From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  ‘Or our first kiss,’ Mr Mercier said softly and with, I like to flatter myself, the slightest touch of regret.

  I sighed. ‘Exactly.’ Again I offered him my hand, only this time he took it and we shook hands as formally as strangers. ‘I wish you all the best, Mr Mercier,’ I said as cordially as I could.

  ‘And may I be the first to offer my congratulations, Miss Redmayne?’ he said, clearly struggling to hide his annoyance.

  I smiled and shook my head. ‘I meant what I said,’ I said with a laugh. ‘Cats in a bag.’

  I watched him walk away until he had vanished into the fog and the muffled sound of his footsteps died slowly away. I could have run after him again, of course I could, but to what end? It was clear to me now, and in fact had probably always been clear to me deep down, that my wistful daydreams about making him a part of my life had indeed been nothing more than ridiculous fantasies, childlike in their simplicity and just as pathetically unrealistic. In fact, although his words had stung more than I could bear, he was quite right in his cruel estimation of my motivation - I was indeed a spoilt little rich girl indulging in a preposterous fancy for someone who could never really hurt me, safe in the knowledge that the man that I knew deep down, however much I fought it, was really right for me would wait until I was ready for him. Poor Patrick.

  ‘I have been such an idiot,’ I said to myself as I turned to go back to the house. ‘What was I thinking?’ It wasn’t so much my sheer foolishness that stung though, it was the look on Henry Mercier’s face when he looked at me in all my finery, it was the sheer and palpable disdain that he had for everything about me. I could see now that the main obstacle in the way of Henry being a part of my life was not so much the differences between us but rather Henry himself and at that moment, my stupid girlish and ridiculous longing to make him a part of my world was replaced by a sort of shamed wish that he should never return to it.

  Patrick and Lucasta had already gone by the time I got back home, shivering with cold and no doubt looking suspiciously disheveled although the staff were far too well trained to so much as bat an eyelash at either that or at my pulling the now very crumpled envelope out from inside my tight bodice. My fingers shook with impatience and nerves as I ripped it open and let it drop to the floor then quickly scanned the small scrap of paper inside.

  ‘Emma has moved on from Thrawl Street to Crossingham’s lodging house at 35 Dorset Street. I thought you might like to know although, and I am well aware that my advice is falling upon deaf ears, I would absolutely NOT advise that you attempt to go there alone. H. Mercier.’

  I crumpled the paper in my fist then marched purposefully across the hall to my father’s study, a gloomy book lined room that I rarely had occasion to enter and mostly associated with my mother’s final illness when I had been sent downstairs from her sick room several times in order to fetch a favourite book from the well stocked shelves. I don’t think I had set foot inside since then and my heart was in my mouth as I gently pushed open the door and stole inside.

  The study smelt strongly of leather bound books, cigar smoke and the sweet incense that my father loved to burn in beautiful blue and white porcelain burners when he was relaxing with a book. I smiled as I went over to the desk, thinking how the mingled scent of incense and cigars would always bring him to mind, just as the smell of lavender and rose face cream would forever remind me of my mother.

  Her portrait, serene, pale and limpid eyed in primrose yellow silk and muslin, hung over the fireplace in the study and I glanced up at it with a smile as I quickly sifted through the pile of pamphlets and books that littered the desk, hunting for my father’s battered pocket atlas of London. I’d learned my lesson now and was determined never again to approach the dark and warren like streets of Whitechapel without proper preparation.

  ‘Where on earth it it?’ I wondered aloud as I scattered letters, receipts and leaflets all over the desk in my search before giving up and turning my attention to the drawers. The top one was locked, unsurprisingly enough, but the one below slid open and proved to be stuffed full of even more seemingly random pieces of paper: letters from admirers, invoices for painting commissions, bills from father’s tailor, all shoved in together with no thought for order. I smiled wryly as I remembered my poor Mama’s despair over father’s untidy and disorganised ways and how he had blithely kissed it away, always reminding her that she only had herself to blame for choosing to marry a Bohemian artist rather than the peer that her parents had lined up for her hand.

