[Oscar Wilde 07] - Jack the Ripper: Case Closed

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘What happened to her?’ I asked.

  ‘She died. Went to Ramsgate with Walter Wellbeloved – dirty weekend. He said she was his spirit guide. They’ll call it anything, these old buggers, won’t they? Anyway, he took her for a dip and she drowned. She couldn’t swim.’

  Oscar began to laugh.

  ‘I thought she was a mermaid,’ I protested.

  ‘She was – in the bath here.’ He began to giggle once more. ‘Poor girl. I was very fond of her. And to be fair to Wellbeloved, I think he was fond of her, too.’ He sighed and looked around his emporium, as if conjuring up the spirits of all the acts and turns he had been proud to present across the years. ‘I’ve had ’em all,’ he cooed, ‘Mermaids, midgets, savage Zulus.’

  ‘And now you’ve had enough,’ said Oscar briskly. ‘You’re moving, I see?’

  Norman returned from his reveries. ‘How do you see that, Mr Wilde?’

  ‘Well, there’s dust on your forearms and when you kindly opened the door to us there was a line of perspiration across your brow, which suggested unaccustomed exertion. You’ve been moving heavy items that have not been moved for a while.’

  Norman tittered. ‘Picking up some of Mr Holmes’s tricks, eh? Yes, I’m cataloguing the collection prior to my departure – for Chicago.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Oscar. ‘When are you going?’

  ‘As soon as possible.’

  ‘Are you going alone?’

  ‘I’m not taking any of my artistes with me, if that’s what you mean. I shall be recruiting new talent in Illinois. They have taller giants and shorter midgets there than we do. I’m just taking my cabinets with me – about a hundred cabinets in all, that’s more than enough.’

  ‘Featuring?’

  ‘The collection of a lifetime!’ Norman moved across the shop to the nearest cabinet and lifted its blanket covering slowly – as if he had been a child raising the curtain on a toy theatre. ‘Behold,’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the world’s smallest whale,’ he breathed, his voice thick with wonder.

  ‘Really?’ said Oscar, going over to the cabinet and peering in at the specimen. ‘It looks more like a bloater in aspic to me.’

  ‘You may well be right, Mr Wilde.’ He dropped the blanket over the glass case and lifted the curtain on the adjacent cabinet. ‘This may be more to your liking.’

  ‘Good grief,’ cried Oscar. ‘It’s an ass’s head.’

  ‘It is all that remains of the donkey that carried Our Lord into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday.’

  ‘That certainly is remarkable,’ said Oscar.

  Tom Norman covered up the animal’s head and fixed his beady eyes on Oscar. ‘My father was a butcher. I began in the butcher’s trade. I keep his knives still. They come into their own now and then.’

  ‘Do you have human specimens?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ answered Norman eagerly. He stood, with his hat well pushed back on his head, toying with his black locks while surveying the room, pondering which case or cabinet to unveil next. ‘Mr Barnum had the Siamese Twins, of course, and the advantage that they were living and breathing creatures. I have the Trowbridge Triplets. The disadvantage is that they died at birth. However, there are three of them and they’re conjoined in a most interesting fashion. If I can remember where they are, I’ll show you.’

  ‘No, no thank you,’ protested Oscar. ‘Please don’t trouble yourself.’

  ‘No trouble,’ said Norman, squeezing himself between cabinets. ‘And no charge, either.’ He moved like a dancer. ‘It’s good to meet people who appreciate the exotic. Not everyone does nowadays. Back here I have some wonderful novelties – not just freaks of nature, but intriguing parts of the anatomy. Somewhere I have an amusing case featuring the private parts of well-endowed young men.’

  ‘How on earth have you come by those?’

  ‘Medical students used to bring them over. Young doctors have a lively sense of humour. One offered me a female head not long ago. Said it was Mary, Queen of Scots and he’d found it washed up by the Tower of London. We all know Mary wasn’t beheaded at the Tower. She was executed up at Fotheringay. Funny folk, doctors.’ Norman looked at me and giggled coldly. ‘Am I right, Dr Doyle?’

