Anatomy of Evil (38 page)

“In Scottish courts, it would be considered not proven,” Barker agreed.

“Could you imagine the fury of the English public if Jack the Ripper walked out of the Old Bailey a free man?” Swanson asked.

“We cannot let that happen,” Frederick Abberline said. “Facts. Evidence. We need blood samples and a weapon. Perhaps another bit of torn apron. Kosminski is mad. Perhaps he has a box full of souvenirs under the floorboards of his room.”

I thought of the altar he had made from found objects.

“Are you saying I should go back into that room, sir?” I asked.

“Something should be done.”

“For now,” the Guv said, “let us agree to work together and to monitor both subjects very closely. If a chance avails itself, we shall try to get into Mr. Kosminski’s room again.”

Barker may have said “we,” but I knew better. When the time came it would be me in Kosminski’s charnal house, searching for evidence.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

October gave way to November. In Whitehall, people added long coats and scarves to their attire. In Whitechapel, they huddled in doorways out of the wind, and scurried to their destinations. Guy Fawkes Day was approaching, and Christmas was beginning its long but inevitable arrival.

We had received two presents already, in the persons of detectives Hoskins and Worth, of the CID. They arrived each night around ten and stayed until six in the morning. They watched Aaron Kosminski intently through the skylight and windows of the factory while Barker and I slept. They were quiet and professional. They brought sandwiches and a jug of coffee to get them through the night. We could not have performed our duties successfully without them.

One evening they had arrived as usual and we had bedded down for the night. I was still working at the mantle factory, trying to find a new way to break in to Aaron’s bedroom to search for evidence. The lamps were out, but a fire was making a feeble attempt to warm the room.

Barker’s paw of a hand was suddenly on my shoulder. He had lit a candle. I pushed myself up onto my elbows and shook my head to clear it.

“What has happened?” I asked.

“They have not seen Kosminski in an hour. I know there are portions of the room we cannot view, but he is constantly moving. At some point he should have passed under the skylight or by a window. He does not or cannot read and he slept through most of the day. I don’t think he’s on the premises.”

“How did he get out?” I asked, pulling on my shoes.

“If I knew the answer to that, lad, I would have enough evidence to arrest him.”

“It’s Mischief Night,” I pointed out.

“Did he seem excited when he returned from his evening walk?”

“He did,” I admitted. “He was agitated, and there was some color in his cheeks. He mumbled something to his brother about people preparing for the festivities, but of course, I could make no sense of it myself. Wolfe translated for me.”

“It bodes ill for the women of Whitechapel. Unfortunately, he could have left anytime during the past hour and might be anywhere within a mile.”

“Or he could be somewhere in the building, having one of his cataleptic fits.”

“Is that a risk you’re willing to take?” he asked.

“Not after what he did to Catherine Eddowes.”

The four of us hurried downstairs and into the street, making our way to where the revelers were gathering. We split up there. Nearby a church bell rang eleven times.

“Do you really think Aaron Kosminski is the Whitechapel Killer?” I asked.

Barker nodded. His hands were folded behind him and his head down watching the road ahead of him.

“You know how I feel about coincidence. There could be two lunatics strolling the East End at the moment. It is conceivable, but it is not likely. Not as likely as the possibility that they are one and the same.”

“I agree, and every murder is a short walk from the factory.”

We approached a bonfire at the corner of Osborn and Old Montague Street. Smoke rose from a fire there that had burned for hours and was being refueled with wood from fences. A Guy Fawkes dummy hung by the neck from a lamppost, swinging in the air. Most of the people there were drunk, but not in a cheerful way. It was a night with no real historical purpose anymore, save that these people trapped here needed to numb their minds to forget their horrible existence in these blighted streets.

“I don’t see him,” I said, after a few minutes.

“Nor do I, but he’s difficult to spot. He has a way of blending in with the background and seems to know these streets better than we do. He has squeezed between buildings I can’t fit through. He’s a scarecrow.”

We pushed along, looking right and left, until we found a second celebration several streets away. The Guy hanging from the night post, dangling over the fire, had a huge Hebrew nose. The crowd was shoving one another, trying to precipitate something.

