“I know,” she interrupted. “We all know that. But he isn’t aggressive, he’s just…a bit silly.”
“A bit silly,” he aped her tone. “And what about his affairs? Are they just a bit silly as well? With women off the street? Just like the ones that the Ripper’s killed and gutted. Did you know that?”
She was too stunned to argue. That was nothing like the Albert she knew. It was spiteful of Riley to have told her that. She didn’t need to know.
“I can see it in your face,” he said jubilantly. “You didn’t know! And you’d like to disbelieve me, but you can’t. You think I made it up? I’ve seen the black and scarlet garter he keeps as a memento of it. And don’t tell me it’s Mary’s! She never wore anything like that in her life. She hasn’t the imagination…any more than you have!”
“You like scarlet and black garters?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“I like the sort of women who wear them, yes! Women who can laugh and have a bit of fun. Women who know how to flatter a man and please him, women who are proud of who they are and don’t go around with faces like a jug of burnt porridge and a taste to match. You wouldn’t know such women if you fell over them.”
“And you do?” she asked with sudden spirit. “Fall over them often, do you?” There was an idea stirring in her mind, not that she cared that Riley was praising such people, but that he was trying to make her think that Albert could be the Ripper. It was a horrible, vicious thing to do, as if he were trying to poison her liking for Albert, and hurt Mary as well.
“Don’t be stupid,” was all he said, standing up from the table and walking out of the room, leaving the door open behind him.
Stupid! Did that mean he did? Or he didn’t?
But it started the idea in her mind as to what she would do about it.
—
It took her two weeks to pluck up her courage, well into the middle of October. The weather grew worse, with the exception of one or two sharp, clear days, but ending earlier and earlier as the nights drew in and winter approached.
The Ripper was still in the news, and of course there were other crimes, some of them appalling. There were reckoned to be sixty-two brothels in Whitechapel alone, with twelve hundred prostitutes on the streets. Violence was not unusual. But these murders stood apart from all others and the words describing them screamed out from the newspapers and the sheets and posters around the city, and in the minds of the people, whether they could read or not.
Riley forbade Gwen from seeing Mary unless it was all four of them out together, most often a good meal, once to the music hall where any joke was good enough, crude or not. The only subject not made fun of was the Ripper. That was the one thing about which no one laughed.
It was because of Riley’s spiteful remarks about Albert that Gwen was finally prompted to act. She took the bit of housekeeping money she had saved and went to a shop she had heard of, but had never visited before. She felt conspicuous and knew she would have to buy something else as well, simply to account for being there, if anyone should see her and speak of it.
“I’ll have two yards of elastic, please,” she began. Then looking around she saw what she had really come for. “And one of those, if you’ll be so kind.” She pointed to the black lace garter with scarlet ribbons wound through it and tied in a bow with pointed ends.
The girl blinked. “Yes, ma’am. Of course, ma’am. Just the one?”
“Yes please. One will be sufficient.”
“Yes, madam. Whatever you say.” And still with an air of amazement she wrapped it up, with the elastic, and passed it across the counter, in exchange for the money.
Gwen was a little annoyed that she apparently looked so little the type of woman who would wear such a thing as a lace garter, but then perhaps it was not such an insult after all. It did hint at a trade she would not care to join, even though she knew many did it of necessity.
When she got home she took it out of its paper, stored the elastic in her sewing basket, then went into the bathroom and put on the garter, on her left leg. It looked loud, outlandish. It required more elegant stockings than hers. But it was still fun. And it must look used, not one that came straight from the haberdashery. She added a tiny drop of perfume. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.
It was another week before the perfect opportunity arose for it to be publicly displayed. Gwen and Riley were to dine out together at a very well thought of hotel. Gwen even had a new dress for the occasion. In her reticule she placed the garter, looking very slightly worn and definitely carrying a sweet odor of perfume. She knew exactly what she was going to do with it. This was Riley’s invitation, so he would be paying the bill.
