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

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘I believe I visited his barber’s shop on one occasion,’ said Oscar.

  ‘I wonder if you’ll recognise him now,’ said Dr Rogerson, putting his key in the lock and turning it.

  He pushed open the door and ushered us into a large, light-filled room. The sun poured in through tall, wide windows covered with a lattice of white-painted grilles. It was an elegant room, sparsely furnished but with a fine Adam-style fireplace and a small Murano glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Arranged around the room were half a dozen occasional tables with a pair of upright wooden chairs on either side of each of them. Seated on one of these chairs, dressed in striped pyjamas reminiscent of a convict’s uniform, was Aaron Kosminski.

  ‘Oh,’ whispered Oscar, ‘he’s not run away to the circus. That’s him. Without a doubt.’

  ‘He’s strapped in,’ I said, appalled to see that the hapless creature’s arms were pinioned to the back of his chair. I looked to the floor and saw that each of the chairs in the room was fixed where it was by lock and bolt.

  ‘He might be Jack the Ripper,’ said Dr Rogerson quietly. ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘But if he is,’ said Oscar, ‘he is not going to harm us, is he? We are not women of the night. And he’s an old man.’

  ‘He’s not yet forty.’

  ‘Look at him,’ said Oscar. ‘He’s a broken man.’

  He was certainly a forlorn figure. His lank black hair was streaked with grey. His moustache drooped around his half-open mouth. He seemed to have no teeth. He seemed to have no life. He sat, as slumped on his chair as the tethers allowed, his eyes cast down, his beaky nose pointing towards the ground.

  ‘We secure all patients with a history of violence like this,’ explained Dr Rogerson.

  ‘But does he have a history of violence?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a recent one, no. He has been consistently placid since his arrival here. If he were admitted today, he’d be classed as a harmless imbecile. But, by definition, mania comes and goes. Five years ago, he will have been a different man. The magistrate who committed him believed he was a threat to others as well as to himself.’

  ‘He looks very weak,’ I said.

  ‘He eats very little.’

  We looked at him. We stepped towards him. We introduced ourselves. We asked him his name. We asked him if he remembered his life in Whitechapel. We asked him a dozen questions and more.

  He did not move. He did not say a word.

  Eventually, Oscar turned to the asylum superintendent. ‘Does he ever speak?’

  ‘Rarely,’ said Dr Rogerson. ‘Sometimes at night he calls out in his sleep, but we can make no sense of what he says. None of us speaks Yiddish. By day he is as you see him now.’

  ‘As if in a trance,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly so,’ said the superintendent, stroking his beard reflectively while gazing fixedly at Kosminski’s impassive face.

  ‘He’s not registering our presence,’ said Oscar.

  ‘He’s not registering anything,’ said Dr Rogerson. ‘Watch.’ Suddenly, the superintendent leaned forward and clapped his hands together loudly in front of his patient’s face. ‘Not the flicker of an eyelid.’

  ‘How long has he been like this?’ I asked.

  ‘Since he arrived.’

  ‘And will he be like this always?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘There is no reason to suppose not,’ said Dr Rogerson. ‘I think we can assume he will be like this until the day he dies.’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Oscar quietly. ‘This has been most helpful.’

  23

  Olga

  ‘I’m not sure I’d call that interview “helpful”, Oscar,’ I said, as we climbed back into our two-wheeler. ‘We learned nothing.’

  ‘On the contrary, Arthur. We learned a great deal.’

  ‘Did we?’ I protested. ‘I don’t think so. The wretched man is dead to the world.’

  ‘Yes. And firmly under lock and key – and consequently incapable of committing this week’s killings in Chelsea. At least we learned that.’

  ‘True enough,’ I conceded. ‘But we learned nothing about his life in Whitechapel.’

  ‘Not so,’ purred my friend complacently. ‘I visited his barber’s shop in Whitechapel once, as you know, and I remember nothing about it. What does that tell us?’

  ‘That you have a poor memory?’

