City of Darkness

Chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

October 29

4:15 PM





“I don’t know how to thank you, Welles.”

“Then don’t. If I can’t go to Paris myself, you’re clearly the man for the job.” Trevor looked back as he held the door for Abrams. “And there is something you can do in compensation. I’m on my way to meet Madley and Phillips for an overview of the case. Come with me. We’ve been through this all so often, and we can use a pair of fresh eyes.”

Abrams looked about, nervous as a naughty schoolboy. “Eatwell insisted –“

“Bother Eatwell. I plan to use your brain as much as I can while it’s still in London. In a matter of days you’ll be sailing to France, on direct order of Her Majesty, and even Eatwell’s jurisdiction doesn’t reach that far. Come on, man. We go through the notes every week, for all the good it’s given us.”

Abrams nodded and followed Trevor deeper into the belly of Scotland Yard, down each level until they ended up in the mortuary where Phillips and Davy were already waiting. If they were surprised to see Abrams coming through the door with Trevor, neither made a sign. The four men sat down around the table and Trevor pulled out his notebook.

“I thought we’d see if Abrams brings any new thoughts to the discussion,” he said. “Davy, would you like to begin?”

“Three hundred thirteen people interviewed so far,” Davy said promptly. “Eighty- one of them detained, most on the grounds of a prior arrest for violence with a woman, particularly a prostitute. Most of the men are untrained, illiterate, over half of them foreign-born. Which is, of course, quite a different profile from how we originally viewed our killer.” Davy looked at Abrams. “The ships bring more men in and out every day and we could continue to interview them until the turn of the century. But I don’t think we’ll hear anything new.”

He’s different from the boy I met a few weeks ago, Abram thought. All that lad could do was stammer “Yes, Sir” and “No, Sir,” and the bobby before me now isn’t afraid to express an opinion, even in the midst of superiors.

“Sounds like you’ve found three hundred and thirteen Micha Banasiks,” Abrams said. “Have you interviewed any people who aren’t illiterate and foreign-born?”

Davy nodded. “Of course, Sir. An actor who is apparently too good at his craft, a writer of children’s books who likes to play word games similar to those in the letters, several doctors, even a woman or two. Either interviewed them or indirectly sought alibis, just as you did for the Duke of Clarence.”

“The Queen’s grandson?” Phillips said with surprise. “Even I hadn’t heard that part. Whatever for?”

“Granted, he has no medical skills,” said Trevor. “And, for that matter, no apparent skills of any sort. But he is known to be a frequent patron of the brothels in the East End.”

“It’s quite a jump from saying he visits whores to saying that he kills them,” Phillips said sharply. His use of the word “whore” surprised Abrams. In all they had been through, he had never heard the doctor refer to the women of Whitechapel as anything but patients or victims. But Welles and Davy laughed easily.

“Quite right,” Welles said. “He may be a fool or a reprobate, but the man has alibis to spare.”

“Other than that, we don’t have much more than we had when you worked the case,” Davy said, turning back to Abrams. “It’s most likely a man with some medical training who is ambidextrous. “

“Not a slaughterhouse worker?” Abrams asked, just to confirm.

Phillips shook his head. “I’m afraid the last two killings ruled that out completely. The work on Eddowes…Well, you saw. Too complete.”

“We received a kidney courtesy of George Lusk, the man who leads the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee,” Trevor said.

“So the newspapers got that part right?” Abrams said.

“Unfortunately yes,” Trevor said. “That was one thing we were hoping to keep under our hats but Mister Lusk seems to have an unquenchable thirst for public attention. We considered him a suspect, briefly, because he always seemed to be close to the trouble, but he has excellent alibis as well.”

“But he did provide the kidney,” Phillips said. “Which is human, of a size that would suggest from a woman, and in the right state of decomposition to have been removed about the time Eddowes was killed. An expert job of removal, especially under the circumstances of haste and darkness, and it was then I knew beyond question that we weren’t dealing with a dockworker or a barber or a butcher.”

“So why are you still interviewing men from the East End?” Abrams looked around at the three solemn faces before him. “I’m sorry if it’s a rude question, but it seems to me you’ve eliminated the very sort of man you’d find there as a suspect.”

