What Alice Knew

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  “He’s Jack the Ripper! He as good as confessed. You saw it! You almost fainted!”

  “I had a moment of trepidation, I admit, but I was mistaken. Walter Sickert is as innocent as I am.”

  William stared at her.

  She continued. “The man is incapable of calculated brutality. He is a philanderer, to be sure—no doubt a source of misery to his wife—but he would never commit murder.”

  “He has seduced you! Even as we watched, he exerted his animal magnetism and caused you to lose your reason.”

  Alice laughed and protested that her reason was entirely intact. She had, she admitted, found Sickert appealing; for the first time in many years she understood the attraction that a man could hold for a woman. Indeed, though her condition made it impossible for her to act on her inclination, she could understand how other women might. She felt for Ellen Cobden, the long-suffering wife, but one ought to know what one was getting oneself into when marrying this sort of man. He belonged, one might say, to womankind.

  William listened with mounting astonishment and disgust. He had never dreamed that his sister would espouse the notions of unfettered love or make excuses for an adulterer. But here he was, listening to her do so.

  “Will you make her see reason, Henry?” he insisted, turning to his brother.

  Henry, who had been pressing the handkerchief Sickert had given him to his nose (he had finally put it together and recalled the scene of his near death in the East End that night), looked up with surprise. “Oh,” he said dreamily, “Walter Sickert couldn’t possibly have killed those women in the East End. He’s a capital fellow. He saved my life.”

  ***

  Sickert was not late the next day. He arrived at three p.m. as he had said he would. It was, Alice suspected, more than a matter of professional punctuality; he wished to see her again as much as she wished to see him. And why should this be surprising? Although she was not young or pretty, she was interesting. Why wouldn’t a man of exceptional sensibility enjoy her company? William could not be expected to understand it; his opinion of other men was too low to imagine that anyone might be as discriminating as he was.

  Her conviction that Sickert was innocent of anything beyond excessive appreciation of the opposite sex had solidified, and in the face of her conviction, she had forbidden her brothers to spy on her. “If you want to come in to greet the artist and exchange a few words, you may,” she intoned regally, “but I will not permit you to stay.”

  William knew that he was helpless to change her mind. From childhood on, there had been certain edicts that she would not allow to be breached; thus, when Sickert arrived for his next visit, William remained downstairs in the kitchen, fuming and pacing.

  Henry, on the other hand, made a point of coming into the room to offer thanks to the man who had saved him from attack in the East End some weeks earlier. “I had no idea it was you,” he explained with a mixture of gratitude and embarrassment, “given my…confused…state of mind. But yesterday I recognized the scent of your handkerchief and then realized that was the event you were referring to when we spoke at dinner the other night.”

  Sickert smiled affably and had the good grace to shift the focus of discussion from the victim to the attacker. “It was an unfortunate combination of circumstances,” he said. “You found yourself in the wrong place and collided with the wrong man. Such people are dangerous, because they want more than your money.”

  “What do they want?” asked Henry.

  “They want attention. They want to be heard. But they don’t know how to express themselves except by beating you senseless.”

  “I see,” said Henry. “So you think my attacker was trying to express himself. And would you say the same for all criminals…for this Jack the Ripper, for example? Does he want to express himself by killing those women in Whitechapel?”

  “Most assuredly,” said Sickert. “All that carving up of the bodies. It’s clear something is being expressed.”

  “Something sexual, you mean,” said Alice, interested in hearing Sickert elaborate.

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. The murders do not seem to me sexual in nature. Creative, but not sexual.”

  “You call murder creative?” asked Alice, surprised to hear her own views echoed so succinctly. “What do you mean?”

  “All human beings are creative. They may not express their creativity as your brother and I do, by painting or writing, but they find an outlet in some form.”

  “It puts me in mind of that De Quincey essay, you know,” said Henry casually, shooting a glance at his sister.

  “Oh yes,” said Sickert. “‘Murder Considered as a Fine Art.’”

  “I’m fond of De Quincey,” murmured Henry, “though I haven’t read everything.”

  “I have a complete edition, given to me by a friend,” noted Sickert. “I’d be glad to lend it to you.”

  Henry said he was grateful and would consider the offer.

  “And how does someone who is bedridden express her creativity?” asked Alice returning to the original topic.

  “With her illness, certainly,” said Sickert. “It takes a certain amount of creative energy to be sick.”

  Alice laughed. “Precisely what I’ve always believed. Henry has explored it in his fiction. Some of his most interesting characters are sick. But William does not approve. He sees the invalid as someone who hasn’t exerted his will sufficiently. It’s the American Puritan in him,” added Alice. “His touchstones are spirituality, exertion, and restraint. He doesn’t approve of Henry and me.”

  “Then he certainly wouldn’t approve of me,” noted Sickert.

  Chapter 36

  William was seated in the public house off Whitechapel High Street waiting for Ella Abrams. He had arranged the meeting in order to interrogate her on the subject of her former lover. The thought made him twitch with repulsion, but he was determined to gather ammunition in his case against Walter Sickert. His brother and his sister had turned against him. Abberline was useless.