  ‘No. It tells us that nothing occurred that was out of the ordinary. Kosminski was simply a nondescript Whitechapel barber. Now he’s a wreck of a man, dead to the world, locked in a trance. What trauma was it that induced so great a change in him?’

  Having asked his question, Oscar closed his eyes and left me to ponder it. I did so, as we journeyed back from Colney Hatch to central London. Was Kosminski our murderer? Had an eventual realisation of the horror of his crimes brought him to his present state? I did not know the answer. Nor, I reckoned, did Oscar.

  As finally we reached our hotel once more, my friend, beaming blithely, evidently refreshed by his further sleep on the homeward journey, announced that he had ‘business to attend to’ and, without further explanation, proposed that we meet, ‘after dinner, at around ten o’clock’.

  ‘What’s happening then?’

  ‘Our promised interview with Michael Ostrog. Kosminski told us nothing and everything. What will we learn from Ostrog, I wonder?’

  ‘Where’s this interview to take place?’ I asked.

  ‘At the office of Ivan the Terrible.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Somewhere at the circus. Up in the rafters of the Agricultural Hall, I suppose. Olga will show you the way, I’m sure.’

  Until that mention of her name, I had had no more than fleeting thoughts of the young Russian acrobat who had so charmed me at our first brief encounter at the circus on Constance’s birthday a few days before. Now, all of a sudden, and to my amazement, I could not get the beguiling girl out of my mind’s eye! It was six o’clock: I heard the church clock in Portland Place strike the hour. I went up to my hotel room and failed to settle. I ordered a glass of ale and a sandwich and thought to read some more of Stevenson’s novel. Before the refreshments had arrived, I had tossed the book aside. I began a letter to my darling Touie, but abandoned it even as I was writing her dear name. I decided that work would be the answer – as it so often is – and took out the notes of a story I had in mind and began to write. I had done with Sherlock Holmes. ‘The Final Problem’ had appeared in The Strand Magazine before Christmas. Now I was planning something in a different vein. The opening sentences pleased me:

  It is hard for the general practitioner who sits among his patients both morning and evening, and sees them in their homes between, to steal time for one little daily breath of cleanly air. To win it he must slip early from his bed and walk out between shuttered shops when it is chill but very clear, and all things are sharply outlined, as in a frost. It is an hour that has a charm of its own . . .

  I stopped. I reread the phrase: ‘It is an hour that has a charm of its own . . .’

  I laid down my pen, I picked up my coat. Without pausing, I left my room, ran down the stairs and out into the street. On the rank outside the hotel, a two-wheeler was waiting.

  I called up to the cabman: ‘John – do you know the way to Olympia?’

  ‘That’s not my name, sir. I’m Bill, but I knows the way to Olympia.’

  ‘Take me there, please, as fast as you can.’

  It was not long after six. We reached the circus at a little before seven. I paid off the cab and, with a pounding heart I did not try to comprehend, pushed my way through the press of public arriving for the Friday-night performance. This was London’s alternative to the pantomime and the gathering crowd was in holiday mood. Children’s faces shone with anticipation. Fathers (proud and satisfied) held tickets aloft as they led their broods into the teeming entrance hall. Mothers (happy yet anxious) followed behind, clucking, scolding, praying the treat might work out as well as
planned.

  Inside the foyer the swirl of circus-goers moved hither and yon: finding and losing one another, seeking out the doorways leading to their seats, queuing for programmes, oranges and ices, gathering in clusters around the daises on which stood or lay assorted circus animals. At once, to my right, at the back of the foyer, I saw the bear cubs tied to their trivet and pushed my way towards them, but as I got close the sequined acrobat standing over them, hoop and whip in hand, turned towards me. It was not her.

  Where was she? I had to find her! I stopped as the crowd churned about me. For a singular, queer moment I felt I was a man drowning in a whirlpool of heaving humanity. I rose up onto my toes and turned and turned about again – and then I saw her.

