The Ripper's Shadow

by Laura Joh Rowland

  The clouds and smoke in the sky have lightened to a murky umber color. The daytime noise of hoofbeats and rattling carriage wheels has begun. I hear rapping noises from a knocker-upper—a man with a long cane and a lantern, who knocks on the windows of people who can’t afford to buy a clock; they pay him a pittance to wake them up for work in the morning. More folks appear in Buck’s Row, chatting in clusters, spreading news of the crime. The killer, like the urchin who stole my camera, has dissolved into the fog. I look down Buck’s Row at a terrace of brick houses. In the nearest doorway stands a woman—a broad figure in a shapeless dress.

  I’m shy with acquaintances and strangers alike, and I have to clear my throat before I say, “Good morning.”

  The woman has lumpy features and a raw, red complexion, as if scrubbed with a wire brush. Braids of gray hair blend into the knitted shawl around her shoulders. Her shrewd, pale blue eyes regard me warily. Folks in Whitechapel are suspicious of strangers.

  “I’m Sarah Bain. I own the photography studio on Commercial Street.”

  “Oh. You did me niece’s wedding picture.” Her suspicion thaws, but not much.

  Although I’m respected by my neighbors, we’re not friends, despite the fact that I’ve resided and worked in Whitechapel for a decade. At the outset, I rebuffed their invitations to tea, which hasn’t endeared me to them. Neither has my courteous but adamant refusal to answer questions about my past, but the murder in our midst encourages conversation.

  “I’m Mrs. Emma Green,” the woman says. “Terrible ain’t it, what happened to that woman?”

  “Yes.” The next logical thing to say comes to mind. “And it was right near your house. Did you hear it?”

  “Not a sound.” Mrs. Green shakes her head in surprise and bewilderment. “I were fast asleep.”

  Across the street, a group of men loiters outside the stable. One waves to Mrs. Green. She says, “That’s Walter Purkis, night manager of Essex Wharf. He never heard a sound, neither.”

  My hope for a hint at the killer’s identity fades.

  Mrs. Green’s eyes glitter with fear and excitement. “This murder were just like the one in George Yard Buildings.”

  My uneasiness quickens because I am not the only person to connect Martha Tabram’s murder with Polly’s. Surely the police will, too; and then they will search for links between the women. One link is myself.

  “They say she were stabbed thirty times.” Mrs. Green’s voice drops to a whisper. “And it looked like she’d been interfered with.”

  I heard that Martha, like Polly, had been found with her skirts up and her legs open. I remember Martha posing for me. A coarse, blowsy woman of thirty-nine, she came to my studio drunk. While I photographed her, she told me that she and her beau worked as hawkers, selling needles, pins, and trinkets by day. By night, she sold herself. She couldn’t sit still, even though I told her the pictures would come out blurry, but she wanted to be paid the full price. When I objected, she flew into a cursing rage, wrested the money from me, and stormed out. I’d been glad to see the last of her but was horrified by her death.

  “George Yard Buildings is full of people,” Mrs. Green said. “They come and go at all hours. You’d think she must have screamed while she was being attacked, but nobody seen nor heard nothing. Just like this time.”

  “Have you heard any ideas about who killed Martha?” I ask.

  “They say he’s a fiend.” Mrs. Green darts furtive glances around us, as if afraid he’s listening. “He’s invisible. He’s not flesh and blood.”

  A disembodied evil seems to permeate the fog, and my shoulders hunch; my hand grips my coat collar around my throat. I head down the street in search of more information, but although the other women in Buck’s Row are eager to talk about the crime, none can offer anything except speculations. With neither my suspicions nor my fears relieved, I turn homeward.

  A gruff, childish voice speaks beside me: “Pardon, Miss.”

  It’s the street urchin. In the clearer light of dawn, I see shame on his dirty face. He holds out my satchel. “Here. You can have it back.”

  Amazement stuns me. He’s no ordinary hardened criminal; he has a sense of right and wrong, and he’s repaid my favor of not reporting him to the police.

  It’s rare that anyone moves me to the brink of tears. I accept the satchel. “Thank you.” An even rarer impulse compels me to ask, “What is your name?”

