As you stare at the new orange paint on the door you wonder what you’re going to say. You have some idea and surely enough money, but will she respond to that? You understand some prostitutes refuse to talk rather than act. You can hardly explain your interest in the Ripper. You’re still wondering when she opens the door.
She must be in her thirties, but her face has aged like an orange and she’s tried to fill in the wrinkles, probably while waiting for you. Her eyelashes are like unwashed black paintbrushes. But she smiles slightly, as if unsure whether you want her to, and then sticks out her tongue at a head craning from next door. “You rang before,” she says, and you nod.
The door slams behind you. Your hand reaches blindly for the latch; you can still leave, she’ll never be able to pursue you. Beneath your tongue a pulse is going wild. If you don’t go through with this now, it will be more difficult next time, and you’ll never be rid of the Ripper or of your dreams. You follow her upstairs.
Seeing her from below you find it easy to forget her smile. Her red dress pulls up and her knickers, covered with whorls of colour like the eye of a peacock’s tail, alternately bulge and crease. The hint of guilt you were beginning to feel retreats: her job is to be on show, an object, you need have no compunction. Then you’re at the top of the stairs and in her room.
There are thick red curtains, mauve walls, a crimson bed and telephone, a color TV, a card from Ibiza and one from Rhyl. Behind a partition you can see pans and knives hanging on hooks in the kitchen area. Then your gaze is wrenched back to her as she says, “Go on then, tell me your name, you know mine.”
Of course you don’t. You’re not so stupid as to suppose she would display her real name in the window. You shake your head and try to smile. But the garish thick colors of the room are beginning to weigh on you, and the trapped heat makes your mouth feel dry, so that the smile comes out soured.
“Never mind, you don’t have to,” she says. “What do you want? Want me to wear anything?”
Now you have to speak or the encounter will turn into a grotesque misunderstanding. But your tongue feels as if it’s glued down, while beneath it the flesh is throbbing painfully. You can feel your face prickling and reddening, and rotted in the discomfort behind your teeth a frustrated disgust with the whole situation is growing.
“Are you shy? There’s no need to be,” she says. “If you were really shy, you wouldn’t have come at all, would you?” She stares into the mute struggle within your eyes and smiling tentatively again, says, “Can’t you talk?”
Yes, you can talk, it’s only a temporary obstruction. And when you shift it you’ll tell her that you’ve come to use her, because that’s what she’s for. An object, that’s what she’s made herself. Inside that crust of makeup there’s nothing. No wonder the Ripper sought them out. You don’t need compassion in a slaughterhouse. You try to control your raw tongue, but only the throbbing beneath it moves.
“I’m sorry, I’m only upsetting you. Never mind, love,” she says. “Nerves are terrible, I know. You sit down and I’ll get you a drink.”
And that’s when you have to act, because your mouth is filling with saliva as if a dam had burst, and your tongue’s still straining to raise itself, and the turgid colors have insinuated themselves into your head like migraine, and tendrils of uneasiness are streaming up from your clogged mouth and matting your brain, and at the core of all this there’s a writhing disgust and fury that this woman should presume to patronize you. You don’t care if you never understand the Ripper so long as you can smash your way out of this trap. You move toward the door, but at the same time your hand is beckoning her, it seems quite independent of you. You haven’t reached the door when she’s in front of you, her mouth open and saying, “What?” And you do the only thing that seems, in your blind violent frustration, available to you.
You spit into her open mouth.
For a moment you feel free. Your mouth is clean and your tongue can move as you want it to. The colors have retreated, and she’s just a well-meaning rather sad woman using her talents as best she can. Then you realize what you’ve done. Now your tongue’s free you don’t know what to say. You think perhaps you could explain that you sneezed. Perhaps she’ll accept that, if you apologize. But by this time she’s already begun to scream.