  He had stopped in to see the inspector that morning and received the report of Abberline’s forgers on the subject of Sickert’s note. “They say there’s no proof that it wasn’t written by Jack the Ripper,” Abberline asserted, “but no reason to believe that it was.”

  Under other circumstances, William would have accepted the verdict that the note was a potential piece of evidence that had come to nothing, but since his meeting with Ella Abrams in the shop, his attitude had changed dramatically. Suspicion of Sickert had hardened into conviction, and the note seemed to be irrefutable evidence. It was apparent to him now, for example, that the ink was the same ink used in the “Dear Boss” letter, that the r’s were formed in precisely the same way, and that the flourish under the signature looked exactly like a line near the bottom of that notorious letter. He had made his case to Abberline, noting that the use of Pirie and Sons paper became significant in the context of the other factors. Surely, there was more than enough evidence on which to base an arrest.

  Abberline had disagreed. “My forgers assure me there are no definitive points of resemblance,” he insisted, “and they are experts in these matters.”

  “Experts!” William sneered. “They are criminals, not to be trusted!”

  Abberline looked surprised at the vehemence with which his colleague spoke. “I assure you they are trustworthy in this arena at least. Honor among thieves and all that.”

  William grew incensed by Abberline’s light tone. “They are protecting their own livelihood,” he spit out. “The longer they delay the resolution of this case, the better for them. It’s doubtless the same for you,” he added tersely. “You have you own interests to protect. Sickert is a man of standing in society…or at least he knows people of consequence. This keeps you from arresting him.”

  Abberline drew back, surprised. He and William had spent many days together by then and had acquired some understanding of each other’s character. The accusation seemed to come out o
f nowhere. “I assure you I have no reason to protect my social superiors.” He spoke proudly. “I would be prone, if anything, to take the side of my own class over those above me. But I advocate only for justice. I will pursue a murderer, whatever his class, and will make an arrest when there is evidence to warrant one.”

  William was hardly listening and instead continued arguing in the same line in which he had begun. “When you grow up in a society in which the privileged are protected, you are conditioned to follow suit.”

  Abberline stared at his colleague. It was as though William had lost touch with reality and retreated into his own world. He spoke slowly, as if to a child. “I would be the first to arrest this man, were there evidence against him. But I see no evidence. Only a desire on your part that he be guilty.”

  “A desire on my part?” exclaimed William. “And why would I have such a desire?” His voice had grown shrill.

  “I have no idea what motivates you; only you are privy to that. I will continue to keep your Walter Sickert under watch, but will do no more without additional reason to suspect him.”

  William had not argued further but had turned on his heel and left. He felt eaten away by anger and resentment, even as he knew, behind the turmoil of his emotions, that Abberline was right. Ella Abrams had once loved Walter Sickert. That fact fed an irrational, morally ignoble jealousy that undergirded his conviction of the man’s guilt. He knew this fact at the same time that he could not disentangle what he knew from what he felt.

  As soon as he left Abberline’s office, he had sent a note to Connaught Square, requesting that Ella meet him that afternoon. Perhaps the evidence he craved lay with her, or perhaps he sensed that seeing her would assuage his agitation. She had immediately written back that she would meet with him in Whitechapel, as she had business in that area. She designated a public house and an hour at which she would be there.

  He had arrived early, still smarting from his encounter with Abberline, but the place had a soothing effect on his nerves. The large downstairs room was practically empty and, unlike rowdier establishments in the neighborhood, was clean and quiet, with a comforting lack of distinctiveness. He could have been anywhere, in a limbo outside of time and place, where nothing he did mattered, where he would not be held to account for his actions. He chose a table toward the back and waited for her to come.

  He had been waiting almost an hour when a figure in a cloak rose up before him, causing him to jump in alarm. He had been so engrossed in his own thoughts that seeing the cloaked figure had brought back the visceral terror of the attack the week before. But in a moment, Ella pushed back the hood and revealed her face. The relief and pleasure of seeing her was as great as the initial terror, merging into what he could only describe, based on his readings from some of the Germans, as a sense of the sublime. Her beauty dazzled him, made him feel literally dizzy with euphoric wonder, as it had on the two previous occasions when he had seen her.

  “It’s good of you to go out of your way at such short notice,” he said, his voice sounding muffled and unnatural to his own ears.

  Ella sat down and faced him. “It’s not out of my way,” she said. “I was delivering some canvases for framing to a shop nearby. And I wanted to meet you.”

  She draped her cloak over her seat and looked at him with a frankness unusual for a woman. It occurred to him, seeing her here, how much she lived between worlds: rich and poor, Jewish and gentile, male and female, and he wondered if this fact wasn’t a large part of her fascination for him. He too lived between worlds, or had swung between them, if one considered the chaos of his younger life and the settled nature of his present one. And of course, he maintained oscillation in his work. He was constantly sliding out of one field and into another, finding he could not get a grip on the discipline as it existed and needing to reshape it in light of something else. Was the mark of a certain kind of character its inability to fit into the grooves that life had established, either because of happenstance of birth or temperament? Was this the nature of the philosopher and the artist—as well as the malcontent and the misfit?

