Sinistrari

by Giles Ekins

  Appeals for witnesses who might have seen Teresa in the last days of her life after she absconded were fruitless. From the day she had fled Mary Magdalene until the day she was discovered nailed to her bloody cross no one had seen her or at least one came forward; now the only memorial to her sad existence was her name chalked upon a murder investigation blackboard.

  Also the names of Sergeant Herbert Gimlet aged thirty-nine and PC Percy Gutteridge, fifty-six years old, good men both, were recorded on Flanagan’s summary board.

  ‘Sorry, Gimlet my old friend,’ he whispered to himself as he studied the boards and then forced his thoughts back to his assessment of the evidence – such as it was.

  Black Eyed Mary and Katie Cornfields were known prostitutes; Alice Newton and Susan Siddons were not. Teresa Reilly had absconded from the home only nine days before her body was discovered, it was possible she had resorted to selling herself in order to eat but there was no means of knowing for certain.

  Either willingly or not, all the victims had presumably climbed into Sinistrari’s black coach or a similar vehicle and taken to meet their dreadful end on the inverted cross. Three of the bodies had been put into the River Thames. Katherine Pellew and Teresa Reilly had been recovered from the scene of their deaths.

  The dates of the killings appeared to coincide with Satanic festivals – although that was a thought that did not appear on the evidence board, Collingwood kept to that particular ‘absurd opinion’ to very much himself. The mere-est hint of such an idea to Warren would certainly lead to his enforced retirement – if not confinement to an asylum.

  Black Eyed Mary Hopwell had died on or about the 30th April – Walpurgis Night; the night when all the worlds witches and demons were abroad, as had Katherine Pellew one year later. Walpurgis Night; the most important date in the Satanic Calendar; that foul sacrilegious night when witches and warlocks meet on the Brocken to revel with the Devil.

  Alice Newton may have died on the night of the Summer Solstice whilst the death of Susan Siddons at the end of October coincided with All Hallows Eve, Hallowe’en, another foul occasion dedicated to the evil and profane.

  Had the poor girls been bloody homage to the Dark Lord Satanachia, tortured sacrifice at some vile satanic Black Mass? Collingwood believed so, believed so with a passion.

  Then PC Percy Gutteridge; the brave Percy Gutteridge who died with Avram’s knife plunged into his chest. Gimlet impaled on cruel spikes, these murders to be laid at Sinistrari’s feet but not related to his satanic activities.

  But all had died in Blackwater House.

  So much agony and death.

  With a sigh of despair, Collingwood made his way across to the other board – to the Whitechapel murder board.

  Polly Nicholls, a forty-two year old alcoholic prostitute, killed in Buck’s Row; strangled, her throat cut and body severely mutilated, her corpse left where she had been murdered. No body parts removed.

  Dark Annie Chapman, forty-seven years old, a homeless prostitute with a long history of alcoholism, murdered in Hanbury Street. Throat cut and body severely mutilated, body parts removed. The possible sighting of her killer by Elizabeth Long, whom Collingwood considered a reliable witness.

  Long Liz Stride, forty-four years old, a prostitute who had left a violent relationship to meet a violent death in Dutfield’s Yard off Berner Street. Throat cut, no mutilation.

  Catherine Eddowes, also aged forty-four, an alcoholic occasional prostitute murdered in Mitre Square, extensive mutilations and body parts removed.

  Flanagan had also included the previous murders of Martha Tabram and Emma Smith on his board, but only for completeness of record since neither he nor Collingwood, or for that matter many other police officers, believed the same hand committed the killings of Smith and Tabram. Smith had been beaten and a sharp object thrust deep into her vagina and although Tabram had been slashed and stabbed, her injuries bore no relation to that of Nicholls, Chapman or Eddowes. Long Liz Stride did not fit the pattern either and Collingwood was convinced that her killing was also not a ‘Jack the Ripper’ murder, a terminology he hated but which was now very much in common usage since the publication of the Dear Boss letters.

  ‘No,’ he said out aloud, ‘these killings are not carried out by Sinistrari. He may be orchestrating the killer but he is not himself the murderer.’ Flanagan looked up from his desk but said nothing. Collingwood paced back and forth, from board to board, his eyes constantly ranging over the chalk written boards. ‘The answer is there, the answer has to be there.’ he muttered repeatedly to himself.

