“No, no!” Catherine sits up. She seems to be upset rather than enjoying herself. Ida presses her shoulders down, and she struggles. “Please!”
I force my voice through the barrier of my fear. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s no need for concern,” Dr. Poole’s features are unnaturally rigid. The black flecks in his eyes enlarge and coalesce. “Outbursts are common during the procedure.”
His breathing quickens, and sweat droplets bead on his skin. It’s as if the dark, foul passions within him are rising to the surface, leaking through his professional carapace. I think he knows what’s going on—he’s not fooled by the cloak of scientific respectability he’s thrown over the proceedings. He must have fornicated with his victims immediately before he killed them, and taken his own pleasure even as he attempted to induce hysterical paroxysms in them without the aid of a pelvic massager. I suppose he thought that because he’d seen them displaying carnal excitement in my photographs, they would easily and quickly reach hysterical paroxysm. He desires Catherine, and stimulating her sensations excites him. But Ida seems unsuspicious, unaffected, and innocent. I think she’s never experienced the sensations herself.
Catherine moans, writhes, and tries to push the massager away. Ida restrains her while Dr. Poole holds the massager in place. Catherine cries, “Help!”
I hold her hand. Her fingernails dig into my palm. I’m afraid to oppose Dr. Poole, afraid of what he might do if angered, but I say, “Dr. Poole, that’s enough! You’re hurting her.”
“It’s all right.” Catherine’s red, perspiring face contorts. Her hips buck; she breathes hard and fast. She seems torn between craving the pleasure and fearing it.
Dr. Poole adjusts knobs on the black box. The humming rises to a shriller pitch. Catherine screams. Shudders course through her body. Her head tosses from side to side as her feet kick out of the stirrups. Catherine gasps and sobs as if in terrible pain.
“What’s wrong?” I say anxiously.
Babbling, incoherent, she clings to me. Dr. Poole withdraws the massager from beneath her skirts. The rubber cap is shiny, wet. His hand is shaking.
“This is quite unusual.” His chest heaves; his voice is ragged. “Most women are calmer after a paroxysm.” Ida stares at him, surprised because he’s lost his air of professional detachment. “One was not enough. She needs another treatment.”
“How can you think so? She was fine before, and now look at her!” I feel a shifting sensation within me. It’s the anger elbowing aside my fear. “Catherine, we’re going home.”
“No! I want another treatment.”
She’s determined to occupy Dr. Poole long enough for Hugh and Mick to photograph his laboratory. I want evidence that he’s Ripper Number Two, but not at her expense.
“The treatment didn’t agree with you.” I’m still baffled by her reaction to it, and my fury at Dr. Poole is nearing the now-too-familiar point beyond my control. His readiness to compromise his patients’ well-being for his own pleasure must have enabled him to murder them for the sake of science. “Another will make you worse.”
“Perhaps Sarah is right,” Ida murmurs, clearly having second thoughts about the beneficence of her employer’s work.
“I want it,” Catherine says in the same stubborn tone with which she once refused to stop picking up men.
Dr. Poole induces another paroxysm. This time she screams louder, shakes and sobs more violently. Her suffering is more than I can bear. My temper explodes like an internal black thunderstorm. I snatch the vibrating massager from Dr. Poole, and for the first time, I face him one-on-one. Gripped by the same impulse to violence as I felt at Bedlam, I raise the massager to strike Dr. Poole.
He’s perspiring so heavily that his male, animal reek fills the room. His pupils are so dilated, their blackness seems to fill his eye sockets. The bell jar has cracked; the air has reached the scorpions and cobras, freed them from their suspended animation. His expression is devoid of thought, as if he’s become an automaton controlled by the evil forces that possess him.
This is how he must look when he kills.
In his own way, he’s more terrifying than Commissioner Warren.
Fear overcomes my anger with a shattering sensation, as if I’m a blacksmith’s red-hot iron rod dunked in an ice bath.
