Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper

by David Barnett

  Lestrade nodded. The professor was suddenly shifty about something. He said as conversationally as he could, “What is the nature of your current work?”

  Rubicon tugged more forcefully at his full beard. “Much of it’s top secret, Lestrade. You know. Government work. Catching up, a lot of it, after … well, you read the papers, no doubt.”

  Lestrade did read the papers, and knew that only three months ago Rubicon had been saved from a shipwreck on some lost island in the Pacific, where he had been marooned for half a year with Charles Darwin. Saved by Gideon Smith and Aloysius Bent, he remembered, casting another glance over at the journalist at the fluttering cordon.

  “My constable mentioned a quantity of blood present at the laboratory,” said Lestrade.

  “Emily’s?” asked Rubicon, almost tugging the hair from his beard. Lestrade made a mental note. Pulls at facial hair when uncertain … or lying, perhaps?

  “We don’t think so. There don’t appear to be injuries other than … well. Perhaps if you go with my constable to formally identify the body, we can discuss it later?”

  Constable Ayres had appeared at Lestrade’s elbow again, with a small flask of coffee. And yet another newcomer, tramping through the crime scene. Lestrade looked at him with as much of his weariness as he could manage hidden behind his ferrety eyes.

  “Sir, this is…” Ayres glanced at the man, neatly bearded and with sad eyes in the shadow of his hat brim, an expensive-looking woolen overcoat keeping the snow off his immaculate black suit.

  “Friedrich Miescher,” said the man in a clipped accent, inclining his head.

  “German?” asked Lestrade.

  “Swiss.” Miescher dug into the inside pocket of his overcoat. “I have a letter of introduction from Sir Edward Bradford…?”

  That made Lestrade perk up a little. A letter from the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police? Who was this Miescher? Lestrade took the folded vellum from the man—noting it had been opened and re-folded several times recently—and read from it. Miescher was some kind of scientist, and he had been given free rein to blunder into any murder investigation in London as he saw fit, the gorier the better from what Lestrade read. He handed back the letter.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” said Miescher, pocketing his folded paper. “Is it true…? Is this a Jack the Ripper killing…?”

  “Not so loud, sir,” admonished Lestrade. “The gutter press is out in force behind the cordon. What exactly are you looking for here?”

  “I apologize,” said Miescher, tapping his ear. “I am somewhat deaf from a boyhood attack of typhus. As to what I am looking for, Inspector Lestrade … blood.”

  Rubicon uttered an oath, and Lestrade murmured to Ayres, “Take the professor to formally identify the body, would you? Give me a minute with Miescher.”

  When Rubicon had been led to the sheet covering Emily Dawson, Miescher said, “What do you know of nuclein, Inspector?”

  “Less than I know about the moon, Miescher. I’ve seen the moon umpteen times; never heard of your … what did you call it?”

  “Nuclein,” said the Swiss, rubbing his hands together. Lestrade had the sinking feeling the man was warming to a subject that was about to shoot right over his head.

  Miescher said, “As a doctor I was worried my deafness would inhibit my profession, so I chose to study the things that we are all made of, the cells and their nuclei. Can you imagine the nucleus of a single cell, Inspector? Imagine how minuscule it is?”

  “I am well used to finding needles in haystacks, Dr. Miescher, so I suppose I can.”

  Miescher nodded. “I began my research into lymphocytes but found them difficult to obtain, so switched to leukocytes—”

  “You’ve lost me already, Doctor,” said Lestrade. “And I really must be getting on … I have a murder investigation—”

  Miescher raised his hand. “Forgive me. They are both types of white blood cell but the latter is somewhat easier to obtain … I used bandages from the hospital and was able to isolate leukocytes from the pus stains.”

  Lestrade made a face. “I still don’t—”

  “I will cut my story short, Inspector Lestrade. Suffice to say, my research has thrown up some fascinating results. From the nuclei of the white blood cells I managed to extract and study what I call nuclein. We all carry nuclein in our bodies, Inspector, in wonderful spirals that would take your breath away were you to behold them through the lenses of my powerful microscopes. Beautiful … and every single one is different. As different as our fingerprints.”

