The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper

by James Carnac

  For some time I curbed my impatience and lay there listening intently. After the sound of my landlady’s descent into the lower regions of the house I heard nothing; and at last I decided to make an attempt to reach the sitting-room. Mrs. Hamlett had turned out my light, but I levered myself up in bed and, feeling for the switch beside me, turned it on again. The slight movement made me feel faint and giddy, but after sitting on the edge of the bed for a few minutes my head cleared, and I looked round for my crutch. It was not there, and I cursed softly; evidently it had been left behind when I had been brought up to bed.

  I should explain that I do not wear an artificial leg, but I can make shift to move about without my crutch if solid objects are to hand which I can hold to; and I was sure I could manage to get down the two flights of stairs with the aid of the banisters. But I was feeling far from fit, and I wanted to make no noise. I stood up on my one leg and held to the head of the bed; immediately the room began to swim round and I nearly fell. But I mastered my weakness and, with a sort of hopping pirouette, reached the foot of the bed and, by aid of a chair, the door. There I took down my dressing-gown, struggled into it and, leaving it flapping open, cautiously unlatched the door.

  The lights were burning on the landing outside and also, apparently, upon the landing below, and this surprised me for it was unusual after the household had retired. But I assumed that Mrs. Hamlett had forgotten to turn out the lights in the excitement caused by my performance of the evening. I began my descent by clinging to the balustrade and hopping from step to step; but I could not avoid a slight noise, so I sat on the stairs and, getting the necessary leverage with my arms, slid myself down, one stair at a time. I had to rest occasionally on account of my giddiness. Looking back to that night it strikes me that the affair must have been a horridly grotesque one, such as would have appealed to a German film-producer. A one-legged elderly gentleman, lightly clad and with an expression of apprehension on his face, bumping himself down from tread to tread of an ill-lit stairway on his posterior in order to conceal that which might send him to the gallows.

  I finally reached the threshold of my sitting-room where I found that the door was open and the room lit. Without pausing to reflect that the room might not be unoccupied, I struggled upright and, clinging to the door-frame, hopped inside. There I paused aghast. Mrs. Hamlett was standing by the table reading my manuscript.

  Some slight sound on my part must have attracted her attention, for she looked up in the act of turning a page. No doubt the figure she saw must have startled her; clinging to the side of the door, its dressing-gown hanging open and its light-coloured pyjamas with one empty leg fluttering. She gasped, but she did not move, simply stood there holding the page and staring fixedly at me.

  For what seemed an eternity we stood without movement gazing into each other’s eyes. The table was illuminated by a shaded stand-lamp; the shade itself cut a broad bar of shadow, but the manuscript and Mrs. Hamlett’s hands were brilliantly lit, and the upper part of her face was bright from the upper opening of the shade, so that she seemed to be wearing a luminous mask. From this patch of light her two pale eyes gazed unblinkingly into mine, and in that moment I perceived that Mrs. Hamlett knew.

  Concurrently with this perception there flashed into my mind a visual recollection of that other dramatic scene with my uncle so many years ago. Then two eyes had stared into mine in the relatively dim light of a candle, while I waited above him, a poised scalpel in my hand. The vision dimmed and the room before me swam; I felt faint again, doubtless the shock of this present revelation acting upon my weak state. I must have tottered, for my landlady left the manuscript and darted forward, grasping me by the arm. I drew back my head abruptly and stared again into her eyes, now at close quarters, for I wanted to confirm what I felt was a certainty. Yes; she did know.

  But she addressed me in what seemed almost her usual tone; or was it her usual tone? Was it not rather a carefully controlled tone?

  “Come, Mr. Carnac, this won’t do,” she said. “You ought to be in bed, you know. What have you come down for?”

  I did not reply immediately; I continued to stare. Then I wrenched my eyes from her face and pointed to the table.

