As if by Magic

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘How did his personality alter?’ asked Jack. ‘He doesn’t sound any great shakes to begin with.’

  ‘He doesn’t, does he? However, he had some good qualities, if you count all that shrewdness, energy and charm as good points. She says that she went from being charmed to being wary but then – and the dates fit his treatment from Maguire – she started to be afraid. I know we’ve only got her word for it but I was convinced she was telling the truth. Things came to a head the morning of Wednesday, 31st October. What she found in his room terrified the life out of her.’

  Jack looked a question.

  ‘Culverton was up in London, of course,’ said Rackham, stubbing out his cigarette and lighting another. ‘Mrs Culverton went into his dressing room. It was a room which, according to her, she rarely entered. Culverton’s valet looked after his things and she never had occasion to go in, but the Richmond Red Cross were having a jumble sale and she’d been asked to look out some old clothes. While going through Culverton’s wardrobe, she saw there was a loose panel at the base. The wardrobe had a false bottom and tucked into it was a folder containing yet more obscene photographs and a bundle of newspaper cuttings.’

  Rackham stopped and looked at Jack. ‘There were newspaper cuttings in the rosewood box in his office. These were on the same subject.’ He paused. ‘You seemed to have a good idea what he was like, Jack. You seemed to have him pegged right away. I don’t suppose you can guess what these cuttings were about, can you?’

  Jack leaned back. Images and sensations jumbled together in his mind. A cold-eyed predatory face, the sensuous luxury of Culverton’s office, a dying girl, a terrified woman, the obscene photographs, a string of unsolved murders, the intrusive memory of a Holbein portrait, and an imaginary but oddly convincing picture of a bundle of newspaper cuttings gloated over in private. It was huge leap but he was going to make it. He took a deep breath. ‘He’s the X man. He’s your Jack the Ripper,’ he said quietly.

  Rackham brought his fist down on the table.’ You’ve got it. That’s what the cuttings were about. They were all accounts of the murders and when Mrs Culverton saw them hidden away under the bottom of the wardrobe she said she felt sick. All of a sudden, all sorts of details, all sorts of comments and, most of all, her growing feeling of terror seemed to make sense. She’s utterly convinced of it.’

  ‘Was she going to tell you?’ asked Jack.

  Rackham splayed his hands out in a questioning gesture. ‘How do I know? After she found the cuttings she had no thought beyond getting out of the house and to the safety of her own flat. She says she felt paralysed. She had no proof, only conviction, and was terrified that if she did approach the police Culverton would find out what she’d done. To be honest, I think she was nerving herself to come to us when she got the letter from Lloyd to say he was missing. After that . . .’ He shrugged. ‘What was the point? Culverton was dead and she couldn’t help his victims.’

  ‘Is there any proof?’ asked Jack, suddenly cautious. He would have preferred Rackham to argue the toss with him, to point out all the reasons why he could be wrong, to test his sudden insight against hard fact. ‘I mean, it’s all very well us swapping nightmares with each other but is there any evidence?’

  Rackham raised his hands and let them fall. ‘No. No, there isn’t and if we can’t find any, this will never be made public. What sort of evidence could there be? I’m going to look, believe me I’m going to look, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the X man murders are never officially solved. The Assistant Commissioner is going to interview Mrs Culverton but he told me there’s no real doubt in his mind that we’ve got the truth.’

  ‘What about his papers? Did he keep a diary?’

  ‘Only that appointment diary.’ Rackham leaned forward. ‘That threw up a bit of a question. In the last eighteen months there have been five murders we’ve attributed to the Ripper. On all the relevant dates Culverton had written Paris in his diary and that’s a lie. I think he might have been arranging an alibi for himself. Lloyd was able to check from other paperwork where Culverton was. It took a bit of doing but he hadn’t been in France, he’d been in London, all right.’

  ‘He’d written Paris in his diary the other night,’ Jack said. ‘The night the last girl was killed.’

  ‘Yes. On that occasion, of course, he actually was going to Paris, even if he didn’t get there.’ He gave a humourless smile. ‘There’s only one way of really being certain, and that’s if the murders stop. In the meantime, I still have to try and find who killed him.’

  ‘If Culverton really is your Ripper, whoever saw him off deserves a medal.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Rackham, stretching his shoulders.

