Anatomy of Evil (23 page)

I reasoned if he could see in the dark with his smoky quartz spectacles, I could do so without. We began to search, beginning with the area around the body and moving out in every direction, including upward where blood might have sprayed upon a wall. At the Guv’s suggestion, I touched nothing, but made a notation in my book of anything that looked out of the ordinary. It was difficult and backbreaking, stooping to examine minutely every inch of the courtyard. My eyes began to blur from focusing intently and from lack of sleep. It was just a bit of ugly paving, with bits of broken brick and cobblestones and mud. Anything of value whatsoever, from bits of broken glass from ale bottles to the very night soil left behind by workhorses, would be collected and sold by someone locally to whoever could turn a profit on it. When one came to think of it, it was efficient. Everything was used, and everyone employed collecting it or coming up with ways to benefit. The night soil would fertilize someone’s garden in Kent, and the broken green glass would end its days in a child’s kaleidoscope in Poplar.

“Sir!” I called out a half hour later to my employer, who was on the other side of the court. “I found something!”

He came trotting over, as did some of the constables who were searching nearby. They leaned over my shoulder, as I kneeled on the small grate of the sewer. One shone his regulation bull’s-eye on what I was pointing to.

“Some sort of stalk?” Barker asked.

“A grape stalk,” I said. “And still green. Who could afford grapes in Whitechapel? I doubt anyone even sells such a luxury in this district. Perhaps it was brought as a favor.”

“Who would buy a favor for a common streetwalker?” a voice asked behind us. It was Abberline, who had arrived from the station on Dutton Road.

“Someone who doesn’t know the ways here,” my employer answered.

“Like a rich man with money for fresh fruit in September.”

“Why would such a man need to come all the way to Whitechapel when the unfortunates in the West End are younger and more attractive?”

“Because they don’t fight back so hard here when you slit their throats, and cut out their privates for souvenirs,” Abberline said. “They are beaten down by life, not like some young chippy who takes offense when you start waving a knife in her face.”

“So, you’re convinced the killer is from the West End,” Barker said.

“I’m not convinced of anything,” the inspector replied. “And won’t be until I’ve got him jugged like a hare. Then you can ask him all the questions you like, Inspector Barker.”

The way he said the word, I suspected he thought the Guv was nothing of the kind. He also wanted us to know that he considered the case his, being in his jurisdiction, and while he might be polite enough to allow us to help him, that only went so far, and not a step further.

“Why don’t you hand that bit of evidence over to me?” Abberline asked me, as if it was really a question. I looked over at my employer for confirmation, not that I should give it to the inspector, for obviously it belonged to him, but that I should touch the thing at all, since we had been ordered not to. Gingerly, I picked up the fragile stalk with a handkerchief and extended it toward Abberline. Both were snatched from my hand.

“This is all you have to show so far, a stalk of grapes?”

“I found it on the cobblestones.”

“Do you deduce the Ripper stopped for a nosh before cutting up his victim?”

“This one was not cut up, as you say,” Barker stated. “She was murdered with one slash and then left.”

That said, there was little to discover now that the grape stalk had been found. I examined the long slick of blood but found no foreign matter in it. Barker came up beside me.

We crossed the courtyard and approached the inspector, who had a dyspeptic look on his face.

“There is nothing more, Inspector,” the Guv said, not adding undue stress on the last word as Abberline had done to Barker. “Dutfield’s Yard has been swept thoroughly.”

Just then a constable came running up so swiftly that he skittered on the traffic-polished cobblestones and fell. He was one of the younger ones, like me, really, the kind that would be used for messenger work. He was back on his feet in a trice and running toward the inspector as fast as he could.

“What is it, Parker?” Abberline demanded. “What has happened?”

“Another one, sir!” the constable cried. “Two in one night!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Another one. My mind could not take it in. Was there more than one Ripper? A gang of them, perhaps? How many unfortunates would be found before the day dawned? I have rarely seen Barker stunned by anything, but he was stunned now. Jaw-dropping, pale-skinned, eyebrows-rising-to-the-hairline stunned.

