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

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘On the Saturday of the week of the murder, the sixth of January, he appeared at our friend George R. Sims’ Twelfth Night party – in mourning, naturally, and there, having announced his wife’s death in the columns of The Times the day before, received the sympathy of his friends – all of whom knew his poor wife had been in failing health and none of whom was surprised.

  ‘What surprised me was his insistence that I should join him the following Monday for “a picnic lunch” to celebrate the birthday of Prince Eddy. I knew Sir Freddie, but I did not know him well. Why did he want me there? And with my friend, Dr Conan Doyle? I believe it was because he wanted to share his secret.’

  ‘And did he?’ asked Willie.

  ‘Not in so many words, Willie, but the most interesting books are the ones where the truth is told between the lines. He told enough. He made it clear that he loved his wife and he loved Prince Eddy. He made it clear that his ultimate ambition was to the rescue the prince’s reputation from the mire of suspicion. He made it clear that neither he nor his friend Fitzmaurice were long for this world.’

  ‘Fitzmaurice was the bugger who was caught with the regimental goat?’ queried Labouchere from out of the darkness.

  ‘Careful, old man,’ said Alec Shand. ‘There’s a lady present.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Oscar, ‘you recall the story, Labby. So many of the best are remembered through the prism of their downfall. When Dr Doyle and I saw Festing Fitzmaurice last Monday he was no longer of this world – sans everything, save a curious sense of style – and I believed Sir Freddie when he told us that Festing was starving himself to death deliberately. I thought it would be tomorrow that Bunbury planned to take his own life – the anniversary of Prince Eddy’s death and the day before he was due to return to Yorkshire for his wife’s funeral when, of course, his story of her demise by natural causes might begin to unravel. But he chose to do it today . . .’

  ‘At lunchtime,’ said Macnaghten firmly from the far end of the table. ‘He blew himself up with a home-made mortar, hours after savagely killing another woman in the same alley in much the same way.’

  ‘No, Chief Constable, that wasn’t Bunbury.’

  ‘Can you be sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. This morning’s brutal murder – that was the work of Jack the Ripper.’

  37

  The promised end

  In the distance the church clock struck one.

  ‘Oh,’ said Oscar, startled. ‘It is the witching hour. And so soon. My time is up. I promised to release you all by one o’clock.’

  ‘Don’t be a damn fool, Wilde,’ barked Henry Labouchere irritably. ‘Just get to the point, man – with a little less of your flowery witching-twitching circumlocution.’

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ said Walter Wellbeloved quietly, ‘it is not yet the witching hour. In pagan ritual, the witching hour falls between three and four o’clock.’

  Another voice spoke softly in the darkness:

  Tis now the very witching time of night,

  When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

  Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood

  And do such bitter business as the day

  Would quake to look on.

  ‘I wish I’d seen your Hamlet, Mansfield,’ murmured George R. Sims appreciatively.

  Oscar laughed and, leaning forward, poured more port into his glass. ‘Suddenly, after a long silence, all our Jack the Rippers speak at once!’ He raised his wine to the figures in the shadows. ‘Not that I’m accusing you of being him, gentlemen – but others have, as you know. Indeed, that’s why you’re here. And our doctors are here because two more of the accused have been consigned to their charge.’

  Dr Rogerson spoke up: ‘We’re listening, Mr Wilde. We’re here with rapt attention.’

  ‘Which I appreciate,’ replied Oscar, with a small bow. ‘The more so, since my brother seems to be asleep.’

  I glanced across the table. Willie Wilde had his hands folded comfortably across his ample stomach and his bearded chin was lolling on his chest. Whether or not his eyes were open, I could not see.

  ‘He’s not asleep,’ said Sims. ‘If he were, we’d hear him snoring.’ A gentle chuckle rippled around the room.

  ‘It’s interesting,’ said Alec Shand, ‘how often we laugh when we are most afraid.’

  ‘We’ll give you fifteen minutes more, Wilde,’ announced Labouchere, ‘and then we’re off to bed. We’re all busy people.’ I watched his silhouette turn to either side of him. ‘The doctors have to get back to their lunatics, Salazkin’s got to get to Paris—’

  ‘And Labby has the Empire to run,’ threw in George R. Sims.

