He blasted the horn—it made a trumpeting sound—and then swerved around the U-Haul truck ahead of them, then back into the proper lane.
Miranda held her tongue.
And he did it again, leapfrogging and hopscotching through the traffic, gaining whatever time he could.
He poked his head out the window to look ahead at the unending cavalcade of cars and other vehicles snaking their way around the perilous turns and switchbacks of Topanga Canyon Road. The air was noticeably more acrid. It carried the smell of burning sage and chaparral, dried cactus, and parched soil, and under it all, a tinge of something foreign, and chemical in nature. The smoke was drifting overhead from a northerly direction—the direction of the derelict meth lab . . . though maybe not as derelict as he’d thought.
Dusk was falling, the smoke darkening the sky even further. There was a constant whirring from the helicopters flying overhead, some of them dropping tons of water, some no doubt just reporting on the wildfire. A coyote skipped across the road, its tail and head down, barely missed by a passing SUV. Diego and Frida were somewhere in there, too. Along with the first wolf to have made it this far south.
He saw a tiny opening and jerked the wheel to the left, got around a station wagon packed with barking dogs, and settled in again behind a truck—a red one, with a dragging tailpipe.
“Is that Seth and Alfie’s truck?” Miranda said.
It was. And maybe their buddy Laszlo was with them.
“Can you see who’s in it?” Rafe said, quickly speeding up to close the gap between them.
“Rafe, you’re going to run into them!”
Before doing just that, he swung to their left, and drew abreast of them long enough to look into the cab. Seth was driving, and when he saw who was in the Land Rover, he gave them the finger. Alfie hollered something Rafe couldn’t hear over the long shriek of the air horn on the semi barreling his way.
Miranda shouted “Watch out!” And he pulled back behind the truck in the nick of time. “Rafe, come on—you’re going to get us killed.”
But Rafe’s blood was up, and he could swear the truck was deliberately slowing down, just to impede his progress. Did they know something he didn’t about what had happened back at the store, or what might be awaiting him there?
He hit the horn and signaled that he wanted to pass, but if anything the truck slowed down more and even edged a bit onto the center line, blocking his view of what was coming.
“Let it go, Rafe. We’ll be home in a few minutes no matter what.”
Taking advantage of their slowed speed, he shot the Rover into the left lane, but as soon as he had, Seth steered the truck left, too, and when Rafe fell back, and then tried again, Seth actually jerked his truck so hard it banged into the side of the Rover and knocked it farther toward the cliff running along the south side of the road.
Miranda screamed, and Rafe was barely able to wrestle the Rover back toward the land side. Alfie had turned around in his seat and was staring back, laughing like a maniac. They were coming up on Topanga Hardware and Locks, and Rafe knew that on the right-hand side of the road there was a wide and long turnoff for weight-bearing trucks that wanted to slow the momentum of their descent. He could use that to swing around them on the right. When he saw the sign for it, he gunned ahead, and skidded off the asphalt and into the dirt and grit of the turnoff.
“What are you doing?” Miranda asked in alarm.
Rafe just hit the gas harder, gaining on the truck, but he knew he had to get past them before the turnoff ended. Alfie in the passenger seat looked startled to see him coming up on the right, quickly said something to Seth, and the truck sped up, too, not enough to pull away—Rafe doubted it had the horsepower—but enough to keep him hemmed in. Rafe swung his own wheel to the left, hoping to sneak in ahead of them, and managed to make it with only inches to spare. But Seth wasn’t about to give up; he drove his front bumper into the back of the Rover, sending its back tires fishtailing on the road. Rafe was barely able to maintain control of the car. Miranda braced her hands against the dashboard.
Seth, however, had overcorrected, and his truck drifted out of the right lane and then into the left just as the turnoff was ending and a hairpin turn was coming up.
