Ripping Time

by Robert Asprin

  As soon as they had gained enough distance, Shahdi Feroz cast a curious glance over her shoulder. “How in the world will Annie Chapman slip through that door with seventeen people asleep in the house and nobody hear a thing?”

  Margo shot the scholar an intent glance. “Good question. Maybe one of the working girls got tired of having that busybody interfere with using a perfectly suitable business location? One of them could’ve poured lamp oil on the hinges?”

  “It’s entirely possible,” Dr. Feroz said thoughtfully. “Pity we haven’t the resources to put twenty-four hour surveillance on that door for the next week. That was quick thinking, by the way,” she added with a brief smile. “When she shouted like that, I very nearly lost my footing. I had no idea what to say. All I could imagine was being placed in jail.” She shivered, leaving Margo to wonder if she’d ever seen the inside of a down-time gaol, or if she just had a vivid imagination. Margo, for one, had no intention of discovering what a Victorian jail cell looked like, certainly not from the inside. She had far too vivid a memory of sixteenth-century Portuguese ones.

  “Huh,” she muttered. “When you’re caught stealing the cookies, the only defense is a counterattack with a healthy dose of misdirection.”

  Shahdi Feroz smiled. “And were you caught stealing the cookies often, my dear Miss Smith?”

  Margo thrust away memory of too many beatings and didn’t answer.

  “Miss Smith?”

  Margo knew that tone. That was the Something’s wrong, can I help? tone people used when they’d inadvertently bumped too close to something Margo didn’t want bumped. So she said briskly, “Let’s see, next stop is Dorset Street, where Elizabeth Stride was killed in Dutfield’s Yard. We shouldn’t have any trouble getting in there, at least. Mr. Dutfield has moved his construction yard, so the whole place has been deserted for months.” She very carefully did not look at Shahdi Feroz.

  The older woman studied her for a long, dangerous moment more, then sighed.

  Margo relaxed. She’d let it go, thank God. Margo didn’t want to share those particular memories with anyone, not even Malcolm or Kit. Especially Malcolm or Kit. She realized that Shahdi Feroz, like so many others since it had happened, meant well; but raking it all up again wouldn’t help anyone or solve anything. So she kept up a steady stream of chatter about nothing whatsoever as her most useful barrier to well-intentioned prying. She talked all the way down Brick Lane and Osborn Street, across Whitechapel Road, down Plumber Street, past jammed wagon traffic on Commercial Road, clear down to Berner Street, which left her badly out of breath, since Berner Street was all the way across the depth of Whitechapel parish from number twenty-nine Hanbury.

  Dutfield’s Yard was a deserted, open square which could be reached only by an eighteen-foot alleyway leading in from Berner Street. A double gate between wooden posts boasted a wooden gate to the right and a wicker gate to the left, to be used when the main gate was closed. White lettering on the wooden gate proclaimed the yard as the property of W. Hindley, Sack Manufacturer and A. Dutfield, Van and Cart Builder. The wicker gate creaked when Margo pushed it open and stepped through. She held it for Shahdi Feroz, who lifted her skirts clear of the rubbish blown against the base by wind from the previous night’s storm.

  The alleyway, a dreary, dim passage even in daylight, was bordered on the north by the International Workers’ Educational Club and to the south by three artisans’ houses, remodeled from older, existing structures. Once into the yard proper, Margo found herself surrounded by decaying old buildings. To the west lay the sack factory, where men and teenaged boys could be seen at work through dull, soot-grimed windows. Beside the abandoned cart factory stood a dusty, dilapidated stable which clearly hadn’t been used since Arthur Dutfield had moved his business to Pinchin Street. Terraced cottages to the south closed in the yard completely. The odor of tobacco wafted into the yard from these cottages, where cigarettes were being assembled by hand, using sweatshop labor. The whir of sewing machines, operated by foot treadles, floated through a couple of open windows in one of the cottages; a small sign announced that this establishment was home to two separate tailors. The rear windows of the two-story, barn-like International Workers’ Educational Club overlooked the yard, looming above it as the major feature closing in this tiny, isolated bit of real estate. The club, a hotbed of radical political activity and renowned for its Jewish ownership, also served as a major community center for educational and cultural events.

