The murder of Mary Jane Kelly transformed the city into a vast asylum echoing with the outcries of its inmates. Some cowered fearfully behind locked doors, others ran wild, but everywhere the crazed clamor rose — voices babbling terror, wailing protest, screaming vengeance. The hue and cry was hideous by day, but at night the whispers were worse. Whispers of shapes glimpsed in darkness, of fearsome forms lurking in the shadows, of unseen presences stalking and crouching; bloodstained creatures with bloodstained knives, waiting to strike again.
The keepers of the madhouse fared no better than their charges. They heard rumors but no facts. There were investigations but no findings. There were confessions and arrests and incarcerations but none stood the test of truth.
The press spread panic, the authorities compounded confusion, and Sir Charles Warren officially resigned.
And on November 12th the inquest was held.
Early that morning Mark found Dr. Trebor at his office in the hospital, slumped over the desk, face ashen and gray-green eyes glazed.
“I’m not going,” he murmured.
“Not going?” Mark stared at the haggard man.
“What a fool I was!” Trebor’s voice quavered. “Wasting time, watching and worrying about the fate of those who didn’t concern me. And all the while it was coming nearer and nearer, but I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see. Now it’s too late. She’s gone.”
Mark controlled his features but he couldn’t control his thoughts. Madness is contagious. London Bridge is falling down. They’ve all gone crazy — Trebor too.
He forced himself to speak. “You mustn’t blame yourself. If the police can’t cope, how can anyone come up with an answer? You couldn’t have prevented Mary Jane Kelly’s murder.”
“It’s not Kelly.” Trebor raised a creased slip of yellow paper from his desktop. “The telegram came this morning. My wife is dead.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”
“Nor did I.” Trebor rose slowly. “The next train’s at noon. I’ll be leaving shortly.”
“If there’s anything I can do—”
“Thanks. But don’t worry, I’ll manage.” Trebor consulted his watch. “Abberline said he’d be stopping by on his way to the inquest. I’d appreciate your telling him what happened.”
“Of course.” Mark hesitated. “But I may not go with him. As you say, what’s the use? There’s really nothing I can do.”
Trebor sighed. “Forget what I said just now. It was self-pity, not the voice of reason. I was wrong, Mark — the deaths of those women does concern me. And finding their murderer is a matter that concerns all of us. If there’s the faintest chance of helping, it mustn’t be ignored. When Abberline comes, promise me you’ll go with him.”
Mark promised, and he kept his word.
Later that morning, en route to Shoreditch Town Hall’s mortuary, Inspector Abberline brought him up to date on the events of the past few days.
“A fine kettle of fish,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the mess. When I got to Miller’s Court that morning the whole area was sealed off. Nobody’d been allowed to leave the premises. Inspectors, detectives, constabulary and four doctors stood outside the locked door to Kelly’s room for over two hours.”
“Why didn’t they break in?” Mark asked.
“Warren’s orders — his last before resigning. Nobody could enter until the bloodhounds arrived.”
“Not again?”
Abberline smiled sourly. “The damned fool still insisted they could track the murderer. What he didn’t bother to find out was that the dogs had been sent back to their owner weeks ago.
“Finally Superintendent Arnold had enough. He was too gutless to take responsibility for breaking down the door, but he ordered the windowpane removed. That’s how the photographer got in.”
Abberline answered Mark’s puzzled frown with a shrug. “Some idiot had sent him down to photograph the eyes of the corpse, on the theory that the image of the murderer was fixed on the victim’s retina.”
“That’s impossible,” Mark murmured. “Surely the doctors must have known—”
“The doctors weren’t much help either. After the pictures were taken, more orders came — this time from Anderson, as the new acting commissioner. The landlord, a fellow named McCarthy, got permission to break the door down with an axe. It was barricaded by a chest of drawers from inside. If you read the papers, you know what we found.”
Mark glanced at the inspector. “Was it really as bad as they said?”
Abberline nodded slowly. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and God willing, I’ll not see such a sight again. That’s when we ran into trouble with the medical men. They were all for examining the corpse, or what was left of it, and we wanted the room cleared for a search. We let them take the remains to Shoreditch mortuary in a carrier’s cart. They say it took a team of two surgeons and four assistants to reassemble the body and do an autopsy. The doctors hadn’t wanted the body removed to Shoreditch because the murder took place in Whitechapel. There was a row about that, but Superintendent Arnold insisted. He said he was following orders.”
“Whose?”
Abberline grimaced. “I wish I knew. I’ve got a bloody lot more questions, but damned few answers. Everything in that room needs explaining. There’d been a fierce fire in the grate, hot enough to burn away part of a teakettle. Kelly’s clothing was untouched, but other clothes had been burned — we found the wirework of a woman’s felt hat, a piece of velvet from a jacket, the prats of a skirt, and there must have been other things that were completely consumed. But why was this stuff burned? And why kindle a fire at all?”
“Perhaps the killer wanted light to work by,” Mark said.
“He didn’t need the grate for that. There was half a candle stuck in a broken wine glass on the table, but it hadn’t been used.”
Mark nodded. “I see your problem.”
“Only part of it,” Abberline told him. “What sticks in my craw is the door, locked and bolted from the inside, with the chest of drawers shoved up against it.”
“Isn’t there a simple answer to that?” Mark said. “Obviously the murderer escaped by climbing out the window, then pulled it down again.”
Abberline shrugged. “Nothing’s simple or obvious about this case. We learned Kelly had been living with a man named Barnett — just between us, the autopsy showed her to be three or four months pregnant, presumably by him, though the fetus is missing.”
“Missing?”
“Like Eddowes’ kidney,” Abberline murmured. “Kelly and her lover quarreled on October 30th — that’s when the glass in the window was broken.” He raised his hand to forestall the obvious query. “We’ve interrogated Barnett thoroughly and he’s not a suspect. He visited her several times afterward, even brought her some money. But both he and Kelly used the window to leave the room after bolting the door from the inside. And they got back in again by reaching through the broken glass and pulling the bolt back.
“You see, according to his statement, the key to the room had been missing for at least ten days before Kelly died.”
“Lost?” Mark asked.
“If so, then how could the door be locked from inside when we arrived?” Abberline paused. “The murderer used the window to escape, just as you said. But before he left he locked the door as well as bolted it. The man who killed Mary Jane Kelly is walking the streets somewhere right now — with the key to her room in his pocket.”
Mark frowned. “But where would he get hold of it in the first place?”
“That’s one of the things I’d dearly love to know. Perhaps the inquest may bring some evidence to light, but I doubt it.”
And at Shoreditch Town Hall, the doubts were confirmed.
When the doctors were sworn in, there was a squabble over the hearing. As Abberline had pointed out, the murder took place in Whitechapel, where Wynne Baxter was the coroner. But Dr. Roderick McDonald was very much in charge here. “Jurisdiction lies where the body lies, not where it was found,” he insisted.