Anatomy of Evil

by Will Thomas

  As luck would have it, and one must remember in the East End most all luck is bad luck, there was a folded apron found beside the corpse, a leather apron as might be used by a butcher or tanner. If it was a clue, the Whitechapel Killer had been conspicuously forgetful to leave behind so well tended an article of clothing. If not, he either intentionally left it behind or it was already there when he killed her. Why did he not take it with him, while carrying away the portion he had cut from her body?

  I knew these streets now, or was getting to know them. Nothing worth so much as a farthing was left on the streets. Even an orange peel tossed to the ground would be picked up by someone else and eaten. These people were on the verge of starvation. A leather apron, even a used one, was worth sixpence or more. There was the cost of a bed and a meal right there.

  I flipped out my notebook and wrote the first of what would eventually be hundreds of questions: does the killer bring a candle or some kind of lantern, or does he perform such skillful surgery by touch only, in total darkness?

  I looked over at my employer. The file was on the table in front of him and he was sitting back with his legs crossed and his arms clasped about his chest. He looked low, as anyone who had just read what he did should look.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think sometimes I want to buy a croft on an island in the farthest Hebrides and not see a single human being from one year to the next. I have been negligent, lad. The money that sits in my accounts could have been put to use and done some good there.”

  “You already contribute to several programs there, sir,” I reminded him. “Besides, no amount of money is going to help women like Mary and Annie. They need the drink. They wouldn’t say thank you for a home and steady employment if it meant they couldn’t have several glasses of gin per day.”

  The Guv relaxed his grip on himself. “I suppose you are correct, but I cannot abide it. We are given a paradise on Earth, and yet we make it over into the very picture of hell. I wonder if this killer feels that he is releasing these women to a better life than they have been living. I’ve been guilty, lad, of forgetting. I stand in my garden and tend to my plants, while scarcely a mile away women like this, who should be grandmothers and pillars of their neighborhood, offer themselves in the street to strangers for the price of a bed.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  That afternoon, while I was busy carrying messages to various departments for the desk sergeant, and a few to various buildings nearby in Whitehall Street, Cyrus Barker stepped out for an hour or two. He didn’t say where he went, but then I had grown used to such behavior. He certainly didn’t need my permission to do what he thought best.

  Six o’clock finally arrived according to the booming of Big Ben, and I went downstairs to the room full of lockers and changed into my regular clothing while the Guv spent the time chatting up anyone who would speak to him. He would take in information and opinions piecemeal, making no judgments as yet, merely asking questions. I’d seen him do it a thousand times. He would start with no opinion, consider that of whomever he was speaking to and then squeeze them as if they were a sponge. Later, when he had put together all the various accounts and formed a possible theory, he might come back and question them again, asking still more probing questions. Sometimes he would bark at them, threaten them in order to shake them up. When he was done questioning a witness, he either had all the information they could give or he could estimate their opinion. That being said, he approached them according to his personal instinct, never two people the same way twice. I suppose that is what Scotland Yard meant when they said that his methods were “irregular.” They were not, nor could not be, successfully codified. They were uniquely his.

  I met him in the hall by the front entrance. He’s not an expressive man, but I could tell he was pleased with his first day at the Yard. By the creases at the corners of his spectacles, I deduced his eyes were half open with satisfaction.

  “A good day?” I asked.

  “Well enough for our first.”

  I cautioned myself not to ask where he had disappeared to during the afternoon. He would reveal it in what he liked to call “the fullness of time.” That’s the way he actually spoke, a farrago of quaint phrases, Scottish axioms, and things he’d picked up in books. Autodidacts are always unique. Couple that with an early life spent among the Chinese as an orphan, hiding his race in order to survive, and you have not merely unique but remarkable. Travel does not merely broaden the mind, it deepens it as well.

  We climbed into a hansom cab and Barker told the cabman to take us to Whitechapel. I suppressed a sigh. Here I was thinking my day was over. Obviously, the Guv wanted to tour the streets a second time. My duty was to see that he stopped to eat something, otherwise he’d be so caught up in his work that he might not stop for hours. I speculated that at some point he would eventually run out of energy, but that would be hours beyond what I could endure.

  If I had known we would be walking Whitechapel officially within a few days, I’d have had no reason to sneak out of the house under cover of darkness with Israel to search for the killer. Our vehicle crossed through the Strand, into Fleet Street, through the City, and finally into Whitechapel, a matter of about half an hour during the busiest time of the day. Traffic was very slow around Aldgate, but Barker did not seem inclined to get out and walk. I theorized he must have a particular destination.

  “Here we are,” he finally said, leaning forward to get out as we drew to the curb. We were at the corner of Thrawl Street and Brick Lane. It was not a prepossessing address. I stepped down and regarded one building in particular. Certain public houses call attention to themselves by having a door on the diagonal at a corner. This one did, as well as a stone emblem over the lintel, illustrating the name for the illiterate masses.

  “The Frying Pan?” I asked.

  “It’s not merely a public house, it is also an inn. Rooms are available by the week. I have let it for the month.”

