Murder

by Sarah Pinborough

  13

  Extract from letter from James Harrington to Edward Kane, dated 1888

  … I have been so wrapped up in my fears for my sanity that when she said she was upset about my behaviour I was expecting some revelation that she knew of my blackouts, or perhaps something worse, some confirmation of the things I fear I am doing in those times. But it was none of that. She said only that she felt lonely. I had promised her she could come and help me with some of the books and she said she did not mind that the opportunity had not arisen (although it was clear that had upset her too, but how could I let her near the wharves? How could she see how little I concentrated there and how my mind was focused on whatever was behind that locked door that I trembled to open?) and that she was glad her father and I clearly found each other’s company interesting, but she was tired of spending evenings alone while we dined at the club.

  I did not know how to answer that. As far as I was aware I had dined with Hebbert at the club only once, maybe twice; it certainly was no regular occurrence. I did not say this though; I opened my mouth to deny it, but found I could not speak the words.

  I know what you’re thinking, Edward – if you’re thinking anything other than I should be in an asylum by now – and that is that if I am suffering blackouts from my fever or something worse then perhaps I am dining with Dr Hebbert and simply not remembering it.

  The vague spaces I sometimes occupy don’t work like that. And my strands of memory related to them are always grim. Surely if I was dining so frequently with her father that it was upsetting Juliana then I would remember at least some of it? I wondered if it was a lie I had told her at some point and forgotten but it was not something that it would strike me to say. I know that when I returned from wherever I found myself late at night I would tell her I had been working late (another reason I could not allow her to come to my offices to help me), but I could not recall ever including her father in my terrible deceptions. Why would I? It would be so easy for her to prove wrong.

  I mumbled an apology, and did my best to make her feel better. She loves me very much and it hurts me terribly to see her so distressed. It is not the grand passion I had with Elizabeth – that was a first love, and I was different then – but I do love her and I wish that this terrible weight on my back and in my soul did not plague me so, that I could be a good future husband to her.

  At times, when the dream-like visions of what I am coming more and more to believe are recollections of my own actions overwhelm me, I think I should break off our engagement. Surely it is wrong of me to marry her knowing how troubled I am, but the idea of being alone – more alone than I feel already – terrifies me even more. It is as if Juliana and the normality of my life with her is the only anchor I have against this growing madness. And when the fever passes and my mind clears it is easier to dismiss all my terrible misgivings as flights of fancy. Then I think myself foolish for even considering giving her up.

  I ramble once again, but these letters are a comfort to me, perhaps as much because you do not answer them (although I hope you are well and there is no sinister reason for your lack of correspondence). They are like a confessional. If you are not receiving them then whoever is reading them – if anyone at all – is simply a stranger in another country and I care not what they make of my strange predicaments.

  I mentioned our visits to the club to Charles over dinner, a brief throwaway remark, even though beneath my hopefully calm surface, I was trembling. He simply paused, and for a second I thought he was as confused as I was, but then something shifted and he smiled at me before saying that men must have their pursuits away from womenfolk, and then he moved the conversation on. I could barely eat after that. I know that it sounds strange that I am so certain I have not been spending several evenings with him this month, but I know in my bones I have not. But why would he lie? And if he had his own secret – a mistress, perhaps? – why would he involve me in his lie if he did not know me to have secrets of my own? Perhaps he knows that I would not expose him, but it seems to me a great risk. Deception, which has never been part of my nature previously, is becoming something on which I am an expert. I am so tired of the doubts that surround me. I am so tired of my fears and the thing always out of sight that I fear is driving me to a terrible end.

  I have not yet opened the warehouse door. I will. I promise myself I will.

  14

  Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. 1894

  Aaron Kosminski

  Assessment

  Since his last visitor two weeks ago, the patient has become violent when approached and it has become necessary to separate him from other patients for their own safety. Staff maintain a minimal contact policy at all times and Mr Kosminski spends most of his hours alone, which calms him slightly.

  I believe that the visitor he received has in some way fed into Kosminski’s complicated paranoias. The report from the doctor and nurse on duty who supervised the visit can shed no light on why it affected the patient so badly. The gentleman who called on him was a foreign priest. The two men spoke intently for some time, during which the patient was entirely calm. The priest, notable for his missing hand as well as his accent, embraced the patient and then after a short while, he left.

  He told the doctor that he had been sent by the patient’s older sister, Matilda, but she has since stated that she did no such thing. She did say, however, that her brother did have two friends with whom he spent many hours but she did not have their names. She thought that one was foreign.

  One week ago Kosminski was violent towards himself, beating his head against the wall of his room. This was perhaps a suicide attempt, but before he could cause himself any sustained injury he became tearful and would say only, ‘It won’t let me.’

  He masturbates frequently and aggressively and with no care if he is observed. He mutters to himself almost constantly and eats and drinks the bare minimum to survive.

  My recommendation for this patient is to move him to Leavesden, where they are better accommodated for the treatment of excitable patients.

