A Taste for Monsters

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “That was lovely,” I said. “What is it called?”

  “I haven’t named it.”

  “You mean … did you compose that?” His talent impressed me.

  “It were me, indeed,” he said. “That give you cause to rethink your appraisal?”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “Maybe I’ll call it ‘Joseph and Evelyn,’” he said, and that actually brought a smile out of me. “But now,” he said, grinning, “I’m wondering what a song ‘Charles and Evelyn’ would make—”

  “Do not flirt with me,” I said. “Not now, of all times.” It offended me he would even try.

  He dipped his head. “Of course. My apologies.”

  “He is dying,” I said. “How could you even think—”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  I didn’t know if he truly was or wasn’t, but it felt unfair to give him any further attention for it while Mr. Merrick lay there.

  “Before I go,” Charles said, “is there anything else I can do for Joseph?”

  I thought of what really needed to be done, namely the action Mr. Merrick had asked me to make on behalf of the spirits. Such a thing would require me to go into the city to first find the friends and associates of Polly and Annie, and from them learn where I might find William and discover the identity of Johnny. I grudgingly admitted it did not seem to be a task I could undertake alone.

  “There may actually be something you can do, Mr. Weaver.”

  “Name it,” he said.

  “You might … find it hard to accept.”

  “I’ll accept anything you tell me.”

  “Do you remember Mr. Merrick asking if you believed in ghosts?”

  He cocked his head. “I do.”

  “He had reason to ask it,” I said, and then explained to him all the details of the haunting. Through my tale he remained stoic, nodding here and there, but otherwise refrained from commenting, and I had no sense of whether he believed me or not. I thought it likely I sounded quite mad, but pressed through until I had caught him up to the present circumstances.

  When I’d finished, Charles stood a moment rubbing his knuckles. “So you’re saying you been seeing ghosts?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you never run away? You stayed with Joseph?”

  “I did.”

  “Bricky bit o’ jam, you are, you know that? Bricky bit of jam.”

  I took his compliment with a slight blush in spite of myself.

  “And now,” he said, “you needs to find this William bloke, and this Johnny bloke?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. But I must talk with them. Perhaps they’ll have some answers.”

  He kept rubbing his knuckles a moment or two longer, and then dropped his hands to his sides. “Right. Let’s do it, then.”

  “You mean you’ll help me?”

  “Of course,” he said. “But I must confess, I’m hoping this’ll earn me the privilege of a walk with you.” My indignation at that must have been apparent to him, for he held up his hands in mock defense. “Only having some fun with you.”

  “Once again, now is not the time.”

  “I see that plainly enough, and regret my mistake.” He lifted his violin case. “Where do we start?”

  “I don’t know.” I lifted my shawl up to cover my face and pulled it tight. “The paper said Annie Chapman drank at the Ten Bells.”

  “I know that pub,” he said. “Up in Spitalfields by Christ Church. So we ask around there, then?”

  “I suppose it’s as good a place to start as any.” I headed for the door.

  “Hang on. You need to let them know you’re taking off or something?”

  “Oh.” In my hurry and eagerness to help Mr. Merrick, I had given almost no thought to the matron’s expectations of me. But she could’ve been anywhere in the great hospital, and it would’ve taken time to seek her out. Time was something I didn’t feel I had to spare, for Mr. Merrick’s life seemed measured by the hour. “I’ve not taken a single day off since I came here,” I said. “I’m owed the time. I’ll leave a note for Miss Flemming and Miss Doyle on the table.” I hoped that would be sufficient.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  After doing so, I cast Mr. Merrick a long glance and silently renewed my promise to him. Then I went with Charles from the room out into Bedstead Square. Instead of exiting through the wards, we turned east and crossed the courtyard, passing the hospital’s workshops, and left the grounds through a tall gate manned by a porter on East Mount Street. From there, Charles led the way north to Whitechapel Street, where wagons full of crates and barrels, carts with livestock, hansom cabs, and omnibuses packed the street. The sound of horses, the smell of dung, and the shouts of drivers, vendors, and pedestrians assaulted me.