  “I left some important papers out,” I replied; and found that my voice was dry and hoarse. Twitching her hand away I swung myself, by aid of a chair, to the table, seized the manuscript and hopped with it to the safe. I thrust it in and slammed the door; and then remembered that the key was in the pocket of my trousers upstairs.

  “Would you mind fetching my keys, Mrs. Hamlett?” I said.

  She hesitated, still standing by the door; then, without a word, left the room. In a few minutes she returned with my bunch of keys. I locked the safe and, without again looking her in the face, suffered myself to be helped upstairs to bed.

  —

  Strange that I should have slept that night, but I did; or, at least, I passed the night in some form of coma approximating sleep. But when I awoke, early next morning, I felt reasonably well again, and my brain leapt instantly at the problem confronting it.

  I had no doubt that my landlady knew that I, her respectable lodger, was none other than Jack the Ripper, whom it was her dearest wish to meet. And the fact that she did not really wish to meet Jack the Ripper, but a plagiarist, had no bearing upon the situation. I say that I had no doubt; I knew, but I cannot explain how I knew, beyond putting forward the unsatisfactory statement that I had read it in the woman’s eyes.

  The human eye is an extraordinary thing. It is limited in movement and its actual form is immutable with the exception of the variation in size possible to the iris. We talk of the eye “flashing” but, in reality, the eye never does flash; that is a mere novelists’ cliché. Neither does it dim, nor grow soft. Yet, in spite of its limitations, the human eye is the most expressive and revealing part of the body; it can convey a meaning only secondary to that conveyed by speech. It can betray the fraud and the liar—I do not mean that it always does, but that it can to the discerning; it can betray the slightest traces of fear, anger and other emotions. And those eyes of Mrs. Hamlett seen in the bright illumination of a stand-lamp had betrayed to me the possession of certain undesirable knowledge.

  And now what was I to do? For Mrs. Hamlett to know, and for Mrs. Hamlett to prove were two entirely different things; and though a ray of comfort might exist for me in this it was offset by the unfortunate fact that my doings during the vital period concerned would not bear suspicious investigation—or so I thought. My safety in the past had been due largely to an entire absence of suspicion on the part of anyone. And now I had been fool enough to set down in black and white my private thoughts and actions for all the world to read; and the most undesirable person possible had promptly read. Yes; I was a blind, egotistical fool. I recognized that now. And a bigger fool still not to have destroyed my effusion under the recent prompting of sanity.

  However, self-recriminations would not help me; this was a case for calm, self-controlled thinking if ever there was one. I settled myself more comfortably in bed, while I gazed at the blank whiteness of the ceiling and reviewed the problem.

  What would Mrs. Hamlett do? She was not of the thoughtlessly excitable type and would not, therefore, dash poste-haste to Scotland Yard. She had no evidence to offer beyond her allegation that she had read a confession which could very well be explained as an essay in fiction. She would be laughed at or shown the nearest way out, and she must know that quite well. And, after all, she does not know all because of her reading of my manuscript, but because that reading set her mind working in the right direction and because she correctly interpreted my look when I found her in the act of discovery. It was almost as though she had said last night: “I have been reading this confession of yours; can it possibly be real?” and I had replied: “I was afraid of this, Mrs. Hamlett; that’s why I came down. Yes, it is true.” This is how Mrs. Hamlett came to know; by
a species of telepathy functioning in particularly favourable circumstances.

  Of course in a legal sense she does not know; she possesses no provable knowledge, but she entertains strong suspicions.

  And, again, what would Mrs. Hamlett do? As I estimate her character she is of the slow and sure type. She will bide her time, nosing into my affairs until something else comes to light sufficiently definite to justify her taking legal assistance. And, knowing as I did the uncanny capacity of the female of the species for rooting up tit-bits of hidden scandal, I was not inclined to underrate the potentialities of Mrs. Hamlett. I did not know which part of my manuscript she had read nor, therefore, what incident in my life had been revealed to her as a starting-point for investigation.

