The Ripper's Shadow

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “What were you doing outside at five o’clock in the morning?”

  “Taking photographs by the river. Or, rather, attempting to. It was an experiment. It didn’t work.” I am uncomfortably aware of talking too much.

  His eyes narrow further; he senses lies. “You went from house to house, asking people what they’d seen and heard, whether they had any idea who killed that woman. Why?”

  As I try to frame a reply that he’ll accept, that won’t reveal too much, he looks me up and down. I’m further discomfited because I notice that he’s a handsome man. His eyes are a clear, bright gray, like agates under sunlit water. They glint with satisfaction because he’s managed to intimidate me. I think he’s realized that he betrayed his personal feelings a moment ago, it was unbecoming to a police officer, and he’s relieved to regain control of the situation. For my part I thoroughly loathe PC Barrett.

  My loathing emboldens me enough to say, “The murder happened not far from my studio. Naturally, I wanted to know about it. I’m concerned.”

  “Naturally,” Barrett agrees, unconvinced by my fib. “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing,” I say truthfully.

  He steps closer, and I step behind the table where Mick and I breakfasted together. “You wouldn’t be withholding information from the police, would you? That’s a crime.”

  One heave from him could upend the table. “I’m not.”

  “You Whitechapel folks are all the same. You always know more than you’ll tell the police,” he says. “Maybe you even know who killed those two women, but you hold your tongues because you’re afraid to speak or because you don’t like the police, being on the wrong side of the law yourselves. You keep secrets even when there’s a killer in your midst.” He apparently understands that Whitechapel has a dark side, like a globe lighted from one direction, and I’m in the middle of it while the police can only peer from the edge. “We’re only trying to protect you, and you won’t let us!”

  I’m surprised to detect passion behind his annoyance. Barrett cares about protecting citizens and is only upset because people like me are making his job hard.

  “Do you know what, Miss Sarah Bain? I think you’re more than a busybody looking for gossip to spread. You’re conducting your own little private inquiry. Tell me if I’m wrong.”

  Flustered because he’s hit the mark, I stammer, “Yes. I mean, no—I’m not.”

  “Pardon me if I think you’re lying,” he says with frustration. “Suppose you find out who killed those women. What are you going to do about it?”

  I haven’t thought that far ahead. “I would tell the police.” I hasten to add, “That is, if I were conducting an inquiry. Which I’m not.” Defensiveness sharpens my tongue. “I’m a photographer, not a detective.”

  “You’re the one who should keep that in mind. If the killer sees you nosing around, you could be in danger.” Barrett waits a moment, letting his words sink in, observing the fear I can’t hide. Then he asks, “Did you know Martha Tabram?”

  He’s caught me off guard. I almost blurt the truth. “No.”

  “What about the woman who was killed last night? Do you know who she is?”

  When I answer no again, it’s obvious he doesn’t believe me. “Then why put yourself to the trouble of trying to find out about the murders?”

  “As I told you, I’m just a concerned citizen.”

  Baffled, PC Barrett shakes his head, then begins prowling around, surveying the equipment, backdrops, furniture, and props. Mick’s curiosity was worrisome enough, but this feels doubly intrusive because I know what Barrett is doing. I do it myself, on occasions when I photograph clients in their homes. I look at their possessions, the better to understand them and know how to pose them in a way that reflects their characters. PC Barrett is looking for clues to mine, the better to crack me open like a safe.

  “Nice place you’ve got here.” His tone says he hasn’t missed the fact that my studio isn’t prosperous. “Who owns it? Your husband?”

  “No. I’m not married.” I glance at his left hand, noting the absence of a wedding ring. “I’m the proprietor.”

  I watch him categorize me as one of the breed of spinsters operating businesses on a shoestring. As I force myself to hold his gaze, my internal barrier against the world strengthens as if fortified with cast-iron thorns. Stay away from men, my mother often told me. They’ll just leave you in the lurch. That my father died was, in her eyes, a poor excuse for his leaving us. My lack of charms has made it easy for the opposite sex to overlook me, a circumstance that serves me well. A single woman operating a business cannot be too careful about her good reputation. My avoidance of men doesn’t mean I never have feelings toward the opposite sex, but I keep those feelings firmly in check.

