Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper

by David Barnett

  WHITHER THE PEELERS?

  Mrs. Strutter (though this newspaper has been unable to establish whether she is in fact a married woman) furthermore claims that our constabulary has systematically failed to make any inroads into the capture of Jack the Ripper, who (sensitive readers may wish to turn the page) is renowned for cutting the tops of the skulls of his victims—all young women who have been found on the streets of Whitechapel and the East End.

  Indeed, she surmises that the police are in actual fact supportive of the actions of Jack the Ripper and wish him to wipe out the entire population of Whitechapel’s “ruined women.”

  SCOOPED OUT THEIR BRAINS

  No one is certain of Jack the Ripper’s motives for his killing spree, which is about to mark its third Christmas. It is said that the monster scoops out his victims’ brains with a wooden spoon and eats them as one might porridge.

  The letter from the prostitutes of Whitechapel leaves no doubt that the sordid business of “favors for sale” on the public streets of the East End is now—albeit temporarily—in abeyance.

  Well, that was some good news at least, thought Lestrade. The latest Metropolitan Police report had the number of prostitutes across London at something like ten thousand, and a quarter of those were in the boroughs of Spitalfields, Houndsditch, and Whitechapel. One of his biggest headaches was managing the sheer volume of streetwalkers and the associated crime that they brought to his corner of the East End. He couldn’t suppress a smile, and Bent noticed.

  “What the eff are you grinning about, George?”

  Lestrade waved his hand at the Argus. “One less headache, Mr. Bent.”

  Bent stared at him, incredulous. “You’re having a laugh, right? You think this is a good thing? You’re off your effing rocker, Inspector Lestrade. Prostitutes are the oil that keeps Whitechapel moving. And now they’re having an effing strike? Think about it, George. There’ll be the devil to pay. Wouldn’t surprise me if you had an effing riot on your hands in a day or two.”

  Lestrade opened his mouth to retort, then closed it again and harrumphed. “You really think so?”

  “I bloody know so, and I’m speaking from experience,” said Bent. “I mean, George, look at me. You think I can get a woman without paying for it? I don’t get my leg over for a few days, I start to get cranky. Worst I might do, though, is kick a dog on my way back to Grosvenor Square, where I’ll wank myself to sleep.”

  Lestrade made a face, but Bent went on. “Think about some of the characters you’ve got out there, George. What happens when they can’t get a tumble? Some of ’em’ll get their kicks in other ways. Some of ’em’ll take it whether it’s on offer or not. And some of ’em’ll blame you, George. Old Jack the Ripper’s been slicing up whores since the summer of ’88. It’s Christmas 1890. That’s two and a half years. And how close have you come to catching him?”

  “We’ve made good progress,” mumbled Lestrade, but he knew as well as anyone that that was a lie.

  Bent nodded. “Thought so. You’re going to have to pull out all the stops, George. Because it might be snowing out there, but Whitechapel’s suddenly a tinderbox of pent-up frustration. And it won’t take much for it to go up, just like that.”

  Bent snapped his thumb and fingers, and Lestrade jumped, startled out of the reverie brought on by the sudden, dreadful realization that Aloysius Bent was exactly right. He groaned and put his head in his hands.

  “Cheer up, though, George,” said Bent, standing up and rearranging his groin in the folds of his creased trousers. “At least now you’ve got me and Gideon Smith on the case. We’ll have this sorted out in no time. I’ll see myself out.”

  * * *

  After Bent had departed, George Lestrade sat for a long time in welcome silence, reading and rereading the story in the Illustrated London Argus. A prostitutes’ strike. And how long before it spread, how long before they got word out to Bethnal Green, Mile End, and Blackwall? Lambeth and Blackfriars? Southwark, Bermondsey, and Rotherhithe? Because though it was a Whitechapel problem just now, Lestrade knew of Lizzie Strutter by reputation very well indeed. She ruled the whores of the borough with an iron fist, and what she said went. Even the gangs were scared of Lizzie Strutter. Once the punters starved of sex in Whitechapel started drifting out to the other areas, she was going to clamp down on them as well. This thing could go across London. And when the judges and Members of Parliament and captains of industry couldn’t get their illicit tumbles, then the trouble would really begin.