  He went back to the Sinistrari boards, re- read every word for the twentieth time that morning and then sat down heavily at his desk. His eyes were red rimmed with fatigue. He barely slept in his bed these days, terrified of his dreams, spending long hours in his office, his pipe constantly alight and smoking. Several times he had fallen asleep at his desk, one time singeing his hair as he slumped over his brass-shell ashtray and burning briar.

  He held his head in his hands and closed his eyes, feeling his fatigue flow through him like a wave of melting lead. He awoke with a start, a memory was there, and something had seeped into his consciousness as he dozed. Voices. Voices from a dream, the murdered victims chanting to him as he lay trapped beneath the pitiless spikes. ‘Blind him so he can see, blind him so he can see. Blind him so he can see, blind him so he can see. He remembered, all too vividly the terror of that particular dream, it haunted his waking moments.

  ‘Blind him so he can see,’ he said aloud, ‘blind him so he can see.’

  ‘Sir?’ asked Flanagan.

  ‘Nothing, just something that came to me in a terrible dream.’

  ‘Maybe it has import, sir, dreams can be a mirror to the unconscious mind, perhaps there is something there in your psyche, something buried deep and your dreams are trying to bring it to your conscious mind.’

  ‘I fear that is rather too profound a concept for me, Flanagan,’

  ‘Try it sir, my grandmother used to read dreams, she was able to interpret them and she helped very many people. I remember one time she told me about a man called Seamus Hanlon who had had a dream about faces floating on water. My grandmother told him not to undertake any voyages by sea as the dream portended disaster. What she did not know was that he had booked passage for himself and his family, from Cork to New South Wales on the SS Princess Beatrice. He was planning to emigrate. To start a new life in Australia but so convinced he was by Grandmother’s interpretation that he cancelled the tickets. The Princess Beatrice went down off the southern cape of Africa with a loss of 243 lives. So you see sir, dreams can help in making decisions, can foretell the future and unlock the past. ‘

  ‘You’ll be telling me next to study the entrails of chickens.’ Collingwood answered with a grunt.

  ‘But sir, if there is something,’ pleaded Flanagan, ‘something that can unlock this case, surely, sir, what harm can it do?

  ‘This is stuff and nonsense, good heavens man, we are almost in the twentieth century, and the divination of dreams and portents went out with the Middle Ages.’

  Flanagan gave up at that and picked up a file he was reading, his beard bristling with suppressed indignation, he knew that the interpretation of dreams could bring subconscious thoughts to the fore and he was annoyed that a man of Collingwood’s obvious intelligence could be so closed-minded and obdurate. He heard the rasp of a match on sandpaper and the stuffy office was once again filled with noxious tobacco smoke. He needed fresh air and he got to his feet and stomped outside in high dudgeon.

  With a trickle of remorse, Collingwood watched him go; he hadn’t meant to upset his sergeant, but really, thinking that the interpretation of his worst nightmares was going to solve the case.

  Blind him so he can see. Blind him so he can see. The foul words would not go away, seemingly imprinted in the forefront of his mind as though etched in acid. What could it mean? The only interpretation that made sense was that the answer was
blindingly obvious but he could not see it. But he thought that anyway, without the dubious benefit of horrific nightmares.

  He looked up at the boards again, every word embedded in his mind. He closed his eyes (blinded himself?) and let his thoughts wash over him. Black Eyed Mary, Alice Newton, Susan Siddons, Katie Cornfields, Teresa Reilly, Percy Gutteridge and Herbert Gimlet.

  All had died at Blackwater House. That was it!

  ALL HAD DIED AT BLACKWATER HOUSE!

  He sat up with a start. Blackwater House was the key. Or rather, the purchase of Blackwater House was the key. Sinistrari had bought the house, but how had he purchased it? Where had his money come from? Where does his money come from? Find the source of his money and we will find Sinistrari. He must have bankers. Bank accounts. Bank transactions are traceable.

