A Taste for Monsters

by Matthew J. Kirby

  I shook my head. “No. I must see this thing done.”

  “Bricky girl,” he said.

  We drove our way through the crowd to the front doors, though with Charles’s broken rib, I was the point of the wedge.

  We’d arrived but a few minutes early, and when the doors to the court opened, we filed in through a plain foyer, pressed on all sides, and then into the courtroom. There, we took our seats in the public gallery, while to our right sat the twelve members of the jury in two rows on their stand. Opposite them ran a long row of desks where reporters had already begun scribbling notes, and in the middle of the room stood a witness box. The solicitor handling the inquest sat behind his bench at the front of the room where he could preside over all, the same smell of disinfectant around us, and overtop, the subtle reek of decay, while the coroner stood near a desk of his own before the jury.

  Charles jostled a bit next to me on the hard wooden bench, as if trying to ease his discomfort, his face the worse side of a joint of meat, but he didn’t complain. I looked around the room at those who had come to observe the proceedings.

  “Do you think her family is here?” I asked Charles.

  “Maybe,” he said. “If she had any. But it’s a million to a bit of dirt you’s the only one here about a ghost.” He chuckled, and then ceased abruptly with a wince.

  When the coroner brought the inquest to order, the solicitor, a Mr. Crawford, said to the coroner, “I appear here as representing the city police in this matter, for the purpose of rendering you every possible assistance. The jury has already viewed the deceased in the mortuary?”

  “They have,” the coroner said.

  “Then,” Mr. Crawford said, “let us begin this inquest. You may call up your first witness.”

  A woman in her cape and bonnet stepped forward from the gallery and approached the witness box with reddened eyes, clutching a handkerchief to her lips, and identified herself as Eliza Gold.

  “I live at six Thrawl Street, Spitalfields,” she said. “I recognize the deceased as my … my poor sister.” She sobbed suddenly and quite loudly into her handkerchief, and continued to do so for a few moments.

  Feeling hopeful, I whispered to Charles, “Her sister should know much about her.”

  He nodded.

  When Eliza Gold recovered enough to proceed, she said, “Her name was Catherine Eddowes. I cannot exactly tell where she was living. She was staying with a gentleman, but she was not married to him. Her age last birthday was about forty-three years, as far as I can remember.”

  The fact that she didn’t accurately know her sister’s age did not bode well for the closeness of their relations.

  She continued, “She has been living for some years with Mr. Kelly. He is here in court. I last saw her alive about four or five months ago. She used to go out hawking for a living, and was a woman of sober habits. Before she went to live with Kelly, she had lived with a man named Conway for several years, and had two children by him. I cannot tell how many years she lived with Conway. I do not know whether Conway is still living. He was a pensioner from the army, and used to go out hawking also. I do not know on what terms he parted from my sister. I do not know whether she had ever seen him from the time they parted. I am quite certain that the body I have seen is my sister.”

  “When did you last see this Conway?” Mr. Crawford asked.

  “I have not seen Conway for seven or eight years. I believe my sister was living with him then on friendly terms.”

  The coroner then asked, “Was she living on friendly terms with Kelly?”

  “I cannot say. Three or four weeks ago I saw them together, and they were then on happy terms. From that time, until I saw her in the mortuary, I have not seen her.”

  One of the jurymen motioned for the coroner, who went and received a muttered communication into his ear. The coroner then returned to Eliza Gold and said, “You saw them together three or four weeks ago?

  “Um. Yes.”

  The coroner frowned. “But you earlier said you had not seen your sister for four or five months. Was that a mistake?”

  “Yes,” the woman said, twisting the handkerchief between her hands. “No. That is, I—I am so upset and confused.” She commenced to sob again, and after a glance between the coroner and magistrate, was allowed to leave the witness box.

  “She don’t seem reliable,” Charles whispered next to me.

  “Perhaps not,” I said, but at least she’d provided a possible name. Catherine Eddowes.

  The next witness called was a strong-looking, ruddy man named John Kelly, the man mentioned by Eliza Gold, who identified the victim not as Catherine Eddowes, but Catherine Conway, which I found confusing.

  “I have been living with her for seven years,” Mr. Kelly said, “at a common lodging house in Flower and Dean Street. I last saw her alive about two o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday in Houndsditch. We parted on very good terms. She told me she was going over to Bermondsey to try and find her daughter Annie. Those were the last words she spoke to me. Annie was a daughter whom I believe she’d had by Conway. She promised me before we parted that she would be back by four o’clock, and no later. She did not return.”

  Thus far, I’d learned the ghost’s name was Catherine, possibly Eddowes or Conway, and that she had a daughter named Annie, but nothing yet about the tattoo or what she so consumingly regretted as to injure herself over it.

  “When she failed to return,” the coroner said, “did you make any inquiry after her?”

  “I heard she had been locked up at Bishopsgate Street on Saturday afternoon,” Mr. Kelly said. “An old woman who works in the lane told me she saw her in the hands of the police.”

  “Did you know why she was locked up?” the coroner asked.

