Sitting beside Dr. Trebor in the stuffy little room at the Guilders Green mortuary, Mark wondered if he was experiencing déjà vu. The inquest under way seemed familiar, as though he’d heard the same proceedings before.
That much was true. Only a few days ago he and Trebor were seated in a very similar chamber in Vestry Hall, attending the inquest of Elizabeth Stride.
This, it was disclosed, had been Annie Fitzgerald’s real name. “Long Liz,” the first victim of the double event, used an alias, like so many others plying her trade.
And just prior to the time of her murder, three witnesses, one of them a police constable, testified they’d seen her talking to a man in Berner Street. One took no notice of him at the time, but another said he was stout, dressed in a cutaway coat and a round peaked cap. The constable noted that he had carried a newspaper parcel about eighteen inches long and six inches wide, and wore a dark felt deerstalker hat.
The doctor in charge concluded that the killer probably caught his victim by her scarf, pulling it backwards and cutting her throat while she was falling or when she was on the ground, to avoid the spurting blood.
Now Mark was hearing it all again. The second victim had also used other names — Kate Kelly and Kate Conway — but here she was identified as Catherine Eddowes.
Once more there was a witness; this time a man named Joseph Lavende saw the deceased with a stranger just off Mitre Square shortly before her death. He said the woman’s companion wore a cloth cap with a peak.
Again the doctors agreed that the mutilations occurred after death, with the victim on the ground so that there’d be less chance of staining the murderer’s clothing with blood.
As the medical testimony droned on, Mark made a mental resolve to discard his deerstalker cap, and he wondered if Dr. Trebor had formed a similar resolution. But then he wondered about many other things concerning the older man. Since the night of the double slaying they had never discussed Trebor’s mysterious absence during the previous week, nor his sudden reappearance at the scene of the first crime. Only one thing seemed certain; if Trebor had been at Berner Street when it occurred, he couldn’t possibly be involved in what happened at Mitre Square a half-mile away.
But did Inspector Abberline know that?
Mark glanced toward the rotund figure seated on his right at the end of the row. Abberline was ignoring him; he seemed totally absorbed in listening as Dr. Brown, the police surgeon, answered the questions of Mr. Crawford.
“I understand you found certain portions of the body removed,” Crawford said.
“Yes.” Dr. Brown consulted his notes. “The uterus was cut away with the exception of a small portion, and the left kidney was cut out. Both these organs were absent and have not been found.”
Over the murmurs of the coroner’s jury, Mr. Crawford continued. “Would you consider that the person who inflicted the wounds possessed great anatomical skill?”
Dr. Brown nodded. “He must have had a good deal of knowledge as to the position of the abdominal organs and the way to remove them. The way in which the kidney was cut out showed that it was done by somebody who knew what he was about.”
Mark stiffened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Abberline’s head turn swiftly; now the inspector was staring directly at him and Dr. Trebor.
And when the inquest concluded he was still staring. The coroner’s verdict was a simple one; “Willful murder by some person unknown.”
But the look in the inspector’s eyes gave Mark the uneasy feeling that Abberline didn’t agree.
~ TWENTY-FOUR ~
Turkey, A.D. 1635. Murad IV, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, had the royal privilege of killing ten innocent subjects a day. When riding abroad, he was accompanied by an executioner carrying clubs, knives, nails, and other useful implements of his trade. The Sultan himself bore a bow or an arquebus to shoot down anyone who crossed his path. He hated smoking and forbade it in public; anyone found disobeying could be executed. One of his wives and a gardener were discovered smoking. He had their legs chopped off in a public ceremony and let them bleed to death.
Inspector Abberline’s stomach was at it again, growling away like a dog worrying a bone.
Didn’t it ever get tired? He was tired; weary of walking, fatigued by constant questioning, exhausted from scribbling notes and writing endless reports, but somehow his stomach found the strength to churn. His stomach and his brain, revolving over the events of the past few days.
The inquests had solved nothing. Nothing that would lead to the discovery of the murderer, nothing that would stop the clamor in the press and the turmoil in the streets.
How many suspects had been arrested since the night of the double killings — arrested to save them from angry mobs that recognized the Ripper every time they saw a suspicious-looking stranger? All were investigated and all were eventually released as innocent, but this didn’t end the uproar.
How many rewards had been posted, how many petitions sent to the Prime Minister and the Queen herself? Nothing had come of that either, except more panic.
How many witnesses had offered tips which had to be checked out, wild rumors about crazy foreigners who muttered threats against prostitutes or staggered into pubs with blood on their hands? How many knives were found in the streets, only to be discarded as evidence because none of them matched medical testimony about the type of weapon used? How many false leads had he pursued? How many orders had he given to question local residents, search the premises of crowded doss-houses and deserted buildings?
Police procedure — what a farce! The whole system was hopelessly out-of-date. No wonder the murderer had slipped through their fingers. And speaking of fingers, why didn’t they adopt this Frenchie’s — Adolphe Bertillion’s — new system of fingerprinting every suspect? A chap named Spearman had been trying to interest the Home Office in the idea, but of course nobody listened. All they did was keep lists of convicted criminals. Much good that was, with the files a bloody shambles. The Home Office was nine months behind in forwarding them to Scotland Yard, and when they came the physical descriptions were no damned use to anyone. How did it help to read that a missing suspect had “a scar on his cheek”? You had to know what kind of a scar, and which cheek it was on. Could be his bloody arse-cheek for all the good it did.
He was tired, dead tired of the whole business, and that went for the meetings as well. Meetings like this one here in Robert Anderson’s office.
Abberline sighed and his stomach echoed agreement. He’d tried so long to see the new assistant commissioner, but now that he finally found himself in his presence it scarcely seemed worth the wait.
And Robert Anderson was tired too. He sat hunched over the desk, his face pale and his eyes staring blankly at the litter of documents heaped before him.
Only Sir Charles Warren maintained his customary vigor. Monocle glinting in the sunlight, he paced before the open window, a one-man parade.
“I tell you time is of the essence! The newspapers accuse us of incompetence, they call for a departmental investigation, they demand an inquiry in Parliament. Do you know what that means? It’s our blood they’re crying for now, not the killer’s!”
Anderson sighed. “We’re doing all we can. We’ve put out descriptions of the suspect and photographic reproductions of those letters. We’ve talked with scores of known prostitutes and informers. No possible source of information stands neglected. Police in other cities are cooperating. And we’ve requested the heads of every asylum in the country to furnish descriptions of violent patients who have been freed or escaped from custody at the time of the murders.”