by Alex Grecian
“Telling us he has Walter,” Hammersmith said.
“Perhaps. Or maybe just telling us he knows something we don’t. Each line of this thing is a separate jab.”
“The spelling is—”
“The spelling’s a ruse, I think. Meant to make it seem like he’s not as smart as he actually is. He’s used Latin in the first line, so he’s more educated than he’d like us to think. And there are other inconsistencies here. A study in misdirection.”
“Do you really think he ate someone’s kidney?”
Kingsley pointed to the splayed corpse on the table. “That one’s missing his left kidney. But there’s no indication that anyone ate it. If he cooked anything here, he cleaned up after himself. And if he ate it raw, there are no signs of it, no bits of it dropped on the body, no extra blood left on the outside of the clothing or on the table itself. Nothing on the sideboard. If he consumed any part of this man, he’s not a sloppy eater.”
“Then where is it?”
“I think he took it with him.”
“But he wants us to think he ate it? Why?”
“Perhaps he only means to disgust us, to throw us off our game. He’s taken all their tongues as well. That seems to be his calling card.”
“All right,” Hammersmith said. “In the second line of his poem—”
“You think it’s a poem?”
“I’m more versed in literature than poetry. He makes it sound like they surprised him. Or maybe even hurt him. I’d guess by the fourth line he’s talking about the Karstphanomen.”
“That seems like a safe assumption. Which would indicate that these four men were all a part of that secret society. But it’s hard to say whether he’s randomly depleting their ranks or is only attacking the men who were directly a part of his incarceration. Does his revenge extend to all of them or only those few that had a hand in torturing him?”
Hammersmith pointed above the message to the row of four circles. “Four zeroes, four victims. This looks angry to me. I think these must be the specific men who tortured him. Or some of them. There can’t be many more of them, can there?” He sniffed and looked away. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that Walter’s been missing for a year? The same amount of time Jack was held prisoner?”
“It’s hard to say what’s a coincidence in all this mayhem.”
“If he’s telling the truth, I’m sure he means to kill again before he’s done. It’s all he ever does. It’s all he’s good at. ‘The crow and the white king.’ What do you suppose they are?”
“I don’t know.”
“People? His next victims?”
“Or chess pieces,” Kingsley said. “He may be talking about the rook. When he says crow, I mean. Rook is another word for a crow, and a white king is, of course, one of the two objectives in chess.”
“So either he’s referring to a game—he sees all this as some sort of gambit and we’re supposed to figure out his next move, or maybe make the next move ourselves—or these are references to people and this is some sort of riddle. The white king could be the leader of the Karstphanomen. Who do you suppose that would be?”
“It’s a secret society for a reason. I recognize two of these three men, though.” Kingsley indicated the dead men lined up under the message, but he didn’t look directly at them. “One’s a very successful solicitor. He’s backed a number of enterprises lately.”
“Enterprises?”
“Oh, a small string of tea shops, a haberdashery, I hear he’s even got some money invested in Plumm’s. I don’t know them, but I’d wager the other men here are also prominent in their fields. Once we identify them, we might have a better idea of the circles Jack’s stalking.”
“Whoever their leader is, he’d best be wary.”
“For all we know, he may already be dead. For all we know, one of these men is the Ripper’s ‘white king.’”
“No,” Hammersmith said. “I don’t think so. Jack’s leaving clues. He wants me to search for him, he wants me there when he does it, when he claims his last victim, doesn’t he?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Otherwise, why tease me, why write this here in this way so he can be sure it’ll get brought to my attention?”
“Why you?”
“I’ve been after Walter for a year. Jack’s not stupid. He’s been watching me.” Hammersmith pounded his fist against the palm of his other hand. “He might have been right there the whole while I was looking for him. But why act now?”
“Why does he do any of this? You’re trying to make sense of pure chaos.”
“If I don’t catch him, do you think he’ll go back to his old ways after he’s had his vengeance? Don’t you think he’ll start up again, killing women?”
“I don’t think he’ll ever stop,” Kingsley said.
“Nor do I,” Hammersmith said.
“Don’t let him distract you. Find Day. I’ll do everything I can to help.”
33
Day came blinking out into the morning sun and rested in the shade of the department store while he got his bearings. He was so used to the smothering fog that the city looked new and bright and innocent to him. The workshop was behind Plumm’s, and so, once he realized where he was, he jogged up Moorgate and through Great Bell Alley. His leg hurt and he couldn’t go as fast as he needed to, but there was a part of him that was afraid of what he’d find when he got to Drapers’ Gardens and Esther Paxton’s little shop.
If I hadn’t spent so much time discovering the bodies in the workshop . . . But no, he stopped that thought before he could finish it. If Jack had paid a visit to Esther, he had done it in the night while Day was at the bottom of a canvas cart. If Esther was dead, she had been dead for quite some time already.