You were so nearly right most of the time. You realized that the stolen portions of Mary Kelly might have been placed in the box as a lure. If only you’d appreciated the implications of this: that the other mutilations were by no means the act of a maniac, but the attempts of a gradually less sane man to conceal the atrocities of what possessed him. Who knows, perhaps it had come from Egypt. He couldn’t have been sure of its existence even when he lured it into the box. Perhaps you’ll be luckier, if that’s luck, although now you can only stand paralyzed as the woman screams and screams and falls inertly to the floor, and blood begins to seep from her abdomen. Perhaps you’ll be able to catch it as it emerges, or at least to see your little friend.
The Stripper
H. H. HOLMES
H. H. Holmes is one of the pseudonyms of William Anthony Parker White (1911–1968), a prolific writer of mystery novels and short stories, as well as science fiction and supernatural short stories. His better-known pseudonym is Anthony Boucher (rhymes with “voucher”). Although he had numerous accomplishments in various fields of writing, it is for his work in the mystery world that White is best known.
Under the pseudonym H. H. Holmes, an infamous nineteenth-century serial killer, White wrote two novels about Sister Ursula, a nun, the first of which, Nine Times Nine (1940), was voted the ninth-best locked-room mystery of all time in a poll of fellow writers and critics; the second, Rocket to the Morgue (1942), was selected as a Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone.
As Boucher, White wrote well-regarded fair-play detective novels, the first of which was The Case of the Seven of Calvary (1937). It featured Dr. John Ashwin, a professor of Sanskrit, who solves a series of bizarre murders from his armchair. He wrote four novels about Fergus O’Breen, the one-man detective agency who handles mainly Hollywood cases brought to him by his older sister, Maureen, who had the responsibility of raising him. O’Breen’s first appearance was in The Case of the Crumpled Knave (1939), which deals with the murder of an elderly inventor whose anti-gas weapon could be of incalculable importance during wartime. O’Breen also appeared in The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940), The Case of the Solid Key (1941), and The Case of the Seven Sneezes (1942). Boucher also wrote a series of short stories featuring Nick Noble, a disgraced former policeman turned wino who sits in a cheap bar and solves complex crimes brought to him by a policeman friend.
“The Stripper” was first published in the May 1945 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
THE STRIPPER
H. H. Holmes
He was called Jack the Stripper because the only witness who had seen him and lived (J. F. Flugelbach, 1463 N. Edgemont) had described the glint of moonlight on bare skin. The nickname was inevitable.
Mr. Flugelbach had stumbled upon the fourth of the murders, the one in the grounds of City College. He had not seen enough to be of any help to the police; but at least he had furnished a name for the killer heretofore known by such routine cognomens as “butcher,” “werewolf,” and “vampire.”
The murders in themselves were enough to make a newspaper’s fortune. They were frequent, bloody, and pointless, since neither theft nor rape was attempted. The murderer was no specialist, like the original Jack, but rather an eclectic, like Kürten the Düsseldorf Monster, who struck when the mood was on him and disregarded age and sex. This indiscriminate taste made better copy; the menace threatened not merely a certain class of unfortunates but every reader.
It was the nudity, however, and the nickname evolved from it, that made the cause truly celebrated. Feature writers dug up all the legends of naked murderers—Courvoisier of London, Durrant of San Francisco, Wallace of Liverpool, Borden of Fall River—and pr
inted them as sober fact, explaining at length the advantages of avoiding the evidence of bloodstains.
—
When he read this explanation, he always smiled. It was plausible, but irrelevant. The real reason for nakedness was simply that it felt better that way. When the color of things began to change, his first impulse was to get rid of his clothing. He supposed that psychoanalysts could find some atavistic reason for that.
He felt the cold air on his naked body. He had never noticed that before. Noiselessly he pushed the door open and tiptoed into the study. His hand did not waver as he raised the knife.
—
The Stripper case was Lieutenant Marshall’s baby, and he was going nuts. His condition was not helped by the constant allusions of his colleagues to the fact that his wife had once been a stripper of a more pleasurable variety. Six murders in three months, without a single profitable lead, had reduced him to a state where a lesser man might have gibbered, and sometimes he thought it would be simpler to be a lesser man.