  I did not know what reply to make, so I deflected his question with an enquiry of my own. ‘And how do you preserve your specimens?’ I asked.

  ‘Formaldehyde,’ he said. ‘It’s a chemical that’s quite transformed the art of embalming.’ He was turning to and fro within his maze of cabinets, lifting and dropping the blanket coverings of his cases as he spoke. ‘We may have to leave the mummified members for another day,’ he said. ‘It’s all a bit of a muddle back here, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s an extraordinary collection,’ said Oscar admiringly. ‘I am sorry you are closing.’

  ‘Business is not what it was. You really need a good story to sell a show.’

  ‘I don’t believe you can have run out of those,’ said Oscar amiably.

  ‘Indeed, not,’ replied Norman, gazing steadily at Oscar. ‘I have a perfect story right on my doorstep. You’ve heard of Jack the Ripper, have you not?’

  ‘We have. Of course.’

  ‘He was partial to eviscerating his victims – removing their entrails, don’t you know.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘And he was local. If I’d been able to display some of his trophies here – the Ripper’s off-cuts, as it were – I’d have had the public lining the street from Whitechapel to Ludgate Circus.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Oscar.

  ‘I asked the police about it, but they were most unhelpful. Said the body parts had been buried with the victims’ remains. No guts, no show.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘We must go,’ I said, suddenly feeling that I had enjoyed more than a sufficiency of the company of this queer showman who laughed but never smiled.

  ‘Just before we do, Mr Norman,’ said Oscar, as we stepped towards the door, ‘I have a favour to ask. It’s the reason for our visit, in fact.’

  ‘I thought there must be one.’

  ‘I have written a play.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘This is in French and on a biblical theme.’

  ‘Ah,’ sniffed Norman, ‘you are not planning to draw the town.’

  ‘But I’d like to,’ said Oscar. ‘What playwright wouldn’t?’

  ‘Forgive me, Mr Wilde, but yours does not sound like an obviously popular piece.’

  ‘Oh, but it might be – if well translated and with the right leading lady. And your assistance.’

  ‘My assistance? I am going to Chicago.’

  ‘The play tells the story of Salome, the daughter of King Herod.’

  ‘I know who you mean. She’s the one who asked for the head of John the Baptist – on a plate.’

  ‘Exactly. And to help “draw the town”, as you’d have it, I am in want . . .’

  ‘ . . . Not of the plate, but of the head of John the Baptist?’

  ‘Can you help me? Can you supply the head – preserved in formaldehyde?’

  Tom Norman giggled. ‘I can’t supply you with the original, I’m afraid.’

  Oscar looked imploringly into Tom Norman’s yes. ‘Walter Wellbeloved thought you might be able to assist me,’ he said earnestly. ‘He told me you’d helped him in the past.’

  ‘Walter’s made some improbable requests in his time for his rituals – but always animals, never humans. You need a human head, do you? Male? What sort of age?’

  ‘Twenties, thirties, handsome, hirsute. There’s a fine Caravaggio in the National Gallery that will give you an idea.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can, Mr Wilde – since you’re a friend of Mr Wellbeloved. I make no promises, but I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Oscar, extending his hand towards Tom Norman. ‘Don’t say a word, Arthur.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ I said. I was too be
wildered to know what to say.

  ‘You’ll be in touch, then?’ said Oscar, pulling open the shop door.

  ‘I will be,’ said Norman. ‘If I make progress, I’ll send you a note to agree terms. You’re still in Tite Street, I presume?’

  22

  Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum

  ‘What on earth was that about?’

  Oscar chuckled as, complacently, he settled himself back into our two-wheeler and carefully placed his yellow gloves across his knees. ‘On to Colney Hatch Lane, John,’ he called out to the cabman. ‘I was testing the temperature of the water, Arthur, that’s all.’

  ‘You were asking a man to supply you with a severed head,’ I hissed. ‘You were as good as commissioning a murder.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Arthur. Have a cigarette. These come from Algiers. They are rough and smooth at the same time – an intriguing combination. Tom Norman’s not a murderer.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because if he had been, he’d have protested at once that he couldn’t supply me with a severed head. Have a cigarette. It’ll soothe your nerves.’

