City of Darkness (City of Mystery) (29 page)

“I disagree with Davy,” Trevor said
amiably.  “I think we’re looking for a West End gent who goes to the East End,
does his deeds, and then leaves.”

“How?” Abrams asked skeptically. 
“Does he walk up to the fountain on Merchant Street covered in blood and
casually hail a carriage?”

Trevor winced.  “Quite right.  That’s
the part I haven’t figured.”

“Should we show Detective Abrams the pictures
and the letters?” Davy prompted.

“Ah, the damned letters,” Trevor
said, reaching for another file.  “More than a dozen in total and I would venture
most of them are hoaxes.  The question is, which ones?  Some are quite polite
and measured, one a wild rant supposedly sent from hell, two are in rhyme….hard
to picture them all being written by the same man.”

Abrams flipped through the letters,
his eyes scanning a phrase here and there.  “An educated man could pretend to
be ignorant,” he said.  “He could deliberately misspell words and use incorrect
grammar in an attempt to throw us off the scent.”  Abrams reddened as he noted
he’s used the word “us” instead of “you.”  Despite the plum of the Paris
assignment, he had not fully come to terms with the humiliation of being
removed from the case, and his hands almost trembled with the excitement of
actually touching the Ripper letters. “But an ignorant man or a person with
limited knowledge of English couldn’t write any better than they knew how, no
matter how hard they tried.”

“Which is precisely why I don’t think
they were all written by the same person,” Trevor said. “Now, for the
pictures.”

Abrams paused for a moment before
flipping the file open, his fingertips resting lightly on the cloth covering. 
Photographs disturbed him, for reasons that he could not say.  When Scotland
Yard had insisted each of their detectives submit his image to the black box,
Abrams had found that his heart was pounding as he waited in line for his
turn.  I’m as bad as those savages who fear the camera will steal their souls,
he thought, and the final product – the visage of a homely, bespectacled man,
whose left eye tended to drift ever so slightly toward his nose – had not
pleased him.  Abrams considered the recent mania for photographing the dead
even more macabre, although in the case of murder victims he supposed there was
an argument to be made for the practice. 

With a soft exhalation, Abrams opened
the folder.  The first picture was of Martha Tabram, proof that Welles had not
fully given up on the notion of including her in the list of victims.  Her face
was turned slightly to the left, mouth slack, as if she had been caught in the
act of snoring.  Mary Nichols had been photographed from an odd angle, as if
whoever had taken the picture had stood at her feet and gazed up at her.  Next
came Anne Chapman, her head also lolling to the side, and Elizabeth Stride, the
only one of the group whose photograph evidenced the oft-quoted claim that the
dead looked at peace.  He supposed it was because the Ripper didn’t have much
time with her.  Sad to consider that this were likely the only pictures ever
taken of these five women, the only way in which they would ever be remembered.

Catherine Eddowes would be the
worst.  He knew it and he paused again, pretending to study the face of
Elizabeth Stride but actually dreading the image which lay between it.  He did
not glance up, afraid he might see pity in the eyes of the other men who sat
around the table.  Finally, Abrams put aside the Stride picture and braced
himself for the brutalized body of Eddowes.

“My assistant closed the wounds,”
Phillips said, almost apologetically, and indeed Abrams could see a neat series
of stitches holding the lower half of the woman’s face to the upper.   The man
had clearly taken care in his task, and it was, he supposed, better than gazing
down into the gaping slashes the woman had borne on the night they found her. 
But the absent ears, flattened nose, and sutured mouth combined to make her look
subhuman, a cast aside toy.   The other victims had only had their faces
photographed as they lay clothed in their coffins, but Eddowes had been
photographed on the mortuary slab, completely naked, a Y-shaped incision
beginning at her shoulders and running the entire length of her torso.  With
her scarred, nippleless breasts and her abdomen gathered into the loose folds
of a woman who had clearly borne children, she looked far more vulnerable than
the others, the perfect example of the female form fallen to ruin. 

