by David Field
‘There’s been another slashing in Whitechapel, two nights ago. The inquest’s already under way and I’ve just come from the first day’s hearing. Reid’s on tomorrow and he wants you two down there to hear what he’s going to tell the coroner, so that you all get your stories right.’
‘So we didn’t get the real Ripper?’ Esther enquired, open-mouthed.
‘You probably did,’ Percy assured her, ‘but Reid’s preparing to bluff his way through this latest one, without giving too much away. If I can stay here the night, we can all go down there tomorrow.’
The latest victim was yet another ageing prostitute, a woman called Alice Mackenzie whose body had been found in a virtual blind alley off Wentworth Street, her head almost hidden underneath a scavenger’s wagon, with her throat cut and several other deep wounds on her body reminiscent of the horrors of the previous year. Two police surgeons — Dr Phillips and Dr Bond — disagreed over any similarity between this murder and those inflicted by the Ripper and it now fell to Edmund Reid, who’d been called out to view the body when it had first been discovered, to hose down any suggestion that the Ripper had struck again, without disclosing the true reason for his confidence.
Jack and Esther sat holding hands in the fourth row back from the front as Coroner Wynne Baxter plodded his way through the type of inquest with which he had become all too familiar. He called Edmund Reid to the witness seat and enquired as to what connections, if any, there were between this killing and ‘the ones that so darkened our East End streets last year’.
Reid cleared his throat, opened the paper in his hand, lifted his head to be clearly heard and announced, ‘With the authority of the Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police, I can assert with every confidence that the death of Alice Mackenzie was brought about by the hand of a common murderer and not the sexual maniac who gave himself the name “Jack the Ripper”. We will, of course, leave no stone unturned to bring this new killer to justice, but we believe their motive to have been an entirely personal one between the victim and their killer and not the work of the deranged lunatic who we confidently believe to no longer be in our midst.’
‘How can you be so certain?’ Baxter enquired.
‘Twenty odd years of police experience,’ Reid replied, ‘which has made me more familiar with the mind of the criminal offender than the average person. The reign of terror by the person calling himself Jack the Ripper is at an end, but extra manpower has been drafted into the area, to give renewed assurance to the people of Whitechapel and Spitalfields that they may go about their daily lives in safety — unless they are unfortunates who constantly court danger from their perverted customers in dark alleyways. Thank you, Mr Coroner.’
Baxter announced another adjournment until a new day to be fixed and Jack and Esther wandered outside.
‘Let’s hope that’s an end to it,’ Esther murmured as she took Jack’s arm.
‘Certainly,’ Jack replied as he reached into his pocket and extracted a small padded box covered in purple felt, ‘but we have one matter left to resolve.’
‘Not here, Jack,’ Esther pleaded as she became acutely aware of the passing pedestrians, in whose constantly moving flow they were a stationary island.
‘Yes here, Esther,’ Jack insisted as he took the ring from the box. ‘Esther Jacobs, will you marry me?’
‘Give me one good reason.’ Esther half smiled back at him.
‘I love you.’
‘Another one.’
‘You have the money for a house to set ourselves up in and have babies.’
‘Another.’
‘You love me.’
She giggled, then burst into tears as she threw her arms around him and hugged him hard. ‘Yes.’
‘About bloody time,’ Percy Enright commented from close behind them. ‘Just don’t ask me to be the flower girl.’
BOOK TWO: THE NIGHT CALLER
Chapter One
Helen Trenchard came restlessly awake with the uneasy feeling that something had just happened. Something bad. Or perhaps it was just the tail end of a bad dream, as her subconscious mind handed over to its conscious companion for another day shift. It also smelt as if she was in hospital again — that clinical, antiseptic carbolic sort of smell that she remembered from that dreadful time when her appendix had burst and she’d been rushed off to the London Hospital in Whitechapel from her place of work in Dalton’s Department Store in Aldgate. Except that she didn’t recall any smell of peppermint in the hospital, whereas this morning it was in her nostrils every time she took a breath.
She slipped out from under the covers and, since it was a sharp morning in early September, slid her feet into her fluffy bedroom slippers and then stood up, intending to walk to the bedroom windows and pull up the blinds from under which the sun was already beckoning her into her Sunday day off. What she saw made her stop in her tracks, then look around the room in sudden alarm before padding, awe-stricken, towards her mirrored dressing table.
All her most intimate garments were spread in wild disarray across the dressing table, as well as the floor around it. Chemises, drawers, corsets and petticoats were strewn everywhere. She tried to focus on what might have happened while she’d been in bed, in the belief that the bad feeling she’d woken up with had not been a mere dream, but all she could recall was a vague memory of being on a train journey somewhere.
She raised the blinds hastily, revealing a commanding view of Hackney’s Victoria Park, and she squinted her eyes against the bright rays of the morning sun as she pushed the casement windows upwards to let in the fresh air. She looked back at the black marble mantle clock that had been part of her childhood, had been bequeathed to her when her father died, and now sat in pride of place on the shelf above the empty open fireplace. Eight-twenty or thereabouts. Then, in a moment of blind panic, she looked behind her, just in case. The burglar might still be in the house somewhere!
