City of Darkness

by Kim Wright

  Eatwell had said he could take more men and Trevor had initially been tempted to do so. But perhaps, he reflected as he gazed at the exhausted girl struggling to lift a tray laden with glasses, it was better if just he and Davy did the interrogations and let the other men handle the patrols. It was hard for him to remember, in the dawning light of this new day, what he had hoped to accomplish by walking the streets of Whitechapel. There were plenty of bobbies to do that, nearly twice the number assigned to an area on a typical Tuesday night. Davy had not questioned his judgment directly, but he was right. They needed to spend their time following up leads, not mindlessly roaming the serpentine streets of the East End. Perhaps on the weekend, but not through the week.

  Trevor drained his pint in three long gulps and looked around. Despite the fact it was nearly four in the morning there were still a surprising number of people clustered around the Pony Pub. It’s not just me, Trevor thought. No one in London can sleep. We have become a city of insomniacs. The barmaid turned an inquiring face and he nodded. Yes, another. Why not?

  “I wish you would listen,” the girl said, sliding a beer toward Trevor, but talking to a man several seats down the bar. “We should go to my sister’s house, that’s what I think. London’s not a fit place for the decent, but she said she’d take us in…”

  “Excuse me,” Trevor said. “Miss –“

  “Name’s Lucy,” the girl said, turning her attention promptly back to Trevor.

  “Pleased to meet you. I was going to ask about a man named Micha –“

  “Oh yes, Micha, right as rain,” the girl said. “A copper bloke came in asking if he could be the Ripper, can you picture? But I told him he’d been here the whole night. His usual charming gentleman of a self, right as rain.” She laughed, showing a row of teeth that were surprisingly white and even considering this was the East End, and Trevor found himself laughing back. Perhaps it was his disheveled appearance or perhaps the fact he was drinking at four in the morning, but for some reason the girl taken him as a friend of the brute.

  “Not likely to forget a face like that, are you?” Trevor asked and the girl shook her head vigorously, glancing down the bar as she did so. Trevor couldn’t see the man sitting at the end, but he was likely the jealous sort from the nervous little titters that erupted from the girl whenever she looked in his direction. He had undoubtedly seduced Lucy at some point and didn’t like it when she showed another man attention. We’re all of us beasts in a way, Trevor thought. The man at the end of the bar probably had her easy enough, cares for her not a whit, and even without looking him in the face I’d bet the crown jewels he hasn’t the slightest notion of taking this poor little simpleton to her sister.

  “Not likely to forget that ugly devil” the girl agreed with a giggle. “He pays for it, or he has it not at all, that’s our Micha.”

  She had picked up English phrases and diction well enough, but but her accent, especially on certain words like “ugly,” revealed that she was Polish. Like Micha, and probably half of the people in the Pony Pub. The bar catered to the squadrons of people escaping Eastern Europe for what they imagined to be a more humane and civilized life in London and the tightness of these communities was one reason that Trevor conducted his interviews with skepticism. The Poles vouched for the Poles, the Jews for the Jews, the sailors for the sailors, and, farther to the west, the Royals vouched for the Royals. Trevor had often argued that the natural human impulse to protect your own kind rendered most alibis useless, but the Yard continued to put a great deal of faith in them, still behaved as if investigating even the most heinous crimes was a gentleman’s game. Yes, guv, I’d slit a woman’s throat ear to ear but I certainly wouldn’t lie about it.

  The girl continued to chatter as she wiped the bar, saying that she was frightened, which was undoubtedly true. Saying she wanted to go to her sister, who was in Jersey, somewhere rural and green and safe, at least to this girl’s mind. Half the men in this bar have mustaches, Trevor drily noted, and most of them dark hair. The physical descriptions provided by the witnesses, he was rapidly beginning to see, were as pointless as alibis. The witnesses were giving him impressions, not true descriptions, and impressions were as individual as breasts…

  God. Where had that come from? Trevor pulled himself upright, took another swig of his beer. How long had it been? Weeks coming up on months, months coming up on more like a year?

