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

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘Only the man you handed over wasn’t Ostrog at all. It was the man you had found under the railway arch in Pinchin Street.’

  ‘We cleaned him up. We shaved him. We dressed him in Ostrov’s clothes. The clothes were too big for him, but it didn’t matter. He looked a little like Ostrov, but that didn’t much matter either.’

  ‘No one really looks closely when the Jew walks by,’ said Ostrog.

  ‘Did the man know what was happening to him?’ I asked.

  ‘He knew he was getting food at last. And clothes. And shelter.’

  ‘Could he talk? Did he make sense?’

  ‘He was not in his right mind. He’d ruined that with drink. But he could talk – not in English, but in Yiddish and Russian.’

  ‘Did you ask him his name?’

  ‘No. We told him his name.’

  ‘Michael Ostrog.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Salazkin. ‘We told him who he was. We told him his whole life story.’

  ‘And he believed you?’

  ‘Yes. He became who we wanted him to be.’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘Very simply,’ said Salazkin, with a smile. ‘I hypnotised him. It is easily done. It’s much easier than knife-throwing. You can buy a book in the Tottenham Court Road that will show you how.’

  25

  George R. Sims

  The interview concluded, I left Oscar at the circus and walked back to the Langham Hotel alone. It was a cold night, but the sky was clear and the moon was full. I maintained a brisk pace through near-deserted streets and managed the journey from Olympia to Portland Place in little more than an hour. I relished the solitary walk – and the silence. I needed time – and peace – to think.

  As I lay in bed, my head was filled with a kaleidoscope of images: Ostrog staring at himself in the looking glass, Ivan the Terrible on horseback commanding the circus ring, little Olga swinging towards me on her trapeze. I could not get the girl out of my mind’s eye. She was an enchantress and I was spellbound.

  In the morning, at breakfast, there was no sign of Oscar. As I left the dining room, I found Martin, the young waiter, hovering by the door. He seemed eager to speak to me. I asked him if he had seen Mr Wilde.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘not since yesterday, but I’s seen the man who’s following him. He was outside the hotel last night and he was here again this morning. When I come on at six, he was already out there, underneath the lamp-post. That’s how I saw him. I went out to speak to him. He didn’t see me sneak up on him. He was lighting a cigarette. I went right up to him and said, “Who are you? What do you want?” He didn’t say a word, just walked away.’

  I thanked the lad and told him I’d report his intelligence to Mr Wilde. He grinned mischievously. ‘You do that, sir. I know he’ll reward me. He’s good like that.’

  I went up to Oscar’s room: there was no answer at the door. I tried it: it was locked. I found the chambermaid: she told me she had already cleaned the room and that the bed had not been slept in. I returned to my own room – the maid had cleaned that, too – and spent the morning seated at the table by the window completing the short story I had begun the night before. When I had finished it, I called it ‘Sweethearts’. (If you are inclined to read it, it appeared in The Idler in June that year, 1894.)

  My work done (and done well, I felt), I returned to Olympia – this time by bus and tram. As I was leaving the hotel, Jimmy, the bellboy, stopped me in the foyer.

  ‘Mr Wilde hasn’t collected his flower today,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t rightly know, sir. It’s for a lady, I think. It’s a pink ’un.’

  ‘Show me,’ I said.

  It was a pink viola and quite beautiful. ‘I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘It would be a shame for it to go to waste.’

  Clutching my small bloom, I found Olga waiting for me outside the National Agricultural Hall. As I walked towards her from the bus stop, she walked towards me, smiling broadly, with a firm step and outward composure of manner, but as we met and I presented her with the flower, her lip trembled and her hand quivered.

  It was the first time that I had seen her not dressed as a circus acrobat, not costumed in her sequined leotard. Today she was a young lady, small, dainty, well gloved, and dressed in the most perfect taste. There was, unsurprisingly, a plainness and simplicity about her outfit, which bore with it the suggestion of limited means. Her coat was a sombre, greyish beige, untrimmed and unbraided, and on her head she wore a small turban of the same dull hue, relieved only by a suspicion of white feather in the side.

  ‘You look lovely, Olga,’ I said.

  ‘And you look so handsome, Arthur,’ she replied. ‘Thank you for my flower.’

