[Oscar Wilde 07] - Jack the Ripper: Case Closed

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘She looked dead to all sensation,’ he said, ‘but I doubt that she’s in mortal danger. Who knows?’ He dropped his cigarette in the gutter and pointed west. ‘This way.’ We continued along Hanbury Street, Oscar setting a brisk pace. ‘If we cross Commercial Street, we should reach Miller’s Court. It’s not far. At least we’re learning what we need to know.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘That this is the vilest part of town where poverty and prostitution are rife, where the main thoroughfares are few and poorly lit, and between them are myriad passageways, backstreets, lanes and alleys through which rats of every kind may run.’ He stopped in his tracks. ‘Where are we now?’

  There was a street sign fixed to the railings. I could barely read it through the murk. ‘It says “Commercial Road”,’ I said.

  ‘We have come the wrong way.’ He struck a Vesta and in the flickering light peered at his map. ‘Down here, fourth on the right and we should be at Dutfield’s Yard. We’ll go there first.’

  As we paced along the roadway, counting the side streets, he said, ‘I am beginning to understand how the police have failed. We see the shape of people as they pass us by, but in the darkness we don’t see their faces. No two witnesses offered the same description of any one suspect. Now we know why.’

  ‘This is Berner Street,’ I said.

  ‘And this alley here leads to Dutfield’s Yard. It’s a black hole.’

  ‘But the killings occurred in August and September. Perhaps there was no fog. There might have been a moon.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, moving slowly along the alley, his gloved hand touching the wall as he went. ‘Yes, there must have been a moon. The murderer saw what he was doing. The crime was brutal, but the surgery curiously precise.’

  ‘Except here. This is where Elizabeth Stride was killed, isn’t it? Her throat was cut – her left artery severed – but there were no other incisions, no abdominal mutilations.’

  We had reached the end of the alley. We sensed the absence of walls to either side of us, we knew there was an open space before us, but still we could see nothing.

  ‘Why are we here?’ I asked.

  ‘Because the darkness tells its own story.’ He reached in his pocket once more and lit another of his Vestas. A blue flame burst into life and suddenly we saw her, standing immediately in front of us – a middle-aged woman with a painted face and a feather boa wrapped around her neck. She appeared quite unperturbed.

  ‘Hello, dearie,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Mary Mother of God,’ cried Oscar, stepping backwards. ‘These women are everywhere.’

  ‘Please excuse us,’ I said lamely. I took Oscar’s arm to pull him away.

  ‘Come to see where poor Lizzie died?’ enquired the woman. She put the question almost cheerfully.

  ‘Did you know her?’ asked Oscar, holding up his matchstick above the woman’s face.

  ‘She was my sister. This was her patch. Now it’s mine.’

  ‘How can you bear to come here?’ asked Oscar, as the light flickered and died in his hand.

  ‘I gets a lot of business on account of poor Lizzie. There’s a lot of men likes the idea of having their way with the sister of one of Jack the Ripper’s girls. They want to do it where poor Lizzie died.’

  Oscar lit another of his Vestas. His hands were trembling, but his voice was steady. ‘It can’t be safe for you.’ He handed me the light and felt in his coat for his wallet. ‘Here,’ he said, producing a pound note. ‘Here, please take this.’

  ‘It’s too much,’ she said, shaking her head. And then she laughed and grabbed the note. ‘Or is it for the two of you?’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Oscar. ‘Please don’t misunderstand us. We’re . . .’

  ‘We’re concerned for your safety,’ I said.

  ‘I can look after myself,’ said the woman. Clasping Oscar’s money tightly in the palm of her left hand, with thumb and forefinger she pulled her feather boa away from her neck. In her right hand, just below her chin, she held an unsheathed knife that looked quite sharp enough to kill a man.

  ‘Do you know who it was who murdered your sister?’

  ‘It was Jack,’ she said. ‘He killed another girl that night.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oscar. ‘Catherine Eddowes – in Mitre Square.’

  ‘Poor Kate. He ripped her apart all right. He cut out her kidney. With Lizzie he had to stop.’

  ‘He was disturbed?’

