“A part hidden in most people. In me, she comes to the surface now and again and takes control.” She motioned with a lift of her chin toward the sleeping Firebaugh. “He gave me the treatment.”
“The treatment? Of what kind?”
“In the asylum. Where he brought me when he took me out of prison. He gave me the drug treatment to keep Lizzie quiet, but it didn’t work the way he wished. Or perhaps it did, because I believe he enjoyed the fact that once Samson took me out I would have to keep taking the drug or she would come out when she was least expected. And Samson paid quite a bit for that drug.”
“I see.” Matthew also saw how Lash must’ve decided on Firebaugh to be involved in this affair. “But…the drug. How often do you take it?”
“I drink it twice a day,” she said. “I took it early this morning, just before I let you through the door. My next sip would be due around six o’clock in the evening. It remains to be seen if I’ll get it or not.”
“It helps you keep her at bay?”
She smiled, showing her teeth. “She is never at bay. She only chooses sometimes to be quiet, and to wait. With the drug, she is put back into her bottle after a killing or two, which she needs as others need air to breathe. Without the drug…well, I don’t dare think, because it’s been so long since she’s been…” She paused, finding the word. “Unchained,” she said.
“Hm,” said Matthew, who felt rather uneasy along the spine with this young woman so near to him, Black-Eyed Broodie or not. He shifted uneasily in his seat, and Elizabeth Mulloy gave a soft laugh.
“Fear,” she said. “It tingles the back of my neck.” She leaned forward. Matthew saw that her brown eyes seemed to have gotten darker and there were cinders of red in them, just like Cardinal Black’s. “We have time, dear brother,” she told him. “Dear brother Broodie. Though I think you have lived a life so different from mine that this brother can never fathom his sister. Yet we shall attempt it. Would you care to hear my story?”
Matthew’s first response would be No, prefaced by the word Hell. But he thought better of it, for it appeared his sister wished to tell the tale, and as they were travelling in the same direction for any number of hours it might be wise to listen, and heed the warning that was sure to be in it.
Thus Matthew settled back in his seat, as the coach’s wheels crunched along the snowcast road and the wind made little whines and shrieks past the portholes. She gave him a smile that was not really a smile but more of a grimace, like she was about to open a door that led to a chamber where grotesque figures of the damned danced and capered at a party far beyond Matthew’s understanding of good and evil.
Her smile faded. Her face became a blank, and though she was still a lovely young woman Matthew thought there was something horrific in that empty stare, and he wished to look away but he could not, for he had an inkling that this was part of how she lured men into alleys and tore them to pieces: she looked so lost, so innocent, so needful of a guiding hand.
“I will begin,” she told him, and the Spitalfields Murderess opened that dreadful door to the party.
twenty-six.
The first one I killed, she said, bore a remarkable resemblance to the man who murdered the only mother I ever knew and raped me at the age of ten.
But…I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me go back a distance.
What are you before you’re born? I ask myself that question, and there is no answer. But is there something in you, even as a seed before birth, that might someday catch fire depending on the circumstances? Something that might, once begun, become a driving need in a person as much as the need for food and water? I suppose, Matthew, that I am touching on facets of good and evil that no one can fully understand.
Am I evil?
I’ll let you decide.
I was given up as a baby to an orphanage in Spitalfields, so perhaps it was only natural that I return there. I did not know my mother or father. I received my name of Elizabeth from the first woman who found me wrapped in a blanket in their barn. I simply recall growing up in the orphanage, surrounded by the others and with kindly people there to assist us. The games of children. I remember them well, and I think that was a happy time.
At the age of eight I was adopted by an older woman—she was in her late forties—and taken with her to the boarding house she ran in Walham Green, southwest of the city. Her name was Nora Mulloy, a widow of a few years, whose daughter by blood had married a tobacco merchant and moved with him to the colonies. I was to call her ‘Mum’, and I was pleased to do so.