It was a most pleasant evening. The menu was excellent and both Albert and Riley were in a generous mood, a little boastful perhaps, but not enough to complain of. Other diners seemed to watch them with tolerance.
That was, until it came time to settle the account. The bill was duly presented to Riley, and he put his hand into his pocket to draw out his wallet. With it came a black lace garter with a scarlet ribbon in it.
Mary gave a little shriek and clapped her hand to her mouth. Gwen guessed that she had, after all, seen the one that Albert apparently kept as a souvenir.
“Oh my…!” Gwen said loudly, just to make certain everyone’s attention was caught. “What is that?” As if anyone couldn’t see!
The waiter struggled for words not to offend anyone, and gave up.
Someone stifled a giggle. One or two men swore or muttered about vulgarity and worse.
Riley looked around as if hoping someone might help him. Albert was trying desperately not to laugh. Perhaps he had suffered enough at Riley’s teasing to relish this moment.
“Sir…” the waiter said at last. “I think…”
He was saved from having to say anything more by Gwen reaching across and taking the garter. She stuffed it into one of Riley’s outside pockets, wanting to make it perfectly certain that nobody would think it was hers. She did it with a faint air of distaste, holding it between her finger and thumb.
“I think you should pay the bill,” she said to Riley.
“Of course I’m going to pay the bill!” he snapped. “What did you think I was going to do?” He pushed the money at the waiter without counting it out.
Gwen raised her eyebrows. “With a scarlet ribboned garter at the dinner table?” she said mildly. “I have no idea! Whose is it?”
Riley blushed fiercely, but he was caught. Any denial would only make it worse.
Albert stifled his laughter and resumed a serious expression again. Mary looked bleak, and a little alarmed, as if she were trying to work out exactly what it meant.
The waiter withdrew with the money, thankful to escape.
Half the people in the dining room were openly staring at Riley. The other half were doing so more surreptitiously, whispering and avoiding his eyes.
“What’s the matter with them?” Riley snarled under his breath. “What on earth are they thinking?” He dragged the last word out into silence as he realized exactly what was in their minds: newspaper pictures and terrified imaginations of dead prostitutes, sexually mutilated, blood…and a man who came to dinner with a prostitute’s garter in his pocket. “Damn them!” he said hoarsely. “Who could…” He did not finish the sentence.
Gwen smiled patiently. “Well, Riley, you said yourself, the Ripper could be anyone. Most likely we haven’t caught him precisely because he looks just like anyone else, quiet and respectable in the daytime. And very likely his own wife doesn’t know for sure.”
He stared at her as if he were seeing her for the first time, his eyes wide with incredulity, and then with fear. He looked around the room, and one by one people averted their eyes, some murmuring to the others at their table, some in silence.
Riley stood up, his face still scarlet, and walked out of the room to collect his overcoat and leave.
“I suppose we’d better all go,” Gwen
rose to her feet. “I’m so sorry.”
“Damn stupid thing to do,” Albert muttered, but there was a smile of amusement on his mouth and Gwen could guess what he must be thinking. She would have suspected him of having his revenge, if she hadn’t put the garter there herself.
—
They were not home long, perhaps half an hour, when there was a knock at the door, sharp and demanding.
“Ignore it,” Riley said tartly. “Just some nosy neighbour come to gawp at us.”
The knock was repeated, heavy and hard.
Gwen disregarded Riley and went to answer it, hearing his voice behind her warning her to be careful. She was not afraid. The Ripper had never gone into anyone’s home and attacked them.
She opened the door and found Sergeant Walpole on the step, and another uniformed policeman a couple of paces behind him.
“Sorry to trouble you, ma’am,” Walpole said gently. “But I need to speak with your husband. I know about the garter, and you understand I can’t just let it be.”