  ‘It was only one o’clock, wasn’t it? There was still people in Berner Street. He must have heard a noise and scarpered.’

  ‘Did anyone see him?’

  ‘Some say they did, but they didn’t. All we know is that it wasn’t one of her regulars. They’ve been accounted for.’ She smiled. ‘I see some of them now.’

  ‘Do you have many regulars?’ I asked. She chuckled and I realised how awkwardly I had phrased my question. ‘I mean, does one have many regulars in your line of business?’

  ‘A few. But here, ’cos we’re down by the docks, we get a lot of sailors. And foreigners. Russians, Poles, Jews. There’s not a lot of chit-chat, but some of the English ones like to talk about Lizzie first. The gentlemen that is, not the locals. Strangers, like you two. Funny that. Jack the Ripper’s been good for business.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘Don’t be. There’s no point in being sorry about anything.’ She laughed again. ‘We all ends up dead anyway.’

  ‘It’s a philosophy, I suppose,’ said Oscar. His Vesta died once more and we stood in silence in the black night. ‘We must be going,’ he added. He put out a hand and took my arm.

  ‘Is that it, then?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Yes,’ said Oscar, ‘thank you. May I ask, what is your name?’

  ‘Stella,’ she said. ‘But if you want me and I’m not here, just ask for Lizzie Stride’s sister.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea who he might have been?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I has an idea about it all the same.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Oscar eagerly.

  ‘If you want to know, and nobody does, I think there might have been two of ’em.’

  ‘Two assailants?’

  ‘Yeah. Two Jacks for the price of one.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, really. It’s just a working girl’s hunch, that’s all.’ As she laughed we could see nothing but her breath in the night air. ‘It wasn’t you two, was it?’

  19

  Opium

  We continued our walk through the murky streets of Whitechapel. Poverty and squalor were everywhere. At one street corner a drunken man stood pissing in a doorway. As we veered off the pavement to avoid him, in the fog I collided with a woman who was pulling a small handcart along the gutter. She was dressed as a washerwoman, and her cart was piled high with bloodied rags. The stench was overwhelming.

  We quickened our pace and hurried on. ‘Life is never fair,’ said Oscar, as we passed by an old soldier sitting on the kerbstone with a wooden crutch and an empty begging bowl at his side. ‘Perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.’ He looked at me and smiled and then turned back and emptied all the coins from his coat pocket into the begging bowl. The old soldier touched his cap, but said nothing.

  ‘Have we seen enough?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably. And what have we learned from what we’ve seen?’

  ‘That the streets are dark and the fog is thick and it’s little wonder that the police have failed to find their man,’ I said, somewhat bleakly.

  Oscar laughed. ‘You’re getting hungry, aren’t you, Arthur? Let’s make for the docks.’

  ‘The docks?’

  ‘Harry’s whelk stall?’

  ‘It’s a bit cold for gin and whelks,’ I said.

  ‘You’d prefer a glass of stout and a ham sandwich, wouldn’t you?’

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘I would,’ I said.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said
.

  We were now on Back Church Street, travelling south towards the river. There were street lamps here and Oscar paused beneath one of them to consult his map. ‘There’s Pinchin Street to our left . . .’

  ‘Where the torso was found?’

  ‘Yes, but let’s not be distracted. “Don’t dabble, focus.” The torso belongs to an entirely different case, according to Macnaghten – remember? You need your supper and there’s a club of sorts near here where they’ll serve you a passable sandwich.’

  ‘You’ve been here before?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Once or twice. I am a man of the world, Arthur, as you know. I get about. And the club has a highly respectable clientele.’

  The ‘club’ was an opium den and as seedy and disreputable an establishment as I have encountered.

  It stood between a slop-shop and a gin-shop in a vile alley underneath the railway arches off Pinchin Street. A lamp flickered above the wooden front door, but there was no outward indication of what lay within. ‘Here we are,’ said Oscar cheerily, lifting the latch on the door and making his way into the gloom beyond as comfortably as a man might do returning to the cosiness of his beloved hearth and home.

