City of Darkness (City of Mystery) (31 page)

“The body’s inside and the door is
barred, Sir,” Davy said, advancing toward Trevor as he alighted from the
carriage.  “We’re lucky to have even found this one, but a bobby saw blood on
the door frame while making rounds about an hour ago.  See, Sir.” Davy lifted
his lantern and gestured toward the door.  The bobby’s eyes had been sharp
indeed to catch this small smear of blood in the darkness, and Trevor nodded,
then put on his gloves and began to look around for something to break down the
door.

“There’s a pick-axe in the wagon,
Welles,” Abrams said in a low voice, bringing his face close to Trevor’s.  “But
I’ve looked through the window and it’s my advice that you have a shot of
brandy before we proceed.”  Trevor glanced at him with some surprise, for
Abrams had earned his first citation on a child-murder case and was not a man
to go to nerves easily.  “Don’t be a fool, Welles,” Abrams said, noticing his
hesitation.  “Have a drink first.  The girl will wait.”

Shrugging, Trevor accepted the
offered brandy and threw it down in one gulp, as Davy and Abrams also drank, a
shot Trevor suspected was their second of the morning, or possibly the third. 
Then they all stood back while the same bobby who had fetched him broke in the
flimsy door with two big throws of the axe.  Trevor, lantern aloft, led the way
into the house.

His eyes scanned the room for a body
and it took him a long slow look before he realized there was no body.  A woman
was literally scattered about the room in pieces.  Trevor raised his lantern
higher and, nearly screaming out as his eye caught his own fleeting image in a
broad glass, brought the light back to the mirror.  “Look there, a rope,” he
said with some confusion, for the Ripper had never strangled a victim or left
behind a weapon of any sort before.  He stepped closer to the mirror, and saw
that he was not gazing at a rope at all, but rather at a long length of human
intestines, neatly washed and draped along the top of the mirror.

“Oh, God, oh God, Sweet Mary,” Davy
moaned from a far corner for it had been his misfortune to find the girl’s
face, stretched across a bedside table like a discarded mask.  The skin had
been neatly peeled from the skull, which was nowhere in sight, with cleanly
sliced eyeholes and the mouth opening curved upward in a mocking mile.   How
long would it take to skin a woman, Trevor wondered?  Beside the face lay the
woman’s heart, cleaned and dried and resting just above her forehead.

The three men worked the rest of the
room swiftly, without speaking.  They located one leg, but never the other, and
several bodily organs they could not readily identify.  What tortures this
woman had gone through they tried not to consider, knowing that if they stopped
for even a second to view the scene in human terms, their nerve and objectivity
would shatter and they would be unable to go on.  Abrams found her amputated
breasts lying on a table as if they were plates, with knives and forks laid out
around them.

Dr. Phillips had arrived and stood
patiently in the doorway until they had finished, the sky behind his shoulders
brightening somewhat as he waited.  He clasped Trevor’s hands silently as the
men left the room so he and Severin could gather the pieces.  Trevor was
relieved to see the examination was proceeding in an orderly fashion; evidently
his paper on proper procedure had done some good, for the area was well roped
off and guarded.

“Care for some tea and rolls, Sir?”
one of the bobbies questioned cheerfully, as Trevor, Abrams and Davy made their
way into the street.  “If you’d fancy a bit of breakfast while the doctors
work, I could dash to the bakery on…” 

Abrams let out a shout of punchy
laughter and Trevor said “Gad, boy, we may never eat again after witnessing
such a sight.  But I’m sure you meant well, so don’t worry about it.”

The three of them walked mutely up
and down the alleyway, not talking and indeed trying not to think while they
waited.  Trevor, who had gone blessedly numb with shock, noted it was nearly
twenty minutes before Phillips emerged, with Severin and a bobby behind him
carrying one of the regulation pauper’s coffins which the city provided. 

“Frightful butchery,” Phillips
muttered.  “But a well-done job, Welles, mind you of that.  To dissect and skin
an adult human body must have taken him half the night, and working by
firelight as he did…”

“Firelight!” Trevor exclaimed.  “Of
course, you’re right.  Perhaps he tore his clothes carrying wood or something,
for if worked on her all night he must surely had to have kept a fire going for
hours on end.  May we reenter the room, doctor?”

