The memory had been lost to me – it had, after all, been nothing of consequence at the time – but now, now, it had significance. It had been him, I was sure of it. The man outside the Rainham inquest was the same man with the withered arm whom I had seen in the opium dens – but what had he been doing in Camden that day, and why had he been watching us so intently? Surely it could not be a simple coincidence? I wished I could see more of his face in my memory, and I also wished that I could trust my memory entirely. Could this be my imagination playing tricks on me through my exhaustion? The man and his obvious search for someone had become a curiosity to me of late, so perhaps my mind had simply moved him from one section of memory to another? I tried to concentrate on the dinner.
‘I think it’s so important that a man has a purpose, don’t you agree, Dr Bond?’
I looked at Juliana. She had grown up in the past year, and now had a confidence in her demeanor that changed her from a child to a woman. Her eyes were lively and intelligent and her chestnut curls and skin glowed with health.
‘I think it’s imperative,’ I said, smiling.
‘That’s why I’m so proud of James. He’s achieving so much, and has such a brilliant mind. I have no doubt that soon his company will be the largest import business in the whole of London.’
‘That sounds quite something,’ I said. James Harrington was a little older than Juliana’s twenty-one years, but he was still a young man: a fine-looking one, with a charming smile that tilted slightly downwards when under scrutiny. I thought that he was not one of these over-confident sorts who filled the gentlemen’s clubs these days, always competing with one another in business or gambling. He was a serious type, I decided as I saw a slight blush creep under his collar, a quiet man at heart. He would suit the exuberant Juliana well.
‘Oh, Juliana,’ the young man under my scrutiny started, interrupting her, ‘I fear that although I love the faith you have in me, you are making me sound rather too impressive.’ Harrington squeezed her hand on the table and then turned his attention to me. ‘I was unfortunate enough to lose my father last year, just before I met Juliana, but the success of the business is very much all his work. I fully intend to do him credit by expanding it, but I have a lot to learn yet. I’m afraid I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have to his work while he and my mother were still alive.’
Sadness flickered in his eyes, but he covered it with a small smile. I remembered him now, from that same afternoon on the steps after the Rainham inquest. He had been thinner and paler, then, and no wonder.
‘Unfortunately,’ I said, ‘it is perhaps in all our natures that we take the living for granted until they are no longer with us.’
‘Not so easy for you and Father to do, I imagine,’ Juliana said.
‘True. Although your father’s natural good cheer does rather keep us both in fine spirits, even at times like these.’
‘Well, I shall certainly not be taking James for granted,’ she declared. ‘I’m going to help with the company bookkeeping and whatever else he needs me to do. I’m sure I’m far better with figures than some of the men he has working for him.’
‘Sometimes, my dear,’ Charles said, his pride obvious, ‘I do wonder whether you should have been born a boy.’
‘I have to say,’ Harrington replied, ‘that I for one am very glad she was not.’
We all laughed at that, and watching the couple I envied them their youth and excitement for life and each other. In the face of so much energy, it was hard not to feel old and tired, both of which I was. In fact, listening to the chatter around the table, I felt envious of the warmth with which Charles was surrounded. I doubted there were many sleepless nights in this house.
Despite my eagerness to get to the opium dens and find the stranger in the black coat, as the main course arrived, a very fine cut of beef, I realised how much I had been neglecting my appetite of late, surviving as I was on plates of cheese, bread and cold meats. My stomach growled loudly, twice, which caused further laughter, given the informal nature of our dining, and I finished everything on my plate with an enthusiasm that made Mary ply me with more.
I had hoped to get away quite soon after coffee, but Charles insisted I join him in his study for some brandy. We left the ladies to say their goodnights to young Harrington and closed the door behind us. Charles wasted no time in pouring two large measures and we sat on either side of the small fire gazing quietly into the flames for a few minutes. Just as the silence was reaching a palpably awkward stage, Charles shifted in his chair and leaned forward.
‘London is not herself this year, wouldn’t you say, Thomas?’ He didn’t look at me, his eyes still on the grate. His tone was quiet.
I watched as he took a long swallow of his drink before I took a sip of my own. ‘I think that could be considered a fair assumption,’ I said.
‘Sometimes I look at Juliana and my heart is gripped with fear for her.’ The leather creaked as he leaned forward in his seat to re-fill his glass from the decanter. ‘There is so much wickedness at work in the city I feel as if I can almost touch it. We’re surrounded by it.’
‘Perhaps we are, my friend, but I think your Juliana is safe.’ Was this the cause of his sudden melancholy? I had envied my friend his family, but perhaps I had not considered the worries that came with that. But the women in Charles’ life were surely safe from the human monsters currently hunting on London’s streets.
‘She’s not …’ I struggled to find the appropriate words, ‘she’s not in a position to cause alarm. She has her young man and her family to make sure she’s not in any place of danger.’ The idea of Juliana wandering the streets of Whitechapel was one that I could not entertain. She moved in different circles; she had a different sort of life. ‘She’s also a bright girl,’ I added. ‘She has never been childish in her thinking. Life might throw the unexpected at us at any time, this is true, but as for the London we have seen so much of this year? It won’t touch her. You can be sure of that, my friend.’