“I don’t like this. This could become a riot very easily.”

“Keep looking,” the Guv said.

“He could be a mile away by now, or back safe and sound in his bed.”

“He could,” he admitted. “But I perceived a trifle more urgency this evening, or perhaps it was excitement. He seemed to be enjoying the spectacle.”

“Did you follow him openly?”

“No, I went to pains not to be seen. It caused some looks of concern, I can tell you. I had to show my badge to prove what I was about.”

A third location, outside a public house, was just breaking up. The fire was smoldering. It was windy and sparks were being snatched up from the embers and carried through the air. That’s just what we need, I told myself, a fire in the East End to seal the Ripper’s reign.

“I should have brought my coat,” I said. I’m awfully good at complaining if the situation requires it. “I know, keep looking.”

We turned and plunged into an alley.

“Did you hear something?” Barker suddenly asked. Our progress was halted momentarily. I stopped and listened. Nothing. Nothing. A sigh.

Barker began to trot. I felt the hackles rise on the back of my neck.

The next thing I knew, I was stepping into a puddle of watery blood, and Barker was bending over a figure leaning against a wall.

“The Ripper!” I said.

I looked over my employer’s broad shoulder. There was a young woman with a very pale face wrapped in a shawl.

“No, Thomas, she’s giving birth.”

“I’ll get a doctor and a hand litter,” I said, turning to leave.

“It’s too late for that,” he said. “The child’s head has already crowned.”

“I’ll get help, then. You can’t deliver a baby by yourself.”

“I’ve done it before. What’s your name, girl?”

“Svetlana,” the girl whispered.

“Where is your husband?”

“At sea.”

“We’ll make you as comfortable as we can, and then this baby will come.”

He ripped off his long coat and squeezed it between her and the wall. Her face went rigid as a spasm came over her.

“Thomas, I need a lantern and some clean water. I don’t care where you get it. Just get it.”

“Right,” I said.

I turned and ran. In the next street, I found the familiar emblem of the Frying Pan. I hurried inside.

“There’s a woman giving birth nearby,” I said. “I need a lantern and a bucket of water!”

The barman recognized me but was still reluctant to part with his property.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We have lamps, but we need them for our customers.”

I began putting pound notes on the counter. “Look, I’ll pay for them, then I’ll return them to you. You’ll come out ahead.”

“Beryl!” he bellowed to the woman in the back. “A bucket of water!”

“For what?” the cook asked, coming from the back.

“Someone’s having a baby!”

The old woman waddled out from the kitchen, her face red from the heat. She blew a white curl out of her eyes and looked at me suspiciously.

“We came up on a young woman in an alleyway, just a street away. I need water and a lantern.”

She didn’t say a word but went back into the kitchen. I heard water being pumped. In two minutes, she returned.

“Kitchen’s closed,” she announced to the barman. “You, show me where she is.”

She seized a lamp from one of the tables and motioned me out. I offered to carry the water, but she refused. I led her back to the alley and she held the lamp high in the air. I saw more than I bargained for. The baby’s head was out, and Barker was slowly turning the little body around.

“That’s it,” he said. “Now stop pushing. Stop! I want you to pant. Pant for me, Svetlana.”

By the light, I saw that the mother was young, still in her teens. It was possible she was unwed, but I wasn’t going to stop everything to find out.

“The doctor seems to have this well in hand,” the cook said, viewing things with a critical eye. “All over but the final shout, poor dear.”

“Do you know her? Does she live nearby?”

“Dunno. H’ain’t seen her before. Bad place for a birth, though, in a dark alley on Mischief Night. Baby musta been scared right out of her.”

“All right, Svetlana, you’re doing very well. Now, I need one more big push,” Barker said in a soothing voice. Ten minutes before, he was stalking a killer through the East End, and now he was acting a midwife. “Push!”

The young woman wailed and pushed and suddenly there was a sound in the alleyway, a small cry from the newest citizen of Whitechapel.

