A Taste for Monsters

by Matthew J. Kirby

  I waited out the rest of that day impatient for more news, for I still had little knowledge with which to make a pursuit. I hoped that Charles would come with word from William Nichols, but the day came and went without the musician’s return.

  That evening, I repeated my morning excursion and collected another assortment of papers, hoping the day’s investigation had brought the reporters more revelations. I was quite hungry by then, so rather than take that new stack back to Mr. Merrick’s room, I carried it to the servants’ table for dinner. I arrived before everyone else, which afforded me the opportunity to read through them, and I did so as quickly as my eyes could gallop.

  When Beatrice came in with her copy of the Star, she appeared to notice my collection of papers, and scowled. I wondered if she felt annoyed at having someone else at the table as informed on the events as she. Later, as the maids gathered ’round eating, Martha asked if there were any news on the murders.

  Beatrice opened her mouth to speak, but my voice outpaced hers. “The second victim is still unidentified,” I said. “Though she has a unique tattoo on her arm in blue ink. The initials T and C.” That detail matched what I had glimpsed on the arm of the second spirit before she’d ruined her flesh.

  Beatrice’s scowl deepened as I spoke.

  “Well, that’s something,” Becky said. “Someone ought to know her from that.”

  “What of the first murder?” Martha asked.

  “Long Liz,” Beatrice said, loudly asserting herself. “A streetwalker, like the others, all four of ’em gin bottles, too.”

  I spoke up then, for that was not the whole character of the woman whose ghost had come into Mr. Merrick’s room. “She also lost her husband and children when the Princess Alice sank,” I said. “Those who knew her said she was kind and would do a good turn for anyone.”

  “Aw,” Becky said. “That’s nice, isn’t it?”

  Beatrice thinned her eyes at me. “She had a taste for grapes,” she said, it seeming more important that she know something than know something of importance. “Says she ate them right before she had her throat cut.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “At the inquest, the coroner stated emphatically she’d eaten no grapes.”

  “Perhaps the coroner got it wrong, then,” Beatrice said, her lips stitching tightly together, as if cinched by a needle and thread.

  “More likely the reporter making the claim got it wrong,” I said.

  “Why do grapes matter?” Becky asked.

  “It’s a murder investigation,” Beatrice said. “Everything matters.” Then she looked hard at me. “That’s why it do matter if she were a prostitute.”

  “She was also a charwoman,” I said. “Which isn’t so different from us, now is it? Is that important to you?”

  Beatrice slapped her paper down upon the table. “You think these women were like us? Well, I think maybe they got what’s coming to them. I think maybe this Leather Apron is a religious fanatic trying to rid the city of sin.”

  “Or maybe he’s a Jew,” I said. “Or maybe he’s an American from Texas. Or maybe he’s this mysterious lodger. Or maybe he’s an escaped lunatic.” I’d read numerous theories that day, some quite outlandish, all written by readers to the editors of the papers, as though it had become a hobby among the wealthy and learned to speculate on the crimes. “A theory is not a truth,” I said. “Though it may satisfy some as one.”

  “Whoever he is, he can hold a candle to the Devil,” Beatrice said, and rose from her chair. “I think we can agree on that.”

  “We can,” I said.

  That night, when Long Liz came calling with her tortured movement and the sound of a butcher snapping joints apart, I tried to obtain more information from her ghost. “Tell me about your husband, Elizabeth,” I said. “The one who drowned.”

  “My husband drowned,” she said. “He was aboard the Princess Alice.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry. But will you tell me about him?”

  “My husband?” she said. “He—he drowned on the Princess Alice.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “With my children,” she said.

  “Tell me about your children, then.”

  “They drowned when the Princess Alice went down in the river.”

  Her thoughts seemed caught in an eddy, swept ’round and ’round the same rocks by the current of her grief. Annie had been similarly trapped, and it was the scarf, a piece of her son, that had finally allowed her to escape. Perhaps Long Liz needed something of her husband and children to be free. From the papers, I’d learned of only one place where I might find such an article, and that was her lodging in Flower and Dean.

