What Alice Knew (12 page)

William recalled that Mrs. Lancaster, the medium, was married to someone in the foreign office; she too had tried to finger a Jewish subject, although there had also been that odd moment when she veered off from this line, almost, it seemed, against her will. He could not forget her insistence on the killer’s stained fingers.

His thoughts turned to the nude photograph of Polly Nichols. He remembered the odd expression on the face of the woman in that picture who would become Jack the Ripper’s first victim. He was now convinced, with Abberline and Mrs. Lancaster, that Polly
was
the first, not the second. Despite her nakedness, she had looked dignified, even proud, in the photograph, not the usual expression of a prostitute who sold her body for money. William sensed this piece was important, though he did not know why. Where was the photograph taken? Who had taken it? And how had it gotten into Benjamin Cohen’s shop?

“The picture of Polly Nichols—I want to study it,” he said to Abberline. “And the address of Benjamin Cohen. Could you please make it available to me?”

It seemed he would get his chance to visit the bookstalls of Whitechapel after all.

Alice was perusing the letters that William had handed over, jotting down occasional thoughts between dozing, when there was a knock at her door, and Archie peeked in, a parcel under his arm.

“Pardon any disturbing of you, mum, but a man was by from Mr. John Singing Sargent who said as how I should give it to you.”

Alice beckoned to the boy to approach her bed and took the parcel, which she supposed was the painting John had promised to brighten up. She must remember, she thought to herself, to refer to John in the future as “John
Singing
Sargent.”

“Sit here a moment, Archie,” she said to the boy, patting the bed, “and keep me company for a moment. I get lonesome sometimes, you know.”

The boy perched himself on the side of the bed. “I have some tricks for keepin’ the lonesomeness away if you wanna hear ’em, mum,” said Archie.

“Please,” said Alice.

“Well, when my mum would leave me alone for days and days, I would tell myself stories. I’d make as I had friends comin’ by and ud tell ’em the stories bit by bit, like in them
Arabian Nights
that the ol’ lady told me ’bout later. It passed the time. But I don’ suppose you’d need that, seein’ as how you have your books and newspapers, and your brothers too. That’s nice to have family.”

“Do you miss your mother and father?” asked Alice.

“Can’ say I miss what I never ’ad,” said the boy. “Not as I blame ’em, havin’ all the troubles they did; they coulden very well think on me. I kep’ track of ’em, though, ’specially my mum.” The boy’s face grew dark, and Alice suspected that he might blame himself for her death.

“What do you mean you kept track?”

“I were always good at followin’ people, without them knowing, that is. So I used to follow my mum when she went places. Not as she went out much, ’specially toward the end. But that day she did, an’ I followed ’er. She went to the church and lit a candle for me brother as died, and stayed there for a long time. It was the las’ thing she did afore she done away wi’ ’erself. I used to follow my dad too. Mostly ’e went to those places where they lie around with pipes lookin’ like they’re dead.”

“Opium dens,” said Alice matter-of-factly. “I’m told they can ease pain and misery, but at the cost of deadening the mind. You must never do that, Archie. We must bear whatever pain we have and keep our minds sharp.”

“And why’s that, mum?”

“Because our minds are the one thing we have that is truly ours—that no one can take from us. To be able to think is a rare and precious thing, to be protected, no matter what happens to us.”

“I can see that, mum.”

“So you’ve gotten along without parents,” said Alice. “You’re a strong boy.”

“It’s not as I diden wanna have ’em,” said the boy. “I saw other chaps whose mums worried ’bout whether they ’ad a hole in their trousers or a button gone. I used to say, ‘My mum’s gonna whup me for losing that there button,’ jus’ so it would look like someone cared as I lost it. But no one did.”

“Well, we care here,” said Alice. “And if you lose any buttons, you will have me to answer to. I hope you can begin to feel at home with us.”

“I do, mum. I feel I got a home now more swell than any a the rest of ’em. Sally, she’s like a sister, only stric’ like a mum. I likes it when she yells at me, which is jus’ as well, as she yells at me a lot.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” said Alice, feeling that she ought to have the boy leave the room before she burst into tears. “Tell Sally that she is to continue to yell. And now, I think, I’ll rest a bit. Please close the door quietly when you leave.”