“I’m finished,” Phillps said.  For
the record, the skull is missing, one leg and both kidneys.  How he managed to
walk the streets with such a collection of souvenirs, I shall leave to you to
decide.”

Trevor found the little room even
more depressing by daylight than it had been in the darkness.  The furnishings
consisted of one small cot, a rocking chair, a bureau, and a table.  The only
surprising piece was a bookcase and when he wandered over, he was even more
startled by the titles he found there.  Authors whom he must confess he had not
read since his days in school, his own taste running more to travelogues and
adventures.  But here was a prostitute evidently quite capable of reading
Milton.

“Interesting,” Abrams said from where
he was sorting through items on the table.  “And potentially very helpful.  She
seemed to keep records, and in a very neat hand, I might add.  No names, but
addresses and notes.  Her clients, I’d presume?  Regulars or men she might have
viewed as having the means to lift her out of this hovel?  But the killer was
so through in his desecration of the room.  He must have seen these papers. 
Why would he leave them behind?”

“The door was barred, Sir.  How did
he leave at all?” Davy asked.  Abrams pointed toward a high window, ajar and
leading to the alley.

“He’d have to be rather spry to climb
through that,” Davy said. “’Specially carrying what he had to carry.” 

“Mad Maudy has her alibi at last,”
Trevor said.

The bureau stood in one corner of the
room, and when Trevor opened it he found no clothes, but several pairs of
shoes, lined up in an orderly fashion and surprisingly clean.  The dead girl
had dainty feet.  Dainty feet, neat handwriting, and a knowledge of Milton.

“Trevor,” Davy said, dropping the
formality of titles in his excitement.  “It’s just as you suggested.  Evidently
the Ripper ran through the girl’s firewood soon enough and he began burning her
clothes to give himself enough light to perform his work.  See, here, looks
like the remains of women’s clothes.”

“That explains the empty bureau,”
Abrams said, bending to assist Davy as they began to retrieve pieces of cloth
from the grate with a poker.  “But look at the size of that skirt there.  It’s
nearly intact and it’s enormous.  Was the murdered girl stocky?”

“Hard to tell from the pieces what
size she was,” Davy said.  “I could ask some of the people outside.  Surely
some of them knew her and a right good crowd is gathering now.”

“Do that,” Trevor said.  “But judging
from her shoes I’d say she was a tiny thing and this skirt could fit me.”  To
illustrate his point he stood, holding the brown cloth skirt to his waist. 
Abrams grimaced in wry amusement at the sight of Trevor solemnly modeling the
frock, but Davy immediately caught his meaning.

“You’re saying that a man may have
dressed as a woman to gain entry, then after the killings he could have burned
his disguise and left in men’s clothes.  Quite a notion, Sir.”

“But not without holes,” Abrams
objected.  “First of all, there are women that stout, your friend Mad Maudy for
one.”

“She wouldn’t have burned her own
clothes,” Davy protested.  “And there’s no way she could have climbed through
that high window, no way at all.”

“Point taken,” Abrams agreed.  “We’ve
wondered all along why blood-stained clothes were never found and this may be
the answer.  If the killer were clever enough to dress in two layers and then
shuck and burn or discard the top layer after the murder was performed…”

“It is possible,” Trevor admitted,
carefully folding the skirt to take back with him to Scotland Yard.  “A man who
dresses as a woman, a woman who dresses as a man…no wonder the working girls
are terrified and don’t know whom to trust.  Look there, Abrams,” he added,
pointing toward the bookcase.  “She was rather the scholar, was she not?”

“Ah,” said Abrams, peering down at
the titles.  “It would seem that if the killer was so desperate for light he or
she or it would have burned the papers on the table and then these books, but
evidently our Ripper has a respect of literature.”  Abrams flipped open one of
the books and read from the flysheet.  “’To my daughters Mary and Emma Kelly,
from your loving father, John.’  Quite touching, isn’t it? She must have had
family who cared for her once.  By God, whatever is wrong, Welles, you look
like death.”

