The Big Book of Jack the Ripper

by The Big Book of Jack the Ripper (retail) (epub)

  “Intestines?” I could hear the distaste in his voice. “What is this, Beatrice? And who is Mary Kelly?”

  “She’s the woman you killed last night!” I cried. “Surely you knew her name!” I turned to confront him…and saw a look of such loathing on his face that I took a step back. “Oh!” I gasped involuntarily. “Please don’t…” Edward? Jack?

  The look disappeared immediately—he knew, he knew what he was doing! “I killed someone last night, you say?” he asked, his rational manner quickly restored. “And then I put her intestines…in the teakettle? Why don’t you show me, Beatrice?”

  Distrustful of his suggestion, I nevertheless led the way to the kitchen. As I’d half expected, the teakettle was empty and spotlessly clean. With a heavy heart I pulled the piece of brown plaid cloth out of my pocket. “But here is something you neglected to destroy.”

  He scowled. “A dirty rag?”

  “Oh, Edward, stop professing you know nothing of this! It is a strip from Mary Kelly’s petticoat, as you well realize! Edward, you must go to the police. Confess all, make your peace with God. No one else can stop your nocturnal expeditions—you must stop yourself! Go to Inspector Abberline.”

  He held out one hand. “Give me the rag,” he said expressionlessly.

  “Think of your soul, Edward! This is your one chance for salvation! You must confess!”

  “The rag, Beatrice.”

  “I cannot! Edward, do you not understand? You are accursed—your own actions have damned you! You must go down on your knees and beg for forgiveness!”

  Edward lowered his hand. “You are ill, my dear. This delusion of yours that I am the Ripper—that is the crux of your accusation, is it not? This distraction is most unbefitting the wife of the vicar of St. Jude’s. I cannot tolerate the thought that before long you may be found raving in the street. We will pray together, we will ask God to send you self-control.”

  I thought I understood what that meant. “Very well…if you will not turn yourself over to the police, there is only one alternate course of action open to you. You must kill yourself.”

  “Beatrice!” He was shocked. “Suicide is a sin!”

  His reaction was so absurd that I had to choke down a hysterical laugh. But it made me understand that further pleading would be fruitless. He was hopelessly insane; I would never be able to reach him.

  Edward was shaking his head. “I am most disturbed, Beatrice. This dementia of yours is more profound than I realized. I must tell you I am unsure of my capacity to care for you while you are subject to delusions. Perhaps an institution is the rightful solution.”

  I was stunned. “You would put me in an asylum?”

  He sighed. “Where else will we find physicians qualified to treat dementia? But if you cannot control these delusions of yours, I see no other recourse. You must pray, Beatrice, you must pray for the ability to discipline your thoughts.”

  He could have me locked away; he could have me locked away and then continue unimpeded with his ghastly killings, never having to worry about a wife who noticed too much. It was a moment before I could speak. “I will do as you say, Edward. I will pray.”

  “Excellent! I will pray with you. But first—the rag, please.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, I handed him the strip of Mary Kelly’s petticoat. Edward took a fireplace match and struck it, and the evidence linking him to murder dissolved into thin black smoke that spiraled up the chimney. Then we prayed; we asked God to give me the mental and spiritual willpower I lacked.

  Following that act of hypocrisy, Edward suggested that I prepare our tea; I put the big teakettle aside and used my smaller one. Talk during tea was about several church duties Edward still needed to perform. I spoke only when spoken to and was careful to give no offense. I did everything I could to assure my husband that I deferred to his authority.

  Shortly before six Edward announced he was expected at a meeting of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. I waited until he was out of sight and went first to the cupboard for a table knife and then to the writing table for a sheet of foolscap. Then I stepped into the pantry and began to scrape up as much of the arsenic from the rat holes as I could.

