Death at Whitechapel

by Robin Paige

  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

  to Winston Churchill,

  upon Winston’s acceptance into Sandhurst

  August 1893

  Winston drummed his fingers on his desk and stared out the window that overlooked Great Cumberland Place, where a few horse-drawn carriages and one or two hansom cabs moved briskly through the gray November afternoon. It had been a trying day, the culmination of a difficult week, and Winston felt himself at the end of his tether. Even as a boy he had been given to fits of black depression, sinking into brooding spells of melancholy so dark, as he had once written to his mother, that he might have been plunged headfirst into the slough of despond. The only antidote to these dreadful depressions was company—the more flamboyant and stimulating and zestful, the better—and incessant activity. “A change is as good as a rest,” he had told his brother Jack, and he whirled from one project to another as madly as a dervish, allowing himself no time to brood over the terrible evidences of his inevitable failures—evidences that, from very young days, his father had not failed to point out to him with great force and equally great regularity. No matter how hard he tried to show what he could do, no matter how much he dreamed of impressing his father with his achievements, it was all for naught. He could do nothing to make his father proud of him, and the thought had filled him with despair.

  Of course, Winston knew, his father had to be right in his rebukes, for Lord Randolph was a magnificent man, a paragon, worthy of nothing other than the greatest admiration, respect, and loyalty. For his son, he had held the key to everything worth having, had known everything worth knowing. Winston had been obsessed with his father’s image, clipping newspaper stories about his political career, copying his physical stance, mimicking his patterns of speech. When Lord Randolph had died three years before, in the ugly depths of a political and social disgrace that Winston was just now beginning to comprehend, the son had committed himself to the father’s redemption: to lifting up his flag, to pursuing his aims to the same successful end that he should have achieved, had he lived.

  And therein lay Winston’s dilemma. To achieve these ends, he had to claim for himself the political success that his father had so inexplicably cast aside when he resigned his Cabinet post as Minister of the Exchequer. He had, in a phrase, to prove his infallible father wrong when he had said that his son would never, could never succeed. In the depths of that profound paradox lurked the true beast of Winston’s depressions, a nameless black dog. ready to rise out of even the most trivial of rejections and sink its furious teeth into his heart.

  Today’s black dog was a fierce one, perhaps the most savage yet. On the surface of it, Winston’s despair arose from a relatively minor incident. At the suggestion of several rising Tories who were encouraging his political ambitions, he had gone to Conservative Party headquarters at Saint Stephen’s Chambers, where Fitzroy Stewart introduced him to Richard Middleton, the “Skipper,” as he was called. Mr. Middleton was held in great repute because he had steered the Party to its victory in the General Election of 1895.

  Up to a point, the meeting had been successful, Stewart and the Skipper praising Winston’s Malakand Field Force and extolling the letters he had written for the Morning Post as the “talk of Fleet Street.” The party would certainly find a seat for such a promising candidate, who, despite his years and youthful appearance, had already shown himself a force to be reckoned with, a chip, as it were, off the Churchill block.

  And then, just as Winston was about to extend his hand to seal the bargain, the question had come. If he truly wanted a constituency, the Skipper had asked, how much could he pay for it? Startled, Winston had replied that he thought he could raise the money to fund his campaign, but that was about the limit. “I’m not a rich man,” he said. “I live by my earnings.” (This was not quite true, for he also lived by his mother’s earnings, such as they were. He did not, however, want to publicize this fact.) The Skipper, hearing the phrase “not a rich man,” had grown cool. The price of a safe seat was around a thousand pounds a year; insecure seats, of course, went more cheaply, but none were free. No candidate could assume the Party’s backing if he did not back the Party. Winston should return when he could afford to play the game.

