Murder

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘He did well for us, I won’t deny.’ I looked around once again for a hansom, not entirely sure how to continue this conversation. The past had become determined to engulf me of late, and Jasper Waring and his terrier belonged in my memory and not my present. ‘But I’m afraid I still cannot divulge any of my findings to you with regard to Miss Camp’s death.’

  ‘It was worth a try, though.’ He grinned again, and I could not help but smile back. He had not aged, and I wondered if chasing the news somehow made men immune – it was as if they remained untouched, impartial observers of life.

  ‘Savage, wasn’t it?’ he continued. ‘Reminds me a bit of Jack – attacking a woman like that, with no motive, in a public place. No wonder people are scared.’

  His light tone did not deceive me. He was trying to lure me into revealing something.

  ‘As I said,’ I commented dryly, ‘you will need to address your questions to the Superintendent, or attend the inquest.’

  He laughed, a warm earthy sound. ‘Right you are, Doctor. Right you are. And I don’t blame you fellows for not wanting another Jack on our streets. I know how hard you and that other doctor worked.’

  Finally a hansom rounded the street and I waved him down.

  ‘I worried about him for a while, if I’m honest,’ Waring continued. ‘Walking the streets of Whitechapel like that – those dead women must’ve right haunted him.’

  I had only been half-listening, but at that I frowned. ‘I’m sorry? Who was walking the streets?’

  ‘That other doctor – Hebbert. I saw him, scruffed down a bit, but definitely him. Saw him a couple of times. We were always out that way during that time, had to be really. Sometimes I forget how much you surgeons help the police – and the things you see … Well, you must have strong stomachs, that’s all I can say.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, forcing a smile onto my face as a chill settled into my stomach, ‘I suppose we must.’ I pulled the cab door open and tipped my hat at him. ‘Well, I bid you good day, Mister Waring, and I wish you good luck with the Superintendent.’

  I kept the smile until I’d sat back in the seat and the wheels were rolling underneath me, and then it dropped like a stone. What had Charles Hebbert been doing in Whitechapel during that time? Had he been taking the opium too? If so, it was highly unlikely that our paths had not crossed, for though the periodicals might imply otherwise, the streets of London were not teeming with dens. I had been a regular poppy smoker myself at that time, and I was sure if Charles had been the same, then I would have discovered it – or at the very least, I would have seen the signs.

  Why did my heart beat so fast? Surely it could have been as Waring himself had suggested: Charles was simply scouring the streets to find some clue as to who might be perpetrating the terrible crimes. But I knew Charles – he was curious, but he was no policeman, and nor was he like me, a man with an interest in analysing the behaviours of others. He was a surgeon, and involved only in the meat of the matter.

  As the shadows gathered in my mind, I cursed Jasper Waring for calling after me, for throwing more of the past at my feet: a heavy slab of darkness I wished so badly to forget.

  By the time I reached home, Mrs Parks had my dinner ready, a fine roast pork, but I pushed it around my plate, barely picking at it, until eventually I declared I had work to do in my study and left the table. I could not breathe under her scrutiny. She was a good, honest woman but she remembered well how I had behaved those few years ago when my sleep failed me and madness came calling. My appetite had vanished first, and I was sure she kept one eye on me for signs of the malady’s return.

  ‘I ate a large lunch, I’m afraid,’ I said as I passed her in the doorway, all too aware of her disapproving eye falling on my full plate, ‘but the meat will serve for a cold supper later.’

  ‘As you wish,’ she said, and I thought I could hear her disapprobation as I ducked away from her and climbed the stairs, making a mental note to come down before bed and throw the meat out for the cats. I told myself this was so as not to hurt her feelings, but in my heart I knew it was because Mrs Parks could – with one withering stare – turn me in an instant back into an awkward, ashamed boy.

  I sat in my study and gazed out at the gathering night. The glare of my desk-lamp on the glass of the window trapped a ghostly, intangible world of reflection, where everything was not quite as it should be.

