He now turned his attention back to the cold streets before him.
Will tonight be the night for us, Little Heart?
Oh, Jacques hoped so, he prayed so.
Ah, but now, what was this? One man stopped his Little Heart. A portly man in a fine jacket and bowler hat. They began a conversation. He was not, of course, asking for the most expedient route to St. Paul’s.
He watched as words continued to be exchanged and business negotiated.
No matter. He certainly felt the urge. But Jacques LaFleur was someone who had learned that patience was the only virtue worth embracing.
TWO
Friday, 9 November, 1 A.M.
For hour upon hour, Wentworth and Adams made their way around the East End, enquiring among chemists about purchases of Fitzgerald’s Preserving Fluid.
Midnight had come and gone, and the men were incurring abuse from both the cold and the shopkeepers whom they awakened, some offering oaths liberally.
Finally, his bones were so cold that Wentworth decided he had reached the boundary. He would interview one more chemist and then flee to the bosom of his home and wife. Dr. Adams, too, was showing signs of fatigue and ill effects from the chill; his limp was more pronounced than earlier.
But it was fortunate he chose to awaken the owner of Merry’s Chemists, because it was there that at last they found a lead to Jack the Ripper.
The owner, a huge, glowering man with a shabby greatcoat over his white—better said, dirty gray—nightshirt, had a lined face, muscles like a docker’s, and a balding pate with a half-dozen hairs striving for heaven from his shiny scalp.
The man listened to Wentworth’s appeal and then, to the surprise of both the inspector and, it seemed, the doctor, said in a growling baritone, “Think I know ’oo you mean, Inspector.”
“The person who bought some Fitzgerald’s?”
“Right you are.”
“You have the name of this fellow?”
“No. Only came in once, I think. Recent.”
“Around thirtieth September?”
“Could’ve been. Easy could’ve been.”
The doctor and the officer regarded each other. “What’d he look like?”
“Lor’, I can hardly remember now, can I? Get lots o’ customers here. Normal fellow, I recall. Moustache?” He frowned. “Can’t recall that one, guv’nor.”
Wentworth sighed. “Pale, dark?”
“He was a white man, not African. I don’t think.”
He doesn’t think? Wentworth thought cynically. Witnesses were useless as often as not.
“Accent?”
“What’sat, governor?”
“Did he seem foreign?”
“Oh, you mean like from Prussia or China?”
“Anywhere.”
“Not ’at I can say.”
“Describe him, if you would, Mr. Merry.”
“Slightly built, shorter’n you,” he said to the inspector. “Weasely face.” Merry thought for a moment. “Though I never seen a weasel up close, ’ave I?”
“Wearing?”
“Greatcoat. Brown.”
“Did he seem to be a man of means?”
“ ’Ow would I know, governor? Smelled of some flower. Lavender. If that ’elps you.”
“Did he have any knowledge of medicine?”
“ ’E come in, paid ’is coin, and left.”
Meaning no, Wentworth assumed.
Adams held up his hands, which were nicked and stained from his work as a surgeon, presumably. “You surely saw his hands when he handed the money over.”
“I suppose I did.”
“Were they like mine?”
“No. They was like a lady’s ’ands, they was. What’s this boy wanted for?” Finally some animation in the dull, hostile eyes. “Is ’e Saucy Jacky? ’E is, ain’t ’e?”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes, ’e was.”
“What happened after he paid?”
“Not a thing, Inspector. ’E just left—after ’e give me the address.”
“What?” Wentworth asked, aghast.
“I didn’t mention that?”
Witnesses…
Merry continued, “Fitzgerald’s only come in five-gallon jars. He ’ad someplace to be, so I ’ad me boy deliver it that night. Yes, yes, yes. Let me see.” The massive chemist dug through a jumble of documents and scraps of paper.
“ ’Ere we go.” He handed over a sheet to Wentworth, who displayed it to Adams. It was an address on Anthony Street, about a quarter-mile away, an even shabbier district of the East End than where they stood.
