by David Waine
CHAPTER 11
Wednesday, October 3rd, 1888
The twisted, grimy, cobbled streets of Whitechapel were deserted and wreathed in a lank chill fog from the nearby River Thames now that the final lingering echoes of summer had retreated south beyond the sea, and the city sagged into the dismal grip of a cold and damp autumn. Silence roamed the alleys now. Occasionally an unseen dog barked or a cat hissed, but human traffic virtually ceased after nightfall. The nameless terror that stalked those courts and struck without warning or mercy had swept them all but clear.
Even the district’s many taverns had lost their usual air of boisterous conviviality. Their windows still glowed with the flickering radiance of flaring gas mantles or the warm glimmer of candles, but raucous laughter could no longer be heard outside and there was no tuneless singing along to the thumping of a metallic piano, for the instrument had fallen silent and stood, forlorn and forgotten, in the corner. The Ten Bells wore as gloomy an air as any of its rival hostelries that night. The saloon bar was less full than usual, heads were bowed, words muttered and beer slurped surreptitiously. The traditional cloud of yellowish tobacco smoke was thinner than it used to be, and a creeping chill seemed to have stolen in from outside as a worried landlord polished glasses and replenished the occasional pint without a word, dropping the proffered coins into the till with a curt nod.
The bar may have been lightly patronised, but the snug was empty, and that was the reason for the sombre mood in the larger room. The snug was traditionally the preserve of the fairer sex, where they could sit and sip their gins while the menfolk swayed about on the sawdust-strewn floor next door. It had long been a base of operations for four particular women. Although they did no whoring on the premises, the initial verbal exchanges frequently occurred there, whereupon harlot and punter would leave separately to meet up in a dark spot a little later for the physical completion of their assignation.
None would be concluded that night for there was no female half of the agreement to conclude it. Three of the women, Polly Nichols, Dark Annie and Long Liz, were dead, butchered horribly. The fourth, Mary Jane Kelly, had disappeared, terrified for her life, and who could blame her?
Much of the muttered talk surrounded another woman. Catherine Eddowes’s body had been found within ninety minutes of Elizabeth Stride’s and in Mitre Square, more than a mile away. The infamous double act had elevated the Ripper’s reign of terror to an altogether new echelon of notoriety and, although none realised it at the time, secured his place in the annals of crime forever.
It was the addition of Eddowes to the other three that caused most of the discussion, however. She was not a regular associate of the four who had worked out of the snug, although they all knew her. The men knew her as well, not a few of them having known her on several occasions.
The consensus seemed to be that she was a case of mistaken identity. With Polly, Annie and Liz all disposed of, Mary Jane was the obvious next target. Why anyone should choose to kill these four pathetic trollops was anybody’s guess. There was no lack of them in the East End. Even someone who was down on whores, as the writer of that note, delivered to George Lusk along with half a kidney a few days before, had claimed to be, had a surfeit of choice. Lusk had recently formed a vigilante group to patrol the streets at night and help the police to make them safe for all women.
“D’yer think he thought he was getting Mary Jane?” asked a semi-inebriated fishmonger of a barely more sober butcher, his friend and drinking companion.
The butcher, a sometime client of both women, snorted into his beer and thought carefully before answering. “Catherine Eddowes, or Kate Kelly, or whatever else she called herself, claimed to be twenty-nine, was really more like forty-seven and looked sixty. Mary Jane says she's twenty-four and might be, lookin’ at her. How pissed and desperate do you have to be to mix them up?”
“To do two in one night like that, he can’t have been pissed at all,” observed the fishmonger. The butcher nodded, taking a further sip of his beer and wondering idly why each pint seemed to make him thirstier than the last.
“Mary Jane,” he mused fondly, remembering. “I haven’t done her since before this all began. Gawd, I miss her arse. Lovely soft and squeezy. So are her tits. She’s still got some juice in her. Wonder where she’s hidin’.”
As it happened, Mary Jane Kelly was not hiding. She was running, running until she felt her lungs would burst. She was fleeing, hurling herself blindly through the dank, clinging fog from alleyway to alleyway, court to court, sprinting through pools of misty light and oceans of darkness. Terrified tears streamed from her eyes and ran, almost horizontally, back to her ears before gravity asserted itself and they resumed their natural downward course.
A dark shadow pursued her: vague, indistinct, but massive, tireless and remorseless. Her legs, bereft of strength and on the verge of collapse, moved only because her panic willed them forward. On she ran, not caring of catching a toe in her petticoats or ripping her skirt. Her strength was giving out. She felt as if there was no blood left in her limbs to flow and she knew that they would collapse under her at any moment.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!” she screamed in her terror.