  “Do you have money?” she asked me, cracking again. “Please, I need money.”

  “I have money,” I said, and again tossed what coins I had to her, and then later, after she’d gone, I went out into Bedstead Square to retrieve them freezing from the ground. The second, nameless spirit soon appeared, more quietly than the others, suddenly before the fireplace. I went to her side sooner then, and before she’d had a chance to deface it with her clawing, I saw the tattoo, TC, in blue ink, just as the paper had reported it. I wondered if the letters were her initials.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  She shook her downward-cast head, sobbing. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  “I know,” I said. “But please, you must tell me your name.”

  She ignored me, and the destruction of her arm began in earnest. I had to look away, but I could hear the slippery sounds of her flesh tearing, her grunts and whimpers, until at last she screamed, “I’m sorry!” and once again ran from the room.

  I stood shaking in her aftermath, no closer to knowing who she was or why she haunted or why she did such injury to herself. Unless someone came forward in the papers to identify her, the upcoming inquest presented perhaps the only opportunity I would have to discover the key to free her from her pain.

  When Polly came a few hours later, I’d fallen asleep in Mr. Merrick’s oddly canted chair and woke only to the ache in my jaw announcing her presence. She hovered by the mantel near me, surveying the cards and photographs, and then she was gone, off to St. Bride’s.

  When Dr. Treves came later that morning, he reported Mr. Merrick’s condition worsened, both in his breathing and the strength of his heart, and Miss Doyle gave me a knowing look and nod. I knew what was needed to restore him, but a later search of that day’s papers offered nothing useful to my purpose, and it became clear I would have to do what I had been avoiding. I needed to venture out into the city once again, to Flower and Dean and the former lodging of Long Liz, if I was to help Mr. Merrick in time. Such a thing would’ve been extremely foolish and dangerous on my own, so I waited and hoped for Charles’s return to ask him to accompany me.

  He failed to return that day, during which I watched Mr. Merrick’s skin grow grayer, the draft of his breathing driven further over the shoals. Dr. Treves came frequently with Miss Doyle, and I felt crestfallen each time the door opened on them and not Charles.

  I slept the first few hours of that night in my bed, and a few more in Mr. Merrick’s chair after Long Liz and the nameless spirit had come. Neither of them had offered any further revelation, and I resolved to go out the following morning into the city on my own whether Charles returned or not, for Mr. Merrick’s life would not wait for him.

  Fortunately, Charles did come the next morning, and he had located William Nichols.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” he said. “Chap was hard to track down, but I found him working as a printer’s machinist at Perkins and Bacon, over on Whitefriars.”

  “You delivered my letter to him?” I asked.

  “That I did.”

  “And what was his reply?”

  “He wrote a letter of his own.” Charles reached into his coat pocket and pulled out an envelope, which he then handed to me. “Seemed a decent enough man, to me.”

  I took
the letter from him and rushed to open and read it.

  Miss Fallow,

  I thank you for your letter. I wish you had no cause to write it. Polly left me and her children three years ago. I have not seen her since, but I did not wish her any harm, and certainly not the evil that found her. Regarding her father, that is something I suspected when I married her, but it would not have stopped me from joining with her. I could not make her speak of it, just as I could not make her leave the drink alone. If she had stopped drinking, we might have got on all right together. But it has come to a sad end at last.

  Sincerely,

  William Nichols

  His mention of her drinking snagged me, pulling on the barb in my chest. I hadn’t been able to make my father stop, either.

  “What’s he say?” Charles asked.

  “He would have married her anyway,” I said. “Just as Mr. Merrick has tried to tell her.”

  “Pity the man can’t come and tell her himself. Can’t think how I’d convince him to, though.”