  Suddenly enthused Collingwood bounded to his feet and began to take box files down from the shelves, flicking through them for the information he sought. He tossed the first one aside, pulled down another file, then another. And another. He shouted for Miggs, annoyed that he could not immediately put his hand to the correct files and that his inconsiderate filing clerk of a constable was out at lunch.

  ‘Blast him. And Flanagan,’ he muttered as Flanagan walked back into the office having walked off his annoyance.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘How did Sinistrari purchase Blackwater House?’

  ‘Purchase Blackwater House?’ Flanagan responded, puzzled.

  ‘Yes, that could be his mistake. He bought the property in his own name. I know we’ve checked at the Land Registry for other recent sales of houses in his name, without success, but in purchasing Blackwater House in his own name he must have left a trail. He must have used solicitors, bankers. Where does he bank, how does he obtain his money? Did he buy other properties? How? Where? Money, Flanagan, we follow the money.’

  ‘Did this come to you in your dreams, sir? Flanagan asked dryly.

  ‘What? No! Of course not.’

  ‘You are looking for something in particular, sir?’ Flanagan asked, nodding at the files that Collingwood had taken down from the shelves.

  ‘Yes, I’m looking for poor Percy Gutteridge’s notes on the sale of Blackwater House. I’m sure he mentioned the agents and bankers and suchlike.’

  Flanagan quickly scanned the rows of files, reached up and pulled three file boxes. ‘They should be in one of these.’ He opened the first, checked the contents list, closed it, opened the second, nodded in satisfaction and flipped through the closely packed pages, slipping them out from the red ribbon that bound the documents together. ‘Here we are,’ he said, extracting several pages from the middle of the file and handing them to Collingwood.

  ‘Excellent, Flanagan, excellent. Now slip the hounds and let the hunt begin.

  JACK THE RIPPER STAYED HIDDEN IN HIS LIVERPOOL lodgings in a back street close to the docks as much as he could, only venturing out to eat at night and choosing only those establishments close to his room. He had some distant Irish connections and Fenian sympathies and he was relying on these to get him aboard a vessel: New York, Boston or Baltimore bound.

  The peremptory knock on his door made his heart leap with sudden fear, had the police caught up with him. A recent newspaper article had run a story about a blood stained shirt given to a landlady for washing and added that the police were watching a certain East End house, waiting for the owner of the shirt to return1 and it seemed clear to the Ripper that his identity must be now be known. The hangman’s shadow crept ever closer. He looked around frantically, there was nowhere to hide except under the bed and it would take all of ten seconds for the police to find him there. Escape? There was only one window, one way out, frantically he tried to open it but the unpainted window frames were so swollen from incipient damp that the window stayed resolutely closed. He desperately he pulled and tugged but the timber was so rotten the handle simply came away in his hand.

  Another heavy knock and then the door swung slowly open to reveal Edward James Sinistrari standing before him, silhouetted against the meagre luminance of the landing gas light and Jack’s bowels turned to water as he desperately tried to control his bladder. The hangman’s noose seemed infinitely preferable to whatever Sinistrari could devise as a means of dispatch and he fell to his knees in submission

  ‘Master,’ he stammered, ‘a surprise, a most pleasing surprise.’

  ‘I think not but no matter.’

  ‘How, how did you find me? I thought …’

  ‘You thought yourself invisible? Beyond my powers?’

  ‘No Master, indeed not! Most certainly not, sir, I know your powers to be limitless. Boundless. Infinite.’

  ‘Do stop babbling, man and get up.’ Sinistrari looked around the meagrely furnished room, noting the none too clean sheets on the rusty iron bed, the worn carpet, the unwashed windows and the all-pervasive smell of cheap lodgings; the smell of sewage, unwashed bodies, dirty laundry, boiled cabbage, cat urine, mouse droppings and rotting refuse and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘I see you have not risen much in the world since fleeing your choice abode in Whitechapel.’

  ‘It’s only temporary until I can get out of the country; the police are on to me and I can’t go back to London. They’ll catch me and I’ll hang for certain.’

  ‘The police are checking the passengers and crew on all steamers leaving Liverpool, so I do not advise that course. Besides, your work for me is not yet completed.’

  ‘There is panic in the streets, the police are discredited, I have done all you asked, I mean two killings on the one night, what more could I do?’ taking credit for a killing he did not commit and then suddenly fearful that Sinistrari would recognise the lie.