  I pulled out a sheaf of papers, some of which were yellowed with age and looked to be several years old and idly looked through them, thinking that perhaps it might be time for him to hire a proper secretary to keep his affairs in order and that it was wonder he ever got paid when he seemed to have such scant regard for bills and invoices when a letter somewhere in the middle captured my attention.

  It was the return address at the very top that first caught my attention: Panacea House, Rayleigh, Essex. I may not have known very much about the world but I had heard of Panacea House, a well known, very exclusive and reputedly shockingly expensive ‘rest home’ for women suffering for nervous complaints or to put it another way - a lunatic asylum for inconvenient aristocratic ladies. It was one of those places that upper crust families like Lucasta’s or my own, I suppose, sent girls and women who didn’t quite fit in or were deemed liable to cause a scandal with their errant or erratic behaviour. It was either that or marriage to whoever would have them.

  I let the other papers fall back into the drawer as I quickly read through the letter, which was dated from October 1882 and then, my eyes wide with shock and disbelief, read it through yet again, forcing myself to slow down and carefully take in each and every word. I could hardly believe what I was seeing, could hardly believe that I had been so soundly deceived in such a way and not just me but everyone else as well. Or had they? Was I the last to know?

  ‘This changes everything,’ I said to myself as I shakily tucked the letter and Henry’s note into my reticule and dashed from the room.

  Chapter Seventeen, Cora, 1888

  The inquest was already well under way in the Working Lad’s Institute on Whitechapel Road when I sneaked in through the heavy double doors and slid into one of the few remaining seats left at the back of the room, which was packed full of people, mostly women, all craning their necks to get a better view of the coroner as he spoke so that my view was obscured by a sea of dark bonnets and nodding heads.

  ‘Hot in here, isn’t it,’ someone said close by and I turned to see Emma grinning at me from a seat just behind. I smiled back, noticing how much thinner and paler she looked and how despite the broad grin there was something wary about the way that her eyes, which were under shadowed by dark smudges of exhaustion, didn’t quite meet mine.

  ‘Boiling,’ I agreed, pointlessly fanning myself with my hand as I looked around. It was autumn’s last warm blast of the year and we were all sweltering in the small room which reeked of oniony sweat, bad breath and, oddly, old fish. A few women were patting lavender oil behind their ears in an attempt to freshen themselves up but they need not have bothered as the sweet spicy scent was no match for the rank smell that surrounded us all.

  ‘What did I miss?’ I whispered to Emma, ignoring the cross looks and pointed sssh’s of the people around us.

  She gave a delicate shrug. ‘Nothing much,’ she said with a hint of her usual chirpiness. ‘Just the usual he said and she said. The doctor who examined poor old Annie is up next which should be more interesting.’

  I shuddered. I’d already heard what was done to the woman found in Hanbury Street - even though Pa tried to keep us from finding out about it, it was impossible not to hear the rumour and gossip that churned around the police station during the days after the murder. ‘He almost took her head clean off,’ Ned told me in a whisper when I was hanging about with him in the yard, enjoying the sunshine in between my chores while he puffed almost angrily on a c
igarette while glancing uneasily over his shoulder in case one of the Sergeants came out and caught him. ‘He cut it all around and yanked on it but it didn’t come away, see.’

  I must have gone pale or looked queasy or something because Emma leaned across and awkwardly patted my arm. She was wearing grimy black fine knitted mittens with a tear across the top and her fingernails were broken and thick with grime. ‘Are you sure you should be here?’ she asked in concern. ‘It’s not a pleasant business. I can tell you what happened later on if you’d rather go.’