  Lestrade opened his mouth to dismiss the Swiss physician once and for all and then paused, screwing up his eyes. “Different, you say?”

  “Like a signature buried deep inside our most microscopic parts.” Miescher nodded enthusiastically. “So you see…”

  Lestrade rubbed his chin. “So the blood of poor old Emily Dawson could be proved to be different from mine, or yours. I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  Miescher’s eyes widened. “I could help you, Inspector. I could help you catch Jack the Ripper. If only there is a single white blood cell…”

  “There is plenty of blood, Doctor, but I fear it belongs to his victim.”

  “Ah, but perhaps she fought back, Inspector. Perhaps she raked her nails along his face. Perhaps there is a tiny fleck of blood beneath those nails, or perhaps a few flakes of skin.”

  Finally, the penny dropped. “So with this … this blood signature, you could identify the killer?”

  “We could if we can match it with another sample,” agreed Miescher.

  Lestrade sighed, deflated. “You do know how many people there are in London, Doctor Miescher? Are you proposing we go and—what? Obtain blood samples from all of ’em?”

  “The process is in its infancy,” admitted the doctor. “But from what I read in the newspapers this morning … you can use all the help you can get, eh?”

  Lestrade stared at the body for a long moment as Ayres and Rubicon began to walk back toward him down the alley. Finally he said, “All right, but not here. Don’t want to give the vultures too much to crow about. We’ll transfer the body to the morgue when we have finished here, and you can do your trickery there. In the meantime…” An idea had struck Lestrade, one that almost made him smile.

  “Constable Ayres,” he said. “I believe your earlier report was of a quantity of blood at Professor Rubicon’s laboratories.”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “Constable, please take Professor Rubicon and Doctor Miescher to Bishopsgate, where our Swiss friend will be very interested in those blood stains. And Ayres … make sure you talk about this as loudly as possible as you pass Mr. Aloysius Bent.”

  “But sir, I thought you said—”

  “I know what I said, Constable, but I’ve changed my mind.”

  Lestrade watched the three of them head off through the thickening snow toward the mouth of the alley. That should keep them all from getting under his feet for a while, all the scientists and adventurers and journalists. He turned back to regard the sheet-covered body of Emily Dawson. Get them all away, let him do what he did best without interference: good, old-fashioned police work.

  4

  “YOU’RE THE HERO OF THE EMPIRE, MR. SMITH”

  Aloysius Bent declined the well-telegraphed offer to follow Professor Rubicon, the young constable, and the earnest bearded fellow from the scene of the crime, opting instead for a quick gin in the Golden Ball and a steam-cab back to Grosvenor Square. He would visit Rubicon, of course, but at his convenience, thank you very much, and not following the clumsy trail set by Lestrade and his boys as though he were some hound to be set after a rabbit.

  Besides, he thought as he paid the driver, I’ve had enough of standing out freezing my effing balls off for one morning, especially after the morning’s news. The snow was all well and good if you could find a nice, warm pair of titties to bury your cold nose in, for the price of a couple of farthings. This pro
stitutes’ strike … he didn’t quite know what to make of it, nor where his next tumble was going to come from.

  It was then he noticed the man, tall, in a heavy overcoat and with a bowler on his head, furtively lurking around the gate to the house.

  “Oi,” Bent shouted. “What you after?”

  The man, still a dozen yards away, looked up and squinted at Bent through the snow, then turned on his heel and hurried away. Some autograph hunter, no doubt, or a snooping reporter Bent didn’t know. He let himself into the house, stamping his feet on the rough mat and closing the door against the flurries of snow. As he unwound the muffler from around his bullish neck, Bent sniffed the air. Smelled like the housekeeper, Mrs. Cadwallader, had been baking. He could just taste one of her dainty little cakes—or maybe three or four, washed down with a gallon of tea. Or ale. He rubbed some feeling back into his spadelike hands. Oh yes, a big pitcher of ale, a plate of cakes, and his feet up in the study in front of a roaring fire, to mull over the events of the morning.

  “Mrs. C!” roared Bent from the beeswaxed, wood-paneled hallway. “Where’s young Gideon? And is Miss Maria back yet?”

