From Whitechapel

by Clegg, Melanie

  ‘Tuppence for a suck,’ a tall dark man in a cloth cap hissed to me from the shadows as I walked past the Britannia, all shut up now with the lamps turned off for the night and with a couple of tramps trying to sleep in the doorway.

  ‘No chance,’ I said with a laugh, relieved to still have enough money left for my bed that night. I remembered with a pang that Emily had made me promise not to stay out all night and quickened my step as I crossed the now nearly empty Commercial Street where the usually daytime bustle had been replaced by a few carts making deliveries to the market, some stray tarts still grumpily touting for business outside Christ Church and the usual stream of weary eyed men heading off to work. She’d gone all jittery and nervous since Poll turned up dead and wouldn’t stay out much after night fall any more, convinced that there was a killer on the loose.

  ‘Em!’ I was just turning towards Thrawl Street when a voice called to me from in front of Christ Church. ‘Over here.’ I turned, half expecting to see Cora again but instead Annie stepped out of the gloom looking tired and in desperate need of a good wash.

  I gave a sigh and strolled over to her, thinking wistfully of my bed at Wilmott’s. Lousy and flea ridden though it may be, I still thought of it as mine and had even learned to take some small comfort from the almost companionable snores and sighs of the two other women who shared the room with me. ‘Alright, Annie,’ I said. ‘I was just on my way home.’

  ‘You stopped out late,’ she said with a laugh. ‘Marie full of gin and talking shit as usual then?’

  I grinned. ‘You could say that,’ I said cordially as we walked up the road a bit towards the corner of Hanbury Street.

  ‘Is that bloke of hers still living in cloud cuckoo land about where she gets her money and why McCarthy hasn’t kicked them out yet?’ she asked with a mean glint in her small eyes.

  I stopped dead. ‘Best not talk about that,’ I said coldly. ‘It’s none of our business what Marie gets up to.’

  Annie screwed up her face. ‘Suit yourself,’ she said glumly. ‘Although I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes nor hers neither when he finds out that she’s been telling him fairy tales. He’s a blethering idiot if he really believes that the likes of McCarthy lets them stay there out of the goodness of his heart.’ She spat on the pavement. ‘McCarthy’s sort don’t have a heart. He’s like all men - out for all he can get and a bit extra besides.’

  I turned to go. ‘Night, Annie.’ I left her on the corner and walked away ignoring her muttered ‘Stupid cow’ directed at my departing back. Something made me turn back though when I got to the other corner outside the Ten Bells and I saw Annie, all smiles now of course, talking to the man in the cloth cap who had offered me tuppence for a suck. ‘Good luck to her and him too, the poor bastard,’ I thought to myself with a grin as I headed towards Thrawl Street and bed.

  Something nagged at me though as I walked. Something about the man and the way he had loomed over Annie in the darkness, his hand gestures quick and impatient as he talked to her. I’d seen him before but where? No doubt I’d just passed him in the street or maybe he’d stayed at the same lodging house or perhaps he’d stood me a drink in the Britannia once upon a time, plenty of fellows had after all. I gave a shrug and tried to think about other things as I turned my feet towards Thrawl Street but the feeling of unease still lingered and in my mind’s eye I saw flashes of wet cobbles, of a pale out-flung hand splattered with blood and a man, a dark man in a cloth cap kneeling over a…

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  I heard the Christ Church clock chime half past five as I turned back and raced up Commercial Street to the corner of Hanbury Street, where I had last seen Annie and the dark man together. There was no one there, of course there wasn’t, and I couldn’t see her further down the street either nor anywhere on Commercial Street.