  “The month?” I asked. “You mean we’ll be staying here for an entire month?”

  “Or until we find the Whitechapel Killer. I want to be here when he kills again. No news is worthwhile that is learned secondhand.”

  As stoic as my room in Newington is, I’d grown accustomed to it. My books are there and my clothes, and Mac sees to my every need, if begrudgingly. Etienne Dummolard makes my coffee and my breakfast, and Harm and I tolerate one another. To give all that up to live over a raucous public house for a solid month seemed too great a sacrifice just to capture a murderer. On the other hand, it was no use saying no to Barker. One might as well try saying it to a wall. The results are the same.

  “Let’s go in, then,” I said.

  The proprietor, when we met him, looked like a partially shaved bear. He must have weighed twenty stone, and had the circumference of a barrel. He gave us a key and we climbed a very narrow staircase to the first floor. It made me wonder how the proprietor squeezed up the stair. I hazarded a guess that the place had been built during George III’s reign, when this street was the very edge of town and green fields were all one saw to the east. No sooner were we in the room than my employer handed me a tin and a spoon.

  “Keating’s Bug Powder?” I asked, reading the label.

  “It’s mostly boric acid. I bought it earlier. Spoon it along the walls and a little between the sheets of the beds. I have no wish to share mine with bedbugs and cockroaches.”

  “As long as we’re going first class,” I said.

  “That’s the pity of it, lad. In Whitechapel, this is first class.”

  I looked about. The wallpaper was old and yellowed, unless that was their original color, and there were two single beds, a desk, and a large chest of drawers that might be as old as the building. A window faced the dreary street, but it was better than no window at all. When I first came to London, I had stayed in worse than this. I set to work, armed with my trusty spoon. It felt like I was preparing for some sort of unholy ritual: stay
inside the circle and you will be safe.

  “So, this is where you went today,” I said by way of conversation.

  “Aye,” he growled. “One cannot catch criminals from an armchair in Charing Cross. We shall spend the next few hours observing where the people congregate at night, what they do, and how they live. I’m given to understand that Mary Nichols drank in the room below us just prior to getting her throat cut.”

  “So you did not simply pull the name out of a hat.”

  “A hat?”

  Having spent half his life in China, Cyrus Barker sometimes misses common idioms.

  “A conjurer’s trick,” I explained.

  “Ah. No, if you recall, this was mentioned in her report.”

  I tried to recall the mention, but I had read a lot of information that day.

  “Are you finished?”

  “Almost.”

  I pulled back the covers of the first bed and sprinkled more Keating’s Bug Powder onto the sheets. I did the same with the second.

  “What about a change of clothes, sir? Should I call Mac on the telephone set in the morning and have him bring a steamer trunk?”

  “No, in the morning, we shall purchase clothing in Petticoat Lane.”

  “The booths won’t be set up until Sunday, sir.”

  “No, but the permanent shops will still be open. A half-dozen boiled shirts and some twice-turned trousers should allow us to blend into this crowd without being noticed.”

  “If you say so.”

  Between the bed and the bug powder and the thought of wearing someone else’s trousers, my limbs were beginning to itch.

  “How long will we be out, would you say? A couple of hours?”

  “Oh, Thomas, the district doesn’t fully waken until after midnight.”

  “But I have work in the morning!”

  “That cannot be helped. Strong tea must stand in place of a few hours’ rest.”

  “What about washing?”

  “There is a public bath a few streets away.”

  At least I could take comfort in the knowledge that his needs were taken care of.

  “What will Etienne say?” I asked. “You know how he gets.”

  Etienne Dummolard used Barker’s kitchen to prepare our breakfast and experiment on recipes for his restaurant, Le Toison d’Or. He was temperamental and would pack his equipment and leave at the slightest provocation, such as our disappearing without notice and interrupting his routine.

  “Coddling only makes him worse. He should relish not having us underfoot and catering to our needs.”

  “Oh, come,” I said. “Etienne hasn’t catered to a need in his life.”

  “Just so,” Barker muttered.

  “What about the W.C.? I don’t suppose—”

  “There is a privy out back.”

  “Wonderful. Have you tried the food here?”

  “I thought it best to wait until you arrived. Your palate is more sensitive than mine. Shall we go downstairs and try it now?”

  As it turned out, there was a red-faced cook in her sixties who ran the kitchen and was known in the East End as an excellent cook. True to the name of the establishment, she had a half-dozen seasoned frying pans on the old Aga that continually fried potatoes, mushrooms, cutlets, tomatoes, fish, and vegetables. It was solid English food in which black pepper was considered an exotic spice, but there was plenty of it, to be washed down with ale or tea. I would have dearly liked something to complain about, but could find nothing. The poor old thing stood on her pins and cooked for sixteen hours straight every day without complaint. Those pans were well seasoned, indeed. I bet they stayed red hot for hours.

  After we ate, we began our second foray into the streets of Whitechapel. My first surprise was that at least half of it was as clean, well settled, and orderly as the City of London a few streets away. This, most likely, was the Jewish influence. Wherever they went on the earth, they brought with them civilization, orthodoxy, cleanliness, and order. Despite the fact that they were packed like sardines in a can, they worked hard to prosper and move out of the area, leaving it in far better condition than when they found it.