  “Let’s ride the tram!” Charles said, lifting his voice above the din.

  We jostled between porters unloading whiskey barrels from a couple of wagons, walked to the rail lines embedded in the street, and Charles waved his hand to flag down an approaching omnibus. The driver pulled the horses to a stop before us, and the conductor motioned us to the rear of the bus and up the circular staircase to the garden seats atop the vehicle. I went up first, and made sure to clutch tight my skirts to keep Charles from getting a view of my drawers, but he waited until I’d decently ascended before climbing up after me. We then claimed two seats next to each other on the right side, and the omnibus resumed its trundle down the tramway, the hospital on our left.

  Our vantage offered a view of the street below, but also made me feel somewhat displayed to those we passed, and I checked my scarf to make sure it was in place.

  “I haven’t ridden a bus in quite some time,” I said.

  “I like to when my pockets ain’t empty,” Charles said. “But I’ve stepped off a bus to find my pockets emptied, anyways. Bloody dippers.”

  Omnibus passengers were a favorite target among pickpockets, which was another reason I’d avoided the vehicles, aside from the cost of riding. Maltoolers went for women in particular.

  Within a few moments, we passed the greengrocer I’d stood before on my first day at the London Hospital, and next to it hunkered the same boarded-up waxworks, which must’ve been the very same place Mr. Merrick had been exhibited, and where Dr. Treves had first seen him. It was very strange and sad to think of him in there instead of the hospital, frightening matchgirls from a dark and dusty room.

  At the end of the block we came to Court Street and the Star and Garter pub, and but two doors on, we passed Thomas Barry’s Live Entertainments, and next to it Thomas Barry’s Waxworks. A crowd had gathered around the latter, and I leaned toward it to see what was of so much interest.

  In the window of the waxworks hung a long painting depicting a woman. I had to blink at it twice for the image to settle upon my senses, and once it did I gasped and looked away in horror. The woman was obviously supposed to be one of Leather Apron’s victims, and from what the papers had said, and the quantity of red and severity of injury depicted, I guessed it to be Annie Chapman.

  “You all right?” Charles asked.

  “They’re putting the murdered women on display?” I said.

  Charles nodded toward the establishment. “For a penny you can go in and see the bodies made in wax. Just as they were found murdered. The painting’s a grab to get you in the door.”

  “I don’t want to go near that place,” I said.

  Charles shrugged. “I’d go in.”

  “It’s ghoulish,” I said, and shuddered.

  “I’m rightful curious is all.”

  I decided to drop the matter as I had with Martha, and on we rode down Whitechapel, which cut a wide arc southward as if it meant to reach the Thames. We passed the St. Mary’s Station of the Metropolitan Underground Railway, opened but four years previous, and soon after rode by St. Mary’s Church, all steeple and newly rebuilt after a fire had gutted her. A short dis
tance from there we came to the frantic crossroads at Commercial Street, where different lines of the tramway came together near the Aldgate Station of the underground railway. Vehicles, pedestrians, horses, merchants, and vendors all choked the street as surely as consumption of the lungs.

  Here, we paid the conductor our two farthings and disembarked from the omnibus, then boarded another heading north, up Commercial Street. This took us out of Whitechapel toward Spitalfields, into the Evil Quarter Mile, a warren of back slum alleyways, rookeries, doss-houses, and brothels. My father’s body had been found in one of the alleys that we passed, and I tried not to look too long at any of them. Commercial Street was itself wide and busy with traffic, but from it reached narrow avenues like Flower and Dean, which was known as the foulest and most dangerous street in all London, with Dorset Street perhaps competing with it for the distinction.

  I peered down both of them as we passed, Flower and Dean on the right, then Dorset on the left, both dark, narrow, and teeming with whores, house-breakers, lurkers, and bludgers, where children crawled naked in the filthy street, and in the face of evil the only two responses were to cheer it on or look the other way.