Yes, Matthew, I did know love at one time in my life. And that was a wonderful time. The boarding house was kept spotlessly clean, my mum was a grand cook famous in the area for her soups and chowders, and we had quite a good business due to those qualities and the fact that our house stood near Sand’s End and the harbor there, so we had many travellers passing through.
In her youth Mum had been a street dancer with a group of other girls. She had never lost her flair. She always dressed well and wore an assortment of gloves such as those I have on now, and those I always wear. She taught me how to dance, how to express myself with the movements of legs, arms, head and hands. It was quite a gift she had. How flawlessly she could move, how effortlessly…but I can tell you that learning it takes a great deal of effort. She said I was born to the dance. In time I put on little shows for some of the boarders, with her playing the flute and sometimes the drum. The next year she proclaimed me ready for the public, as she called it, and she sent me out to dance at the harbor and give out broadsheets advertising our house. Oh, it was a harmless thing, Matthew…she always accompanied me and it was all good business…but how were she and I to know what it would soon attract?
Yes, what you’re thinking is correct. One morning a man came off a ship with a bag of his belongings and stood watching me dance. I remember his face very well, though at that moment it meant only that we might have a new boarder. It was later, during the thing that was to come, that his face was burned into my memory: A nose long and a shade crooked, as if broken more than once, a high forehead with many furrows, a thick chin adorned with a short brown beard, brown hair also cropped short and pale green eyes. It was only later, during the moment, that I thought they were the eyes of the cats that roamed the harbor creeping up on birds and mice and tearing them to shreds. And sometimes—ofttimes—those cats never ate what they killed. It was for the pleasure of the hunt. It was for the killing, and that was all.
This man’s name—or at least the name he put down on the ledger—was Broderick Robson. A false name? Yes. The constable who investigated the incident later learned the man had arrived from Newcastle on the ship the Broderick Robson. It was a fitting name, for he robbed both my mum and myself…she of her life, and me of everything but that…and I suppose, that too.
I will take a moment to think on some things. I do not like the cold, but I like the sound the wind makes. It’s almost like music, is it not?
So. This man Robson. He was in London for a week, he said. Here to see an attorney and settle a score. That was all he said and we knew better than to ask, for it seemed to be a private trouble. During that week we had three more boarders, but they stayed only a few nights and then they were off again. Robson kept to himself, took his meals in his room, went out walking at night and slept long past the breakfast hour. Then one afternoon he asked my mother if I might dance for him after his evening meal, in his room, for his entertainment. He said that was why he had come to our house, because of my dancing. Such a perfect little girl, he said. I brightened the world, he said, and the world needed brightening because it was such a dark place. He called me a little candle. I recall very sharply that he said that. Well, my mother agreed that I should dance for not only him but for Mister Patrick and Mister and Misses Carnahan who were staying there, and I should perform in the parlor that evening.
When the
appointed time came, all gathered but Robson. Mum went up to knock at his door, and she returned with an ashen face. I danced for the group, and later Mum said Robson did not answer the knock, but that she could hear him as if he were two persons, talking to each other. One was cursing in a brutal voice, and the other was sobbing. From that moment, Mum wanted me to stay far away from the man and she wished him to leave but he’d already paid for the week and he had two more nights.
In the room I had, which was just off my Mum’s chambers, I could hear Robson walking at night in his room. Back and forth and back and forth…the thudding of heavy boots upon the boards. Then stopping. Silence for several minutes. Then again…back and forth, as if he were walking the distance to London. Mum took him his meals on that last day and was told to leave them at the door. They went untouched.
What is it, Matthew, that makes a man an animal? What is it that makes the hidden beast rear up and strike out at the world?
Who can answer such questions? Certainly not my Mum or myself. Little did we know.
On the last night.
He was to leave the next morning. The Carnahans had departed that evening. We were alone in the house with Robson. It was raining. Late October. Raining steadily. In my room I heard him walking again. The sound of it had wakened me.