Rafe sped up to give the truck room to get back into the right lane, just as he heard a siren blaring and a horn blasting. Before Seth could get out of its way, a fire engine with a long ladder, making a wide turn, emerged like a monster from its lair. Its front grille smacked straight into the truck, pushing it back up the road so hard the old red flatbed went up on its back tires, like a stallion rearing, before twisting to the side and tumbling over a low white guardrail.
“Oh my God!” Miranda screamed, but Rafe could only catch a glimpse of what had happened in the rearview mirror. He was desperately trying to pilot the Rover down the incline and through the gaggle of cars that had already paused to make way for the fire engine.
“Rafe, they went over the cliff!”
He nodded. He knew.
“What should we do?”
But what could they do? Already the traffic behind him was piling up—there was a Hummer riding his back bumper—and the firemen would know better than anyone else what needed to be done to rescue them . . . if rescue was even possible.
The only thing Rafe could think of doing was getting back to the house. “Try Lucy on the cell again!”
“It won’t work,” she said. “You know that.”
“Keep trying anyway!”
A bobcat shot across the road, dodging between the cars and shooting under the guardrail.
Rafe wiped his sweaty hands, one at a time, on the fabric seats, and deliberately putting all other thoughts out of his mind, focused his attention entirely on the road ahead. And Lucy.
11 November, 1888
It was perhaps a matter of my heritage, but I could not take my eyes off the silver-plated lamp mounted inside the commissioner’s carriage. No son and grandson of lighthouse builders could help but be fascinated by the ingenuity of its design. What might have originated as a hearse lamp mounted on the outside of a funeral carriage had been modified to sit firmly atop a fixed desk, impervious to the joltings of the carriage by virtue of a spring-loaded base, and offering a quartet of bevelled glass ports and interior mirrors that at once emitted and magnified the candlelight from within. Putting my hand over its crown, I felt the narrow vent through which the heat was allowed to escape from the mechanism, lest the glass crack or the brass fittings become too hot to touch.
‘When you are quite done . . .’ Inspector Abberline said dryly.
‘Yes,’ I said, withdrawing my hand. ‘I’ve never seen a lamp quite like this.’ It made the cabin of the carriage feel as if one were sitting inside a hearth.
‘The commissioner had it specially made for his coach so that he could continue his work even after dark.’
But Sir Charles Warren, whose insignia as head of the police force was proudly emblazoned on the doors of the coach, was absent. He had lent the carriage to Abberline in an attempt, I could only surmise, to show his flag in the precincts of the city most affected by the Ripper’s most recent crime . . . for another crime, perfectly in keeping with the modus operandi of its predecessors, had been committed.
This time, a young prostitute, Mary Jane Kelly, had been discovered by the landlord’s agent, dispatched to collect the overdue rent on her hovel off Dorset Street in Whitechapel. But if the early accounts in the penny press were true, and Abberline had so far said nothing to deny it, there were but two new wrinkles in this instance.
‘He did his work indoors this time, and not out on the street or in some alleyway,’ he said, unsealing an envelope bearing the Scotland Yard address. ‘Which may account for his—what shall we call it—thoroughness.’
He slipped from the envelope three or four photographs and laid them out on the carriage desk before us. Inured as I should have been to these horrors, having attended the autopsy of Annie Chapman
, I was nonetheless appalled at the images taken by the Criminal Investigation Department’s official photographer. The victim—a twenty-five-year-old from Limerick, given to singing, and reputedly so pretty that she had once been a wealthy gentleman’s consort in France—had been reduced to a mangled pile of flesh and bones. She was splayed on her bed, legs spread, abdominal cavity eviscerated, and all of her internal organs placed willy-nilly, as other photographs showed, around her on the blood-soaked bed or elsewhere in the tiny room. Her kidneys rested under her head, her liver between her feet. Her intestines were thrown to the right, her spleen to the left, and portions of her thighs, stripped of skin, had been placed on the bedside table, beside the lone candle protruding from the neck of a wine bottle that had once provided the sole illumination.