  Jack picked up his beer and raised an eyebrow at his friend. ‘So can’t you just let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak?’

  ‘No.’ Rackham leaned back on the settle. ‘For one thing, we don’t work like that. Police procedure is police procedure and I can’t get round it. Besides that, think of the consequences if we don’t crack it. Thanks to you, we believe Culverton was frequenting a dodgy club, a club where, granted he’s our man, he’s been able to pick up and go on to murder no less than five women. I want that club found, Jack, and our key to finding it has to be to work out who killed Culverton. We haven’t got anything else to go on but it’s a damn sight more than we had before. The AC’s agreed to detail some men who can go into clubs – men who won’t stand out like a sore thumb by wearing uniform boots with evening dress and so on – and see if they can pick up any traces.’

  ‘I was going to have a look round myself tonight,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t know if I’m really in the mood any more. I always run into someone I know and I’ve got to be jolly. I don’t feel the least jolly after what you’ve told me.’ He smoked his cigarette down to the butt and crushed it out in the ashtray. ‘What about the other angle? Where was the last Ripper victim seen?’

  ‘We found out as much as we could about the latest victim, Bridget Flynn, at the time. She was last seen a bit the worse for wear with drink at Wednesday lunchtime in Carrowgate Road, Chelsea. Then, like Culverton himself, she seemed to vanish into thin air until she was found on Friday morning. She’d been in the water longer than Culverton so it was difficult to state exactly when she died but the police surgeon, Dr Harding, puts it sometime on Wednesday night or the early hours of Thursday morning, which ties in with Culverton right enough.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got photographs of these girls, have you?’

  ‘We have,’ said Rackham doubtfully, ‘but you wouldn’t want to see them. They’re all taken after we found them.’

  ‘In that case, is there a photo of Culverton I can have? If I’m going to join the hunt, it’ll help.’

  ‘You can have a picture of him and welcome,’ agreed Rackham, ‘but for heaven’s sake if you do find anything, let me know right away. Don’t try anything off your own bat. I don’t want to haul your body out of the Thames.’

  Jack spread his hands wide. ‘Pax, amigo. I’ll be good.’ He picked up his glass. ‘C’mon, Bill. I know this has got to you, but he’s dead, remember. He can’t do any more harm.’

  ‘There’s still the club,’ said Rackham. ‘We have to find the club.’

  The next day brought the promised trip to the factory. In a way, Jack was surprised it was going ahead but old Mr Lassiter, according to George, wanted to keep as much to his plans and usual routine as possible. Michael Walsh’s funeral was planned for Thursday and George intended to be there, principally to support his grandfather. Old Mr Lassiter had been upset by Michael Walsh’s death – very upset – but Dr Moorhouse’s reassurance that it could have happened at any time had helped. ‘My grandfather knew that,’ said George. ‘It was because poor old Walsh was such a basket case that he took him on in the first place. He felt very strongly about the men who were injured in the war and employing Walsh was one of his ways of showing it. It was decent of him, wasn’t it?’

 
Jack agreed. It was probably, he reflected, because of the easy life Mr Lassiter had been able to give him that Walsh had survived as long as he did.

  The roomy Armstrong-Siddeley, which drew up in Chandos Row after lunch, contained not only Mr Lassiter but Anne Lassiter and Dr Maguire as well.

  ‘I have to thank you, Major,’ said Mr Lassiter, after they’d settled themselves in the car, ‘for taking David down to Tilbury on Saturday night. It was a grievous loss. A very grievous loss. I miss poor Walsh enormously.’

  ‘Why was Mr Walsh at the factory in the first place?’ asked Maguire curiously

  Mr Lassiter hesitated. ‘He had undertaken a commission I had entrusted him with,’ he said eventually. ‘A matter of looking out some papers, doctor.’

  Jack admired his way of putting it. It was the truth, when all was said and done, and wouldn’t raise any suspicions in Maguire’s mind. However, Mr Lassiter was clearly uncomfortable and, to divert Maguire’s attention, Jack chipped in with a question about the dinner at the Savoy on Saturday night.