  Standing in the center of the empty construction yard, Margo gazed thoughtfully at the rear windows of the popular hall. “Bold as brass, wasn’t he?” she muttered.

  Shahdi Feroz was studying the yard’s only access, the eighteen-foot blind alley. She glanced up, first at Margo, then at the windows Margo was gazing at. “Yes,” the scholar agreed. “The hall was—will be—filled with people that night.”

  It would be the Association’s secretary, in fact, jeweler Louis Diemshutz, who would discover Elizabeth Stride’s body some four weeks hence. Margo frowned slowly as she gazed, narrow-eyed, at the ranks of windows in the popular meeting hall. “Doesn’t it strike you as odd that he chose this particular spot to kill Long Liz Stride?”

  Shahdi frowned. “Odd? But it is a perfectly natural spot for him to choose. It is completely isolated from the street. And it will be utterly dark, that night. What more natural place for a prostitute to take her customer than a deserted stable in an abandoned yard?”

  “Yes . . .” Margo was trying to put a more concrete reason to the niggling feeling that this was still an odd place for Jack to have killed his victim. “But she didn’t want to come back here. She was struggling to escape when Israel Schwartz saw her. Given the descriptions he gave of the two men, I’m betting it’s our mystery doctor who knocked her to the ground and Maybrick who ran Schwartz off.”

  Shahdi turned her full attention to Margo. “You know, that has always puzzled me about Elizabeth Stride,” the Ripper scholar mused. “Why she struggled. As a working prostitute, this is not in character. And she had turned down a customer earlier that evening.”

  Margo stared. “She had?”

  Shahdi nodded. “One of the witnesses who remembered seeing her said this. That a man had approached her and she said, ‘No, not tonight.’ And yet we know she needed money. She had quarreled with the man she lived with, had been seen in a doss house, admitted to a friend that she needed money. Why would she have refused one customer, then struggled when a second propositioned her? What did they discuss, that he attacked her?”

  “Maybe,” Margo said slowly, narrowing her eyes slightly, “she didn’t need the money as much as we thought she did.”

  Shahdi’s eyes widened. “The letters,” she whispered, abruptly excited. Her eyes gleamed with quick speculation. “Perhaps these mysterious letters are worth a great deal of money, yes? Clearly, our friend the doctor is most anxious to retrieve them. And he recovered several gold sovereigns from Polly Nichols’ pockets, which she must have been given by him earlier in the evening, as payment for these letters.”

  “Blackmail?” Margo breathed. “But blackmail against who? Whom, I mean. And if all these penniless women are being systematically hunted down because they’ve got somebody’s valuable letters, why didn’t they cash in on them? Every one of Jack’s victims was drunk and soliciting just to get enough money for a four penny bed for the night.”

  Shahdi Feroz shook her, visibly frustrated. “I do not know. But I intend to find out!”

  Margo grinned. “Me, too. Come on, let’s go. My feet are freezing and it’s a long walk to Mitre Square and Goulston Street.”

  To reach Mitre Square, they traced one of the possible routes the Ripper might have taken from Berner Street where his bloody work with Elizabeth Stride had been—would be—interrupted by Louis Diemshutz. “One thing I find interesting,” Margo said as they followed Back Church Lane up to Commercial Road and from there hiked down to Aldgate High Street and Aldgate proper, further wes
t. “He knew the area. Knew it well enough to pull a stunt like switching police jurisdictions after getting away from Dutfield’s Yard. He knew he was going to kill again. So he deliberately left Whitechapel and Metropolitan Police jurisdiction and hunted his second victim over in The City proper, where The City police didn’t get on with Scotland Yard at all.”

  The “City of London” was a tiny district of government buildings in the very heart of London. Fiercely independent, The City maintained its own Lord Mayor and its own police force, its own laws and jurisdictions, separate from the rest of London proper, and was exceedingly jealous about maintaining its autonomy. It was confusing from the get-go, particularly to up-time visitors. In the case of Jack the Ripper’s murder spree on the night of September 30th, it would confuse the devil out of London’s two rival constabularies, as well. And it would lead to destruction of vital evidence by bickering police officials trying to keep the East End from exploding into anti-Semitic riots.