  At once we found ourselves in a long, low room, thick and heavy with brown opium smoke, and terraced with wooden berths, like the forecastle of an emigrant ship. Through the poisonous mist one could dimly catch a glimpse of bodies lying in strange fantastic poses, bowed shoulders, bent knees, heads thrown back and chins pointing upward, with here and there a dark, lack-lustre eye turned upon the newcomer. Out of the black shadows there glimmered little red circles of light, now bright, now faint, as the burning opium waxed or waned in the bowls of the metal pipes. Most lay silent, but some muttered to themselves, and others talked together in a strange, low, monotonous voice, their conversation audible in snatches and then suddenly tailing off into silence, each mumbling out his own thoughts and paying little heed to the words of his neighbour.

  As we entered, a sallow Malay attendant hurried up with a pipe in each hand, beckoning us towards an empty berth. ‘Thank you,’ said Oscar. ‘But we have no time to smoke today. We’re simply after a bite to eat and a little warmth. Is there any room in the captain’s cabin?’

  The Malay attendant offered Oscar an obsequious bow and, with a fawning, crablike, sideways gait, led us along the narrow passageway between the double row of sleepers, and through a heavily curtained doorway into a second, smaller chamber beyond. Here the air was clearer, the light was brighter and the furnishings more comfortable. The walls and floor were covered with Turkish rugs; around the room were assorted stools, chairs and divans, some empty, some occupied. In one corner was a small brazier of burning charcoal, beside which, on a three-legged wooden stool, there sat a tall, thin old man, with his jaw resting upon his two fists, and his elbows upon his knees, staring into the fire. A boy, no more than sixteen or seventeen years of age, sat at his feet resting his head against the old man’s thigh. In another corner, in a high-backed armchair, sat a surly looking individual, a man of perhaps fifty years of age, of medium build but strong physical presence, immediately noticeable because of the sneer on his lips and the thick black bushiness of his eyebrows. He held a horsewhip in his hand and beat it rhythmically across his knees. It was clear at once that Oscar recognised the man.

  ‘We’ll sit here,’ said Oscar softly, indicating a sofa close to the doorway.

  ‘Should you greet your friend?’ I asked.

  Oscar ignored my remark and said to the Malay: ‘Sandwiches, Mamat, please, and beer. Chop-chop.’ The attendant hurried away and Oscar leaned towards me conspiratorially. ‘I have read The Man with the Twisted Lip, Arthur. I know you have been to places such as this before.’

  ‘Only the once,’ I said truthfully, ‘for the purposes of research. I have read The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar. I think this is more your milieu than mine.’

  ‘There are gentlemen here, as you can see,’ he continued, his voice barely above a whisper, ‘and fundamental to the rules of a place like this is that no one acknowledges anyone else and no one tells tales.’

  ‘It is the Freemasonry of the damned,’ I murmured.

  ‘Exactly,’ whispered my friend, with a knowing smile.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That if Mansfield or Druitt or Wellbeloved or anyone else had taken refuge here, no one would have spoken of it.’

  ‘Even if they had been covered in blood?’

  ‘Especially if they had been covered in blood. This is a secret garden, Arthur. The weeds and flowers that grow here do so undisturbed, unreported, unobserved.’

  The Malay returned with a tin tray on which stood two tankards of beer and a plate of meat and cheese sandwiches. As he placed the tray on the floor between us, beyond his stooping figure I caught sight of the boy sitting by the brazier at the feet of the thin old man. The youth looked directly at me and then, closing his eyes, reached up with his hands and pulled the old man’s head towards his and kissed him on the mouth.

  ‘Tuck in, Arthur,’ said Oscar happily. ‘I think you’ll be surprised.’

  ‘It is a night for surprises,’ I said drily, but I drank the ale and ate the sandwiches and they were indeed unexpectedly good.

  ‘One of the many mysteries of this case,’ continued my friend, between mouthfuls, sotto voce, ‘is that each of the killings was as bloody a business as you may imagine and yet no one – no one at all – appears to have seen anybody within the vicinity of the crimes whose hands or clothes betrayed the least signs of blood. How come?’