  ‘It was a great success,’ said Maguire, ‘or seemed so, at least. That’s why I’m here today. Nigel’s arranged another meeting for those who seemed particularly interested and I’ve been roped in to enthuse about the flying-boat.’ He smiled. ‘That being so, I thought I’d better come and see it for myself. After all,’ he added, ‘it’s as much for my benefit as for Nigel’s, especially now there’s a question mark over what Culverton’s are going to provide.’

  George, who had clearly heard enough about Culverton’s and their problematical finances to last him a long time, spent most of the journey looking out of the window in discontented silence. ‘Why on earth,’ he said, looking at the drab streets, ‘would anyone live here?’

  Jack had to admit that George had a point. Parts of the journey would have been enough to curb the highest of spirits. The city appeared as mile after mile of dingy blackened-brick boxes where even the occasional grass verge seemed grubby, and autumn showed only as a dismal foretaste of winter.

  Weary of the view, he turned to the occupants of the car. Mr Lassiter was wrapped in reflective silence. It must be hard for him, thought Jack, with a stab of sympathy. He’d obviously thought a lot of Walsh.

  Anne Lassiter sat next to Roger Maguire. Anne was still in her twenties and Maguire was a well-preserved forty-odd. That by itself wouldn’t matter but he couldn’t see why the sophisticated, worldly Maguire was attracted to Anne. She was a good-looking girl, in a fresh, outdoor way. She was wearing a red coat and hat which set off her dark hair and bright eyes, and she looked really something. No, it wasn’t a question of looks, it was a matter of personality. That was the puzzle. Material possessions, thought Jack, didn’t make much appeal to Anne. He could imagine her making the cheerful best of hardship, as the mother of a large and happy family with constant visitors, where the dinner would always be made to go round rather than turn anyone away. She seemed the sort of woman who instinctively understood large dogs and small boys and must have been a cracking nurse.

  Maguire, on the other hand, would recoil from any sort of hardship as a cat recoiled from water. Sleek was about the best word to describe him. Psychiatry, in some of its forms at least, was probably a good choice of profession. Armed with Anthony Brooke’s insights in the club on Saturday, Jack could easily believe that Maguire would be indulgent to a whole range of conditions which Anne had never heard of and which would bewilder her if she did. Sensuality and the problems thrown up by its gratification would be second nature to the knowledgeable Dr Maguire. Jack doubted Anne could even begin to understand the man. So what did she see in him? He was handsome, with an easy, if well-practised, courtesy of manner, and the poor girl must have been lonely after her husband died. Her kindness would excuse his faults. No; Anne’s attraction to Maguire was no mystery but Maguire’s attraction to Anne was baffling.

  After a wearisomely long journey they left the buildings behind and turned down the broad road which ran down the long spit of land to the factory. On this sullen November day, the gloomy clouds seemed to hang at hand-height over the endless iron band of the Thames, in a landscape whose colours varied from grey to black.

  They went through the lodge gates and got out of the car beside the long, high brick bulk of the factory. The clank and rumble of a train sounded clearly somewhere out of sight.

  Mr Lassiter looked at George. ‘I know you’ve been here before, my boy, but I can’t imagine you took much in, granted the very distressing circumstances.’ He pointed down the length of the factory. ‘This is the main building, where the aeroplanes are actually made and, as you know, the offices are at the back. This is only part of the site, of course. We’ve got about fifteen acres altogether. On the other side there’s the testing field and our harbour.’

  He led them up an imposing flight of steps, through a pillared doorway and into the hall. A clerk, who had been seated at a desk, stood up respectfully as they came in. Mr Lassiter spoke to him briefly then turned to his guests. ‘I’ll show you the factory first.’

  With a slight touch of showmanship, Mr Lassiter opened the door from the hall into the factory, ushered them in and stood back with an attitude of modest pride.

  Blinking in the bright lights, Jack took in the factory. The doorway they had come through led them into the side of the building. At first sight it was impressive. The factory itself was a sort of indoor street, open at both ends. Half-formed aeroplanes stood at intervals, each surrounded by khaki-coated workers. The noise was tremendous. It was the smell of the place that hit him, a smell consisting of hot oil, warm metal, new wood, leather, varnish and the heady scent of aircraft dope. For a couple of seconds he was whisked into the skin of his sixteen-year-old self, nearly sick with excitement, climbing into a plane for the first time. Then he realized how empty it all seemed. You could have fitted four or five times as many planes and far more men into the space. He had been told, he reflected, that things were tough for Lassiter’s.