Hugh and Mick burst into the room, yelling, “Catherine! Sarah!” They stare, appalled, at Catherine weeping on the couch, me brandishing the massager at Dr. Poole, and Ida fearfully, helplessly wringing her hands. Mick grabs me before I can strike Dr. Poole. I drop the massager on the floor, and it hums and writhes like a swatted hornet.
“What happened?” Hugh asks.
Mick glares at Dr. Poole, who doesn’t seem aware of him or Hugh, Ida or me. His blank, black gaze is fixed on Catherine.
“We must take Catherine home,” is all I can manage to say.
Hugh carries her out of the room. Mick runs ahead to open the front door. I can’t leave Ida alone with Dr. Poole. “Come with us.” I grab her by the hand and pull her along as I follow my friends. On our way out of the house, I grab our coats from the stand. While Hugh and Mick put Catherine in the carriage, I say, “Ida, you mustn’t work for Dr. Poole any longer.” I’m so distressed, I can’t find the words to explain.
“Because of how he treated Catherine. Yes, it was awful.” Ida’s face is drawn with misery. “Tomorrow I shall give notice.”
“Don’t give notice! Never go back. Let us take you home now.”
“Very well,” Ida says, unhappy because she’s lost her job but relieved that she needn’t face Dr. Poole again.
Dr. Poole’s figure darkens the lighted doorway of his house. I feel his attention following Catherine like a miasma. I could pity him in the way that I would pity a lizard born without a leg, or any other defective creature, if he didn’t seem so soulless. If I had to guess which Ripper has a conscience, I would have to choose Commissioner Warren. I hurry Ida into the carriage and discover that Catherine has fainted. As we make our escape, Hugh calls her name and pats her cheeks, but she’s as limp, white, and still as death.
Mick sits across from her, his hands clasped, whispering prayers. Ida opens a vial of smelling salts under Catherine’s nose. Catherine jerks and coughs. Mick says, “Thank you, God!”
Catherine opens dazed, frightened eyes. She doesn’t seem to recognize us. Huddling in the corner of the seat, she shivers. I cover her with her coat. When the carriage stops outside York Street Chambers, Hugh walks Ida to the door. He’s gone a long time. Mick and I are silent, watching and fearing for Catherine.
When Hugh climbs back into the carriage, his face is grim. “I told Ida. She’s terribly hurt, but she said she understands and forgives us. I’ve never felt so ashamed.”
Nor have I. “Does she believe Dr. Poole is a murderer?”
“Yes. I had to lie to her again, though. She wanted to tell the police everything, but I figured they would probably throw us in jail for fraud instead of arresting Dr. Poole, so I told her we’re secret agents working for the government.”
“And she believed you?”
“I could have convinced her that left is right,” Hugh says bitterly. “Damn me.”
I ask whether he and Mick got into Dr. Poole’s laboratory. Mick nods and holds up my camera, but at the moment, we’re too worried about Catherine to care what’s in it. Hugh says, “Sarah, were you really going to wallop Dr. Poole with that gizmo?” His voice is filled with disbelief. He’s never seen me lose my temper; he didn’t see me in Bedlam.
“No, of course not.” But at the time, I could have split Dr. Poole’s head open.
“Well, it’s good that you didn’t,” Hugh says. He and Mick seem not quite reassured, a little afraid of me. “God only knows what would have happened.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. It won’t happen again.”
But I remember the overpowering force of my temper, I’m unsure I can control it next time, and I begin to per
ceive what’s gotten into me. The anger ignited by Commissioner Warren isn’t directed only at him or anyone else who’s crossed me lately. At the tea party, my irrational hatred toward Ida’s mother was really displaced, unacknowledged hatred toward my own mother. She is the source of my reservoir of hot, molten fury. Not only was she harsh and unloving, but by refusing to let me see my father’s body and visit his grave, she denied me the right to know for certain whether his death was a fact. No matter her reasons, she left me with persistent questions and a habit of distrusting other people, and she consigned me to a life of loneliness. Because she never set the record straight, I don’t know if Commissioner Warren lied when he said my father was a fugitive from the law. And because my mother is gone, I’m venting my rage on other people. Now I retreat into frightened silence. What have I become? I don’t know myself anymore. I can’t predict what I’m capable of doing in the future.