  Bent’s words came back to haunt him mockingly. Whitechapel’s suddenly a tinderbox of pent-up frustration. And it won’t take much for it to go up, just like that. And some of ’em’ll blame you, George.

  He reached for the coffeepot, but Bent had drained it dry. He looked up expectantly as Constable Ayres bobbed his head around the door. At least he could get more coffee. At least the day couldn’t get any worse.

  Then he saw the look on the constable’s face.

  “Bad news, sir,” he said apologetically. “There’s been another one.”

  Lestrade rubbed his eyes and frowned. “Another what, Constable?”

  “Jack the Ripper, sir,” said Ayres. “He’s struck again.”

  INTERMEDIO: VERY FAR FROM HOME

  He was very far from home, yet he walked the streets of London with an unerring sense of direction and purpose, as though the sluggish black waters of the Thames coursed in his veins, as if the smog that hung oppressively over the rooftops filled his lungs. His heart was as black as the smoke-stained walls of the towering ziggurats and tumbledown tenements, and as hard as the cobbles coated with the dirty snow beneath the heels of his boots.

  He was very far from home, but the shrill cries and guttural shouts gave him some comfort; the swell of the filthy bodies of the damned toward a narrow alleyway and the faint but unmistakable smell of blood on the cold, damp air went some way toward alleviating the homesickness that crouched like a black toad in his soul. He fell in with the masses, hanging back at the corner of the alley as they surged forward to get a better look. He had already seen it, and more like it besides, but still he came, and craned his neck to look.

  To look at the scene of the crime.

  He felt his black, stone-hard heart quicken as he caught a glimpse of the victim, her face darkened by a dried curtain of blood, before the police officers began to push the crowd back as more uniformed coppers brought out barricades to preserve the scene for the detectives. He would be coming, ferret-eyed Lestrade, rubbing his thin mustache and pondering the body laid against the wall, knowing with a sinking stomach what was already passing through the crowd like the pox.

  Jack the Ripper. Jack the Ripper had struck again.

  He allowed himself a smile and turned away, walking against the ghoulish Londoners who flocked to the mouth of the alley still, walking away from the tumult. The true work had been done; there was nothing to see but the aftermath. Art had been committed, black art, the truest and only kind of art there was. Besides, he had seen enough, and more than the great unwashed masses who jostled for a glimpse of torn flesh and rusted blood.

  He had seen the ghost of the girl, pale and diffuse, almost invisible against the snow. She didn’t exist, of course, because although he knew there were more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than were dreamed of in all but the philosophy of a select few, he could distinguish phantoms of the mind from more outré occurrences. The ghost was a product of his mind, a stain on his soul, a message from deep within himself.

  The ghost was encouragement that he was on the right path, as dark as the woods that the trail crept through. She was blood and blackness, set free from inside him. For when he killed, he was not merely spilling the blood of his victims. He was bloodletting his own conscience, easing his own soul lest it consume him completely, trepanning the pressure that built up inside his skull not through self-mutilation, but by the vicious injuries he dealt to others.

  The ghost was also a warning.


  Not enough, she had mouthed at him. Not enough.

  3

  JACK THE BLOODY RIPPER

  George Lestrade was resigned: The day was only going to get worse. Three immediate pieces of evidence in support of his hypothesis were present in the snowdrifts that had gathered in the narrow alley off Commercial Street, where the constables had set up a cordon of police bunting to keep the gathering crowd of onlookers back from the crime scene.

  One, it was definitely a Ripper. Slumped against the soot-blackened brick wall, a smear of red painting the brickwork behind her, was the victim, her eyes glassily, shockingly open, curtains of dried blood down her face, bisected by her nose. The top of her head had been severed, the cap of her skull peeled back as though it were nothing more than the lid of a jam jar. Lestrade knew that tests in the morgue would reveal that an initial cut across the forehead by an incredibly sharp, thin blade had been supplemented with a rough, jagged incision by something more powerful and crude, in the manner of an implement that might be used to remove the top of a tin can. That was the modus operandi of the man the gutter press insisted on referring to as Jack the Ripper. Beneath the pried-apart skull, the brains of the victim glistened like gray jelly.

