Death at Whitechapel (18 page)

 

K
ate expected that her early years in New York would have prepared her for the streets of Whitechapel, but she was wrong. For one thing, her memories of sights and sounds and smells had been blessedly dulled by the passage of time. For another, the New York in which she had lived had seemed somehow hopeful, and if lives were bleak and possibilities limited, the dream of a brighter future was compelling, the desire to change station was strong.

But there was nothing hopeful about the streets of Whitechapel. The spiritless faces Kate saw as she and Jennie trudged down Commercial Street were marked by the desolate, dreary, hopeless business of surviving the present day, with no energy or will to dream of a future. The figures seemed to move as if through a fog, slow and sad.

Commercial Street slashed a long diagonal through Spitalfields from Shoreditch High Street to Whitechapel High Street. Christ Church loomed on the left, its massive bulk of Portland stone rising through the thickening mist like some monument to a forgotten god who offered only scant comfort to his followers. Attached to the church was a patch of bare dirt under a few trees, known locally as Itchy Park, owing to the many lice-infected, homeless people who passed their time there. Now, Kate saw, its benches were filled with sleeping figures clothed in rags, huddled under newspapers or pieces of cardboard, taking refuge from the ravages of the day in the solace of sleep.

“This is the street where Mary Kelly lived,” Kate said, pointing at a dirty sign that read Duval Street, directly across from the park, beside the Britannia Pub. “It was called Dorset Street then, but the notoriety was so great that the name was changed.”

A raucous group of factory girls in dark stuff dresses and white aprons charged past them, pushing and shoving and calling out insults to one another. Behind them sauntered a pair of women rather more gaily dressed—prostitutes, Kate surmised—their eyes boldly searching out men's faces, their lips suggestively pursed.

Jennie had pulled her veil across her face, and behind it her eyes were deeply shadowed. She fixed them on Kate, as if to avoid seeing anything else. “I still don't understand what you hope to learn in this awful place,” she said. “It all seems so grim and hopeless.”

Kate, her own spirit failing her, did not answer. What could she hope to learn, ten years after the murders? Even if there was information to be had, some truth to be discovered, why would anyone be willing to share it with
her?
And how could this effort throw any light on the more immediate and urgent question: who was blackmailing Jennie and how could he be made to stop?

But Kate had committed herself to this search, futile and perhaps purposeless as it might seem, and she was determined to go on with it. Without a word to Jennie, she turned into Duval Street, a mean, inhospitable, evil-looking place of lodging-houses and pubs, their grimy signboards thrusting out over the narrow thoroughfare, which was ankle-deep in dirt and mud. It was, Kate thought despairingly, like a street in hell.

Millers Court lay at the end of an arched, tunnel-like passage between Numbers 26 and 27 Dorset Street. Walking through the passageway was like walking through a sewer, Kate thought, as she held a handkerchief to her nose to filter the terrible stench. The court itself was a narrow paved yard littered with blowing papers and old rags, surrounded by six houses, their walls whitewashed up to the second story. The windows had once been painted green, and from one to another was stretched a clothesline, from which were hung a wet shirt and a pair of tar-smeared canvas trousers. A mangy dog lay sleeping in one corner, a half-naked runny-nosed child played with a pile of stones in another, and a pretty young woman, barely out of her teens, sat hunched in a doorway, her feet tucked under her ragged woolen skirt, her long black hair dirty and unkempt. A broken gin bottle lay in shards on the pavement beside her. She looked up at Kate. There was a large purple bruise on one cheekbone and her jaw looked swollen.

“We should like to speak to the landlady,” Kate said. “Can you tell us where to find her?”

“That would be Mrs. McCarthy,” the girl said shortly. She took a broken comb out of her pocket and began to tug it through her hair. “In the chandler's shop around the corner in Dorset Street.”

Kate looked at the girl in some surprise, for it was evident by her speech that she had been educated. “Thank you,” she said. She paused. “Have you lived here long? Do you live alone?”

“Long enough,” the girl said. She jumped up, and her dullness turned to an active hostility. “And I live with whomever I please,” she snapped. She looked Kate up and down, from her respectable bonnet to her respectable boots. “I don't need any missionaries telling me that I'm a sinner. I know what I am, and it's my business.”