  I stumbled down Hanbury Street then, my heart thudding like crazy in my chest, as I looked from side to side, wondering where she had gone and not knowing what I planned to do should I find her. The dark and desolate road, lit only by a few street lamps that were too distantly placed from one another to help much and in fact made the street seem even darker in contrast, was empty with only a handful of upper storey windows lit up, probably due to market traders getting ready for the day ahead. I strained my ears as hard as I could as I walked stealthily along the pavement, listening out for any sound, however faint and feeble, that would lead me to Annie but all I could hear above my own echoing footsteps was the usual barking of dogs, crying children, the distant tooting of a train whistle and a couple of women having a blazing row in a house further down the road.

  I was almost at Brick Lane when I remembered Cathy telling me once that the local whores liked to use the yard behind number twenty nine to do their business, mainly because it was completely enclosed but also because the front door was left permanently unlocked due to the constant coming and going of the lodgers who lived in the house. ‘They don’t half give you an earful if they catch you back there though,’ she’d added ruefully, rubbing at the ghost of a bruise on her cheek bone.

  With a feeling of almost unbearable dread, I turned back to number twenty nine, a nondescript and dilapidated three storey house that formed part of a short terrace, and then took a deep wobbly breath before nervously pushing the front door, which stood slightly ajar as if in grotesque invitation, open.

  Holding my breath against the dank smell of damp walls and rancid cooking that assailed me and thinking that I was going to faint at any minute from fear, I walked on tiptoe through the small hallway and then down the gloomy narrow corridor that led straight out to the yard at the back of the house. ‘Annie?’ I whispered as I reached the door. My voice was dry and feeble with terror and the hairs on the back of my neck rose when for one awful moment I thought I could hear someone breathing somewhere in the dismal darkness behind me. ‘Oh, Annie, say something if you’re there.’

  My heart hammering in my ears, I stood on the top of the steps that descended down the yard and peered out into the murky night, straining my eyes as I peered into the far corners of the yard which had a privy and a work shed huddled together at the end. At first I could see nothing and gave a sigh of relief. She must have taken him somewhere else further down the street and was probably already on her way back to Dorset Street with fourpence in her pocket and a smug smile on her face.

  I turned to go and in that moment caught sight of something lying in the narrow recess between the steps that I stood on and the wooden fence that separated the yard from the one next door. Almost forgetting to be frightened, I peered down at what appeared to be a woman’s boot lying abandoned on the ground, only to realise a split second later that the boot was one of two lying together and that both were attached to a pair of podgy legs that were drawn up from the ground with the knees hanging open as if in parody of intercourse.

  The hammering in my head grew ever louder as my eyes followed the legs up to the body then staggered back against the door frame in shock and fright when I saw what he had done to her, hardly able to comprehend what I had just seen: the ripped and bleeding flesh where he had cut her open, the grey and blood smeared pile of what I thought must be her guts lying across her shoulder and the terrible gashes across her throat so deep that for one awful dizzying moment I thought that he had actually taken her head off.

  And above it all was Annie’s face, her eyes wide open and staring at nothing, her mouth slack and hanging open with the tongue just visible. There was a smear of fresh blood on her chin and there were new bruises on either side of her jaw where he must have grabbed her face as he slashed her throat.

  My legs trembled so hard that I could barely stay upright and I was about to give myself over to the darkness and the pounding in my head that threatened to overwhelm me when there was a whisper of something moving behind my back and a voice, a man’s voice that I had heard just once before and hoped never to hear again. ‘Remember me, Emma?’

  Chapter Twelve, Alice, Sept
ember 1888

  It was a beautiful morning, bright and fine and clear and I could feel my spirits lifting with every bump of the road as my father’s carriage bowled along busy Shoreditch High Street on its way to Whitechapel. I’d been going to the Whitechapel Women’s Mission on Lamb Street for over a fortnight now and had actually started looking forward to my days spent working alongside Miss Lawler. Certainly coming home exhausted but happy and full of purpose every evening was a marked and very pleasing contrast to what I now saw with some shame was a previously very indolent and directionless life.