  ‘I won’t have a cigarette, thank you. My nerves do not need soothing. I’m simply confused by your line of inquiry.’

  ‘Don’t be. If you’ll forgive me for adding a commonplace to a platitude and mixing my metaphors, as well as testing the water, I was scattering bread on the water in hope of getting a clearer picture of how the land lies. Tom Norman preserves body parts in formaldehyde. Does that have any bearing on our case?’

  ‘I don’t know. Does it?’

  ‘Tom Norman lives and works in Whitechapel. Business is not what it was. Could he have commissioned the Whitechapel murders to create a sensation in the hope of exploiting that sensation with a Jack the Ripper show for his emporium?’

  ‘That seems unlikely.’

  ‘But not impossible. The police have got nowhere, Arthur. We must look everywhere. I was merely lifting up a few stones to see what crawled out.’

  ‘I can’t say I took to the man,’ I said. ‘I didn’t care for his mirthless laugh.’

  ‘The vulgar only laugh, but never smile,’ said Oscar, drawing slowly on his Algerian cigarette, ‘whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.’

  I shook my head. ‘He’s a queer fish.’

  ‘No, he’s a showman. He trades in queer fish – and mermaids.’ He smiled at his own joke. ‘Don’t concern yourself, Arthur. I was sounding him out, nothing more.’

  ‘You were playing a dangerous game at the end there, Oscar,’ I said, taking out my pipe. ‘How did he know your address?’

  Oscar pondered for a moment. ‘He knows Walter Wellbeloved. Constance and I are friends of Walter Wellbeloved. People talk about me. If there is one thing worse than being talked about—’

  ‘Don’t say it. I know the line.’

  ‘Tom Norman will have learned my address from Walter Wellbeloved.’

  I considered the point. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s possible.’

  ‘And we learned a little bit more about the nature of Walter Wellbeloved, did we not, Arthur? Wellbeloved sought animal parts from Tom Norman, but never human ones. That’s useful to know – and in Wellbeloved’s favour.’

  ‘We certainly learned that Wellbeloved’s another queer fish. A love affair with a mermaid? What was going on there, I ask myself.’

  ‘Not a great deal, I imagine,’ said Oscar, grinning mischievously. ‘L’amour de l’impossible . . . it’s a well-known phenomenon. Men yearn for what they know they cannot have.’

  My friend exhaled a blue-black cloud of cigarette smoke and rapped me gently over the knee with one of his yellow gloves. ‘Close your eyes, Arthur, and picture that unknown land full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes, that land of which it is a joy of all joys to dream, that land where all things are perfect and poisonous.’ He closed his own eyes as he spoke.

  ‘I think I’ll smoke my pipe,’ I said.

  It took us more than an hour to reach the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, travelling due north from the slums of Whitechapel through the suburbs of Islington towards the countryside. For much of the journey Oscar slept, holding his cigarette between his fingers all the while. I smoked my pipe and looked out at the passing scene and, when the motion of the carriage allowed, I read. I had brought with me a pocket edition of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. For some time I had been intending to reread it for professional purposes: the better to understand the secrets of its extraordinary popular success. I chose to reread it now in case it should have a bearing on our case. One line in particular struck me: ‘All human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone, in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil.’

  ‘I have been thinking,’ I said to Oscar, as we clambered out of the two-wheeler at our journey’s end, ‘these crimes – these Whitechapel murders – are acts of pure evil, are they not?’

  ‘One cannot think of them otherwise,’ he said, blinking in the sharp January sunlight and stamping his feet on the ground to return some life to them after our journey.

  ‘So whoever is responsible is a creature of pure evil?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oscar, ‘or a madman. And if he’s a madman, of course, it does make the story less interesting.’

  We were standing on a gravel drive at the foot of a broad flight of shallow steps leading up to the high arched doorway of the asylum – the largest institution of its kind in Europe, we later learned. The building was huge and formidable – a curious cross between Wandsworth Prison and Blenheim Palace, but seemingly larger than either. The drive from the gates of the establishment to these front steps must have been at least half a mile long.