He smiled slightly, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and as he turned to me I realised that Charles was quite drunk. I had been so distracted by thoughts of the stranger throughout dinner I hadn’t paid so much attention to my host’s behaviour; I had presumed his joviality to be his normal good humour. But now, seeing him in this state, I realised that his laughter had been a touch too loud; his jocularity a touch forced. I looked more closely at him in the flickering glow of the firelight. His skin was flushed and his pupils were glazed.
‘I dream of blood,’ he murmured. ‘Have I told you that, Thomas? Everything is coated in it. The world has turned red.’ His mouth turned down in a tight frown. ‘Quite horrible.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, wanting to reassure him. ‘With all that has filled the news of late, and the violence that has gripped our city, it’s remarkable we’re still functioning at all.’ Despite his dreams, I envied him his sleep. Nightmares I could cope with; this endless exhaustion was something else.
‘She’s always in them,’ he said, ‘Juliana. Every dream.’
‘She is your daughter, Charles. It is entirely normal for your mind to place her at the centre of your fears. The mind is a strange terrain. It has its own way of dealing with the world while you sleep.’
Charles nodded, although it was clear he was unconvinced. He muttered something under his breath, the words slurring together.
‘What was that?’ I asked. My own tiredness was starting to feel like grit behind my eyes, and although I was under no illusion that sleep would embrace me that night, my senses were dull. As much as Charles was my friend, I had little to offer anyone in the way of good humour and support.
‘I don’t like to look out of the windows at night,’ he admitted. ‘It’s the glass, and the darkness. It’s as if everything wicked is looking into my house. Into me.’
I had no answer for that other than a hollow dread in the pit of my stomach. This was not my Charles Hebbert, my cheery friend
and colleague. If his thoughts could go to such dark places then what hope was there for mine?
I drank my brandy quickly, fully intending to make my excuses and leave, but Charles suddenly burst into a smile.
‘Don’t listen to me, Thomas. I am fine. Just a momentary bout of melancholy. Shall we have one more drink? I promise to be more cheerful.’ He slapped my shoulder, heading towards the decanter, regardless of my answer. ‘Just one more, and then I shall let you get home to bed.’
I glanced at the clock to see it was already gone ten o’clock. I would not make the dens tonight, not, at least, in any fit state to speak to the stranger should I encounter him. I forced a smile and took another drink.
*
One drink became several and it was nearly midnight when I finally rose from my chair to leave. Charles had been true to his word, and our conversation had turned to more pleasant talk, of family life, Juliana and James, and then reminiscing on the past adventures of our own youths, but I couldn’t help but feel it was somewhat forced. Charles finally drifted off into a drunken sleep mid-sentence and I left him by the dying fire and quietly headed downstairs. My own head was spinning slightly, despite having tried to avoid matching Charles’ measures, and I was looking forward to lying in my own bed, even if sleep wouldn’t come.
I had reached the front door when Mary emerged from the drawing room. I jumped slightly, expecting her to be already asleep.
‘Thank you, Thomas,’ she said. ‘You must come again. I think your company is good for him.’
‘You might not thank me in the morning. I fear he is somewhat the worse for brandy. I have left him asleep by the fire.’
‘I shall look after him.’ She smiled softly as she passed me my hat. ‘I’m sorry he’s kept you up so late. You’re both working so hard; you must be tired yourself.’
My exhaustion and I were such companions now that it was almost amusing to hear someone mention it so lightly. ‘I shall cope,’ I answered, ‘and so will Charles.’
Outside, the night was cold, winter finally gripping the city now that the long, hot summer had died. The streets of Westminster were quiet. I looked back up at the house and the glass of the windows glinted black back at me. I shivered and turned away, pulling my overcoat tight around me.
9
London. 18 August, 1888
She was crying. She couldn’t help it, even though it was making her nose run, which was making it harder for her to breathe. It’s your own fault: the thought came to her in her sister’s voice, even though Magda had been dead two years. If you dally in wickedness, then the devil will surely come for your soul.
In the corner of the gloomy workshop she could just about see where the four jackets lay discarded and forgotten. He hadn’t wanted them at all; they had been nothing more than a lure – a temptation – and she had succumbed. A choked whimper escaped her throat and immediately she tried to suck the sound back in, aware of her captor busying himself with the unseen contents of an open trunk a few feet away. Her head throbbed where he had struck her suddenly only minutes before, and the rough cloth he had stuffed into her mouth was so rancid she was sure she was about to vomit up the fried fish she had treated herself to that morning, and then no matter what the man was planning she would probably die. Fresh tears ran down her face.
He coughed and spat a ball of phlegm to the floor and she trembled. She had thought him a gentleman, but now she didn’t know what he was. Yes, you do, Ava, the ghost of her sister reprimanded her. He’s the Devil, come to tear your soul from your body. And you have no one to blame but yourself.