“Where?” Abberline shouted.

“Mitre Square, sir,” the constable answered. “It’s horrible. He—he carved up her face and carried away her vitals entire. I never seen anything like it!”

“I don’t need your opinions, Constable!” Abberline barked. “Lead the way now!”

The young fellow stepped back and raised an arm as if to ward off an attack. I suspected his nerve had been shattered by what he’d seen. Police constables learn to see a great deal without displaying emotion, but apparently, this was something else again.

Mitre Square was several streets to the east. Abberline had no vehicle at his disposal, and at five in the morning, there were no hansoms available in Commercial Road. We were afoot, but if there is one thing men in our profession learn to do it is to walk long distances. I’m sure Abberline was accustomed to getting about his district
à
pied.
There is the steady plod, learned as a constable while walking one’s beat, and the trot, when an emergency was occurring. This was naturally the latter. Two murders in one night. One could barely take it in. Apparently, one had not been enough for this killer. Soon he would be killing in droves.

The Guv took running in stride. I did my best to keep up, but then my gait is not as long as his. My emotions were a mixture of anticipation and dread. Something had shocked the constable, had set him on edge, and I was anxious to see what it was and experience it for myself knowing full well there would be an emotional toll afterward.

I admit there is within me a flaw, a desire to see things that are terrible, such as railway or carriage accidents, to see how bad they can be. My senses want to be stimulated, shocked, and appalled, and then of course, my heart goes out to the victims and I want to help. I do not wish that such a fate would fall upon them, yet the next time I pass a carriage accident, I know I shall gawk again. I do not believe I am alone in this weakness. We want to see for ourselves the very worst: the compound fracture, the injured horse, the aftermath of a drunken brawl, or the politician that falls at the hand of an assassin, the street Arab run over by a cab, the cow dead on the tracks. These are things from which society has done its best to insulate us, and yet, safe in our protected sphere, we crane our necks searching for the blood.

Aye, the blood. We had just come from a woman whose life’s blood had spilled out across a courtyard in a stream. There must have been a bucketful, at least. I have heard that in the body, encased within the veins, the blood is not red, that only when it comes in contact with air does it turn that particular shade of crimson that causes our heart to beat in sympathy and alarm when it splashes on the pavement. Staring down at Elizabeth Stride’s corpse, I felt as if we all are merely vessels of blood, beakers, flagons, tankards. Walking wine glasses, fragile as a brandy snifter, so easily dashed to the ground, splashing our contents everywhere for all to see.

“Hurry, Thomas!” Barker called. “Don’t lag behind.”

Are we congratulating ourselves that it wasn’t us? Is that why we stare? Do we not know that the probability that we will be next improves with every attack? Are we glad to cheat Death and Injury again? Is it bravado on our part? Do we revel in a feeling of false invincibility? I ask this because we were all running, our faces flush with exertion, and I never felt more completely alive. Then we turned the corner into Mitre Square and came up to a large group of people milling about and there we met Death. In spite of everything, I was not prepared for it.

A woman lay there, like the others, on her back, with her hands down at her sides and her limbs splayed open, resting on her outer heels, but the Ripper had not spared this one. Great gobbets of flesh had been cut from her body as if she were a pig on a butcher’s block. It stained her petticoats and lay in puddles about her. Her throat had been cut and yet still these were not the worst things about this tragic death. The killer had seen fit, when going about his work, to entertain himself by carving shapes in her face. A vertical slash had been sliced in each eyeball, the ears had been nearly severed. An inverted
V
had been cut in the flesh of each cheek. Had she still been dying when her face was first incised with the blade which had killed three other women?

It was too much. That is the thing about terror. One reaches a point and it isn’t academic anymore. It seizes us in its skeletal claws and shakes us by the throat. I cried out involuntarily as I saw the poor drab laying there.

“Merciful heaven,” Abberline muttered under his breath. As for the constable who led us here, he stumbled to a nearby wall and became ill.

Barker squatted on his haunches and put a hand on the cooling ankle of the victim. I don’t know if there is a Baptist version of last rites, but he lowered his head and prayed over her body.