  Of course all this will doubtless seem very vague as a basis of anxiety to a reader who may have no more than a few trivial peccadillos to conceal, but my position was such as to force me to take even trivialities seriously. Yes, even after forty years of exemplary living. “Conscience makes cowards of us all” you will quote, dear reader; but it was not conscience in my case. You “get me wrong” (as Minnie would say) if you think that. I have never been troubled by conscience in the sense you mean; but I was now seriously troubled by the fear of being found out. Which is quite a different matter.

  I pursued my thoughts, as I lay in bed, though as confusedly as I have, I fear, presented them here. I tried to envisage Mrs. Hamlett’s point of view and to estimate her line of action, and was still so occupied when the good lady entered the room bearing my breakfast-tray. I looked at her carefully; I felt I was looking furtively, but hope that was not the case. She glanced swiftly at me and then turned her eyes away as she bid me “Good morning” and enquired after my condition.

  I told her I was perfectly well again, and apologized for the trouble I had caused her. She began a formal chatting as she arranged the breakfast-tray upon my knee, and while she was doing this I was thinking: “She has not apologized for prying into my manuscript. She is ignoring the manuscript. That shows that I am right. She does know, and that is why it is impossible for her to refer to the manuscript.”

  As I interpreted her manner it said: “All right, I know who you are now. I can’t prove it, but I shall soon be able to do so. Just wait. In the meantime I must not let you know I know. I am going to carry on as usual as the considerate landlady. But it will be a bit of a strain.”

  The door closed behind Mrs. Hamlett and, over a poached egg, I applied myself again to the problem. My own side of the question this time.

  What could I do? I could sit still, do nothing and hope for the best. This I instantly dismissed. The best would probably be weeks of suspense terminating in the appearance in my sitting-room of two (or more) large gentlemen in navy blue and bowler hats, accompanied by a triumphant Mrs. Hamlett.

  As an alternative I could flee, as many other potential clients of the hang-man have fled. But this did not appeal to me at all. It would confirm Mrs. Hamlett in her conviction and, moreover, it is extremely difficult to flee successfully, particularly when one is plainly labelled by a noticeable physical disability, which renders identification easy. And was I, an elderly gentleman of settled habits, to pass his declining years in hopping about the planet on one leg, looking for a non-extraditional country and expecting at any time the feel of a policeman’s hand on my shoulder? This scheme was obviously out of the question.

  There remained, then, but one alternative, and I admit that I considered it with distaste. Mrs. Hamlett possessed knowledge which was inimical to my safety; therefore Mrs. Hamlett must be eliminated.

  Chapter 28

  My active life as J.R. ceased at the time of my accident forty years ago; not only did the loss of my leg result in that sudden termination of the series of “atrocities” which puzzled the authorities, but it also resulted in a definite change in my feelings. My craving to slay departed, leaving me in peace. I am still interested in knives, those useful implements devised by man for the cutting of his food and his fellows, but I have no longer a desire to use them in a way repugnant to respectable society. Whether my craving atrophied through my sheer inability to move about and slay, or whether the crack upon my head at the time of the accident resulted in some trifling mental change, I cannot say.

  However, when I began to contemplate the removal of Mrs. Hamlett, I was actuated by none of those feelings which had driven me to unconventional behavior in the past. I did not propose to kill her because I experienced a purposeless desire to kill, but because I regarded her as a menace to my safety. I wish to be perfectly honest, and I state, therefore, that no parallel existed between my former cases and that which I now intended. The killing of Mrs. Hamlett would be plain murder—a murder of expediency—as serious a crime as any other murders for which men have been executed, and without justification or excuse in the eyes of any member of the community. I felt justified, because it was her life or mine, but no one else would be likely to share that view, and I confess frankly that I commenced a consideration of the project with some repugnance.