  ‘More, much more,’ Sinistrari said, seemingly unaware of the Ripper’s falsehood, ‘you will return with me to London. Liverpool is not safe for you in any case; they are searching for you here. I have … premises in Richmond, just across the river from Kew Gardens, they do have a most interesting collection and we really must visit sometime. I have need of a coachman and I know you to be skilled in that department. Oh yes, there is much to be done and we shall have such a jolly time. Come, I have a cab waiting.’

  ‘Sinistrari took hold of the Ripper’s arm and led him out and down the stairs.

  Chapter 28

  AS EXPECTED, THE VISIT TO EDMUNDS, EDMUNDS, SLEIGHT AND RACKHAM, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths had been a waste of time but nonetheless, the ground had to be covered.

  The senior partner, Septimus Rackham creaked as he stood up to greet Collingwood and Flanagan as they were shown into his office. Rackham was ancient and bent, with thin white hair curled in spiralling wisps about protuberant red ears and square-rimmed pince- nez perched precariously on the tip of a long pointed nose. Shaking hands with him was like shaking hands with a bundle of dry twigs, complete with flaking bark thought Flanagan. The act of shaking hands with Collingwood and Flanagan appeared to exhaust Lawyer Rackham and he collapsed back into his chair before waving his visitors to a pair of hard wooden chairs before his desk. Surreptitiously Flanagan brushed the dust from the chair before he sat down, the dust motes dancing in a bright beam of sunlight from the narrow window to the side of the lawyer’s office.

  ‘How can I help you, gentlemen?’ Rackham wheezed reluctantly, as if the emission of breath was a practice to be discouraged.

  ‘You handled the purchase of Blackwater House, I believe, sir?’ We are making enquiries about that transaction,’ Collingwood asked, ensuring that he carefully enunciated each word, suspecting that Rackham’s hearing might not be as good as once it was.

  ‘Blackwater House? Hmm, quite so, yes I do recollect,’ ruminated Rackham ponderously. ‘How indeed could one not recollect? A house of such infamy, the murder of so many innocents. Indeed, sir, I do recall. Quite so!’

  ‘You did not deal directly with the purchaser, Edward Sinistrari, is that correct?’

  Rackham nodded his head and then closed his eyes as if f
alling asleep.

  ‘Mister Rackham?’

  The ancient lawyer opened his eyes again,

  Yes? Where were we?’

  ‘Blackwater House.’

  ‘Ah yes. Quite so.’

  ‘You handled the sale on behalf of Edward Sinistrari?’

  ‘Only indirectly and it was not I who dealt with the matter but rather Young Mister Giggleswick. Quite so.’ Rackham started to nod off again but then roused himself sufficiently to ring a bell on his desk to summon his secretary who led the two police officers in turn to the office of Young Mister Giggleswick.

  As it turned out, Young Mister Giggleswick, himself only a few years younger than the ancient Rackham, could tell them very little. He instructed his clerk to fetch the relevant file from the archive store and passed it over to Collingwood. Flanagan pulled his chair up close and they read the slender contents together. The file contained precisely fifteen items.

  Instructions to purchase Blackwater House on behalf of an Edward Sinistrari had been received through the post. How the purchaser had obtained the details of the property, Giggleswick was unable to say. Payment for the property and all the conveyance costs, deposits, legal fees, agent’s commission etc. were made by Bankers Cheques drawn on Portman’s Bank in the Strand.

  No direct contact was ever made by the solicitors with Sinistrari and the letter of instruction and subsequent correspondence had been signed by an A. V. Ramsdon on behalf of the purchaser. The return address was a Post office box at Holborn Post Office. Collingwood and Flanagan looked at each other as they read the name of the signatory, A.V Ramsdon, obviously the late unlamented Avram, Sinistrari’s man, the killer of Percy Gutteridge. Once completion of the sale had taken place and the purchase price paid in full, the Title Deeds had been collected by messenger.

  Where and to whom they were delivered Young Mister Giggleswick could not say.

  After consultation with Mister Rackham, Giggleswick reluctantly allowed the file to be taken away. Collingwood and Flanagan were both required to sign a receipt before it was handed over.