Then I heard him cry out. It was a cry unlike any noise I had ever heard, and it terrified me to my very soul. It was the noise of the beast emerging. Or rather the cry, possibly, of a man trying to keep the beast from coming out, and commanding it back to its cage.
But on this night…the last night…it would not obey, and it had become the master.
My Mum came into my room in her nightclothes, carrying a lantern. She said for me not to be afraid. She had heard the cry as well—how could she not have?—and she was going to have to go upstairs to knock at his door. She told me to stay in my room, and she told me to latch my door after she had gone.
I was ten years old, Matthew. Can you imagine the moment? Mum left with the lantern, I latched the door, I stood in the corner where I felt safe, and I prayed to God as I heard Mum climbing the stairs.
I heard her knock at his door.
‘Mister Robson!’ I heard her call. ‘Mister Robson, would you come to the door?’
Rain was beating at the window next to me. I heard voices. My Mum’s and…a voice I did not recognize. A low, harsh voice…I could not hear the words, but it was almost as if I could feel the entire house tremble.
Then…let me take a breath, if you please.
Then I heard a sound that could only have been a body falling to the floor. There was no scream, no cry for help. She was not given time. It came upon her so fast, she had no moment to defend herself. And who can defend against a razor, Matthew, when it comes at you without warning, and you are standing close enough to feel the other person’s breath on your face?
After the body fell, I heard the noise of…I can only describe it as pounding…a pounding…pounding. His boots upon her, as she lay in the hall. Pounding. It went on until it stopped.
‘Mum!’ I cried out. ‘Mum!’ And I crossed the room and reached for the door’s latch, and then I heard him coming down the stairs. My hand froze on the latch. He came down no longer as a guest, but as master of the house. He came down slowly, whistling a tune. An eerie sound, dissonant, discordant, disordered. A tune from the mind of the monster.
At last came the hand upon the door’s knob, turning it and turning it. And then followed the knock at the door.
‘Elizabeth?’ he whispered. And it was not fully the voice of Mister Robson. It was partly his, and partly some other voice that I can only say sounded harsh and bestial and…yes, I would say demonic. ‘Little candle,’ he said, ‘open the door and shine for me.’
You don’t have to go on, Matthew said.
Oh yes. Yes. Only partway out will not do…it has to be told all the way, as it happened. But thank you for your consideration.
I was not going to open that door. I was going to get out the window and run for help, because I knew my Mum…if she was not dead…she was not able to save me. And as I backed toward the window he kicked the door open and he came in with Mum’s lantern lifted high and blood on the razor and all over his shirt and his teeth bared. And his eyes…the cat eyes, the predator eyes…they glinted with pleasure in the light, for they had found a mouse to play with.
He put the lantern down very softly upon a table. Very softly. It hardly made a noise.
He put his hand in my hair. It was long then. Down over my shoulders. He put his hand in my hair, and I felt it tighten.
‘Please,’ I said. I do remember I said that. My sight was blurred. There were tears in my eyes, because I knew something terrible had happened, and something terrible was yet to happen.
He leaned down and he kissed my forehead. And then he drew the razor up and down each side of my face, as if sharpening it on a strop…but carefully, so no cutting was made. He whispered in my ear. ‘Dance for me,’ he said. ‘And smile, little candle. Smile!’
I could not move. My feet were rooted to the boards. He closed the razor and slid it into a pocket of his breeches. Then he began to clap his hands in a rhythm, while his grin showed his teeth and those pale green eyes glittered in the light.
I don’t remember starting to dance. I just recall moving…swaying…beginning to sob…and he said ‘No, no, don’t cry! Here, my love,’ he said, ‘let me dance with you.’