  23 FEBRUARY 1892, WHITECHAPEL CHARITABLE INSTITUTE FOR INDIGENT CHILDREN.

  Inspector Abberline sat in my office, nodding approval at everything he’d seen. “It’s difficult to believe,” he said, “that these are the same thin and dirty children who only months ago used to sleep in doorways and under wooden crates. You have worked wonders, Mrs. Wickham. The board of trustees could not have found a better director. Are the children learning to read and write? Can they learn?”

  “Some can,” I answered. “Others are slower. The youngest are the quickest, it seems. I have great hopes for them.”

  “I wonder if they understand how fortunate they are. What a pity the Reverend Mr. Wickham didn’t live to see this. He would have been so pleased with what you’ve accomplished.”

  “Yes.” Would he have? Edward always believed the poor should care for their own.

  The Inspector was still thinking of my late husband. “I had an aunt who succumbed to gastric fever,” he said. “Dreadful way to die, dreadful.” He suddenly realized I might not care to be reminded of the painful method of Edward’s passing. “I do beg your pardon—that was thoughtless of me.”

  I told him not to be concerned. “I am reconciled to his death now, as much as I can ever be. My life is here now, in the school, and it is a most rewarding way to spend my days.”

  He smiled. “I can see you are in your element.” Then he sobered. “I came not only to see your school but also to tell you something.” He leaned forward in his chair. “The file on the Ripper is officially closed. It’s been more than two years since his last murder. For whatever reason he stopped, he did stop. That particular reign of terror is over. The case is closed.”

  My heart lifted. Keeping up my end of the conversation, I asked, “Why do you think he stopped, Inspector?”

  He rubbed the side of his nose. “He stopped either because he’s dead or because he’s locked up somewhere, in an asylum or perhaps in prison for some other crime. Forgive my bluntness, Mrs. Wickham, but I earnestly hope it is the former. Inmates have been known to escape from asylums and prisons.”

  “I understand. Do you think the file will ever be reopened?”

  “Not for one hundred years. Once a murder case is marked closed, the files are sealed and the date is written on the outside when they can be made public. It will be a full century before anyone looks at those papers again.”

  It couldn’t be more official than that; the case was indeed closed. “A century…why so long a time?”

  “Well, the hundred-year rule was put into effect to guarantee the anonymity of all those making confidential statements to the police during the course of the investigation. It’s best that way. Now no one will be prying into our reports on the Ripper until the year 1992. It is over.”

  “Thank Heaven for that.”

  “Amen.”

  Inspector Abberline chatted a little longer and then took his leave. I strolled through the halls of my school, a former church building adapted to its present needs. I stopped in one of the classrooms. Some of the children were paying attention to the teacher, others were daydreaming, a few were drawing pictures. Just like children everywhere.

  Not all the children who pass through here will be helped; some will go on to better themselves, but others will slide back into the life of the streets. I can save none of them. I must not add arrogance to my other offenses by assuming the role of deliverer; God does not entrust the work of salvation to one such as I. But I am permitted to offer the children a chance, to give them the opportunity to lift themselves above the life of squalor and crime that is all they have ever known. I do most earnestly thank God for granting me this privilege.

  Periodically I return to Miller’s Court. I go there not because it is the site of Edward’s final murder, but because it is
where I last saw Rose Howe, the young girl who helped me deliver the Macklin baby. There is a place for Rose in my school. I have not found her yet, but I will keep searching.

  My life belongs to the children of Whitechapel now. My prayers are for them; those prayers are the only ones of mine ever likely to be answered. When I do pray for myself, it is always and only to ask for an easier place in Hell.

  A Matter of Blood

  JEFFERY DEAVER

  One of the most prominent and consistently excellent suspense writers in the world, Jeffery Deaver (1950– ) was born outside Chicago and received his journalism degree from the University of Missouri. He became a newspaperman, after which he received his law degree from Fordham University and practiced for several years. A poet, he wrote his own songs and performed them across the country.