He barked into phones nowadays. He hardly apologized when he realized that his caller was Sister Ursula, that surprising nun who had once planned to be a policewoman and who had extricated him from several extraordinary cases. But that was just it; those had been extraordinary, freak locked-room problems, while this was the horrible epitome of ordinary, clueless, plotless murder. There was no room in the Stripper case for the talents of Sister Ursula.
He was in a hurry and her sentences hardly penetrated his mind until he caught the word “Stripper.” Then he said sharply, “So? Backtrack please, Sister. I’m afraid I wasn’t listening.”
“He says,” her quiet voice repeated, “that he thinks he knows who the Stripper is, but he hasn’t enough proof. He’d like to talk to the police about it; and since he knows I know you, he asked me to arrange it, so that you wouldn’t think him just a crank.”
“Which,” said Marshall, “he probably is. But to please you, Sister…What did you say his name is?”
“Flecker. Harvey Flecker. Professor of Latin at the University.”
Marshall caught his breath. “Coincidence,” he said flatly. “I’m on my way to see him now.”
“Oh. Then he did get in touch with you himself?”
“Not with me,” said Marshall. “With the Stripper.”
“God rest his soul…” Sister Ursula murmured.
“So. I’m on my way now. If you could meet me there and bring his letter—”
“Lieutenant, I know our order is a singularly liberal one, but still I doubt if Reverend Mother—”
“You’re a material witness,” Marshall said authoritatively. “I’ll send a car for you. And don’t forget the letter.”
Sister Ursula hung up and sighed. She had liked Professor Flecker, both for his scholarly wit and for his quiet kindliness. He was the only man who could hold his agnostic own with Father Pearson in disputatious sophistry, and he was also the man who had helped keep the Order’s soup-kitchen open at the depth of the depression.
She took up her breviary and began to read the office for the dead while she waited for the car.
—
“It is obvious,” Professor Lowe enunciated, “that the Stripper is one of the three of us.”
Hugo Ellis said, “Speak for yourself.” His voice cracked a little, and he seemed even younger than he looked.
Professor de’ Cassis said nothing. His huge hunchback body crouched in the corner and he mourned his friend.
“So?” said Lieutenant Marshall. “Go on, Professor.”
“It was by pure chance,” Professor Lowe continued, his lean face alight with logical satisfaction, “that the back door was latched last night. We have been leaving it unfastened for Mrs. Carey since she lost her key; but Flecker must have forgotten that fact and inadvertently reverted to habit. Ingress by the front door was impossible, since it was not only secured by a spring lock but also bolted from within. None of the windows shows any sign of external tampering. The murderer presumably counted upon the back door to make plausible the entrance of an intruder; but Flecker had accidentally secured it, and that accident,” he concluded impressively, “will strap the Tripper.”
Hugo Ellis laughed, and then looked ashamed of himself.
Marshall laughed too. “Setting aside the Spoonerism, Professor, your statement of the conditions is flawless. This house was locked tight as a drum. Yes, the Stripper is one of the three of you.” It wasn’t amusing when Marshall said it.
Professor de’ Cassis raised his despondent head. “But why?” His voice was guttural. “Why?”
Hugo Ellis said, “Why? With a madman?”
Professor Lowe lifted one finger as though emphasizing a point in a lecture. “Ah, but is this a madman’s crime? There is the point. When the Stripper kills a stranger, yes, he is mad. When he kills a man with whom he lives…may he not be applying the technique of his madness to the purpose of his sanity?”
“It’s an idea,” Marshall admitted. “I can see where there’s going to be some advantage in having a psychologist among the witnesses. But there’s another witness I’m even more anxious to—” His face lit up as Sergeant Raglan came in. “She’s here, Rags?”
“Yeah,” said Raglan. “It’s the sister. Holy smoke, Loot, does this mean this is gonna be another screwy one?”
