by David Field
‘I was, once,’ Esther replied evasively, ‘and I still am, in a manner of speaking.’ She shook her head when Constance held the muffin plate towards her. ‘I wouldn’t want to get butter all over this beautiful gown,’ she explained.
‘Your parents have a clothing manufactory?’ Constance enquired of Esther, but it was Jack who seized the initiative.
‘Esther is an orphan, Mother.’
‘They were cloth importers,’ Esther added. ‘But later, after they died, I was sort of adopted by the Rosens of Spitalfields, who taught me all about garment manufacture and repair.’
‘And do you still reside with the Rosens?’ Constance persevered.
‘Mother!’ Jack objected, but Esther was determined not to be spoken about as if she had no tongue of her own.
‘The Rosens had their premises burned out by those who hate Jews.’
‘And what is your opinion of Jews, Esther? That’s a Jewish name, isn’t it?’
‘That’s quite enough, Mother!’ Jack insisted. ‘Once Esther has finished her delicate work on Lucy’s gown, we shall have to be leaving, so please bring me up to date on family news.’
‘Very well, dear,’ Constance agreed as she smiled reassuringly at Esther. ‘Your cousin Emily is expecting again, but then my sister’s daughter seems to enjoy being in almost constant childbirth. Twice was enough for me, obviously, but I have cause to be grateful for the pain and indignity of labour, since it gave me two such beautiful children. I hear that your Aunt Beatrice has an infection of the lungs that has laid her low again, but no doubt your Uncle Percy has kept you well advised of that. He informs me that he has been drafted in to work with you in connection with two horrible murders, the second barely a week ago. As you know, I disapprove heartily of your being involved in such sordid matters, but I have never been one to stand in the way of my children’s desires, within reason. Fortunately, Lucy has shown no inclination to leave home as you did, although no doubt that will occur when she finally decides which of her would-be suitors to favour.’
‘She’s very beautiful,’ Esther murmured, her head bowed low over her delicate stitching operation. ‘There,’ she announced with a triumphant smile, ‘it’s good enough for one evening’s wear at least, but it should really be strengthened by a second row done with a sewing machine.’
‘The least Lucy could have done in the circumstances,’ Constance complained, ‘was to remain in our company and watch how you did it, then give you her most heartfelt thanks. Instead, she’s probably in her room, lost in one of those dreadful novel things that she’s always reading. Do you read much, Esther?’
‘We have to go now, Mother,’ Jack announced with evident relief. ‘We’ll take the train back and it’s stopped raining, so we can walk down Church Lane to the station. I take it that the trains still run on a Sunday?’
‘I wouldn’t know, dear,’ his mother explained.
‘They do, at least until six in the evening,’ Lucy advised them as she reappeared in the doorway and caught the final part of the conversation. She took the gown from Esther and examined the new hem, then held it up to herself and looked down with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘It looks perfect, thank you, Esther.’
‘You planned that from the very start, didn’t you?’ Esther said accusingly as they walked down the lane towards the station.
‘Mother insisted on meeting you,’ Jack replied in his own defence.
‘And why would that be?’ Esther demanded. ‘And why did your mother look me up and down as if she was hiring me as a domestic?’
‘You can blame Uncle Percy for all of that,’ Jack explained. ‘He’s taken quite a shine to you and he’s obviously put two and two together and told Mother that at long last I’ve found a suitable young lady.’
‘But I’m not “suitable”, as you choose to call it, am I?’ Esther objected. ‘Your mother seemed to regard me with great suspicion and Lucy only took to me because I was able to alter her best party dress. The house is beautiful, even more than the house I grew up in before my parents were killed, and there’s clearly a family of considerable breeding living in it. And here I am, a Jewish orphan living in a rooming house and taking in sewing to keep body and soul together.’
Jack stopped walking, turned to face Esther and leaned forward to kiss her on the lips. ‘You’re “suitable” as far as I’m concerned and I can read my mother. She’s intrigued by you, obviously, and she rightly surmises that you’re very important to me. As I once told you, she’s only concerned for my happiness.’
