Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace

by Patricia Marcantonio

  From an envelope, she withdrew a sample of the black grainy material that had been used to write the Chinese symbols on the wall of the store. Placing the specimen in a pan of water, she separated a tiny chunk of the grit and washed it. After viewing the piece under the microscope, she whistled at the discovery of calcium phosphate. The killer had written on the wall with ground bone mixed with ink. Human or animal bone, she could not tell.

  Her excitement heightened at the next test for evidence the killer could not conceal—his handwriting.

  The Whitechapel killer in London had sent three pieces of correspondence to the Central News Agency, which had written scandalous accounts of the murders in the East End. One note had been signed JACK THE RIPPER, a name that had become synonymous with terror over the course of those months and even beyond. The most nefarious letter came dated 15 October 1888 and was delivered to the president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, whose volunteers had patrolled the streets during the killing spree. With the greeting FROM HELL, the note arrived with part of a human kidney thought by police to have come from Catherine Eddowes.

  Felicity compared the handwriting in the note sent to Pike with that in the photograph of the Ripper’s “From Hell” letter, as it had come to be called. She studied each word and how the letters were connected. Some people deemed graphology a modern science, but handwriting research dated back to 1622, when University of Bologna philosopher Camillo Baldi had published work on the subject. Baldi wrote about how a person’s nature could be exposed in his handwriting. For example, if the handwriting was uneven with ascending lines, the person tended to be dominating. Even earlier, the great Aristotle had written that a person’s handwriting expressed his sentiments, thoughts, and desires.

  In the Jack the Ripper note and in the one sent to Pike, the letters y, f, and g had identical elongated tails. The words in each were written in the same forward slant, as if the writer’s urges drove him headlong. The letters rose to spiky points, a sign of the writer’s forcefulness. In the note to the sheriff, the killer had pressed his pen hard onto the parchment, as if he had stabbed at it with the kind of violence he used on his victims. Despite his attempts to disguise himself in the notes, his distorted personality had surfaced on paper and in blood.

  Aristotle or not, however, courts of law didn’t accept handwriting comparisons as evidence.

  When she completed the examination, she stood and paced. The conclusion was irrefutable. The same hand had written the notes.

  Jack the Ripper had come to America.

  She sat down hard. The murderer had eluded all of Scotland Yard. How was she going to find him? She was also afraid—she’d readily admit that. To actually face a man so comfortable with slaughter was terrifying.

  Exhausted, she went downstairs to read, hoping to submerge her uneasiness in a novel or biography for an hour or so. The former owner’s library had a good selection of both, and she chose one, but all she could think about was Jackson Davies and his obsession with finding Jack the Ripper. Why he so diligently tracked the monster in human form. Her mouth watered with nausea. She felt what must have sickened her friend—his failure to stop the madman who seemed to live in the darkness and devour all hope.

  * * *

  A boy who could have been doused with all of Placer’s dirt stood on Felicity’s porch. He stomped anxious feet, leaving dust rings. She had been sitting in the library trying to read when he tapped at the window.

  “It’s after nine, little boy. You should be in bed,” she said.

  “My grandpa Jeremiah says you should come quick to the livery stable. He wants to talk with you. Something about the reverend.”

  “Let’s go in my wagon,” said Felicity, grabbing her crossbow on the way out. Thankfully, Helen had gone to bed early and didn’t awaken easily.

  When Felicity arrived, Jeremiah Sutton told his grandson to scat and led her to the livery stable for what he called a private chat.

  “Did the Reverend Phoenix venture out the night of the latest murder?” she said.

  Sutton licked his finger as he consulted the pages in the notebook she had given him. He found the right page. “Here it is. The night the girl was killed behind the King store, Phoenix came back to his church at ten. He didn’t leave until six the next morning.”

  “Are you positive? He might have left on foot or if you dozed off.”

  “No, he stayed put and I didn’t sleep.”