  She was no more than ten feet away, standing on a stool at the foot of the main staircase. Her figure was an enchantment. She had the poise of a dancer and the vigour of an athlete. She was looking out over the heads of the crowd. Her shining dark hair was swept back and tied on top of her head in a bun. Her loveliness was not of the obvious kind. Her face had neither regularity of feature nor beauty of complexion, but her expression was sweet and amiable, and her large blue eyes were singularly spiritual and sympathetic. Simply looking at her I could see her strength and her intelligence. Suddenly, she saw me and, laughing, she waved. I pushed through the throng towards her. She jumped down from her stool, still laughing, and held out her hand towards me.

  ‘Olga,’ I said.

  ‘Doctor,’ she said.

  ‘You remember me?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘You speak English?’

  ‘Malenkly. A little.’

  ‘You speak good English.’

  ‘No, I speak bad English.’ She shook her head and turned away, as if embarrassed. For a moment, a silence fell between us. There must have been five hundred people swarming through the circus foyer that night, but in that moment’s silence there were just the two of us – and on a round raised dais, in a small roped-off enclosure no more than four feet wide and no more than two feet away from where we stood, a black panther cub. The animal (the size of a large dog) was lying down, resting its huge head on its mighty paws. It gazed balefully at us and yawned, its black tongue lolling out of its mouth, exposing its white teeth, as long as kitchen knives, as sharp as icicles.

  ‘Is he friendly?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but he won’t move from there. You are safe.’

  ‘Your English is so good,’ I said. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘This time? One month. But I have been to England many times.’

  ‘Always with the circus?’

  ‘Yes, always with Ivan. He is not so terrible. He looks after us.’

  ‘How long have you been with the circus?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Always? You are from a circus family?’

  ‘No. We have no families. We are orphans.’

  ‘You are orphans?’

  She laughed and looked around. ‘Yes, all the girls here are orphans – all the acrobat girls. All of us. Ivan is like a father to us. He comes to the orphanage each year and chooses the best – the girls who will be strongest. We are lucky. Life in Russia is bad. Life in the circus is good.’

  ‘You have no parents?’

  She laughed again. ‘No parents, no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, nobody. But I have the circus. I have work. I have food. And I travel the world. London, Paris, Berlin. Next year we will go to New York. That’s what Ivan says.’

  ‘Will you stay with him always?’

  ‘I don’t know. He does not like us to go. He owns us. We are his serfs. It is the Russian way.’

  ‘Not any more,’ I said earnestly. ‘Serfdom has been abolished. You are free.’

  She laughed. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It is a joke. It is Ivan’s joke. He says he is our Tsar and he owns us. But not all the girls stay. Some girls run away. We don’t see them again.’

  ‘Will you run away?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘If I find the right man, perhaps.’

  ‘You need a man to run away with?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said seriously. She tilted her head to one side and looked up at me with smiling eyes. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I am too old for you,’ I said.

  ‘How old are you?’ she repeated.

  ‘I am thirty-four,’ I said.

  ‘That is perfect,’ she said. ‘You are ten years older than I am. That is the correct difference.’

  I laughed. ‘Who says?’

  ‘Everyone knows it. And I need a man who is strong. And brave. You are a strong man. And you are brave. I know that. You are a doctor.’

  ‘Yes, I am a doctor. I am a writer, also.’ I hesitated. ‘And I am a fami—’

  She put her finger to my lips. ‘I know. You are a famous man. You are the man who invented the great Sherlock Holmes. In Russia, everybody loves Mr Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘but there’s going to be no more Mr Holmes. I have written my last story about him.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘You want to be free. You want to fly.’

  ‘You do understand, don’t you? Yes, I want to be free. I am going to write different stories now. I will write a story about the circus and about you and your animals.’ She smiled at me and, leaning across the rope barrier, stretched out her arm and scratched the panther cub behind his large cup-like ears. The animal lifted his head and shook it. His long whiskers twitched.

  ‘He is very good,’ I said.

  ‘I have hypnotised him. It is quite easy. Ivan teaches us. I can teach you.’ She looked into my eyes. I said nothing. She smiled. ‘You do not believe me?’

  ‘Oh, I believe you, Olga.’ I returned her gaze. I had never seen eyes so blue. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know you are a hypnotist.’

