Marie Franchise Hinfray, the daughter of the family that bought Mai-son Mouton from Sickert, was kind enough to give me a tour of the former gendarmerie where Sickert lived, and Christine died. It is now occupied by the Hinfrays, who are undertakers. Madame Hinfray said that when her parents bought the house from Walter Sickert, the walls were painted in very somber shades, all "dark and unhappy with low ceilings." It was filled with abandoned paintings, and when the outhouse or latrine was dug up, workmen discovered rusted pieces of a small-caliber six-shot revolver dating back to the turn of the century. It was not the sort of gun used by the gendarmes.
Madame Hinfray showed me the revolver. It had been soldered back together and painted black, and she was very proud of it. She showed me the master bedroom and said that Sickert used to keep the curtains open to the dark street and build such big fires that the neighbors could see in. Madame Hinfray sleeps there now, and the generous space is filled with plants and pretty colors. I had her take me upstairs last, to the room where Christine died, a former jail cell with a small wood-burning stove.
I stood there alone looking around, listening. I knew that had Sickert been downstairs, or out in the yard or garage, he could not have heard Christine call him if the stove needed stoking or she wanted a glass of water or was hungry. He didn't need to hear her because she probably couldn't make a sound. She probably did not wake up very often, or if she did, she dozed. Morphine would have kept her floating in painless slumber.
There is no record of the entire village gathering at Christine's funeral. It seems most of the crowd was Sickert's people, as Ellen used to call them, and Christine's father was there. He later recalled being "shocked" by Sickert's "sangfroid," or complete indifference. It was raining when I visited the old graveyard surrounded by a brick wall. Christine's modest headstone was hard to find. I saw no "little wood" or "favorite walk," and from where I stood, there was no "lovely view of the whole valley."
The day of Christine's funeral was blustery and cold, and the procession was late. Sickert did not pour her ashes into her grave. He dug his hands inside the urn and flung them into the wind, which blew them onto the coats and into the faces of his friends.
My Team
Without the help of many people and archival and academic resources, I could not have conducted this investigation nor written the account of it.
There would be no story of Walter Sickert - no resolution to the vicious crimes he committed under the alias of Jack the Ripper - had history not been preserved in a way that really is no longer possible because of the rapidly vanishing arts of letter-writing and diary-keeping. I could not have followed Sickert's century-old tracks had I not been aided by tenacious and courageous experts.
I am indebted to the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine - especially co-directors Dr. Paul Ferrara and Dr. Marcella Fierro and forensic scientists Lisa Schiermeier, Chuck Pruitt, and Wally Forst; The Bode Technology Group; Sickert curator and researcher Vada Hart; art historian and Sickert expert Dr. Anna Gruetzner Robins; paper historian and forensic paper expert Peter Bower; letterer Sally Bower; paper conservator Anne Kennett; FBI profiler and law enforcement instructor Edward Sulzbach; Assistant New York District Attorney Linda Fairstein; rare documents and antiquarian book researcher Joe Jameson.
I thank artist John Lessore for his kind and gentle conversations and generosity.
I am grateful to members of my relentless and patient staff who have facilitated my work in every way possible and demonstrated admirable talents and investigative and technical skills of their own: Irene Shulgin, Alex Shulgin, and Viki Everly.
I fear I cannot remember everyone I have met along this grueling and often painful and depressing journey, and I hope any person or institution I might have overlooked will be forgiving and understanding.
I could not have carried on without the following galleries, museums, and archival sources and their staffs: Paul Johnson, Hugh Alexander, Kate Herst, Clea Relly, and David Humphries of the Public Record Office, Kew; R. J. Childs, Peter Wilkinson, and Timothy McCann at the West Sussex Record Office; Hugh Jaques and the Dorset Record Office; Sue Newman at Christchurch Local History Society; Ashmolean Museum; Dr. Rosalind Moad at Cambridge University, King's College Modern Archives Centre; Professor Nigel Thorp and Andrew Hale at Glasgow University Library, Special Collections Department.
Jenny Cooksey at Leeds City Art Gallery; Sir Nicholas Scrota, director, Tate Gallery; Robert Upstone, Adrian Glew, and Julia Creed at the Tate Gallery Archive, London; Julian Treuherz at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; Vada Hart and Martin Banham of Islington Central Libraries, Islington Archives, London; Institut Bibliotheque de L'Institut de France, Paris; James Sewell, Juliet Banks, and Jessica Newton of the Corporation of London Records Office; University of Reading Department of History of Art.
The Fine Art Society, London; St. Mark's Hospital; St. Bartholomew's Hospital; Julia Sheppard at the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, London; Bodleian Library, Oxford University, M.S. English History; Jonathan Evans at the Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum; Dr. Stella Butler and John Hodgson at the University of Manchester, the John Rylands Library and History of Art Department; Howard Smith, Manchester City Galleries; Reese Griffith at the London Metropolitan Archives; Ray Seal and Steve Earl at Metropolitan Police Historical Museum; Metropolitan Police Archives.
John Ross at the Metropolitan Police Crime Museum; Christine Penny of Birmingham University Information Services; Dr. Alice Prochaska at the British Library Manuscripts Collection; National Register of Archives, Scotland; Mark Pomeroy of the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Iain Maclver of the National Library of Scotland; Sussex University Library Special Collections; New York Public Library; British Newspaper Library; rare books, autographs, and manuscripts dealer Clive Farahar and Sophie Dupre; Denison Beach of Harvard University's Houghton Library.
Registrar Births, Deaths and Marriage Certificates, London; Aberdeen University Library, Special Libraries and Archives, Kings College (business records of Alexander Pirie amp; Sons); House of Lords Records Office, London; National Registrar Family Records Center; London Bureau of Camden; Marylebone Registry Office.
Since I do not speak French, I would have been quite helpless in all things French were it not for my publisher, Nina Salter, who mined the following sources: Professor Dominique Lecomte, Director of the Paris Institute for Forensic Medicine; Records of Department of the Seine-Maritime; Archives of the French National Gendarmerie; Archives of the Central Police Station in Rouen; the archives of the Town Council, Rouen; the archives of the prefecture in Rouen; the Rouen Morgue; Reports of the Central Police in Rouen; Records of the Sectors of Dieppe, Neuchatel, and Rouen; Records of the French regional press; the National Archives in Paris; Appeal Courts 1895-1898; Dieppe Historical Collection; Appeal Courts of Paris and Rouen.
Of course, my respectful, humble thanks to Scotland Yard, which may have been young and inexperienced in days of old, but is now an enlightened force against injustice. First, my gratitude to the remarkable Deputy Assistant Commissioner John D. Grieve; and to my British partner in crime fighting, Detective Inspector Howard Gosling; to Maggie Bird; Professor Betsy Stanko; and Detective Sergeant David Field. I thank the people of the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police Department. All of you were nothing but cooperative, courteous, and encouraging. No one tried to get in my way or cast the slightest shadow of egotism, or - no matter how cold the case - to be an obstruction to long-overdue justice.