  Winston buried his face in his hands. If money was what it took to get into politics, it would be a very long time before he could write “MP” after the Churchill name and begin to redeem his father’s memory. The only person he could ask for money was his mother, and while she was willing, she did not seem to be able to manage her money and was sometimes so short that she could not pay his allowance. Of course, she might marry again: it had been rumored the year before that she was engaged to William Waldorf Astor. But while Winston couldn’t help wishing that the family coffers might be enriched with some of Mr. Astor’s six-million-dollar income, he had told his mother that she should never marry anyone for money, not even Mr. Astor. And now it looked very much as if she might marry George Cornwallis-West, for love! Winston could not for the life of him imagine why a woman as enticing, as seductive as his mother should stoop to that callow boy, who was as penniless as he was profligate. Why, it was a pairing so unspeakably absurd that it made his stomach turn. But stoop she had, or rather, tumbled to it, as that sour wit in Punch had put it, in a remark brutal with sexual innuendo. Not even Winston’s blunt warning (“Fine sentiments and empty stomachs,” he had told her, “do not accord.”) could keep her from doing whatever she chose.

  But these—the bitter want of money and his mother’s romantic follies—were not the only beasts that gnawed at Winston’s vitals. No, there was something far worse, something so utterly ghastly, so abhorrent and appalling, that he could not bear to think of it. But he had to think about it, because he feared that the other man might bring it to light. He had to do something to keep it from being found out and ruining all his hopes for himself and for the redemption of his father’s name and reputation.

  But what could he do? What could he do? The hideous truth would sooner or later out. Worse, the other man would see that it found its ugly way into the press, always hungry for some sensation, always ready to cast the first stone, and the next, and the next. And once that happened, not even death would write finis to it.

  9

  A Gross Cavalry Scandal

  I have heard many strange stories from the British Army, but few to equal this. Here is a lad of excellent character, a crack rider, a first-class shot, and an all-around “good sportsman” ... He joins his regiment in April, and by the next January he is chucked out of the Service with ignominy; his profession lost, his long and expensive apprenticeship thrown away, and his prospects in life seriously impaired. And all for what?

  Truth,

  21 May, 1896

  Manfred Raeburn stacked the manuscripts on his desk and tied them together with a stout cord. They were the initial submissions for the first issue of Lady Randolph’s “Maggie,” as she insisted on calling it—an altogether ridiculous nickname, Manfred thought with irritation, as if the journal were one of her intimate friends. He preferred to think of it as The Anglo-Saxon Review, a name that had dignity and merit and should certainly command attention in the literary world.

  The content of the magazine would command attention, too, if Manfred had anything to do with it. And he would, in spite of the fact that Lady Randolph had made it clear that she meant to have the last word with respect to the editorial decisions. He smiled to himself as he finished bundling the manuscripts. Of course, she did not go through the daily post that arrived here in the office of the Review, as he did. She could not know that he had already received, read, and discarded as unfit several submissions that she had invited. That silly thing from Pearl Craigie, for instance, which was so light and shallow that it would never do. He would simply tell her that the expected manuscripts had never arrived, and she would be none the wiser.

  At the thought of Lady Randolph, Manfred’s lip curled slightly. Of course, he had nothing against
her personally, except that she was Winston’s mother. And even that in itself was not a high crime, for everyone knew that it was Winston’s father who had shaped his son’s worst attributes: an overweening arrogance, a total lack of principle, a misconceived impression of his own importance, the lack of any compensatory quality except for compulsive industry and an astonishing ability to make things happen. At Aldershot, one of the instructors had said that Winston was nothing but a spoiled rich boy endowed by some absurd chance with the brain of a genius and the ambition of a Napoleon, and Manfred, bitterly, agreed.

  Aldershot. Manfred sank down in his office chair and turned to stare out at the dirty yellow fog that rose from the tiled roofs and curled around the chimney pots on the opposite side of Fleet Street. Aldershot—where he and his brother Arthur, both of them victims of a vicious and immoral intrigue, had been stripped of their right to a military life. Aldershot—where the dearest thing in the world had been taken from him, the entire tragedy set in motion at the whim and fancy of a spoiled boy who ...