Jennie drew herself up. “We're not missionaries,” she protested. “We're—”

“—looking for our cousin,” Kate interrupted hastily. “Her name was Mary Kelly. She died here ten years ago. We're hoping that someone will remember her.”

The girl leaned against the doorjamb, whatever energy the anger had sparked in her seeping away. “Well, it won't be me,” she said, sullenly lethargic. “Ten years ago, I was a schoolgirl in Stratford-Upon-Avon.” She turned her head to hide the bright glint of tears. “The shop is at Number 27. Back down the passageway and turn right.”

 

The chandler's shop was lined with shelves on which were displayed a variety of cheap wares—dishes and crockery, lamps, a few bolts of coarsely woven calico, flatirons, some ragged straw hats that looked as if they had been chewed by mice, an assortment of used bottles. A gray-haired, apple-cheeked woman sat in a rocking chair near the door, her lap filled with a piece of black woolen knitting to which she was energetically plying a pair of large steel needles. She wore men's brown boots, and a mammoth orange cat lay curled between her feet.

At the sight of Kate and Jennie, the woman put on a broad gap-toothed smile. “Arternoon, ladies,” she chirped. “An wot're ye lookin' fer t‘day? Sheets? Pillers? Got two new goosedown pillers, niver a 'ead laid on ‘em.” Her eyes glinted at the prospect of some fresh customer with a full purse. “Er maybe ye're arter a nice bit o' calico. I 'ave some fine Turkey red that's sure t' suit th' daintiest taste.”

The woman's voice was harsh with Cockney accents, but to Kate's ear, there was some Irish in it. She slipped into her own Irish brogue, with an inflection a bit broader than that she had used to speak with Mr. Lees.

“Faith, Mrs. McCarthy, it's yer help we've come fer, if ye'd be so kind. Me name is Kathryn Kelly an' this is me sister Charlotte. We're from—” She hesitated. Where might Mary Kelly's people have lived? She took a breath and named her own mother's home. “From Limerick, in the west o' Ireland.”

“From Limerick, ‘ey?” A brightness lit in the depths of Mrs. McCarthy's eyes, and she gave a sentimental sigh. “Ah, sweet Limerick.” She sat rocking for a moment, reflectively, then shook herself and shifted her feet. “But that wuz a long time ago, when I wuz a wee girl, an' I ain't laid eyes on Limerick fer years. Wot kind o' 'elp?” The orange cat, deposed from his place between the boots, blinked, sat up, and yawned.

Kate dropped her voice. “Our cousin Mary Kelly was murdered in Millers Court ten years ago, almost to the day. We're lookin' fer someone who might've known her. Her mother is dyin', ye see, an' we've been asked to find out, if we can, why she was killed.”

The rocking stopped. The ball of black worsted rolled out of Mrs. McCarthy's lap and bounced on the floor. The orange cat pounced swiftly upon it and began to bat it back and forth. With a muttered exclamation, the landlady retrieved the ball, kicked the cat, and resumed her chair. Her round face, which had before been blandly cheerful, was now dark with anger.

“Why she wuz killed?” she asked grimly. Her eyes narrowed. “Wot makes ye think there was a reason to it? The Ripper wuz mad, din't ye know? ‘Ee 'ad no reason, 'cept th' pore girl wuz a Unfortunate. Ye knew that, din't ye?”

Jennie leaned forward and said, with a soft lilt, “Mary's mother trusts that God in His infinite wisdom had a reason to take her dear daughter, but she longs to know what it was. Can't ye help her?”

“God in ‘Is wisdom?” cried the landlady. The phrase seemed to set her off, and she gave a wild, scornful laugh that sent the cat scurrying. “God in 'Is wisdom ‘lowed that girl an' the others t' be murdered, all fer th' sake of a secret marriage an' a babe!” She began to knit furiously, the needles clacking like a gaggle of geese. “Don't talk t' me 'bout God in 'Is wisdom, er I'll kick ye out with th' cat.”

“A marriage?” Kate asked, frowning. “A babe?”

Click click. “Aye, a babe!” Mrs. McCarthy snapped. “Ain't that wot I said?” Click click. “A lit‘le girl. Mary Kelly was 'er nanny.”

Her nanny? “Mrs. McCarthy,” Kate said, by now completely confused, “are we talking about the Mary Kelly who died in Millers Court?”

