The Big Book of Jack the Ripper

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

  The nets brought up more broken wood and what looked to be a piece of iron rail of the sort that might garnish a driver’s platform. Then there was a hansom on the river bottom, as unbelievable as that seemed. He sat back in wonder at how such a thing could happen, and looked right up at his answer—at the jutting promontory of the Tower Bridge. As Mayhew imagined what happened, the water behind his boat erupted in a release of bubbles. He scrambled to the rear in time to see a body flung up onto the surface of the Thames, bob there for a moment, then sink out of sight. Hastily, he grabbed his nets and flung them out where the water still rippled. Then he rotated the oars into the water and rowed hard, nearly lifting himself onto his feet. The nets took on weight and dragged. He shipped the oars quickly and started drawing the nets in hand over fist, soaking himself but too single-minded in his purpose to stop and put on the slick sou’wester.

  The nets and their tangled capture bumped against the boat. Mayhew grabbed hold and pulled the whole mess in at once. The body rolled beneath the ropes, the head flopped back, and death stared up at Patrick Mayhew.

  The man had been in the water much longer than Mayhew had supposed, long enough for the skin to have sloughed away from the sludge-covered bones in most places, to leave a wet, glistening visage, a moulage of mud. As much as a year, Mayhew guessed, pulling back. He had hauled corpses in every horrible state of decay imaginable, most of them obscenely bloated. This eyeless figure ought to have been insignificant by comparison, but it now sent a wave of terror shooting like an electrical discharge through Mayhew. He found himself pressed against the side, gripping one oar as if to crush it. This unreasoned fear lasted only moments and then passed like a breeze continuing on downstream. Mayhew had a vision of the people on the ships at dock waking from their sleep, lifting taut faces from pints of ale, as the cadaverous wind rolled by. He wanted nothing more than to grab the nets and fling this body back into the blackness of the Thames; but he had a purpose here, and he was not finished.

  He inched his way to the remains. The body wore a cloak and, beneath this, the remains of a coat, vest and tie. Mayhew tore the cloak apart when he lifted it—the material shredded with the weight of muck to support. He dug his fingers through the slime and drew back the black coat—which looked to have been a fashionable dinner jacket—to get at the vest. At first he thought there was no watch, because the chain, covered with weedy slime, was as dark as the material. As he shifted the corpse, something in the watch pocket gleamed, and he moved the lantern nearer, then reached in and drew out the watch. Where every other part of the corpse was caked or colored from its long stay in the water, the watch case glistened as if it had been polished that morning. Mayhew turned it over, disbelieving that it could be in such condition, but the other side was as shiny and unblemished. He could make out distinctly the smoothly molded ridges of the case and the stylized face of a Gorgon in a raised circle, even in the lantern light. He stood, and the body rolled slightly. One arm was suddenly flung out. The knuckles clacked against the side; the sharp, blackened fingers began to curl up slowly. He could bear the thing no longer. He stuffed the watch into his pocket, knelt down, grabbing the netting, and heaved the body over the side. When it did not sink right away, he grabbed a short boat hook and stabbed out, shoving the body under the surface. The hook must have caught on the corpse’s coat because, when he tried to draw it back in, it snagged, tipping Mayhew off-balance. He twisted around and the hook caught on the edge of the boat. All of his weight went on it as he turned, and the hook snapped. The spot was cursed. In a panic, Mayhew threw down the broken pole, sat and began hauling on the oars as hard as he could, desperate to escape that haunted place. Never had the Thames carried any fear for him before this, but now, even with the body back where it belonged, he could not get rid of the apprehension that had crawled into his boat with the corpse. It was as if the fear had slithered off and condensed into the muck on his clothes, at his feet. His shoulders ached and his lungs burned at the effort, but Mayhew did not slacken his pace until he was in sight of his dock. He left hooks and nets in the boat, threw the tarp hastily over everything, and set off, almost at a dead run, for home.