  Sudden tears blinded him, but Manfred blinked them away and hardened himself. The loss was immeasurable and inconsolable, but it lay in the past, and if he dwelled on it too long, he would drown in bitter rage. He did not intend that to happen. At some cost to himself, he had already taken steps to ensure that the ghastly wrong would be redressed. If that plan did not serve, he felt confident that he could think of something else.

  He stood and began to pace the room, his hands behind his back, his head bent. His confidence in himself was no mere shallow conceit, or feigned, like Winston’s, to cover a deep uneasiness about his merit. After all, he had managed to recover from the very worst thing that could befall an ambitious young man bent on bettering himself, had he not? The glory of a military career was forever denied him, but he had already made a name for himself in the publishing business and his present position as managing editor of Lady Randolph’s Review—the reward for working diligently and playing his hand just right—suggested that even better and more prominent situations lay ahead.

  Outside in the street, a lorry horn blared, a horse whinnied, and a man shouted. Recalled to himself, Manfred stopped in his pacing and glanced with satisfaction at the well-appointed office, with its bookshelf and filing cabinet and typewriter and leather chairs and fine walnut desk. Whatever the ambiguities and unhappinesses of his private life, he reminded himself, he was in a good place. And once the old scores were settled and the old wrongs redressed, he would be in a better.

  10

  Horror upon Horror Whitechapel Is Panic-Stricken at Another Fiendish Crime

  London lies to-day under the spell of a great terror. A nameless reprobate—half beast, half man—is at large, who is daily gratifying his murderous instincts on the most miserable and defenceless classes of the community. There can be no shadow of a doubt now that our original theory was correct, and that the Whitechapel murderer ... is one man, and that man a murderous maniac. The ghoul-like creature who stalks through the streets of London ... is simply drunk with blood, and he will have more.

  The Pall Mall Gazette,

  8 September, 1888

  Kate took off her green velvet dressing gown and laid it across the chair. The hands on the ormolu mantel clock pointed to eleven, but she was feeling keyed up and not quite ready for sleep. The evening had given her much to think about. That odd business about blackmail that Jennie had brought up at tea seemed curiously unresolved, but at dinner, she had been as gay and witty as if she had not a care in the world, and afterward, in the library, she had entertained them with several Beethoven piano sonatas, expertly played.

  Then Charles had gone off to write letters and Kate and Jennie had lingered before the fire, talking about the new magazine, and Winston’s political ambitions, and the latest London gossip: Daisy Warwick, no longer the Prince’s favorite, had fallen in love with the wealthy and dashing Captain Joseph Laycock. Captain Joe was hardly a handsome man but incredibly magnetic and of course wealthy, and five years younger than the countess.

  “One really can’t blame her”—Jennie sighed—“but I predict trouble ahead.” Her face darkened. “Young men are so charmingly attentive and passionate—but frighteningly possessive.”

  Frighteningly possessive? The remark sounded as if it came out of some deep apprehension. Kate wondered if Jennie were speaking obliquely about her own relationship with the young George Cornwallis-West, but did not like to ask.

  After a moment, Jennie turned the conversation back to Winston’s political hopes. “You know,” she said, “that when the government came to claim Randolph’s robes of the Exchequer, I refused to hand them over.” The firm set of her chin belied the casual tone of her voice. “I am keeping them for Winston to wear when he becomes a member of the Cabinet. It shan’t be long now.”

  Kate couldn’t help thinking that Jennie’s confidence was premature, for Winston had not even gotten into Parliament yet. But Jennie and her son possessed a powerful resolution that might itself shape the course of future events. “He’ll campaign in the next election?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Jennie said. “He’s been assured by the Party that a seat shall be open to him.” She leaned forward, her eyes intense. “That’s why this terrible blackmail must be—” She stopped, and forced a smile. “There I go again,” she said lightly. “Silly me. Making a fuss over nothing.”