“Some of the men in the East End started life higher,” Davy said. “You’ve got to remember, Sir, not everyone is like you and Detective Welles. I mean no disrespect, but –“

“He’s fumbling around trying to find a polite way to say that not all men are ambitious climbers like us, Abrams,” Trevor said with a mirthless laugh. “Not all men rise above their born station.”

Davy looked down at the table. “Just the opposite for some, Sir, that’s my point. A man who was once educated or professional…. he could fall in status, take a step back in his prospects. Due to a taste for alcohol or for certain type of woman or even because he emigrated from some lesser country and then he’d be dead bitter, wouldn’t he, Sir? That’s why I’m still interviewing men from the East End.”

“I disagree with Davy,” Trevor said amiably. “I think we’re looking for a West End gent who goes to the East End, does his deeds, and then leaves.”

“How?” Abrams asked skeptically. “Does he walk up to the fountain on Merchant Street covered in blood and casually hail a carriage?”

Trevor winced. “Quite right. That’s the part I haven’t figured.”

“Show Detective Abrams the pictures and the letters,” Davy prompted.

“Ah, the damned letters,” Trevor said, reaching for another file. “More than a dozen in total and I would venture most of them are hoaxes. The question is, which ones? Some are quite polite and measured, one a wild rant supposedly sent from hell, two are in rhyme….hard to picture them all being written by the same man.”

Abrams flipped through the letters, his eyes scanning a phrase here and there. “An educated man could pretend to be ignorant,” he said. “He could deliberately misspell words and use incorrect grammar in an attempt to throw us off the scent.” Abrams reddened as he noted he’s used the word “us” instead of “you.” Despite the plum of the Paris assignment, he had not fully come to terms with the humiliation of being removed from the case, and his hands almost trembled with the excitement of actually touching the Ripper letters. “But an ignorant man or a person with limited knowledge of English couldn’t write any better than they knew how, no matter how hard they tried.”

“Which is precisely why I don’t think they were all written by the same person,” Trevor said. “Now, for the pictures.”

Abrams paused for a moment before flipping the file open, his fingertips resting lightly on the cloth covering. Photographs disturbed him, for reasons that he could not say. When Scotland Yard had insisted each of their detectives submit his image to the black box, Abrams had found that his heart was pounding as he waited in line for his turn. I’m as bad as those savages who fear the camera will steal their souls, he thought, and the final product – the visage of a homely, bespectacled man, whose left eye tended to drift ever so slightly toward his nose – had not pleased him. Abrams considered the recent mania for photographing the dead even more macabre, although in the case of murder victims he supposed there was an argument to be made for the practice.

With a soft exhalation, Abrams opened the folder. The first picture was of Martha Tabram, proof that Welles had not fully given up on the notion of including her in the list of victims. Her face was turned slightly to the left, mouth slack, as if she had been caught in the act of snoring. Mary Nichols had been photographed from an odd angle, as if whoever had taken the picture had stood at her feet and gazed up at her. Next came Anne Chapman, her head also lolling to the side, and Elizabeth Stride, the only one of the group whose photograph evidenced the oft-quoted claim that the dead looked at peace. He supposed it was because the Ripper didn’t have much time with her. Sad to consider that this were likely the only pictures ever taken of these five women, the only way in which they would ever be remembered.

Catherine Eddowes would be the worst. He knew it and he paused again, pretending to study the face of Elizabeth Stride but really dreading the image which lay between it. He did not glance up, afraid he might see pity in the eyes of the other men who sat around the table. Finally, Abrams put aside the Stride picture and braced himself for the brutalized body of Eddowes.

“My assistant closed the wounds,” Phillips said, almost apologetically, and indeed Abrams could see a neat series of stitches holding the lower half of the woman’s face to the upper. The man had clearly taken care in his task, and it was, he supposed, better than gazing down into the gaping slashes the woman had borne on the night they found her. But the absent ears, flattened nose, and sutured mouth combined to make her look subhuman, a cast aside toy. The other victims had only had their faces photographed as they lay clothed in their coffins, but Eddowes had been photographed on the mortuary slab, completely naked, a Y-shaped incision beginning at her shoulders and running the entire length of her torso. With her scarred, nippleless breasts and her abdomen gathered into the loose folds of a woman who had clearly borne children, she looked far more vulnerable than the others, the perfect example of the female form fallen to ruin.

