by Tim Standish
‘Would it be terribly discourteous of me to ask for a little more explanation before you carry on?’
‘Explanation?’ Collier asked. ‘About what, in particular?’ He had the look of a master teaching a Latin class suddenly presented with a question about trigonometry; amiable but slightly bemused.
‘Oh, nothing much,’ I replied, feeling myself begin to anger as I did, ‘just a few trivial matters: why I am here, who you all are and what we do when the real Executive Sterling asks for his seat back.’
Collier thought for a moment before he spoke. ‘You are here, Mr Sterling, for the same reason as the rest of us; a briefing on the directive that you and Mr Church will be taking on. As a new field executive, we have allocated you a relatively simple task and one that, with your own undoubted talents and Mr Church’s able support, we are sure you will make a resounding success of.’ He smiled. ‘As for the question of chairs, there is only one Executive Sterling and you, I am pleased to say, are he. So we need not worry ourselves about that.’
‘And if I decide that I am not, in fact, he?’ I asked.
‘Well now, Mr Sterling, I’m really not sure why on earth you would. After all, it’s a perfectly pleasant morning, we are well supplied with coffee and, it would seem to me, enjoying, to all intents and purposes, a life of freedom.’ He paused meaningfully. ‘But I know that Milady will speak to you after this briefing so perhaps you will have a chance to explore that possibility with her then. In the meantime, though, shall we proceed as if you are, so to speak, in the right chair?’ He paused and raised his eyebrows.
And, suddenly and bone-wearily tired, I concluded that, as long as they weren’t going to arrest me, shoot me or try and drown me again, I might as well go along with it. I nodded.
‘Excellent,’ said Collier, ‘and so, to business.’ He clicked the slide.
Five photographs of women’s faces. Police file photos. Dates underneath each of them, from August to November 1888. I vaguely remembered the furore about the murders that autumn, providing as they had done a seemingly inexhaustible supply of gore and mystery for the capital’s newspaper editors. The date of the last murder was only a few days before I was shipped to Canada, I noticed.
‘Nichols, Chapman, Stride…’ Collier paused and looked around like a schoolmaster who had stopped at ‘amat’.
‘Eddowes and Kelly.’ It was the American woman.
‘Thank you, Miss Green,’ said Collier. ‘Top marks as always. Five victims, one killer, vile murder, police baffled, et cetera et cetera.’ Collier was about to click on to the next slide when Church interrupted him, the gravel of his voice harsh against the polished calm of Collier’s delivery.
‘You are having a laugh, aren’t you?’
‘Mr Church?’ Collier stared at him with a look of mild interest.
Church jerked his head at the screen behind Collier as he replied: ‘This. The Ripper. Is it a joke? Bit of jolly for the new lad? So, good one, now put the real directive up and let’s get on with it.’
There was a bleak stillness in Collier’s tone as he responded: ‘No joke, Mr Church.’
‘All right, so say it’s actually serious. We’re not police,’ Church went on, ‘and even if we were we wouldn’t be touching this with a bargepole. It’s a blind alley.’
Collier shifted his gaze to me. ‘Mr Sterling, what is your view?’
I thought for a moment. ‘You, that is we, do seem like a particularly sophisticated hammer to swing at what might not turn out to be a nut at all,’ I replied.
Collier made a dry noise. It took me a moment to register it as laughter.
‘Very droll, Mr Sterling. We are indeed fashioned for situations more imperial in scope. However, one condition of not officially existing is that, from time to time, we must carry out a favour for those that do. This is one such favour.’
‘Look,’ Church responded, ‘if the Ripper ever existed, he’s in the ground or good and gone and there’s nothing left but mud and dead ends. It’s a rainbow hunt.’ To his right, Green shook her head.
‘Miss Green?’ Collier asked. ‘You are not of that opinion?’