“That voice sounds strong enough,” the cook said, and she smiled for the first time since I’d met her. She took off her apron and wrapped the baby in it, while Cyrus Barker used his knife to cut the cord.

“We must send for a policeman and a doctor. May we bring them into your kitchen?”

The cook shook her head. “Her afterbirth is coming. I serve food in there. But there’s a sheltered courtyard right outside. We’ll make her comfortable there.”

She held the baby while we helped the mother out of the alley and across to the pub. The infant was making small mewling sounds in the cook’s brawny arms. Once the girl was seated on a bench by the back door, the afterbirth came. Barker removed and disposed of it with the same aplomb as he had the birth. Was this one of those abilities he expected an enquiry agent to learn? He washed the baby quickly despite her protests, then wrapped her in a new towel and gave her into the arms of her willing mother. Then he washed his hands in the bucket, soaking the blood out of his cuffs as best he could. Afterward, when a policeman had brought a litter and had taken the girl to the London Hospital, he had a smoke with his traveling pipe on a nearby bench. For once, he looked spent.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I demanded.

“In China. For months, I followed after my martial arts teacher, who was a doctor, acting as his assistant. I learned the rudiments of bone setting, stitching wounds, and of course, birthing. They’ve served me in good stead.”

“I was always herded from the room when my brothers and sisters came,” I said. “I never realized it was so painful and bloody.”

“‘In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,’” he quoted.

“Do you believe she has a husband at sea?”

Barker shrugged his shoulders. “That could go either way, I suppose. It’s out of my hands now. Let’s go back to our room. It must be nearing midnight.”

“No killing tonight.”

“It is early yet. They all happened in the early morning hours. But you have work in the morning.”

He rose and began to walk through what passes in Whitechapel for empty streets. Most of the revelers had gone home and the bonfires we passed were smoking ash. I was thinking to myself how nice my pillow would feel.

“I suppose there’s no way to patrol the East End so extensively that the killer could not strike,” I said.

“No, indeed. I don’t think all of the Metropolitan Police Force working together in Whitechapel would be enough. On the other hand, he has survived so far mostly due to chance. No one ever came upon him when he was murdering a woman, though several came upon the body soon afterward. They missed an encounter by minutes. It cannot last. He’ll be captured soon, if not by us, by the regular force.”

“Do you prefer that we catch him?” I asked.

“Oh, I suppose, but it matters little. It would mean trouble for us, newspaper reporters dogging our steps. The commissioner would not be happy.”

“No, I don’t believe he would.”

We finally reached our rooms and entered, climbing wearily up the stairs. Hoskins and Worth had returned and were keeping vigil again.

“Kosminski’s back,” Worth stated. “Perhaps he wasn’t gone to begin with.”

I was growing tired of sleeping rough. I wanted pillowcases and a proper nightshirt, or one of the new Indian pajama sleeping suits that our butler, Mac, fancied. Then I thought of the poor young girl who had just given birth on the cold, hard cobblestones of a bleak Whitechapel alley. Soon, I would be going back to middle-class Newington to my comfortable life. Where would she and her helpless newborn end up? Sitting down, I unlaced and pulled off my boots, then unbuttoned my braces. As humble as it was, the mattress and blanket was good enough for tonight. Barker blew out the candle he had just lit. I lay down on the bed, pulled the blanket around me, and settled my head on the pillow, when suddenly I screamed.

By the time the candle was lit again, I was standing fully on top of my mattress, my hand covered in blood.

“What?” I asked, my heart knocking my rib cage with every beat. “How did—”

“Where?” Barker demanded.

“Under the pillow.”

He came around the mattresses and when he reached my pillow, kicked it over. There was a dead rat there, a large one.

“It’s been cut open,” I said, trying to keep myself from being ill.

“More precisely,” the Guv said, looking closer by the light of the candle, “its throat has been cut and its viscera removed. It’s a message for you from the Whitechapel Killer, the real one. He knows who you are and what you are trying to do.”

“My word,” I said.

Barker gave me a grim stare. “At least we know what he was doing tonight.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT