City of Darkness

Chapter FOUR

5:35 PM





“It’s a bit early in the investigation for us to be literally running down blind alleys, wouldn’t you say?”

Trevor turned to see Rayley Abrams standing behind him. “This is where they found Martha Tabram in the early morning of August 7,” he said.

“I know where we are, Welles. But Tabram isn’t part of our inquiry.”

“She should be. Throat sliced eat to ear and then stabbed thirty-nine times, for God’s sake, not three weeks before the Nichols murder. Are you so sure she shouldn’t be under consideration?”

Abrams shook his head. “Not sure at all, but you heard Eatwell. We can’t investigate every woman who comes to a bad end in Whitechapel. And perhaps he’s right. Prostitution is not just the world’s oldest profession, but also the most dangerous. They’re statistically more likely to be killed in the line of duty than we are.”

Trevor shot him a skeptical look.

“It’s true,” Abrams said, “and, even more to the point, thirty-nine stabs point to a different sort of mentality. Not surgical. Not precise. You said it yourself, a multiplicity of wounds implies a frenzy of anger, as if the killer knew the victim personally. The last two are more….as if you are taking something meant to heal, a surgical scalpel, and very deliberately turning it a different way. Do you see what I mean?”

“It’s just as the doctor said. The how will tell us more than the why.”

“Precisely,” Abrams said, removing his glasses and blowing on the lenses.

Trevor looked down at the overgrown grass and bits of broken windowpane where Martha Tabram had drawn her last breaths and a slow shudder came over him. “Our normal means of deduction are quite useless here. Our killer didn’t necessarily have any prior relationship to our victim.”

“Quite right again,” Abrams said. “Which is why the hour I spent tracing the Sussex postmark turned out to be a blind alley too. Chapman was taking some sort of pills and the box that held them broke. So she tore a piece off an envelope she found in the rubbish at her boarding house and folded the pills into it. Wasn’t even her letter. It makes you long for the good old days, doesn’t it? When criminals were decent enough to only murder people they knew?”

The men turned, as if by silent agreement, and began walking back toward the street. Trevor had spent his own afternoon combing the East End, moving back and forth between the slaughterhouses and the bars. He had seen a dozen aprons of the kind Phillips had displayed in the conference room and had observed several people holding a pencil, cigarette, or whiskey bottle in their left hands. He had taken note of everyone in the area, even women, and wouldn’t Eatwell have a laugh at that? But a midwife or nurse might have enough medical knowledge to effectively wield a scalpel, and Trevor would not allow himself to leave any stone unturned.

“It’s a daunting task, is it not?” Abrams said, as if reading his mind. “Within the confines of Whitechapel there are 233 lodging houses with over 8000 occupants, an estimated 1,200 of them making their living as prostitutes.”

“Over a thousand women?” Trevor said with surprise. He wouldn’t have guessed as third as many. “Abrams, you’re a marvel. Wherever do you get all your statistics?”

“Home Secretary report, Welles. Released last week.”

Trevor stopped on the sidewalk, so abruptly that the man behind him bumped into him with a low curse, and dug his journal from his pocket. “233 lodging houses?”

“Sixty-two of them established brothels. I say, Welles, you’re a marvel in your own right. You don’t go anywhere without that little notebook of yours, do you?”

“Where do you keep your reports?”

Abrams tapped his temple lightly.

“Bully,” Trevor said stiffly. “But I want to make sure I don’t forget anything and a case like this has so many – where are we going, by the way?”

“I’m visiting the mortuary to have a look at Annie Chapman,” Abrams said. “And since you’re walking with me, it would appear that you’re headed there too. She’s set to be buried tomorrow morning, and seeing them off is a bit of a ritual with me, I suppose. There’s nothing to be done with it, of course, but I can’t seem to resist paying my final call.”

“You’ve never worked with a partner, have you, Abrams?”

“Never saw the need. He travels fastest who travels alone, as they say. And you?”

“Never saw the need either.”

“I suppose your little notebook is your partner.”

“Scoff if you will, but if there are over a thousand prostitutes in Whitechapel, each with a hefty number of clients, how many interviews do you think we’ll have to conduct before this matter is brought to an end? Look at the sheer amount of people on this street, the number of possible victims, the number of possible suspects. How are we to determine where a random killer will turn his sights next?”

“I don’t know,” Abrams said, his shoulders drooping a little. “I suppose if a man’s a hunter, any bird in the sky will do. Ah, here we are.”

Trevor and Abrams entered a plain gray stone building beside the graveyard and followed the dull sound of hammering to the back of the hall. “What can I do for you?” asked a voice slightly muffled by the pounding.