  “That,” Shahdi mused, “or he simply didn’t meet Catharine Eddowes until he’d reached The City’s jurisdiction. She had just been released from jail and was heading east, while Jack was presumably heading west.”

  “Well, even if he did just happen to meet her in The City, he doubled back into Whitechapel again, so it’d be the Metropolitan Police who found the apron he left for them under his chalked message, not constables from The City police. Somehow, Maybrick doesn’t strike me as quite that clever.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not,” Shahdi said thoughtfully. “But one thing is quite clear. Our doctor is very clever. How has he managed, I wonder, to work so closely with Mr. Maybrick, yet keep all mention of himself out of Maybrick’s incriminating diary?”

  “Yeah. And why did Maybrick write a diary like that at all? I mean, that’s tempting fate just a little too much, isn’t it? His wife knew he was married to another woman, that he was a bigamist and having other affairs, probably with his own maidservants. At Florie’s trial, everybody commented on how gorgeous all the Maybrick maids were. Florie might have gone looking for clues to who the other women were and found the diary. Or one of those nosy maids might have. They certainly helped themselves to Mrs. Maybrick’s clothes and jewelry.”

  Shahdi Feroz was shaking her head in disagreement. “Yes, they did, but you may not realize that Maybrick kept his study locked at all times with a padlock. He kept the only key and straightened the room himself. Very peculiar for a businessman of the time. And he threatened to kill a clerk who nearly discovered something incriminating. Presumably the diary, itself. As to why he wrote the diary, many serial killers have a profound need to confess their crimes. A compulsion to be caught. It is why they play taunting games with the police, with letters and clues. A serial killer is under terrible pressure to murder his victims. By writing down his deeds, he can relieve some of this pressure, as well as relive the terrible thrill and excitement of the crime. Maybrick is not alone, in this. The risk of being caught, either through the diary or at the crime scene, is as addictive to the serial killer as the murder itself, is.”

  “God, that’s really sick!” Margo gulped back nausea.

  Shahdi nodded, eyes grim. “Maybrick’s diary has always rung with authenticity on many levels. To forge such a thing, a person would have needed to comprehend a vast array of information, technical and scientific skills ranging from psychopathic serial killer psychology to the forensics of ink and handwriting and linguistic styles. No, I never believed the diary to be a forgery, even before we taped Mr. Maybrick killing Polly Nichols, although many of my colleagues have believed it to be, ever since it was discovered in the twentieth century. The thing I find most intriguing, however, is his silence in the diary about this doctor who works with him. Through the whole diary, he names people quite freely, including doctors he has consulted, both in Liverpool and London. Why, then, no mention of this doctor?”

  “He mentions a doctor in London?” Margo said eagerly. “That’s the guy, then!”

  “No,” Shahdi shook her head. “There are records of this doctor. He does not fit the age or physical description profile of the man on our video. I had already thought of this, of course, but we brought with us downloaded copies of everything known on this case. It is not the same man.”

  “Oh.” Margo couldn’t hide the disappointment in her voice.

  Shahdi smiled. “It was a good thought, my dear. Ah, this is where we turn for Mitre Square.”

  They had to dodge heavy freight wagon traffic across Aldgate to reach Mitre Street, from which they could take one of the two access routes into the Square. This was a rectangle of buildings almost entirely closed in on four sides by tall warehouses, private residences, and a Jewish Synagogue. The only ways in and out lay along a narrow inlet off Mitre Street and through a covered alleyway called Church Passage, which ran from Duke Street directly beneath a building, as so many odd little streets and narrow lanes in London did. Empty working men’s cottages rose several stories along one side of the square. School children’s voices could be heard in one corner, reciting lessons through the open windows of a small boarding school for working families with enough income to give their children a chance at a better future.

  As they studied the layout of the narrow square, a door to one of the private houses opened. A policeman in uniform paused to kiss a woman in a plain morning dress. “Good day, m’dearie, an’ keep the doors locked up, what with that maniac running about loose, cutting ladies’ throats. I’ll be back in time for supper.”

