What Alice Knew (2 page)

Henry opened his eyes with a start. He had dozed over his ices, and he now saw that the table had been cleared. A few disorderly souls were loitering in the corner of the room, but the other guests had already taken their leave and dispersed into the night.

He rose and made his way unsteadily to the side door. His stomach had begun to rumble loudly, making him eager to exit the premises as quickly as he could.

Gosse’s manservant opened the side door at Henry’s request (but wasn’t Gosse’s man portly, while this one was spindly and with an insinuating eye?).

“Pressed for time,” he muttered as he stumbled out. “Relay thanks to the host—or hostess.”

Did Gosse’s man wink at him? Servants were getting cheeky these days. His own, though not entirely reliable, were not cheeky—at least he didn’t think so.

He moved quickly out of sight of the smirking manservant. He would find a hansom cab to take him home, but first he would walk, to clear his mind and settle his stomach. He should never have eaten the oysters.

He began moving briskly, in itself a novelty, since he was generally slow and sedentary, at his desk writing or driving about with women, but pains had erupted in his stomach, inspiring an urge to quicken his pace.

What if he had to—? Why had he not remained inside, where he could have—?

Perhaps he would vomit. That would be preferable—the lesser of evils, so to speak. The reality of his physical being, that whole unseemly apparatus of human plumbing, pressed itself on his consciousness. He felt a piercing pain in his abdomen that put him in mind of the stabbings discussed over dinner. Those women in the East End, their bowels ripped open, were horrible to think about. Yet now he must think about bowels, as he felt the pain ripping him from the inside. Was all suffering the same, indigestion as intense as the cut of a knife? The body was the great leveler. A thought to be pondered, though not now.

He would have to rid himself of the contents of his stomach; the certainty of this gripped him. He looked around at the well-appointed houses and neatly swept stoops he was passing. If he were in Mayfair, he might find his way to St. James Park, where he could locate a spot behind the shrubbery to do his business. The prospect of relieving himself, unseemly though it was, made him walk faster, and soon he could see that he had left the manicured streets and entered a new and unfamiliar area.

There was no greenery here. He had not been in Mayfair, perhaps, but in Chelsea or Bloomsbury, which abutted less pleasant parts of the city. Indeed, he was walking on a street that had little to recommend it. The lamps were fewer, and the curbs were mostly piles of rubble. What he could see of the houses were low, mean structures, their shutters broken, with little show of light inside. There was more movement on the street, however, though not festive movement; figures skulked and jostled up against him. He could not make them out but did not like the look of them.

He became aware of foul odors emanating from the pavement. Garbage was strewn about, and he stumbled over trash, his foot landing squarely in a pile of offal. The stench wafted up to his nostrils and made his stomach turn over more violently. He realized, to his horror, that his bladder had leaked, and the front of his trousers was wet. Disgust at his own person took hold; he was at the mercy of his body. A greater awareness then gripped him: he was at the mercy of his surroundings as well. He glanced at the low buildings and skulking figures and then at the narrow, trash-strewn streets, hoping to hail a carriage, but no vehicle was in sight. He had always sought control, in his life and his writing, but here he was, suddenly alone in a strange neighborhood, his mind clouded by wine, the figures around him alien and threatening. The sense of exposure, the sort of quivering vulnerability that he had always sought to avoid, swept over him, causing him to shudder violently.“Fine gentleman on an errand,” he heard someone call out. “What’s yer hurry?”

He ought to slow down. He was drawing attention to himself, walking so fast. But he couldn’t. The stabs of pain in his abdomen were intense and the waves of nausea coming more quickly.

These people must hate him, he thought, lowering his head. Wasn’t he portly and prosperous looking? Why shouldn’t they want to rob him, or worse, take a knife and cut into his soft belly? What had they to lose? If only he felt more like himself, he could show his authority in his bearing and, if necessary, his speech; these people were cowed by authority. But in his present state, he could not walk properly or speak or even think about anything but the terrible uproar inside him.

“Don’t run away, Mister.” A woman’s face, bloated with drink and garishly painted, appeared in front of him. Despite the cold, she was wearing practically nothing, her breasts pushed up like mottled melons from a tattered corset. He tried to shove her aside, but she held tight to both his arms, and her face and body, rancid with the odor of sex and sweat, pressed up against him.

“No,” he muttered, “not interested.”

“I kin make you interested, sir; just you gi’ me a second.” She rubbed against him forcibly, and with the pressure on his belly, he felt a lurch of nausea that caused him to retch, spilling the contents of his stomach—oysters, sweetbreads, the lot of it—on to her breasts.

The woman jumped back with a shriek. “Pig! Filthy pig! Look what he done, puking his dinner on me! Fine gentleman, got me filthy with his puke!”

People on the street turned around to look. Henry tried to move away but felt the woman block his passage, continuing to scream and point, the colorful stew of his vomit dripping from her front.