  Charles leaned closer to me. “You ever been in there?”

  I nodded but didn’t want to say anything more to him about it, because I had no desire to remember. “And you?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Mutton shunters won’t even go in there.”

  He was right. For a policeman to enter either street, he needed at least half a dozen compatriots at his side if they hoped to get out alive and unmaimed, and even then it would be a close thing. There would always be someone waiting in the shadows to serve out a crusher and damage any policeman for life. Kill a policeman, it’d be the gallows, but break a leg so the copper never walks right again, it’d be only twelve months hard labor, which to many was a dirty cheap price for the pleasure.

  Past Dorset, we rolled up to Christ Church and disembarked with another two farthings paid to the conductor. The white building gleamed before us, the six thick columns at its feet bearing up the tall steeple with its clock face.

  “Ten Bells is over there,” Charles said, pointing across Fournier Street at a corner pub. “Shouldn’t be too rough this early in the day.”

  I inhaled deeply to steady my nerves, then checked my shawl. I’d gone into such pubs as a girl, looking for my father. I didn’t know exactly what I would find inside this one, but I knew I had to begin somewhere, and if this tavern had been frequented by Annie Chapman, it seemed a good enough place to start asking questions. I was afraid, but I had only to think of Mr. Merrick wasting away in his bed to find my courage.

  “You sure about this?” Charles asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Even given the time of day, the Ten Bells had a bit of a crowd inside. Charles had been right, though. This wasn’t the rough gathering it would be that night, but rather a collection of laborers and tradesmen taking a beer before they settled into their afternoon’s work. The pub wasn’t large, just one room with a horseshoe bar along the far wall to the right.

  The barkeep was a black man, his graying hair in a terrier crop, wearing a white shirt, black waistcoat, and an apron, and he offered us a nod as we entered and approached. “Good afternoon,” he said. “What do you fancy?”

  “Wondering if we might ask you a few questions,” Charles said, leaning forward against the bar.

  “Depends on the question,” the bartender said, “and if you’re buying.”

  Charles nodded. “Right. Gin for me, beer for the lady.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want—”

  “Allow me,” Charles said, and paid the bartender for the drinks.

  I was no teetotaler, but I had watched drink destroy my father, and on the streets I had seen how vulnerable a drunken state could make a person. Though there had been times I’d certainly desired the sweet oblivion of alcohol, or opium for that matter, I’d never succumbed to such temptations.

  Charles, on the other hand, tossed back his gin in an instant and ordered another. “What do they call you?” Charles asked the bartender.

  “Flat Michael,” the bartender said.

  Charles nodded. “Flat Michael, I’m Charles Weaver. We’re wondering about this Leather Apron business.”

  Flat Michael’s eyes went dark and he leaned forward over his bar. “Bad business, that. Why you here asking me about it?”

  “We heard Annie Chapman drinks here,” Charles said.

  “Not no more,” Flat Michael said. “And unless a ghost can drink, I don’t expect I’ll see her again.”

  I felt a shiver as he said it, as if his words might summon Annie to that spot.

  “Of course,” Charles said. “My mistake, God rest her soul.”

  “I already told the police,” Flat Michael said. “I didn’t hardly know her.”

  “Don’t sell me a dog,” Charles said. “You know everyone who comes through that door.”

  “Why would I lie, eh? This maniac is bad for my business.” He jabbed his own chest with his thumb. “Keeps the women away and brings in mobs hunting Jews. If I had information would catch him, believe me, I’d shout it. Why’re you asking?”

  “We simply want to know more about her,” I said.

  Flat Michael looked at me, then down at the beer I hadn’t touched. “Something wrong with your drink?”

  “Does she have any kin around?” Charles asked.

  “None she spoke of,” Flat Michael said. “Her husband’s dead.”

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “A coachman,” Flat Michael said. “John Chapman.”