  “Is it really nothing?” Kate asked. She put her hand over Jennie’s. “You can tell me, you know. I am your friend.”

  “I know.” Jennie had looked down at their hands. “Thank you.”

  The door to Charles’s dressing room opened, interrupting Kate’s thoughts. He came out, clad in his white cotton nightshirt. “Ready for bed?” he asked.

  “Very nearly,” Kate said. She raised her hands and lifted her long, heavy hair so that it flowed loosely down her back, then went to stand by the window, still thinking about Jennie, still puzzling over the blackmail. She said, “I don’t understand what went on at teatime, Charles.”

  Charles leaned over the gas lamp, the oval of golden light turning the hollows of his bearded cheeks into shadow. He turned down the mantle until the light was gone and the room fell into a pale darkness, lit only by the slender moon that hung in the branches of the copper beech outside the window. Climbing into bed, he answered Kate with a question.

  “How much did you hear about the Ripper, over there in America?” He settled his pillow into a rest for his back and leaned against it.

  Kate stood beside the half-drawn drape, gazing through the window onto the wide sweep of moonlit lawn. “I read about him,” she said evasively. Then, because she had fallen into the habit of telling her husband almost everything, she turned and said frankly, “I read a great deal about him, I must confess. Even as recently as three years ago, I happened across an article—a reprinting of a piece in a Chicago newspaper—about an English medium who claimed to have led the police to the killer.” Actually, she had clipped the article and filed it away, thinking that it might prove to be useful material for one of Beryl Bardwell’s narratives. “In that version, the Ripper was a mad doctor. He later died in a lunatic asylum.”

  Charles folded his arms across his chest with a chuckle. “You are bloodthirsty, my dear. I should have thought that a proper lady would be repulsed by so much spilled blood.”

  Kate tilted her head and gave him an impertinent smile. “I am hardly a proper lady, m’lord. While your Ripper was reducing the population of Whitechapel, I was earning my own living in New York City—and Beryl Bardwell was just starting to write her first stories.”

  Kate had begun her literary career some years before. Writing under her own name, Kathryn Ardleigh, she had intended to compose tidy domestic narratives of the sort written by Louisa May Alcott—Little Women and Little Men. But the publisher to whom she offered her work, replied that while her stories were very fine, there was no market for morality.

  “Sensation is what the public wan
ts,” he had told her, thumping on the desk. “Excitement, suspense, stimulation—and the more, the better. Heap it on!” So Kate adopted the name of Beryl Bardwell and became a writer of sensational shockers, dramatic stories that she often drew from newspaper reports of real crime. The publisher had been right. The public was hungry for sensation, and the more lurid details she included, the sharper the readers’ appetites became. Her shockers had sold like hot pies on an icy street corner in winter.

  “I doubt,” Charles said with a crooked smile, “that you learned much of the Ripper. The newspapers were not accurate, of course. They printed what they chose to print—which was a good deal of sordid nonsense. Like that article about the clairvoyant.” He beckoned. “Come to bed, Kate.”

  The article had stayed in Kate’s mind, for it had had the ring of truth. But Charles was right. The newspapers rarely printed the truth—although that did not alter her interest in the crimes. “I suppose,” she said, “that I was repulsed by the idea that a man could despise women so much that he would kill and mutilate them. How many? A dozen, was it?”

  Charles shook his head ruefully. “More nonsense. Where the Ripper is concerned, there is far more fiction than fact in circulation—perhaps because the truth is so grisly that it can scarcely be imagined.” He pulled the covers back. “Please come, Kate. You’ll get a chill, standing by the window in that gown. Which is so thin,” he added meaningfully, “that I can see right through it.”

  Kate left the window and climbed into bed beside her husband. “Well, then,” she said, pulling the sheet up to her chin, “if not a dozen, how many did he kill?”

  “Five,” Charles said. He put his arm around Kate’s shoulder and pulled her close against him. “A number of other women, all of them unfortunates, were murdered in Whitechapel during that time. But—”