Riptide

by Michael Prescott

  Like a schoolteacher, Jennifer thought.

  “Although there was little sympathy for the victims while they lived, the rash of mutilated bodies did catch the public’s attention. Every inquest ended with the same maddening refrain: ‘willful murder by some person or persons unknown.’ The sheer fact that the killer kept getting away with it drove the populace into a frenzy. None of the foregoing is of great interest, though.”

  “Isn’t it?” She had found it interesting enough.

  “What is of interest,” he said with a languid wave, “are the oddities of the case that make for clever conversation. For instance”—his hand came to rest on the sofa, occupying the space between them, uncomfortably close to her bare leg—“there’s Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. He was living at the Royal London Hospital in the East End, at the very time when Jack the Ripper was on the prowl. Some people even thought he was Jack. Of course, poor Merrick was in no condition to mount violent attacks on women, nor was he likely to blend into the crowd.” His hand twitched nearer. “Then there’s the business of the sneakers.”

  “Sneakers?” She tried not to look at his pale, fleshy fingers.

  “The first sneakers were improvised by the police in an effort to apprehend the Ripper. Their leather boots announced their approach, so they cut up bicycle tires and nailed the rubber strips to the soles of their boots. The case inspired innovations of other sorts. There were amateurish attempts at psychological profiling. One theory was that Jack had been inspired by a play about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which had recently opened in London.”

  “Mr. Mansfield’s play,” Jennifer said, hardly realizing she’d spoken aloud.

  Sirk gave her a quizzical look. “Now, how is it that you would happen to have that obscure item of information at your disposal?”

  She hadn’t meant to quote the diary. “It’s just something that came up.”

  “Did it?” He watched her for a long moment. “You’re aptly named, Miss Silence. You do like to keep mum. Well, you’re right. The actor Richard Mansfield brought a dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story to the Lyceum Theatre. Many people ventured the opinion that the play had warped the killer’s mind. The stage manager of the Lyceum, by the way, was an Irishman named Bram Stoker, who later wrote Dracula. Was Stoker inspired by Jack the Ripper’s deeds? Perhaps he was Jack the Ripper himself.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “It’s no more far-fetched then some of the other candidates. Lewis Carroll, Arthur Conan Doyle, the royal physician Sir William Gull, the Duke of Clarence, the seer Madame Blavatsky, a mad midwife, a Russian eunuch, and an escaped orangutan reenacting Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ have been among the suspects proposed.”

  “Who do you think it was?”

  “In my opinion, Jack the Ripper was a mere nobody, some disappointingly run-of-the-mill psychopath who would be altogether forgotten had it not been for his nickname—a nickname that quite possibly was the invention of a letter-writing hoaxer. Really, as multiple murderers go, he is quite routine.”

  His hand was now up against her leg. She glanced down at it, then caught him watching her. His expression was hard to read, some mixture of amusement and need.

  “Well,” she said briskly, rising from the sofa, “you’ve certainly brought him to life for me. Thanks for your time. I’d better be going now.”

  Disappointment crossed Sirk’s face. “So soon?”

  It couldn’t be soon enough. “Afraid so.”

  He rose. “Please call if you need further assistance. Or if you choose to unburden yourself of your secrets.”

  “I will.”

  He smiled suddenly. “You won’t solve it, you know.”

  “What?”

  “The Ripper case. It’s a set of Russian dolls. Those peculiar dolls that nest, one inside the other. The whole matter seems so simple when you first look at it, but as you take it apart, you find another doll, and another. Yet there is an irresistible compulsion to keep working on it. To pull one more thread, if I may mix my metaphors, in the hope that the entire mystery will magically unravel.”

  “Maybe someday it will.”

  “I very much doubt it.” His gaze was far away. “Some years ago there was a series of novelty books called Whatever Became Of. They would tell you what had happened to the actor who played Sam in Casablanca or the gypsy woman in The Wolf Man. Which was all very interesting, but it was never the question I wished to have answered.”

  He looked at her and smiled again, almost fondly.

  “Whatever became of Jack the Ripper? Now there’s a mystery worth solving. Whatever became of dear old Jack?”

  1896

  Chicago was a fine place. Near the stockyards the reek of slaughtered hogs rose like a miasma in the congested air. It was a city of butchers, where Hare felt very much at home.

  This evening he dined alone, as was his custom, in his room at the Lexington Hotel. He had taken up semipermanent residence at the Lexington shortly after it opened in ’92. He rented his room by the month, and found it most satisfactory. From his window he could gaze down on the ceaseless flow of traffic on the wide thoroughfare. Everyone was on the move, pursuing wealth with the fanatical ardor that medieval saints had brought to the pursuit of grace. It was all so very American.

  He had become something of an American himself. The constant throbbing beat of the city had quickened something in him, made him a new man, a practical man on the rise in the great world of business. His drab and studious ways seemed far behind him now, as distant as the swing of the bat on the cricket field. He had nearly forgotten his former life.