‘He was in no hurry,’ Abberline said. ‘It was if he finally had acquired the proper laboratory for his atrocious procedures.’
Methodical he had been, most particularly when it had come to the poor girl’s face. It was turned to the left, towards the camera, and the Ripper had carved away the nose, cheeks, and even the eyebrows; the ears had been partially severed, and the lips had been slashed. It was as if, in his frenzy, he had tried to do nothing less than utterly obliterate the girl.
What remained unclear, however, was exactly why Inspector Abberline had appeared at my house with two constables in tow, to enlist me on this mission. Fanny had been quite hysterical when I was escorted out.
‘What do you want my husband for? Haven’t you troubled him enough already?’
But Abberline had explained that I was not under arrest. ‘We are simply seeking his advice and counsel.’
‘I am sending word to our solicitor!’ she cried out as I stepped up into the coach.
Another lawyer, I thought. Only that morning, I had written a note to Randolph Desmond begging him to abstain from legal action against Lloyd. ‘I will recompense you for damages you have received, and take strong measures to ensure that no such incident recurs.’ I counted, too, upon his reluctance to become the subject of public notice, and even perhaps ridicule. (Should not men in a romantic imbroglio be able to settle the matter with their own wits, or fists, without recourse to the law courts?)
As the police carriage made its way towards the East End, I heard, through the closed windows, muffled catcalls from passers-by.
‘Too little, too late, Sir Charles!’
‘What took you so long?’
‘If this had been Mayfair, Jack would be hanged by now!’
Sentiment in the street had never been more volatile. For months, the public had been demanding that a reward be offered for the capture and conviction of Jack the Ripper, but the official government stance had been unyielding. They did not offer rewards to people for doing what must only be construed as their civic duty. Others had stepped forward, however, to fill the gap, including Sir Samuel Montagu, the Hebrew businessman who had been elected to Parliament to represent Whitechapel in 1885. The Whitechapel Vigilance Committee was raising its own funds for another reward. In a grudging concession to the mounting pressure, Sir Charles had declared that a murder pardon would be issued by the secretary of state to ‘any accomplice not being a person who contrived or actually committed the murder who shall give such information and evidence as shall lead to the discovery and conviction of the person or persons who committed the murder’ of Mary Janet (as she was inscribed in the document) Kelly. It was unlikely in itself to quell the unrest.
‘As you can see,’ Abberline said, gathering up the photos and replacing them in the envelope, ‘the madman is becoming, if anything, more emboldened, and his butchery, if it is even considered possible, more savage.’ Turning down the lamp and taking a pipe from his pocket, he said, ‘The German who attacked you in the coach—and let’s not have any folderol about you not being the gentleman in the coach, I have your name from the publican at the Aldgate Arms—did you know him?’
He had been doing his work. ‘No, not exactly.’
‘Did you, or didn’t you?’
‘Although I have never met him, in the usual manner of speaking, I do believe I know who he is. He is the son of a man who worked at a clinic in Switzerland. His name is Josef.’
‘Josef what?’
‘That I don’t know. But he blames me for his father’s death.’
‘Were you responsible?’
Was I? It was a question I had been known to wrestle with myself. ‘From his perspective, yes.’
Lighting his pipe, he said, rather sharply, ‘I must ask you, why did you not come forward with this information on your own? Why have I had to come to you?’
It was a fair question. But between the vigil I had had to keep by the bedside of my stepson—a matter I did not wish to bring up—and the fact that Josef’s salient characteristics, from his knife to his attire, had already been confirmed by the onlookers, I did not have much more to offer. I could not even guess where he might be hiding. ‘I have not been well,’ I said, ‘but would have done so shortly. In light of this new crime, I regret the delay.’
‘Yes, well, regret it all you like, but without the cooperation of people such as yourself—people intimately involved in some way with the killer—we shall forever be one step behind.’
At this, I took umbrage. ‘I would hardly call myself intimately involved.’