  I shook my head. ‘I want to hear it for myself,’ I said before turning back to the front where a small dapper looking man with a neatly clipped grey beard and small glasses was taking the stand. To my relief it wasn’t Dr Killeen but one of his colleagues, Dr Phillips, a kind, gently spoken man whom I knew by sight from his occasional forays into the station. He coughed nervously before he began to speak and removed his glasses, played with them a bit then replaced them several times before addressing the room. ‘I think that it might be advisable if any children, women or people of a nervous or gentle disposition leave the room before I begin,’ he said with a frown that took in the gaggle of women who sat agog and eager for gory details on the front few rows, their children perched, bored and yawning on their laps. ‘The evidence that I am about to present is of a rather, shall we say, distressing nature.’

  He paused and looked pointedly at the women, clearly waiting for them to get up and leave, but instead they merely stared back at him, folded their arms and settled themselves more comfortably in their chairs, making it clear that they were not to budged. ‘Ah.’ Clearly knowing when to concede defeat, the doctor rustled the papers in front of him one last time then addressed the room again, first describing the scene when he had first seen the body of Annie Chapman in the yard off Hanbury Street then, with another pained look at the women on the front rows, continuing on to her many injuries.

  I sank back against my chair as I listened, wondering not for the first time, why on earth I had come here to hear all of this. I suppose the truth was that since seeing the body of Martha Tabram laid out on the mortuary slab and then the sad and desolate site where poor Poll Nichols had met her end, I’d felt some sort of strange connection to these murdered women, had wanted to find out more about them.

  ‘The throat had been severed as before described. The incisions into the skin indicated that they had been made from the left side of the neck. There were two distinct, clean cuts on the left side of the spine.’ He paused and removed his glasses again and rubbed the skin between his eyes as if weary. ‘They were parallel from each other and separated by about half an inch. The muscular structures appeared as though an attempt had been made to separate the bones of the neck.’

  There was a ripple of horror through the room as we all winced, taking in the import of those words. Ned was right, he really had tried to pull her head right off. This was no man, it was a monster. A monster, furthermore, who walked among us still for I knew from my father’s anxious expression and earnest pleas to we girls not to go out at night that he and his colleagues were no closer to catching whoever was responsible for these dreadful murders.

  Dr Phillips paused until the hubbub of appalled muttering had died down then continued at a slower pace, carefully referring to his notes as he went. ‘There were various other mutilations of the body, but I am of the opinion that they occurred subsequent to the death of the woman, and to the large escape of blood from the division of the neck.’ He looked across to the coroner, who had gone ashen as he listened. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, spreading his hands out apologetically. ‘From these injuries, I am satisfied as to the cause of death and I feel that perhaps I ought not to go into further details of the mutilations, which could only be painful to the feelings of the jury and the public.’ The women gave a great collective groan of annoyance - why else did he suppose that they had come there - and he cast them a reproachful look.

  The coroner nodded his assent to this, also looking with annoyance at the women, who shushed then and whispered angrily to each other. I looked back at Emma, expecting to see her grinning away at the macabre pantomime being performed before us, but was surprised to see her staring in rapt and unsmiling attention at Dr Phillips as he started talking again, even leaning forward on her chair with her hands clasped tightly around her knees.

  ‘It must have been a very sharp knife,’ he said turning to nod at a portly dark haired man in a check suit who stood to the side: Inspector Abberline, a seasoned detective with many years prior experience of Whitechapel and the East End, who had been sent from Scotland Yard to solve this case as quickly and efficiently as possible. Pa said that he was a good sort with a quick brain but I knew from Ned that the other policemen were being rather less complimentary about him, disliking his quiet manner and resolute insistence on following police procedure to the letter. ‘A knife with a thin, narrow blade.’ I thought of the stab wounds on Martha Tabram, the blood that had oozed out on to her dress, her flabby face and the foul stench of death that had surrounded her as his voice droned on in the background. ‘There was no evidence about the body of the woman of a struggle having taken place. I am positive that the deceased entered the yard alive as I made a practical search of the passage and the approach to the house and saw no trace of blood.’ Another pause. ‘I am of the opinion that the person who cut the deceased’s throat took hold of her by the chin, and then commenced the incision from left to right.’