The voice of her nemesis boomed in her head. “Mary…”
She half-turned in her flight. The black shadow filled the court behind her, looming through the mist, surrounding her, enveloping her.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” she screamed through her ragged tears, dragging her agonised feet forward, no longer even looking where she was going.
Then the world exploded with light and her legs gave way altogether, collapsing beneath her as her body slid down the wet brick wall with which she had collided, coming to rest in a crumpled heap on the filthy cobbles at its base.
She did not know how long she lay there. A minute? An hour? Her eyes flickered open at last. The fog was thickening into a misty drizzle. Her clothes were soaking and filthy, her hand muddy from where she had reached out to break her fall. The shadow had gone. Gagging for breath, she felt the back of her head contact the unyielding brick wall that had felled her and she took a long gagging breath. The terrified tears still clung, gleaming, to her cheeks. She felt the slight tickle as they finally resumed their downward course to her chin.
A grubby pair of boots crunched to a stop before her. Panic again seized her as she fought to rise and launch herself back into full flight, but the voice that reached her ears was not the pounding knell of doom that spoke her name like a lover’s caress. It was clear and sympathetic.
“You all right, miss?”
Her back pressed to the wall, she clawed her way up to a standing position, one hand held out in front of her to ward off an attack. “Get away from me!” she croaked.
Now his hand was raised, but not aggressively. He was holding it out in a placatory manner. “Oy, hold it. Hold it a moment. I only asked.”
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed.
He held his arms away from his sides to indicate that he carried no weapon. “Course not. Honest. I won’t hurt you. I promise.”
Mary’s eyes focused properly for the first time. The man was young, not much more than her age and he was not dressed in the shabby rags of the destitute. Although his clothing was cheap and simple, it looked relatively clean. This was a working man. His voice, furthermore, bore none of the satanic quality of her personal demon.
“Who are you?” she asked in a shaking voice.
A quick smile spread across his face. He swept his small bowler hat from his head and gave her a brief bow. “I’m Joseph Barnet esquire, gentleman of this parish, and you look like you could do with a bit of help, Miss… er?”
“Mary Jane,” she answered automatically in a flat, expressionless voice.
“Mary Jane what?” The question was couched pleasantly enough. Although his face was silhouetted against the glow of a street lamp, she somehow sensed his smile.
She gulped, her heart still pounding, but she felt
she knew that he meant her no harm. He was certainly not the monster that had pursued her through the streets. Taking another ragged, sobbing breath, she told him her surname. “Kelly.”
The man who called himself Joseph Barnet approached, stopping directly in front of her. The ochre light of a nearby street lamp fell on his face, revealing it fully for the first time. He was round-faced with clean-shaven chin and short moustache. He was smiling. A crumb of comfort began to revive in her loins as the clinging terror started to loosen its grip. This was the face of an honest man.
“Well, Mary Jane Kelly, I’m about these streets most nights and I see ladies from time to time, but not many stuck down on the cobbles in tears and screaming.” Reaching up, he cupped her left cheek with his right hand and examined her face closely, brushing the tears to one side with his thumb. “Let’s have a look at you. Lor, you have had a fright, haven’t you. Don’t need to think hard to work out why these days, do I? Did yer think he was after yer?”
She nodded abruptly, the tears starting again. “He was,” she gulped.
He understood and waited for her convulsion to pass. “Did yer think I was him?”
She nodded again, a little shamefacedly this time. “Yes.”
Releasing her cheek, he transferred his gentle grip to her arm and began to steer her away from the wall, talking all the while. “Can’t say as I blame you. Can’t see your own feet in this fog. But it’s all right, ’cause I’m not. Matter of fact, it looks like it’s all over anyway and the streets are safe again, or as safe as they ever are round here. I’ve just heard that he’s been arrested. Bulletin’s been posted at Commercial Street. John Pizer, would you believe? John! It was his leather apron what they found, so it must be him.”
They were now walking slowly side by side. Mary Jane slipped her hand through his crooked elbow and he smiled at her for displaying such trust. It was a gesture she had done before with countless men before hoisting her skirts for a bit of business, but this time, somehow, it felt different.
“It’s not him,” she said at last.
He looked at her, surprised. “How do you know?”
“I know,” she replied grimly without looking back.
He accepted this without a word and they walked on in silence for a few paces. “Well, in a way, that’s good to hear,” he said at last. “I don’t know John well, but he always seemed a decent enough sort. Claims he lost his apron. Maybe he did. I wouldn’t like to think of him dying on the end of a rope.”