  He is the author of more than two dozen novels and four short story collections. His works have been translated into twenty-five languages and are perennial bestsellers in America and elsewhere. Among his many honors are six nominations for Edgar Awards (twice for Best Paperback Original, four times for Best Short Story), three Ellery Queen Reader’s Awards for Best Short Story of the Year, the 2001 W. H. Smith Thumping Good Read Award for The Empty Chair, and the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award from the (British) Crime Writers’ Association for Garden of Beasts; he also won a Dagger for best short story. In 2009, he was the guest editor of The Best American Mystery Stories.

  He has written about a dozen stand-alone novels but is most famous for his series about Lincoln Rhyme, the brilliant quadriplegic detective who made his debut in The Bone Collector (1997), which was released by Universal in 1999 and starred Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Other Rhyme novels are The Coffin Dancer (1998), The Empty Chair (2000), The Stone Monkey (2002), The Vanished Man (2003), The Twelfth Card (2005), The Cold Moon (2006), and The Steel Kiss (2016). His non-series novel A Maiden’s Grave (1995) was adapted for an HBO movie titled Dead Silence (1997) and starred James Garner and Marlee Matlin. His suspense novel The Devil’s Teardrop (1999) became a 2010 made-for-television movie of the same name.

  “A Matter of Blood” was written especially for this collection and has never previously been published.

  A MATTER OF BLOOD

  Jeffery Deaver

  ONE

  Thursday, 8 November 1888

  The man in the leather waistcoat left his rooms and began his short walk to a news vendor on Aldgate High Street.

  The early morning air chilled the slim man, save for when he passed through one of the bands of sun slipping through gaps between the low buildings here in the East End. The neighborhood was, however, as congested as a hive, and those moments of warmth were few.

  At the vendor he bought a number of newspapers and, venturing to a dismal shop, purchased some bread, pickles, and cheese. He then walked south and east, eyeing the crowds around him with some suspicion, in a circuitous route that eventually led him back to his rooms, a not unpleasant living space on the short, dark, and, fortunately, quite private Somerset Street. Entering and locking the door, he hung his jacket and unbuttoned his waistcoat. Then he made a cup of tea and sat at the unsteady table to read the news of the day.

  When he found no reports of developments that might alarm him, he located his scissors and clipped some articles, as souvenirs. These he arranged into a stack that he set on a second table, beside a much larger collection of stories, sliced from the Daily News, the Standard, the London Journal, the Police News, and the Manchester Guardian, as well as some smaller papers from around the British Isles, and from America, the Continent, Australia, and even one from Singapore.

  Prominent among them was perhaps his favorite news account from a London broadsheet:

  Ghastly Murder

  in the East End

  Dreadful Mutilation of a Woman

  This headline and the accompanying article were not what so pleased him, though. No, what was deliciously agreeable was a small graphic box contiguous to that news account—an advertisement:

  Warner’s

  SAFE

  Kidney and Liver Cure

  The irony of the juxtaposition was not lost on the man in the leather waistcoat, whose given name was Jacques.

  Sipping his tea, Jacques fished his pocket watch from the brown waistcoat and regarded the time.

  He was disappointed to see that it was still many hours till nightfall. His impatience swelled. But he was a man who could contain his urges and so, he told himself, he would simply have to wait. Better to be smart.

  He unwrapped his cheese and opened the jar of pickles. Then he began to slice the bread with a knife that was, to him, dreadfully dull.

  —

  Erasmus Nathan Wentworth used a brass tool to scrape clean his pipe and refill it with tobacco imported from America, cherrywood-tinged. After tamping it, he lit the bowl and drew the relaxing smoke into his mouth. Let the vaporous ghost escape ceilingward.

  The hour was 10 A.M. and he was sitting in his dim office at Metropolitan Police headquarters. His facility was on Great Scotland Yard, not Whitehall Place—in one of the buildings into which the organization had just expanded from the private residence that had housed the police for more than five decades.

  His eyes settled on the front page of a newspaper, the Daily Advertiser.

  BLOODY SUNDAY!