At my studio, Hugh carries Catherine upstairs, then goes to the kitchen to make tea. Mick watches me tuck Catherine into my bed and light the fire. She lies still, her eyes closed.
“Is she gonna be all right?” Mick whispers. Love for her shines from his eyes.
I nod even though I’m far from certain.
“You want me to develop the pictures?”
“Do you know how?”
He manages a smile. “I’ve watched you enough times.”
After he goes, I sit beside Catherine and say softly, “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
Her eyes move beneath their closed lids as if she’s half asleep and dreaming. Her lips form words that are barely audible. “I begged him not to. But he said I wanted it.”
She must be talking about the squire who violated her. It hurts me to listen. I don’t know what to say.
“When he did it, it happened. I couldn’t control it.” Her voice is tiny, woeful. “He said it meant I liked how he made me feel. I thought he must be right. Because it did feel good.”
These cryptic words, together with the story I heard her tell Hugh, add up to a tale that’s even more upsetting: When the squire had carnal relations with her, her body naturally responded with what Dr. Poole terms “hysterical paroxysm.” She experienced pleasure that he forced upon her, and Dr. Poole’s treatment brought back the painful memories.
“I was so ashamed.” Tears seep from under Catherine’s long, dark lashes. “When he told me I was a bad girl, I believed him. Because if I weren’t, I wouldn’t have liked it.”
“Oh, Catherine,” I whisper, sad that she still carries the undeserved burden of guilt.
“I never let it happen with other men. I never let myself feel good while they touched me. I don’t want to be reminded of him. When I came to London, I thought I could forget. But I never will.” Sobs erupt from Catherine. She sounds as if something is broken inside.
My heart breaks for her. That day at Euston Station, I thought I was saving her, but I was only setting her on a road back to her old nightmare.
By the time she falls asleep, it’s two thirty in the morning. I go downstairs to the studio. Hugh says, “You need to see the photographs.”
#
In the darkroom, two damp prints hang from the line. The first shows a table like the one I saw in Bedlam; it has shackles and a head restraint. Mick points at glass-fronted cabinets behind the table and says, “Those things in there are all kinds of different knives. We didn’t have time to take closeup pictures.”
“This setup tells us that Dr. Poole isn’t planning to stop his experiments, and now he’s willing to risk doing them at home,” Hugh says. “I think he’s already started collecting more specimens.” He taps the second photograph.
Spread on the laboratory table is a dress with a white collar, cloth-covered buttons down the left bodice, and a swath of fabric draped across the full, pleated skirt—the kind a respectable, affluent woman would wear. My vision is so bleary from fatigue that I can’t see why Hugh and Mick thought the dress worth photographing or why it was in the laboratory.
“It’s cut down the front,” Mick says.
“We found it in a cabinet,” Hugh says. “We think Dr. Poole cut it off a woman so he could remove her organs, and he forgot to dispose of it afterward.”
We once thought the Ripper’s interest was confined to my models, and that even if we couldn’t save Mary Jane and Catherine, at least he wouldn’t kill anyone else. “But who was she?” I say, horrified.
“I would suppose one of his patients,” Hugh says.
“What happened to her body?” I ask.
“God only knows.” Hugh says. “The devil of it is, if Dr. Poole keeps on killing, Commissioner Warren won’t stop either.”
“He can hide behind Dr. Poole,” I agree. “As long as he’s careful, he’ll be safe.”
“Safe to switch to murdering whatever sort of woman Dr. Poole chooses next,” Hugh adds. “I hate to say this, but we can’t go to the police. They wouldn’t believe that these pictures mean what we think they mean. We lack a certain credibility.”
“Shit!” Mick says. “Was tonight all for nothing?”
“No,” I say. “We found out that Dr. Poole really is the Ripper. I recognized him. He’s the man who was in Dutfield’s Yard with Liz Stride.”
“Which makes our job simpler,” Hugh says. “Dr. Poole can’t kill Mary Jane Kelly because you paid her to stay indoors, or Catherine because we’re not letting her go out by herself no matter what she says, so he’ll proceed to kill other women. All we have to do is spy on him and catch him in the act.”
