by Sam Gafford
“There was a whole crowd here before you knew it!” said one of the other men. “Lots of people standing around and not much getting done. And how about that Spratling, eh? Strutting around all important like. ‘Oh, I’m Inspector Spratling from J Division, look at me! What do you mean they took the body away already? I didn’t authorise that! And who said you could wash the blood away! Toot toot toot toot!’” The others laughed as the man strutted around like a tin general.
“They took the body to Llewellyn, right?” Arthur asked. He hadn’t laughed at the man’s impression.
“What? Oh, yeah, they had her cleared out of here by four-thirty or so. Well before Spratling got here. Oh, was he ranting about that! Then he spent some time looking at the ground.”
“Looking at his own feet, I bet!” More laughter.
“Took off for Llewellyn’s like a shot after that. Heard he gave the doctor a piece of his mind.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
The charwoman snorted. “Bloody doctor didn’t even notice the cuts. Had her thrown in the basket without a ‘by your leave’ and then went home. Doctors! Wouldn’t give a ha’penny for the lot of ‘em. Bunch of butchers if you ask me. Wouldn’t surprise me if it hadn’t been a doctor what killed her to begin with.”
Arthur motioned to me, and we backed out of the group. As we walked away, I could hear them still discussing the case. Horrified as they were, they were also fascinated.
“Where are we going now, Arthur? To Mary Kelly?”
“No, not just yet, Albert. Right now, I am going to call in a debt. We’re going to see Dr. Llewellyn, and I’m going to find out just what is going on around here.”
I had no way of knowing it then, but I was already caught up in the horror and events were already sent into motion that would end in a bloody haze on a hilltop in Wales.
Chapter 8
London! the needy villain’s general home,
The common sewer of Paris and of Rome!
With eager thirst, by folly or by fate,
Sucks in the dregs of each corrupted state.
—Samuel Johnson
The mortuary in Old Montague Street was a harsh affair. Built entirely of brick, it was a cold and lifeless building. It was a fitting place to hold the dead, and the living people inside its walls were barely more animated. I had never been inside a house of the dead before and could scarcely imagine what it would be like. My imagination would never have been as horrible as the truth.
Arthur barged into the small front office like a madman. There was a lost soul wandering around with an apron on; it was covered in blood. He looked as if he could barely manage to walk. Arthur barely gave the man a glance and bounded through the next door.
“What is the meaning of this?” I heard a loud voice bellowing from the other side of the door. I was looking at the man with the apron.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
He looked up to me with eyes that had seen madness.
“It’s horrible. Horrible.”
I left him and walked through the door into the room of death and blood. There were several slabs in the room, used for examinations. A body was lying on one of them. It had been a man at one point. Now he just lay there, naked and lifeless. I had never seen a human being so vulnerable.
Arthur was confronting another man who was standing at the far slab upon which a woman’s body was lying. A third man, subservient to the other, was in the back and was also wearing an apron. The man at the slab, though not tall, was an imposing figure. This was Dr. Llewellyn, a man who gave the immediate impression of being the lord of this realm and not accustomed to being questioned—which, of course, Arthur was in the process of doing.
“Dr. Llewellyn, I want to know what happened!” Arthur demanded.
“Really, Machen, I don’t see that this is any of your concern. Unless I’m misinformed, you are not a member of the London Police Force and I am not required to tell you anything.”
“Required, no. But obligated is another matter.”
“What do you mean?” Dr. Llewellyn asked.
Arthur touched his right index finger to his nose and Llewellyn visibly blanched.
“You don’t mean?”
“I did you a service not so long ago, Rees. I ask for so little in return.”
Llewellyn glared at Arthur. Whatever hold Arthur had over the man, it was powerful, but he was using it all for this dead woman.
“A Welshman!” Llewellyn scowled. “I should have known that you were not an honourable man.”
“I take offense at that, Rees. I still take pride in our mutual native land. Word of our previous ‘association’ has never left my lips, nor will it ever. Surely some information about a dead woman that you care nothing about is a small price to pay.”
Llewellyn snorted. “Very well. What do you want to know?”
“What happened to her? When was she killed?”
Llewellyn turned back to the body on the slab. It was the woman that had bumped into Arthur the night before at the Ten Bells. There was a sheet over her body, but her head and face were uncovered. I had grown up with death and the ways that the sea could inflict it, but I had never seen anything like this before.
The woman’s face was fleshy and it appeared as if age were catching up to her, with her hair beginning to turn grey. There was a bruise running along the lower part of the jaw on the right side of the face. On the left side of her neck, I could see an incision starting from immediately below her ear and running about four inches. Another cut began about an inch below the first one and ran across her neck, to end about three inches below the right jaw. It was a horribly deep cut.
