“But why Jack the Ripper?” Maggie mused. “And why now?”
“Shows a huge ego and decided lack of imagination,” Durgin muttered.
“Wait—” Maggie said. “Not so fast. Jack the Ripper is a powerful symbol for violence against women. Look at the women this new killer has targeted—educated professionals, coming and going as they please. This war has turned everything topsy-turvy. Women are now challenging the status quo of nighttime London as a male-dominated space. What if invoking the specter of Jack the Ripper is intended to keep women scared and at home?”
“Is this what they’re teaching you young ladies at boarding school these days?” Durgin’s eyebrow lifted. “Because you might want to ask for your money back.”
“No, wait—listen,” Maggie insisted. “During the Victorian era, professional women who roamed London at night triggered fears of women’s independence.”
Durgin closed his eyes and pretended to snore.
Maggie ignored him. “The point of the Jack the Ripper killings was to frighten women into staying at home. What if that’s the same cause now? What if someone doesn’t like how women have more freedoms now? Working traditional men’s jobs? Living alone? And so, invoking the mythical Jack the Ripper murders is a way to control women.” She was thinking out loud. “Women are always in danger on the streets and in public spaces, but now even more so, as more women come to London for war work and lead independent lives.”
She began to pace. “Our so-called Blackout Beast is drawing on these cultural fantasies we all share—our issues with the female body, about the dark labyrinthine city, the Minotaur, the madman.” She was warming to the topic, remembering a paper she’d written for a Women in Victorian Novels class at college, drawing upon William Thomas Stead’s book, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. “Our killer’s continuing a long-running theme of male violence and women’s helplessness against it. And so today’s women are conditioned—reconditioned—to stay at home and not ‘provoke’ a man’s violence. Well, sod that!”
“It’s all very interesting, theoretically, but why now?” Durgin crossed his arms.
“Don’t you see? Not only are women enjoying unprecedented freedoms, but London’s wartime blackout has created the perfect cover for women to vanish. Thousands upon thousands of young women have come to London since the war broke out. It’s a sea change in the way women are allowed to exist. In the context of history, it’s huge! Enormous!”
Maggie spun on her heel. “All of these unmarried young women, released from the protection of their homes and permitted—encouraged even—to work and live without their families or a husband. Women who once would have gone straight from their father’s home to their husband’s are now living on their own or with flatmates. Don’t you see? Women are everywhere in public life now—postwomen, bus drivers, tram conductors, dispatch riders on motorcycles, telegram messengers, Red Cross workers on bicycles…”
“You might be onto something, Miss Tiger,” Durgin admitted. “There have always been disappearances in London, but there was a sharp uptick in the vanishings of young women with the blackout.”
“Well, what do you have?” Maggie asked.
At his desk, Mark picked up a heavy tome, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. “According to the author, who’s allegedly an expert, injuries to the original Ripper’s victims were crude, not made with any sort of surgical precision.”
Maggie wrote crude injuries under the Jack the Ripper column. “But where the original Ripper’s crimes were of passion, with rough slashes, the injuries to the Blackout Beast’s victims are deliberate.” In the other column, she wrote precise.
“Jack the Ripper—he had a need for control. Killing provided such a sexually satisfying”—Durgin looked to Maggie. “Sorry.”
“Please continue.”
“—sexually satisfying experience, he was compelled to repeat the fantasy with multiple victims.”
“But there’s no evidence of that,” Mark pointed out.
“You’re being literal,” Durgin countered. “He might be using his scalpel as a standin.”
“Charming,” Maggie commented. “Impotence, plus sadism, plus need for control. Could that equal murder?”
“The links to sequential crimes are the sort of victim, the modus operandi, and the signature,” Durgin explained. “So, here we have similar victims, consistent method of killing, and a quite literal signature—Jack is back. He may or may not have a criminal record. He’s probably done any number of antisocial things, but if he’s slick enough, or if his pater’s powerful enough, he might have gotten away with them and not have a police record. He’s most likely handsome, or at least inoffensive looking.”
“Why do you think that?” Maggie asked.
“He didn’t have to hurt them to get them to come with him—all of the injury was done later. His victims, at least initially, didn’t see him as a threat. They trusted him.”
Detective Durgin gazed off into space, as if picturing life through the eyes of the Blackout Beast. “He’s a copycat killer, but he thinks he’s better than the original Ripper—he’s showing him up. That’s why the injuries are the same, but more precise. He wants to be bigger than Jack the Ripper. Do the crimes better. Become even more famous. His ego—it’s huge. And he’s smart.”
Mark’s forehead creased. “How do you know?”
“No physical evidence. He knows about fingerprinting—enough to wear gloves. And I also suspect our man has a history of paranoia, which he may be able to hide quite well in public. Probably stems from some sort of childhood trauma—the early death of a parent, or witnessing a violent accident or crime. The kidnapping, the killing—it gives him back a sense of power. My hypothesis is he’s trying to erase the memories of a brutal father, who may have abused him and his mother. A man contemptuous of women.
“Then the murderer’s experiences of witnessing his mother’s abuse and/or absence led him to feel victimized as he faced losses and rejections in his later life—while also unconsciously identifying with a violent masculinity that dominated women. He had issues with Mummy—and so now with all women. Or, at least, the women he sees as powerful—a threat.”
“How can you possibly know—about his mother and father? Those are feelings, not facts. Guesses.”
“Hypotheses,” Durgin corrected. “And I trust my gut. My gut’s always right.”
“A ‘gut’ can’t possibly be right or wrong.” God help us, thought Maggie, who preferred facts and science to feelings. She remembered a bad call she’d made trying to protect the Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle because of her dislike of one of the ladies-in-waiting. She’d sworn at the time never to let her personal feelings get in the way of solving a case again. “Your so-called gut is merely a collection of organs, connective tissue, and blood.”
Durgin patted the starched shirt covering his lean midsection. “Don’t disparage the gut, Miss Tiger. It has almost twenty years of experience with killers, thieves, and the like.”
“If I ever said I had a ‘feeling’ about something on a case, it would be labeled ‘feminine intuition’ and I’d be laughed at before I was kicked off,” she retorted.
Mark looked up at the blank spaces. “With the way he’s killing, we don’t have much time.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Maggie said, “but those aren’t places for murder victims to come—rather, those spots represent women we can save, opportunities for us to thwart our Beast. I think we should start with these books.” She pointed to a few volumes about Jack the Ripper that Frain’s secretary had left.
“At the Yard, we don’t catch killers by reading books,” Durgin stated, pouring himself more tea.
“Ah yes, you use the ‘tummy tingles.’?”
“I told you—the gut. Don’t disrespect the gut.”
“Forget the gut—what we have now is a lack of data. We need more evidence.”