  Mrs. Cadwallader, all bustle and apron and starched white blouse keeping her vast bosom in check, emerged from the door to the kitchen like the ruddy-faced figurehead of some proud ship, the sails of her skirts buoyed by the warm scent of freshly baked cinnamon cakes. Not for the first time, Bent thanked his lucky stars for the way he’d fallen on his feet the way he had. He wouldn’t have fancied another winter in the hovel in the East End where he’d spent the last ten years—wasn’t sure, to be honest, he’d have survived it. This little place, though … never in his wildest dreams had Aloysius Bent thought he’d ever have a Mayfair address. The place had belonged to Captain Lucian Trigger and Doctor John Reed, and as they were a pair of homosexuals, there’d been no family for it to pass on to once they took a dive off the top of that brass dragon hovering above Hyde Park, ready to rain fiery death upon Buckingham Palace and all in it. Bent found it hard to believe all that business—hooking up with Gideon and the mysterious mechanical girl, Maria, scrapping with mummies on the Embankment, discovering lost pyramids in the shifting sands of Egypt—was only five months ago. A lot had happened since July, and the best of it was when they all moved into the Grosvenor Square house, so that young Gideon was fully able to succeed that old fraud Trigger as the official Hero of the Empire.

  “By God, Sally, that smells effing good,” said Bent, taking off his battered derby and placing it on the coat stand beside his faithful pith helmet, the one he’d bought in the souk in Alexandria. Only one previous owner, with the bullet hole to prove it. He’d be dead without it, after that pyramid collapsed right on his head, instead of just being unable to say his favorite word. He tried every day, of course, as though they were exercises and physical jerks to be done every morning, in the hope he might regain the power. But no. “Eff. Eff. Effffff.” Not a fuck to be had. He grinned to himself. Bit like the streets of Whitechapel.

  Mrs. Cadwallader put a finger to her lips. “Not so loud and brash, Mr. Bent. Miss Maria is not yet back from whatever they have her doing with that infernal dragon, and Mr. Smith is in the parlor with guests. The Elmwoods. They have come seeking his assistance and seem most distressed.”

  “Oh, yes, the ones with the missing daughter. I told him not to bother with it. Job for the police. I’ll take myself off to the study, I think. Is there a fire lit?”

  “There is, Mr. Bent. And you have a visitor of your own in there.”

  Bent’s eyes narrowed. “Not Big Henry, is it? I told him we was square. You know what these crooks are like, though, Sally. You think you’ve paid ’em off…”

  “It’s Mr. Walsingham,” she whispered, as though saying his name too loud would attract his unwelcome attention from within the closed door of the study.

  Bent blew a raspberry. “Oh, eff. What does he want? Did you tell him Gideon’s otherwise engaged?”

  She nodded. “I did. But he wants to see you.”

  “Double eff,” said Bent. He dug in his pocket for his flask and took a slug of rum. “Better get this over with, then.”

  * * *

  There was indeed a fire crackling merrily in the hearth of the study, but any joy it might have offered seemed to be sucked out of the room by the brooding presence of Mr. Walsingham. He was sitting upright like a black crow in one of the easy chairs, his back to the glass cabinets bearing the trophies from John Reed and Lucian Trigger’s adventures: the claw of the Exeter Werewolf, Lord Dexter’s Top Hat, the Golden Apple of Shangri-La. They were supplemented by trophies Gideon had assembled to carry on the tradition: poor old Louis Cockayne’s pearl-handled revolvers, a piece of steel from the giant steam-powered mechanical man they had fought in Nyu Edo, a lump of clay from the Golem of Manchester, the hair of a mermaid from St. Ives. Walsingham looked up sharply as Bent entered, fixing him with his piercing eyes, the neat white mustache beneath his hawklike nose twitching as though with mild distaste. Few people in the country knew Walsingham’s name, but the power he wielded was almost without boundary. Bent sometimes doubted that even Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the Prime Minister, knew of Walsingham and just how far his tendrils reached. Walsingham had both leather-gloved hands resting on the silver head of his cane, his black suit immaculate and cut to perfection.

  “What brings you out on such a foul day?” asked Bent, closing the door behind him. “The smell of Mrs. Cadwallader’s baking?”

  “Nothing so pleasant,” said Walsingham, indicating with a curt nod that Bent should sit in the armchair opposite.

