It started to rain and I felt water spatter my face. 'Over 'ere, darlin',' I heard the woman say, and her fingers closed around my privates. I gasped and felt a sudden wave of nausea. I reached my right hand into my jacket and extracated my favourite knife.
Elizabeth glanced down, saw the steel glinting in the dim light. 'Oh, no!' she mumbled, and then her face froze as I covered her mouth with my left hand and slid the metal between her legs. Pulling the blade away, I spun her round and brought the knife up to her throat, ran it across her neck and let her slump back as her warm blood ran over my fingers and down my wrist.
I had plenty of time, having decided days earlier exactly what I was going to do with the material at my feet. In the event, it did not take as long as I had anticipated. I made the incisions across Elizabeth's face, cutting the shape of a triangle on each cheek. I then set about the torso, opening her up and removing her womb. I draped a length of her intestine over her left shoulder and took out the right kidney. Pocketing this last item, I checked that no one was close by. I heard nothing. Standing up from my crouching position, I stretched, releasing the tension in my back. It ached rather. Removing a piece of chalk from my trouser pocket, I walked over to the brick wall a couple of yards from where Elizabeth Stride's feet lay. On the wall I wrote a message: 'The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing'. Stepping back, I surveyed my evening's work in the pale glow cast from the tenement.
I was back on Osborn Street in a moment. Pulling my hat low over my brow, I strode along the wet street, heading south towards Whitechapel Road. Within two minutes, I was at the corner of Wentworth Street, turning towards my lodgings on the left no more than twenty yards down the road.
Two police officers were walking towards me. I don't know why, but I overreacted. Perhaps it was simply the fact that I had just dispatched a woman and ripped her open. Or maybe it was because I had one of her kidneys in my pocket, oozing blood into the fabric of my coat. I turned as casually as I could and walked back towards Osborn Street, then, dodging the passing carriages, I reached the far side and afforded myself a glance backwards. The policemen were nowhere to be seen.
I was on Old Montague Street. I knew it well from my researches. Twenty yards beyond the busy junction with Osborn Street there was a narrow lane on the left that led to Finch Street. I ducked into the inky dark, letting the sounds of the late-night revellers, the braying of horses and the splashing of water on brickwork fall behind me.
Ten yards along the lane, I could barely see my hand when I held it in front of me. I crouched on the ground close to the left-hand wall of the lane. Withdrawing the bloodied knife from my coat, I quickly gouged a hole in the filthy wet dirt. I used my fingers to scoop out the soil, then plunged my hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out the grey kidney. It felt like a fat sausage before it is placed in the pan. I let it fall into the soil and then used both hands to shovel the dirt back over it. I patted the ground flat, wiped my palms together and rose to my feet.
I walked back the way I had come, guided by the widening funnel of light between the lane's brick walls. Emerging on to Osborn Street, I kept my head down. A voice startled me. 'Watch out!' Glancing up, I was just in time to see a hansom cab bearing down on me. I reacted with amazing alacrity, stepping back and missing the oncoming horse's hoofs with barely an inch to spare. Water splashed my trousers and boots and I almost tripped over the high kerb.
Now, let me ask you this, dear lady: do you believe in serendipity? I always have. It is a mercurial force, but one that is nevertheless very real. Well, whether or not you believe it to be a part of the flux of Nature, I myself experienced a serendipitous moment as I caught my balance and steadied myself while the hansom rushed past me and the cabbie bellowed a malediction. The third woman on my list, Catherine Eddowes, was standing directly opposite me, on the far side of the street, soliciting for business.
Catherine, you may remember, worked at the Pav. She was, you will recall, the woman your husband was with the night I first met him. She was dressed in green and black, and on top of her long auburn hair wore a black bonnet trimmed with green velvet. She was clearly drunk, swaying unsteadily on the narrow pavement. I watched her as she tried her luck with a passer by. When the gentlemen rejected her, she swore at him, her voice muffled and lisping thanks to the fact that most of her upper teeth were missing.
Sauntering across the road, I stopped a few feet from her. She stank of booze. With a subtle nod, I indicated she should follow me down a narrow lane a few yards away along the street, another of the thousands of dark alleyways that splintered and dissected Whitechapel.
''Ang on, mithta,' came Catherine Eddowes's lisp from behind me. 'Let's thee ya money firtht.'
I turned slowly and she came right up to me, the gin stink oozing out of her. I looked down at her dirty face, a strand of frizzy hair escaping the bonnet to hang down over her eyes. She blew the straying hair away. I gave her a brief smile, pulled a shilling from my pocket and held it out in the palm of my hand. She gave me a furtive look and snatched the coin, before grabbing my collar. Giggling, she leaned back against the slimy brickwork, pulling me towards her.
'For thith, you get thpechial treatment, like,' she whispered and started to lower herself towards my groin.
'No,' I hissed. 'Up.' And swivelled her round to face the wall.
'Whatever you wanth, dar…'
The blade made a squelching sound as it split open her throat. Blood sprayed out of her, hitting the wall. A few drops caught me in the face and got into my eyes. I cursed and let her fall at my feet. Her bonnet slid to one side. Bending down, I turned her face towards me. Her eyes were glazed over and her mouth was moving silently. That was when I first saw the light, at the very edge of my vision. I spun round and could just make out the figure of a policeman holding his lantern at arm's length. The light from it illuminated his face – high cheekbones, bushy brows – his helmet with its silver badge, his voluminous cape revealed under the arm holding aloft the lantern. He saw me. I turned and ran.
There was a low brick wall at the end of the lane. The place was so dark I only saw the wall when I was almost upon it. Under normal circumstances, scrambling up the wet bricks would have been difficult, but I was fiercely energised, my heart racing, every muscle tensed. I heard the policeman blow his whistle, its shrill sound ricocheting from the walls around me. His lantern bobbed around, sending patches of light sliding here and there. I could see his silhouette as he crouched down beside Catherine Eddowes. In less than a second I was over the wall. I could hear his footsteps pursuing me now. He had reached the wall. 'Stop!' he screamed. 'Stop! Murderer!' He blew his whistle again. This time the sound was twice as loud. I heard voices, the beat of running feet, men answering the summons and looking for me. I sped off into the darkness.
Something crunched underfoot. I tripped, but just managed to maintain my balance. My outstretched hands came into contact with a large wooden object: a barrel of some sort. It fell to one side and clattered away. The whistle sounded again, and I sped through the narrow opening at the end of the alley.
A group of rowdy fellows was passing by. They were all extremely inebriated, swaying this way and that. I ducked past them and they remained completely oblivious to the commotion coming from the alley behind me. Sliding into a shadowy doorway, I gulped for air. It felt like the first full breath I had taken since slitting the throat of Catherine Eddowes. I noticed blood on my shirt. Pulling my jacket together at the front, I succeeded in covering up the crimson patch, and with my handkerchief wiped away the blood from around my eyes and drops of the stuff from about my mouth. I tasted a speck of it on my fingertip, relishing the iron tang. It was a flavour redolent of what the common herd would call 'sin'. But as you are, of course, by now aware, dear lady, I have little respect for prudish taboos.