  —

  Louise was awake, and he could not hide his uneasiness from her. He had told her of the job, of Demming, and of what he suspected. Now he showed her the watch as he described in trembling detail his encounter with the submerged carriage and the passenger he had released, for that was how he interpreted the events. They sat at the small dinner table, Louise in her nightclothes and a shawl, Mayhew still dressed in his checked shirt and smelling of the river, the watch on display between them. Louise marvelled at the etched Gorgon on the case. She reached out and picked up the watch, which Mayhew, in his loathing of it, was unable to do. He wanted to tell her to put it down, but also wanted to see inside it. Louise pressed the winding stem and the case popped open. She opened the lid. Mayhew dragged the lamp closer.

  The face of the watch amazed him; whatever he had anticipated, this certainly was not it. The watch dial, a simple dial, took up the lower quarter of the face. Around it, the gold had been etched beautifully with trumpet swirls and leaves. Above and to each side of the dial were two oval insets. These contained small photos that appeared to have been stuffed in; one of them was loose along one edge, and Mayhew peeled it down to find a painted design like a piece of foreign calligraphy underneath. The photos themselves were the only parts of the watch that showed damage from being in the river. They had gone dark and gray, and the best that Mayhew and his daughter could make out was that one of the photos was of a woman’s face. The features were too vague to hint at more than that. In the top of the watch, filling that quarter, was a circle the same size as the dial below, and containing another etched Gorgon ringed by snakes. Mayhew noticed now that the face was not quite human in that it had two eyes to each side of the nasal fissures where a nose ought to have been. And the teeth came to points, bared, like two rows of daggers. He closed the case to ascertain that the other Gorgon mirrored this image, and it did. He raised his eyes to Louise. She smiled at him, apparently unaffected by the horrible aspects he saw in the watch.

  “Let me see something, papa,” she said as she spun the watch towards herself. She sprang open the case again, then lightly ran one fingertip around the edge of the Medusa circle. About three-quarters of the way around, she stopped and pressed with her thumb, and the circle popped up. Louise stared with momentary shock, then began to laugh. “Oh, look at this,” and she held the watch out to him.

  The Medusa circle had hidden a small painting. For a moment, Mayhew did not comprehend the picture, but then he understood and did not know whether to laugh or be disgusted. The painting showed a grinning priest seated on a small padded stool while a demon knelt, its mouth and one claw clamped around his marrowbone. The demon’s body was a dark green, rough with warts, and it had a second lewd face on its arse, yellow teeth and red eyes. That second face finally tipped the scales for Mayhew. “Don’t laugh,” he ordered Louise, “it’s blasphemous. What sort of a gentleman would own a watch like that?”

  “You’d be surprised as to what ‘gentlemen’ carry on them.”

  “I don’t want to know. I found what’s wanted and I’ll give it away like I’m supposed to, nor do anything but.”

  “I wonder if it still runs,” Louise mused. She closed the case, then began winding the stem. The watch started to tick after a moment, loud and precise.

  “Put it down!” Mayhew spluttered. “The man was in the water well onto a year by the look of him. There wasn’t a part of him that the water hadn’t rotted at, and here’s his watch that runs like it come from a shop this morning. By what Providence can such a thing be?”

  Louise put the watch down. “I don’t have an idea. But there it is. Maybe that’s as why he wants it back, your Mr. Demming. Maybe he’s got the most special watch in the world.”

  “Maybe so. I don’t care nor I get my money, but you leave it be. I’m tired fro
m rowing for my life, so let’s get us some sleep, and today I’ll take him his watch and buy you something real fine.” His head swam for a moment as he stood. He shuffled off and laid down on his small bed, listening to Louise climb into hers, listening to the watch ticking on the table across the room.