  Charles Hebbert had been walking the streets of Whitechapel during the Jack murders. I did not doubt Waring’s words, for he had no reason to lie. Charles had been different then, I recalled that much: he had been drinking and despondent – and what was it he had said to me one night? I glanced over at the window again. He had used a particular phrase, Wickedness through the windows, or something like that, and talked of bad dreams of terrible bloody things. I thought too of Harrington, as much as I wished not to. Many of the police – Henry Moore and Andrews included – had believed a surgeon could have been responsible for the deaths, even though we had firmly believed that it was unlikely. Could Charles have had suspicions that his son-in-law was Jack the Ripper? Harrington was killing women at that time, so perhaps Charles had come to believe he might be responsible for the Ripper deaths? Maybe that was why he had not been forthcoming with information when it was discovered that Elizabeth Jackson had lived in the same street as Harrington’s family home when it would have been more natural to mention such a thing?

  I poured myself a brandy and calmed a little. That must have been it: he was simply suspicious. There was nothing strange about that, after all.

  *

  It was later, in the depth of the night, that I woke sweating and gasping from my sleep. My bedclothes had tangled around me and I fought free of them as if they were a live thing trying to drag me down into some unknown hell. Perhaps they did. The dream that had woken me had already evaporated, but my dry mouth was bitter with its echo and my heart pounded.

  Two things emerged in my mind from that subconscious wandering in my sleep. The first was that on the night that Alice McKenzie, the last of Jack’s victims, had died, I had dined with James Harrington. It was not a night I would ever forget, despite how hard I had tried. It was the night I had taken the strange opium and seen the Upir crawling up over his shoulder. Charles Hebbert had not been there. He had been dining at his club with colleagues.

  The second thing that crawled, dark and uninvited, to the forefront of my thinking was something the priest had said: that Jack was simply a by-product of the Upir, part of the mayhem that followed in its wake.

  I turned on a lamp, relishing in the glow of the light that returned the shapes that hulked threateningly in the gloom to simply objects of familiar furniture. I could not allow myself to be sucked back into the way I thought in that time. However real the things I had seen might have appeared to be, I knew that they could not exist. Harrington had been a killer; all else was simply drug-induced madness. There had been no Upir, and therefore Charles Hebbert could not have been affected by his proximity to it. The idea was simply absurd. The dawning realisation that I was even considering my old friend to be a Jack suspect made me feel as if I was once again hovering on the precipice of insanity.

  There was only one thing I could do: I must prove to myself that Charles was innocent of these crimes. I would arrange a dinner at his club with him. That would be my first move. I would not think of the priest or the hairdresser or the Upir. I would do what I did best: work with the presented facts.

  11

  London. February, 1897

  Edward Kane

  ‘Do you live near a river in New York?’

  ‘Sure I do. The Hudson River runs right around the city – but I’ve never done this in New York, though.’ Edward Kane looked down at the small boy beside him and grinned. ‘And make sure those trousers stay rolled up. We’ll both be in big trouble with your mother if those get ruined.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the same river,’ James said. His cheeks were rosy in the crisp air as he
crouched and rummaged in the wet mud revealed by the low tide and pulled out a large black pebble to add to the collection of odds and ends he’d put in his small pail. ‘Maybe it goes all the way from here to there.’

  ‘Maybe it does, son. Maybe it does.’ He took the boy’s hand and they walked further along towards the old steps that led up to the pavement and houses. ‘We need to head back. I’ve got to go for dinner with your grandfather and Dr Bond.’ He looked down at his own rolled-up trouser legs and muddy shoes and winked. ‘And I don’t think they’d like it if I showed up like this, do you?’

  James giggled and shook his head. He sniffed in the breeze. ‘Why doesn’t Mother like the river? Should I not like it too?’