  15

  London. May, 1897

  Dr Bond

  ‘Does it feel strange to be taking this train back into town after your recent case?’ Edward Kane asked. ‘It must be far more real to you than it possibly could be for the rest of us, who just read the details in the papers.’

  Charles Hebbert, tired from playing with James and Edward in the garden while we all enjoyed the sudden breath of summer in the air, had taken a carriage from Juliana’s earlier in the day but Edward Kane insisted on taking the train. It didn’t surprise me; the railways were his business, after all. However, I could find no excuse of my own not to travel with him and so here we sat, facing each other, as we rolled from station to station towards Waterloo.

  ‘Sadly, if that were the case then there would be very few places left in London where I felt comfortable. I would probably never leave my house.’ I smiled and then returned my gaze to the window, hoping we would be able to travel the rest of the way in relative silence.

  I thought once more upon Charles’ enthusiasm as he acted like as young a man as Kane this afternoon. He had piggybacked James up and down the garden at a fair old pace, then let him climb on his back and ride him like a horse before playing catch with both of them. Had this been just a surge of grandfatherly affection, or had he been avoiding my company?

  Apart from my discovery of his lies about his visits to the club, I had been able to find nothing concrete in Hebbert’s behaviour or habits to give ground to my doubts about him. When not immersed in my work at the hospital or with inquests – Elizabeth Camp’s had run into April – I had followed him, and studied him whenever in his company – but there was nothing, no sign of anything untoward. He worked, he went to his club – no lies about that any more – and he visited Juliana, and those three activities took up most of his time. Even when he was drunk and I engaged him in discussion about our time on the Ripper case, there was never any flicke
r of guilt about him; he remained as cheerful as ever, that very disposition which had drawn me to him so early in our friendship. The more that winter faded, giving way to the scents of early summer in the air, the harder I found it to find darkness in him.

  But still I could not shake my curiosity.

  ‘You seem tired of late.’

  Kane’s words broke my reverie and I looked over at him to find his dark eyes resting thoughtfully on me. ‘And preoccupied,’ he concluded. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you look like a man in need of a vacation.’

  ‘Perhaps I am a little tired,’ I admitted. ‘I sometimes find it hard to relax at night.’

  And that was no lie, for sleep was once again evading me. Although I wasn’t being troubled by that awful sense of dread that had plagued me during those terrifying months when blood seeped into every stone of London’s streets, my mind would not rest, and at night, when the inner world had a tendency to become as dark as the outer one, scorpions of doubt and suspicion skittered wildly within my skull. I had done my best to push the priest and the Upir from my thinking, but if Charles Hebbert was Jack, then it was strange that two such terrible killers had come to live under one roof.

  Was my suspicion of Hebbert based solely on my subconscious still believing in part that the Upir affected those around the host? Or could it be that Hebbert and Harrington had been drawn to each other, each recognising some unspoken bloodlust in the other? Juliana had said that Harrington had been friendly to her when they first met, and it was only after being introduced to Hebbert that his intentions became romantic. Or perhaps I was making links where there were none; there could be a far more mundane explanation for his lies about dining at the club.

  It was entirely possible that Charles Hebbert had been lured by the call of those unfortunate women of Whitechapel and had sated his lusts on them in ways that left them a few pennies richer but very much alive. He wouldn’t be the first or last gentleman to wish to experience such a thing. Distasteful as I might find it, that could easily be the cause of both his nocturnal visits to the East End as witnessed by Waring and his lies about his visits to his club.

  But I had to admit that I found it harder to accept this explanation, simply because he’d involved Harrington in it – that seemed unnecessary to me, and it laid him open to discovery. Had he perhaps had a conversation with Harrington, possibly that the young man had forgotten whilst in the grips of the fever? Perhaps he had seen Harrington with a woman – one of his victims – and had mistaken the meeting for some sexual indiscretion, and so he knew Harrington would not challenge him; instead, Harrington provided cover for both of them. But knowing how much Charles loved his daughter, that too did not ring true to me. I was certain he would not have tolerated that behaviour from Harrington, especially before the young people had wed.

  It was a knotted mess and I could make no sense of it, and although much of the time, especially now that the days were longer and the air warm, I ridiculed myself for my suspicions, still I knew I needed to find some logic that would allow them to be shaken away, for my own sanity as much as for my sleep. If Hebbert had been our frenzied Jack, then why had he stopped killing so suddenly? The only event I could link it to was Harrington’s death, and that brought me straight back to the Upir and the legend of the wickedness it brought in its wake, and I would not – could not – entertain that.

  Once again I cursed Jasper Waring for his idle remark, and Edward Kane for bringing the past back to London.

  The latter was still watching me patiently and I turned my mind back to his question.

  ‘I am perhaps getting a little old for such long-winded inquests on top of my responsibilities at the hospital,’ I admitted at last.

  ‘I apologise if I have added to that,’ Kane said, ‘by asking you to look through Harrington’s letters.’