  “Oh.” She had lost a suspect. Pike had estimated that the latest murder had taken place between one in the morning, when the Kings’ son had returned home from drinking, and five in the morning, when Betsy King had found the body. Betsy’s son had seen nothing behind the store when he stopped to relieve himself against the back wall.

  “If that’s all you have to share with me, Mr. Sutton.” She prepared to pay him and leave.

  The filthy boy ran into the stable. “Grandpa, Grandpa. The reverend carried another big burlap bag into his church.”

  “He did the same thing last night,” Sutton told Felicity. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  “A bag?” Felicity felt foolish for hurrying to meet the old man.

  “Something in the bag was moving and crying.”

  Now she wasn’t so foolish. Mrs. Albert had seen the reverend’s hands covered in blood. Blood stained the floor under the cross in his church. Maybe the reverend had sneaked out undetected on the night of the killing. “Mr. Sutton, we’ve got to see what he’s up to,” she said.

  Sutton scooted his grandson out of the stable. “I know the place. We can sneak up to the old hayloft. We’ll get a real good view.” He snapped his suspenders.

  “Excellent.”

  “How you gonna climb in that skirt?”

  “I’ll manage, Mr. Sutton. We must hurry.”

  Outside, music and voices resonated from the saloons up the street. The breeze had changed direction and brought another sound from the church. Someone bawled and yelled inside.

  “Hear that?” Felicity whispered to Sutton.

  “I ain’t deef,” he whispered back.

  She followed as he crossed the road and began to climb short, thick wooden planks nailed into the back of Phoenix’s building. Loud organ music started up inside—a hymn she couldn’t name. Startled, she felt her foot slip halfway up, causing her chin to slam on one step, but she didn’t cry out or slow her progress. As she rubbed her chin, she envisioned how her late father might react to this activity—shimmying up a building in the middle of the night to watch a supposed man of the cloth doing something involving blood. A storm rousing the English Channel would pale next to his outrage. Then again, he might just ignore her as he had most of her life.

  Spry for his years, Sutton opened one side of the wide door in the loft and slithered inside. When she reached the loft, he had already lifted a trapdoor so they could see into the church below. The stink of mouse droppings was oppressive.

  Lighted candles in front of the large cross gave them enough illumination to see. A burlap bag big as a person writhed below the cross as Phoenix played a hymn on the organ. When he ended the song, he opened the bag and clutched the throat of a calf that bellowed and skittered. He pulled a thick knife from his coat and uttered a bizarre, choppy language. Felicity didn’t recognize the words.

  “What’s he saying?” Sutton whispered.

  “Speaking tongues, I suspect. A common phenomenon of people in the throes of religious hysteria.”

  The reverend pointed the knife upward and killed the calf. His eyes rolled back in his head as he raised his bloody hands toward the cross.

  Felicity and Sutton looked at each other.

  The old man shook his head. “That man’s nuttier than a nut cake,” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  After a few minutes, Phoenix put the calf’s body in the burlap bag, then began to scoop out the bloody floor dirt with a shovel and placed it in the bag also.

  Felicity had seen enough, and they
left as silently as they had entered.

  “That explains the blood,” she said when they returned to Sutton’s livery stable.

  “What, Miss?”

  “Nothing. Mr. Sutton, you did a fine job of surveillance, but I’ll no longer need your services.” She handed him two twenty-dollar gold pieces. “A bonus.”

  “You mean Phoenix ain’t guilty of that wrong you were talking about, young lady?”

  “Yes, Mr. Sutton. And sacrificing animals, no matter how disgusting, is not against the law.”

  “Too bad.”

  The next morning Felicity returned to her laboratory, going over the facts again as if a new clue might appear. Helen rapped, brought in a tray with breakfast, and placed it on the counter where Felicity sat.

  “Not sure how you can eat in here, Miss.” She kept her eyes away from the crime photographs.

  “It is difficult sometimes.”

  Helen placed her head down and made an X in the floor with her shoe.

  Felicity placed down her fork. “All right, my dear, what is it?”

  “After dinner Friday, may I take the rest of the night off? I’ll clean up early the next morning.”