“Abrams and Welles of Scotland Yard,” said Abrams. “Here to see the remains of Anne Chapman.”

“Remains is right, Detective” said the man, stepping out from behind his work bench and gesturing with his hammer toward a doorway. “Poor Dark Annie was butchered sure enough. She’s in the pine box in the back.”

Trevor walked into the second room where a man he supposed to be one of the coroner’s assistants was bent over a coffin. Why they had done their examinations here, in this ramshackle mortuary, and not at Scotland Yard was a mystery to Trevor and he wondered if the case was truly receiving the attention it deserved. The assistant seemed to recognize Abrams and Welles as detectives, or perhaps he had overheard the conversation in the hall, for he stepped back from the body smartly, in an almost military manner.

Trevor walked over to the humble coffin and paused for a moment. He gave a nod of credit to the assistant, who was now setting up a camera on a tripod, for the expression on the ashen face was peaceful and Annie Chapman was neatly dressed, her body giving little evidence of the violations of two nights before. Her eyes were shut and her arms had been neatly crossed over her chest.

“Where would you drain blood from a body?” he asked the assistant.

The young man turned clumsily from the camera, startled at having been addressed. “In the mortuary at Scotland Yard, Sir.”

“No. No, I mean what parts of the body?”

“Throat, wrists, behind the ear.“

“Then I regret I must spoil your admirable work,” Trevor said, reaching into the coffin and seizing one of the woman’s waxy white hands. He turned it over and there, just as he predicted, was a tiny aperture in her wrist.

“See this, Abrams, unmistakably a hypodermic needle,” he said, forcing himself to shrug, although he was so excited it took all of his control not to tremble. “Now we just have to find the bastard who drained her blood.”

“It was me, Sirs,” said the mortuary assistant.

Trevor looked up.

“When we embalmed her, Sirs.”

Abrams gave a soft laugh and Trevor felt himself flush.

“And did you happen to notice,” he said, in what he hoped was a cool and level voice, “if there were any such apertures when you began?”

“Doctor Phillips reported she was very nearly drained when they found her,” Abrams said, by way of explanation, but the young man still seemed confused.

“When doing your embalmations, your… your preparations for the coffin, you didn’t stop to wonder at the absence of blood?” Trevor asked, his voice revealing more exasperation than he intended.

“The incision in her throat, Sir, six to eight inches long and three deep –“

“Quite,” said Abrams, shooting Trevor a warning look. A case could be made that the woman’s near-decapitation, followed by a bumpy cross-town transit in a cart, was a reasonable enough explanation for the fact she’d arrived to the mortuary almost bloodless. Besides, they wouldn’t aid the investigation or win any friends by snapping at the assistants of powerful men.

Trevor sighed, looked down at the pale hand in his own. Phillips had scolded Eatwell for not better training the bobbies and yet it appeared he also chose his own assistants more on the basis of their silent efficiency than for their curious minds. But he supposed it wasn’t this boy’s task to look for needle marks on a corpse, any more than the bobbies could be blamed for the manner in which they swarmed the crime scenes. The men on top liked their underlings physically strong and mentally deferential, quick to do whatever task they’re ordered but unlikely to ask troubling questions along the way. No one knew that better than him.

“But see here,” Trevor said, still staring down at the woman’s hand. “There is something. Under the fingernail.”

Abrams handed Trevor a pencil and all three men held their breath as he carefully used its tip to remove a raveled red fiber. Trevor held the thin piece up to the light to examine it better and slowly, carefully untangled a red thread about an inch long.

“From the clothes of the killer, perhaps,” Trevor said. “There may have been a struggle and she grabbed at him. Tore at a shirt or scarf.” He removed the journal once again from his breast pocket and carefully laid the red thread between two pages, then reached back over Annie to get a better look at her other hand.

“I assure you, Detective, you will not find a pulse,” came a familiar voice from the doorway.

“Doctor Phillips,” Abrams said, extending a hand. “We got here just in time to see you photograph the retinas.” The two men chuckled and, noting Trevor’s uncertain expression, Abrams explained. “This morning The Star ran an article suggesting the police photograph the dead women’s eyes. Apparently there’s a theory floating around that the last image one sees before death is forever seared into the retina.”

“Would that it were that easy,” said the doctor. He motioned to his assistant, who was waiting with the camera. “Go ahead, Severin, take your picture. Eyes closed, of course, the detective was just having his little joke. What were you doing with her hands, Welles?”

“In the morning meeting you said the victims may have been strangled or smothered first, which allowed for so little blood.”

Phillips nodded.