  “Yes, for drink. She’d had a drop of drink, so I was told. I never knew she went out for any immoral purpose. She occasionally drank, but not to excess. When I left her she had no money about her. She went to see and find her daughter to get a trifle, so that I shouldn’t see her walk about the streets at night.”

  If she didn’t drink to excess, I had to wonder why she’d been locked up for drunkenness, but this discrepancy was never resolved, for after a series of questions establishing the precise hour and circumstances in which Mr. Kelly had last seen Catherine, he was dismissed.

  The next witnesses included the deputy of the lodging house where Mr. Kelly and Catherine had been staying, followed by those who’d found her body, and then the policemen they’d called, their testimonies serving primarily to establish a timeline of Catherine’s whereabouts prior to her murder. Then the coroner summoned the surgeon who had examined the body, a bread loaf of a man with a long and flaring mustache, Dr. Frederick Gordon Brown.

  “I was called shortly after two o’clock on Sunday morning,” he said, “and reached the place of the murder about twenty minutes past two. My attention was directed to the body of the deceased. It was lying on its back, the head turned to the left shoulder, the arms by the side of the body, as if they had fallen there. Both palms were upward, the fingers slightly bent. A thimble was lying near. The clothes were thrown up. The bonnet was at the back of the head. There was great disfigurement of the face. The throat was cut across …”

  I did not want to hear any of that, and feared where the surgeon’s testimony would yet go, but I could not escape the crowded gallery the way I had the waxworks, and this time had to endure the details of violence and depravity.

  “The upper part of the dress had been torn open,” Dr. Brown continued. “The abdomen was exposed. The, um, that is …” He glanced between the coroner, the reporters, and those of us in the gallery, as though unsure how to measure his words for the varied audience. “The intestines were drawn out to a large extent and placed over the right shoulder.”

  A few gasps and murmurs rose up around me, but I was not as shocked as they, for such had been depicted by the waxworks.

  “The intestines,” Dr. Brown continued, “we
re smeared over with—with some feculent matter. A piece of intestine about two feet was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and the left arm, apparently by design.”

  “God blimey,” Charles whispered.

  “The lobe and auricle of the right ear were cut obliquely through. The body was quite warm. No rigor mortis. The crime must have been committed within half an hour, or certainly within forty minutes from the time when I saw the body. I made a postmortem examination on Sunday afternoon.” He paused a moment to wipe sweat from his brow, the silence in the courtroom one of both horror and anticipation. “The clothes were taken off carefully from the body. A piece of the deceased’s ear dropped from the clothing. The face was very much mutilated, the eyelids, the nose, the jaw, the cheeks, the lips, and the mouth all bore cuts. There were abrasions under the left ear. The throat was cut across to the extent of six or seven inches.”

  The coroner spoke up then. “Can you tell us, what was the cause of death?”

  After learning the extent of the mutilation, it was a question I had avoided asking, for I didn’t want to know how much of that had been done to a living woman.

  “The cause of death was hemorrhage from the throat,” Dr. Brown said. “Death must have been immediate.”

  The whole courtroom seemed to exhale then, and sigh, including myself.

  “I understand that you found certain portions of the body removed?” the coroner said.

  “What does he mean?” I asked Charles, who shrugged.

  “Yes,” Dr. Brown said. “The uterus was cut away with the exception of a small portion, and the left kidney was also cut out. Both these organs were absent, and have not been found.”

  “The devil took the organs with him?” Charles whispered.

  I understood Becky then, for like her, it was all too much for me, and I wanted to cover my ears.

  The coroner put his hands on his hips, spreading his coat. “Would you consider that the person who inflicted the wounds possessed anatomical skill?”

  Dr. Brown nodded. “He must have had a good deal of knowledge as to the position of the abdominal organs, and the way to remove them. The kidney would require a good deal of knowledge, because it is apt to be overlooked, being covered by a membrane.”

  “What would he want with her organs?” Charles whispered.

  I could not and had no desire to imagine what vile and evil uses Leather Apron might have for such things, and because of that did my best to bar the rest of Dr. Brown’s testimony from traveling to my ears, until he was mercifully dismissed from the witness box.

  The coroner then called up the next witness, a young woman appearing just north of twenty years of age, with auburn hair and wearing black. She stepped into the box and identified herself as Annie Phillips.

  “Annie. That’s her daughter,” I said to Charles, hoping I might finally learn something useful.

  Annie Phillips began her testimony. “I reside at number twelve Dilston Road, Southwark Park Road, and am married, my husband being a lamp-black packer. I am daughter of the deceased, who formerly lived with my father. She always told me that she was married to him, but I have never seen the marriage lines. My father’s name was Thomas Conway.”

  I realized Thomas Conway’s initials were the same as those tattooed on the spirit’s arm.

  “What calling did your father follow?” the coroner asked.

  “That of a hawker,” she said.

  “What became of him?” the coroner asked.

  She looked downward at the witness box railing. “I do not know.”

  “Did he leave on good terms with you?”

  She hesitated. “Not on very good terms.”

  “Was he a sober man?”

  “He was a teetotaler,” she said. “Quite fervent.”

  “Did he live on bad terms with your mother?”