He bypassed the shrubbery where he had spent his first days of freedom and limped down the stone path to the door. The wire was not across the window, Esther’s wares were not displayed, and the globe above the door was still lit, even though it was broad daylight. Esther would not have wasted expensive oil. Day found that he couldn’t swallow and he had to lean over and spit. He caught his breath and knocked at the door. There was no answer. He tried the knob and it turned easily. He swung the door open and stepped inside, careful and quiet, conscious of the fact that Jack might be near.
It was dark inside the room. Day listened and thought he heard a small sound somewhere far away at the back of the house. He left the door open and took a step forward. Something crunched under his foot and he drew back. After a moment’s hesitation, he went to the window, keeping close to the wall as he moved, and unlatched the shutters, threw them back. The room was immediately awash in bright sunlight, and Day blinked. He turned around.
Esther’s rug was heaped against the wall, and all the furniture that had been on it was scattered about. A table with a pretty glass inlay was upside down, the glass crushed and pebbled. Two chairs were on their backs, one missing a leg. A lamp had broken, adding its glass to that of the table, and a puddle of oil had spread to the bounds of its ability, soaking one corner of the rug. Most alarming was a hole in the wall next to the door, an ugly gash, the wallpaper around it torn and tattered.
Day drew a ragged breath and licked his lips. “Esther,” he said. Softly, but the sound of his own voice gave him courage and he called again, louder this time. “Esther!”
There was an answering cry, but he couldn’t tell if it was her. The sound was high-pitched but muffled, and there were no words, only a senseless animal sound. Day thought of Jack’s victim, the man he had called “Kitten,” and he shivered.
Day moved quickly now. Someone was alive in the draper’s shop, and that gave him hope. He hurried across the room as well as he was able, avoiding the glass and setting a chair upright as he passed. There was an inner door and he pushed it open, his fist raised in defense. Nothing. Only a short pa
ssage that he knew led to a tiny parlor at the back and a staircase that led to the rooms upstairs where he kept his meager belongings: his change of clothing, his jars of tobacco and rolling papers, a small decanter of brandy. He called out again.
“Esther? Esther, are you here?”
He listened and heard the animal sound again coming from the parlor.
Day bounded past the staircase and through the last door into the room at the back. Esther Paxton was propped up against the far wall. Her legs stuck straight out from her body, her skirts hiked too high for modesty and her hair falling in tangled ringlets round her face. It was not bright in the room, but a window was open and Day could see that she had a black eye. It looked to Day as if her nose might be broken, and blood had crusted around her mouth and chin. The front of her dress was dark and wet, and a long smear of blood trailed down the wall toward her body.
But her chest was rising and falling. She was breathing. She was alive.
He went to her and knelt in her blood, which had pooled beneath her. He stood and opened another window to get more light in the room and knelt again, examining the wounds in her stomach. She had been stabbed at least twice, but not deeply, and her dress was already going stiff as her blood dried. He had no way of knowing how long she’d been lying there, and now he cursed himself for taking so long in the department store workshop. He was always a step behind Jack, and the people around him paid the price.
He took off his jacket and balled it up, lifted her head, and laid it back down on the jacket, hoping it might make her more comfortable. “Don’t stop breathing, Esther. Just keep breathing. That’s all you have to do now.”
He left her there and ran back through the shop to the front door and pelted out onto the street. He dashed up Moorgate as fast as he could, ignoring the pain in his leg. The usual gang of boys loitered at the intersection near Finsbury Circus, waiting to help pedestrians. He recognized one of them, a lad who occasionally scouted tobacco for him.
“How fast can you run, Jerome?”
“Pretty fast, sir.”
“Get to a telephone. Do you know where the nearest telephone is? Go to it and call University College Hospital. Ask for Dr Bernard Kingsley. Tell him Walter Day needs him to come straightaway. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you know Paxton’s shop off the gardens?”
“I do.”
“Tell him to go there. Tell him to send his best people there. Someone’s badly injured and may be dying, may be dead already if he doesn’t hurry.”
“There’s nearer doctors to here, sir, if it’s a hurry you’re in.”
“Yes. That’s a good lad. After you make the call, find the nearest doctor and get him over there, too. Get two doctors. Get three. Bring whoever you can muster. Go now.”
Jerome nodded and went back to his cluster of friends. Day grew anxious as he watched the boys talk, but in an instant three of the boys had peeled off and were running in different directions. Jerome had delegated his errands to some of the others. He hoped it would be Jerome himself making the call to Kingsley. Trusting that the boys could move more swiftly than he could, Day returned to the shop and checked again on Esther. She was still breathing, steady but irregular.
He wondered at the fact that Dr Kingsley’s name had come into his head at the moment he needed to remember it. Now that things were unraveling, there was a lot that was coming back to him. Like a fog being lifted.
The light from the window glinted off something metallic beneath Esther’s legs, and Day recognized the brass knob at the end of his cane. He pulled the walking stick out from under her and scraped a few drops of dry blood off the shaft with his thumbnail.
Had Esther used his cane to protect herself or had Jack left it to taunt Day?