  Arm in arm, we walked down the road to Hammersmith to a small teashop that Olga knew well. We had a pot of tea and poached eggs on toast, followed by more tea and a slice of Victoria sponge, which we shared. ‘This is my favourite meal,’ she said. It was one of the happiest and saddest meals that I have ever known. We cannot command our love, but we can our actions. Olga captivated me: she was so young and so alive. I wanted to make love to her – so much! But I knew it would be wrong – so wrong!

  At two o’clock, Olga had to return to the circus and I made my way back to the Langham Hotel. There was a wire waiting for me from Oscar:

  YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FOND OF ME ARTHUR. I REPRESENT ALL THE SINS YOU NEVER HAD THE COURAGE TO COMMIT. SEE YOU TONIGHT AT SEVEN PM AT TWELVE CLARENCE GATE LONDON W. SIMS KNOWS ALL.

  George R. Sims certainly knew everybody. In 1894 he was at the height of his fame and fortune. He was the highest paid journalist in the land (reputedly earning upwards of £150,000 a year) and, arguably, the best informed. He was also a prolific playwright, popular poet, zealous social reformer, acknowledged criminologist, noted bon vivant and ardent follower of the horses, the dogs and the boxing ring. Today, he is probably best remembered as the author of the sentimental ballad that begins, ‘It was Christmas day in the workhouse . . . ’ In his day, he was known as a thoroughly good egg, a wholly decent, hard-working, amusing, intelligent, clubbable man.

  ‘Even behind his back, people say nice things about George R. Sims,’ said Oscar. ‘What’s his dark secret, I wonder? He must have one.’

  ‘Hush!’ I said.

  I had encountered my friend in the entrance hall of Sims’ house, just off the Marylebone Road on the south side of Regent’s Park. Oscar had stepped out of his carriage just as I was coming up the road from the underground at Baker Street. The Sims’ butler was helping him off with his coat. Oscar was looking unusually pink-cheeked and ebullient, freshly kitted out in a well-cut velvet evening suit of bottle green.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I asked, taking off my own coat to hand to the butler.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said my friend. ‘Look where we are now! This is George R. Sims’ Twelfth Night party. Everybody who is anybody will be here.’

  Together we walked across the parquet-floored hall and into the Sims’ drawing room. Footmen on either side of the double doors held trays bearing frosted flutes of gently bubbling champagne. ‘It’ll be Perrier-Jouët,’ murmured Oscar. ‘And a good vintage. George is a generous soul.’

  The drawing room was beautifully proportioned, high-ceilinged, brilliantly lit and crowded with an equally brilliant assembly. There must have been eighty to a hundred people in the room and, even at a glance, most of them looked familiar. At once, I recognised actresses I knew from picture postcards, politicians I knew from photographs in the daily papers, authors I knew as rivals.

  ‘There’s Bram Stoker,’ I said.

  ‘With Florrie Balcombe, once the prettiest girl in Dublin, now the loveliest woman in London. You know she turned down my offer of marriage in favour of Bram?’

  ‘So you tell me.’

  ‘So it is.’

  ‘And who are they talking to?’

  ‘The handsome one’s Alec Shand. Now he was secretly en
gaged to Constance. Before my time. He’s a most unusual fellow with some quite unusual ideas. He has sent me his new book. It’s intriguing.’

  ‘And the little old man they’re talking to? Is he a clergyman?’

  ‘That is the Reverend Charles Dodgson.’

  ‘Lewis Carroll?’

  ‘Oh yes. Sims knows everybody. Le tout monde and le demimonde. Look over there . . . Tom Norman deep in conversation with Walter Wellbeloved. And there’s Richard Mansfield huggermugger with my friend Wat Sickert. Extraordinary. Is this a convocation of Jack the Ripper suspects brought together for our convenience?’

  As he spoke, a large hand fell on his right shoulder and another on my left. It was our host coming up behind us and giving us a welcoming embrace. He was as tall as Oscar – over six feet – and as elegantly attired – he sported a black velvet evening suit, with silk trimmings – but he cut a more dapper figure because he was slimmer than Oscar and, unlike Oscar, wore a full beard, carefully cut in the style made fashionable by the Prince of Wales.

  ‘You know I was once mistaken for Jack the Ripper, don’t you? My portrait appeared on the cover of a sixpenny edition of one of my books and a Whitechapel coffee-stall keeper who claimed to have had a conversation with the Ripper on the night of the double murder said “That’s the man” and took my picture to the police.’