  The rhythmic ticking washed over him as he fell asleep and followed him down into the landscape of dream. He found himself walking through a darkened Aldgate Street. Gaslight created bubbles of clarity along the murky avenue, which contained shops that he did not recognize, many of them canted forward, looming over him, others stretching high above. Soon, he walked along Whitechapel Road. People began to appear in the pools of flickering light, their faces as distorted as the buildings. They watched him pass; most were grinning like the priest in the little painting, and their sharpened teeth held all of his attention. The rest of their features escaped him. He hastened on, found himself in a darkened lane. Someone spoke close by, and he turned to see Louise’s face. At first she was the forlorn child on the doorstep but as she came to him her features distorted, her hair writhing as if alive. He stared into her eyes and found them empty, two great holes through which he could see some other place where the sky was shot through with stars. The ticking of the watch sounded like a scrabbling rat.

  A weight in his hand tugged at his awareness like a child pulling on his arm. He looked down, found a huge knife there, a strange knife that looked like an immense carpenter’s file. Again he faced Louise, and this time he found the features of her face fallen away, revealing muscle and bone, teeth like daggers. Her mouth hung open and he could see more of that other place between the ivory points. Her jaw clacked shut, the bared grin horrible. “Take me here,” she said softly. Her fleshless hand slid down across his trousers. He was becoming aroused by his own daughter. The knife pulled at him, begging to be put to use. “Open the gate,” a cold voice said. Could it have been him? “You don’t want to do that, or the coppers will find us,” Louise said. “Open the gate, let them through,” the voice insisted harshly. He turned, and Louise was a skeleton poised before that other place, which now poured through the alley, suffusing every shadow with a reddish glow. Someone moved into it, and he saw Demming there, behind the living skeleton, looking accusatorily at him. Demming reached out, saying, “Give it to me,” and the skeleton begged, “Papa, don’t.” Demming scowled and slapped the bones aside. They shattered and went tumbling; some clattered on the stones, others landed in the altered shadows without a sound and dropped into the star-shot void. “The watch,” Demming demanded. With a scabrous, warty hand, he opened his cloak to attach the gold fob, which now ran from Mayhew to him. The swirling stars played in the shadows beneath his coat, too. “Papa,” Louise called. “Papa.” The ticking of the watch beat at his brain. He squeezed shut his eyes and tried to cover his ears.

  When he opened his eyes, he was standing near the door. Pressed between him and the wall, Louise had her palms up under his jaw as if trying to push him aside. Mayhew backed away. He saw that her nightgown was torn, purple marks on her throat. “Did I—?” he tried to ask. Tears spilled from her eyes. Mayhew could not look at her. He had known other dredgers, other men, who actually boasted of having coupled with their daughters; and once, in a pub years earlier, he had struck a man who grabbed hold of Louise. That he had almost done this awful thing, that the desire might live inside him as it did in those other monsters—he could hardly stand to think on it. He went and sat on his bed. Louise covered herself with her shawl and came to sit beside him.

  “Papa,” she said, “I ain’t like that, no matter what you think. I ain’t a whore for you, nor anymore for anyone else. I wish I’d never told you none of it.” He tried to reply, to explain, but beyond her shoulder he saw the lamp on the table and, beside it, the recovered watch. The watch had run down and stopped.

  —

  Demming lived in St. James’s, a neighborhood far more fashionable than Mayhew’s. Both the dredger and his daughter went along to Demming’s house; he feared that if he left her home she would not be there when he got back. She had accepted his apology and his explanation, but he could tell that she did not truly believe any of it.

  A black iron sign hung on the wall beside the door: Walter A. Demming, Doctor of Neuroses. A servant answered their knock and escorted them directly to a second-floor office. There was a single desk to one side of the room, and behind it a case containing skulls of humans and related mammals. A glass jar on the desk held for viewing a model of the brain. Mayhew went to the case and saw, on the shelf below the prominent skulls, a display of medical tools, most of them scalpels and probes. He understood only that these were tools for cutting into people. Behind him the door opened, and Demming, all in tweed, swept in.

  “I dared not hope that it was you, Mr. Mayhew. With all I said to you, I maintained doubts. I—” He broke off, staring darkly at Louise.

