Domini Mortum

by Paul Holbrook

  I paused for a short while in the grounds of the asylum to add to my notes while they were fresh in my mind and draw some sketches of Bethany Finnan, waiting to be rescued by a ghost who lived within her broken mind.

  ***

  That evening, after midnight, I sat in my rooms, piecing the details of my conversation with Bethany into my larger piece of work. Despite being angered by the lack of detail that she had given me regarding Darke, I found that I could not shift the image of her face from my mind. There had been something about her presentation which I had found morbidly engaging. The girl had been taken past the edge of sanity through her experiences with Darke and was living testament to the dark power which he must have used on all around him. Bethany had obviously been taken in by him, as had her father, and this only made me wish to learn more about the man and to find out when and why he had turned into such a monster.

  I was disturbed by the sharp knock of a messenger boy on my door. This was a normal; I had promised Purkess that I would be willing to attend a murder scene no matter how late or early the hour. I was a man who usually slept very little and enjoyed the excitement of being at the scene as soon as possible. This was considerably more preferable than having to search for dry scraps from the police, long after the bodies had been removed.

  The note was sent by Inspector Thomas and, written in his usual brusque manner, it stated: ‘Dead girl, Cuthbert Street, you are expected – AT.’

  Within twenty minutes I had arrived at my destination, where I found a small crowd gathered at the end of the road. I pushed my way through and when seen by the officers, who recognised me, I was let through to walk the twenty or so yards to where the body had been placed.

  Like the three other recent killings, the freshly murdered girl had been ruthlessly butchered and carefully positioned to create the maximum impact upon those who saw her. Although sitting upon the floor, the victim, little more than a child from what I could ascertain, was tied to the iron railings outside one of the street’s properties. She was fastened by her wrists, her arms outstretched, crucified and reaching to the world for comfort and mercy, of which she had obviously been given none. Her neck had been dramatically broken and her head lolled to one side resting upon her shoulder. Her legs were splayed wide in front of her, and the lower part of her body was covered in her internal organs, which spilled out of a wide cut from the top of one hip to the other, almost bisecting her. Although sickening to see, I found that I could not draw my eyes from her.

  ‘They’re getting worse, Sam.’ Abe Thomas’s voice came from behind me and I turned to see him looking disconsolately down at her.

  ‘Do we know who she is yet?’ I asked, pulling my sketchbook out from my bag.

  ‘Local girl, Catherine Davies. She was found an hour ago by one of my men; he must have only just missed whoever did it. She’s wearing work clothes so she must have been in service somewhere in the area. Someone will know where.’

  ‘Just like the others then?’

  ‘Mm, we discovered the name of the jointed girl, Eloise Davison, known to work kitchens in Marylebone by all accounts, another girl in service. There is a wider pattern, it is not just victim type. They all suffered singular cuts from a large and keen blade, all of the bodies were positioned. There is even a witness account of a ‘golden woman’ seen in the area shortly before the body was found.’

  ‘Golden woman? Are you sure? That sounds very odd.’

  ‘Yes, but it ties together with the ‘jaundiced woman’ seen at the last murder. The description was similar this time: a “tall, dark-cloaked lady with golden skin, running from the scene at speed”. You should get drawing quickly if you want to capture this one. I’ve been told not to let you near any murdered girls, if any more happen.’

  ‘What have I done so wrong, Abe? I didn’t think I’d insulted anyone in the police lately.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘But someone up top’s not happy with the access I’ve been giving to you.’

  ‘But I’m just doing my job. Isn’t it best that I see it so the truth is published?’

  ‘It is Samuel, it is – but it’s not about you personally, I think it is the press at large. My superiors want to keep this quiet for as long as possible, and they don’t trust your kind.’ There was the edge of a smile on his lips and he let out a short laugh as he slapped me on the back. ‘Get on with it quick, boy. Before we both get put out of a job.’

  I needed no further encouragement and set about making sketches of the scene. I already had in mind the front page, an amalgamation of all the recent murders with each pictured surrounding the central image of their starting point – the twelve dead bodies at Boston Place.

  ‘Can I step a little closer, Abe?’ I asked, glancing over my shoulder. He nodded.

  The girl had an honest, gentle face; her eyes were open and stared down at the ground, but I could see no hint of terror or pain in them. Her hair was pulled tightly back into a bun, held in place by a number of small pins and a delicately crocheted net that held it together. Her skin, although pallid and grey, was soft and smooth and it was plain to see that she cared for herself well and obviously worked somewhere where cleanliness and appearance were important. Her lips, once red and full, were now blue and waxy, parted slightly as if about to speak. In that moment I felt something that was alien to my mind and did not sit right; it was a mixture of pity and sadness. I was normally immune to such barriers to objectiveness.

  I felt an uncomfortable twinge in the corner of my eyes and coughed slightly, checking to see if Thomas had noticed.

  It was as I stared at her lips that I saw something that did not belong there: a triangle of white stuck to the inside of her bottom lip.

  ‘Abe,’ I called. ‘Has anyone looked inside her mouth?’

  He bent down beside me, studying her face.