‘Choose your own words, then. But let me be frank with you, Mr Stevenson.’
When had he not? I thought.
‘I do not understand you.’
‘In what way may I enlighten you?’
‘I do not understand the impulse that causes you to create what you do. The world is filled with horrors enough; I see them every day—babies thrown into dust bins, wives beaten senseless by their husbands, children left to starve—and I do not see the point, any point at all, in imagining even more of such stuff. The fact is, your play opened at the Lyceum and all hell broke loose in the city that very night. Not only the fires at the docks, but the first of these murders. I do not read your books, and I have forbidden my wife to do so either, but from your success, I gather that you are not without ability.’
From Abberline, I took that as a ringing endorsement.
‘Why would you not put such abilities as you have towards the writing of works meant to elevate the soul, to teach morality, and to raise the spirits of your audience? If you have it within your powers to summon the devil, why not summon angels instead?’
Though Abberline had put it well, he was hardly the first to do so. My father had often taken me to task for not bending my efforts in a direction more consonant with his Covenanter faith, and in an effort to please him, I had ameliorated certain effects in my early work. (Later, I had always been sorry.) ‘I do not believe a story like “Jekyll and Hyde” depresses the spirits’, I now replied, ‘or contributes to immorality. If anything, it is a tale designed to throw some light on what it is that makes a man good, or bad. Are we born with a single nature that drives us on, or are we cursed with a duality of purpose? Are we not, all of us, amalgams? Free will would have no resonance, would it, if that will was forever and already ordained to the good?’
There was a splat as a piece of rotten fruit struck the window of the carriage. ‘Catch the bastard!’ a man shouted.
‘You there,’ the police driver shouted, ‘no more of that!’
The man shouted something else in reply, but the carriage had already rattled on. While I had initially assumed that we were on our way to the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police on Whitehall Place for a more formal interview, somewhere along the way we had bypassed that destination and continued towards the East End. Glancing out the window, I saw a sign for Dorset Street, and a number of people hanging about the lamp posts and loitering on the pavement.
‘Miller’s Court, sir,’ the driver called out, pulling on the reins. Plainly, I had been taken to the scene of the murder. Another constable opened the door on Abberline’s side and said, ‘This way, sir. They�
��re all waiting.’
Who was waiting? I hoped not the coroner—I had no wish to see the mutilated corpse. Surely, it had been removed by now.
Abberline, his pipe stuck between his teeth, tamped his brown bowler hat down on his head and stepped out. I followed, keeping an eye out for flying fruit. We stood before a darkened passageway, flanked by a Cart Hire on one side and a forlorn shop advertising everything from stovepipe varnish to Dartnell’s ginger beer on the other.
The detective strode into the tunnel, and I, feeling like Dante led by Virgil into Hell, stayed close behind. We emerged into a small and dank courtyard, lit by a single gas lamp suspended from a crooked pole. A policeman stood at attention before a broken window, beside a door that had been reduced to splinters by an axe. Not Jack’s work, that was for sure; he was a good deal stealthier than that.
Abberline engaged another officer in a private conversation, while I stood about awkwardly, wondering what my role in this could be. Why bring me here? An oil lantern had been left burning in the little room behind the guard, and in its light I could see the remains of the carnage. The body was gone, but the sheets, saturated in blood, still lay on the mattress, and even the walls glistened with crimson streaks. This room, where Mary Jane Kelly had breathed her last—a newspaper account had said she was heard singing a French tune not long before her death—looked now like an abattoir.
It was then that I noticed, lurking in the shadows, four or five men and women, like animals being kept in a pen, under the watchful eye of another constable. Were they the other residents of the court? Abberline gestured that I should meet him under the crooked pole. A policeman prodded me in the back with his truncheon. I went to him, and he took several seconds to relight his pipe. Then, he said, ‘The door we had to chop down ourselves.’
The Jekyll Revelation Page 33