  I thought of the name that Annie always screamed when she came—Johnny—as well as the black clothing she wore, and thought perhaps that mystery had been solved. But I had not a single notion of what could be done to assuage her spirit’s pain if the man she mourned was dead. “When did he die?” I asked.

  “On Christmas Day, it’ll be two years,” Flat Michael said. “But they’d not been living together before that.”

  “You know anyone else on terms with her?” Charles asked.

  “Nah,” Flat Michael said. “She sold things she crocheted or somesuch, and when that weren’t enough, she sold her cunny. Kept with the Pensioner, at times.”

  Just then, a tall, blue-eyed woman with blonde hair poked her head through the door of the pub. “Michael,” she said, “have you seen Barnett?”

  “Not today, Mary Jane,” Flat Michael said, after which the woman thanked him and left.

  “The Pensioner?” Charles asked.

  “Oh. That’s what they call him. Military man. Lives on Osborn Place.”

  “Do you know what he drinks?” I asked.

  “Anything he got the coin for,” Flat Michael said. “Why?”

  “I’ll take a bottle of gin,” I said, and paid him for it. Charles eyed me sidelong but said nothing as we thanked Flat Michael and left the Ten Bells. Out on the street, I tucked the bottle into a pocket in my skirts and led the way east along Fournier Street, down the length of Christ Church. Charles waited until we were a few paces on before asking me about the liquor I’d purchased.

  “Planning to boil an owl, are you?”

  “It’s not for me,” I said. “It’s for the Pensioner.”

  “I see,” Charles said. “So that’s where we going, then?”

  “It is,” I said, feeling emboldened by our success thus far. I hadn’t yet discovered how I might aid the spirit of Annie Chapman in her torment, but I knew more than I had when we’d left the hospital a short time earlier, and felt sure we might yet uncover the answer.

  “I still don’t understand what we’re looking for,” Charles said.

  “I believe we’ll know it when we find it,” I said.

  Osborn Place lay just opposite the far end of Flower and Dean, across Brick Lane, and a direct route to the Pensioner’s might’ve taken us through the black heart of the rookeries.
By traveling down Fournier and then turning south, I avoided that danger, though with its Jewish residents, Brick Lane was filled with an explosive air. On our way south, Charles and I passed several mobs armed with clubs and iron bars marching down the street, shouting and cursing, some wearing sandwich boards proclaiming LEATHER APRON IS NO ENGLISHMAN!

  “I thought they cleared Pizer of suspicion,” I whispered to Charles.

  “Then it must be some other Jew,” he whispered back, his voice sharp with cynicism.

  We passed Heneage Street, with its stinking Best and Co. brewery, the pungent sour of fermentation mixed with smoke in the air all about the block, and came to Osborn Place. Across from it lay the other dark entrance to Flower and Dean. Osborn was not much better in character, but Charles stepped forward to approach a coster wearing a blue velveteen coat and a yellow kingsman about his neck. His boy next to him called out his oysters at a penny a piece and winkles at a penny a pint.

  Charles bought a bag of winkles and asked the man if he knew where the Pensioner lived.

  “Number one,” the coster said, his hoarse voice ruined by a lifetime of barking. He pointed at the first door on the south side of the street.

  We thanked him and approached the address. Charles knocked upon the door, and I withdrew the gin bottle from my skirts. Moments passed without a reply, and I’d almost reached the conclusion the Pensioner was out when I heard the key in the lock on the other side of the door. It opened to reveal a balding, farthing-faced, muscular man in shirtsleeves untucked from his trousers.

  “Who’re you?” he asked, with that deadness in his eyes I had come to recognize in men who’d lost all conscience.

  “Charles Weaver.” He gestured to me. “Miss Evelyn Fallow.”

  The man shifted his weight and leaned against the jamb. “Get on with it, then.”

  “We’ve come to speak about Annie Chapma—”

  “Shove off,” he said, and went to slam the door, but I stuck out my hand and stopped it from closing. The Pensioner responded to this by throwing it wide and stepping out aggressively toward me, but Charles leapt between us.