  Assuming the question was rhetorical, I said nothing. ‘How come?’ repeated Oscar, in a hoarse whisper, waving a crust towards me.

  ‘The perpetrator wore a cloak,’ I suggested lamely, ‘an all-encompassing cloak, and was spirited away from the area by a waiting hansom cab in the immediate aftermath of the crimes.’

  Oscar sipped at the warm beer. ‘That’s possible, though I don’t recall Macnaghten’s report making mention of any heavily cloaked figures having been seen in this part of town on the nights of the murders. And every licensed cabman known to ply for trade in the East End was questioned by police and none provided any evidence of value.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, finding it not easy to maintain my concentration in our bizarre surroundings, ‘as we know, one of the best ways to hide is in full view, so perhaps the murderer made no secret of his bloody hands and clothes.’

  ‘Indeed – the very reason PC Thick and Co. began by arresting every butcher and meat-market porter to the east of Smithfield. To no avail. They moved on to doctors, surgeons . . . Anyone who might have reason to have blood on their hands. Again, it led them nowhere.’

  ‘So you think that the murderer could have come here?’

  ‘To wash and change and destroy his incriminating clothes in one of the many fires that burn here by day and night . . . Yes, I think it’s a possibility.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘No clothing of any kind bearing bloodstains of any kind was found among the possessions of any of the suspects. The clothing must have been destroyed.’

  ‘Or cleaned?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, we must consider every possibility.’ He leaned closer to me and lowered his voice still further. ‘What did you make of poor Lizzie Stride’s sister? Everyone has assumed that the Whitechapel murderer was a lone wolf: they’ve only been looking for a man on his own. But what if Stella Stride is right? What if these are crimes perpetrated by two men, not one?’

  ‘Or by a woman?’ I suggested – a wild thought suddenly springing into my distracted mind. ‘Did you notice the woman we passed, dragging her handcart through the gutter? Did you smell her? I recognised the stench. She is a practitioner of foeticide.’

  Oscar’s brow furrowed. ‘She procures abortions?’

  ‘I fear so. A crime punishable by death and yet, in this godforsaken part of town, a calling so commonplace that the wretched woman can walk the streets w
ith her bundles of bloodied rags and raise no comment whatsoever.’

  Oscar reached into his waistcoat pocket for his half-hunter. ‘What time is it? You’ve put me off my sandwich, Arthur.’

  I looked about the room. I felt a giddiness in my head. I turned away from the sight of the old man and the boy by the brazier, now in one another’s embrace, and saw, for the first time, lying on a divan nearby them, what appeared to be a clergyman. I looked into the pin-point pupils of his wide-open eyes. I considered his yellow, pasty face, his drooping eyelids, his half-open mouth. I felt a mixture of horror and pity as I gazed at the wreck and ruin of a noble man.

  ‘This is a beastly place,’ I said. ‘Let us go.’

  Oscar pressed a consoling hand upon my knee. ‘Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?’ he said.

  As he spoke, the man with the black eyebrows and the sneer strode past us, swishing his horsewhip as he went. He disappeared through the curtained doorway, letting in a gust of foul fumes.

  ‘You know that man?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite well,’ said Oscar, getting to his feet.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘This is a private club. I should not tell you, but we must have no secrets, Arthur, so I will. He is the ninth Marquess of Queensberry.’

  I laughed. ‘And I am Lord Rosebery. Who is he really?’

  ‘He is who I say he is. He is Lord Queensberry.’

  ‘Your friend Bosie’s father?’

  ‘The very same.’

  ‘Why is he here?’

  20

  Questions

  ‘Why was Lord Queensberry there?’

  It was my fourth breakfast in a row at an hotel I could not afford in pursuit of a mystery I could not see being solved – but I was on parade yet again in the dining room of the Langham that Friday morning, 5 January 1894, because there was something irresistible about the company of Oscar Wilde.

  I had not slept well. The opium fumes and the beer had taken their toll on my system. Oscar, by contrast, was in fine form, bubbling with bonhomie and dressed in a fresh pink shirt and pale yellow tie, with a matching pale yellow gardenia in his buttonhole.