—
Marshall had said she and Raglan had said the sister. These facts may serve as sufficient characterization of Sister Felicitas, who had accompanied her. They were always a pair, yet always spoken of in the singular. Now Sister Felicitas dozed in the corner where the hunchback crouched, and Marshall read and reread the letter which seemed like the posthumous utterance of the Stripper’s latest victim:
My dear Sister:
I have reason to fear that someone close to me is Jack the Stripper.
You know me, I trust, too well to think me a sensationalist striving to be a star witness. I have grounds for what I say. This individual, whom I shall for the moment call “Quasimodo” for reasons that might particularly appeal to you, first betrayed himself when I noticed a fleck of blood behind his ear—a trifle, but suggestive. Since then I have religiously observed his comings and goings, and found curious coincidences between the absence of Quasimodo and the presence elsewhere of the Stripper.
I have not a conclusive body of evidence, but I believe that I do have sufficient to bring to the attention of the authorities. I have heard you mention a Lieutenant Marshall who is a close friend of yours. If you will recommend me to him as a man whose word is to be taken seriously, I shall be deeply obliged.
I may, of course, be making a fool of myself with my suspicions of Quasimodo, which is why I refrain from giving you his real name. But every man must do what is possible to rid this city a negotio perambulante in tenebris.
Yours respectfully,
Harvey Flecker.
“He didn’t have much to go on, did he?” Marshall observed. “But he was right. God help him. And he may have known more than he cared to trust to a letter. He must have slipped somehow and let Quasimodo see his suspicions….What does that last phrase mean?”
“Lieutenant! And you an Oxford man!” exclaimed Sister Ursula.
“I can translate it. But what’s its connotation?”
“It’s from St. Jerome’s Vulgate of the ninetieth psalm. The Douay version translates it literally: of the business that walketh about in the dark; but that doesn’t convey the full horror of that nameless prowling negotium. It’s one of the most terrible phrases I know, and perfect for the Stripper.”
“Flecker was a Catholic?”
“No, he was a resolute agnostic, though I have always had hopes that Thomist philosophy would lead him into the Church. I almost think he refrained because his conversion would have left nothing to argue with Father Pearson about. But he was an excellent Church Latinist and knew the liturgy better than most Catholics.”
“Do you understand what he means by Quasimodo?”
; “I don’t know. Allusiveness was typical of Professor Flecker; he delighted in British crossword puzzles, if you see what I mean. But I think I could guess more readily if he had not said that it might particularly appeal to me…”
“So? I can see at least two possibilities—”
“But before we try to decode the Professor’s message, Lieutenant, tell me what you have learned here. All I know is that the poor man is dead, may he rest in peace.”
Marshall told her. Four university teachers lived in this ancient (for Southern California) two-story house near the Campus. Mrs. Carey came in every day to clean for them and prepare dinner. When she arrived this morning at nine, Lowe and de’ Cassis were eating breakfast and Hugo Ellis, the youngest of the group, was out mowing the lawn. They were not concerned over Flecker’s absence. He often worked in the study till all hours and sometimes fell asleep there.
Mrs. Carey went about her work. Today was Tuesday, the day for changing the beds and getting the laundry ready. When she had finished that task, she dusted the living room and went on to the study.
The police did not yet have her story of the discovery. Her scream had summoned the others, who had at once called the police and, sensibly, canceled their classes and waited. When the police arrived, Mrs. Carey was still hysterical. The doctor had quieted her with a hypodermic, from which she had not yet revived.
Professor Flecker had had his throat cut and (Marshall skipped over this hastily) suffered certain other butcheries characteristic of the Stripper. The knife, an ordinary kitchen-knife, had been left by the body as usual. He had died instantly, at approximately one in the morning, when each of the other three men claimed to be asleep.
More evidence than that of the locked doors proved that the Stripper was an inmate of the house. He had kept his feet clear of the blood which bespattered the study, but he had still left a trail of small drops which revealed themselves to the minute police inspection—blood which had bathed his body and dripped off as he left his crime.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 121