  PC Barrett moves to the wall where I’ve hung samples of my work. Studying the portraits, the wedding pictures, and the family groups, he says, “Not bad,” then strolls up to my scenes of London: factory girls with begrimed faces, a legless peddler in Covent Garden, the wreckage from a collision between an omnibus and a train. They’re exercises in balancing light and dark tones, attempts to clarify the fine details in both the bright and the shadowy areas and reveal hidden meaning under the surface of their subjects. I manage to sell some, not often.

  Barrett leans in for a closer look and says, as if he’s surprised, “These are really good.”

  I can’t help feeling pleased. Barrett realizes he’s paid me a sincere compliment in spite of himself and undermined his authority. He straightens up, clears his throat, and turns to the other photographs. These soft-focus, lyrical views of the English countryside are not for sale. My favorite one shows a graveyard where daffodils bloom through spring snow that covers the grass between the tombstones. In the woods is a blurry figure—my father. He took the photograph by using a timer on his camera. It is the only picture of him that I have.

  “Were these taken by someone else?” Barrett asks.

  “Yes.” The landscapes are among the few examples I have of my father’s work. I display them because they’re not only beautiful; they make me feel that he is still with me.

  “Who’s the photographer?”

  I cross my arms against my chest. I don’t want to talk about my father with Barrett, but I have to answer or he’ll wonder why I’m reluctant. “My father.”

  “Does he work here?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” As I hesitate to reply, Barrett says, “He should. He’d bring in customers, and it looks like you could use them.”

  Barrett isn’t interested in my father; he’s just trying to hold onto the upper hand and get at me. But if I refuse to discuss my father, he’ll switch back to the subject of the murders. “My father is dead.”

  “How’d he die?” Barrett speaks callously, as if to make up for complimenting my photographs.

  “He was killed during a riot.” The lump in my throat is harder to swallow this time.

  Now Barrett looks stricken by my distress, aware that he’s needlessly hurt me. He blurts, “I’m sorry.”

  His sympathy and apology are genuine. They move me toward the verge of tears. I feel compelled to explain, to defend my father in case Barrett should think the riot was his fault. “My father was a social reformer. He organized workers to go on strike and march through London to protest the dangerous conditions in the factories and demand help from the government.”

  My mother resented him for it, for putting the workers ahead of his own family, for dying for their sake and leaving her to raise me alone. She repeatedly warned me, A man will always put something ahead of you. It’s better to be independent than left in the lurch.

  “The police used force to break up the marches,” I tell PC Barrett. “They also barged into our house, yelled at my father for being a rabble-rouser, and threatened him. Once they put him in jail overnight, they beat him up, and he came home with blood and bruises all over his face.” From those days came my fear of the law. Su
ddenly I’m not just afraid of PC Barrett; I’m angry. What happened to my father isn’t Barrett’s fault, but he’s a handy scapegoat. “My father was only trying to help poor people.” I loved him and admired him despite what my mother said. “The police are the ones who started the riot.”

  Barrett looks ashamed of his fellow police yet offended because I’ve maligned them. He opens his mouth to argue, but I must close the door to more questions about the murders—and about my father. I can’t let Barrett induce me to reveal my most private secret—my notion that my father is still alive.

  When my mother told me he’d been killed in the riot, I begged to see him, to say good-bye. She said he’d already been buried and refused to tell me where his grave was. My notion was based partly on this meager evidence, but mostly on the childish, wishful hope that he would come back. When I was older, I realized he must have been buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave because my mother couldn’t afford a proper burial with a headstone and she was ashamed. But childhood dreams die hard.

  “Sir, I’ve had enough of your invading my privacy,” I say to PC Barrett. “I must ask you to leave.”

  “What if I don’t?” His chuckle doesn’t hide his anger at my defiance. He strides over to me and stops too near. “You’ll call the police?”