  ‘Very well,’ said Oscar. ‘I will be brief.’

  ‘Who was this Jack the Ripper?’ demanded Labouchere. ‘Who is he? That’s all we want to know.’

  ‘I can tell you,’ said Melville Macnaghten emphatically. ‘The Whitechapel murderer was the doctor, Druitt, who killed himself after murdering Mary Jane Kelly. And the Chelsea murderer was Sir Frederick Bunbury, who took his own life today. I’m grateful to Mr Wilde and to Dr Doyle for unravelling the mystery of these latest killings.’

  ‘And we are grateful to you, Chief Constable, for involving us in the matter and inviting me to bring what you charmingly called my “poet’s eye” to the proceedings.’ Oscar was full of energy once more. ‘But Montague John Druitt was not a doctor. He was a barrister and a schoolmaster and he could not have been Jack the Ripper because there are reliable witnesses who will testify that he was nowhere near Whitechapel at the time of any one of the Whitechapel murders. His suicide came from quite another cause.’

  ‘So who was Jack the Ripper?’ demanded Labouchere. ‘We’ve not got all night.’

  Oscar breathed deeply as he lit another cigarette. ‘Very well,’ he said again. He considered the cloud of smoke as it filtered from his mouth and nostrils, as if the monster might appear from the miasmal mist. ‘Who was he? Who is he? He seems to have been so many people since his arrival – and his christening – six years ago.’

  He looked towards George R. Sims and then down at the slumped figure of Willie Wilde. ‘To the gentlemen of the press – and to the public at large – he was whoever they could fix a name to. Who is interested in a murderer “name unknown”? But call him “Leather Apron” or, better still, “Jack the Ripper”, and now there’s a shivering up the spine and the papers start to sell. And bring in “celebrity” – a crass coinage for a noxious notion – and the whole kingdom is suddenly agog. Could it be Her Majesty’s grandson, the heir to the heir to the throne? We’ve heard rum talk about him. It’s a notorious crime, let’s pin it on someone famous! What do you say? Lewis Carroll or George R. Sims?’

  Sims chuckled obligingly.

  ‘In the course of our investigation,’ Oscar continued, ‘with the help of Mr Wellbeloved and his friend Mrs Mathers, Dr Doyle and I took part in a séance. I was reminded then how often it is that when we try to contact “the other side” we expect to be greeted by an immortal of note. There must be millions of lost souls waiting out there in the ether, but when we come knocking we don’t want any Tom, Dick or Harry responding to our summons. We want to find Joan of Arc or Charlemagne or Napoleon at the door.’

  Oscar searched out Richard Mansfield in the gloom. The actor’s monocle glistened in the candlelight. ‘Mr Mansfield is playing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the Strand. He’s been seen in Whitechapel after dark. He’s famous. Let’s make him Jack the Ripper.’

  ‘Are you saying it’s Mansfield?’ interrupted Sims. ‘That’s preposterous.’

  ‘Richard Mansfield has no alibis for the witching hours when the Whitechapel murders took place – though I acknowledge that he was on stage when the second of the bodies was left in the alley by Paradise Walk last week.’

  ‘If your “poet’s eye” has lighted on Mansfield, Oscar, you need to visit your oculist.’

  ‘I’m merely saying, George, that – encou
raged by the popular press – the public warms to the idea of a multiple murderer who looks the part. Richard III, Mr Hyde, Napoleon . . . these are monsters to reckon with.’

  Mansfield said nothing. From what I could tell in the half-light, he appeared amused.