Wentworth thanked him. Adams said, “One question, Mr. Merry. Did he ask you for Fitzgerald’s specifically?”
“No,” Merry offered. “Just wanted some preserver.”
“And you sold him Fitzgerald’s but charged him for better-quality fluid?”
The chemist’s eyes evaded theirs. “And if I did, governor? Man’s got to look out for ’imself, don’t ’e?”
“No, no, Mr. Merry. Take no offense. I am merely thinking that your tactic of scamming the fellow may be the single most important fact in getting London’s worst murderer in recent years in darbies and onto the gallows.”
“Blimey. That right?” He beamed.
Wentworth said, “Let’s pray that’s the case.”
—
Their hopes of finding the killer from the chemist’s intelligence, however, were not immediately fulfilled.
The two men hurried on foot to the address on Anthony Street that the hulking chemist had given them. Wentworth peered through a broken window of the warehouse, his police whistle in hand—a Hudson, the latest version, with the pea inside, which could almost split the eardrum of anyone nearby and would summon colleagues from a quarter-mile away.
But he slipped it back in his pocket and shook his head. While Saucy Jacky might very well have taken delivery of the Fitzgerald’s Preserving Fluid in this warehouse, the small, decrepit facility was empty.
The inspector kicked in the door and they entered. He found an oil lamp, which he lit. The two men examined the place. In truth, it contained very little: broken-down boxes, staves, nails and bolts, bottles discarded by the unfortunates and homeless who had succumbed to the scourge of alcohol, a man’s boot, a jacket, old newspapers and periodicals, scattered receipts, and bills of lading.
And in the corner, the jar of Fitzgerald’s.
“Well, this is perhaps his den,” Wentworth said. “But he doesn’t live here, obviously. He must have used this venue to prepare for some of the assaults. This is roughly midway between them.” Much had been made of the location of the killings; lines drawn between them created, some said, a mystical symbol; this was, to Wentworth, nonsense and distracted from the true course of the investigation.
Wentworth panned the lantern over the floor and the men observed that someone had, in fact, been here recently. The dust had been disturbed by footsteps—one man’s only, it seemed.
Adams examined the marks. He followed the steps into the corner. “Here!” He was smelling a rag he’d found. “More Fitzgerald’s!” The doctor’s eyes were wide. “And, Wentworth. It’s damp still. He has been here today!”
The inspector’s face, he was sure, revealed the dismay he was feeling. “So perhaps he’s out on the hunt as we speak. But where, where?”
“We too must keep hunting!” Adams renewed his search of the dim quarters. The inspector joined him.
It was fifteen minutes later that Wentworth made a discovery. “Doctor! Here!” He lifted a scrap of newspaper on which was written in pencil an address. It was on Barker’s Row. About ten streets away.
“But did the villain himself write it?” Wentworth mused.
“Does the handwriting look familiar?”
“It might. I cannot say.”
Adams lifted the paper to his nose and said, “Look at these finger marks. They are redolent of Fitzgerald’s fluid. I would say, yes, this could very
well be the address of his next victim.”
“Come, Doctor. We must hurry.” Outside, Wentworth oriented himself. “This way!” He sprinted to a nearby police signal box, those booths, first established in Glasgow, where police could use a telephone to communicate with Division headquarters—here that would be H Division, Whitechapel, on Leman Street. (The kiosks were also topped with a blue beacon to summon patrolling officers to the box to receive communiqués from their superiors.)
As Adams joined him, moving more slowly because of his wounded leg, Wentworth rang headquarters and reported that constables should proceed to the address on Barker’s Row immediately; the Whitechapel killer might be there, murdering another victim. He was assured an alarm would be raised and officers would be en route soon.
Wentworth put the mouthpiece down and stepped to the street with Adams beside him, looking for a hansom, of which none were to be found in this luckless portion of the city.
—
Now, at last, at 2:30 A.M., his Little Heart was alone.