  “Mick O’Reilly.”

  “Thank you, Mick.” I realize, too late, that I now must introduce myself and thus turn an encounter into an acquaintance. “My name is Sarah Bain.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Bain.” He tips his ragged cap; he’s learned manners somewhere. He regards me curiously as we again experience that feeling of kinship. “I’ll walk you home. It’s not safe for a lady by herself.”

  His gallantry is endearing—and alarming. I say, “No, you needn’t,” and walk away.

  Mick grins and matches my brisk pace. “’S’all right. I got time.”

  I’ve unintentionally drawn him into my shadow.

  “Did you see the deader in Buck’s Row?” he asks.

  “Yes.” I feel bad because he’s seen something no child should see. “It was frightful.” I try to think of a polite way to get rid of him.

  “I can’t wait to tell the other lads. They’ll want to ’ear all about it, and I’ll be first with the news.” Mick sounds more eager and excited than disturbed. “By the by, what’s that thingamajig in your bag?”

  I tell him it’s a camera, and he says, “Did you take a picture of the deader?” When I say no, he’s disappointed. “You could’ve sold it for a whole quid, I bet.”

  It occurs to me that I should be more careful about what I take pictures of.

  On Whitechapel High Street, the morning is scarcely brighter than dusk. Smoke from chimneys blackens the sky; a thin rain dissolves the yellowish-brown fumes belched by factories into acid tears. Soot stains the brick walls and slate roofs of the buildings that rise high along the road, which bustles with carriages, wagons, and omnibuses. I step nimbly to avoid horses’ hooves and clattering wheels that splash mud. Hoping to lose Mick in the traffic, I glance sideways to see if he’s still with me.

  He is.

  When was the last time that someone, other than a neighbor who happened to be going in the same direction, walked beside me? When my mother, who died fourteen years ago, was still alive, we walked together by ourselves. She told me I didn’t need friends; friends would only turn on me. Stab you in the back before you know it, her harsh voice says in my mind.

  That happened when I was ten. Overnight, it seemed, for no apparent reason, my mother and I suddenly lost all our friends—the neighbors wouldn’t speak to her, let their children play with me, or sit by us in church. I never understood why, but it was a painful experience that neither my mother nor I ever wanted to repeat.

  “I’m almost home,” I tell Mick. He shrugs off my attempt to push him out of my shadow for his good and mine. He’s so badly off that I doubt I could make things worse for him—but that’s what I told myself about Martha and Polly.

  Saturday is market day, and we navigate through the usual crowd. Farmers drive wagons loaded with fruit and vegetables past women flocking to the shops. Bearded Jews, turbaned Indians, black Africans, and native East Enders jostle. A din composed of voices speaking foreign languages engulfs me, as do the smells of cesspools, exotic foods cooking, manure, and garbage. Amid the decay and squalor, there is a raw vitality that invigorates. There is also an undercurrent of violence. At any instant, tempers may flare into an argument that sparks a fight. Blood spills often. Here, the line between life and death is as narrow as the edge of a knife blade. Now I sense a menace darker than usual. The murderer who stabbed Martha Tabram and Polly Nichols—if indeed it is one and the same man in both instances—could still be among us. Is he that cheerful, rotund hackney driver? Or the thin, nervous clerk at the stationery store? The scene is like
an overexposed photograph, its secret, shadowy details lost in the bleaching glare of the flash lamp.

  Commercial Street, on the edge of a marginally respectable neighborhood that borders on London’s worst slums, has the air of a slattern waking after a bad night. The public house on one corner is closed, the tearoom on the other not yet open. Cockle shells and old newspapers litter the street. Puddles between the cobblestones outside the brick tenements smell of urine. My shop—a storefront wedged between a druggist’s and a milliner’s—looks drab and forlorn; yet to me, it is the dearest place in the world. As I unlock the door, Mick studies the gold lettering painted on the window, lined with a maroon velvet curtain, which displays portraits of solemn brides and grooms, family groups stiffly posed.

  “Bain & Sons, Photography,” he says.