  ‘No, not to my knowledge,’ he said, prising open her jaw. A square fold of paper lay upon her tongue and he reached a finger into her mouth to retrieve it. After pulling out the piece of paper, he returned his fingers to her mouth and, to my horror and sad expectation, he withdrew a cut spike which had been forced down her throat. He wrapped the spike in a handkerchief before carefully unwrapping the paper. It was a handwritten note. The words were in Latin: Profectus venit per dolorem.

  Through pain comes progress.

  7

  Sent Before the Beak

  I could hold the story back no longer and the Inspector finally agreed with me to make it public. We retired to the Bay Horse, a regular haunt of Abe’s and somewhere where I held a good enough relationship with the landlord to ensure that the Inspector’s drinks flowed freely enough to keep his mouth working.

  ‘Tell Mr Purkess to go with it,’ he said, draining another whisky at my expense. ‘Tell him to make sure that it doesn’t say my name anywhere, but he can tell the world the whole bloody lot – the bit about the golden woman, the names of the girls that were killed, all of it.’

  I itched to leave and to let Mr Purkess know. There had been reporters from other newspapers sniffing around at the last two scenes but, with no official word from the Inspector or his seniors, and all witnesses in fear of a beating from Thomas’s men if they spoke out, any story was but a rumour. I sat at the table scribbling notes, which I would later write up and present to Henry Cope with my pictures, telling him to send them to the engravers with our Inspector friend’s blessing. Abe, becoming looser of tongue by the minute, added words to my scribbles and, through whisky-clouded eyes, took in all I wrote. He retained some vague level of sobriety, however, as he bade me keep some of the more particular details from the newsstands to afford him the power of knowledge over the general public.

  I settled back in my seat and stared hard at the drunken bear before me; his large frame had begun to sink down into itself and I knew that it would not be long before he would leave to take in the air and undergo a sobering walk back to the station. I had known the man drink to a degree that
would have laid me flat upon my back for days on end; Abe Thomas, however, knew precisely when to call a halt to proceedings and how to pause for enough time to be able to stand and talk straight enough to return to work.

  I had wondered, in the past, if he had always been this way. Was his habitual inebriation the result of his experiences in Whitechapel six years previously? I had come to the conclusion, based on our discussions regarding Darke, that perhaps guilt played a major part.

  I decided that I should try to press this matter.

  ‘I have a question for you, Abe,’ I said, taking a gentle sip of ale. ‘One that has been annoyingly prominent in my mind for a couple of weeks now.’

  His eyes were closing a little. Time was short before he left.

  ‘Go on,’ he murmured, reaching for his glass.

  ‘It has to do with Sibelius Darke… now please do not anger, I know that it is a matter which has caused you some discomfort to talk about to me in the past.’ He bristled somewhat, but did not speak. ‘You told me that you were prevented from holding him; that you had him in your hands and were powerless to stop him,’ I continued. ‘Why is that? He was an obvious suspect; Inspector Draper interviewed him on more than one occasion. You said yourself that you knew he had done it. Why would anyone want to stop you?’

  There was no flash of anger in his eyes, no sudden torment to him; in fact he did not flinch at all at my question. His face broke into a rueful smile and he drained the glass of whisky in his hand.

  ‘Samuel, I am not so much of a drunk that I will tell all I know for a few shots of whisky and the appearance of friendship. You are a journalist at heart and you work for a paper that has been proven to love a good scandal. I will not give it to you.’

  ‘You are right, Abe, but if ever there was a line of truth come from my lips it is this: George Purkess is not interested in the past. He cares not one jot for the story of Sibelius Darke and those terrible murders which you were witness to. If I went to him with your version of the events of six years ago, he would laugh me out of his office. This is just my interest, Abe. My query into everything I’ve ever heard about Darke. It is obviously something which has annoyed you, which continues to annoy you. Tell me, as a friend, and I promise it will go no further than these walls. Why was he allowed to continue to kill?’

  Thomas had a sullen look upon his face. He shuffled to the end of his bench and made to stand. The world rose up to meet his heavy frame and for a moment I thought that he might just rush down to meet it halfway, but he did not and his legs held his weight.

  I thought that I had lost him but he leant forwards and I felt his hot and sour breath upon my skin as he spoke softly into my cheek.

  ‘There are higher powers at work in this world, Sam. Powers that make the rules, pull the strings and that will kill, yes kill, to maintain what they have. Sibelius Darke was a terrible murderer, a killer and eater of children, of that I have no doubt; but he was a pawn. A pawn who turned on his masters, but it was the masters who directed him. Look to the club that he burned to the ground; look to those who did not die, that is where you will find your scandal. But I did not tell you this.’

  And with that he righted himself and stumbled towards the door and out into the busy afternoon street.