‘Mr Church is right about the mud but wrong about the Ripper.’ she replied. ‘He did exist.’ Church shook his head, muttered something under his breath. ‘Would you put the next slide up, please, Mr Collier?’ Collier clicked the device again and Green got up and walked over to stand next to the other side of the screen. The new slide showed an aerial photo of a cobbled street. Striding down the street was a single black-clad and hatted figure, carrying some sort of bag and looking back over his right shoulder.
Green pointed to the image. ‘The so-called Ripper photo. Taken from the static dirigible the Met had set up over Whitechapel after the third murder. This was taken in the early morning of the Miller’s Court murder, just after 4am. Matched the description of a man seen by a witness close to one of the earlier murders, though no one on the ground saw him on this occasion. The papers ran it for a week, but it didn’t amount to much beyond mobs setting upon the occasional surgeon.
‘And, if he was the Ripper, he is walking away from the last and the most brutal of the murders generally ascribed to him. In this case the girl, Kelly, was severely, horribly mutilated in an extended and concerted attack that the coroner surmised would have taken place over several hours. There are pictures in the background files I’ve prepared for you, but I wouldn’t advise looking at them on a full stomach. In any case general opinion agrees with Mr Church and, given that there were no further murders, presumes the Ripper dead, fled or institutionalised shortly thereafter. The latter seems likely, not just because of what happened in Miller’s Court but judging by this, one of the few letters received by the police that might be genuine.’
Click.
Green went on, confident in her material; it was obviously a subject she knew well: ‘This letter was sent to George Lusk, chair of the Whitechapel vigilance committee two weeks after the third and fourth murders. Known by people who care about these things as the ‘From Hell’ letter because of the sender’s address.’
The note was short, letters sprawling across the paper in what looked like faded, brown ink.
‘Note the writer doesn’t identify as “The Ripper” though the name was well used in the press by the time it was sent and that he mentions a kidney, which was enclosed, and a knife, which was not. There is some speculation that, although it seems to be written by an illiterate, it was actually written that way deliberately to disguise the intelligence and class of the sender. In the end it was written off as a prank by a medical student.’
‘I wonder why.’ From Church.
‘Then there is also this card.’ She clicked on to the next slide; a facsimile of a postcard, simply addressed ‘Hell’ and continued ‘Dear comissonor. My cincer apologes for no kidne nor knife as promsd but you will hav them soon.’ The writing was identical in colour and style to the other letter. Addressed and signed in the same way.
‘I don’t remember seeing that one at the time,’ I said.
Green waited a moment before she answered. ‘You won’t have done. It was sent a week ago.’
Collier interrupted the silence that followed that announcement with a courteous ‘Thank you Miss Green.’ He waited until she had retaken her seat and then clicked on to the next slide. ‘And this photograph is from two nights ago.’
The slide showed a woman’s face, eyes closed, obviously a morgue photo.
‘Polly Ann Shaw, a sometime prostitute.’ Collier spoke neutrally. His voice toneless, unexcited. ‘Her throat was cut. Her chest and abdomen were mutilated, and organs roughly excised. Indications are this was carried out by either the Ripper or someone intimately associated with the crimes. This morning Sir Edward Bradford, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, received a package containing a worn surgeon’s knife and a freshly removed kidney. There was a note inside that said “From hell, your servant”.’
Silence again. Then Church spoke,
his tone still disbelieving.
‘Alright, so let’s say that this isn’t just some crackpot who has got it into his head to try for a bit of reflected glory. Let’s say, however ridiculous that is, that this is true and, after an extended absence, the Ripper is real and back murdering whores in the East End. Fine. If that’s the case, I can see why Bradford might be pissing himself about it but what I don’t see is why any of this makes it a favour we want to get involved in?’
The door opened and March walked in with a tray. ‘Tea, Mr Collier.’
‘Thank you, March, just pop it down, we’ll serve ourselves.’
‘Very well, sir.’ March replied as he deposited the tray on the sideboard next to the coffee. ‘Would you like me to clear the other away, Mr Collier?’
‘No need, March. Thank you.’ Collier smiled the same thin smile as before. March stood briefly to attention, gave the same curt nod that he had before and left the room, drawing the door closed silently behind him.