  I heard Emma give a small sigh behind me and turned again, this time meeting her eyes. ‘I’ve heard enough,’ she said and got up to leave. I hesitated just for a moment before I stood up too and hurried after her, stumbling over feet and ankles in my haste not to lose her. I turned just once at the door and saw with a blush that Dr Phillips had paused again and that everyone had turned to watch us leave, including Inspector Abberline who was looking at me with interest and, more worryingly, recognition.

  ‘Emma, wait!’ She was already half way along the street, hurrying along with one hand holding her shawl about her shoulders and the other clamped to the front of her black bonnet to stop it falling off as she charged head first through the crowds, clearly determined not to be caught up with. ‘Emma!’ She obviously wasn’t going to stop and wait for me so I had no option but to run after her, bunching my skirts up so that I didn’t trip over them.

  ‘Emma?’ I was panting by the time I caught up with her. ‘What’s wrong?’ I put a hand on her arm to stop her and was a bit surprised when she didn’t just shake it off and go on her way but instead came to a halt and turned slowly and clearly unwillingly towards me.

  ‘Nothing.’ She muttered, not quite meeting my eyes. ‘Nothing’s wrong. Why would it be?’

  ‘Why did you run out of the inquest then?’ I said. We were standing in the middle of the pavement on Whitechapel Road, which was jam packed with the usual wandering throng of traders, housewives in their aprons with baskets slung over their arms and small children darting in and out of the traffic. On the corner of Osborn Street there stood a trio of sad faced flower sellers, hoarsely shouting about their wares above the din of the traffic while further along a knife grinder was cheerfully sharpening knives for a queue of women. I thought of Dr Phillips’ evidence about the murder weapon at the inquest and quickly looked away. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Emma turned on me angrily, almost snarling. ‘There’s nothing wrong so just bloody leave it, why don’t you.’ This time she did yank her arm away from my hand then gathered her grubby yellow shawl tighter about her shoulders as if trying to protect herself. ‘Just leave me alone.’

  I was confused, this wasn’t the Emma that had waved me cheerily off from the steps of Christ Church all those weeks ago. This pale, trembling, wild eyed girl was someone else, was a total stranger in fact and I wondered what on earth had happened to her since the last time we’d met. ‘What’s going on?’ I whispered, pulling her to the side out of the way of the jostling crowds, some
of whom stared at us curiously as they milled around us. ‘Are you in trouble?’

  She laughed nastily. ‘You could say that,’ she said, twisting up her grubby face to stop herself crying. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  I put my arm around her painfully thin shoulders and hugged her close. ‘Maybe I could help you?’ I wasn’t sure how exactly but it felt good to make the offer.

  Emma gave a wavering smile. ‘There’s no one on God’s earth who can help me now,’ she said wearily before giving a rueful little shrug. ‘And there’s no one that I trust enough to help anyway.’

  Did I imagine the resentful look she gave me as she said this? ‘You can trust me,’ I said falteringly, wondering what was going on and hoping that it wasn’t anything serious.

  ‘Can I?’ She shook off my arm and backed away, frowning. No, I hadn’t imagined that look of mingled resentment and anger that glinted in her eyes. ‘We both know that that isn’t true.’

  I stared at her. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ I did though, of course I did. She’d asked me before about the envelope, the one that I’d taken from amongst Martha Tabram’s pile of shabby belongings at the mortuary, and I’d lied about it. Would I still lie about it now though?

  ‘You’re lying,’ Emma whispered, reaching out to grasp my wrist with her thin fingers. ‘What did you do with it?’ Her eyes bored into my mine and although I desperately wanted to look away, I couldn’t. She gave me a little shake. ‘What. Did. You. Do. With. It?’

  I tore my gaze away then. ‘I gave it back to her,’ I mumbled.

  She released me then and took a step back. ‘You did what?’ she said, confused. ‘Gave it back to whom?’

  I shook my head, not really wanting to tell her about my pathetic trip to Highbury but knowing that I must nonetheless. ‘The girl on the envelope,’ I muttered. ‘Alice Redmayne. I gave it back to her.’