  ***

  I submitted my writings and sketches of the servant girl murders to George Purkess personally the next day, including the full list of the names given to me by Inspector Thomas of the victims from Boston Place: Florence White, Patricia West and Annie Flanders, among others. George was apprehensive at first, but eventually decided that the opportunity to beat the other papers to the full story was too good to miss – and my scoop hit the front page the following Saturday to great success. Circulation for the ‘Boston Place’ edition surpassed anything The Illustrated Police News had achieved in the past. The public lapped up the horror and potential danger of ‘A merciless killer with a razor-sharp blade’ stalking the streets of West London and the ‘mysterious golden woman’ sighted at the murder scenes. George’s happiness was matched by the ire of Henry Cope who, if anything, despised me even more. Over the next two months I found myself somewhat out in the cold in terms of work. There were no further murders related to the Boston Place killings although, as expected, sightings of large men armed with devilish knives sprang up all over London and beyond, even as far north as Edinburgh. The only work that seemed to come my way were long days spent in the courts, sketching defendants and recording notable incidents of the trials of the day. These assignments generated within me the firm belief that I was being punished in some way. Possibly by Purkess for my continual badgering about Darke, but more probably from Cope.

  Some artists and writers in the employ of old Mr Purkess were content to spend their days comfortably sitting within the law courts and away from grisly scenes of crime. There must have been a dozen others who were bitterly jealous of Cope’s desire to cage me within the court buildings, and I would have gladly passed on the work to them if I could have.

  I could not, however. If I were seen to be turning down assignments given to me by Cope, it would only give him further excuses to downplay my importance to the newspaper and the light of my necessity would fade before George Purkess. I prayed for another murder to save me from the boredom of it all.

  This is not to say that suddenly all murder and mayhem ceased within London. Knives were drawn, throats were cut and the stain of blood continued to soak into pavements and floorboards. All whilst I was stuck for endless hours listening to lawyers pontificate, judges snore, and petty criminals beg for forgiveness.

  It was as I entered the second week of my entombment in the courts that my life saw a change which was both unexpected and unexplainable.

  It had been a slow morning in the court of Judge William Edwards. My day had been filled with almost nothing of note: petty burglars and con men, late payers and pox-ridden harridans who passed themselves off as ‘ladies’.

  The prosecuting counsel for the day had spent as much time in these chambers as I over the past week. He was a short, round man by the name of Richard Warriner. Although relatively new to the bar, Warriner was ambitious and attempted to use the courtroom as his own private theatre. He fought hard for every case that he brought before the judge, which set him apart from his peers, many of whom appeared to see their time in chambers as time wasted when it could be spent drinking and socialising. Warriner had a piercing nasal tone to his voice, which only made my hours spent in this cold limbo more difficult to bear.

  I had written little in my notebook and had amused myself, in a brave attempt to stave off the ennui of the day, by drawing pictures of those who sat willingly in the public stalls in pursuit of entertainment. The pictures that I drew of them placed their caricatures in terrible situations, both of a deviant and violent nature; heads were lost, limbs taken viciously from them, as they starred in their very own newspaper covers which would never be published.

  I was just starting a new ‘faux edition’ with the thrilling headline ‘Eaten alive by mice!’ when the next defendant was brought before the bench and I found myself pausing to give her my full attention.

  She was a slight and pretty girl, but proud, perhaps five or six years younger than I; she held herself well in the dock and gave eye contact to those in court. Her flaxen hair was tightly drawn into a bun and I wondered whether she was normally this well kempt or had tidied herself up for the benefit of her situation. She had bright eyes, full of life and fire, and her face was well scrubbed. At her side stood a small dark-haired boy no older than ten who, unlike her, stood shivering and tearful. He was painfully thin and I wondered when he had last been afforded a good meal. He remained pinned to the girl’s side, his mouth a taut line.

  As the clerk of court began to speak, the girl pulled the boy’s cap from his head and straightened his unruly hair somewhat.

  ‘The defendant will give her name!’

  ‘Alice Griffiths,’ she answered.

&n
bsp; ‘Your Honour.’

  ‘Alice Griffiths, Your Honour, begging your pardon.’ She attempted what I can only imagine was supposed to be a curtsey to the judge.

  The clerk walked slowly to the bench, where he handed over the details of the case to Judge Edwards, who was in his natural position: slumped at the bench, giving little sign that he was interested in anything more than the impending call for lunch. He glared over his spectacles at the papers, murmuring to himself under his breath as he read. After what seemed like an age, he finally spoke.

  ‘Miss Griffiths,’ the judge began, ‘I see that you are accused of petty theft. The theft of a loaf of bread from the stall of one Harold Gardener. How do you plead?’

  ‘Not guilty, Your Honour.’ She rose as she spoke. Although addressing the judge, her voice held within it an element of disgust at the proceedings. I sensed defiance and found myself putting down my notebook.

  Richard Warriner lugged his large frame to its feet and strode slowly over to the stand, beginning his performance. ‘You plead not guilty and yet there are several witnesses who saw you steal the bread. How can you not be guilty?’

  ‘It was not theft!’ she snapped. ‘I took the bread because it was mine to take.’

  Judge Edwards, who had been staring idly around the courtroom until this point, suddenly jumped to life and, placing his spectacles upon his nose, glared down at the young girl.

  ‘Young lady,’ Edwards’s voice was reedy and thin, ‘do I understand it correctly that you admit to taking the bread from the stall but still see yourself as the innocent party in this matter?’