‘But ...’
‘But nothing, Esther Jacobs,’ Jack interrupted her as he placed two fingers on her lips to silence her. ‘I’ve never met anyone who made me feel the way I do about you. I don’t know whether it’s ... well, it might be ...’
‘Lost your tongue all of a sudden?’ Esther teased him with a broad smile.
Jack turned bright red in the face and studied the ground on which they were standing. ‘My mother’s not the only one intrigued by you, Esther,’ he mumbled, before looking back up, then directly down into her eyes. ‘But for me, it’s ...’
‘It’s what?’ Esther encouraged him.
‘It’s something more. I’ve no experience of these things, but I think I may have fallen in love with you, Esther.’
Chapter Ten
‘At least this one’s on my patch,’ Edmund Reid muttered as he looked down gloomily at the prostrate and mangled remains to the left of the steps leading down into the rear yard of 29 Hanbury Street. It was shortly after six thirty on that Sunday morning and Reid had been summoned from his bed by a breathless constable sent by police wagon from Commercial Street, where the discovery of the body had first been reported. Another constable called in from beat patrol in nearby Brick Lane had recognised Dark Annie as the lady he’d recently helped to take into protective custody at Leman Street.
‘You’re welcome to this one,’ Inspector Chandler assured him with a grimace as he watched police surgeon George Phillips gingerly prodding and poking around the bloody corpse.
‘Just don’t tell Enright until I’ve had chance to alert the Yard direct,’ Reid requested. He looked down as Phillips stood back up and straightened his back in the cold September morning air. ‘Well?’ he demanded.
Phillips shook his head. ‘Difficult to tell, at this stage. Throat cut, obviously, but the torso’s been messed around with as well. She’s not stiffening yet, but not far off it. No obvious signs of a struggle and it probably happened in the past couple of hours. As I say, difficult to tell, but if the carotid was severed like that to begin with, she probably lost quite a lot of blood first off, some of which you can see on the ground near the neck and on that fence. Given that and the cool of the morning, the rigor would set in more quickly. That may also explain the relative lack of blood where the maniac set about carving like she was the Sunday roast.’
Reid moved off the bottom step and took a closer look. Annie was lying flat on her back, her head close to the rear wall of number 29 and her feet pointing towards the outbuildings at the bottom of the yard. Her skirt and petticoats were up around her waist and her knees were drawn up towards her middle with her feet on the ground, in a grotesque pose suggestive of intercourse.
‘What’s that on the shoulder of her jacket?’ Chandler enquired.
‘Her guts, in layman’s terms,’ Phillips replied.
Chandler went white in the face and began dry-retching.
Reid opted to get as much information as he could before Chandler began to void the contents of his stomach, as he was threatening to do. ‘Any witnesses?’
‘My men are rounding up the ones we know about and conducting enquiries in this house and the neighbouring ones,’ Chandler replied as the colour began to return to his face. ‘I’m told that the poor bugger was in safe custody in Leman Street at one time.’
‘Until Thursday,’ Reid replied morosely, ‘then she insisted on being let out and we had nothing to hold her on. She gave an addr
ess in Dorset Street; I’ll get my men to enquire down there in due course. But until recently she was using a room in a doss house in George Yard and that’s why we were holding her, believing that she knew something about the Tabram killing there on Bank Holiday weekend.’
‘I’ve finished here,’ Phillips advised them both. ‘Get the body to the mortuary on the handcart and I’ll have a better look at her around lunchtime. I have a full hospital round before that, given this latest cholera outbreak.’
‘What are you going to tell Enright?’ Chandler enquired.
Reid smirked. ‘As little as possible, although he’ll find out soon enough. I’ll keep his nephew busy up here on the north side, probably in Dorset Street; I think Percy Enright’s getting his information from him.’
‘Sir,’ a constable announced as he poked his head round the open rear door to the yard and tried not to look down toward the body at the side of the steps, ‘the man who found the body’s anxious to get off to his work. Do you want to talk to him before you leave?’