37
It was four o’clock in the morning before I crept into bed beside Catherine.
A knock at the door awakens me from a heavy, exhausted slumber.
“Miss Sarah,” Mick whispers, “can you come downstairs? Something’s happened.”
I forgot that I let him and Hugh sleep in my studio. Blinking in the pale daylight from the window, I glance at the clock: ten thirty. Catherine is still asleep. After hastily washing and dressing, I go downstairs to find Mick and Hugh at the table. There lies a huge bouquet of red roses, so dark they’re almost black. They fill the air with a funereal scent.
“A delivery boy just brought them,” Mick says. His red hair stands up in cowlicks, but his eyes are bright, wide-awake.
Hugh, rubbing the whisker stubble on his jaw, gives me the card that came with the roses. The message is written in script so precise that it could have been printed on a press, but inkblots betray the author’s impatient, excited state of mind. I read the letter aloud:
Dear Miss Catherine Price,
Last night was most extraordinary. I believe that together you and I can make great scientific advances. Please tell me when and where I can see you again. Perhaps at the Oxford Theater after your next performance?
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Henry Poole
PS Dare I hope that we might also become more than friends?
I drop the card as if it soiled my fingers. I feel the burn of anger again.
Hugh yawns. “Catherine’s made another conquest. She can be the bride of Dr. Frankenstein.” He sees me frown and says, “Sorry.”
“I’ll take this to the dustbin.” Mick gathers up the card and bouquet.
I wonder if he’s remembering the pink rose he tried to give Catherine. “Dr. Poole must think Catherine lives with me.” I voice a belated thought. “His handwriting isn’t anything like that of the Jack the Ripper letters. Either they’re Warren’s doing or someone else’s hoax.”
As soon as Mick comes back, there’s a loud knocking at the door, and a male voice shouts, “Sarah Bain!” The shade is pulled down over the window; we can’t see outside, but I recognize the voice. My heart lurches.
“It’s Inspector Reid,” I whisper.
“Open up, or we’ll break the door down!”
Thumps rattle the door’s windowpanes. I mustn’t let Reid at Hugh and Mick. “Run out the back door!”
They stand pat. “We’re not le
aving you alone with him,” Hugh says.
Wood splinters and glass shatters. I push Hugh and Mick into the darkroom just before the front door flies open. PC Barrett steps across the threshold, looking both defiant and ashamed. Then comes Inspector Reid. Fists clenched, a bounce in his gait, he sparks with combative energy, like a boxer entering the ring. The ends of his mustache are straggly; he’s been gnawing on them. His disheveled gray hair hangs into his eyes, which are red from sleeplessness and anger.
“The Ripper has struck again,” he says. “Mary Jane Kelly was killed in Miller’s Court, early this morning.”
Shock pressures the wind from me. I lean on the table and struggle to inhale. How could Mary Jane have been murdered? Mick and I paid her to stay safe at home!
“The Ripper attacked her while she was in bed. He slit her throat, cut off her arm, and ripped her stomach open. He pulled her entrails out, cut off her nose and her breasts, and skinned her legs.” Reid seems to relish these appalling details that he hurls at me. “The scene looked like a bloody slaughterhouse.”
Her killer must have gained entry via the broken window. Frustrated with waiting for her to come out, or afraid of meeting the police or the vigilantes on the streets, he murdered her in her own room. Was he Dr. Poole or Commissioner Warren? Whoever killed Mary Jane, we made her a sitting duck.
Reid can’t see the misery on Barrett’s face because Barrett is standing behind him, but I can tell that Barrett thinks Warren killed Mary Jane. He thinks that because he didn’t speak out against Warren, her murder is partly his fault.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know her,” Reid says. “I can see that you did.”
The murder is in some ways a lucky break. “Mr. Lipsky was in jail during the murder. He couldn’t have done it. This proves he’s innocent!” Sick with guilt for Mary Jane yet overjoyed for Mr. and Mrs. Lipsky, I say, “Are you going to set him free?”
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