  It was a small question, but so heavily loaded. Kane knew how protective Juliana was over her son. He’d seen enough evidence of it – the home-schooling, the distrust of strangers around him, and most definitely her insistence on keeping him away from the river. Given how the boy’s father had died, that was no real surprise, but he wondered if she realised how much damage her cosseting could be causing. There were many gifts a parent could give to a child, but their own fears should not be one of them.

  ‘Rivers are beautiful. You know why I have one in my city and you have one in yours?’ The boy’s big blue eyes looked up at him as if he were the font of all knowledge. ‘Because rivers bring life,’ he continued. ‘They link people. Because of the river, products from all over the world can get to London easily. Your family business brings in produce from as far away as the Indies to the very heart of the city. Between the rivers and the oceans, and now the railways, we are bringing the world together.’ He paused, and then bent down and looked James in the eye as he said seriously, ‘But water can be dangerous. There are strong tides and currents that can drag you away. Plants grow on the bottom that can tangle you and pull you down. The thing with rivers is that you have to treat them with respect – as long as you do that, there’s no reason to be afraid of them. I’ve spent some of the best summers of my childhood messing around on rivers. But I was always careful.’

  ‘Did you go out in a rowing boat?’

  ‘Sure I did.’

  ‘Can we go in a rowing boat one day?’

  ‘As long as I can persuade your mother,’ Kane said.

  ‘Uncle Thomas never takes me on the river. I think he hates it as much as she does.’ James paused. ‘Uncle Thomas doesn’t play with me very much.’

  ‘He’s a very busy man,’ Edward said, ‘and he works very hard. But I know he loves you.’

  They climbed the slick steps in a comfortable silence and left the river behind.

  *

  Edward Kane had never really considered children – they were in his future somewhere, just like a sensible wife was; after all, he’d need a son to leave his business to – but he’d never spent any time with them. He swung James up in his arms, making the boy giggle. He was happy to be able to give him some freedom from the stuffy confines of his London life for a few moments. He had discovered that he enjoyed little James’ company. Despite his words, he wasn’t sure that Thomas Bond did. The doctor had been busy with a murder case for much of the time since his return from Southampton, but on the few occasions they’d all been together, he’d seen how the doctor avoided the child where he could. It was strange, considering how much he clearly loved Juliana. Kane couldn’t help it, but that love bothered him: he had all the respect in the world for Bond as a man and a professional, but the idea of Juliana and him as a couple revolted him. If he was honest with himself, he had to admit that what rankled him was less Bond’s feelings towards Juliana than hers for the doctor: she might think she loved him, sure, but it was surely a love born of obligation and gratitude. They were friends who loved each other, and he feared she was in danger of confusing that with being lovers.

  Juliana. If anyone should be her lover then it should be him. He knew that without doubt. He should have been back in New York by now, but he’d rented some offices and hired a lawyer so he could continue his business while in London, in order to stay longer. His father would be spinning in his grave to know that his son was turning his world around to accommodate his feelings for a woman – but the good thing about graves was that they were final. His father could twist and turn as much as he wanted; his son no longer had to listen to him. Edward Kane was very much a grown man, and he could do as he pleased. However, neither was he still quite the rebel of his youth: he was not ignoring his business and had in fact made some sound new investments whilst he was here. He freely admitted the business had become an adventure in itself, and he enjoyed it. He was also enjoying London in all its vibrancy and excitement.

  And the most vibrant part of it was undoubtedly Juliana: Jim Harrington’s wife.

  As if on cue, she opened the front door to them and sighed dramatically at their wind-fresh faces and beaming grins.

  ‘I got rocks!’ James held up his small pail.

  ‘So I can see.’

  Kane put the boy down and he ran inside.

  ‘I hope he didn’t go in the water,’ Juliana said.

  ‘In this weather? Are you kidding me?’ He kept his tone light and she smiled.

  ‘I had better get you some coffee before you go back into town. You must be freezing.’