“Took him two hours,” Phillips said vaguely. “Not just to stitch the face, of course, but the whole body.”

Abrams could think of no response. For some reason he could not stop staring at the woman’s hands, which lay curled and empty at her sides.

“The most difficult to behold,” Trevor said quietly.

“Yes,” Abrams said, letting the file fall closed again. “Because she’s the one we could have prevented.” His voice, he was relieved to hear, was steady. “I suppose you felt the need to photograph….the full extent of her mutilations.”

“We didn’t do it as a gentleman’s pleasure, Abrams, I assure you,” Phillips said drily.

“This file is completely closed by the Yard, Sir,” Davy said. “Pictures won’t be released to the public for….what did they say, Sir?”

“A hundred years,” Trevor said. “By then the answers will be so obvious that the detectives of 1988 will hold their sides and laugh at us. Consider us barbarians.” He pulled the file back and stacked it with the others. “Learn everything you can, Abrams, from the most logical methodologies the French have developed to the most ludicrous, because such is the future of forensics.”

“I will. But I’m sorry I haven’t been more help to you today.”

Trevor shrugged. “It’s all right. According to Eatwell, these photographs and letters don’t belong in suspect files, but rather in my final report. He’s convinced that it’s over. Five weeks without a murder.”

“Five weeks, three days,” Davy said.

“Five weeks, three days,” Trevor repeated. “And Eatwell says that’s reason enough to consider it all behind us.”

Abrams nodded. “But I take it five weeks and three days is not enough time to persuade you gentlemen that we’re in the clear.” He sat for a moment in silence. “You still have to wonder, though, don’t you? I realize Jack doesn’t operate under the same rules of logic as the rest of us but still….you have to wonder.”

“Abrams has a novelist’s turn of mind,” Trevor said by means of explanation to Davy and Phillips. “He once told me the Ripper had a certain appeal for him, if you can feature that.”

“I feel it as well, Sir,” Davy said, to Trevor’s great surprise. “Can’t stop thinking of him, can I, even on the nights when it’s not my duty, even when I’m home with my mum and dad. I’ll catch myself staring at something and wondering what old Jack might be looking at, what it seems like to him.”

“Curiosity is natural,” Phillips said. “Inevitable, really.”

“Dear God,” Trevor said. “It sounds as if you all are professing sympathy for the man. I would think when you look at those pictures, of that final savaged body - ”

Abrams held up a palm, shaking his head with a chuckle. “Calm yourself, Welles. No one’s excusing him. But it’s the eternal mystery, is it not, why evil overrides one heart and not the next? Are you honestly telling us that Jack’s never made his way into your dreams? That you’ve never wondered what happened to the bastard to make him what he is?”

“Each man has his story, does he not, Sirs?” Davy said.

Abrams nodded. “He certainly does. Come on, Welles, stop staring down at that table. Come out for a drink.”

“Thank you for invitation,” Trevor said stiffly. “But I’ll be working late. And no, to answer your question, I’ve never wondered after Jack’s reasons for there are none, at least none that the rational mind can bear. Some people manage to endure the most wretched losses with their sanity intact while others…others crack at the slightest provocation. It hardly falls within the description of my job to wonder why.”

“Indeed,” said Abrams, pushing to his feet. “Come Davy, the beer’s on my tab tonight. Will you join us, doctor? Invite the boys in your lab?” As the men scattered, gathering scarves and gloves, Abrams put a hand on Trevor’s shoulder and gave it an awkward pat. “We’ll be at the Copper Dome if you change your mind.”

“Pointless to speculate on his reasons” Trevor said. “A man like me will never understand a man like him.”

Abrams shrugged. “You’re the one who’s always saying his success hinges on the fact he blends in.”

“Looks like us, maybe. Doesn’t think like us.”

“Welles,” Abrams said, picking up his coat. “I think thou dost protest too much.”