“Begging your pardon, Sir Charles, but I’m in charge here and I refuse to permit this.”
“Blast your permission!” Warren roared. “You city police have authority over Mitre Square, but this street is under metropolitan jurisdiction. I give the orders here, and I want that writing removed — immediately!”
The detective glanced at his superior, but Major Smith made no sign. Warren turned to Inspector MacWilliams and the other detective; neither man moved.
“Insubordination, is it?” Warren’s face was grim. “If that’s your game, I’ll wipe out the bloody thing myself!”
And he did.
But no one could wipe out the message published in the papers.
“TWO MORE EAST END ATROCITIES,” was the headline in The Daily Chronicle, “HORRIBLE MURDER OF A WOMAN IN COMMERCIAL ROAD EAST. A WOMAN MURDERED AND MUTILATED IN ALDGATE. GREAT EXCITEMENT.”
Among those excited was John Montague Druitt, a barrister who tutored at a boy’s school in Blackheath. He also maintained chambers at King’s Bench Walk in London, and frequently spent weekends there when not playing cricket. It was a healthful outdoor sport, beneficial to the mind and spirit, and the doctors recommended it as an excellent remedy for melancholia.
But what did they know of melancholia? What did they know about how it felt to fail at law, fail at teaching, fail even in normal relationships with the fair sex?
Druitt read the news and the moming sunlight disappeared as angry clouds of memory descended. He’d set up practice here with no success; he’d turned to teaching and that wasn’t working out well either, not with those unkind rumors circulating about him and some of the younger boys. As for women, it was they who had failed him. The female is indeed deadlier than the male; he remembered the cutting remarks, the piercing laughter, the wounds of rejection. Even his own mother had failed him, for the recent news of her confinement in a mental institution was like the stab of a knife.
Sometimes he tried to put all this out of his mind, and lately it seemed to him that he’d succeeded only too well. There were gaps in his memory, whole days and nights he couldn’t quite account for. Last night, for instance; where had he been last night?
Was it all a dream? Like the trip to Venice where the funeral barge floated on the water — a black gondola gliding through the oozing slime of the canal?
Melancholia. That was his mother’s affliction, that’s why they put her away, and now there were times when she couldn’t remember. Was that to be his fate?
Somehow the accounts in the newspaper brought back the failures and the fears, but last night was still a blank. Why did he keep thinking about knives?
Reading about the murders, John Montague Druitt wondered if he was going mad…
A Polish refugee named Severin Klosowski read the paper too but he was not mad. To rise to the rank of feldscher, a doctor’s assistant in the army of His Imperial Highness, Czar of Russia, calls for the keenest intelligence, and his was razor-sharp. Just because his command of English was not yet perfect, just because he’d been reduced to odd jobs of barbering, these stupid clods in Whitechapel took him for a fool; even the whores laughed at him. But there were ways to pay them back for their ridicule. They might mistrust his appearance, his bushy mustache and foreign dress, and make fun of his accent, but he knew a trick or two. Like the little one he played, showing them two polished farthings in the dark, which they mistook for sovereigns. In the end he always got what he was after; one way or another, he had his revenge.
No, he was not mad, merely clever. More clever than all the whores and all the police put together. It was just that these newspapers made trouble for him with their stories about suspicious foreigners. Perhaps the time had come to think about moving on. If he could speak the language better maybe he would change his name and go to America. He was already learning American slang and that would help. There were a few whores less in London now, but America was a different story — didn’t they call it the Land of Opportunity?
Yes, a clever man could find opportunities there, of that he was certain. Meanwhile he must be careful. Careful and clever. No one would ever get the best of Severin Klosowski — not if he took pains to sharpen his wits the way a skillful feldscher sharpens his knife…
There were some who missed the morning newspapers because they slept. Dr. Trebor was one of them; he didn’t get around to reading a report until late in the afternoon. And it was then, in the Evening News, that he read the story which sent him into shock.
The Central News Agency gives us the following information, namely, that on Thursday last a letter bearing the EC postmark, directed in red ink, was delivered at their agency.
September 25, 1888
Dear Boss,
I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me and my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I can’t use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha, ha, ha! The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears and send them to the police officers just for jolly. Wouldn’t you keep this letter back until I do a bit more work; then give it out straight. My knife is so nice and sharp, I want to get right to work if I get the chance. Good luck.
Yours truly,
Jack the Ripper
Don’t mind me giving the trade name. Wasn’t good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands, curse it. They say I’m a doctor. Ha! ha! ha!
Dr. Trebor wasn’t amused.
Neither was Mark, who read the same story in his own newspaper that evening. His dismay was not lessened as he scanned the rest of the account.
According to the story, another message — this time on a postcard bearing the cancellation stamp “London E. October 1,” had been received today. It too had been written in red ink, in the same style of handwriting.
I was not codding, dear old Boss, when I gave you the tip. You’ll hear about Saucy Jack’s work tomorrow. Double event this time. Number One squealed a bit. Couldn’t finish straight off. Had no time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping the last letter back till I got to work again.
Jack the Ripper
Mark remembered last night only too well. It had been a “double event,” just as the postcard promised. And the killer “couldn’t finish” the disfigurement of the first victim. He “had no time to get ears for police”—but the paper stated that one of the second victim’s ears was nearly cut off.
None of these details appeared in the morning press, but the card had already been mailed. Unless one of the police or onlookers was a practical joker, this message came from the murderer himself.
Jack the Ripper. So now they knew his name.
Mark shuddered…
Others saw the same story, but they didn’t shudder.
Dr. Forbes Winslow prayed.
Sir Charles Warren cursed.
And Jeremy Hume laughed.
~ TWENTY-THREE ~
Hispaniola, A.D. 1630. The buccaneers improvised new tortures by using whatever materials were at hand. A hemp caulking material called oakum was highly flammable; it could be stuffed into a prisoner’s mouth or other bodily openings and then set afire.