“Don’t worry,” she replied softly, “he won’t.”
They stopped and Joseph turned to her again, a serious look in his eyes. “Whether it’s him or not, you’re safe with me. I’m with the vigilantes. Mr. Lusk’s got all the able-bodied blokes he can find to patrol the streets at night, to make them safe for women. There’s not enough coppers, you see, so we help them out.”
The sarcasm rose to her throat before she could quell it. “So let’s be thankful for Mr. Lusk. Where would we be without him?”
Recognising the note in her voice, his eyebrows rose a little. “Be fair,” he said. “How many more murders might there have been without us?”
“None!” she replied with greater force than she intended, withdrawing her hand and turning to face him. The stress of her narrow escape had not yet dissipated itself fully. “The streets are safe for most women. Or as safe as they ever are, as you put it. You’re protecting them as don’t need it.” She removed her arm from his elbow.
Understanding her drift at last, he nodded slowly. “I get you. He only goes for, well, you know.”
She laughed harshly and ironically. “Oh, yes, I know all right. I know all about it.”
Taking her arm and slotting her hand back within the crook of his elbow, he urged her to walk with him. “So, you’re one of them, are you? One of the… er…”
A grim smile spread across her face as she described the desolation of her condition. “The ‘Unfortunate Class’ they call us, like they could care.” Stopping in her tracks, she turned to face him solemnly. “Yes, I am,” she said. “You look like a regular bloke so you should call it what it is, if you’re honest. I‘m not a respectable lady what you can rescue and carry off to your castle on a hill. I’m a whore, a trollop, a harlot. I’m the scum in the gutter and I’m no good for nothing save a quick good time. Fourpence in the hand, quick fumble against a wall and goodbye. There. That’s what I am and that’s what I always will be. I’m no good for you, Joseph Barnet, and I’m no good for anybody else neither, 'specially me. Spare your blushes and see if you want to protect me now. I’ll only bring you down ‘cause that’s all I’m good for. Or, if you’ve another mind, and you’re not him, I’m available. It’ll cost your fourpence. I’m short for me lodgings.”
He quelled her outburst with a gently raised hand and a soft word. “Hold it, Mary Jane. I haven’t come here to rip you up. Honestly. And I haven’t come for the other neither. I know what living is like round here. I’m not goin’ to blame you for what you are. Rich toffs don’t know what it’s like for poor folks, and they don’t care neither. But I do. I can help you. Please let me help you.”
“How?” she backed away from him slightly, wide-eyed. “What can you do?”
He shrugged, the simple gesture of a sincere man. “I can take you home and look after you. And, no, you don’t have to work for it. Not that way anyway. I can protect you.”
She still felt a stubborn kernel of mistrust within her breast, although it was struggling against a burgeoning desire to believe this ingenuous young man. “Why would you want to protect me? You know what I am. Don’t think I don’t know what ‘take you home’ means. I been took home many a time and I never stayed there more than an hour even once.”
“No, Mary Jane, you got me wrong,” he said earnestly. There was a depth of honesty in his eyes. “I’m involved now.” Reaching out to her, he took her hands gently in his. “I know what it’s like. I had a cousin on the streets. Not her fault. She didn’t want to do it. It was that or starve ‘cause nobody cared.”
She had not expected to be told that. Her voice was reduced to a whisper. “What happened?”
Joseph grimaced. The memory was painful. “It was years ago. I didn’t know nothing about it till it was too late, or I’d have done something.” He closed his eyes momentarily, remembering. “She got with child, and she tried to get rid of it by herself.”
He was silenced immediately by Mary Jane’s finger across his lips. “Don’t say any more,” she whimpered, “I know all that.”
Joseph shook himself, banishing the memory of his dead cousin to the back of his mind. “Anyway,” he continued, “my dad died before I was born. I never knew my mum. She did off soon after. My older sister tried the best she could, but she never had a chance. She was beaten half to death when I was twelve. I swore then to work at whatever I could to protect her. And I did it. I got regular employment and I got her work too. She’s married now and happy. That’s why I want to help you. I’ve seen what life is like for folks in the gutter and I’ll do anything I can to help yer rise out of it. Coming from where I do, I’m almost kin.”
His words had disarmed her. She knew that she had absolutely no reason to trust him, but she did nonetheless. His word was her only assurance that he was not the monster who sought her life, and yet there was something about him that told her that his heart was true. At first she could hardly believe her good fortune, but it was the concerned look in his eyes that finally convinced her. A faint, nervous smile opened on her lips. “Oh yes? Does that make you my big brother?”