  “Whatever you want, Hellie.” Embarrassment colored Felicity’s cheeks. “And forgive me for neglecting your needs. I’ve been so preoccupied with this case.”

  “I’ve been taking my regular Sundays and Mondays off, Miss. Robert—I mean, Mr. Lowery—has been showing me the country.”

  “Hellie, you may have any night you wish, or day, for that matter.”

  Helen raised her head. “Sunday’s fine; it’s just that Mr. Lowery is taking me to something called a hoedown at a church.”

  “What is that?”

  “A kind of dance, Miss Felicity.”

  “Ah, a social engagement.”

  Helen blushed. “Not at my age, Miss.”

  “At any age, Hellie. And I have noticed Mr. Lowery is very attentive to you. Smitten, really.”

  Helen’s blush deepened.

  “You know it’s perfectly all right and wonderful you have a new friend.” Felicity pulled money from her purse and placed it in Helen’s hand. “I want you to buy a new dress for the dance.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Helen said, though she appeared moved by the gesture.

  “Yes, it is. You deserve all happiness. He is a good man.”

  “Aye. That he is, and thank you, Miss. Excuse me now, but this room is quite petrifying. The faces of those dead women make my skin go cold.” She curtsied and closed the door behind her.

  Felicity studied the photographs of the women killed by Jack the Ripper in England and his new victims in Placer. The women’s faces were frightening. Not only because of the way they had died.

  They were not at peace.

  CHAPTER 21

  Sheriff Tom Pike’s emotions were stamped on his face as if put there by a steam press. And they revealed disappointment. “I spent a good part of the day talking to anyone who carries a knife,” he said, accompanied by a massive sigh.

  “I take it you found no leads.” Felicity said. They stood in her laboratory. She had invited him over to talk about the case.

  “Butchers are slaughterers by trade. There are three of them in Placer, and I started there.” He paced, waving his hands about. “The only thing I learned was that butchers are dull as their blades. Then I talked with chefs at the restaurants, but they accounted for their whereabouts. Then bootmakers, but their knives were—”

  “Stubby and thick.” From his bothered expression, she knew she was right. “I suppose you interviewed barbers next.”

  “I did. Straight razors make perfect killing tools. I skipped the ones I knew and went to those I didn’t. But none of them …”

  “Fit the profile of our killer. Your formidable intuition told you so.”

  “I wish you’d quit that. Yes, none of them were clever enough to carry out these killings. I doubt they knew how to write in English, much less Chinese.”

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Tom. The inspectors at Scotland Yard followed the same leads with the same outcome.”

  “I do have one bit of good news. The victim’s name was Rose Johnson.”

  “How’d you identify her?”

  “A man who stokes coal at the Ross Smelter came in and said he’d spotted Rose the night she was killed. Before going home, he stopped for a drink at the Shady Lady Saloon. He come round the corner of Rich Street and saw Rose talking with a man. But he didn’t think nothing of it because of Rose’s line of work.”

  “Did he see the man’s face?” Felicity’s hands tightened.

  “Too dark. But he said the man wore a bowler hat low over his head. No hardworking fella. He had on one of those fancy coats.” Pike reached to his knee.

  “A frock coat.”

  “Yeah. Also gray gloves and black shiny shoes. The man motioned for Rose to follow, and they went behind the store.”

  “The few witnesses who may have seen Jack the Ripper described a similar outfit. At least he’s consistent in his dress. How was your witness even acquainted with Rose Johnson?”

  “How do you think?”

  “Oh.” Silly question. “Why didn’t the stoker come to see you earlier?”

  “He wanted the five-hundred-dollar reward the city has just put up to find the killer,” Pike said.

  She could have offered more but hadn’t thought about a reward. The fact that the witness couldn’t identify the killer amounted to another setback.

  “Since the stoker didn’t see the man’s face, I couldn’t arrest anyone, so he won’t get the money. We did promise not to tell his wife about his acquaintance with the late Rose Johnson,” Pike said. “Now I hope you have something more helpful.”