She felt a chill run through her, leaving her a little shaky. She had meant to frighten Riley and definitely embarrass him, and she had succeeded brilliantly. But she had not intended to raise genuine suspicion with the police. That was entirely different. But if she admitted to buying the garter and putting it in his pocket, on purpose, he would never forgive her. He had seldom actually raised a hand against her, but it had happened. In her imagination, she could still feel the shock and the pain from it. And the fear would always be there.
“Of course,” she said hastily. “Please come in.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Walpole accepted, and he stepped into the hall, followed immediately by the constable.
Riley appeared at the sitting room door, ready to be angry with Gwen for letting people in at this hour. But when he saw the police, his face went ashen. He backed away and they followed him in, the constable waiting at the door, effectively blocking it.
There was panic in Riley’s eyes.
“I expect you know why we’re here, sir,” Walpole said calmly, but he was watching Riley very closely and his right hand lingered near the truncheon at his belt. “Would you care to explain the very lurid woman’s garter that fell out of your pocket this evening at the Albion Hotel?”
“None of your business,” Riley said angrily. “A stupid prank. We dined with friends. Albert Clandon has a nasty sense of humor. I know one or two things about him, and he knows I do. He was just getting his own back. Trying to embarrass me.”
“Seems he succeeded rather well.” Walpole kept a totally straight face. “Are you saying Mr. Clandon put that garter in your pocket, sir?”
Riley saw the trap and sidestepped it. “I don’t know, Sergeant. If I’d known, I’d have made damn sure I didn’t haul it out at the table, now wouldn’t I?”
“Yes, sir. So you’re saying someone else put it there, and you weren’t aware of it, so it could be anyone. But Mr. Clandon has an odd and rather spiteful sense of humor?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Walpole appeared to consider it.
“He has a garter like that himself,” Riley went on. “Souvenir of an old affair. I’ve teased him about it.” He took a breath. “Maybe I shouldn’t have, in front of his wife. This is probably his way of getting back at me.”
“Having you pull that out in front of your wife? Not very funny, in the present circumstance, is it, sir? He had half the clients of the hotel thinking as you were the Ripper.”
“Me?” Riley tried to look amazed, as if he had not thought of it himself, but he failed. The fear was clearly too deep.
“Well thank you, sir,” Walpole said with a very slight smile. “It will be easy enough to confirm. I’ll just have a very stiff word with Mr. Clandon. If he confirms it, that will be the end of the matter.”
Riley drew in his breath to protest, and changed his mind. His face was white.
“And if he still has his?” Gwen asked. The moment the words were out of her mouth she wondered if she should have said them. Maybe she would have to admit her part in it. Now she was really afraid. Riley would beat her. This he would never forgive because he was frightened, and others had seen it.
“That would be another matter,” Walpole said, looking at her with considerable sympathy.
Should she say that Riley had had it for years? It was new. They might be able to tell that somehow. And it still wouldn’t explain why it had been in his pocket tonight, except that she had put it there. No one else had had the chance, except Albert, Mary, or Gwen. The answer had to be that Riley had put it there a while ago, and forgotten it.
“Gwen!” Riley said with a note of desperation. “Tell the sergeant that I was with you when those two women were killed back at the end of last month! You know I couldn’t have done anything like that! Go on, tell him.”
If she did that she would not only be lying herself, she would be making a liar of Mary as well. Because Mary would tell the truth, that Albert and Riley had gone out for quite a while after dinner.
What would Albert say, if he were asked? And he probably would be.
“Tell them!” Riley’s voice was higher, sharper.
“We all had dinner together,” she said to Walpole, hating doing it. It was wrong to lie, especially to the police, and on a matter as terrible as this. But it was also wrong not to stand by your husband when he needed you. And it was she who had got him into this trouble by putting the garter in his pocket. He couldn’t actually be the Ripper!
Could he?
“So you said when I met you at about two o’clock that morning,” Walpole agreed. “And you were together all evening?”
Her mouth was dry. What if it really were Albert? What if that darker side of him that Riley spoke of were something so hideous it ended in the Ripper murders? If they went on, then the next one would be, in a way, her fault.