She pressed herself into the damp wall as if she could somehow squeeze through the bricks to freedom on the other side. Outside, she had been sweating in the summer heat and wishing for a cool breeze. Now her entire body trembled in the chill, as if he had transported her to an entirely different world. And perhaps he had.
Not so far away, her employer – her ex-employer – would be working hard on her sewing machine, not giving her a single thought – and why should she? She wouldn’t miss Ava or the jackets until eight that evening, when she was due to return them with the buttonholes and finishing done. Of course it had never been in her plan to return them, not once she’d met a fine gentleman who’d persuaded her to sell them to him.
More tears squeezed from her eyes as she heard the clank of metal on metal: he was removing items from the trunk and laying them out on the small workbench, muttering quietly to himself as he did so. How had someone so clearly caught by madness appeared so sane? Or had she simply been blinded to it by her own greed, by the thought of having some money in her pocket and being able to move on from her tiny, grubby room and start again somewhere else in the heaving city? He held up something that glinted in the gloom. What was that? A knife? Too big; a saw? She mewled again and fought not to release the contents of her bladder.
Food had always been her downfall. She was tall, had been even as a child, and her mother always said she had been born with a man’s appetite to go with her height. She had become slimmer in these recent hard times, but even given her life of near-poverty since Magda died she still had a fair coating of flesh on her bones. Maybe that was why Katherine Jackson didn’t feed her during her working hours, like many other employers did – perhaps she thought Ava was managing perfectly well on the miserable four shillings a week she paid her. It was only a brief moment of anger, and then she cried some more, knowing this was not the truth. Katherine Jackson couldn’t afford to feed her and that was all there was to it. She too was struggling to earn some kind of living, but that hadn’t stopped Ava stealing the four jackets, which would cost Katherine dearly. She hadn’t even been afraid as she’d done it, that’s how wicked she was. She had smiled at Katherine and taken the garments, meeting her gaze shamelessly, and all the while her mind had been fixed on what she would treat herself to that evening – maybe a buttercake, that sweet taste she had never outgrown, or perhaps some German sausage. Her mouth had been watering all the way to where she had agreed to meet the gentleman and sell on the coats. She would be happy never to see a buttercake again. She would sew buttonholes until her fingers bled if it would get her out of this dark and miserable place and back into the stinking sunshine.
He bent over the open box and took out something she couldn’t quite see, placing it with a heavy thud on the workbench before lighting a dusty lamp and turning to face her. She had thought that light would somehow appease her fear, but now she wished he would plunge them back into the gloom, where she could still pretend that perhaps he had forgotten about her. As his shadow stretched out behind him in the glow of the small light, all thoughts of food and sunshine evaporated from her mind, leaving nothing but terror. His blue eyes were wide as he stared at her, focused and curious and quite, quite mad.
‘Old blood,’ he said, a small smile on his face. ‘You have old blood. From home. I didn’t know what it was at first, this scent in the air every time you walked past. But then suddenly I knew: it was your blood that was driving me mad.’ He frowned. ‘And I’ve been so good – I’ve tried to be so good, for so many months. I thought – I thought perhaps I had control.’
Ava couldn’t stop herself shaking. She shook her head from side to side, as if somehow she could persuade him that she was not the girl he thought. It wasn’t she who had the old blood, whatever that was; she couldn’t come from his home. He was an Englishman and she was a Polish immigrant.
‘It wants you,’ he said, softly, ‘and I have to give it what it wants.’ He picked up a knife from the table and Ava tugged desperately at the leather ties that bound her to the lead pipes, wishing she had tried harder to free herself, wishing she had fought back harder when he’d hit her, wishing that she had never started working for Katherine Jackson three months ago.
He held something else behind his back as he came closer to her and crouched down. ‘Can you see it?’ he whispered. ‘Can you see it?’
She stared at him, uncomprehending. Wh
at did he want from her? If she could just give him the right answer, then maybe he would release her. Maybe—
‘It’s behind me – always behind me. Can’t you see it?’
Ava’s eyes blurred with fresh tears. There was nothing there, nothing behind him; he was just a madman. A madman with a knife. She shook her head. No, she couldn’t see it—
‘She saw it,’ he said as his arm came from behind his back. He held a dead woman’s head high, gripping it by the hair. The skin had turned to leather and thinned against the bones, but the mouth was forever open in terror. ‘They all see it, in the end.’
As Ava screamed and screamed behind her gag, her mind snapping at the horror of her impending fate, the man leaned in closer, and she did; she saw it. Magda’s voice had been wrong. The man wasn’t the Devil at all. The Devil was behind him.
10
Daily Telegraph
October 4, 1888
THE WHITEHALL MURDER
Very little additional information has been allotted by the authorities regarding the identity of the victim of the atrocious crime whose dismembered remains were found on Tuesday afternoon in the new Police buildings, on the Embankment at Westminster.
Mayhem Page 5