  ‘No, not at all – and I am sorry to have taken so long. But I have used my sleepless hours to browse them.’ This was not entirely a lie; I had browsed them, albeit swiftly, as not to linger on any detail of superstition or fantastical monsters, trying to find any references to Hebbert’s club during the night-time hours.

  He leaned forward. ‘And what did you make of them? Can you understand my concerns?’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ I said, ‘and I would have been equally disturbed in your position. But let me put your mind at rest. Terrible as the things he wrote to you are, I truly believe they were simply the effect of the fever on his mind. He was often very ill, and I think he would have been in no condition to carry out such deeds.’

  ‘You think it was just some kind of hallucination?’ He looked relieved, but the conversation was not yet over. I was beginning to think that Edward Kane’s mind was as meticulous as my own. He had clearly not been able to put the letters behind him, and he wanted to understand Harrington’s motivations – perhaps because he had not been there to offer his help at the time. ‘But what of the warehouse? The women?’

  ‘He heard so much about those cases from Charles and me – if he had been experiencing periods of blackouts during his fevers then it is not a great leap to wondering what could have been the worst acts he could have committed in those missing hours – the imagination is a very powerful thing, after all.’

  ‘And his talk of a monster on his back? This Upir?’

  Hearing the word aloud from another’s lips startled me. Harrington had written about the Upir in his letters? I had not seen that, and I had no wish to. Although the very word made me shudder, I could find an easy explanation for Harrington’s mentioning it: the priest had said he’d been sent by the village: when Harrington was ill in Poland he must have heard about their suspicions, and the legend lodged in his mind. Perhaps it even gave him an excuse to allow the killer inside him out.

  I turned my shock into a forced laugh. ‘Do you believe in such things?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Kane said promptly, ‘but from the letters it appears clear that Jim did.’

  ‘I imagine he heard of this legend while travelling and it embedded itself in his subconscious,’ I said calmly. ‘James suffered badly from repeated chest infections, which could indeed create the sensation of a weight on his back. If he was already suffering some delusions, it would not be a great leap for him to believe that perhaps there was something there controlling him.’ I hoped I had not spoken more of the nature of the Upir than was written in the pages, but I wanted the conversation over. I wanted to burn those letters and never think of that time again.

  ‘And so you think it’s all just fantasy? I hoped as much, but with the violence of his death – and with no one knowing where he had been that night …’ Kane looked embarrassed as he finished, ‘I wondered if he had tried to take another woman and it had gone wrong.’ He tilted his head slightly, then dropped his eyes. ‘Although that sounds just as crazy out loud as the thought of him actually murdering women is.’

  I was struck by a moment of genius and I leaned forward so our faces were only inches apart. ‘Where did Harrington say he killed these women?’ I posed the question in such as tone as to suggest I already had the answer and this was a test, although in fact I needed to know just how much information Kane remembered from the letters in case I inadvertently revealed too much.

  ‘In one of his warehouses,’ Kane said promptly.

  ‘Well then, apply the logic,’ I said. ‘If Harrington had indeed been killing women in a warehouse at the wharves, then surely when he died and the inventory of the business was done, evidence of his terrible deeds would have been discovered. He did not know he was going to die that night, so all the tools of that gruesome trade would have been there – and even if there had been no bodies, then there would most certainly have been bloodstains.’ I paused. ‘And no such evidence was found.’

  The priest had cleaned it up well, especially for a one-armed man. All evidence of Harrington’s guilt had been erased, and although I had not been near that warehouse since, neither had any alarm been raised.

/>   Kane leaned backwards, his shoulders slumping slightly as he smiled. His relief was evident. ‘Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?’

  ‘You were worried, whereas I was analysing,’ I said with a smile. ‘Also, I am quite sure that on the dates during which those women were murdered James Harrington was quite ill.’ Now that he was relaxing, I felt more confident. ‘He was more than likely bed-bound, or at the very least, far too weak to have mutilated their bodies. Having read these letters I can’t help but wonder if the infection had spread to his brain; it could easily have caused all this anguish he was suffering. It might turn out – although I would never say as much to Juliana – that his quick death was a mercy.’ By the time I’d finished the sentence I’d almost succeeded in convincing myself.

  ‘I am mightily pleased to hear you say this,’ Kane said. ‘The idea that someone I knew could be capable of all that and I hadn’t noticed – well, I won’t pretend it didn’t disturb my sleep for a while there. But you’ve given me some peace, Doctor. Now I owe the memory of my friend an apology. Suspicion eats at the soul, doesn’t it?’

  My small moment of victory soured with his words and I thought of Hebbert and the doubts that refused to leave me. He was a good friend, one who had shown me nothing but kindness over the years, and yet now I veered between thinking him innocent and believing him to be a monster. My lies had given Kane peace, but I had none of my own. I ached to get home to the laudanum bottle, and that in turn made me feel ashamed; it was too much of an echo of darker times.

  I need to get myself back under control. If I could not prove Hebbert guilty of anything, then I was going to have to try and find a way to let the matter go. I could not be dragged in to madness. My life ahead should be peaceful old age with Juliana by my side. That was all that truly mattered.