  Two, despite his stern words of less than an hour ago, that prancing fool who Dr. Watson was supposed to be keeping as far from Lestrade as possible was here, his keeper wringing his leather-gloved hands behind him as the thin, wiry figure seemed to be performing some kind of dance, just inside the cordon. Lestrade glared at Watson until the doctor felt the weight of his stare and glanced over guiltily. Get him out of here, Lestrade mouthed. His head was pounding fit to burst, as though Jack the bloody Ripper had done a number on him, too.

  Three—and, Lestrade fervently hoped, finally—Aloysius Bent was standing at the front of the crowd at the top of the alley, stuffing a steaming pasty into his mouth and waving cheerfully at Lestrade.

  The inspector pinched his nose and closed his eyes tightly, imagining he was still in his bed and today had just been a nightmare from which he was about to wake. When he opened them again, it was all just the same, save for a young constable who had appeared by his side and was staring expectantly at him.

  “Sir? I thought you might—”

  “First things first, Constable,” said Lestrade. “One, get that bloody idiot detective away from here. Two, increase the cordon and do not say a word to that fat man over there, Aloysius Bent. Not even ‘good morning,’ do you understand?”

  Constable Ayres was a bright young chap, if a little too taken with rules and regulations in Lestrade’s opinion, and he nodded. “Thirdly, if there is any chance of a pot of coffee, it would benefit your promotion prospects greatly.”

  Ayres smiled enthusiastically. “I shall get right on it, sir.”

  Lestrade held up his hand. “Before you go … you had something to tell me? Do we know who this doxy is?”

  The young constable produced his notebook with a flourish. “That’s just it, sir. She isn’t a prostitute at all. We’ve hardly had any on the streets this last evening, what with all the malarkey in the papers, Lizzie Strutter—”

  “I am aware of that, Constable. Not a prostitute, you say? Then we have a positive identification?”

  “Yes, sir. Party of the name of Emily Dawson. She is housekeeper to Professor Stanford Rubicon, the Professor of Adventure, sir. He has a laboratory and office not far from here, on Bishopsgate.”

  Lestrade closed his eyes again. Professor Rubicon had friends in high places. This was not good, at all, insofar as any young woman with her head half sliced off, slumped against a wall on his beat, could ever be described as good. But this was particularly not good. He chanced opening one beady eye and said, “And what was she doing in this insalubrious neighborhood?”

  “One possibility, sir, is that she was on her way to the Empirical Geographic Club on Threadneedle Street, where Professor Rubicon is known to be a member. He reported a burglary just this morning at his premises on Bishopsgate; he had been at his club last night and had not ventured to his laboratory until this morning. His housekeeper—Miss Dawson—was the last person there and would normally have locked up after her cleaning shift. A constable has been to the laboratory and noted that the entire premises had been cleaned apart from one room, where the burglary had taken place. Cleaning products appeared to have been dropped at the door, as though Miss Dawson had just seen the wrecked room. There was a considerable amount of dried blood there, suggesting the burglary happened yesterday evening rather than in the small hours. It’s possible that she discovered the burglary and set off on foot to Threadneedle Street to raise the alarm.…”

  “You seem to have a fondness for possibles, Constable. I prefer to deal in definites. Do you have any definites for me?”

  Ayres flicked over the pages of his notebook, which were rapidly dampening in the renewed snowfall that dusted the shoulders of his black overcoat. “Yesterday evening, sir, at around seven o’clock, Miss Dawson was seen hurrying along Commercial Street. There is a public house, sir, you will know of it—the Golden Ball. We interviewed the regular drinkers there this morning, and one who was at the hostelry last night reports that a woman matching Miss Dawson’s description was the subject of some unwelcome attention from two men who were drinking outside. Not regulars, said the man; rough types. Apparently some of the lower classes are casting their nets quite wide looking for prostitutes who might not be caught up in this strike business, sir.”