  He found himself envying the man who sat at the end of the bar, a man who had clearly taken advantage of a lonely, frightened girl who he had no intention of marrying, no intention of saving. The rules of Mayfair didn’t apply in this part of town. Of course the impressions of the people he and Davy had interviewed were just that, impressions. The poverty and the filth of the East End acted as drugs, transporting the citizens of Whitechapel into a sort of collective stupor. A sense of timelessness, drunkenness, women walking aimlessly back and forth in search of something that did not exist in this mean part of the city, men who worked and ate and slept at odd hours. The people here wore no watches. They read no papers, kept no appointments, accepted no invitations to dine. If you stopped the average person in the street and asked the wretch the date or the month would they even be able to answer? Would there be any reason why they should? And yet these are the people, Trevor thought, draining his second beer, whose recollections are the foundation of our case.

  Trevor shut his eyes. The stories buzzed around him. Was the bar usually this crowded on a Tuesday? But no, it was Wednesday now, wasn’t it? Tuesday had slid into Wednesday just as Tuesday always does, and Trevor listened to Lucy chattering on. A pretty girl, a normal girl, a girl who had committed no greater sin than believing the man who bedded her, a girl who with a single stroke of bad luck might find herself on the streets someday, as desperate as Dark Annie. Trevor let the alcohol settle over him like a blanket and listened to their voices. Not just the girl and her useless lover, but the man in the back, roaring that it must be Victoria’s grandson. “’e’s sick in the ‘ead, you, know? Why they only let ‘im out at night, so ‘e won’t be seen in public.”

  “I think ‘e’s that doctor from Russia,” said another. ”The Jew. Said in the papers these women were cut on like in surgery. Clean cuts and all.”

  “You know ‘e’s had some dealings with Old Maudy,” a third voice, female, ventured. “Maybe they’re working together. She ‘ates all of us. Wears men’s clothing, too.”

  Trevor pulled out his journal and made another note on Maud Minford. He kept hearing her name, but he hadn’t visited her yet. John had seemed so certain she couldn’t have the skills to do the deed, yet everyone had been unanimous in their condemnation of her cruelty. He closed his journal and replaced it in his breast pocket.

  “Evening, Sir.” A young girl – fifteen? sixteen? – slid onto the stool beside him. “Or should I say morning?”

  “Morning it is,” he said. “Don’t you have some place you should be? Someone who’s expecting you home?”

  “No, Sir” she said, with a simplicity that reminded him, oddly, of Davy. “Nowhere to be. No one at home. And you, Sir?”

  “Nowhere to be” Trevor confirmed, draining the last of his beer. “And no one waiting for me either. So you guessed right, love.” It had been ten months, four days, and twenty hours. Afterwards, perhaps he would be able to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  October 5, 1888

  9:14 AM

  Rain was peppering in sharp, hard drops as Trevor and Davy stepped from the coach on Atlantic Street. The two men pulled their collars up about them and held their hats tightly with one hand as they ran to a nearby canopy for shelter. Davy had written down directions they’d gotten from a witness the night before and he fumbled for the note in his pocket. Just the mention of Mad Maudy had put fear in the girl’s face, even though Trevor had assured her that she was not in trouble.

  “Start at the Bullwick Tavern and halfway down the third block, you’ll find an alley. Follow it back to the
water and then go a little further. There’ll be a wooden shack with a chimney.” Davy read.

  “Follow it to the water and then go farther? It sounds as if her house is floating down the bloody Thames itself,” Trevor said, but if the girl had been a mite uncooperative, her directions were as good as gold. Within minutes Davy and Trevor found themselves at the end of the aptly-named Atlantic Street, a broken down thoroughfare which butted the waterfront and reeked of rotten fish. The two men held their scarves over their noses as they walked toward the water and a lone crude building with smoke escaping from its chimney. Hard to imagine a young debutante picking her way through the muck to such a hovel, no matter how desperate she might be. Trevor approached the front door and knocked soundly.