  Oscar smiled. ‘That’s Jack the Ripper for the multitude,’ he said. ‘But, closer to home, nearer to the scene of the crime, he becomes a different character. According to the two policemen that Dr Doyle and I encountered as we walked the streets of Whitechapel, whoever he was, the Ripper wasn’t going to be a local man. There was too much blood and guts for that. He was going to be a stranger, an outsider, “a foreigner most like”. Over many months the police collected hundreds of statements from so-called witnesses – people who had been in the vicinity at the time of one or more of the murders. Some thought they might have seen the man – but none was sure. Not one! They’d seen a figure near the scene of the crime on the night in question. Some said he was tall. More said he was short. Some called him swarthy, some called him pale. One was sure he had a limp. Few thought him clean-shaven. Most gave him a moustache; others a grizzled beard. But how could they tell in Whitechapel by night? It’s darker than this room is now – and rolling up from the Thames there’s invariably a mist and, as often as not, a pea-souper of a fog. Jack the Ripper could be anyone.’

  ‘There needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us this, Oscar,’ said Richard Mansfield, without rancour.

  ‘Indeed not, sir, but I believe it was a ghost of sorts who told us where we should be looking – the ghost of Lizzie Stride.’

  ‘Lizzie Stride?’ repeated Dr Rogerson.

  ‘Elizabeth Stride – the third of the Macnaghten victims. Dr Doyle and I encountered her sister, Stella, plying her trade in the very alley where poor Lizzie lost her life.’

  I spoke – without thinking. ‘Two Jacks for the price of one,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly, Arthur. “There might have been two of them.” That’s what Stella Stride said. One to watch and one to act. One to hold the lamp, one to do the deed. One to be the lookout, while the other wielded the knife. In all the reports of all the murders, very few cries for help were heard. Did one man cover the victim’s mouth while the other began the butchery? And, as butchers, did they take it in turn to carve the joint? The police, led by Chief Constable Macnaghten, believe that only five of the Whitechapel murders can be attributed to Jack the Ripper because only five of the victims were slaughtered in the same way. But there were eleven brutal murders in Whitechapel between the summer of 1888 and the spring of 1891 and a further two, not-dissimilar ones, in Paradise Walk this past week. Thirteen in all. In some, the victims were slashed – mutilated and disembowelled. In others, the victims were stabbed – dismembered and decapitated. Thirteen murders. Two modus operandi. Two Jacks for the price of one.’

  ‘But no witnesses spoke of seeing two men together?’ said Melville Macnaghten.

  ‘No one was looking for two men. Everyone was looking for Jack the Ripper.’

  ‘Two men,’ repeated Labouchere. ‘Two men, hunting together – off and on over a period of almost six years. Could two men keep a secret for so long?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Oscar, ‘I believe so, if they had a bond.’

  ‘A bond?’ queried Sims.

  ‘If they were brothers, for example.’ He glanced down at the slumped figure of Willie and smiled. He looked up across the table. ‘Or felt they were brothers because they were both beleaguered Jews in a foreign land.’

  ‘You mean Kosminski and Ostrog?’ asked Dr Rogerson.

  I spoke without considering my words. ‘And Kosminski did the stabbing and decapitating while Ostrog slashed his victims and removed their internal organs with his knife.’

  ‘Rather the other way around, I think,’ said Oscar lightly.

  ‘It’s not possible, Mr Wilde,’ said Dr Rogerson. ‘You’ve seen Kosminski. He is an incapable imbecile. We keep him under lock and key. Even were he to escape, he hasn’t the strength for barbaric crimes like these.’

  ‘And five years ago?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘He was stronger then, yes,’ said Rogerson, ‘but I examined him on his admission – at length. There is nothing in anything he said that would suggest in any way that he was involved in murders such as these.’

  ‘I can believe it,’ said Oscar. ‘Perhaps he did not know what he had done. Is it possible to wipe the memory clean?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Gabriel, ‘psychogenic amnesia is not unknown.’

  ‘And what causes it?’ asked Oscar.

  ‘Severe abuse of alcohol, trauma to the head. It can be induced by hypnosis.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Dr Rogerson. ‘Kosminski is not capable of the murders that have taken place this week. You have seen him with your own eyes. You must know that.’

  ‘However,’ said Oscar slowly, ‘Ostrog might be.’

  I looked up at Oscar. ‘But Ostrog was in Paris last week when the second body was found in the alley off Paradise Walk.’

  ‘Who told us that?’

  ‘Mr Salazkin did,’ I said. ‘He told us Ostrog was in Paris on circus business, taking publicity material to the French printers or some such.’