  ‘Maybe put a little brandy in it too,’ he said, closing the door and wiping down his feet. He watched her as she walked away, her slim hips moving from side to side behind her bustle. She was not like the American society ladies of New York, who were all so self-aware, conscious of every movement, the social standing of each new acquaintance, and especially of their own attractiveness in comparison with others. They were sharp: even when stripped naked and sweating with lust – and there had been plenty of occasions when that had been the case – there was an edge to them that he could not define. He was sure that such women existed in London too, but perhaps in the part of society that belonged to ‘old’ money. There was no such thing in most of America – perhaps only in Boston. In New York it was the bankers and businessmen whose daughters were got up in fancy clothes and glittering jewels and paraded as examples of their fathers’ wealth. He’d found of late that most of them left him cold. Or maybe he was just getting older and the superficial was becoming jaded.

  By the time Juliana returned with coffee, his trouser legs were rolled down and James had run off to wash and sort the treasures collected on their walk. The boy was happy, but a small shadow of concern had flickered across his face when he’d seen his mother. It wasn’t fair on either of them.

  ‘He’s a good boy,’ Edward said, taking the cup and saucer from her, ‘and he’s tougher than you think.’

  ‘He’s prone to fevers and chest infections like his father was.’ She sat opposite him. ‘I hope it wasn’t too cold outside. And that water – well, I’m sure you understand why he shouldn’t go in it. It’s full of filth.’

  The lines between her eyes that had been slowly disappearing gathered together. Did she even realise the tension she was projecting?

  ‘You know something,’ he started carefully, ‘as adults, we have to learn to keep our fears from our children. They’re very good at picking up those things that don’t need language to communicate. I learned that from my relationship with my own father.’

  ‘Your father wasn’t murdered and thrown into a river.’ Her tone hadn’t changed, but her back had stiffened and she held her cup up over her mouth so only her dark eyes could be seen. He wasn’t a fool; the angry defensiveness in them was clear. But damn the woman, he was no simpering disciple who would back down to her beauty, not when he was trying to do what was right, for her, and for James.

  ‘This is true,’ he said calmly, ‘and if that’s all you want James to remember of his father then you keep gripping him tightly and being afraid every time he wants to do things that are actually just part of normal boyhood behaviour.’

  ‘How I raise my son is none of your business.’ She carefully placed her
cup down and stood up, ramrod-straight.

  She looked quite magnificent. Edward smiled and raised an eyebrow. ‘So this is how we’re going to play it, are we?’

  A flush rose in her cheeks. ‘I think you forget your place here.’

  ‘Perhaps I do.’ He stood up and moved closer to her. ‘But just think about it: one day he’s going to grow into a man and he’ll need to know more of the world than what you can show him from behind your apron strings. Let him breathe.’

  She said nothing, but glared at him.

  ‘Why do you live so close to the river anyway?’ he asked. ‘I don’t understand, when it causes you so much pain.’

  ‘To keep James close,’ she said eventually. ‘So he doesn’t feel alone.’ As her eyes teared up she held her chin higher, and he found himself drawn to her even more. ‘I don’t know if he died before he went in the water or not, but if I don’t think of the river as being part of him then I don’t know where he died at all, and that is worse.’

  ‘He was very lucky to be loved by you.’ He watched her as she regained her composure. He wanted nothing more than to hold her, to wash away all that grief with his passion. His words must have resonated with his feelings because she wiped her hands on her dress as if dusting something off and then turned away and picked up her cup. As she sipped from it he noticed the china trembling slightly. Was that the effect of her grief, or was she too feeling some of the heat between them?

  ‘Enough of this conversation,’ she said, breezily, ‘when it has been such a pleasant day. And you must be getting back so you have time to change for your dinner with my father and Thomas.’ She said Bond’s name as if it was armour. Was that it? Was he her protection against being hurt again?

  ‘I’m so sad not to have seen so much of him of late – although it has been very kind of you to keep me company – but I hope this dinner means that he will soon be able to find more time for me – and for James.’