“Took him two hours,” Phillips said
vaguely.  “Not just to stitch the face, of course, but the whole body.” 

Abrams could think of no response. 
For some reason he could not stop staring at the woman’s hands, which lay
curled and empty at her sides. 

“The most difficult to behold,”
Trevor said quietly.

“Yes,” Abrams said, letting the file
fall closed again.  “Because she’s the one we could have prevented.”  His
voice, he was relieved to hear, was steady.  “I suppose you felt the need to
photograph….the full extent of her mutilations.”

“We didn’t do it as a gentleman’s
pleasure, Abrams, I assure you,” Phillips said drily.  

“This file is completely closed by
the Yard, Sir,” Davy said.  “Pictures won’t be released to the public for….what
did they say, Sir?”

“A hundred years,” Trevor said.  “By
then the answers will be so obvious that the detectives of 1988 will hold their
sides and laugh at us.  Consider us barbarians.” He pulled the file back and
stacked it with the others. “Learn everything you can, Abrams, from the most logical
methodologies the French have developed to the most ludicrous, because such is
the future of forensics.” 

“I will.  But I’m sorry I haven’t
been more help to you today.”

Trevor shrugged.  “It’s all right. 
According to Eatwell, these photographs and letters don’t belong in suspect
files, but rather in my final report.  He’s convinced that it’s over.  Five
weeks without a murder.”

“Five weeks, three days,” Davy said.

“Five weeks, three days,” Trevor
repeated.  “And Eatwell says that’s reason enough to consider it all behind
us.”

Abrams nodded.  “But I take it five
weeks and three days is not enough time to persuade you gentlemen that we’re in
the clear.”   He sat for a moment in silence.  “You still have to wonder, though,
don’t you?  I realize Jack doesn’t operate under the same rules of logic as the
rest of us but still….you have to wonder.”

“Abrams has a novelist’s turn of
mind,” Trevor said by means of explanation to Davy and Phillips.  “He once told
me the Ripper had a certain appeal for him, if you can feature that.”

“I feel it as well, Sir,” Davy said,
to Trevor’s great surprise. “Can’t stop thinking of him, can I, even on the
nights when it’s not my duty, even when I’m home with my mum and brothers. 
I’ll catch myself staring at something and wondering what old Jack might be
looking at, what it seems like to him.”

“Curiosity is natural,” Phillips said. 
“Inevitable, really.”

“Dear God,” Trevor said.   “It sounds
as if you all are professing sympathy for the man.  I would think when you look
at those pictures, of that final savaged body -”

Abrams held up a palm, shaking his
head with a chuckle.  “Calm yourself, Welles.  No one’s excusing him.  But it’s
the eternal mystery, is it not, why evil overrides one human heart and not the
next?  Are you honestly telling us that Jack’s never made his way into your
dreams?  That you’ve never wondered what happened to the bastard to make him
what he is?”

“Each man has his story, does he not,
Sirs?” Davy said.

Abrams nodded.  “He certainly does. 
Come on, Welles, stop staring down at that table.  Come out for a drink.”   

“Thank you for invitation,” Trevor
said stiffly.  “But I’ll be working late.  And no, to answer your question,
I’ve never wondered after Jack’s reasons for there are none, at least none that
the rational mind can bear.  Some people manage to endure the most wretched
losses with their sanity intact while others…others crack at the slightest
provocation.  It hardly falls within the description of my job to wonder why.”

“Indeed,” said Abrams, pushing to his
feet.  “Come Davy, the beers are all on my tab tonight.  Will you join us,
doctor?  Invite the boys in your lab?”  As the men scattered, gathering scarves
and gloves, Abrams put a hand on Trevor’s shoulder and gave it an awkward pat. 
“We’ll be at the Copper Dome if you change your mind.”

“Pointless to speculate on his
reasons…” Trevor said, tonelessly, still staring down at the table.  “A man
like me will never understand a man like him.”