“She was cut to pieces. What else do you want to know?” Arthur looked at Llewellyn, who sighed and continued. “Time of death was probably about a bit earlier than three-thirty a.m. When I first came to the body, I found no signs of life and saw the cut on her neck. I had them put her in the ambulance and bring her back here.”
Arthur nodded and looked at the woman. I could not tell what he was thinking.
“So what did you miss the first time?” I was beginning to see that Arthur truly had the ability to aggravate people if he wanted.
“I don’t miss anything, Machen!”
“Then why did Spratling have you brought back here this morning?”
Llewellyn snorted. “Officious buffoon! I would have discovered it during the post-mortem.”
“Discovered what, Rees?”
Llewellyn grasped the sheet and pulled it off the body. I nearly fainted.
“This!”
Arthur, to his credit, did not show any emotion.
There were no injuries about the body until just about the lower part of the abdomen. Two or three inches from the left side was a wound running in a jagged manner. The wound was a very deep one, and the tissues had been cut through. There were several incisions running across the abdomen. Her intestines were exposed. There were three or four similar cuts running downwards, on the right side, and they were done very violently. I could not believe that one human being would do this to another. Finally, Llewellyn draped the sheet back over the poor remains.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before, Rees?”
Llewellyn hesitated. “No, nothing like this. I’ve seen terrible things done to people in the East End, but nothing this savage.”
“The body’s been cleaned.”
“Yes, that’s standard procedure. But Spratling was still upset about it. That tin-plated martinet had the temerity to shout at me because the body had been left outside in the cart until the mortuary attendant showed up. As if the murder of a whore warranted special attention.”
Arthur let the insult pass, but I could tell that he made a mental note of it.
“Where are her clothes?”
Llewellyn motioned in the corner where a pile of clothes had been left. Arthur walked over to them and picked a couple out of the pile. “The back of this dress is soaked. Bl
ood?”
“Yes,” Llewellyn said, “the blood drained down her back as she lay in the street. One of the P.C.’s got his hands covered in it when he put her in the cart.”
“So she died where she was found?”
“Most probably. There was no blood trail anywhere, so she didn’t crawl there.”
Arthur was examining the clothes more closely.
“There are labels on a couple of these. ‘Lambeth Workhouse.’”
“Yes, Spratling noticed that too. He will try to get someone to come here to make an official identification.”
“I thought she had already been identified,” I asked.
Llewellyn looked at me as if I were a bug. “Who is this who is speaking to me?”
Arthur looked up from the pile of clothes. “That is my associate, Mr. Albert Besame. You will please answer his question?”
“I don’t see why I should. But as you well know, Machen, the police do not consider any identification ‘official’ unless they say it is. Word of mouth tells us that this is Mary Ann Nichols, but that has yet to be confirmed.”
“Why would someone do this to her?” I asked. “She couldn’t possibly have anything anyone would want.”
Llewellyn put the sheet back on the body.
“Money isn’t the only possession people have, Albert. Sometimes they have things more important than coins. There’s nothing here,” Arthur said, putting the clothes back into the pile, “just the remains of a sad life.”
“And what did you hope to find, Machen? A note? The killer’s calling card?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it was, it’s not here.”
“Then perhaps you’ll allow me to get back to my work. I need to finish the post-mortem. Spratling is already annoying me for my findings.”
“When’s the inquest?” Arthur asked. He had walked back to the slab and kept staring at Polly.
“Tomorrow at noon. I have a lot of work here if I’m to be ready in time so if you don’t mind . . .”
Suddenly the front door opened and two men walked in. They were both very well dressed in dark suits with top hats. I hadn’t seen such dapper dress before and was quite impressed. The first man was older, with white hair. He was a bit pudgy and moved somewhat stiffly. The other man was younger and obviously deferred to the older man. When the older man spoke, his voice was not loud but commanding. It was a voice used to being obeyed.
“Rees,” he said, “a moment of your time, if you will.”
Dr. Llewellyn was in shock. His mouth opened and shut before he could speak. “Of course, sir. Please come into the office here in back. We can talk privately.”
The two men walked by and into the back room. Llewellyn turned to us. “As for you, Machen, I believe our business is concluded. Good day.” He followed the two men and closed the door behind him.
No sooner had the door shut than Arthur was on the go again. “Quickly, Albert! Follow me!”
In a mad rush, we ran around to the back of the morgue. There, several windows were open and I could hear voices coming from inside. Arthur put his finger to his lips to motion me to be quiet.
“. . . and who else has seen this woman?” The older man was speaking.
“Only Spratling, my assistants and myself,” Dr. Llewellyn answered.
“And those two just now?” a younger voice asked.
“No one important. Curiosity seekers.”
“Did you show them the body?” The older man again.
“No! Why would I?”
“Word is already spreading about this murder, Rees. It is important that this not be allowed to become more important than it deserves to be. Do you understand? ‘Will no one help the widow’s son?’”