A man with a cap pulled low over his ears appeared, elbowed the shrieking woman aside, grabbed Henry by the arm, and pushed him to the ground. He felt the mud and gravel against his cheek as he lay facedown on the pavement, waves of nausea surging through him. The man with the cap tried to get into his pockets, and instinctively, Henry clutched the watch chain that had been his father’s, holding it close to his body and refusing to be turned, as he continued to retch onto the pavement. His body was in such a state of upheaval, under assault from without and from within, that his only thought was that this, certainly, must be the end of his mortal life.

Out of nowhere, a voice cut through the din. He could not make out the words, but he could hear the manner of locution: a gentleman’s voice, refined but forceful. With it, the chaos in which he had been engulfed receded. The woman’s screaming ceased; the hands that had been pulling at his jacket loosened and let go. He was helped miraculously to his feet and given a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. The door of a hansom cab was opened; he was handed in and asked his address; money was passed to the driver.

The next thing he knew, he was in front of his flat in Kensington. The uproar in his bowels had begun to subside, and his head, though it ached badly, had begun to clear. He staggered from the carriage, the Good Samaritan’s handkerchief still clasped in his hand. Through the haze of his returning consciousness, he noted that it was of very good cambric and wafted a faint scent of lavender.

A young man made a clattering entrance into the small, airless room in Boylston Hall where Professor William James had just finished a lecture on English philosophy (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) at Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The young man’s tie was askew, and a light sweat had formed on his brow, evidence that he had been climbing up and down stairs looking for Professor James, whose academic interests had shifted so often over the past few years that no one seemed to know where in the Old Yard he could be found.

Now, having finally located the elusive professor, the young man thrust a missive into his hands and explained, between short breaths, that it had been delivered by special courier to the Office of the Dean that morning, where an immediate response was awaited. The letter, which William opened at once, given the importance that seemed to surround it, read as follows:

Office of the Commissioner

Metropolitan Police

Scotland Yard

4 Whitehall Place

October 1, 1888

Professor William James

Department of Philosophy

Harvard College

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Dear Sir:

It has come to our attention from a variety of reliable sources that you are engaged in important research in the new science of the mind. In light of this expertise, we find ourselves prompted to solicit your help. You have perhaps heard, through the reporting of your own newspapers and from your contacts abroad, of the cruel and repulsive Whitechapel murders, the devilish work of a creature (I hardly deem him a human being) who calls himself Jack the Ripper. Five murders of an especially ghastly and unusual sort have occurred to date, and there is every indication, according to our officers at Scotland Yard, that more such murders are likely to occur in the next several weeks. It therefore behooves us, in light of this possibility, to seek the aid of your scientific acumen, your training as a physician, and most significantly, your unique understanding of the human mind in its deviant manifestations, and request that you review the facts of this case with an eye to discerning what may have escaped the perception or eluded the understanding of our otherwise well trained and industrious investigators. We acknowledge that the failure on the part of our investigative body to resolve this case has caused some consternation among the general populace and has been a source of dismay to our governmental body at the highest levels. We feel, in short, that we must put aside any false pride, the excrescence of an undue nationalist sentiment, that might impede us from reaching across our national borders to a citizen of that young country which once fell under the beneficent domination of our crown.

We have enclosed relevant background material on the case for your perusal, along with a voucher for your passage on the Cunard Line, of which we sincerely hope you will avail yourself as soon as you receive this missive. Although we cannot reimburse you for your services to the degree that you no doubt richly deserve, please rest assured that the moral debt incurred by Her Majesty, by the prime minister, and by myself will, if you should be so gracious as to respond to our appeal, be great indeed.

I close in the hope that you may present yourself, as soon as it may be possible to effect a transatlantic voyage, at our offices in Scotland Yard, where you will be granted access to any and all information regarding this profoundly troubling and intractable case.

Yours sincerely,

Sir Charles Warren,

Metropolitan Commissioner of Police

Alice James sat propped up by two pillows in the large wooden bedstead in her flat on Bolton Street, Mayfair. An autumn breeze lifted the curtains of the windows behind the bed, sending a pleasant chill into the room. The Japanese lacquered lamp on the bed table was lit, and a fire was in the grate, so that the walls flickered with a soft, pink-tinged glow.

Alice was not a pretty woman, but her face exuded intelligence and a good deal of unsentimental kindness. It was a round face, with the high forehead and deep-set eyes of all the James children. But her eyes were brighter and more alert than those of her brothers, which tended to a vaguer, more distracted gaze.