  “My daughter,” Mayhew interjected by way of an introduction. He did not care for the intensity of Demming’s stare.

  The doctor blinked and placed a look of humor upon himself. “Of course,” he said. “You have it?”

  Louise reached in and removed the watch from her coat, placing it on the table. Her father had been unable to touch it, even in daylight.

  Demming barely restrained himself from leaping on the watch, though from his expression he might as easily have intended to crush it as to gather it up. He seemed to forget that the dredger and his daughter still occupied the room with him; his loftier demeanor vanished, and he wrung his trembling hands and mumbled under his breath. His eyes rolled back and for a moment he struck the pose of a man lost in prayer. Mayhew noticed how dark Demming’s eyelids were. Then the doctor opened the drawer of the desk and withdrew a velvet purse identical to the first one that he had given Mayhew. “You have done me an inestimable service,” he said, while staring once more at Louise, this time with what might have been trepidation. “I shan’t forget it.” He pulled the handkerchief from his breast pocket and began rubbing at the watch case, harder than if merely polishing it.

  “The watch,” said Mayhew slowly, dismayed, “you sure it’s the right one?” He took the purse.

  “There is no doubt of that. There could be no other watch like this. And now, regrettably, I’m late for my appointments at Bethlem Hospital, so I will have to ask you to go, and take my appreciation from the money.”

  “Of course,” Mayhew replied, goaded into recalling the class distinctions at work here. He tucked the purse away, took Louise’s arm, and led her out. The liveried servant waited at the top of the stairs and showed them out onto the quiet, tree-lined sidewalk.

  They walked down through the park to Birdcage Walk without a word traded between them. With Parliament in sight, Louise could no longer stand the silence. “He was a very impressive man, weren’t he?” she asked.

  Mayhew drew up short and turned her to him. “Don’t you ever mention him again. Not to me, not to anyone. It’s done, I’m paid, and I choose to forget everything, just like he wants. You do the same, girl.”

  “Papa—”

  “No, damn you! Never!” He let go the moment she struggled, and watched her run ahead. She did not understand what he was trying to say. He lacked any real understanding of it himself. Perhaps the nightmare was still distorting his reason, and his hatred of Demming was due to the foul memory that he carried all too near the surface. He believed that, for reasons he could not explain, he had come in contact with something monstrous, something unholy and well beyond his comprehension. The best thing he could do, he thought, was to forget it all, to bury the memory as he had buried the corpse by tossing it back into the water. This had now been done. He hastened after his daughter, to explain the way he saw things.

  Returning home, he found that Louise had not gone there. She had run off to cry, he tried to assure himself. Later she would come back and he would apologize. Later. Suddenly very weary, Mayhew lay down to sleep.

  When he awoke, it
was past six and still Louise had not appeared. Mayhew began to worry, but anger soon tinged his concern. This was how things had gone with her before, the last time she ran away. He suspected that she might have fled back to the East End this time, too. If whoring was all she was good for, then to Hell with her; a daughter of his should be made of better stuff than that. “This time I can’t forgive her,” he announced to the empty room, and buried his own loneliness beneath anger. He might have made something of her, but he saw now that she would only waste his money on drink, attracting the same filth that combed the East End. He knew he had not been rough—he hadn’t hit her, and he hadn’t even been yelling at her, not really. He cursed her for being like her mother, cursed her mother for everything in the world that wasn’t right. He dug into his pocket, felt the weight of the coins. Well, at least something was right in the world—at least he had money enough for a long time to come. A country squire, what a great man he would become. Maybe he would marry a fine woman and raise another daughter, one of distinction this time. He went and fetched the other purse, then sat down at his table and counted his way to sleep. He awoke before dawn and took a stroll, smoking a cigarette to ward off the dampness. On Webber Row he stopped into the Frog and Peach for a pint. The few patrons were all huddled in one smoky corner and whispering excitedly. Mayhew sat up on a stool and asked the man who drew his pint what was going on.