“Nearly all,” she said with a slight stammer. “I wasn’t really thinking of the time.”
“I see. Thank you, ma’am.”
When he was gone, Gwen came back into the sitting room trembling. She was afraid of Riley. She had been afraid of him for a long time. She had never before done anything to earn his anger, except mistakes, sometimes a poor meal, the occasional forgetting of something important. This was different. She had bought the garter and put it where it would embarrass him most.
But he was not the Ripper. Of course he wasn’t.
Was he?
No! That was just absurd. Half the women in Whitechapel must have had the thought cross their minds. And maybe one of them was right! Or maybe the one who would have been right had never thought it?
Was that Mary? Could it be?
And was Mary sitting at home now, thinking the same thing of her?
Say nothing, at least for now. She had told Walpole that it could not be Riley. But did he believe her? Maybe he knew she was lying?
—
Days went by. The nights grew longer and darker. Fog shrouded the streets and on some nights ice made the pavements slick and dangerous. October turned into November.
The police got nowhere in their search for Jack the Ripper.
Then, on the night of November 9th, he struck again. The corpse of Mary Kelly was found at 10:45 in the morning. It was lying on a bed in a room in Mathers Court, off Dorset Street in Spitalfields. It was the most hideously mutilated of them all. A pall of terror hung over London as people hurried through the fog, collars turned up, faces white with fear. It affected everyone.
Sergeant Walpole came to see Gwen and Riley again. He looked exhausted. His face was haggard and there was stubble on his cheeks as if he had had no time to take for even the simplest of things for himself.
He had already been to see Albert Clandon, who had no alibi. Mary had slept soundly and could not say that he had been at home all night. She had a heavy cold, and had gone to bed unusually early, and had not woken during the night.
Neither could Gwen swear that R
iley had been home all the hours of darkness. He had not come back from work until after eight. He said he had stopped by for a drink at the Dog and Duck, but had not spoken to anyone he knew.
Walpole nodded and wrote it down on his pad. By the time he left there was nothing more Gwen could do, except blame herself, and wonder with a dark misery at the back of her mind if Riley’s lashing out to blame Albert were actually a suspicion in his mind that it could be true.
If it were true, then why? What had Albert confided, or what had Riley seen, and been afraid to interpret, or even had been too loyal a friend to dare think it?
Something had to be done.
Accordingly, the next day she went to visit Mary, early when it was still bright and frosty, no fog. Riley had said she was not to see Mary alone. Was that because he feared Albert was the Ripper? Or just because he liked to order her around, feel that he was in charge? Regardless, she arrived at Mary’s house at quarter to eleven.
Mary was delighted to see her. “Come in! Come in!” she pulled the door wide open. “A perfect time for a cup of tea. I have fresh scones. Would you like some?”
“I’d love one, at least,” Gwen said with pleasure. She wished this were all as it used to be, before the Ripper terrified half of London out of its wits. They could just have sat and talked, laughed a little, as old friends do. The reality was unspeakable, but the fear of it had withered everything it touched.
They did not bother with the parlor but sat in the kitchen at the table and ate hot scones, rich with butter melting into them, and plum jam on top. For a little while at least, they indulged in old memories.
Of course the real subject had to be broached at last.
“The police were here yesterday,” Mary said, the laughter draining out of her face. “I think they suspect Albert, or at the very least, that he knows something about it.” She bit her lip. “I know he has his weaknesses, Gwen, but honestly there’s no harm in him. I mean…not that kind of harm. I know he’s had affairs, and I put up with them because it’s just his childishness. He wouldn’t hurt anyone!” She looked down the tabletop. “He likes a few strange things that I don’t. Don’t think ill of him, Gwen. It’s just the way men are. My ma used to say, Just let ’em do it, as long as they don’t bring it ’ome with ’em. He’s good to me.”
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 29