  Above us on the stairs, a clown appeared ringing a bell. On the dais the panther got to his feet and stretched. His tail swished from side to side. Olga put her hand on mine. ‘We can talk tomorrow. We can make our plans. I will see you here at twelve o’clock. Yes? Remember, I am a hypnotist.’

  ‘I will be here,’ I said.

  ‘And now – for the circus?’ she asked. ‘Have you got a ticket?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I am meeting Mr Wilde later – afterwards – “in Ivan’s office”, wherever that is.’

  ‘I will show you,’ she said. ‘You can watch the show. We are not full tonight. I will find you a seat. And when I come on I will know where you are and I will bow to you and you will cheer for me.’

  The seat that she found for me was right by the ringside, at the end of a row, alongside a family who engaged me in conversation, but of whom I recall nothing, except that they were fellow Scots (I think) and happy to be there. I watched the circus in a daze. Clowns and tumblers, jugglers and men on stilts, chimpanzees and fire-eaters, elephants and bears, sea lions in portable lagoons and African lions in cages – on they came, off they went. It was an extraordinary cavalcade of colour and excitement – but looking back, now, all I can recollect are two moments: when Ivan the ringmaster made his extraordinary entrance, emerging on horseback from the cradle of the balloon that had been lowered from the roof, and when Olga came on – at the head of a line of a dozen sequined acrobats. The girls – all identical in height and build and costume – marched directly across the sawdust-covered ring towards my seat and, together, all at once, to a sudden burst of trumpets, lifted their right hands high into the air and then swept them down before them to touch the ground in an elaborate bow. Their acrobatic routine involved jumping, leaping, twisting, tumbling, climbing vertical ladders on their hands and turning somersaults along bars balanced thirty feet above the ground. It culminated with Olga climbing onto a giant swing that was wheeled by the other acrobats into the centre of the ring. There she stood, her feet planted on the seat of the swing, her arms holding the ropes to either side of her. As drums rolled, with legs and arms she pumped the swing
back and forth until, slowly, gradually, it began to swing in high arcs, forward and back, higher and further, until ultimately it rotated 360 degrees. Round and round and round she went, faster and faster, until suddenly, she let go of the swing at the peak of its arc, and she flew . . .

  Into the air she flew, twisting and turning as she rose higher and higher, and then, with her arms outstretched, like a diving swallow, she swept down into the arms of her fellow acrobats who stood in formation on the ground ready to catch her.

  When the performance was over, I waited in the foyer at the foot of the stairs leading up to the Prince’s Apartments. She found me there.

  ‘I heard you cheering, Dr Doyle.’

  ‘You must call me Arthur,’ I said.

  ‘You saw me bowing to you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I did not take my eyes off you. You were wonderful. You are wonderful. You have hypnotised me, without a doubt.’

  She laughed. I laughed, too. ‘I will take you to Ivan’s office now,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’

  She took me by the hand and led me out of the foyer and into the street. The departing crowds were already thinning on the pavement. In the roadway hansoms and four-wheelers were rattling up, taking on their cargoes of shirt-fronted men, beshawled, bejewelled women and weary, happy children. Olga held onto me as she took me around the side of the building.

  ‘Look,’ she said, as we emerged from the side-alley into the field at the back of the Agricultural Hall, ‘look up into the sky. In London you cannot usually see the stars, because of the fog, but tonight the sky is clear. Look at the stars, Arthur. They are shining for us. They are happy for us.’

  I turned to look into her face, but in the darkness all I could see was the glimmer of her eyes. ‘Over there,’ she said, ‘that is Ivan’s office – up those steps.’

  I looked to where she was pointing and then turned back. She was gone.

  24

  Ostrog

  The ‘office’ of Ivan Salazkin, ringmaster and owner of the Russian Circus, turned out to be his caravan. On the outside, silhouetted in the darkness, it looked like a traditional gypsy wagon: a fairy-tale cottage carried on giant wheels, with high sides that sloped outwards as they rose towards the eaves. Inside, it looked like the private dining room of the St Petersburg palace of Catherine the Great.