  Whatever was behind it, he felt he was being pulled off the hinges of his conventional life by the sight of her. He could feel himself swerving and careening, and he clutched at something practical. “I asked you to come,” he said, trying to keep his voice level and calm, “because I wanted to know more about that…man…to whom you gave the volumes. Walter Sickert. You said you misjudged his character. What did you mean?”

  Ella looked surprised. “Didn’t you meet with him?”

  “Oh yes,” said William. “He is painting my sister.”

  He must have registered distaste in saying this, because she smiled wryly. “And you disapprove?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said William defensively. “She has commissioned him to do her portrait. I was simply curious about your comment regarding his character, since he visits her house now every day.”

  “I think if he is painting your sister, you know what my comment means,” said Ella. “He only paints women he admires. I’m sure your sister enjoys his admiration. Of course, she must be prepared to share it.”

  “My sister has no interest that way,” said William sharply. “She is an invalid, and he is a married man.” He spoke, realizing that he himself was a married man, though he was sitting with a strange woman in a public house in Whitechapel.

  “Yes, he is married. I didn’t mean sharing him with his wife.”

  “You mean that his immorality goes beyond simple adultery?”

  “Simple adultery, as opposed to complex adultery?” said Ella with amusement. “Yes, I suppose that is what I mean.”

  “In other words, there are other women,” William said pointedly and then paused. “And that’s all?”

  “All what?”

  “All you meant when you said you misjudged his character.”

  “I should think that would be enough.”

  William nodded. She knew no more, then, than that Sickert was a philanderer of the worst sort. It was not what he had been looking for, and yet why did he need more to convince him that the man was a degenerate and, by extension, a murderer. He cleared his throat nervously. There was no point talking about Sickert any longer. “I hope you don’t feel I’ve wasted your time.”

  “No.” She smiled. “I don’t see how you can waste something in such plentiful supply. I am flattered that you would want to see me again. I certainly wanted to see you.”

  He felt himself flush but hurried to disguise his pleasure. “It’s good you had an errand to do,” he said lamely.

  Ella shrugged. “There are always errands for me to do.”

  “Tell me about them.” He wanted to know more about her life.

  “Oh, business for the shop. And chores for the household.” She paused. “I must make visits and receive them. My mother wants me to get married.”

  “And is that what you want?”

  She shrugged again. “It would be a change.”

  William laughed. It was odd to think of marriage as the means to “a change,” but in a sense, that was what it was. Marriage allowed the sameness of one’s original family to be opened up, to detour from its static, familiar course.

  “I should like to have children,” she mused. “There might be satisfaction in being a mother. But for that, I must find someone to marry. And so far, I have found no one suitable.”

  “And whom do you consider suitable?”

  “Oh, he must be Jewish and rich, and I suppose moderately attractive and interesting to talk to.”

  “That’s a rather exacting set of requirements.”

  “I’m sure your wife conforms to an exacting set of requirements,” she said drily.

  William acknowledged to himself that she did. His Alice shared his religion and his interests and had been fully approved by his parents.

  There was silence between them for a moment. He could think of nothing to say, and part of him did not feel inclined to
talk. For some reason, the feeling of nervousness and discomfort he had felt when she arrived had disappeared. He sat looking at her, and she looked back without embarrassment. She then laid her arm on the table, the palm open.

  It was odd how a simple gesture—an arm on a table, an open hand—meaningless in other contexts, could be so eloquent. He looked at the hand in its roundness and softness, the long fingers with the smooth nails, which had been filed so that they tapered into little white moons showing above the rosy, darker flesh. It was a hand not so different from other hands, and yet infinitely different. And it had been placed on the table expressly for him.

  He gazed at it. The attraction he felt for her was intense; it was as though he were underwater, breathing through a filter. His senses felt muffled but also preternaturally alert, attuned to the presence across from him. He took his hand from his lap and placed it on her hand, his fingers intertwining with hers. It was as though he had caught a small animal that might jump away if he did not hold it tightly. Every nerve in his body was vibrating with life, his mind in a kind of frenzy of excitement and desire as he felt her pulse drumming under his fingers. He clasped her hand more tightly, and it remained still under his.

  The rest was a kind of dream. A wizened little barmaid showed them upstairs without the trace of a question and opened the door to a room. It was almost bare except for a bed and a night table, but cleanly swept. Ella placed her cloak on the end of the bedstead and stood before him. He put his hand out, touched her cheek, and then let it fall to the button at the top of her dress. It was a simple dress with buttons leading from the top of the neck to the waist, where there was a wide embroidered sash. He imagined that he would unbutton each of the buttons to the waist and then, in a great sweep of his hand, pull the sash so that the whole edifice that encased her would open up suddenly, and she would be released into his arms. It was just the sort of dress he would have imagined for her—sleek and unadorned, yet intricate with its buttons from neck to waist. Everything about her was simple and strange that way—contained and quiet but also dramatic, intense, excessive.