leather Apron is to a criminal with that nickname who was associated with the murders but has since been cleared,” explained William. “It’s a reference that warrants additional looking into,” he noted, more to himself than to the others.

Alice glanced through the remaining sheets. “Here’s the postcard that they printed in the papers,” she said, holding it up so William could see what she was referring to, and then peering at it more closely. It read:

I wasn’t codding

dear old Boss when

I gave you the tip.

Youll hear about

saucy Jackys work

tomorrow double

event this time

number one squealed

a bit couldn’t

finish straight

off. had not time

to get ears for

police thanks for

keeping last letter

back till I got

to work again.

Jack the Ripper.

William again provided the commentary. “That was also sent to Central News and was postmarked October 1. The reference is to the double murder of September 30. Elizabeth Stride, throat cut, but no further violence done her, followed a few hours later by the extensive stabbings to Catherine Eddowes. It is true that one of the latter’s ears was partially severed, suggesting that the murderer was attempting to follow his intention in the former letter.”

Alice had taken up a third letter on a larger sheet and scrutinized it, with Henry leaning over her shoulder.

From hell,

Mr. Lusk

Sor

I send you half the

Kidne I took from one women

prasarved it for you tother piece I

fried and ate it was very nise I

may send you the bloody knif that

took it out if you only wate a whil

longer

signed Catch me when

you can

Mishter Lusk

“The man certainly could use a spelling primer,” noted Henry. “Who is this Mishter Lusk?”

“Mr. George Lusk,” explained William, “president of the community’s Vigilance Committee, whose assistance to the police the murderer was apparently very proud to thwart. The letter was received only a few days ago, along with a small parcel containing half of a left kidney. Catherine Eddowes’s left kidney was indeed missing. There is no proof, given the timing of these letters, that they could not have been written based on newspaper accounts, hearsay, or even presence near the scene upon the discovery of the bodies. The organ too could have been obtained from another source. Still, the handwriting in these letters shows marks of similarity which, though hardly definitive, are noteworthy.”

“I see no consistency in the misspellings and punctuation,” noted Alice. “It looks like someone making up the mistakes as he goes along.”

William nodded. “They’re erratic, extravagant sorts of mistakes: ‘sor’ for ‘sir’; ‘knif’ for ‘knife.’ He drops the
e
but keeps the silent
k
. It’s what I call ‘disingenuous illiteracy,’ the spelling and syntax errors of someone who knows language but wants to appear ignorant.”

Alice had been fingering the letters ruminatively. “This one is on good vellum,” she noted. “Is there a stationer’s mark?”

“What?” asked William.

“The imprint that they put on stationery of a particular brand. It’s not readily perceptible, but held to the light, you can see it.”

William looked interested, if slightly annoyed. “I don’t know that either Abberline or I took note of that. It would be hard to trace a piece of vellum in London.”

“That depends on the quality. And certainly, if it’s good quality, it would help locate the killer as someone who circulates outside the East End.” She held the paper up to the light on her bed table and pointed to a mark that read “Pirie and Sons.” “It would be worth finding out how much of this paper they sell and the nature of their clientele. And if you had a suspect, you could check to see if his other correspondence comes from this particular stationer.”

“Good point,” said William, a touch sheepishly. “Are you going to illuminate anything else?”

“It seems interesting that the pens are different colors.”

“As the first letter said, he tried to use blood but substituted red ink instead.”

“True, but this ink on the postcard appears to be purple or brown. More than one colored ink was used, it would seem.”

“Part of the fantastic nature of the creature,” said William.

“Yes, but the inks themselves. Where did he get them?”

“I don’t believe that they’re hard to find.”

“But not in a cheap stationer’s.”

“It supports my theory that the man is not a poor illiterate,” said William a bit smugly. “I’ve already suggested as much. The handwriting, even when it seems to be primitive, is too good. And the spelling seems too mannered in its inaccuracy to be genuine.”

“Hmm,” said Alice. “What’s this?”

“What?” William asked. He had begun to feel defensive in the face of his sister’s astute observations.

“This mark near the bottom.”

“I noted that.” William nodded. “Abberline and I assume that it’s glue. It’s clear and shiny, slightly raised. It might suggest that the writer is in one of the trades, a cobbler or furniture maker, for example.”

“Possibly,” said Alice. “And this?” She pointed to a smudge on another letter.

“It looks like dried blood,” said Henry, leaning closer.

“Does dried blood look this way?” Alice asked William, assuming that, with his years of medical training, he could validate this fact.

He paused. “Not really. I made a note to look into it. The police assume it’s blood, given the context, but blood generally dries darker. But if it’s not blood, I don’t know what it is.”

“If it’s not blood, then what it is, is interesting,” said Alice a bit sharply. “I should like to study the letters this evening.”

“I don’t think so,” said William, taking them from her, replacing them in the envelope, and putting them back in his pocket.

“Were you planning to look at them tonight yourself?”

“No, not tonight. I have an appointment with Professor Sidgwick of Cambridge University.”

“Oh no!” groaned Alice.

“Henry Sidgwick is a noted philosopher and classical scholar. A giant in his field.”

“Also a spiritualist crank.”

“Alice!”

“I can’t help it. The man is president of the Society for Psychical Research—I believe that is the title chosen to dignify an interest in Ouija boards and crystal balls. For someone of your intellect and reputation to be drawn to that sort of thing is an embarrassment. I know that you mourn your Hermie; the loss of a child is more painful than any wound a human creature can suffer. But grief is no excuse for idiocy.”