She had finished with her customer and had recently been in the company of various men and women on the street. Carousing. Trying, it seemed, to borrow some money. Harsh words had passed when she’d apparently been denied the coin she asked for. Then she repaired to a friend’s boarding room—troubling Jacques that she might be bedding down for the night. But apparently the stop was merely for a drink or two. She left the place ten minutes later. Walking unsteadily down the deserted street, she began singing in a not unpleasant voice. An Irish ballad. “The Parting Glass.”
Jacques smiled to himself, amused that she had picked this particular song, one of farewell.
The street was not entirely deserted, even at this early hour, but Jacques would not let the opportunity pass. Too many days had gone by without a truly satisfying reward. He needed this. And immediately.
He approached, smiling.
“Evening, m’lady.”
“I’d say morning now.” She was coy. Buxom, and more comely up close than from a distance. Her age was in the middle twenties, he estimated. He gauged her accent to be Welsh.
“Right you are.”
She looked him over, fore to aft. He was scrubbed and buffed and assembled with few wrinkles. His waistcoat was dabbed clean. He could see her eyes relax. Most men in this part of the city did not come in quite this pleasant bundle. And, more to the point, someone as charming and well-spoken as he could hardly be the Ripper. His appearance, and the LaFleur charm, had worked their magic on the others, too.
“Isn’t the inclement night they’d been thinking it might be,” he said, looking up at the sky.
“No, sir, it isn’t.” She was drunk. That would make his efforts easier. “But then I always wonder who ‘they’ is, don’t I? ‘They’ say the queen is bloody cross at France. ‘They’ say the price of coal is going up. Who the hell is ‘they’?”
He could not help but smile.
“I’m Henri,” he said.
“Marie Jeanette.”
He took her gloved hand and kissed it. “If I may be so bold.”
A drunken laugh.
“I’ve an hour free,” he said.
“Do you now, governor? Are you French? You said En-ree. Not Henry. You don’t sound French. I lived there for a time, didn’t I?”
Jacques said, “I’m not. But they say that I have the charm of a Frenchman.”
She laughed once more. “What would they say about your purse?”
“That there’s some coin in it.”
“Lord, it’s late. I’m tired. Tuppence upright?”
Jacques frowned. “On a night like this? It’s inclement enough. Let’s retire inside. A nice warm bed.”
“Ach, I’m a tired one, aren’t I?”
“Would a florin rouse you?”
Her eyes grew wide. “Two bleeding shillings? Let me see it!”
He dug into his pocket and showed the coin, a Jubilee from last year, Victoria’s stern face looking to the left.
“Lor’.”
The general rate for unfortunates in the East End was five pence (two for the upright, which she’d suggested, standing in the alley).
He handed it over. She slipped the coin into her purse.
Then she added, “I have a room, small, small. And shabby, perhaps too much so for a gentleman like yourself.”
“I’m sure it will be lovely.”
In fact, he knew it wasn’t lovely at all. For he had already had a look at it himself. He extended his arm. She hooked hers through it. He said, “Lead on, my lady.”
They turned and started along the pavement. She whispered, “You know what they say? You’re in for a good ride tonight.”
Jacques smiled, though he didn’t feel like smiling. He was thinking about what lay ahead. About the reward. And that was not a matter about which to smile.
Michelangelo, after all, didn’t smile when he presented to the admiring crowds in Rome God and Adam gracing the Sistine Chapel high above their heads.
—
“Where the devil are the constables?” Wentworth muttered as the hansom reined to a stop before the address on Barker’s Row, where he hoped the Whitechapel killer was at that very moment.
He and Adams leapt out, the inspector tossing coins to the cabby. They looked about, and located the building whose address they had found in the warehouse on Anthony Street.
“Ah, there’s one now.” Wentworth waved at a tall, slim, uniformed officer, one of the forty-four sergeants attached to H Division.
Wentworth identified himself.
“Sir.”
“Where are the others?”
“On their way, sir. A half-dozen constables.”