She was the most Irish of the children and, since settling in London, had acquired the hint of a brogue, as though intent on making her loyalties clear at once. She also voiced these loyalties directly whenever she could: her admiration for Gladstone, her passionate support for Irish Home Rule, and her outrage at the condition of workhouses and orphanages. She read three newspapers a day, received a steady stream of visitors, and wrote frequent letters to Parliament and regular entries in her diary. The rest of her time was spent prostrate from a headache, a fainting spell, or an attack of nervous palpitations. And since these debilities struck unexpectedly, she had found it convenient, except on special occasions (a birthday dinner for her brother Henry, an exhibition of John Singer Sargent’s work) to remain in bed.

Today, though ensconced as usual in that place, she had gone to some trouble with her appearance. Her hair was neatly combed and shining from a special rinse that had been sent to her from Paris. She wore a crisply pressed nightgown with a bed jacket and night bonnet of white piqué. She was sitting up very straight against the pillows, her hands clasped tightly over the coverlet, as her eyes darted happily back and forth between the two visitors seated on either side of her bed.

On the right side, in an armchair angled to take in the view through the open windows, sat her brother Henry. There was a bandage affixed to the left side of his face, the result, he had explained brusquely, of an accident with his razor.

“Clumsy of you,” noted Alice.

“Quite,” said Henry.

Alice looked at him quizzically but said nothing. His uncharacteristic terseness suggested that there was more to the injury, but she knew to respect his privacy, as he knew to respect hers.

Ever since she had moved into this apartment on Bolton Street, a five-minute carriage ride from his rooms in Kensington, they had come to an excellent understanding of each other. As children, they were separated by an unbreachable wall of differing family loyalties. Alice had been assigned to her father and her oldest brother, William, and Henry had belonged to his mother and his aunt Kate. The division meant that they had viewed the world from different angles. As Henry observed, “It’s as though, as children, we saw things lit from only one side, and that now, being together, we can see them completely illuminated. It’s a special kind of binocular vision.”

“We should use our binocular vision to do some good,” Alice had noted, her sense of the suffering larger world being acute. “And think if we had William’s vision too, how well we would see. We could solve the deepest mysteries!”

Now, miracle of miracles, William was with them! He had telegraphed a few days earlier that he was making the crossing, without specifying why, and had burst in upon them that afternoon, greenish and disheveled from a bout of seasickness, but full of his usual nervous exuberance. After embracing Henry (with a concerned nod to the bandage and an amused pat to his brother’s waistline), he had pulled a chair up to the other side of Alice’s bed and examined her closely for a few moments. She was reminded that he had trained as a physician, though he had never formally practiced medicine.

“You look very well,” he finally concluded after studying her.

Alice laughed. “You should never tell a professional invalid she looks well. It’s the last thing she wants to hear.”

“But you do. You look the best I’ve seen you look since Father died.”

“It’s living near me,” Henry boasted.

“Or away from me,” noted William wryly.

Alice waved her hand, pleased to be fought over but not wanting to see her brothers begin their familiar sniping. “First,” she asserted, “I’m not well. Second, if I am, it’s not because of either of you; it’s the London air.”

“So American air isn’t good enough for you?” demanded William. “There’s nothing better than American air. It’s the best air in the world!”

“The problem,” Henry soberly addressed his brother, “is that American air is
too
good. Alice and I can’t take it. We need to breathe our air secondhand in the conservatory and the drawing room.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said William.

“Whether the air is good or bad is not a subject worth quarreling about,” interceded Alice. “I’m just glad you’ve come. I never feel entirely myself when I’m not with you both. The three of us are like an old plate that was broken and glued back together. You see the cracks and know you can’t use the plate, but when you see it on the shelf, it’s a joy to behold.”

“I like that.” Henry nodded.

William considered the metaphor. “I admit we’re all damaged—cracked, if you insist on putting it that way. We’ve all had our share of…” He paused, searching for the right words.

“Desperation, despair, and doom?” suggested Henry.

“Yes.” William nodded gravely. He had indeed had his share of these things—his long black moods when he couldn’t work or even read a book. There had been one episode of true madness, followed by the long years of wandering in the wilderness, fleeing from his first career as a painter, giving up on medicine. But in the end, he had found his way, turning his own warring impulses into a subject of study, transforming weakness into strength. He had married, had children, and settled into a productive life. Given his own success, he was convinced there was hope for others. The mind, no matter how wild or resistant, could be trained or willed or seduced into some sort of compliance.

“But there’s no reason for you to be in bed.” He completed his thought, peering down at his sister disapprovingly. “We’ve ruled out a physiological basis for your illness. It’s purely a case of mental adjustment. I’ve been developing ideas that might be useful to you, habits of thought—mental gymnastics, so to speak—that can alleviate the tendency toward pathological thinking and which, combined with diet and exercise—”

“It looks bad for his reputation that you won’t get well,” interrupted Henry. “He’s supposed to be an expert on the mind, but he can’t cure yours. It’s like the shoemaker’s children having no shoes.”