  I didn’t know how I might persuade him, either, but I put his letter on the mantel, hoping to read and contemplate it again later. Before that, there lay an urgent task ahead. “We need to go to Flower and Dean, Charles.”

  “Bloody hell. You going to make this worth my while?” His voice had lost the lilt of flirtation, laden now with a true expectation.

  “It isn’t enough you do it for Mr. Merrick?” I said. “Your friend?”

  “Sure it is,” he said. “It’s just a bit unfair you still think so little of me, is all.”

  “I don’t think little of you.”

  “Oh no? So you’ll go for a stroll with me? We’ll be filly and foal, we will.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why?” he said.

  I had no answer for him, other than the disquiet he caused me. The reasons I had built into a wall no longer fit together as securely as they had when I’d first refused him, but I wasn’t yet ready to bring the ramparts down. “Charles, I …”

  “Fine,” he said, with stony anger. “Let’s go, then. For Joseph.”

  I nodded, grateful to let the matter drop, and we left the hospital, taking the omnibus as we had before. We spoke little as we rode down Whitechapel, for Charles had fallen into sullenness, and as we passed Thomas Barry’s establishment, advertising two new waxen corpses, I found my own anger at him renewed.

  So I peered down at the street traffic, which had become more taut and hostile since my last excursion. Nearly every person we passed wore an expression of anger, fear, or suspicion, and abundant coppers strolled along the street, more numerous than I had ever seen them. Signs, posters, and graffiti shouted about the murders from every side, blaming the Jews or blaming the police, offering rewards, and inciting general paranoia. Evangelists preached fiery religion from the corners, lambasting the vices and moral ailments of the East End. Even the Socialists and Anarchists were out distributing pamphlets, though I failed to see how their politics related to the situation, beyond a general desire for an audience.

  We traded omnibuses at Commercial Street once more, and rode up to Spitalfields and into the Evil Quarter Mile. Fear and nausea turned my stomach with each passing block, bringing us closer to the cursed place. We disembarked at Thrawl Street and walked up the rest of the way to Flower and Dean. I kept my head bowed and my shawl pulled tight, the mood on the street here more menacing than it had been on Whitechapel, and nearly walked right into a blackened coal heaver.

  “Watch it, girl,” he said.

  I roused the old bullyragging cat I’d left behind and snapped at him, “Next time, you mind the grease and make way for a lady.” I moved to go around him, but he stepped into my way. When I tried the other side, he again placed himself in my path.

  “You got a mouth on you,” he said.

  “Oi!” Charles said to him. “Step aside.”

  “Make me, meater,” the coal heaver said, “unless you mean to shake a flannin’.”

  “I’ve no quarrel with you,” Charles said. “And neither does the woman.”

  Charles may have been willing to back down, but I was not and could not. “Well, I’ve a quarrel if you don’t move out of my way,” I said, and reached into my skirt pocket, a risky move to make him wonder what I might be hiding.

  He noticed it and looked into my unblinking, unflinching eyes. I brought all my anger and will to bear on him, and his buckled before me. I could see it by the drop in his shoulders, and he stepped back and to the edge of the sidewalk. But I wasn’t finished with him.

  “You don’t doff your cap to a lady?” I said.

  His face went red, but he tipped his bowler, spilling coal dust from the brim. Charles and I strolled by him, and once a safe distance away, Charles whispered to me, “I know you’re cross with me, but do you have to get me thrashed?”

  “He didn’t want you,” I said, thinking perhaps Charles wouldn’t be as useful as I’d hoped.

  We entered Flower and Dean, a dim and narrow cranny choked with smoke, where it seemed the sunlight couldn’t reach. Refuse and waste of all kinds gathered in piles along the sides of the street. I stepped around a naked child eating something she’d dug out of the street muck and pressed forward. The wood and brick lodging houses reached up four stories to either side of the slum, and its occupants thronged the street. We passed a couple of prostitutes standing outside a brothel, their hulking minder standing near even as their abbess leaned out a window to keep watch.