‘At last,’ said Church to himself, getting up and going across to the tray to help himself.
Collier waited for him to finish, to walk back across the room and to sit down before he clicked the slide control again. It was another version of the aerial photo of Miller’s Court, showing the same striding figure but with more of the street in the frame. ‘The press were never given access to this. In fact neither were the police. This is the uncropped photograph that shows Miller’s Court and, if you magnify that section of the photo, you can see the murder scene itself.’
He clicked again. The next image was zoomed in, blurred and grainy. ‘So we can see the yard that Kelly’s room opened onto, and we can even, if we look carefully, make out her door and there, in the open door we can see—’
We all recognised what Collier was describing at the same time, but I was the first to speak: ‘There is someone else there.’
‘Exactly, Mr Sterling.’ Collier responded, a glimmer of acknowledgement in his voice. ‘Two people, not one. It’s a stretch of the imagination but the one in the doorway seems to be looking at the one in the street just as that figure is looking back.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘So one could make the jump that the two were acting in concert. Two people working together to commit murder, neither of whom have ever been caught or broken silence and whose joint existence is only proved by a photo which was only ever released in a deliberately doctored format.’
Collier paused, walking over to where March had left the tea tray. He opened the silver teapot, glanced inside and, seemingly satisfied, dropped the lid back down again.
‘And so, this begins to me to have the whiff of conspiracy about it. And a conspiracy that had direct or indirect influence on the investigation, could suppress evidence at will and did so to enable the perpetration of a series of public and brutal murders.’
Collier turned back to the tray and began the business of filling his cup as he spoke. He added neither milk nor sugar but instead a small slither of lemon peel.
‘This photograph isn’t the only indication. We have also had evidence from another source about information from the cases being systematically controlled and withheld. We have judged it a high possibility that the conspiracy is real and, moreover, could involve a group within law enforcement or even state security. Which is why we have been asked to look into it.’
He took a sip of tea.
‘The forerunner of this office was formed to ensure cartographic accuracy, to fill in the blanks and, where necessary, amend any errors. We continue in this tradition. Part of our brief is to look out for things that shouldn’t be there and make corrections. Mr Church is absolutely right; we are not police, and therefore the identification and capture of the Ripper is none of our concern. Our aim, by which I mean both of your aims, Mr Church, Mr Sterling,’ he looked at each of us in turn, ‘is to ascertain the extent of the conspiracy, identify its personnel and remove it in a way that causes no embarrassment or unwelcome publicity to the Government.’
He looked round at us brightly. ‘Now I do believe that March has been good enough to provide biscuits, so may I suggest we take a break?’
Church moved first, then Green. I glanced across to see what the scruffily dressed Mac thought of all this, but he had departed as imperceptibly as he had arrived.
I stood and stared at the picture on the screen where the figure was leaning out of the doorway to 13 Miller’s Court. One arm, slightly blurred, seemed to be holding on to the edge of the door and it was difficult to tell from this angle if he was opening it to leave or pulling it closed behind him.
7. Patience
The break was brief, and we moved quickly on. Green handed out manila files thick with paper as Collier outlined our first steps. Church had been tasked with interviewing Sir Anthony Willard, a surgeon who had played a prominent part in the original investigation, while I was off to Whitechapel to, in Collier’s words, ‘sound out a few of the locals’.
I was looking through my file of paper, trying to avoid the worst of the photographs and still not really sure what on earth I was doing there when March came back into the briefing room with a second pot of tea and the news that Milady wanted to see me.
March led me out of the room, back towards the front door and up the sweep of the main stairs, striding ahead of me with a conversation-discouraging demeanour. I followed along in silence to a room at the front of the first floor. March knocked on the door and waited. A few moments passed before it was opened by a tall woman whom I recognised as Britannia’s companion from the night before. She wore the same chauffeur-cum-bodyguard uniform and the same air of grim watchfulness; she opened the door and stood to one side as we walked in.