Wrapping a thick housecoat over her ankle-length nightgown and arming herself with a poker from the set in the fireplace, she tiptoed to the bedroom door and opened it slowly and carefully, wincing as it gave its usual creak. She peered cautiously out onto the landing, glancing first up the narrow staircase to the second floor, then down to the ground. There was no sign of anyone and no furtive noises, so, poker firmly at shoulder height, she crept up the staircase to the second floor hallway, cursing the creaks in the woodwork despite the carpet.
She opened the door to the second bedroom with a pounding heart and threw it back to its full extent, in case someone was hiding behind it. Then, satisfied that the room was empty, she crept across the bare floor and checked the catch on the casement window. It was firmly locked and there were no drainpipes on that external wall, so whoever had gained entry to the house during the night had not used that route. Slightly more encouraged, she performed a similar check on the spare room she used for storage, which, like the second bedroom, was empty.
Back on the first floor she examined the bathroom and lavatory for any sign of broken glass, then reminded herself that anyone choosing that means of entry would have needed to be a fairground midget. So, the intruder must have come by way of the front door. What might have been stolen from downstairs?
To Helen’s considerable surprise, there appeared to be nothing missing from either the sitting room or the small drawing room that she used as an office of sorts for her correspondence. The valuable set of ceramic statuettes that she had painstakingly collected over the years appeared to have no gaps as they sat in pride of place on top of the sideboard in the sitting room and even her gold pen — an indulgent present to herself on attaining her thirty-fifth birthday only last year — was still there, at the side of the leather writing compendium in her office. There was also still some ten pounds or so left in her handbag at the side of the writing desk, which, so far as she could recall, was all that had been in there.
Bemused, she pushed open the kitchen door and slipped quietly through it into the scullery, expecting
to find glass all over the floor, where the burglar had broken in by way of the glass panel in the door that overlooked the small narrow garden. But nothing appeared to be untoward and, after glancing quickly through the window to make sure that there was no-one left in the garden, she moved back into the kitchen and put the pan on to boil. A cup of hot sweet tea what was she needed now — along with some sort of assurance that she wasn’t losing her reason.
Ten minutes later it occurred to her that whoever had rifled through her underclothes had probably been looking for jewellery and would almost certainly have found it had they bothered to open the half drawer on the top of the dressing table. There was not a great deal and nothing really valuable, but she hoped that she hadn’t lost her late mother’s wedding ring, or the love-charm bracelet given to her by a hopeful suitor when she was nineteen, who had died of consumption when she was twenty. She went back upstairs, more confidently this time, and sighed with relief when she opened the half drawer and found everything intact. Then she looked up and — for the first time — she saw the note.
Two notes, to be accurate, but on the same piece of paper, a large white one of the type used in offices. It had been easy to miss, during Helen’s first horrified sight of the underwear explosion all over her dressing table, since whoever had attached it to the mirror with some sort of putty had then careless launched one of her petticoats half across the mirror itself.
In the centre of the paper was a warning of some sort, in capital letters that had either been printed on there, or added using one of those new-fangled typewriter things that Helen could never quite get the hang of. It read ‘ONLY YOU CAN STOP THIS’, with no indication of what ‘this’ might mean. Underneath, in an a near illegible and illiterate scrawl was a far more obscene message which made Helen suddenly feel very sick, making her race for the lavatory bowl.
Another half hour passed before she emerged from her front door in her best walking out attire of a burgundy suit with matching plumed bonnet and black high-laced boots. She closed the front door firmly behind her and before turning the key in the lock she examined both it and the surrounding woodwork with minute care. There was no sign of any attempt to force the heavy duty mortice lock and no tell-tale ‘jemmy’ marks on the surrounding door frame. And that was the extent of Helen’s limited understanding of burglary techniques.
From memory she was aware of the location of a ‘fixed point’ uniformed police officer who was always on duty where her own road met Mare Street and she walked down in that direction, comforted by the presence of Sunday strollers crossing the road, some of them accompanied by children carrying kites, bats and balls, and even toy boats that they could float on the ornamental lake inside the park itself. Sure enough, after a short walk, the conical helmet came into view from a distance, atop the head of a reassuringly strapping six-footer who looked, to Helen, no older than her nephew Simon, but who smiled encouragingly as she walked up to him.
‘Good day, constable. I’d like to report a burglar.’
‘Certainly, madam. Name?’
‘I didn’t get his name.’
‘No, I meant your name, madam.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ Helen laughed with embarrassment. ‘You must forgive me, but it’s been a bit of a shock. My name’s Helen Trenchard and I live at number 64, down the road there.’
‘Victoria Park Road?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Silly question, perhaps, but is the burglar still on the premises?’
‘No, I’m sure of that. I made a thorough search of the house, armed with a poker.’