  “Do take care, won’t you?”

  “Ah, Mrs. Pearse, I always take care on a beat, you know that.”

  “Mr. Pearse,” his wife touched his face, “I worry about you out there, say what you will. I’ll have supper waiting.”

  Margo stared, not so much because Mr. and Mrs. Pearse had addressed one another so formally. That was standard Victorian practice, using the formal address rather than first names in public. The reason Margo stared was because Mr. Pearse was a police constable. “My God,” Margo whispered. “Right across the street from a constable’s house!”

  Shahdi Feroz was also studying the policeman’s house with great interest. “Yes. Most interesting, isn’t it? Playing cat and mouse with the constables on the very night he was nearly caught at Dutfield’s Yard. Giving the police a calculated insult. I am willing to bet on this. Maybrick hated Inspector Abberline already, by the night of the double murder.”

  “And one of them had already started sending those taunting letters to the press, too,” Margo muttered. “No wonder the handwriting on the Dear Boss letters and note didn’t match Maybrick’s. This mysterious doctor of ours must have written them.”

  Shahdi Feroz gave Margo a startled stare. “Yes, of course! Which raises very intriguing questions, Miss Smith, most intriguing questions. Such letters are almost always sent by the killer to taunt police with his power. Yet the letters do not match Maybrick’s handwriting, even though they use the American phrases Maybrick certainly would have known.”

  “Like the word boss,” Margo nodded. “Or the term ‘red stuff’ which isn’t any kind of Britishism. But Maybrick didn’t need to disguise his handwriting, because Maybrick didn’t send them, the doctor did. But why?” Margo wondered. “I mean, why would he write letters taunting the police using language deliberately couched to sound like an American had written them? Or somebody who’d been to America?”

  Shahdi’s eyes widened. “Because,” she said in an excited whisper, “he meant to betray James Maybrick!”

  Margo’s mouth came open. “My God! He sent them to frame his partner? To make sure Maybrick was hanged? But . . . surely Maybrick would’ve turned him in, if he’d been arrested? Which he wasn’t, of course. Maybrick dies of arsenic poisoning next spring.” Margo blinked, thoughts racing. “Does this mean something happens to the partner? To stop him from turning Maybrick over to the police?”

  Shahdi Feroz was staring at Margo. “A very good question, my dear. We must find out
who this mysterious doctor is!”

  “You’re telling me! The sooner the better. We’ve only got a week before he kills Annie Chapman.” Margo was staring absently at the building across the square, while something niggled the back of her mind, some little detail she was missing. “If he knew the East End as well as I’m guessing—“ She broke off as it hit her, what she was seeing. “Oh, my God! Look at that! The Great Synagogue! Another Jewish connection! First the Jewish Workingmen’s Educational Club, then he kills Catharine Eddowes practically on the doorstep of a synagogue. And then he chalks anti-Semitic graffiti on a tenement wall on Goulston Street!”

  Shahdi stared at the synagogue across Mitre Square. “Do you realize, this has never been noticed before? That a synagogue stood in Mitre Square? I am impressed, Miss Smith. Very much impressed. A double message, with one killing, leaving her between a policeman’s home and a Jewish holy place of worship. A triple message, if one considers the taunt to police represented in his crossing police jurisdictions to chalk his message of hatred.”

  Margo shivered. “Yeah. All this gives me the screaming willies. He’s smart. And that’s scary as hell.”

  “My dear,” Shahdi said very softly, “all psychopathic serial murderers are terrifying. If only we could only eliminate the abuse and poverty and social sickness that create such creatures . . .” She shook her head. “But that would leave the ones we cannot explain, except through biology or a willful choice to pursue evil pleasure at the expense of others’ lives.”

  “No matter how you look at it,” Margo muttered, “when you get down to it, human beings aren’t really much better than killer plains apes, are they? Just a thin sugar-coating of civilization to make ‘em look prettier.” Margo couldn’t disguise the bitterness in her voice. She’d had enough experience with human savagery to last a lifetime. And she wasn’t even eighteen years old yet.

  Shahdi’s eyes had gone round. “Whatever has happened to you, my dear, to make you say such things at so young an age?”