Abrams shrugged.   “You’re the one
who’s always saying his success hinges on the fact he blends in.”

“Looks like us, maybe.  Doesn’t think
like us.”

“Welles,” Abrams said, picking up his
coat.  “I think thou dost protest too much.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Winter, 1884

It had all begun simply enough. 

He was a medical student.  They
called him promising.  Enough so that he had been invited to dine in the home
of one of his professors.  It was a rare honor, and – further luck- he had
found himself seated beside the professor’s daughter.  

He had saved his wages all summer
just to purchase a single proper jacket for university.  So of course he was
wearing it that evening.  He’d paid a barber for a shave, a trim of his
mustache, the scent of sandalwood that was rubbed into his neck.   He knew
these dinners must be tiresome for the girl, having to feign endless interest
in conversations with her father’s pet students.  But she had smiled at him. 
Laughed at his jokes.  And then, near the end of the meal, when they were
waiting for the cheese to be served, she had, very briefly, put her hand on his
arm.

A woman’s hand on a man’s arm.  These
things are the miracles of our lives, the small everyday miracles that might be
the result of mere chance or might be something more - an indication of fate,
the promise of something better.  He was only twenty, new to the city,
friendless and poor, so of course he would see his introduction to Katrina as
providence.  He had never known a woman who read books, who played the spinet,
whose hands were soft and free of cuts or burns.  The fact she would accept his
clumsy efforts at conversation, the way she favored him with a smile…Most
telling of all, the fact her father invited him back to dine the next Sunday.  
Who but an infidel could refute that this must all be the workings of a benevolent
God?

The other students teased him.  They
choked on their jealousy.  They had never seen Katrina, so they did not
understand the full extent to which fortune had smiled on him, but they
certainly did notice that the professor began to take a special interest in
this young man so recently come from the country.  The professor chose him for
the demonstrations and was not so rushed or impatient when he answered his
questions. 

So of course the young man could not
help but dream.  What would his career be like under the auspices of such a
father-in-law?  What would his marriage be like in the bed of a woman like
Katrina?  Imagining the answer to the first question made him arrogant,
unpopular among his peers.  Imagining the second drove him deep into the slums
of the city.

He wasn’t the only medical student to
visit the brothels.  Of course not.  They were as randy a bunch as any other
men their age, and the profession they’d chosen required lengthy study and
apprenticeship, meaning that it would be years before any of them could take a
wife.  Whores were as much a part of university life as books, and whenever his
footsteps would turn toward the shadowed side of the city, he felt no guilt. 
He had a favorite among the girls, and he considered the fact that she bore a
slight resemblance to Katrina to be a type of fidelity.  Someday there would be
a wife and a medical practice, a home with music and guests, perhaps even an
appointment to the university seat the professor would vacate with his eventual
retirement.  Until then there was Wednesday afternoons with this thin blonde
girl, who wore a Star of David around her neck but called herself by the
ludicrous name of Collette.  When he had asked her why, she had answered “It
sounds French.”   The pseudonym should have been a sign.  It should have shown
him that she too dreamt of something finer.   But the young man’s ambition was
so all-encompassing that it blinded him to ambition in anyone else.   

And so he had been stunned on the
morning he had opened the door of his rented room to find Collette - dressed
and standing, two conditions in which he had rarely seen her – weeping loudly
and proclaiming him to be the father of her unborn child.

There were probably dozens of men who
could claim this dubious honor, but the girl was insistent. She had counted. 
It was him.  

The very fact she had managed to
track him down there, in his rooming house, was frightening enough and he knew
he had been imprudently talkative in the rest periods between bouts on her
bed.  Bragging had become habituated behavior in him by this point, as natural
as breathing, and he had told the girl all about his favored status at the
university, how he had been invited to assist in any number of surgical
demonstrations while the other students had been able to do no more than
watch.  Kidneys were his specialty.  He could get one out in eight minutes,
utterly intact.  The girl nodded.  She had either been impressed or was
pretending to be.