William ignored his brother’s remark and continued. “I see no reason why you should
resign
yourself.”

“I don’t
resign
myself,” said Alice impatiently. “I just don’t care to do mental gymnastics. I don’t have the stomach for it, or rather, the head. Besides, you both have your vocations; I won’t be cured of mine.”

“She has a point,” noted Henry. “She has everything she wants within reach; everyone comes to her. And she is free to say whatever she pleases, since an invalid is granted complete latitude. As I see it, she has arranged things beautifully.”

William glared at his brother. “It’s ridiculous for her to stay in bed all day; don’t try to make it sound creative. It may be fine for your novels, but in life we want people walking around.” He turned to his sister. “I have several ideas that may get you on your feet—”

“You will never get me on my feet.”

“You were fine after Mother died.”

“I had to take care of Father.”

“So you stay in bed because no one needs you to take care of them?”

“That would be too simple.”

“Henry needs you.”

“Henry has never needed anyone. He has his work; his characters are his family. The rest of the time, he has his admirers, mostly women of a certain age who serve very good dinners. As for you, William, you ceased to need me when you married your Alice.”

There was a momentary silence as the brothers exchanged glances. William had married an appropriate woman. Their mother had practically picked her out—she even had the same name as his sister. It was as close to marrying inside the family as one could get. And yet it wasn’t. Alice James had had her first breakdown soon after William’s marriage; Henry had fled to Europe; Wilky and Bob had begun their downward spiral into depression and alcoholism. But it wasn’t “William’s Alice” (as they referred to his wife inside the family) who had done it. It was
all
the things that had happened: the trauma of civil war, the need to find useful work, the simple fact of growing older. It was change itself that was to blame. The family was not a sturdy artifact, not even a simple breakable one like a plate. It was a supremely intricate and fragile structure, so intricate and so fragile that any change of pressure or temperature was bound to make it crack. Not that it was a bad thing. Henry, of all the children, saw this fact most clearly. If the family had not given him up, if the seismic shift had not happened, he would never have written a word, never have felt the need to create imaginary worlds to replace the world of his childhood.

Alice quickly moved to reassure William. “But you were right to marry. Sisters are fine for a while, but a man wants a wife and children. Except Henry, of course. He doesn’t go in for that sort of thing. And me.”

“You could have married,” noted William glumly. “You still could. There’s Norrie’s son; he always liked you.”

Alice snorted. “Norrie’s son! No one can stand him! Why is it people think women will share their beds with men they wouldn’t want to sit next to at dinner? But Norrie’s son aside, marriage holds no appeal for me. I wouldn’t marry if the man were…” She tried to think of someone who would be impressive to marry. “The Prince of Wales or even John Sargent, if he asked me. And John, if not the prince, is one of the pleasantest men I know.”

“John doesn’t go in for marriage either,” noted Henry.

“That’s true,” agreed Alice. “Nor his sister, which may be why we like them both so much. But I’m speaking hypothetically, to make the point that I am not interested in marriage or anything associated with a normal life in the world. Please don’t argue with me about it anymore.”

William knew from her tone that the subject was closed.

There was silence among them for a few moments as Alice arranged the pillows behind her head, pulled the coverlet up under her arms, and took a sip from a glass of port on her bed table. “Now,” she finally said, turning to William, her eyes growing brighter, “tell us why you are here. Your Royal Society lecture isn’t until January. Have you been invited to give another talk?”

“No.” He spoke carefully. “It’s a different kind of invitation. A very unusual one.”

“Tell us!” said Henry.

“Yes,” said Alice, “tell us!”

William reached into his vest pocket and extracted the letter from Police Commissioner Warren. He passed it to Alice. Henry shifted to the side of the bed and positioned himself so that he could peer at the letter over her shoulder.

They read for a few minutes in silence. “Extraordinary!” Henry finally exclaimed, adding, “I trust the fellow is more adept as a policeman than as a literary stylist.”

Alice, however, was not amused. She sat up very straight against her pillows and spoke quietly. “I’ve read about the Whitechapel murders and been dismayed by the lack of progress the police have made on the case. But now, finally, they have done something right; they have sent for you, William. It is a surprising step but an astute one, and I commend them for it. We can now stop these poor women from being killed.”

Henry and William glanced at each other and then exclaimed together, “
We?
”

“Yes.” She nodded. “It occurred to me, as I read William’s letter, that the solution to these horrific crimes requires the three of us. ‘Tri-ocular vision,’ I would call it.” She paused, as if working out an equation. “Henry, to observe the social world where I sense the murderer lurks and to plumb his friends and acquaintances for gossip. William, to study the physical evidence through his contact with the police and to supply psychological analysis where needed.”

“And
you
?” William asked in amused wonder. “What will
you
do?”

“Me?”
She leveled her intelligent gaze at her brothers. “I will review what you gather…and solve the case.”