  As we glare at each other, I am aware that even though he is the police and therefore the enemy, he’s not as mean as he pretends to be. I am also too aware that there’s a body under his uniform—strong, supple, and intensely male. He has desires in addition to his need to solve a murder case. The thought brings a scarlet blush to my face, for it’s as much exciting as threatening. I will myself to look away from Barrett, but I cannot. Strands of my hair are hanging loose, crackling with electricity.

  “All right,” Barrett says, “I’m going.” He points at my hot face. “If I find out you lied to me, your troubles will have only just begun.”

  He gives me a last glance, smiles with strange satisfaction, and walks out the door. I look down at myself and see what he saw. My hands have wound my apron strings around my wrists in a simulation of handcuffs—a silent admission of guilt.

  4

  I hurry to lock the door behind PC Barrett. Still quaking with fright, anger, and excitement, I stumble into the kitchen at the rear of the shop. On one side are a black iron stove and oven below cupboards filled with pots, pans, crockery, and food; on the other, the worktop where my equipment for developing, enlarging, and printing photographs sits. Prints hang from clothespins attached to a string tied above the sink. The walls and window are painted black, and rags fill the cracks around the door that leads to the alley. Chemical fumes irritate my eyes, but this is my refuge when life gets difficult.

  I light the gas lamp with the red glass shade, close the door to the studio, and sit on the stool by the worktop. The safelight bathes me in a crimson glow that reminds me of Polly’s spilled blood. I hastily remove the red shade. In the brighter light, I remember what PC Barrett said: Suppose you find out who killed those women. What are you going to do about it?

  I think more clearly when my hands and eyes are occupied. I climb off the stool, pry up a loose floorboard, and remove from the space below it a box of exposed photographic plates. I have prints from them, but the negatives are a degree removed from reality, more palatable. I lift out six negatives, spread them on the worktop, set one aside, and study the others. The first shows Kate Eddowes. Unselfconscious about her stringy figure, she poses on hands and knees, her bare bottom pointed at the camera. The dark and light tones are reversed; her body and the counterpane on the bed are black, the shadows white. She grins over her shoulder. On her left forearm is a crude tattoo—the initials T. C.

  Annie Chapman is the model in the second plate. She sits, stout and awkward in her petticoat and chemise, on the edge of the bed. Although she lets men have their way with her body, she’d been shy about undressing. “It’s always dark when we do it,” she explained. “Nobody ever sees me bare naked.”

  Next is Mary Jane Kelly. Her long hair covers her nudity in the manner of Lady Godiva. She poses with knees raised, flirting with the camera while she pleasures herself. Her hand between her legs is blurred in the photograph. After we finished, she said, “That was more fun than I usually have with a man.”

  I turn to the plate that shows Liz Stride. Dark curls frame a face spoiled by drink. Drink is the downfall that puts many of these women on the streets. Naked except for garters and black stockings, Liz coils herself around the bedpost. She leers, revealing the loss of her upper front teeth.

  While photographing the women, I didn’t think about who bought the pictures. Now I imagine a seated man, his face obscured by shadows, the enlarged prints of my photographs in his lap. His breath quickens as his finger traces mouths, breasts, and loins. His hand clenches as if gripping a knife. I wonder again why the killer chose Martha and Polly as his victims. Has he a taste for prostitutes in general, or unbeautiful, downtrodden ones in particular? Other streetwalkers would have been equally convenient targets. The idea that he may have chosen his two victims from among my photographs is disturbing indeed. What surprises me, then horrifies me, is my ability to put myself in the killer’s place. As I study the erotic images of Annie, Mary Jane, Liz, and Kate, I feel an inner stirring, a flush of arousal. They are the physical sensations that a woman experiences with a lover.

  I only experience them in the privacy of my bed at night, by my own hand. I have never had a lover.