  But no other course than the elimination of Mrs. Hamlett would, I was convinced, solve my problem; so I stifled my scruples and began to grapple with the problem of ways and means. And, in my planning, I lost some of my first feeling of distaste and even developed a certain jest as the excitement of the thing took hold of me.

  During the past few years an enormous growth of “detective” literature has developed, and probably very few means of murdering one’s fellow-citizens have lacked exposition. I, myself, am by no means unfamiliar with this class of book; but when I began to review as many as I could recall of the various methods invented by writers of crime novels I realized that the majority of those methods were impracticable. They were too ingenious. And the plans evolved by the fictitious criminals for evading detection were based, in most cases, upon extremely complicated alibis in circumstances specially devised by the authors.

  I could gain no hint whatever from my recollection of any of the books which I had read, and none of the methods seemed adaptable to my present case.

  I considered first of all the relatively crude murder followed by concealment of the body. Well, obviously, this would not work in my case because my physical disability would not permit the activity necessary to conceal the body; without going into unnecessary details I may say that the labour involved in any scheme of concealment seemed to be outside my capacity. The circumstances and routine of the household also disallowed me the necessary leisure; and, furthermore, the inexplicable disappearance of Mrs. Hamlett, a person of regular and settled habits of life, would immediately lead to investigation.

  In my early exploits it had, of course, been entirely unnecessary to conceal the bodies; but in the case I contemplated, the only circumstances in which concealment need not be attempted would be those attendant upon a killing in some place remote from the house. And I could see no prospect of arranging such circumstances.

  My thoughts then proceeded to the more subtle methods of murder, of which poison is a leading example. I examined this idea despite a strong repugnance, for the medium is one which I would only use in the last resort. Although, perhaps, a man of few principles, I share the popular abhorrence of the poisoner.

  Now there are no advantages whatever, from the point of view of the murderer, in the use of poison unless an entire absence of suspicion as to the cause of death obtains. Once suspicion has been aroused, the cause of death is easily discoverable. It is true that many people have doubtless been poisoned whose death has been ascribed to natural causes; but it must always have been a gamble for the criminal. I did not dwell long upon the possibilities of safely poisoning my landlady.

  There remained, then, the ingeniously staged “accident,” and this field I considered thoroughly, for I felt it was the one which offered most scope to my abilities. Something must happen to Mrs. Hamlett which would appear to be an obvious accident, an
d one such thing occurred to me immediately. She might fall downstairs and break her neck. A black string judiciously stretched at the head of the stairs?

  I pursued my cogitations for several days, but without arriving at any satisfactory decision; and during that time the relations between Mrs. Hamlett and myself were peculiar. Outwardly they were as usual, but it seemed to me that the good lady was hard put to it to keep them so. In innumerable small ways she betrayed the strain under which she was labouring: the occasional stealthy glance, the forced normality of tone, the rather excessive politeness, the pointed avoidance of any reference to German films—a subject on which we had often chatted. And I am fairly certain that she must have observed a similar constraint in me.

  On several occasions my landlady betrayed signs of definite distress, entering my sitting-room with eyes red from weeping. It would have been too crude had I endeavoured to conceal my perception of this; my policy in our cat-and-mouse game was to pretend that our relationship was entirely normal. Mrs. Hamlett might suspect—be almost certain, in fact—that I was aware of her knowledge, but while some sort of pretence was maintained it was possible for the status quo to continue, albeit precariously. Mrs. Hamlett was either planning or waiting—I was not sure which—and I admired not only her patience but also her pluck. How many women would care to remain in constant touch with a (supposed) desperate criminal until such time as they could trap him? But once the gloves were off, the good lady would doubtless be driven to some reckless procedure which would definitely end my brief period of safety.

  In reply to my enquiries Mrs. Hamlett informed me that she was suffering from almost constant neuralgia, and I professed sympathy. The same explanation was evidently given to Minnie, for the girl mentioned to me the discomfort of her mistress, and discussed possible remedies. And in the course of our chat Minnie gave me the germ of my great idea.