  ‘Were you arrested?’

  Sims had a warm, deep voice, which, at all times, carried with it the hint of a chuckle. ‘I was pleased to help them with their inquiries,’ he answered, smiling, ‘and provide them with my rock-solid alibis. Who knows who the coffee-stall keeper was talking to that night? It might have been Jack the Ripper. Or it might not. Whitechapel was and is awash with possible suspects, but there are no known witnesses to any of the crimes. The murderer remains a faceless wonder.’

  ‘Could he be among your guests tonight, George?’

  ‘Anything is possible, Oscar, but, whatever the gossip-mongers say, I don’t believe it’s going to turn out to be Lewis Carroll, do you? Look at him. Eccentric, I grant you, but I don’t think the darling man has the strength for it.’

  ‘You know everybody and everything,’ said Oscar ingratiatingly. ‘Who do you reckon is the Whitechapel murderer?’

  ‘I can tell you that the Sun newspaper is about to run a series of articles accusing one Thomas Cutbrush of the crimes.’

  ‘I know the name,’ I said.

  ‘You might well do, Arthur. It was in the papers a year or two ago. Cutbrush is a lunatic, already in Broadmoor because in 1891 he was caught red-handed assaulting a woman’s buttocks with a kitchen knife – but, pace the Sun, there’s nothing of any substance to link him with the Whitechapel killings of 1888. I’m afraid some papers will say anything in pursuit of sales.’

  ‘Cutbrush is a good name for a murderer, all the same.’

  Sims smiled. ‘I agree, Oscar. Names do make such a difference, don’t they? I was so sorry when Dr Cream was ruled out of the running. Dr Cream! Top hat, black moustache – whiskers you could twirl. He looked the part, he played the part – confessed to killings all over the shop – apparently actually boasted of being Jack the Ripper as he went to the gallows. Unfortunately, it turned out he was in America all through 1888 and his modus operandi was the phial of poison rather than the kitchen knife.’

  ‘You know there’s been a Holmes accused of being the Ripper?’ I said.

  ‘Indeed,’ answered Sims. ‘H. H. Holmes, the man who built his own “Murder Castle”. I had hopes of interviewing him, but he proved elusive.’

  ‘And where did Mr Holmes build his “Murder Castle”?’ enquired Oscar, widening his eyes. ‘Not in Whitechapel?’

  ‘No, in Chicago. It was a hotel designed to attract young unattached females attending the Chicago World’s Fair and looking for an inexpensive room for the night. Holmes designed it all himself – with secret passageways, dungeons, poisoned gas chambers, acid pits, the works. I thought it would make a marvellous setting for a play – build the actual house on stage. Holmes murdered women by the dozen, apparently. He’s still on the run. Maybe we should put your Holmes on his trail, Arthur?’

  ‘My Holmes is a fictional character,’ I said firmly, ‘and I’ve done with him, thank you very much.’

  ‘Will we ever be done with Jack the Ripper, I wonder?’ mused Sims. ‘H. H. Holmes is in the clear, however. There’s no evidence he was in Whitechapel in 1888.’

  ‘And is Prince Eddy in the clear, too?’ asked Oscar. ‘I see Bunbury is here tonight and in mourning.’

  ‘Bunbury?’ I asked.

  ‘Prince Eddy’s equerry,’ explained our host. ‘The Bunburys have been courtiers since time immemorial. Freddie was at Prince Eddy’s beck and call to the last – but, while I’ve no doubt he still misses HRH, he’s actually in mourning for his wife. She passed away only this week. I am glad he’s come, under the circumstances.’

  ‘I think I should say hello to him,’ said Oscar. ‘I know him slightly. You’ll like him, Arthur. He’s most engaging.’

  ‘Mix and mingle, gentlemen,’ said Sims encouragingly, pushing us towards the throng. ‘Recharge your glasses as you go. I’ll catch up with you later. There’s something in particular I want to say to you, Oscar. Meanwhile, help me out and work the room – but don’t just hover round the actresses.’ He laughed as we plunged into the mêlée. ‘Your brother’s here, Oscar,’ he called out after us. ‘And the Marquess of Queensbury is here. You know his son, don’t you?’