  But he did not mean to be forgotten by those he had left behind.

  Hare dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, savored another bite of the excellent roast pheasant, and wondered what the police in London thought of his latest letter.

  He had sent only a handful of previous communications under his nom de plume. In his first missive, mailed in the heady days of 1888, he merely wished to introduce himself to his public. He posted the letter to the Central News Agency, because he was afraid the police would hush it up if it went to them directly. It was a bit of a lark. He played loose with grammar and punctuation, preferring to pass as a less educated man. It would hardly do to have the authorities hunting a schoolmaster.

  Dear Boss,

  I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet... I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha. ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck.

  Yours truly

  Jack the Ripper

  Don’t mind me giving the trade name

  Jack the Ripper—a fine sobriquet, he had always thought. Jack was a name long associated with the criminal class, most famously with the legendary Springheeled Jack, the terror of Britain in the 1830s. And the Ripper—because he ripped up his victims, of course, but ripper was also street argot for a well-dressed gentlemen, a man about town. The name blended violence and mystery, and was spiced with humor. He really was most fond of it.

  When his letter did not appear in print directly, he followed up with a postcard that further established his bona fides.

  I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip. You’ll hear about saucy Jacky’s work tomorrow. Double event this time. Number one squealed a bit. Couldn’t finish straight off. Had not time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping back last letter till I got to work ag
ain—Jack the Ripper

  He’d been pleased with that one. The nickname “saucy Jacky” had come to him from Shakespeare’s sonnets—sonnet 128, if he was not mistaken: Since saucy jacks so happy are in this... A marvelous touch, but unappreciated. To his knowledge no one had picked up the reference.

  That message, at least, did the trick. The two communiqués became famous throughout England—even throughout the world.

  Except for his regrettable decision, taken while inebriated, to post the better part of Eddowes’s kidney to Mr. Lusk, he had not felt the impulse to write again until a year later, when the whore Alice McKenzie fell to his knife. By that time the police were saying old Jack was no longer at his game, and Alice was the work of some other “fiend.” This was most unfair. A man wanted credit for his work.

  DEAR BOSS,

  I am very sorry I have given you all the trouble I have, but my thirst for blood must be satisfied, when I have slaughtered 6 more I shall give myself up to your dogs, before this month is gone you will hear of me again, this time it shall be Kings Cross where a few of the whores want thinning. Boss your dogs are too hot for me at Whitechapel or I should have done the rest there...

  He had intended never to write again. The business had become altogether too risky. Innovations were in the wind. People spoke of detecting a man’s finger marks on items he’d touched and matching them to the man himself; it was claimed no two men’s digits bore the same pattern of loops and whorls. And to think he had intentionally stamped his bloody thumb print on the postcard sent in 1888... The card must still be on file in the police office, and if he were ever apprehended, some enterprising detective might think of making a comparison.

  In spite of his misgivings, he did send another message. Honor required it. In September of ’89 a woman’s torso turned up on Pinchin Street, and some fool suggested that Jack the Ripper did the deed. Of course it was not his work at all. Most likely the bitch fell prey to the criminal gangs that sought to control the prostitution trade. Determined to escape blame for such an inartistic piece of work, he scribbled a quick note in pencil on a postcard and dropped it in the nearest pillar-box, addressed to the Evening News and Post.

  Dear Boss

  The Ripper scare this morning is an infernal scandal on me you know. I never do my ripping in that fashion but give them a chance to catch me ha ha I’d show you again soon won’t be long...

  His last victim in London was nearly his undoing. By sheer bad luck a constable came plodding by while the blood was fresh. Then there was the business with Vole and the police, and he made his desperate flight to New York City.

  He had expected never to see London again. But his prospering business enterprises had widened his circle of friends and opened up many new opportunities. It was in the pursuit of one such venture that he had made a brief return to England within the past two months.

  Naturally he used his “American” name, as he thought of it. And just as naturally, he meant to combine business with pleasure. He meant to see Kitty again.

  And he brought his knife.

  Tracking her down was more difficult than he anticipated. She was long gone from her lodgings, and now married. But he sniffed out her hiding place, a cottage in a respectable neighborhood, with a fenced-in garden blooming with roses.

  Through the decorative loopholes in the garden gate he spied on her. She wore a bonnet and a pale blue dress, and she was singing songs to a child, a girl of two or three who giggled riotously on any pretext.

  None of this was what he had expected. He felt the passion die in him. She was not the girl he remembered. She meant nothing to him now, either for good or ill.

  He did not enter the garden, nor did he return at night.

  But before leaving for the States, he did post two quick notes. The first was addressed to Kitty's husband.

  Sir,

  This is to inform you that your loving life is a dirty whore. Make enquiries of her past and you shall see.