A large mahogany dining table occupied the centre of the room. The same wood panelled the lower part of the room’s walls while their upper halves were darkly painted and thickly arrayed with rugged landscapes. Fully one half of the table was covered with stacks of letters and documents arranged around a teletype terminal, the wiring for which snaked to a comparatively new-looking socket in the wall. The room was bright, lit by a large bay window running for most of its width, where a chaise longue and low table sat, framed by heavily patterned and slightly faded velvet curtains. An ornate gas chandelier hung from the ceiling, aflame despite the daylight.
But it was the room’s main occupant that drew the eye. She was flamboyantly costumed in dark green velvet, sleeves fashionably puffed and picked out in patterned silk. A feathered hat lay behind her on a side chair, gloves draped carefully next to it. Her dark hair was set in ornate waves, her make-up perfect and face serene: a marked contrast to the last I had seen of her the night before, standing on a table and conducting the National Anthem.
She looked up from what looked like a lengthy teletype message and smiled. ‘Ah, Sterling, do join me. Kitty, you can leave us.’ The girl paused for a moment before she moved. March opened the door for her and followed her out. A clock struck the hour somewhere, back in the house, its insistent chimes echoing through the marble floor of the entrance hall below.
Milady waited until the door closed, then leaned back from the table and looked me over for a moment before speaking. In sober daylight she looked older than she had appeared at the previous night’s revels, though no less striking; her features unmarred by fatigue, the ghost of a smile hovering.
‘Agent Sterling. Do take a seat.’
I pulled out the chair nearest to me and sat down. ‘Is that who I am now?’
She reached into a silver box by her elbow, took out a thin, black cigarillo and tamped it into a dull ivory holder. ‘It would seem the most attractive identity of the options available, wouldn’t you say? Captain Brown won’t stand up to more than the most superficial scrutiny and Charles Maddox is wanted for murder and treason. Spending some time here with us would seem to be highly convenient, even desirable, at this juncture.’ She lit the end of the cigarillo from a lighter set into a large malachite block that was weighing down a particularly thick
sheaf of paperwork. She smoked in a leisurely way, blowing the strong-smelling smoke over her shoulder in the general direction of the windows. ‘Unless you care to test your mettle against the efforts of the Bureau of Engine Security? They do seem awfully keen to find you.’ The smile half-materialised then, the edges of her mouth twitching ever so slightly upwards.
I couldn’t fault her logic, but I didn’t intend to give her the satisfaction of capitulating too quickly. ‘I’m not sure I would be too worried if their search methods are as lackadaisical as their detective work.’
The smile began to fade again. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well they seemed to be labouring under the impression that I was a sort of smuggler and that Mrs Cooper was a spy.’
‘Well I can’t speak for the former but the latter,’ Milady drew on the cigarillo again and another wave of smoke followed the first, ‘is undoubtedly the truth.’
Suddenly the room seemed like a very still and real and vivid place. I felt myself shiver in a way that I wasn’t able to entirely blame on the night before. ‘What?’
A wide smile beamed across her face. ‘Oh, I assumed you’d know, being on such good terms?’ She watched me as she drew on her cigarillo again. I could smell the tobacco now: dark but somehow floral. ‘Mrs Cooper, dearly and recently departed owner of her eponymous establishment, was a spy for the American rebels, and probably since long before you knew her. We suspect that they funded her enterprise in the first place as a sort of listening station. Did you know that the Confederate States Ambassador was a frequent visitor? No doubt Cooper had listening devices in the rooms and reported everything back to her superiors.’
‘Superiors?’ I was still struggling to believe that Mrs Cooper was a spy. We had been quite close, I thought. I had never even suspected that she was anything other than a shrewdly genial club owner.
‘The Continental Intelligence Agency they seem to be intent on calling themselves. What’s left over from the old Union army intelligence. Little more than three men and a dog huddled round a stove in New Hampshire, but a proper name goes a long way to advertising the seriousness of one’s endeavour, don’t you agree?’