  “Yes,” she said, “because she used to drink.”

  The coroner then asked, “Did your mother ever apply to you for money?”

  He was referring to what Mr. Kelly had said about Catherine going to get a trifle from her daughter.

  “Yes,” Annie Phillips said, in a weary way that suggested it had been a common occurrence.

  “When did you last see her?” the coroner asked.

  “Two years and one month ago,” she said, which revealed a great deal to me about the state of their relations.

  “Have you any brothers or sisters by Conway?”

  “Two brothers,” she said.

  “Did your mother know where to find any of you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Were your addresses purposely kept from her?”

  Annie Phillips failed to respond.

  The coroner stepped toward the witness box. “I said, were your addresses purposely—”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “To …” Her grip on the handrail of the witness box showed the whites of her knuckle bones. “To prevent her applying for money.”

  “When did your mother last receive money from you?” Mr. Crawford, the solicitor, asked.

  “Just over two years ago,” she said. “She waited upon me in my confinement, and I paid her for it.”

  “Is your father living with your two brothers?” the coroner asked.

  “He was,” she said.

  “Where are your brothers residing now?” the coroner asked.

  She shook her head. “I do not know.”

  “When did you last see them?” the coroner asked.

  “About eighteen months ago. I have not seen them since.”

  The coroner glanced toward the jury. “Are we to understand that you had lost all trace of your mother, father, and two brothers for at least eighteen months?”

  “That is so,” she said.

  It seemed to become clear, then, to myself and the members of the court that Annie Phillips would have little useful information about her mother’s death, but for my purposes, she had given me much to think on. It was obvious her family had experienced a terrible discord, for they were all of them estranged, and it did not seem unreasonable to suppose the spirit’s regret somehow related to that. An urgent need came over me to speak with Annie before she left the inquest, and I rose from my bench as she left the witness box.

  “We going?” Charles asked, and slowly eased to his feet.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling impatient of him. “I’m sorry, we must hurry.” Annie had already reached the gallery aisle.

  When Charles was ready, we squeezed our way down the row, bumping and jostling the knees of those still sitting. Some decent men rose to let me by, while others seemed to enjoy my posterior in their faces and let me stumble along before them. I mostly ignored them and kept my eyes upon Annie, and she soon reached the courtroom door and exited. A moment later, I reached the aisle and hurried after her, Charles limping along behind me. Out in the foyer, which was as packed with spectators as the courtroom had been, I caught sight of her leaving through the court’s main door. I feared I would lose her as I pressed through the gossiping mass, and as I came out onto Golden Lane, also congested with gawkers, I saw Annie had already traveled half a block south.

  “Mrs. Phillips!” I called, but she seemed not to have heard me.

  “Go,” Charles said behind me. “Catch her up.”

  I left him hobbling along and ran after her, calling her name repeatedly. Eventually, she heard me and turned to look back. I checked the placement of my shawl even as I came to a stop before her.

  “I apologize,” I said, panting, “for running you down like this.”

  “What can I do for you?” she asked, and up close I saw her mother’s features in her face.

  “I wish to speak with you about Catherine,” I said.

  She looked over my shoulder, back toward the Coroner’s Court. “I have said all there is to say.”

  “I don’t wish to speak about her death,” I said. “I wish to speak about her life.”

&nbs
p; “It’s easier to speak of her death than that.”

  “Your mother had much to regret.”

  Annie’s eyes flicked open an eyelash wider. “That she did, but her lips never tasted an apology. Not to anyone for anything. You knew her, then?”

  “I did.”

  “I trust she treated you fairly. Good day to you.” She turned away and resumed her path down the street.

  “Wait,” I called, and once again she stopped. “What would you say if she did apologize?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “If your mother had ever apologized, what would you have said to her?”

  “I haven’t any words, after all she did to me and my brothers. And to my father, not that he were any saint. We all suffered from her drinking and her scrounging, and it broke our family apart. Not once did she repent of any of it.” Her heavy sigh settled her like a sack of grain on the pavement. “Well, I’ve made a good life for myself now, and I wasn’t about to let her destroy it with her intemperate ways. Who could expect me to, I ask you? How could I have known she would … that this maniac … ?”

  Dr. Brown’s testimony had surely been harder for her to bear than it had been for me. “So,” I said, “you would forgive her?”

  “Of course I’d forgive her,” she said. “As the Bible says I ought. But she was far too proud to ask it of me.”

  “But if she asked it now—”

  “What’s it matter?” She paused, pursed her lips, and then asked, “How did you know my mother?”

  She seemed to have become suspicious of me. “I—I knew her from the lodging house.”

  “Which lodging house?”

  Mr. Kelly had named it in his testimony, but in that moment, I couldn’t recall it to my mind, and I stammered, “It was, uh—”

  Her eyes narrowed by more than a few lashes. “Tell me how you knew her.”

  I offered no answer.

  “You’re hiding something,” she said. “What is it?”

  I did not suppose another lie would be more successful or improve the situation better than the truth, so I gave it to her, fully expecting her to dismiss it. “I believe I have seen your mother’s ghost,” I said.