  Eighty feet above their heads a glass roof covered the entire building. Arc lamps blazed down, making hard black shadows. In the apex of the roof a wooden board-walk ran the entire length of the street, under which ran a thick double chain supporting a huge lump of machinery that hung suspended at one end. Jack narrowed his eyes, then smiled in recognition. ‘Why, sir, it’s an overhead crane,’ he said loudly to Mr Lassiter, pitching his voice to carry over the thump of machinery.

  ‘That’s right.’ Mr Lassiter pointed with his stick again. ‘If you look through the open doors at the end there you can see the railway yard. The crane extends over the trucks and we can pick up and unload all the bulky heavy materials right to the door of the various shops. There’s timber, of course, which is mainly ash and spruce, which we get in the baulk, metal and linen.’ His face lit up as he looked at a group of men standing to the side, about halfway down the factory. ‘There’s David with Benson, the foreman.’

  David Lassiter looked up as they approached. ‘The lodge-keeper sent word to say you’d arrived,’ he said, signing the clipboard Benson had given him. ‘Take a look at that last lot of spruce,’ he said to the foreman. ‘The spar shops will need it by this afternoon.’

  ‘What are you making here?’ asked George.

  ‘This is the Urbis,’ said David. He smiled. ‘It’s an excellent machine, even though I say it myself. Yes, all things considered, we’re not doing badly with the Urbis but I wish you could have seen the factory in the war when we had the LE series in full production. We employed nearly a thousand hands then and turned out over fifty aeroplanes a month. If you look outside –’ he turned and pointed – ‘you can see the land stretching down to the river and the old sheds. You can just see the corner of Nigel’s new hangar down by the river. That’s where the Pegasus is.’

  Jack felt his interest quicken. So far he’d only heard of the Pegasus as a problem, but he was looking forward to seeing the aircraft itself. After all, it was going to be the biggest craft ever con
structed and the idea of an aeroplane that could make commercial flights to India was staggering.

  ‘In here,’ continued David, indicating the shops to his left, ‘we’ve got the workshops. There’s metal-working, fabric-cutting, spars, dope and varnish.’ He grinned. ‘If you want a plot for a story, Haldean, this would be a good place to start. We have to treat the aeroplane fabric with dope and the fumes are lethal. We ventilate the room properly, of course, but dope’s dangerous stuff. Then there are the ovens where we dry out the timber. That’s 125 degrees of dry heat. Get stuck in there and you wouldn’t last long.’

  ‘I imagine you could have any number of interesting accidents,’ said Maguire. ‘Fatal, for sure.’

  ‘Our safety record is excellent,’ said old Mr Lassiter stiffly. ‘And really, David, considering what happened on Saturday night, I think that remark is in very poor taste.’

  David Lassiter looked stricken. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking of poor old Walsh or anything or the sort. I was only trying to make things more interesting for Haldean.’ He glanced at George. ‘I’ll give you a proper idea of my side of things when you’ve got more time. I know you’re only here for a brief visit and Maguire wants to see the Pegasus.’

  ‘We’ll go up to Nigel’s office,’ said his father. ‘He’s the best person to show us the new plane.’

  They retreated out of the factory back into the corridor, the sound of machinery muffled behind them.

  ‘How did the firm get started, sir?’ asked George as they walked up the stairs.

  ‘We were boat builders,’ said his grandfather, after a pause to catch his breath. ‘However, Nigel was fascinated by the experiments in flight and I caught his enthusiasm. You won’t have heard of it, but there was an Air Week in Reims in 1909 where the American and the various European aviators got together. I attended it with Nigel and David. I came away convinced that heavier-than-air flight was the way of the future and started experimenting with building our own craft.’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘I was in my sixties then and had been thinking of retirement, but the idea of starting a fresh enterprise gave me a new lease of life. The first of the LEs, the Lassiter Experimental Number One, was flying by 1910. It was the war that really set us on our feet, of course. That’s when we dropped the boat part of the business. We still use the boat yard, but nowadays it’s to build floats for seaplanes. Nigel’s keeping them all busy at the moment.’