And there I was in that room with him, a room where I had always felt so safe and secure, and before me he was clapping his hands and moving forward to rub his body against mine…and when I moved back he moved forward again…and the next time I moved away from him he let out the kind of half-scream, half-bellow that I had heard from his room. His face…contorted in some kind of unknown agony, horrible to behold. He grabbed my hair with both hands and he flung me onto the bed, and then…well…then he was upon me.
Don’t, said Matthew.
Do you say that because you wish me not to recall this thing? Or because you wish not to hear it? But it is central to my story, Matthew, and it must be told.
He was upon me. Worse than the pain was a crushing sensation. All the breath smashed out of me. I thought I was about to die, because I couldn’t breathe. The pain…I was being torn. Torn apart, it seemed. And yes, perhaps I was and I would never again be whole. His hands…rough flesh, sharp nails. His mouth on me…his green cat eyes, staring down into my face with what later I realized was the perverted joy of the hunt.
Rain beating against the window. Late October. Did I say that already? Raining steadily. That last night my Mum was alive. That last night.
When he finished with me, he pulled his breeches up, took the lantern and left the room without a word or another glance. After he was finished, I was no longer there. I got out of bed and curled myself on the floor. I heard him walking in his room. Then silence. He had gone up to pack his bag, for his stay at the boarding house of Nora Mulloy and her adopted daughter Elizabeth was at an end. Later I heard him come down the stairs. I heard the front door open and shut. Then there was just the sound of the rain and the breath hissing between my teeth.
And do you know what I thought then? After all that…what I thought in my dazed ten-year-old brain was: that man must be crazy, to go out walking in this heavy rain.
It is a fact that people in their most dire situations think of the most inane things to shield their minds from shattering. Doctor Firebaugh told me that.
When I was sure that Robson was gone, I lit a candle and went upstairs.
What I saw in the hallway was the worst of it, Matthew.
The very worst.
I do think my mind shattered. I believe I felt it come apart like a house that had suffered too much shock in a storm…too much for the joints and the foundation to withstand. I felt my brain bleeding as it was torn a
sunder. My head and face became burning hot. I ran down the stairs and out into the rain screaming for help.
It seemed a very long time before anyone answered.
Well. Poor little girl is without a home now, and without a mum. Poor little girl witnessed a murder and was raped by a madman. But you know…poor little girl likely is not all blameless, they said. A cute little thing, dancing and prancing like that at the harbor to draw business in for the widow Mulloy. And no matter that the widow Mulloy was always there with her at the harbor…that pretty little poor little girl…her dancing drew the murderer in, and there you have it.
Spoken in the most fashionable of low and dirty dives, I later heard.
But the little girl must now return to an orphanage. And there I learned that a child who had been raped and overheard the most vile of murders was not quite suited for the stamp of quality, and certainly not the pretense of innocence. Especially since I carried a darkness within me from that time on. The others—the children and the ladies at the home—could sense it. I could no more play children’s games than fly to the moon on a hog’s back. If my mind had been shattered, it healed itself with crooked scars. I became as Robson was: alone in my flesh, carrying private torments I would show to no one. And the result was that on the days when people came from outside to view the orphans with intent to adopt, I was the one they could not bear to look at and rushed past. I was the dark blot on the white sheet of paper. I was the ugly scowl in the picture of smiles. I was thirty years old at the age of twelve.
I remember that I was chosen as a challenge by a well-meaning reverend and his wife. They returned me after almost two weeks. When he told me that God loved me and had a plan for my life I laughed in his face. And I called his wife a fat old cow, which she was, and threw a soup bowl through the window.
But let me move ahead two years. In that span of time I was released from the orphanage in the custody of a man who—honestly speaking—craved young girls. The ladies at the orphanage were glad to be rid of me, so what was the difference? And not only did this man crave young girls, but he craved using the whip on them. As he did to me. And then he revealed his nice little plan: for me to go out posing as a young innocent in the city’s parks and playgrounds, and to draw other young girls to him with the promise of sweets. I ran away from that house the very night, and then I was on the street.
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