  ‘Queensbury and Willie we can avoid,’ murmured Oscar. ‘Let’s find Bunbury. He’s a sweet old thing.’

  Having squeezed our way through the multitude, we found him by the fireplace. Sir Frederick Bunbury, Bt., was a tall, lean figure, dressed all in black, with a thin neck that failed to touch his shirt collar but somehow supported an improbably large head that hung forward like a tortoise’s. His eyes were hooded; his face was deeply lined; he had long white hair and a drooping white moustache.

  ‘My condolences, Sir Freddie,’ said Oscar gently, taking the old gentleman by the hand. ‘I feel for you in your loss.’

  ‘Thank you, Wilde,’ murmured the baronet softly. ‘She had been poorly for some time, so it was not entirely unexpected. And for her, at least, a release.’

  Oscar presented me to Bunbury and, inadequately, I added my condolences.

  ‘Thank you,’ nodded the elderly courtier. ‘The Reverend Dodgson has been reminding me that my dear wife is now in a better place and I believe him. Do you know Mr Dodgson?’

  ‘I know of Lewis Carroll, of course, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,’ said Oscar with feeling, shaking the clergyman’s small hand with both of his. ‘It is an honour to meet you, sir. The Mad Hatter, the March Hare, the White Rabbit, Alice – all yours.’

  ‘Alice is a real person,’ said Lewis Carroll, in a small Dormouse-like voice, gazing up at Oscar myopically. ‘I take no credit for her.’

  ‘No doubt God and the girl’s parents brought her into the world, but you took her into Wonderland and have made her immortal.’

  Lewis Carroll blinked at Oscar, but said nothing more.

  ‘I agree,’ drawled Bunbury. (He was an aristocrat of the old school: his lips barely moved as he spoke and the sound came from the cavernous roof of his mouth.) ‘It’s an extraordinary thing to do – create a character that lives beyond the page. Not many can boast as much.’

  ‘Though, curiously,’ said Oscar, now in full flow, ‘two or three who can are gathered here. Arthur Conan Doyle is the creator of the great detective Mr Sherlock Holmes. And look, here with my brother is one of our finest players, Mr Richard Mansfield, who has successfully brought to life both Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.’

  Willie Wilde, Richard Mansfield, Bram Stoker and my friend James Barrie were standing in line in front of the fireplace. All but Willie were smiling at Oscar’s effulgence. ‘To create a name that will live beyond your own lifetime – that’s something. You’ve done it, Mr Dodgson �
�� with a dozen characters and more. Mr Dickens did it with Mr Pickwick and old Scrooge. I reckon Arthur here has done it with Holmes and his friend Watson. I have some hopes for my Dorian Gray. How’s your vampire coming along, Bram? Has he got a name yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Stoker. ‘I’m thinking of calling him “The Undead”.’

  ‘That won’t do,’ cried Oscar dismissively. ‘You need a proper name – a name with a ring to it.’ Oscar glanced around the little group gathered by the fireplace. ‘Pickwick, Scrooge, Humpty Dumpty, Holmes and Watson, Jekyll and Hyde – they’re all names that will join the ranks of the great immortals. If you want to capture the public’s imagination, you’ve got to get the name right.’

  Willie Wilde spoke up: ‘Jack the Ripper is a case in point.’

  Oscar placed his champagne flute on the mantelpiece and looked at his brother. ‘For once, Willie, I agree with you. Jack the Ripper is a name that could outlast them all.’

  26

  Stay

  Sims’ party was a memorable one and convivial in the main. It was marred by two incidents, noticed by none except those involved.

  The first was minor. As we broke away from the gathering of writers around the fireplace, Willie remarked to Oscar: ‘I notice you’re not wearing your customary buttonhole tonight, Oscar. Neglecting your appearance as well as your wife? Where will it all end, I wonder?’

  Oscar rose above the slight, but I felt it – and felt responsible for it, too.

  The second incident might have been more serious.

  ‘Who is your friend, Arthur?’ Oscar asked once we had shaken off Willie and were returning to the fray. ‘The young man with the sad eyes and the subaltern’s moustache – who is he?’

  ‘James Barrie,’ I said. ‘A fellow Scot. We wrote a comic opera together, Jane Annie.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. It’s set in a girls’ boarding school.’