‘I’m not sure I’ll be leaving soon,’ Reid replied, ‘and I definitely won’t be in need of breakfast after this. So yes, send him out here. I’ll look after this end, Joe,’ he advised Inspector Chandler, who muttered his thanks and undertook to locate and detain any other witnesses there might be.
By the time that the Spitalfields Church clock struck nine, Reid had conducted several interviews and was beginning to build a very confused picture, although the tangled accounts given by the witnesses tended to suggest that Annie Chapman had died at around five thirty.
The man who’d found the body — a carman called John Davies who lived at the lodgings at number 29 — had discovered it lying to the side of the rear steps shortly before 6 am, when he went out into the yard with the intention of using the outside privy. He’d run back down the ground floor passage that ran from the rear into the street at the front and alerted two other men who were passing and who had viewed the body in situ, before one of them contacted police at Commercial Street. It had been Inspector Chandler who’d called in the police surgeon and the ambulance and when advised of the identity of the deceased he’d sent a constable down to Leman Street to alert Reid.
The last one to see Annie alive, apart, obviously, from her killer, was a Mrs Long, who came forward when news of the atrocity ran like wildfire through her place of employment in Spitalfields Market and the address struck a chord in her recent memory. She insisted, under rigorous interrogation from Reid, that shortly before five thirty that morning, she’d had seen a man and woman on the pavement adjoining number 29.
Later that morning, with protestations of disgust and revulsion, she identified the woman in the mortuary as the one she had seen and she described the man who had been with her as ‘foreign looking’ and ‘shabby genteel’ in appearance, approximately forty years of age, only slightly taller than Annie and wearing a dark coat. Because the man’s back had been towards Mrs Long, she hadn’t seen his face, but she’d heard a snippet of conversation, in which the man enquired ‘Will you?’ and the woman had replied ‘Yes’. Taking them for a street prostitute and her client she thought no more about it until she heard about the murder and went back into Hanbury Street and spoke to a constable. Various residents of number 29 had also shamefacedly admitted that the ground floor passage and rear yard of the premises were frequently used by prostitutes to conduct business with their clients, although no-one had heard any sound during that particular early morning.
However, a man called Albert Cadosch who lived next door at number 27 stated that shortly before 5.30 am he had been in the adjoining yard, on the other side of the fence, when he heard a voice saying ‘No’. There was no particular urgency in the voice and he could not be certain whether it was that of a man or a woman, but a few moments later he had heard something fall against the other side of the fence. He had not thought to look over it, since he assumed that it had something to do with the packing case business that was being conducted from the adjoining yard and the fence was some six feet high. However, it was obvious that had he done so, he would have observed the killer about their grisly work.
Chapter Eleven
Jack reported for work at six o’clock on the Monday morning, his head still full of the wonderful memories of the previous day that had kept him from sleeping. Esther had not laughed at, or poured scorn on, his protestation of love and although she had not expressed any reciprocating sentiment, a tear had formed at the corner of her eye as she thanked him for what she had called ‘the compliment’ and had kissed him warmly on the lips. On the train journey back on the London, Tilbury and Southend line to Fenchurch Street, and then by connecting horse bus back into Spitalfields, the conversation had centred around Jack’s family and particularly his sister Lucy, who Esther seemed to have taken a strong liking to.
Now Jack was brought sharply back to reality by the news, given to the entire day shift as they rostered on duty, that the body of Dark Annie Chapman had been found horribly mutilated in a back yard in Spitalfields, only a few streets away from where Esther lived. Jack was told that Inspector Reid had a special task for him and when he tapped on his half-open door, the man in question looked up.
‘Have you heard?’ Reid enquired.
‘About Dark Annie, you mean?’
‘Yes. Does your uncle know yet?’
‘I’ve no idea, sir. I haven’t seen him since I came on duty.’
‘Well when you do, don’t tell him. He’ll find out soon enough and I want my report to reach the Yard before he finds out that, according to one of the witnesses, it was done by a prostitute’s client.’