“‘Oo else?” Mrs. McCarthy's anger seemed to fuel her speech, for it came in short, hard bursts, punctuated by the clicking of her needles. “I've kept th' secret all these years becuz I knew 'twas dangerous t' tell it an' I was afeerd. But I woke up this very mornin' thinkin' on Mary an' Annie Chapman an' Elizabeth an' th' others, an' thinkin' how it wuz ten years gone an' time their story wuz told.”

Annie Chapman? She was the second of the Ripper's victims, Kate thought in surprise. And Elizabeth must be Elizabeth Stride, yet another. This woman had known them? Had known them
all?

“Time their story wuz told,” Mrs. McCarthy said again. Her hands had stopped, the needles had fallen silent, and she gazed straight before her, not as if she were looking out, but rather looking in, inside herself. “An' now ‘ere ye are,” she said in a quieter voice, “askin' 'bout Mary. So mebbee it's you I'm meant t' tell.”

“P‘rhaps that's the way of it, Mrs. McCarthy,” Kate said in an encouraging tone. “P'rhaps we were sent to hear it.”

So for the next few minutes, the two women listened as Mrs. McCarthy told what she knew. Mary Kelly was born in Limerick and moved to Wales as a child. She was the daughter of a collier; at sixteen, she was the wife of a collier; at eighteen, she was a collier's widow. Two years later she moved to London, and while searching for work in the East End, began sleeping in the Providence Row Night Refuge for Women. One of the Refuge's committee members, seeing that Mary was intelligent and ambitious for herself, found employment for her in a confectionery and tobacconist's shop in Cleveland Street. There, she was friendly with a young Roman Catholic woman named Annie Crook, who had become romantically involved with a certain man of title and high position.

In the natural course of the affair, Annie became pregnant. Within a few months, sometime in early 1885, Mary witnessed a wedding, held in Saint Saviour's chapel in Osnaburgh Street. The marriage was followed shortly by the birth of a little girl who was named Alice, after Annie's sister. Mary had no training as a nanny but she had helped to raise her younger brothers and sisters, so a friend of the baby's father arranged for her to move into the basement of Number 6 Cleveland Street with Annie, to assume the care of little Alice. Mrs. McCarthy herself had seen the child often, for Mary was encouraged to take the baby along to Dorset Street when she came to visit her friends there—visits that apparently took place when the child's father wished to stay with Annie. And Mrs. McCarthy had even accompanied Mary back to Cleveland Street several times, since she had a sister who kept a lodging house in Fitzroy Street, a block over.

This comfortable arrangement continued for some time, until one day, Mary returned with the child from an airing in Regent's Park to discover that Annie, upon the order of her husband's father, had been carried away and locked up for mad—and mad she was, indeed, when she was finally released. Mary, frightened out of her wits by what had happened, left Alice in the care of the man who had arranged her employment and fled to the anonymity of the East End. There she unhappily fell into the profession that so many other East End women came to, soliciting for customers in Leman Street or outside The Ten Bells in Commercial Street. But she was angry and very bitter about what had happened and could not keep from telling others about it, especially when (as it often occurred) she was drunk. Some time later, Mary and three of her friends—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, and Elizabeth Stride—devised a blackmail scheme. They wrote to the friend who had paid Mary's salary, threatening to reveal everything they knew about Annie, Alice, and Alice's father, unless they were paid for their silence.

“An' that wuz why they wuz killed,” Mrs. McCarthy said sadly, “one arter t'other. T' shut their mouths. T' make certain sure that th' marriage an' th' babe would stay a secret.”

“And what of Catherine Eddowes?” Kate asked.

Mrs. McCarthy sighed. “Poor Catherine was mistook for your cousin,” she said. “'Twas a sad error.”

Kate stared at her. “What an amazing story!” she said at last. “To think that all those lives were destroyed, and all for a secret marriage!”

Mrs. McCarthy gave a harsh, ironic laugh. “But 't'ain't no secret, not in the East End. Ever‘body knows why, an' wud like t' see the bloody coppers dangle at the end of a rope fer makin' out that Mary an' the others wuz killed becuz they wuz Unfortunates, or killed 'it-or-miss-like, by some crazy. But nobody'll talk, fer fear that somethin' bad'll 'appen to themselfs, like t' the women.”