After he had gone, Alice took Sargent’s parcel from the bed table, where she had placed it. Under the brown wrapping, the painting had been wrapped in newspaper. She carefully spread the paper out on the bed to reveal the picture. Sargent’s masterful rendering of the woman in the red cloak shimmered with new luster under the application of a fresh coat of varnish. She let her gaze rest on the painting for a few minutes, and then her attention wandered to the newspaper on which it lay. Her glance stopped with a jolt. “Of course,” she muttered excitedly to herself, her eyes fastened on the page. “Of course. I understand now!”

Two hours later, when the brothers arrived at Alice’s apartment in response to her message to come at once, they found her in bed nibbling on a brioche. Her eyes were very bright.

“You’re in time for tea—or rather coffee, since that’s what we’re having this afternoon. And you must try one of these,” she said, motioning to the basket of brioches next to a dish of fresh butter and a jar of preserves. “They’re as light as air, thanks to a recipe that Katherine got from Fanny Kemble, and that Fanny got from the divine Sarah Bernhardt. It’s a brioche with a dramatic genealogy.”

The brothers sat down at the little corner table and began eating the brioches and sipping the Moroccan coffee that Sally poured into the large mugs that had been given to Alice by her friend, Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Mrs. Ward had an idolatrous admiration for the late Dickens, and the mugs, which she liked to give as gifts, were painted with characters from Dickens’s novels. Henry found the whole thing very gauche (though perhaps he was jealous). He had at first refused to drink from a mug until Alice said that if he didn’t, it would make more work for Sally, at which he relented and took the one with the picture of Mr. Micawber on it.

They drank their coffee, while Alice kept silent as Henry maligned the mugs and William noted that strawberry preserves were better in America. Suddenly she burst out, unable to contain herself any longer. “I called you here on such short notice because I have an idea about the murders.”

The brothers looked at each other.

“We await illumination,” said William.

“We are all ears,” said Henry.

Alice ignored their facetious tone and continued excitedly, “It began with certain observations that I made while studying the letters. I examined them closely after that horrible Lancaster woman left and was struck, first, by the handwriting. We’ve already discussed the misspellings as exhibiting what William called ‘disingenuous illiteracy.’ The handwriting appears to show a similar tendency; it is artificially awkward.”

“Yes,” said William impatiently. “As I said, it’s clearly the work of someone trying to disguise his hand.”

“But it’s more than that!” exclaimed Alice. “It’s not the sort of handwriting in which the writer is simply trying to deceive. It suggests someone accustomed to using the pen in unorthodox and original ways. The writing is more graphic than it is orthographic, if you follow me.”

“Not really,” said Henry.

“Let me clarify, then, with something I discovered this afternoon. Look at that.” She pointed across the room, where Sargent’s painting had been hung back on the wall.

“One of John’s Venetian scenes,” noted William.

“Not among his best,” said Henry.

Alice ignored them and proceeded. “John took that painting home the other day because he said it looked dull and he wanted to revarnish it. When he sent it back, it was wrapped in newspaper. Some of the varnish dripped onto the paper. Look here.” She took a piece of newspaper from the bed table and indicated a few small shiny spots on the surface. “I sent Katherine to the Sargents’ to inquire about it. The substance is called megilp, a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine commonly used to varnish paintings. Now,” she said, taking one of the Ripper letters from her bed table with a flourish, “look at this!” She pointed to the spot on the page that they had noted before.

“They resemble each other,” acknowledged Henry.

“It’s a shiny, clear substance,” said William peevishly. “It could be anything.”

“I’ve had Katherine purchase a variety of gluing materials. Nothing except megilp dries this way. So the question is this: why would our writer have reason to employ megilp? This brings me to another observation. The reddish smudge on the other letter that you said yourself did not resemble dried blood. It does, however, resemble dried paint.” She took out a sheet of paper, on which there were multiple splotches in a variety of reddish hues. “While Katherine was at John’s, I asked her to have him put together a sample of some of his reds, which he did with his usual thoroughness. Kindly take a look. This one on the right, which John has marked ‘dark amber,’ is an excellent match. I will have to show him the smudge for verification, but it seems to me reasonable to assume that the smudge on the letter is paint.”