He moistened his cuff with spit and used it to clean some of the blood from Esther’s face. He willed her to open her eyes, and when she didn’t he stood and turned the knob of the cane until it clicked. Apparently neither Jack nor Esther had realized it was a sword cane. He drew a two-foot dagger from the stick and tested the blade against his thumb.
Then he left the shop again, confident in the knowledge that the best doctor in London would save Esther’s life. He marched back to Moorgate and west to Plumm’s. He had determined that, one way or another, his long war with Jack the Ripper was going to end.
34
Timothy Pinch swept into the kitchen and dropped his black bag on the table next to the body. Dr Kingsley looked up and raised an eyebrow, then returned to his work, probing the incisions in the dead man’s back.
“Took you long enough,” he said.
“Well, you know, Fiona came round, and I thought you’d want me to give her the details.” Pinch removed his jacket and folded it lengthwise, draped it over the back of a chair, and smoothed out the wrinkles.
“Why would I want you to tell my daughter about a murder?”
“She’s a curious girl.” Pinch stopped rolling up his sleeves for a moment in order to peer over Kingsley’s shoulder at the corpse.
“That she is,” Kingsley said. “And you’re a curious fellow.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind.”
“What are we doing?” Pinch clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “Are they ready for transport? I’ve got a wagon waiting at the curb.”
Kingsley grunted and poked tweezers deep into one of the wounds. He pulled out a long dark brown hair and straightened up, holding it to the light that streamed in through the back door. Pinch leaned in for a look.
“That hair doesn’t belong to this chap here,” he said.
“No,” Kingsley said. “Nor does it belong to any of the other gentlemen we’ve got in here.” He gestured at the two dead men sitting with their hands nailed to the wall.
“What about the man in the parlor?”
“I don’t think so. I haven’t got to him yet, but—”
“I looked in on him before I came in here,” Pinch said. “He’s got yellow hair. Unless the head in there doesn’t belong to the body in there.”
“Good point. Let’s make sure the bones match up in the spine. It’s entirely possible he brought another head with him and took that poor fellow’s.”
“Who would do such a thing?”
Kingsley raised an eyebrow again, but didn’t respond.
“So much anger,” Pinch said.
“Not necessarily. Have you got a pouch for this?”
Pinch produced a pouch from his waistcoat pocket and Kingsley dropped the hair into it.
“I think it’s possible our murderer has finally made a mistake,” Kingsley said.
“What, the hair? It’s not much.”
“No, but it’s more than we had.”
“What’s all that mean?” Pinch pointed at the writing on the wall, and Kingsley gave it a glance.
“Not sure,” Kingsley said. “Chess pieces are the obvious inference. Rook and white king. The rest of it’s mostly nonsense.”
“Doesn’t say rook. Says crow. Could mean a doctor.”
“How’s that?”
“Crow. Another word for doctor, you know? On account of the black robes we all used to wear. Made doctors look like big black birds to some people, I suppose. Of course the reference is a bit outdated at this point, but maybe if the age of the fellow who wrote this—”
“A doctor?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Pinch said. “No need to look so ashen and all. Thought we were playing a guessing game.”
Kingsley took a deep breath and nodded. “Yes, indeed. Hadn’t thought of that, is all. A doctor. And if it’s a doctor, what would that make the white king?”
“Haven’t the foggiest.”
“Hmm.”
“All right, then,” Pinch said. “Best get this fellow out of here,
right? You get his legs and I’ll take the torso?”
“Not yet,” Kingsley said. “I haven’t dusted.”
“Oh, that.” Pinch turned away and looked at the counter and the sideboard. “Do you think it’ll do much good?”
“Perhaps.”
“Never has.”
“It did once. That was before your time, lad, but it’s worth putting the effort in.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
Pinch lowered his head and cleared his throat. “Apologies, sir.”
“No harm done. You’re young, that’s all. And you’re intelligent. I was much the same at your age, sorry to say. Anyway, I’ve already taken the ink on these men’s fingertips. It’s over there on the counter, if you’d be so kind.”
“Of course, Doctor.” Pinch straightened his spine, and his eyes darted over the countertop until he saw a slip of parchment. He picked it up and gazed at it, his tongue rolling over the inside of his cheek. After a moment, he went to his bag and rummaged within until he found a magnifying lens. He held the parchment up so that it got full benefit of the light and went over it with his lens. Kingsley watched him, a smile touching the corner of his mouth. “I see,” Pinch said.
“The differences.”
“Yes, quite pronounced, especially here.” Pinch pointed with the end of the lens’s handle. “And here.”
“You’ve got your powder?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Let’s dust every inch of this kitchen, and the parlor, too. If we’re lucky, the killer will have left some impression behind him.”
“It’s amazing, really. If all the fingerprints are different, then what about toe prints? Or earwax? Someday we’ll be comparing blood and saliva and urine. Do you suppose one criminal’s mucus is different from every other? Or perhaps the pattern of the growth of his hair?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