“Tap for more, don’t whistle. We don’t want to give away our presence.”
“The Whitechapel killer’s inside?”
“Tap, man, tap!”
Scotland Yard supervisors carried a staff, like a walking stick, which could be used as a truncheon or a horse prod but was more often used to strike the ground, sending a distinctive sound that could be heard many streets away; it meant that any officers nearby should hurry to the tapper’s assistance.
The sergeant did this now.
Adams said, “I don’t think we can wait, Inspector. He might’ve heard the hansom pull up.”
“Yes, yes. Let’s go. Doctor, you stay here.”
It was then that two other constables approached, running. They pulled up, breathing heavily, and Wentworth summoned one to join him and the sergeant and told the other to remain with Adams.
The three police officers burst through the door of the two-story flat, the young constable with his truncheon at the ready.
—
Ten minutes later Wentworth walked down the stairs of the dingy structure and onto the pavement, preceding the uniformed officers—now five of them—who had responded to the alarm.
He glanced at Adams and said through grim lips, “Whatever his interest in this place, if indeed he was interested at all, there is no indication he was ever here. All four rooms—and a suite of two—are occupied by ordinary citizens: pensioners and working people. No one has ever seen a stranger, much less anyone suspicious or who might be a killer. And there is no rear door, so even if he were here, you two would have seen him as he tried to pass us on the way out.”
The inspector gazed about him, at the streets gauzed by smoke and fog. “Well, it was a reasonable chance. That is the nature of police work, of course. Most seeming trails to your villain are dead ends. But that cannot stop you from pursuing them all. And we have men watching the warehouse on Anthony Street and will have some here, as well, so perhaps we will have him in irons soon. My, the hour is late. I propose we retire for the evening.”
“Yes, I must be getting home.”
“And I to my wife.” The inspector dismissed the constables, setting a watch from an alley nearby.
As they walked to a wider avenue, in search of hansoms, the inspector said, “By the way, Do
ctor.”
“Yes?”
“Though we did not find our prey, we’ve made good strides. Thanks to you.”
Adams considered this for a moment and said, “I think the success has been due to both of us. We make, dare I say, a good partnership.”
“That we do, Doctor. Now, you can come round tomorrow at, say, noon?”
“I will be there, sir. Goodnight to you.”
—
The reunion of Erasmus Wentworth and Dr. Richard Adams later that day was, however, delayed because of circumstances neither man had envisioned.
Though it was not at the address on Barker’s Row, the Ripper had indeed struck once more, killing his fifth victim.
At about 1 P.M. Friday, Wentworth arrived via police carriage at a residence in Spitalfields. He nodded to the half-dozen constables and inspectors present and proceeded as directed to Miller’s Court, through a covered passageway off Dorset Street. Outside Number 13, he greeted Superintendent Thomas Arnold of H Division, a striking man in full beard, and another superior officer, balding, white-haired Robert Anderson, from Central Office, who had run the Ripper investigation (until he took an unfortunate trip to the Continent at the time two of the victims were killed and was thus replaced, following his vilification in the press).
“Where is she?” Wentworth asked in a subdued voice.
“Inside there,” Arnold said, nodding up the dark corridor. Wentworth started in the direction indicated. He paused as Anderson said, “Steel yourself, Inspector.”
Wentworth regarded him and then continued to the designated door. Inside he found other officers standing outside a twelve-foot-square room, smoky and hot, despite the chill of the day. The place was furnished with a bed and a few other pieces of furniture, but Wentworth paid little mind to the appointments—or his coworkers.
His attention was solely on the human being—or what remained of a human being—in repose on the bed. The three Ripper victims who had been mutilated did not compare to this carnage. This woman had been savaged beyond recognition. Her breasts and a number of internal organs had been sliced free of the body and rearranged. Much of the skin had been flayed.
The heart was missing altogether.
It was clear what the Ripper needed the Fitzgerald’s Preserving Fluid for.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 101