  “Go away, ‘tis too early in the day!” a rough voice exploded from inside.

  “Are you Maud Minford? I wish to speak with you,” Trevor shouted, for the wind along the channel was fierce.

  “You know me, do I know thee?”

  “I’m detective Trevor Welles of Scotland Yard. May I have a few minutes with you?”

  “Scotland Yard, is that what you say? What do you want with ole’ Maudy?”

  “Only to ask you some questions, Miss Minford.”

  Trevor and Davy took a step back as they heard a latch unlock and the door slowly widened to reveal a single squinting eye.

  “I heard your voice and now I see you. I didn’t hear the voices of two.”

  “This is Officer Davy Madley,” Trevor said, although he felt ridiculous shouting into a crack. “We are both from Scotland Yard and we need a little of your time. May we come in?”

  Finally, the door swung all the way open and there stood before them a huge woman several inches taller than Trevor and towering as much as a foot over Davy. Her head was flat and as round as a wooden bucket and her thin gray hair was cropped short. Nor had John Harrowman exaggerated about the amount of facial hair she sported. Her hands and arms looked strong and powerful, the fingers stubby, and her voice was deep.

  “Come in if you must, but the likes of you I do not trust.”

  “Thank you, Miss Minford,” said Trevor, as he and Davy entered. The house smelled, if possible, worse than the waterfront. Maud went back to her fireplace and stirred something cooking in a pot. A broken loaf of bread lay on the table.

  “Tis time you two removed your masks. What are these questions you must ask?”

  “Miss Minford, I understand you are midwife to some of the local women? Is that true?” asked Trevor, a bit unnerved by the woman’s damned rhyming.

  “That be my trade for which I am paid.”

  “I understand you perform another service for these ladies, if needed.”

  Maud jerked her shoulders, but made no comment.

  “I’m not here to pass judgment on you, Miss Minford,” Trevor went on. “And I don’t particularly care what you do for a living. We have come to ask questions about your whereabouts on a certain evening.”

  “It’s evil deeds that plant bad seeds.”

  “Why must you continue to speak in these silly poems?” Davy muttered.

  “Is it a crime that I speak in rhyme?”

  “Let her be, Davy. Where were you on the evening of September thirtieth?”

  “In my home. I did not roam.”

  “Can anyone attest to that?” She gave him a scathing look and shook her head. “How do you feel about your clients, Maud?”

  “I’m just a gardener with a hoe. I have no friend and no foe.”

  “These women that come to you for your special services. Do you wish them pain and feel they deserve it? Trying to teach them a lesson, are you?”

  “They all come crying, help me Maudy, get me back to being naughty.”

  “We’ve heard, Maud, that some of these women die after being in your care.”

  “Some of them bleed, when I pluck their weed. Some of them never recover, when they take too soon a lover. I do them all the same. I take no blame.”

  Davy abruptly leaned across the sloping wooden table, surprising Trevor with his forcefulness. “I have trouble believing you don’t recall where you were on September 30,” he said. “It’s a famous night, isn’t it? Every paper in London screaming the next day about the double murders, and it’s all anyone in any bar in London has talked about since. Yet you tell us you don’t remember the evening.”

  This direct assault seemed to rattle the woman a bit. She walked over to her stove and poked a long bent spoon into her stew, stirring awkwardly. “You ask me fast, now let me think. I probably sat somewhere to drink.”

  “Your stew smells very good, Maud,” Trevor said smoothly. “I bet you bake your own bread, too. May I try a piece?”

  Davy all but rolled his eyes. He knew Trevor was just checking to see the creature’s dominant hand, but he could hardly believe his boss was willing to eat anything in this filthy room.

  “Could you cut me a piece, Maud?” Trevor repeated.

  “Cut your own, or do you now sit on the throne?”

  “I do not wish to remove my gloves, dear lady. Could you please cut me a slice?”