‘That doesn’t mean a guardsman though, does it, sir?’
Reid smiled back at him. ‘Keep thinking like that, Jack — and try and persuade your uncle.’
‘What are the papers saying?’
‘They don’t know yet, since we haven’t informed them. No point in spreading needless panic when we believe that these victims were targeted for something they knew and that it wasn’t just the work of a random lunatic.’
‘I was told you had a job for me, sir.’
‘Indeed yes and it’s in connection with this horrible business. Although we believe that the victim had a close connection with that disreputable thieves’ kitchen in George Yard, Annie gave us an address in Dorset Street, number 35. Get up there and start asking questions and report directly back to me — not your uncle, understand?’
‘Understood, sir.’
‘Very well. Since I imagine that you’ll use the excuse to visit a certain party in George Street while you’re up there, reassure her that she’s not the next target.’
‘Can I advise her who the next target is, sir?’
‘If I knew, I’d tell you. Anyway, off you go.’
Two hours later, Jack was getting conflicting opinions as he interviewed those at 35 Dorset Street who had known Annie Chapman in the weeks leading to her death. Most of her fellow lodgers remembered a friendly, cheerful drunk, while the Superintendent of the lodging house was more critical of her.
‘She caused trouble ’ere, sometimes,’ Timothy Donovan advised him. ‘She were in a stupid fight wi’ another lodger over a bit o’ soap in the kitchen, then she went missin’ fer a week or so. Then she comes back ’ere bold as brass on the Friday afore she died, askin’ fer ’er old room back. She’d obviously ’ad a few an’ were none too sober on the second night, but she didn’t ’ave the money fer ’er room fer the night — a measly bloody fourpence, mind you. Last I saw of ’er, she went out down the street ter sell ’er bonnet, what she reckoned were worth fourpence. If the truth were told, I reckon she were off ’awkin’ ’er body fer the money, but yer shouldn’t speak ill o’ the dead, now should yer?’
‘She were dead scared o’ summat, though,’ chipped in Amelia Palmer, a lodger who happened to be in the kitchen, washing a man’s shirt in the sink.
‘How do you mean?’ Jack enquired.
‘Just lik
e I said,’ Amelia insisted. ‘From the time she come back ter the time she set off ter sell ’er bonnet, she were lookin’ fearful every time someone come in the building, like she were expecting someone ter come an’ get ’er. She were normally a cheery soul, but from Friday onwards she were quiet, broodin’ about summat, an’ dead scared ter go outside.
‘Thank you, you’ve both been most helpful,’ Jack concluded as he closed his notebook and put his helmet back on. ‘If you remember anything else, just call in at Leman Street police station and ask for me — Constable Enright. Or, if it’s more convenient, Inspector Chandler at Commercial Street. Good day.’
There was no doubt in his mind where he had to go next. The brutal murder of Annie Chapman was big news all over Spitalfields and it was unlikely that Esther wouldn’t have heard about it from her fellow lodgers. She may not have associated the Annie Chapman who’d been murdered with the ‘Dark Annie’ she’d located in George Yard, but any excuse would do in Jack’s book and George Street was only a few streets away.
‘I ’opes yer spendin’ yer time lookin’ fer that bloke what did that ’orrible murder up the road there,’ Sadie Thompson admonished him as he walked into the kitchen at Esther’s lodgings, ‘instead o’ loungin’ around ’ere drinkin’ tea.’
‘Actually, I’m here in connection with that,’ Jack assured her. ‘Is Miss Jacobs available for a few questions?’
‘I’ll go an’ get ’er fer yer,’ Sadie offered and Jack stood by the sink, notebook open as if he was there on official business, until he heard Esther’s light footfall in the passageway and smiled warmly as she stepped into the kitchen, looked behind her, then rushed into Jack’s arms, kissing him several times on the lips before taking a seat and straightening her hair, just as Mrs Thompson came back into the kitchen, as if to chaperone proceedings, before announcing that she needed ‘ter spend a penny’ in the outside privy, leaving them alone.