“If I was being choked, I would at least try to lash back at the assailant. I would grab or scratch at anything I could reach, just out of desperation. A simple reflex, wouldn’t you say?”

“And your point?”

“Just this. Did you examine the hands of both victims? Did you noticed if these women had anything under their nails indicating they fought back? Was there blood, or hair, or skin found? Could they have scratched or wounded the attacker? Anything?”

The pop of the camera made them all jump and Phillips blinked, perhaps in anger or perhaps just because of the flash. “Young man, are you seriously questioning my ability to do an autopsy?”

“He found a thread,” Abrams said, both his expression and voice utterly devoid of emotion. He was once again leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest and head tilted in an absurd parody of the dead woman’s position. Isn’t he the cool one, Welles thought. Slight in build and with those thick eyeglasses he truly does look more like a scholar than a detective - but a bit of a dandy too, his shirtsleeves always clean and his tie knotted just so. Never puts himself on the line with a theory, at least not when a superior is in earshot. And yet he’s always there, observing everything.

“A thread?” Phillips asked. “And you think you can follow it all the way to our killer? The men who found the body tried to lift it, Detective, then thought the better of it and wrapped her in a blanket. By the time I got to that shed she was covered head to toe in fibers and there is nothing to suggest that any of them came from the killer.”

“But this one was under her fingernail, Sir. Not just lying on her chest like it came from a blanket used to move her but dug in, as if she’d grabbed something and held on.” Trevor opened his notebook and removed the fiber, holding it delicately between two fingers, but the doctor shook his head.

“Even if she did manage to grab the clothes of her assailant, that would tell us nothing. A red thread. A man with a red scarf or coat.”

“But Nichols and even Martha Tabram, Sir, meaning no disrespect, but did you check their hands? If something similar – “

“Enough, Welles. Tabram and Nichols are in the ground and this poor woman will follow them there in the morning. Take advice from someone who has been dealing in police affairs for forty years. Do not make waves or go over the heads of your superiors. Follow procedure, or you will find yourself walking the streets again as a bobby.”

“But Sir, I feel I owe – “

“Of course you do,” Phillips said, his expression softening. “You haven’t seen as many dead bodies as I have. Of course you feel you owe them something. Some sort of justice or redemption. But if you carry these feelings too far they will draw you from your true purpose, which is the protection of the living, not vengeance for the dead.” The doctor took a final look at Annie Chapman’s face as his assistant lowered the lid of the coffin, moving so slowly and carefully that it closed with only the softest of sighs. “And if it provides you any consolation, Chapman would have been dead within the year. From the condition of her liver, I’d say she liked her drink.”

“Who is claiming the body for burial, Doctor?” Abrams asked. “Do you know?”

“Her children, Detective. A son and a daughter, both grown. Yes, they have families, these women,” Phillips said more sharply, as if Trevor or Abrams had contradicted him. “Everyone has a family, even them.”





Trevor and Abrams said their goodbyes and returned to the street. They walked a couple of blocks without speaking and Trevor, his face still red from the lecture Phillips had given him, was aware that he taking such large strides that the far shorter Abrams was almost trotting to keep up with him. “Procedure!” he finally said. “You’d think the doctor, of all people, would understand. All those bobbies who bungled the case to begin with were only following procedure. Bloody idiots! And why did they examine the body in that dismal shack, rather than taking her to Scotland Yard? Why didn’t the man who embalmed her take note of any other needle marks? Did you see the way he looked at me when I asked a simple question?”

“I imagine the bobbies took her to the nearest police mortuary,” Abrams said, struggling for breath. “And the assistant was Polish or Czech or somesort, judging by his accent. He may not have even understood what you were asking. You’ve got to…”

“Be more politic?”

“It wouldn’t hurt. Let me buy you a drink, Welles.”

“I don’t need a drink.”

“I think you do,” Abrams said. “And don’t make an enemy of Phillips. He’s one of the good ones. He caught your meaning, even if he pretended not to. Next time he’ll take special note of the hands.”

Trevor slowed down and looked Abrams right in the face. “You’re that sure there will be another?”

“Without question. I’m afraid our boy is just getting warmed up, that it took him two or three tries before he figured out how to make things interesting. And now that he has our attention, he won’t want to lose it. Phillips thinks so too, for what it’s worth, that’s why he told us to keep our focus to the living.”

“Oh God,” Trevor said. “Look at all these people. That man has a red scarf, and that one too, a red collar on his jacket. Don’t you laugh at me, Abrams, but look. They’re all wearing red. Every person on this street.”

“Not all of them, Welles, and believe me, I’m not laughing. Come on. We both could use that drink.”