  Maudy jabbed the spoon back down in the stew and sternly walked to the table. She grabbed a long knife, sliced off a piece of bread with her right hand, and slammed it down in front of him.

  “Are you here for a crime or just here to waste my time?”

  “We’re finished.”

  Trevor pushed away from the table with Maudy still giving him a miserable stare. Davy opened the door and both of the men thanked her, in the automatic manner of the Yard, before heading back up the alley to Atlantic Street. Once out of sight of the shack, Trevor began spitting out the bread.

  “I was beginning to think your stomach was made of iron,” Davy laughed as he watched him shuddering and wiping.

  Trevor laughed too, finally removing the last few crumbs from his lips. “She was certainly large enough to be the Ripper and perhaps even had a motive. It’s clear she hates her patients or clients or whatever you care to call them. But her skill with cutlery was quite sloppy, don’t you think?”

  “Her riddles had me almost insane.”

  “Did they rattle your brain? Gad, she has me doing it. The rhyming business is interesting, especially when you consider that the message slipped beneath my office door was set out like a poem. But could such an outlandish creature have strolled into Scotland Yard unnoticed?”

  “Dressed as a man she could.”

  “Perhaps. But there’s still the fact she appears to be right handed and lacks basic medical skill. I don’t feel she’s our Jack, but we’ll still keep an eye on her, repellant as that task might be.”

  The dock front was jammed with activity, for apparently several boats had just come into the harbor and the men were streaming onto land. Itching for fresh food, fresh women, or just the chance to stretch their legs. They stumbled unevenly down the sidewalks, as if the land beneath their feet was swaying, and hooted back and forth to each other. You can feel their wild energy, Trevor thought, what it’s like for them to walk free after being cooped up on their ships. They’ll be back at sea within days or sometimes even hours, so whatever pleasures they manage to soak up in the moment will have to last them for weeks. It was easy to see how such explosive energy could very quickly come to violence.

  About a block up, they passed a sailor wearing a dark pea coat, a felt hat, and a red neckerchief tied around his neck which reminded Trevor of the red fiber he still carried in his journal. He casually mentioned this to Davy and they followed the man to the breakfront where they passed another man with the same type of red scarf. And then another. Soon, he and Davy had passed dozens of sailors, all in the same dress.

  “It’s like a bloody nightmare, isn’t it, Sir? There must be a hundred of those scarves right here.”

  “Yes,” said Trevor, laughing despite himself. “No wonder the doctor thought I was daft. Trevor and his fibers. So this is what we come down to. Mad Maudy claims to have
no memory of the evening in question, but in this part of town, where alcohol runs in the street like rainwater, hardly anyone seems to have memories. Most of them have alibis, yes, more than you can shake a stick at, but considering the alibis were provided by people just as memory-deficient and alcohol-saturated as themselves, what good are they?”

  “So all these interviews, all three hundred of them, all these days….it all was useless?”

  ”Nothing’s useless. But the interviews are the old way, Eatwell’s method, and the deeper we go into this mess the more I see that my first impulse was the right one. This case won’t be solved through interviews, through trying to trick someone into using their left hand or their right hand, and it sure as hell won’t be solved by going up and down a row of barstools, listening to a group of drunken sailors swear their mate was right beside them on the night in question. This case will be solved by forensics. I always knew it. I just didn’t have the faith to push it through in the beginning. We need hard physical evidence.”

  “But not the neck scarves, eh Sir?”

  Trevor laughed. “Not the bloody neck scarves. Come on, boy, let’s head back for the Yard. I’ve got a better plan now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  1:20 PM

  “So we can have use of the mortuary?”

  “Certainly,” Phillips said. “Take the front table, but I don’t understand precisely what you plan to do with the space.”

  “It’s the beginning of my forensics laboratory,” Trevor said. “Davy’s off sending a wire to Paris requesting copies of their latest procedure papers and I intend to try to reproduce their experiments here. Eatwell doesn’t have to know –“