There was a pause. “I understand, Sir William. But there is the inquest tomorrow.”
“The inquest is unimportant. I will tell you what you will say. You will not begin your post-mortem until tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning? But that is not nearly enough time.”
The younger man spoke again. “Are you purposefully obtuse? Your post-mortem is whatever Sir William tells you it is.”
“For now, Rees,” the older voice continued, “you will lock this building and I will inspect the body. You will stay in this room and not leave until we are finished. Is that clear?”
“Yes, yes, Sir William. I’ll lock the door at once.”
There was the sound of someone moving quickly out the door. Then the two men were left alone in the room.
“Can he be trusted, Sir William?”
“Only with what I give him. Nothing more. He is on the square but he is weak. We have to make sure that the royal suspicions are unfounded. Make no mistake, there will be blood on all our hands before this business is concluded.”
Dr. Llewellyn came back into the room, huffing. “I’ve cleared the morgue, Sir William. Please feel free to use any of my instruments that you need. Are you sure you don’t want me to assist you?”
“No, my son-in-law will assist. Please stay in this room and do not ask what we find.”
The door closed again, and I could hear someone moving about in the room. Arthur motioned to me and I followed him back to the street.
“Arthur, who was that man? He seemed very important.”
“You have no idea, Albert. That was Sir William Withey Gull, physician to Queen Victoria herself!”
I was stunned, and my face must have shown it.
“Yes, Albert, my feelings exactly. Why is the Royal Physician concerned with the death of a poor prostitute in Whitechapel? And what is he looking to find with the body? This is becoming very mysterious.”
We walked away from the morgue, but I could not forget the sight of that poor woman lying on the slab. What had she done to deserve such a death? Could a human being actually inflict such violence? It was a foolish question.
Chapter 9
You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.
—Samuel Johnson
We had been walking for several minutes through the streets of Whitechapel in search of Mary Kelly and Miller’s Court. Arthur had a general idea of where it was, but we seemed to be walking down street after street without any luck. After a few moments, I managed to ask something that had been on my mind for some time.
“Arthur, this business about your seeing death on that woman’s face—what was that all about? Did you truly see it?”
Arthur turned and looked at me.
“Absolutely. Albert, when I was younger, I . . . saw things—things that no one else did or could. There are other . . . ways of perception beyond the normal ones.”
“Do you mean ghosts?”
“No, at least not in the usual sense. There are places in this world where the fabric of reality is thin and other things can be seen or can even pass through. I sound insane, don’t I?”
To be honest, I did think he was sounding unbalanced. Certainly no one ever talked of things like this in Cornwall. But I also knew that there were many things I didn’t know about life and that there were places in Cornwall that no man, no matter how brave, would step foot in at night or on certain days.
I didn’t answer him, and we continued walking.
“When we are children, Albert,” Arthur said, “our minds are more open to other concepts and thoughts. As we grow older, we become set in our ways and the things that used to amaze and delight us disappear. The world loses its magic and becomes a dull, grey thing full of errands and responsibilities.”
Arthur stopped and looked at one of the street signs. It said ‘Dorset Street.’ He seemed to be seeing it and thinking of something else at the same time.
“Albert, I have never told anyone about any of this since my childhood. Not my parents, not Amy, no one. I want you to understand how important it is that I’m telling you this. I haven’t had anything like this happen to me
in a very long time. That’s why it hit me so hard. It was so strong.”
“What do you think it meant? I mean, having one after so long?”
Arthur looked very grave. It was not an expression that came very naturally to his face.
“It means murder, Albert, but worse than that, it is murder by unnatural hands. I fear that I have a part to play in this drama and that the first act has barely begun.”
Arthur seemed to recover his balance and headed down Dorset Street.
“I believe Miller’s Court is down this way,” he said. “Someday, Albert, I’ll tell you about my childhood and the Dholes and especially about the Ceremonies. But not now and certainly not here.”
We had gotten to a point on the street where we were opposite Crossingham’s lodging house at 35 Dorset Street. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I would come to know Crossingham’s far too well in the weeks to come. To our left there was a three-foot-wide opening with a small sign on the wall that said ‘Miller’s Court.’ Down this narrow hallway I would later encounter such a scene of terror that it is emblazoned forever upon my memory. We walked down the alley, through an arch and into the court. There were six houses in the court, each whitewashed up to the first-floor windows. There was a door immediately to our right which was the back parlor of 26 Dorset Street. Although there was no one in the court, we could hear sounds of people behind the door. Arthur walked up to the door and knocked loudly on it.
There was the sound of people moving about, and the door slowly opened to reveal a strange-looking woman. She might have been about twenty-five, but the years weighed harshly on her. Her hair was stiff and unclean and she had a general air of dirtiness about her. Not just grime or mud, but of an uncleanliness in her soul.