  “Hey there, pretty fellow,” one of them called to Charles. “What’s in the case?”

  “A violin,” Charles said, tucking it tighter against himself. I didn’t think it wise of him to have announced that. A violin could be sold for a lot of money.

  “Oh,” the other one said, “I’ll bet you got a real fine instrument. Come inside and let me play it.” They both giggled.

  “Not today, ladies,” Charles said, blushing a little in his ears.

  They both pouted and simpered, and the first one said, “Oh, come on. Bring your lady friend, too! Play us a tune and we’ll dance!”

  “I’d sooner see you both dance upon nothing,” I said, a reference to the gallows that seemed to stun the playfulness right out of them. They looked at each other with mouths agape, and even their minder took note of me.

  “Besides,” Charles said, “ain’t you two worried about Leather Apron?”

  “We ain’t no bunters like them he’s murdered!” said the second. “We’re high-class toffers, here!” She looked up toward her abbess, but the woman had left her window perch.

  “Sure you are,” Charles said, and on we walked.

  “We’re looking for number thirty-two,” I said.

  We passed more prostitutes and a couple of bruisers I knew would need little provocation to attack either of us, even as filthy urchins scampered around our feet. Fortunately, it was still morning, and that time of day would find most lurkers, cutthroats, and bludgers still abed, sleeping off the last night’s drink.

  When we reached the address the papers had given as that of Long Liz, Charles rapped upon the door. A giantess opened it, obviously the deputy of the house. She wore her cloak and bonnet as if she meant to go out directly.

  “We got no beds,” she said.

  “We’re not here about lodging,” I said. “We’re inquiring about Long Liz.”

  “On my way to the inquest just now,” she said, ducking through the door to join us in the street. “Why you asking?”

  “I’m wondering about her husband,” I said. “The one who drowned.”

  The formidable woman nodded. “You ain’t the only.”

  “What do you mean?” Charles asked.

  “She been telling that story to everyone, even her man, Michael Kidney. But some of us been talking, and it don’t sound right.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Mind you, I make no habit of speaking ill of others,” she said, leaning down toward me. “Leastwise the dead. But Li
z seemed to like the attention she got for being disaster’s widow. And one night when she was low, I asked her, I says, ‘Liz, if your husband was drowned, why don’t you try for some of that Princess Alice subscription money they raised for the families?’ She says to me she applied, but there was some problem, because another bloke with the same name as her husband had died of consumption in an asylum on Devon’s Row, so they wouldn’t give her no money.” The deputy stood up straight again, nodding. “Tell me that’s not skilamalink.”

  “It does sound odd,” I said.

  “Odd is right. You ask me, I think that bloke in the asylum were her husband, and she cooked up the other story for God knows why. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Her chuckaboo, Catherine, agrees it don’t all come together. But mind you, we won’t speak any of this at the inquest. No, I’ll not say anything to harm her memory. She were a good, kind, hardworking woman.”

  I found her protestations to be at odds with how willing she was to gossip with me, a stranger, about her former tenant, but I thanked her, and she walked away toward Osborn Street, towering over the road.

  “She’s a Maid Marian, isn’t she?” Charles said.

  “She’s not quite that large,” I said.

  We turned in the opposite direction and made our way back through the slum. As we approached that first brothel, almost at Commercial Street, I was disconcerted to find the two ladybirds had gone inside and had been replaced by three brutish minders. One of the mobsmen had a pipe between his teeth and wore a fine top hat. When he saw us, he removed his hat and set it carefully on the brothel’s stoop, along with his pipe, after which the three of them stalked into the street to block our path. They meant to accost us, that was certain, but I didn’t know what type of violence they intended, for Charles, or for me.

  “Should we go the other way?” Charles whispered.

  I looked around us. Everyone else who’d been in the street had turned away or scattered. “Won’t do any good,” I said.