  I looked out of the window as we turned on to Commercial Street, enjoying the familiar sight of children running along the pavements and local women drinking together outside the pubs, cackling over their pint glasses as they exchanged the morning’s gossip. Two weeks working in Whitechapel had shown me that there wasn’t really any point wasting my energy being shocked by the way people lived there, but that I should instead simply embrace them for the honest truth of what they were and focus on the positives about life in the East End such as the close knit relationships that people forged for themselves in those desolate, ramshackle streets and their seemingly irrepressible sense of humour.

  As we passed the Commercial Street police station, I looked up as always at the window with the red geraniums, hoping to catch a glimpse of the redheaded girl who had cheered me up so much the first time I had gone there but as usual there was no sign of her and the window was tightly shut despite the heat of the day. The police station looked busier than usual though with a large crowd, mostly of women, gathered around the great double doors, all shouting and shaking their fists, that peculiarly impotent gesture so beloved of the English.

  We pulled up in Lamb Street shortly afterwards and I was ready with a smile and a sixpence for the ragged children outside the Mission house as I got down from the carriage. They were all wearing socks and sturdy boots now thanks to my allowance that month and it no longer broke my heart quite so much to look at them. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it?’ I said to the eldest boy, the one who liked horses, as I handed him sixpence. ‘Be sure to keep it hidden and spend it only on food for you and the little ones, Charlie.’

  He grinned, showing a few missing teeth. ‘Course I will, Miss. Thanks very much, Miss.’ He made a funny little bow then secreted the coin deep within his threadbare shirt. ‘Have you heard about the murder, Miss? Some tart got her head almost chopped off and puddings cut out on Hanbury Street last night.’

  ‘How horrible!’ I wasn’t entirely sure that I understood what Charlie had said, especially given his apparent lack of love for the letter ‘h’ but I’d comprehended enough to know that yet another unfortunate woman had come to a deeply unpleasant end only a few yards away from where we stood. ‘Make sure you keep yourself safe, won’t you?’

  ‘Ooh, I will, Miss!’ he said cheerfully over his shoulder before shepherding the other children away. ‘Reckon he’s only after the ladies like you though not nippers like us.’

  I smiled and hopped happily up the steps, only to be greeted at the door by Mrs Lightfoot, who took me by the hand and drew me quickly and firmly into the house. I noticed that she stuck her head out and looked left and right before closing the front door behind us. ‘Everything is in a terrible uproar today,’ she said with a sigh as my ears detected the sound of exaggeratedly loud weeping and shouting coming from upstairs. ‘There’s been another one of these awful murders, this time not too far away on Hanbury Street and it’s upset our girls.’

  I dropped my bonnet and shawl carelessly on a chair and started to remove my lilac kid leather gloves. ‘Charlie told me all about it,’ I said. ‘He said something about her ‘puddings’ being cut out.’ I grimaced at the recollection.

  Mrs Lightfoot went a little pale. ‘The things those children hear,’ she said with a sad shake of her head. ‘He’s right though, it seems that the lady had her throat cut and was then disembowelled.’ This last said in a shocked whisper as if saying it aloud would bring ruination on us all.

  ‘Out on the street?’ I said, aghast.

  She shook her head. ‘No, well, not exactly. It all happened in the backyard of one of the houses. Apparently it’s commonly used by the local working girls as a quiet place to take their er clients.’ She motioned to the gloves that I still held crushed in my hand. ‘You’ll ruin those gloves if you don’t put them down,’ she said gently, taking them from me and placing them carefully on top of my raspberry pink silk bonnet and shawl. ‘Try not to dwell on it, my dear. Life must go on.’

  I followed her up the creaking wooden stairs to the schoolroom, where Miss Lawler, dressed in her favoured mannish white linen shirt tucked into a lightly bustled skirt of black cotton, was doing her best to maintain order amidst all the noise and upset. Some of the girls were hugging each other and crying while others were sitting on their desks, eyes round with horror as they swapped whatever gruesome titbits they had gleaned about the murders. This was the third woman to have been killed in the last two months and what had at first seemed like a couple of isolated incidents was now very much beginning to look connected. No wonder the women of the area were terrified and, it had to be said, not a little excited.