  ‘We are expected,’ I murmured.

  Alone, at the top of the steps, gazing down at us, stood a figure in a frock coat that I took at once, and correctly, to be the asylum superintendent. He was a genial-looking man of about sixty, of medium height, portly, largely bald but heavily bearded. His benign appearance was belied by a brisk, businesslike manner.

  ‘Are we late, Dr Rogerson?’ cried Oscar, climbing the steps, hand extended.

  ‘You are here, Mr Wilde, and you are welcome,’ said the superintendent. ‘And you are welcome, too, Dr Conan Doyle. You trained in Edinburgh, I know. We must talk of that another time. I have Kosminski in the visiting room waiting to see you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ replied Oscar, as the superintendent led us through the main door into a large marble-floored hallway. We looked about us and marvelled at what we saw. The grandeur of the surroundings was overwhelming and the quietness of the place unsettling.

  ‘This is impressive,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Dr Rogerson. ‘Prince Albert didn’t entirely approve. He came to open us. He couldn’t really complain. He chose the architect. This way.’

  ‘You received my telegram,’ said Oscar. ‘You understand what we’re about.’

  ‘Perfectly,’ said Dr Rogerson. ‘Follow me.’

  The superintendent marched us across the empty, echoing hallway and, taking a small bundle of keys from his waistcoat pocket, unlocked an elegant side door that led immediately to a second, plainer, sturdier inner door. He unlocked this with two further keys. ‘Go through,’ he commanded, ‘cross the corridor and wait by the door that faces you.’

  We did as we were instructed while Dr Rogerson locked the doors we had come through behind him.

  ‘Oh my,’ murmured Oscar, ‘we have stepped from the anteroom to Elysium onto the pathway to Hades.’

  The corridor we crossed did indeed resemble a hellish highway of sorts. It stretched out to either side of us – apparently infinitely – and along it walked and wandered, ambled and jigged, strolled and strode, a multitude of madmen. Each seemed lunatic in a different way. One marched by, with wild staring eyes, muttering menaces. Another ran forward on tiptoes, then stopped, bent down to kiss the ground, rose again and ran on in
silence. A third stood close by the door where Dr Rogerson had instructed us to wait, banging his head rhythmically against the whitewashed brick wall.

  The superintendent rejoined us, still sorting his keys. ‘Miss Terry said the problem with our lunatics is that they are all far too theatrical. If you tried playing them like this on the stage, no one would believe you.’

  ‘Ellen has been here?’ asked Oscar, wide-eyed. ‘Not as a patient, surely?’

  Dr Rogerson laughed. ‘No. She came when she was studying to play Ophelia. She wanted to see for herself the reality of madness. She decided it would be too much for the paying public to cope with.’ He held up a key. ‘Kosminski is in here. Are you ready, gentlemen? I don’t think this will take long.’

  Oscar stayed the superintendent’s hand. ‘Does he know why we have come?’

  ‘I have told him, but what he understands and does not understand is difficult to tell.’

  ‘But he was ready to meet us?’

  ‘He made no objection.’

  I looked into the face of Dr Rogerson and sensed that I recognised the eyes of an honest man. ‘May I ask your professional opinion, Doctor?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘Could this man Kosminski be the notorious Jack the Ripper? Does the nature of his madness suggest to you the characteristics of a homicidal maniac?’

  ‘No. At least, not now.’

  ‘Then why is he here?’ exclaimed Oscar.

  ‘Where else is he to go?’ said Dr Rogerson simply. ‘He is certainly not in his right mind. He was in the workhouse until they could manage him no more. He was committed here by the local magistrate at the instigation of the police.’

  ‘Was he violent?’ I asked.

  ‘He had been, apparently. And he had filthy habits. Self-abuse was the worst of them.’

  ‘The police believe he may be the Whitechapel murderer,’ said Oscar.

  ‘I know,’ said the superintendent. ‘But on what grounds I don’t know. He was questioned, but never charged.’

  ‘He lived and worked in Whitechapel,’ I said, ‘and because he worked as a barber he had ready access to an assortment of blades and scissors and knives.’