  TWO THOUSAND POLICE CLASH

  WITH SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION

  AND IRISH NATIONAL LEAGUE

  THREE DEAD, HUNDREDS INJURED

  The incident had happened one year ago and Wentworth had received a commendation for attempting to calm the rampaging officers. He had also received threats upon his life for the very same heroics—from constables who were not pleased to have their antics censured. But Scotland Yard periodically went through paroxysms of crisis, during which the old and the corrupt were winnowed out—like so much chaff. Wentworth kept the newspaper, which his wife had mounted in a gold-painted frame, as a reminder to all that policemen were stewards of the people; they were not overlords, they were not criminals.

  He had, however, only to look upon the landscape of sheaves on his desk to be reminded: I am hardly a very good steward at the present moment.

  Wentworth, accordingly, thought: And where might you be, Jack? And more to the point, who might you be?

  It had been more than one month since the Whitechapel killer had so viciously murdered victims three and four, who, like the first two, were unfortunates—prostitutes—in that harsh, hardworking part of East London. Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes had been killed on the same day. Miss Stride’s body was found in Dutfield’s Yard, off Berner Street. Miss Eddowes’s corpse was discovered in Mitre Square. Unlike the other three victims, whose bodies were horrifically mutilated, Miss Stride had suffered a “mere” (the press reported, with some disappointment, Wentworth assessed) slash to the left side of her neck. There was some speculation that she had been the victim of another murderer, not Saucy Jacky, but Wentworth thought not. His examination of the wound told him that it was most likely caused by the same blade—and passersby had caused him to flee before the dissection could begin.

  Detective Inspector Wentworth was one of dozens of officers within the Metropolitan Police’s Criminal Investigation Division working full- or part-time to identify and apprehend the Whitechapel murderer. He, along with Frederick Abberline, was based here in the Central Office. Others were in H Division, Whitechapel. In addition, detective inspectors from the City Police were also assisting. And to stir the stew even more vigorously, a private organization—the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee—was prowling the streets of East London, causing trouble with false leads (and unwarranted assaults) more than providing assistance.

  Looking at the photographs of the savaged victims (save Miss Stride’s intact corpse), however, Wentworth could hardly blame the citizenry for their concern.

  Somewhere in this city of four million souls was a demented human being bent on performing the m
ost heinous acts imaginable…and Wentworth and his fellow law enforcers were unable to stop him.

  He rose and put another log on the fire. He was a lean man, eleven stone, and tall—five foot ten. He was adversely affected by the cold, and today was particularly damp and chill, despite a bold sun. His office was hardly insulated from the elements. He had been told by his Chief Inspector that the Metropolitan Police would be moving to the Victoria Embankment into a much more fitting building, but that would not be for two to three years.

  Just as he settled into his chair once more a figure appeared in his doorway, a constable, a flaxen-haired man, young (although to Wentworth, well into his fourth decade, the newcomers were younger every year). He said, “Two men have arrived to see you, sir.”

  He was not expecting anyone. Perhaps, he hoped, it was some intelligence that would bear on the Whitechapel affair—some useful intelligence; Scotland Yard daily received dispatches and personal accounts from those purporting to have information about Jack’s identity, his motive, his whereabouts, his ancestry, his relations, and any number of other bizarre revelations (such as one sworn statement that the killer transmogrified from wolf to human, at will).

  The two men entered. Both were dressed well and were close to Wentworth in age, though perhaps a few years older. One walked in a stilted fashion, assisted by a modest wooden cane.

  They sat.

  “Detective Inspector Wentworth, I am Henry Gladbrook,” said the taller of the two, who turned to the man with the infirmity. “And this is Doctor Richard Adams. May we smoke? Or I alone, I should say. The good doctor here does not partake.”

  The doctor gave a good-natured laugh. “Had enough smoke in Kandahar to last me all my years—that is, from our Martini-Henrys and the muskets of Ayub Khan. Assorted cannon too, of course.”