  ‘Miss Redmayne!’ Miss Lawler, strode between the desks to me and took my hands in hers with her usual strong grip. ‘You braved the dangerous streets of Whitechapel to visit us then?’ she said with a satirical gleam in her dark eyes.

  I laughed. ‘I’m afraid that I have only just found out what happened here last night,’ I said, a trifle ruefully. ‘I would still have come anyway though.’

  ‘As I am sure will many others,’ Miss Lawler said, taking my arm and leading me from the room. ‘Nothing quite like a murder to bring the philanthropic ladies to an area in droves. I expect that we’ll be inundated with offers to help by the end of the day.’

  She closed the door firmly on all the noise and took me across the landing to the small room where Mr Mercier usually met with the women who needed his help. ‘Oh no…’ I started to say as she put her hand on the handle then blushed and looked away.

  ‘Oh no?’ Miss Lawler raised one thin dark eyebrow. ‘Still at odds with our Mr Mercier then?’

  I grinned, not a little shamefacedly. ‘You could say that,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he likes me very much.’ If I’d expected to completely confound Mr Mercier by returning to the Mission again after my first visit, I had soon been proved sorely wrong when he’d greeted my triumphant re-appearance with nothing more than a shrug of his broad shoulders. And if I had thought to mollify him by producing a wooden box filled to the brim with several dozen bars of the finest French rose soap to be distributed among the girls of the Mission, I was disappointed there too.

  Miss Lawler chuckled. ‘Oh, he’ll come around in time,’ she said with a lop sided smile. ‘He moves in rather more radical circles than you and me and it’s given him all sorts of peculiar notions.’ She gave a shrug.

  ‘He hates me because I am rich, you mean?’ I said, feeling my anger rising. ‘I can hardly be blamed for that!’

  She smiled and put her hand on my arm. ‘Of course he doesn’t hate you,’ she said, looking amused and, for a second, really quite mischievous. ‘Quite the reverse, I should think.’

  I stared at her in confusion but before I could say anything more, she put her hand back on the handle. ‘Anyway, shall we go in? There’s someone I want you to meet - one of our girls from several months ago who didn’t last very long but whom I try to help whenever I can. I’ve been trying to persuade her to come back to us but, well, you know how it can be.’ She’d told me several times that some of the young women they reached out to were highly resistant to giving up the easy camaraderie of street life even if it meant creating a more secure and prosperous life for themselves. ‘I hadn’t actually seen her for quite a long time until she turned up on the doorstep this morning, white as a sheet and completely scared out of her wits.’

  ‘The poor girl,’ I said,
my anger sliding away to replaced with a strangely empty feeling. ‘Is it to do with this ghastly murder?’

  Miss Lawler nodded. ‘Or at least, I think it might well be. They all know each other around here so it may be that she simply knew the victim or perhaps it’s something more serious than that.’ She smiled and shrugged. ‘Or maybe it’s all down to something completely different. Who can tell?’ She turned the handle. ‘I just thought that as you are so good at speaking to the girls here then perhaps she might talk to you about what is troubling her.’ She gently pushed the door open and we stepped into the room.

  The chintz blinds had been pulled up so that sunlight streamed in, creating bright pools on the floor and highlighting the shimmering motes of dust that floated slowly through the air. Mr Mercier was leaning against the window when we entered and turned with a smile, which became a frown when he saw me standing at Miss Lawler’s elbow. ‘I don’t see what use this will be,’ he said, his tone terse and not for the first time I wondered what precisely it was that he saw when he looked at me. Some spoiled rich girl no doubt, frolicking in the slums of Whitechapel in the manner of Marie Antoinette with her sheep. Playing at being poor in the full knowledge that I would get to go home every night to my own comfortable, clean bed and luxuries that were virtually unheard of on these dismal streets.