  ‘Indeed, Arthur, that’s what we were told.’ Oscar lit one of his Vestas. The flame flared and for a moment illuminated the table. The eyes I saw were all turned towards Salazkin. The ringmaster sat impassively at the far end of the table.

  ‘Two Jacks – one King,’ said Oscar. He lit his next cigarette and drew on it deeply. As he exhaled the blue-grey smoke, he set out his stall with the calm authority of an Old Bailey barrister. ‘My friend Dr Conan Doyle once told me that the most difficult crime to track is the one which is purposeless. He is right, of course. He invariably is. But the first crimes – the Whitechapel murders – had a purpose – and a clear one.’

  ‘Beyond the senseless mutilation of defenceless women?’ asked George R. Sims.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Oscar. ‘That was but the means to the end.’

  ‘And what was the end?’ asked Sims.

  ‘Terror and confusion,’ said Oscar. ‘The Whitechapel murders were acts of terrorism.’

  ‘Explain,’ said Labouchere.

  ‘Either acting on his own account or at the behest of his masters in St Petersburg, our country’s “friendly informer”, Ivan Salazkin, brought his Russian Circus to London and set about creating a little mayhem on the side. Whether he is a true revolutionary or an anarchist or, as I suspect, simply a monster with bloodlust in his veins – he is proud to claim descent from the countess who slaughtered young women by the score so that she could take baths in their blood – who knows? What I do know is that his circus was in London at Easter 1888 when Emma Smith was murdered. Before she died she said she had been the victim of two or three assailants. It could be that Salazkin was guilty of the crime or – more likely, in my estimation – it could be that the reports of her murder inspired his killing spree when the circus returned to London in August that year.’

  ‘Is this possible?’ hissed Labouchere. He turned to Salazkin. ‘Say something, man.’

  Salazkin said nothing.

  ‘The dates all fit,’ continued Oscar calmly. ‘The Russian Circus was in London at the time of ten of the eleven Whitechapel murders. The exception is the twentieth of December 1888, when the circus was in Paris and Rose Mylett’s body was found.’

  ‘She died of strangulation,’ said Macnaghten.

  ‘As I recall,’ said Oscar. ‘Her death cannot be laid at Salazkin’s door – except perhaps in the sense that every unexplained murder after the first few was heralded by our sensationalist newspapers as marking the return of Jack the Ripper. If the ringmaster’s purpose was to spread terror in the streets of the capital, the gentlemen of the press certainly assisted him in his endeavour.’

  Labouchere had his eyes fixed on the immobile Salazkin. Without turning towards Oscar, he asked: ‘If terrorising the public at large was the object, w
hy were the victims all prostitutes?’

  ‘I am not sure that they were,’ said Oscar. ‘A torso was found under the railway arch in Pinchin Street in Whitechapel on 10 September 1889. No one had been reported missing. The victim was unidentifiable and unknown. And is so still. But at his Exotic Emporium in Whitechapel, Tom Norman told us that he had acquired a female head a few years ago – it had been washed up in the Thames – and later, when we saw that head preserved in formaldehyde, loosely disguised as the head of John the Baptist, Dr Doyle and I both noticed the young woman’s Slavic high cheekbones. I don’t believe she was a prostitute. I think it more likely that she was one of Salazkin’s troupe of orphaned acrobats – killed on a whim and left in pieces in Whitechapel.’

  ‘But most were prostitutes,’ persisted Labouchere.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Oscar. ‘Most were. Prostitutes were easy prey. And Ostrog and Kosminski were regular customers. They knew the territory. I doubt Salazkin went to Whitechapel himself on the nights his crimes were committed. He is a ringmaster, after all. He cracks the whip and the animals do his bidding.’

  ‘They’d kill for him?’

  ‘Without any difficulty. Have you not seen hypnotists at work at the fairground and the music hall? They can persuade almost anyone who is susceptible to do almost anything they command, however unlikely, however absurd, however evil – and, after the event, to have no recollection of what they have done.’

  ‘But then the killing stopped,’ said Labouchere.