  Bent flopped down and sighed. “Been on me bloody feet all effing day.”

  “So I believe,” said Walsingham mildly. “Whitechapel, I understand.”

  “Had your spies out this morning?” asked Bent. “What else did they tell you?”

  “They tell me that you presented yourself at the office of Inspector George Lestrade at the Commercial Road police station and informed him that Mr. Gideon Smith and yourself had been assigned to solve the murders that your erstwhile colleagues in the gutter press have attributed to one Jack the Ripper.”

  “Ah,” said Bent.

  “Ah indeed, Mr. Bent,” said Walsingham, raising one eyebrow. “An assignment I certainly do not recall authorizing.”

  Bent leaned forward. “Thing is, Walsingham old chap, I thought, well, what with Christmas coming up, and things probably being a bit quiet on the old Hero of the Empire front, why not put my—that is, Gideon’s—talents to good use here in London, give the coppers a bit of a leg up with all this unpleasantness.”

  “And this would have nothing to do with the Jack the Ripper crimes being something of a hobbyhorse of yours, Mr. Bent? Need I remind you that you are no longer a reporter with the Illustrated London Argus?”

  Bent didn’t need reminding at all. He had been more than happy on the Argus. A hack, but so what? What was it old Samuel Johnson had said? No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money. He’d earned a living wage and enjoyed his work. Then after all the business last summer Walsingham had gone and had him moved to the penny dreadful, World Marvels & Wonders, all the better to officially chronicle the adventures of Gideon Smith, Hero of the Empire, for a sensation-hungry public.

  As if reading his mind, Walsingham looked around the study and asked, “Are you enjoying living here, Mr. Bent?”

  Bent narrowed his eyes. “Is that a threat, Walsingham? Letting me know you can have me back on the Argus and living in the Fulwood Rents quicker than I can fart?”

  Walsingham shrugged then tapped his chin thoughtfully with one long forefinger. “However … there is perhaps some conjunction of the crimes of this Jack the Ripper and the raison d’être of Mr. Gideon Smith’s situation. And you are one of the foremost authorities in London on the Ripper murders.…”

  “The foremost authority, I think you’ll find,” said Bent, jabbing a pudgy thumb into his chest. “You’re talking about Maria
, ain’t you? And what’s in her head? And the fact that whoever Jack the Ripper is, he’s slicing off the tops of whores’ heads as though he’s looking for something where the brain should be.”

  “Succinctly put, Mr. Bent. The work of Professor Hermann Einstein with the item code named the Atlantic Artifact is, of course, entirely top secret.…”

  “Stow it, Walsingham, I read the diaries that Gideon filched from the old boy’s house. We all know now that you gave him this Atlantic Artifact, which you found in some sunken Viking longship, and that when he asked for a human brain to experiment on you handed him the gray matter of poor old Annie Crook, who you had done in just because she fell in love with the Duke of Clarence. And that’s the brain he put in the automaton we all now know and love as Maria.”

  Walsingham smiled thinly. “It must be a huge source of frustration to you, Mr. Bent, a journalist sitting on a story of such magnitude yet unable to publish it.”

  Bent sighed. “Who’d believe it anyway, Walsingham? You’ve got me over a barrel. Anyway, the point is that unless these murders really are the random work of some lunatic, someone seems to know what they’re looking for in the heads of East End whores, and that could well be the Atlantic Artifact. And if they know of its existence, they know what it can do. And if they know what it can do, then they must have been speaking to the only bloke in the world who has that information, and that’d be Hermann Einstein, missing now for, what, nearly a year? So the chances are…”

  Walsingham leaned on his cane and stood. “The chances are, if we unmask Jack the Ripper, we may well be able to find Hermann Einstein, who is so terribly important to the work of the Empire. I am delighted that we seem to understand each other, Mr. Bent. So carry on. I’m glad we had this little chat. I’ll see myself out.”

  Bent watched him go, not a little confounded by it all. He let rip with a long, thoughtful fart, then went off to find Mrs. Cadwallader and her cakes in the kitchen. He paused at the door, watching the housekeeper for a moment as she bent forward to pull a tray of steaming cakes from the oven.