“I know a girl named Emma Kelly,” Trevor
mused.

“Who’s Emma Kelly?” Davy asked,
wrinkling his brow.  “Was she one of the girls we interviewed?  There were so
many.”

“No, no, this girl is not a
prostitute.  She lives in Mayfair where she is the companion of Geraldine
Bainbridge.  I’ve shown you the place.”

“I hardly think the two could be
connected,” Rayley said, trying to be reassuring for Trevor was now paler than
he had been all morning.  “Kelly is a common surname and for one sister to end
up in Mayfair and the other in Whitechapel…”

“Yes,” said Trevor, trying to steady
himself.  “And my Emma always said she had no family.”

“So there,” Abrams said, moving back
to the table.  “But, I saw something about….oh, dear.”

“What?” said Davy, for Trevor
appeared to be lost in thought.

“These papers.  Records, I
presumed.    But see this one, it reads 34 Kingsly Place.  That’s a Mayfair
address, isn’t it, Welles?”

“Dear God, that’s where Gerry lives! 
The girl must have been Emma’s sister!”

Trevor sank to the narrow bed, unmindful
of the bloodstains and suddenly too weak to stand.  “Easy man,” said Abrams,
dropping the paper and moving to his side.  “There’s more brandy out in the
wagon, Mabrey.  Pour him a big one.”

“I’m a failure,” said Trevor.  “I
have utterly failed in my mission.  Don’t you see?  Don’t you?”

“Come now, Welles, there were at
least four killings before you were even put on the case. Probably more, we
both know that,” Abrams said.   “You can’t hold yourself responsible for every
crime in the East End.”

“But I can’t even protect the families
of people I know!”  Trevor sprang to his feet, wrested his notebook from his
jacket pocket, and waved it in from of Rayley’s face.  “Do you wish to see a
joke, Detective?  Then feast your eyes on this.  It is my portable forensic
laboratory, holding all manner of nonsense which I’ve collected for nothing. 
For nothing!  No wonder the Ripper laughs at me!  Unraveling red fibers!  Plucking
hairs from corpses and pouring wax into a leg of mutton!  Delivering papers on
procedure to bobbies who are half-asleep!  What was the purpose?  I’m interviewing
whores while he becomes more audacious every day!  Here’s for all the good my
fibers have done me.” 

To Davy’s horror, Trevor opened the
notebook and began to shake all the bits of paper and painfully-assembled evidence
onto Mary Kelly’s dirt floor.  Davy lunged for Trevor, but Abrams got there
first, wrapping his thin arms around Trevor’s torso, holding him still until
the convulsions and shouting ceased.  Davy knelt and hastily scooped up the
contents of Trevor’s notebook, cramming them back inside, and staring up at his
superior with terrified eyes.

“There, get his evidence then get the
damn brandy,” Abrams barked, for it was taking all his strength to contain
Trevor.  “We’ll take him back to the Yard and he’ll be right as rain in an hour
or so.  The strain has just been too much.”  Davy nodded, heading toward the
door.  “And, lad,” Abrams called after him.  “No one is ever to know of this.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

2:50 PM

Davy spent the rest of the day along
the docks.  Despite the ghastly images of the morning, his mind kept going back
to the more mundane issue of the dates on which the murders had occurred.  The
first four – five if Trevor was correct about Martha Tabrum – had occurred in
rapid succession.  There had even been the sense of acceleration, of a killer
becoming either bolder or more desperate, a man whose appetite for violence was
growing with each subsequent crime.  And then, over five weeks of silence.  Had
the Ripper spent that time lying in wait?  Mocking them?  Lulling them into a
false sense of security so that this last killing would strike with the force
of lightning on a sunny day? 

Or….was the killer simply forced to
wait five weeks? 

Forced….perhaps because he was not in
London?

Davy had gone from one dockmaster to
another, trying to find a record of a ship that had been at sea for five
weeks.  Granted, this would not explain the arrival of the kidney in
mid-October, and this was a troubling piece of the puzzle.  But perhaps the
killer could have packed up the kidney and arranged to have it delivered at a
set date while he was at sea, and that would have been clever, would it not?