  “Then perhaps this is not Jack the Ripper at all,” mused Lestrade. Both he and the constable glanced toward the body of Emily Dawson, which was finally being covered against the hungry glances of the crowd with a large white sheet. Unlikely, obviously, but as Lestrade had already pointed out, he dealt in definites. “Have someone track down these two men; as of now they are suspects in a murder inquiry.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Ayres. He closed his notepad and glanced up. “Now … get rid of the Great Detective, don’t speak to Aloysius Bent, and coffee.”

  “Just the coffee, Constable,” said Lestrade wearily. “I’ll attend to the others myself.”

  * * *

  “Doctor Watson,” said Lestrade. The Great Detective was hopping from foot to foot, lunging forward, pulling his thin frame back, dancing around as though taken with the mania. “Perhaps I dreamed our conversation in my office just this morning. The one in which I could have sworn I expressly forbade you from allowing your patient to have anything to do with any criminal investigations in Whitechapel or its immediate environs.”

  Watson wrung his hands again, as the hook-nosed detective glanced over sharply at Lestrade’s use of the word “patient.” “Please, Inspector,” whispered the doctor. “His continued wellbeing relies—”

  “His continued well-being relies upon you getting him the blazes out of my crime scene before he contaminates it and I roll up my sleeves and evict him myself!” roared Lestrade. There was a momentary silence as everyone glanced over at the uncharacteristic outburst, then continued with their activities. Lestrade coughed. “Just … just get him away, John. Stop him dancing like that. What is he doing, anyway?”

  “I have an insight!” announced the Great Detective imperiously. “Inspector … you see those footprints?”

  Lestrade peered at the ground before the cloth-covered body of Emily Dawson. There were indeed scuffed boot-prints, rapidly filling up with fresh snowfall. He hadn’t noticed them, as a matter of fact, but if one of his constables hadn’t already gotten drawings of them there’d be the devil to pay.

  “Watch,” instructed the detective, and began to dance and prance again.

  Lestrade glared at Watson. “Away. Now.”

  “Come along, old chap,” said Watson gently, leading his charge by the bony elbow back toward the bunting cordon. As a constable lifted it for them to pass, another figure bustled through, a large man with a bushy beard and a thick fur coat that gave him the appearance of a bear. A particularly angry bear, a
t that.

  “Who is in charge here?” bellowed the bear, casting around. Several fingers pointed in Lestrade’s direction and the man stalked down the alley toward him, glancing at the sheet covering the body and faltering. “Oh! Oh, tell me that is not—?”

  Lestrade rapidly went to meet trouble halfway, glancing at Aloysius Bent at the top of the alley. The journalist seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, availing himself of what appeared to be another pasty and a small bottle of what looked like gin.

  “I am Inspector Lestrade of the Commercial Road police station. I am in charge of this investigation. And you are…?”

  “Professor Stanford Rubicon,” rumbled the man, taking Lestrade’s proffered hand and squeezing the life out of it. “Is that … is that Emily, my housekeeper?”

  Lestrade took the professor’s elbow and steered him away from the cordon. “I’d be grateful if you could give us a positive identification, Professor Rubicon, but I am sorry to say that it appears so, from papers about her person. Can you tell me when you saw her last yesterday?”

  “Didn’t see her at all yesterday,” said Rubicon, rubbing his beard. “I’d gone off to my club before she came to clean the Bishopsgate rooms.”

  “And you will certainly have people who can vouch for you at the club?”

  Rubicon glared at him. “Sir, are you suggesting I did for my own cleaning lady?”

  “Just to eliminate you from our inquiries,” said Lestrade soothingly. He changed tack. “I believe there had been a burglary…”

  Rubicon nodded. “Found it when I came to open up early this morning. One of the laboratories … wrecked. Your boys have already been round.” His eyes narrowed. “You think it might have something to do with…?” He nodded his head toward the body.

  “What was taken, Professor?”

  Rubicon rubbed his beard again with a big hand. “Looks like damage, more than anything. I had a few … scientific samples there. Not completely sure what’s gone missing, all told.”