  “Quite.”

  “Let’s hear your scientific evidence.”

  Taking in a breath, Felicity began with her strongest proof. She explained the substantial matches between the handwriting of the Jack the Ripper letter and the note sent to Pike. As she talked, he held the letters side by side.

  “Why’d he misspell words in both notes, do you suppose?” Pike asked.

  “I believe he did this on purpose to throw suspicion elsewhere, on someone less intelligent,” Felicity said.

  “He’s constant in his methods, if nothing else. Maybe it’s how we catch the bastard.” He started to light a cigar but threw it out the window. “Dammit. Jack the Ripper is in my town.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You realize if I tell anyone else about this, they’ll throw me into an insane asylum and you alongside me.”

  “Probably.”

  “You got anything to lead us to this murderer?”

  “Regrettably, it’s not definitive.” The paper on which the killer had written the note to Pike provided no clues, she told the sheriff. Given the absence of human skin under the victims’ nails, they hadn’t scratched their assailant.

  When she reported on the ink-and-bone mixture used to write the Chinese symbols, Pike arched an eyebrow. “The man is mad as a dog with rabies.”

  “But smart enough not to leave fingerprints or any other evidence, Tom.”

  “I read a newspaper story about how fingerprints will be used to find criminals someday. That kind of science is the future of the law, I’m guessing.”

  Felicity nodded and reported her findings about the red hairs she had discovered on two of the bodies. She encouraged him to peer at one under the microscope.

  “Know how many red-haired men are running around Placer?” Pike said.

  “Let me guess. A lot?” She didn’t mean to sound flippant with such a serious topic.

  “Anyway, this doesn’t prove a red-haired man killed those women. The hairs might have belonged to one of their clients.”

  “Yes, but red hairs on two of the victims, and one victim grasping strands in her fist? More than coincidence. And here’s another disturbing item.”

  “How much worse can it g
et?” Pike said.

  Felicity pointed to an autopsy photograph on the wall. “Elizabeth Stride died on the thirtieth of September, 1888, in Whitechapel, London. A jewelry salesman happened on her body in Dutfield’s Yard at near one in the morning.” In the photograph, the lower portion of Stride’s body had been covered by a black cloth. “From the fewer number of wounds compared to the others, the Ripper apparently had been interrupted and ran off. He didn’t get his fill of death.”

  “Why do you say that?” Pike studied the photograph.

  “Forty-five minutes after the discovery of Stride’s body, police found the body of Catherine Eddowes at Mitre Square less than a mile away.” She pointed to the spot on the map of Whitechapel. “The killer had finished his customary job of mutilation on poor Catherine.” Felicity handed him the autopsy photograph. Blood had been smeared over the lower part of Eddowes’s face. A line of postmortem stitching rode down her body.

  “Two murders in one night. Unbelievable.” Pike pulled out another cigar from his pocket.

  She lit the cigar for him. He placed his hand on hers as he blew out the match and let it linger. Felicity tasted him on the edges of her tongue. Salted sweat and sage.

  “Cigars help me think.” He took in the smoke and blew it out slowly. “Didn’t your London police have any good Jack the Ripper suspects?”

  “Several. A boot maker, various criminals, and even Mary Jane Kelly’s former lover. But Scotland Yard couldn’t connect any of the suspects to the killings.”

  “That’s just dandy.”

  Felicity sat across from him. “One of the most famous suspects was Dr. James S. Drury, a prominent London surgeon.”

  “Why him?” He exhaled smoke.

  “The good doctor had frequented the Whitechapel prostitutes for years. As a surgeon, he knew anatomy, and the knives used by the Ripper resemble those found in a doctor’s bag. Not to forget that Drury practiced medicine at the London Hospital, a stone’s throw from Whitechapel.”

  “I’d call him one perfect suspect.”

  “Admittedly. A Times writer once quoted an inspector’s suspicions about Dr. Drury. But the newspaper summarily dismissed the writer because the doctor had friends in the highest of places.”