‘Not a wise move, a lady like yourself on her own, but there you go.’
Helen looked up at him enquiringly. ‘I’m obviously not familiar with police procedure, constable, but shouldn’t you be writing something down?’
‘Not my job, madam. My job is to preserve the peace and apprehend malefactors who I see in the act of committing crimes. If you want something written down, you’ll have to go to the police station.’
‘And where might that be?’
‘Just up Mare Street, where we’re standing now. A few hundred yards up there, on your right, just past the ironmongers.’
With a heavy and somewhat theatrical sigh, Helen thanked the constable for his assistance and ten minutes later she had taken a seat in the front hall of the rather cramped local police station. Once the duty sergeant behind the front desk with the wire grille was able to leave his young assistant in charge of the comings and goings he joined Helen, taking the seat next to hers and extracting his notebook and pencil.
‘Now then, a burglary, was it?’
‘That’s right — last night sometime.’
‘The address?’
‘64 Victoria Park Road.’
‘You live there with your husband and family?’
‘No, I live alone.’
‘A big house for a lady living alone, if I may say so.
‘You may not. Do you want to discuss the burglary, or the right of women to live their lives without the control of a husband?’
‘Tell me about the burglary. What was stolen?’
‘Nothing, so far as I can tell.’
‘Was there nothing worth stealing?’
‘Plenty, but none of it was,’ Helen replied with irritation.
‘Then how do you know you’ve been burgled? Was a door broken down, or a window forced?’
‘Neither of those things.’
‘Then how...’
Helen took a deep breath. ‘Whoever it was rifled through my lingerie drawer and left various items strewn around my bedroom.’
‘Your what drawer, madam?’
‘Lingerie — “unmentionables”?’
‘Oh, them things.’ The sergeant nodded with a slight blush. ‘And how many of them got stolen?’
‘None, so far as I can make out.’
‘Got a lot of them, have you?’
‘None of your damned business. But I don’t think any were actually removed — just sort of messed about.’
The sergeant was doing his best to suppress a smirk, or perhaps laughter, as he persevered. ‘So when this so-called burglar was “messing about” — your own phrase, madam — with your “unmentionables”, did you get a good look at him?’
‘No, I was asleep.’
‘So how do you know it was a man?’
‘I don’t, obviously — I was just assuming.’
‘And for that matter, how did you know it was a burglar?’
‘Forgive me, sergeant, but I’m not in the habit of inviting people to rearrange my underwear drawer while I’m lying in bed.’
‘Asleep,’ the sergeant reminded her.
‘That’s right — asleep,’ Helen confirmed as her ire began rising.
‘So how do you know you weren’t sleepwalking or something?’
Helen took several deep breaths before looking directly into the eyes of the clearly amused sergeant. ‘Just so that there’s no misunderstanding on my part, you’re seriously suggesting that in my sleep I got out of bed, threw my underwear all over my bedroom, then went back to bed and forgot all about what I’d done?’
‘I’ve heard of cases like that.’
‘Well, whoever did this also left a note.’
‘A “thank you” note, presumably?’ the sergeant choked as the sheer humour of it all broke through the serious facade he’d been trying to maintain.
Helen went purple in the face with anger and rose to her feet.
‘I would thank you for your assistance, but I don’t think you gave me any. Perhaps I’ll have your full and serious attention when the same man returns one dark night and slaughters me in my bed. Or perhaps I’ll only dream that as well. Good day to you and thank you for precisely nothing!’
She stormed out of the police station to the fading sounds of the laughter of not just the sergeant, but the young constable who’d been listening through the wire grille. Muttering dark imprecations about the attitudes of men
in positions of authority and the ineptitude of the Metropolitan Police in general, Helen all but kicked in her own front door, stormed upstairs and rearranged her lingerie drawer before she’d even changed out of her walking out clothes. Then she took her strewn undergarments downstairs and dropped them in the laundry basket. She took one final scowling look at the note on the dressing table mirror, allowed herself a couple of obscenities, then ripped it down, screwed it up and hurled it into the waste bin in the corner of her bedroom.
So much for her day off. But at least she had something to look forward to the following day. Another step on the road towards the equality of women in the workplace and another blow against the police idiots who’d given her such a humiliating time.
Chapter Two
‘You simply must have the wedding at St. Margaret’s,’ Constance Enright insisted as her housemaid Alice distributed the coffee and petits-fours down the Sunday dinner table. ‘Lucy was married there and the local vicar does such a lovely service. You remember Lucy’s wedding of course, don’t you, Esther? You can’t seriously be thinking of anywhere else for your own wedding to Jackson, now can you?’
Esther was not about to argue, for several reasons. The first was that no-one ever argued with her future mother-in-law, not even her closest family members, and if Esther was shortly to become an Enright by marriage, then she should honour the family tradition. The second was that the only alternative that came to mind was a synagogue in Spitalfields and that would hardly satisfy the social sensitivities of Constance Enright.