  “Do you see that church there?” the Guv asked, indicating a spire that stood tall in the night. “That is St. Mary Matfelon. It is the original white chapel from which the district gets its name.”

  “What are all those funnels, putting out black fumes?” I asked, pointing to a row of chimneys to the north.

  “Sugar refineries. The tall one there belongs to a match manufacturer, which gives the area its sulphurous odor. Then there’s a lot of tanning that goes on by the stockyards, and the fish markets over at Billingsgate.”

  “No wonder the place smells the way it does. What are the more dangerous sections of Whitechapel, the ones we’ll be interesting ourselves in?”

  “You’ve already seen Buck’s Row and Hanbury Street. There’s Flower and Dean Street, the worst row of tenements in all Britain; and Fashion Street, where even the most hale of police constables will not tread alone, and Wentworth Street, which flows into Petticoat Lane. The navy warns their sailors to avoid that street, and that is saying something. It isn’t merely the brothels and fallen women. There are sellers of pornography, counterfeiters, pickpockets, white slavers, gamblers, and rampsmen. Why break your back for twelve hours a day, the residents reason, when you can beat a man into unconsciousness in five minutes and steal his watch and wallet? They seek to avoid Adam’s Curse, laboring with the sweat of one’s brow.”

  “Sir, what sort of man consorts with prostitutes? I mean, are they local or do they travel here from other districts?”

  “I would imagine most would be local, with the occasional wealthy man who comes to take in the prurient sights of the East End. There are brothels all over London, even in respectable streets, and those who would temporarily leave their wife’s side to indulge in depravity must surely know where they are. To come here may be the most dangerous gamble of all. Women like the two who died, those who only occasionally walk the streets, are not examined for the diseases spread by their occupation, which I’m sure you know are untreatable and end horrifically. One is truly gambling with one’s own life. But then, that might be part of the attraction.”

  “Do you think the killer’s presence will curtail some of the activity in the area?”

  “Not in the least. Do you think you and Israel were the only ones to take in the sights last night? I imagine that most men who came to Whitechapel were not as particular as the two of you, and ended the evening in the pubs and brothels. I should warn you, however, that those who come exploring without truly knowing what they’re getting themselves into frequently wake up in an alleyway clad in their underdrawers, their possessions gone in six directions. Don’t bring anything that cannot be easily replaced. In fact, I think it best if I carry the wallet while we are in Whitechapel. Not because you are incapable of defending yourself, but rather because if someone sees you with it, there will be several attempts to liberate it from you simply because you do not appear to be a threat. Few would dare approach me.”

  I was loath to part with the wallet because with it came a certain amount of independence. Now I would have to ask permission for every purchase I made. However, I saw the sense in what he was saying and reluctantly tendered it into his care.

  A game of rounder was taking place in a dead-end alley, its young players paying little heed that catching the ball required running into traffic. It was already growing dark here, but what else did the youth have to do at night? They made paper flowers their mothers sold the next day or practiced picking pockets or worked at situations that children should not in order to feed their families.

  “Look at them,” Barker said. “They are already seasoned by hardship and cynical. The adult men are either feverish for making money or have given up and only care for their personal pleasures. Their wives—common law only, you understand—are either bowed down by woe and strife, or have become harridans, fighting
to survive. Either way, they look ten years older than their husbands.”

  As we walked we came upon a group of young people walking, perhaps five years younger than I. One of the girls upended a bottle of what I took to be gin down her throat, finishing it before simply letting it shatter on the curb. This was no place to take pride in, so there was no attempt to keep it clean.

  Nearby, there was a group of women sitting in the gutter, having a discussion. They weren’t drunken or of low repute, they were what passed for respectable women here, but with no money for tea rooms and no parks in which to sit, they stooped in their cobblestone gardens and mended their husbands’ shirts or darned his socks while passing the time of day. Perhaps for five minutes they could forget that they lived in the worst part of London.

  “I’m very lucky,” I told my employer. “If you hadn’t hired me, I’d be living in streets like this. Thank you for taking a chance on a failed scholar with a record. Most wouldn’t.”

  Barker nodded. He’s not an emotional man, or if he is, he controls it tightly within himself. He, too, had seen hardship and loss and like the people here had learned hard lessons: no one will show you sympathy. Keep yourself in check. Don’t display emotion, it will only get you in trouble. Don’t speak until spoken to. Think before you speak. Keep a constant vigil in every direction for danger. This is the catechism of Whitechapel.

  East London was much darker than West London. The gaslights were farther apart, and many shops shut down early and were locked tight. The darkness was palpable. I could stand in front of an alleyway and not see a man standing therein, though he be but three feet away from me. It made the streets seem ever more dangerous. A hand could come out of the darkness, armed with a razor, and one would be cut before one even knew what was happening.

  “This isn’t the lark you had with your friend the other night, is it?” my employer asked.

  “No, sir.”