  Yours respectfully,

  A Friend

  The second was posted directly to the police. Good old Abberline had retired years ago, sad to say, and Sir Charles Warren, the hapless commissioner, was long gone, but Swanson perhaps remained in the game, and a few others.

  Dear Boss,

  You will be surprised to find that this comes from yours of old Jack-the-Ripper. Ha. Ha. If my old friend Mr Warren is dead you can read it. You might remember me if you try and think a little Ha Ha. The last job was a bad one and no mistake nearly buckled, and meant it to be the best of the lot curse it, Ha Ha. Im alive yet and you’ll soon find it out. I mean to go on again when I get the chance. Wont it be nice dear old Boss to have the good old times once again. You never caught me and you never will. Ha Ha

  You police are a smart lot, the lot of you couldnt catch one man Where have I been Dear Boss youd like to know. Abroad, if you would like to know, and just come back…

  And so on in similar fashion. It was signed with a flourish:

  Yours truly

  Jack-the-Ripper

  That was three weeks ago. By now the letter would have been received and read and studied and worried over. It would have made the rounds, he thought, passing from hand to hand, circulating among all the inspectors still on the force who remembered the autumn of ’88.

  Finishing his meal, Hare reclined in his chair with a glass of cognac. A guileless smile rode his lips. He believed, quite sincerely, that the police had been glad to get his note.

  It was always pleasant to hear from an old friend.

  Gazing out the window as the street lights winked on, he wondered how much longer he would remain in Chicago. In recent months he had felt something stir in him, a restlessness. The West called out, with its deserts and mountains and, at the end of it all, the serene Pacific. Soon, he thought, he would move on.

  Though he would leave Chicago, he would not forget his debt to the city that gave him a fresh start. And Chicago had been good for him in another way. It opened his eyes to a new and better approach to his secret trade. He had Herman Mudgett to thank for that.

  Mudgett, more widely known as H. H. Holmes, came to Chicago in the ’80s, procuring a chemist’s shop by the expedient method of murdering its owner. In 1892 he completed construction of the World’s Fair Hotel, a building later known as the Murder Castle. To all appearances an ordinary hostelry, it was in fact a “chamber of horrors” and a “charnel house,” as the excited press would observe. The hotel contained soundproofed rooms in which Holmes’s victims could be gassed to death, and torture racks, and greased chutes for the conveyance of bodies, and a copious cellar with furnaces and lime pits for their disposal.

  The facility was open for business during the Great Exposition of ’93. Two dozen tourists, mostly females, perished in Mr. Holmes’s hotel.

  Owing to plain bad luck, Holmes was arrested on other charges in ’94, while traveling on the East Coast. Investigation into his background widened the scope of his crimes. Convicted after a five-day trial in Philadelphia, he was hanged last May.

  The publicity afforded Holmes rankled Hare just a bit. He was particularly vexed by the prosecutor’s long-winded closing argument, in which he dubbed Holmes “the most dangerous man in the world.” Hare resented that title. It was one he meant to reserve for himself.

  Nevertheless, he was grateful to Mr. Mudgett, a.k.a. Dr. Holmes, for having stimulated a most rewarding train of thought.

  It was the cellar, of course. The cellar, which Holmes had equipped with a dissecting table and surgical instruments. The bothersome human remains had been eliminated with masterful efficiency. Had Holmes left his victims on the street, the city would have been in an uproar. As it was, he operated unsuspected.

  In Chicago and surrounding towns, Hare indulged his habits occasionally, though with less feverish compulsion than before. Always he chose his victims circumspectly—human trash whose disappearance would never make the papers. He concealed the bodies in deep woods, plentiful i
n this land, or in lakes or caves. He did not wish to leave a trail to follow.

  Such outings were rare. He had entered a quiet phase. Discretion was best. And as long as he remained at the Lexington, he could hardly use his home as a killing ground.

  Someday, however, he would have a house of his own. A house with a cellar.

  He would be sure of that.

  seventeen

  When she got back home, the bones were still there, and so was the diary, and so was yesterday’s threatening note.

  Everything Sirk told her dovetailed with the diarist’s account. She checked one of her Ripper books and found the murder of Carrie Brown covered in detail. It happened on April 23, 1891, in the East River Hotel. The murder of Frances Coles in London took place only two months before.

  Hare wrote that he would take a steamship to the United States. The hotel was near the docks. He might have killed Carrie Brown on his first night in his new country.

  The American connection meant Edward Hare quite possibly was Jack the Ripper. She couldn’t prove it, but she had no grounds to dispute it. For now, at least, she would have to accept it as true.

  Sometime after his arrival, Hare headed west, somehow ending up in California. He could have gone on killing for years, under his new identity. Was it Graham Silence? All the evidence said yes.

  If Hare was her ancestor, he must have passed down his insanity. To her father. To her brother.

  And if her father had been the Devil’s Henchman—if, if, if—then Hare’s homicidal impulses had been passed down, as well.