“Let me see that,” said William, grabbing the sample sheet. He had fleetingly considered that the smudge on the Ripper letter might be paint when he first saw it. He knew what dried paint looked like; he had been a painter, but he had instinctively pushed the idea out of his head because he had no wish to recall that period of his life. He knew the mind could work that way. Elements relating to one thing could slip, without one’s awareness, into affecting another.

“So the murderer is an artist,” ruminated Henry. “It would explain the fair Lancaster’s assertion that his fingers were stained!”

Alice waved her hand. The idea of giving credence to a spiritualist almost made her want to dismiss her theory.

“It would also explain this,” said William quietly, taking the photograph of Polly Nichols out of an envelope in his pocket.

Alice studied the picture a moment. “Where did it come from?” she asked.

“From the police. They found it in a book that a Jewish bookseller had for sale in his shop. It was probably delivered to him by one of his vendors. I will try to find out where he got it.”

“Please do,” said Alice. “There’s no mark of a photographer’s shop on the back. I suspect that it was taken by the murderer.”

William nodded. As soon as his sister had mentioned her theory, he realized that it could account for the pride on Polly Nichols’s face in the photograph. She was posing in the manner of a painter’s model and was proud to be using her body in the service of art.

He mused, “Mary Wells said Polly used to do something in the area that she thought was refined, but came back with her sweater misbuttoned.”

“She was posing for an artist who decided to kill her,” agreed Alice. “It explains the gashes under the eyes of Catherine Eddowes and the symmetrical gashes on the abdomens of the other women.”

“He was painting her body with a knife,” concluded William softly. The idea was grotesque but stunningly obvious. It amazed him that he had not made the connection before.

“Do you think all the women killed by Jack the Ripper were his models?” asked Henry.

“Not necessarily,” William responded quickly. “Polly could simply have set the acts in motion.” He realized that his sister’s revelation was compelling, not only because it fit with the pieces of evidence they had gathered, but also because it resolved his theory about the inner workings of perversion, the way it repeated itself in the form of a habit and linked to the instruments associated with the perpetrator’s vocation.

“If the murders are the work of an artist, what does that tell us?” asked Alice, as though she were quizzing a group of bright students.

“Artists are inclined to sign their work,” suggested Henry. “They crave recognition.”

“The letters reflect this,” she agreed.

“And every artist has a distinctive style,” William noted.

“So what is Jack the Ripper’s style?”

“Hardly traditional, I would say,” said William. “He’d be in the modern impressionist school.”

“But not one of the pretty impressionists,” qualified Alice. “Not lily pads and sunsets.”

“No,” agreed William. “His palette would be dark. We will have to ask John Sargent. He knows everyone.”

“Yes,” Henry added, bemused. “We can certainly trust John. His pictures are pretty, he loves his sister, and he is too fastidious to commit murder.”

“Though sisters may drive even the most fastidious man to murder,” William couldn’t resist noting.

“This is no time for jokes,” Alice intervened sternly. “This is an important discovery, and we must act on it, quickly, each of us according to our abilities.” She spoke with the authority of a commander laying out a plan of battle. “I will continue to study the evidence and consider how it may bring us closer to the murderer. William, you are to learn what you can from Scotland Yard and trace the source of Polly Nichols’s photograph. Henry, you must inventory the art world and consider who has the motive and opportunity to commit these crimes.”

“But Wilde’s dinner party is tonight,” complained Henry. He suddenly imagined being trundled off to thumb through the membership lists of the minor art clubs and having to dine late on Mrs. Smith’s unprepossessing fare.

Alice happily contradicted his assumption. “No need to miss your party,” she said. “I want you in society, mixing with the fashionable world, but alert, if you don’t mind my adding, which means indulging in less wine than you are probably used to.” She gave him a severe look and continued. “Wilde has a wide circle of friends and knows artists, high and low. Keep your eyes and ears open for anyone who seems suspicious. As a novelist, you have an instinct for the incongruous detail; bring this to bear now, where the stakes are the highest.”

Having spoken, she laid her head back on her pillow. The exertion of the past hour had taken its toll. “We are dealing with an artist of murder,” she murmured. “We must use our much vaunted intelligence and creative skill to catch him.”