  I pause, surprised that he can read. Mick says, “I learned my letters from the nuns at St. Vincent’s orphanage.”

  Maybe he isn’t a homeless street urchin after all and has someplace to go after I peel him off me. “Do you live there?”

  “Not anymore. I ran away. Didn’t like bein’ told what to do and how to do it all day long and bein’ paddled if I did something wrong. Rather be on my own.”

  “Where do you live now?”

  His gaze slides away from mine. “Oh, here and there.”

  He must sleep in alleys and under bridges. I can’t help liking his plucky spirit. When I open the door, he stands on the sidewalk. He’s waiting to be invited in, like a dog begging, and I would be cruel to shut the door in his face. If I feed him, maybe then he’ll go away.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  Mick grins. “Sure.”

  The bell that hangs inside the door tinkles as we enter the studio. Mick pauses at the threshold. His curious gaze scrutinizes the room, darting from my large camera on its wooden tripod to the flash lamp mounted on a metal pole and legs. “Who’re Bain and Sons? Your pa and brothers?” He looks afraid that men will appear, object to his presence, and throw him out.

  “I haven’t any brothers. Benjamin Bain was my father. He’s . . . gone.” I swallow the lump that rises in my throat whenever I speak of him, despite the fact that new customers often expect the services of a Mr. Bain, and I have to explain that there is none.

  “You mean, dead?” Mick asks with a child’s bluntness.

  “Yes.” My father’s death is an unhealed wound, even though he died twenty-two years ago.

  “How’d it happen?” Mick doesn’t realize he’s probing a wound.

  To shut him up, I explain, “He was killed during a riot.”

  “Oh.” Mick casually accepts the short story; riots are common in London.

  The long story is that when I was ten years old, my father disappeared. After weeks passed, my mother learned that he’d been fatally beaten in the riot. I’ve never told anyone that on the day he disappeared—before we knew anything was wrong—she sent me to fetch him home from the tavern he frequented. He wasn’t there. After his death, I thought that if I’d looked harder—if I’d searched everywhere else, if I hadn’t been lazy—I’d have found him and rescued him, and he would still be alive. Nobody needs to know I believe I’m somehow responsible for my father’s fate and I live under an unlucky star that will bring harm to anyone else who steps into the shadow I cast. I avoid friendships; I hide my guilt behind a barrier of secrecy.

  “My father was a photographer in Clerkenwell,” I say, giving Mick my standard speech. “He named his business when he expected to have sons who would work in it, but he had only me—his daughter. He began teaching me photography when I was very young. When I grew up and opened my own studio, I gave it the same name as his.”

  That’s all I tell my customers when they ask about my father. I don’t mention my suspicion that my mother’s explanation for my father’s disappearance isn’t true.

  “Is your ma gone, too?” Mick asks.

  “Yes.” After my father died, she and I went to work in a button factory, and she eventually sent me to a charity boarding school. When she died of cancer, she left me a small legacy that she’d scrimped and saved from her wages, and I used it learn the latest photographic techniques and equip my studio.

  “So you’re an orphan, too.”

  “Yes.”

  Mick smiles. I can’t help smiling back. It’s another thing we have in common besides our fear of police.

  Mick explores the studio while I don my apron and put on the kettle at the rear of the building, in the kitchen that doubles as my darkroom. He ducks under the black drape that hangs over the back of my camera and cranks the handle that opens and closes the bellows. I’m worried that he’ll break something. He examines the T-shaped flash lamp, sits on the divan, then jumps up to inspect the photographs that decorate one wall, and opens the cupboards to finger vases, silk flowers, other props, and costumes. He doesn’t seem to notice the shabbiness of the furnishings. I invested my limited capital in equipment, and although I earn a decent living, I can never get ahead. I can’t afford a better location that would attract a richer clientele.

  “I might like to be a photographer someday.” Mick pulls down painted backdrops that hang from rollers—a formal garden; the Grand Canal in Venice—then perches on one of the ornately carved chairs in which my customers pose. “I run me own business, too.”

  I slice bread and measure tea leaves into the pot. “What sort of business?”

  “This ’n that. I do jobs for folks. I find things to sell.”