  The imaginary man turns to a photograph of Polly Nichols. It’s the one in which she cups her bare breasts in her hands and licks her nipple. He shudders as the thought of her body violated and mutilated thrills him. Remembering the terrible sight of Polly dead in Buck’s Row, I hastily put the negatives in their box. I cannot bear to look at the sixth one that I set aside. As I hide the box in the secret compartment, I am also disturbed by what I’ve just noticed in these photographs. When I first met the women, I thought them coarse and tough, but here I see their vulnerability. Maybe my photographs haven’t brought my models to a killer’s attention; I fervently hope not. But if they have—if I am responsible for Martha’s and Polly’s deaths—then I must do something.

  As I reluctantly emerge from my darkroom, a knock at the door jangles the bell. I freeze. Is it PC Barrett again? Then I see, through the windowpanes set in the door, that the man who knocked isn’t wearing a uniform. He must be a customer. Relieved, I hurry to let him in. He is a great, black-whiskered bear of a man, dressed all in black, his arms, chest, and shoulders heavy with muscle, his eyes fierce beneath thick, slanted eyebrows. His scowl is so threatening that I step backward.

  “You take picture?” His gruff voice is heavily accented; he’s a foreigner.

  “No!” I’ve been robbed twice by burglars who pretended to be customers, and this man could be the criminal who murdered Martha and Polly, coming after me. I pick up the iron crowbar that I keep for self-protection and brandish it at him. “Go away!”

  He cringes. Tears fill his eyes, which are already red and swollen from apparent weeping. His scowl is a mere configuration of facial features, a mask that doesn’t reflect his true nature. I am startled to realize that he is a timid, grief-stricken bear. His big hands sketch a gesture of apology, and he turns to go.

  “Wait!” I put down the crowbar and open the door. He pauses, and I notice he’s wearing a skullcap—he is a Jew. I’ve had other Jewish customers who were honest, decent people. “I’m sorry. I’ll take your picture. Please come in, Mr. . . . ?”

  A shy, grateful smile transforms his face. He touches his broad chest. “Abraham Lipsky.” He makes a hasty, awkward bow, fumbles for words, and shakes his head at his inability to communicate in English. “You come.” He starts down the street, beckoning.

  I shouldn’t follow a stranger to a place unknown, but I’m sorry for hurting his feelings, and I can’t afford to turn down business. I also think he looks familiar. “Let me fetch my equipment.”

/>   As we walk together along Commercial Street, Abraham Lipsky carries my tripod, flash lamp and stand, and heavy camera as if they weigh nothing. I carry the satchel of lenses and negative plates. We head north into Spitalfields, a neighborhood of Jews who inhabit the tenements and labor in the sewing workshops. Signs written in Hebrew label stores that sell furs, dresses, and boots. Men with long beards, dressed in black, cluster outside synagogues. Women in head scarves and shawls haggle at the street markets. I hear Russian, Polish, and German languages spoken. The exotic flavor of these streets fascinates me, and I’ve often wished I could capture the sights with my camera, but the suspicious glances of the residents warn me that this is a world to which I don’t belong, in which I shouldn’t take liberties. I can see its surface but not the secrets within, just as PC Barrett saw me but not the things I’m hiding.

  We enter the stretch of Aldgate High Street that is called Butcher’s Row. Outside many butcher shops, canopies shelter meat that hangs from hooks—chickens, headless lambs, sides of beef. Inside the shops, men wearing bloodstained aprons work at chopping blocks amid suspended carcasses. The sharp steel cleavers in their hands flash; the blades thump as they dismember animals. Thinking of Polly Nichols, I hastily look away, but I can’t escape the fetid odors from the shops and the slaughterhouses behind them. I breathe deeply to quell nausea.

  The butchers call solemn greetings to Mr. Lipsky in Russian. He nods in reply. Now I know where I saw him before—he works here. He is a butcher.

  He leads me through a maze of alleys. Grimy brick buildings shut out the daylight. I begin to regret coming. The alleys resound with a cacophony of sinister foreign voices, rats skitter over garbage heaps, and a family evicted from their home sits miserably atop their belongings beside the dark doorway that Mr. Lipsky enters. I hesitate, then follow him up a staircase that smells of urine, to the third floor.