“Don’t touch her, sir,” a man said beside us. I turned and regarded the speaker. He was sketching the body in a notebook with colored pens, every horrible and disgusting detail. It seemed an invasion of the corpse’s privacy. I wanted to rip the notebook from his hand and toss him over my shoulder, using the Japanese method Barker had taught me. My employer stood again and regarded the artist.

“Surely this is not for the newspapers,” he said.

“No, sir,” the man said. “For Scotland Yard. The commissioner wants an exact representation, he said. Apparently, they bundled off the first two victims too quickly. Said he wanted things done thoroughly and scientifically.”

“As you were, then,” Barker said.

I returned to glaring at the unfortunate again. It was another woman in her forties, this one looking a trifle underfed. A bonnet had been pushed to the back of her head. Unlike the others, this poor woman might have been handsome for her age. Her hair was chestnut and her skin was fair. The blade had cut through her eyelids and cut off the tip of her nose, but the wounds had not bled. She had been disfigured after death. The Ripper, or whatever name the Guv would call him, had become a consummate professional now at cutting throats. In every case one slash had extinguished life, or at least I hoped it had.

The body had been illuminated by a full-sized oil lantern a constable had liberated from somewhere. Barker took it by the wire and moved to the other side, near the victim’s left hand. Objects that belonged to her had been spread out beside her, but not taken. There were coins, a comb, a pocket handkerchief, and a small envelope containing lozenges.

“Who spread them out like this?” he demanded. “Was it you?”

“No, the Ripper,” the artist replied.

The Guv sighed. I began to think that whether the killer had sent the red-inked letter to the newspapers or not, he was going to be known by that sobriquet forever.

“Interesting.”

“What is, sir?” I asked.

“How everything is spaced. There doesn’t appear to be any pattern, but he set everything out deliberately. I cannot fathom why he should care to examine the contents of her pockets.”

“Why should he want to carve up her face, for that matter?”

“What do you suppose he does with the parts he cuts out and takes away?” Abberline asked at my shoulder. He had an unsettling habit of moving without a sound, but perhaps my nerves were merely ajangle. “Some sort of trophy, perhaps? Does he preserve them in a jar?”

“He’s mad as a hatter,” I said.

“Or he wants us to think he is,” Abberline answered. “Who found this body?”

Immediately one of the constables came forward. He’d been combing the street for clues. “I did, sir. That is, I was notified where she was and was the first officer on the scene.”

“Who actually found her, then?”

“A couple of Jews. We questioned them and got their address before letting them go.”

“More Jews! Do they own the quarter from dusk to dawn? Do they wander about looking for bodies?”

“No, sir, but they work later hours and take shifts others will not work.”

“Was there any identification on this one?”

“No, sir, but I recognize her. She was just in the cells a few hours ago. If we go back, we can get her name.”

“She was at ‘H’ Division? On what charge?”

“Drunk and disorderly. She’d sobered up enough to go back on the street.”

“In other words, we sent this woman to her death. Why can’t this bastard move on to another district, like Poplar or Clerkenwell? What’s so bloody enticing about Whitechapel?”

Just then a medical examiner for Scotland Yard came toward us, armed with his satchel. He was a round-headed fellow with a short spade beard. He looked irritable at having been awakened to view a body in the middle of the night. Barker gave him the lantern and the surgeon looked at the body with distaste. Then he reached into his bag and took out a ruler to measure the length of the cut. I preferred not to watch this, unless I was ordered to. Barker and I stepped away and gave him room.

“Does he work in pitch darkness or did he bring his own lantern?” my employer asked.

I knew he was not referring to the medical examiner. He was still trying to figure out the modus operandi of the killer.

“There haven’t been any spent vestas nearby or any drops of dried paraffin,” I remarked. “It’s like he can see in the dark.”

“Pray don’t give him demonic powers,” the Guv said. “We have enough work to do tracking him without that.”

Somebody suddenly cleared their throat rather loudly. I looked up from the body to see a phalanx of constables coming forward, led by an officer with elegant side whiskers and a waxed black mustache.