  Or steals them. He runs upstairs to snoop in my flat, and when he comes back, I’m afraid to ask if he’s hidden anything in his pockets. People are unpredictable, dangerous. Stab you in the back before you know it.

  We sit at the table where I confer with clients, write out bills, and keep my account books. Mick wolfs down his bread and butter and tea. After he finishes, he’s restless, like a wild animal confined indoors. He thanks me politely, then says, “Got to go. Be seein’ you.”

  As the door closes on him, I’m glad to be rid of him, yet I feel unexpectedly bereft. Tired because I rose so early this morning, I wonder if it’s worth opening the studio today. I have no photographic sessions scheduled, and few customers will walk in.

  The door opens with a noisy jangle of the bell.

  A man steps into the room. Daylight from the street silhouettes his dark figure. All I can discern of him is the distinctive shape of his helmet.

  My heart jumps into my throat.

  He is a police constable.

  3

  “Good morning, ma’am,” the constable says.

  His loud, brisk voice pins me to the spot despite my instinct to bolt. He takes off his hat with formal courtesy. His hair is dark brown, almost black. He closes the door, and as he advances on me, I feel like a rabbit cornered by a fox. The police—the enemy—has invaded.

  “What do you want?” I say, attempting the stern tone with which I repel folks who barge into my studio to harass or rob me. But my voice is shrill with fear. My studio—my sanctuary, my livelihood—has become a trap.

  “Just a word with you, please.” He’s not above average height, but he stands tall, the better to intimidate, an alien presence in my small, private world.

  My senses preternaturally acute, I see that he is perhaps a year or so younger than I. His skin has an olive tinge, as if from Spanish or Italian blood in his distant ancestry. His face, although molded according to conventional English standards, has rough-cut bones and a dark shadow on the cheeks and jaws from a beard that he must need to shave often. Those features, and his keen eyes, give him an intense, unruly aspect.

  “Pardon me if I startled you.” Beneath his carefully proper speech, I can hear his East End origins in his voice. I can tell that he imitates his betters and aspires to a higher lot in life. “I’m Police Constable Thomas Barrett. I saw you at the murder scene in Buck’s Row.”

  He followed me home. I didn’t notice! The other police at the scene of Polly’s death wer
e willing to forget me, but this PC Barrett must think I’m hiding something germane to the murder. How can I throw him off before he can find out what it is?

  When I photograph people, they are often nervous, their expressions unattractively tense. To distract them into relaxing, I talk about unrelated subjects. Now, to distract him and calm my own nerves, I grasp at this trick of my trade. “I didn’t see you. Were you with the other police?”

  “No. Buck’s Row isn’t my beat,” PC Barrett says. “I’m from Mitre Street Station.”

  Here arises my contrary impulse to poke the wolf. “Then what were you doing there?”

  “I’ve an interest in the murder.” A smile twists the corner of his mouth: he knows I’m trying to direct the conversation away from myself as well as nettle him. “I was the first officer on the scene of another murder, on the seventh of August. It bore striking similarities to the one in Buck’s Row. The victim was a woman named Martha Tabram.”

  What I feared has happened: the police have made the connection between Martha and Polly. How long before PC Barrett draws the line from them to me?

  “Are you investigating Martha Tabram’s murder?” I ask, even though I mustn’t seem too curious. Barrett represents an opportunity to learn more about the murders, and my poking him makes me feel bolder, eases my usual shyness. “What progress has been made toward finding out who killed her?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.” A shadow of emotion crosses his features. Years of watching people while photographing them has sharpened my perception, and I can tell that PC Barrett isn’t as confident as he would like people to think. His authoritative manner is partly standard police behavior, partly a cover for insecurity. I also perceive that I’m not the only one of us with secrets related to the murders, and his may not be any higher above board than mine. The balance of power between us tilts to a more even keel.

  “I’ll ask the questions,” he says. “What brought you to Buck’s Row?”

  My impulse is to protect Mick, so I don’t mention him. “I was on my way home. I saw a crowd of people around—the body.” I almost said Polly’s body. “I stopped to look.”