Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper

by David Barnett

  At least there she had been safe and clean. Here … here she had no idea what was going on. It was as if she were playing a part at the theater, but she wasn’t sure of her lines or her motivation. There was a veneer on her of Lottie, the streetwalker, the good-time girl. But it was cracking, and she was afraid to peel it off, because she didn’t know what was underneath apart from a black, starless void.

  If only she could remember who she was supposed to be.

  If only she knew what she was supposed to do.

  “Henry likes his girls to scream a bit. Thinks if he hears that, it makes him more of a man. Just think on it, eh?”

  Lottie heard a soft tread on the creaking stairs and hugged her knees even tighter to her chest. She felt as though she might be sick—properly, violently sick. She began to shake uncontrollably, and tears began to cascade down her cheeks. As the handle twisted and a pale crack of light appeared at the door’s edge, she thought she might scream with not very much encouragement at all.

  Henry Savage felt as though his whole life had been leading up to this moment. His hand on the door handle, he paused for a moment to take a deep breath. Ever since he had seen that girl Lottie in the square, he had been obsessed. She was beautiful, of course, the sort of beautiful that Henry Savage had never really seen in the flesh before. Girls grew up quick in Whitechapel; the dirt was ingrained in them from an early age, the weight of poverty slumped their shoulders, the babies they popped out—more of them dead than alive, usually—wrecked their bodies, the sheer brutality of life battered their souls. Henry saw them sometimes just stop in the streets to watch an airship passing overhead, or to look at the smog-wreathed towers of the city, tantalizingly close but forever out of reach for Whitechapel’s dirt-poor wretches. Henry never looked up. He didn’t see the point. He’d never fly in an airship, never climb the towers of London. Better to keep your hand on your purse and your eyes in the back of your head, watching for whichever bastard had designs on it.

  But Lottie was different. She was clean. Her body—as much as he’d felt it, for the brief, glorious moments he’d held it against him—was soft and curvy; her skin was clear and unblemished. She smelled nice. She was like the airships or the towers … distant, unknowable, untouchable. She was what the rest of the world thought of as London itself, when the real London was here, in the rat-infested alleyways of the East End, the dark heart of the city beating more loudly in the shit-strewn streets than anywhere else. She was beautiful and pure.

  Lottie was, in short, everything Henry hated, and what Henry Savage hated he fucked, one way or another. That was how you got to the top of the tree on these streets. Not by being nice. But by fucking people, fucking them properly, like he had done on a nightly basis in this house before Lizzie Strutter had called her stupid strike; or fucking them over, with a knife between the ribs or a brick through the window, or a blade across the throat, like Gruff Billy’d gotten. And once Henry Savage had fucked somebody, they didn’t fuck him back.

  His head pounded as the blood deserted it and flooded to his groin. He clutched the jar of goose fat in his hand, trying not to think too much about what he was going to do. He wanted it to be new and fresh. He was going to fuck some Whitechapel into this pure, beautiful little thing, and he was going to enjoy every moment of it.

  Henry was sweating when he finally opened the door, the light of one small candle illuminating the bed facing the door. And there she was. Lottie, sitting with her legs drawn up. He felt a surge between his legs at the sight of her calves disappearing into the folds of her skirt. He stepped inside, the girl never taking her eyes off him, and closed the door quietly behind him.

  “Lottie,” he said. “Lizzie told you what I was going to do?”

  She nodded, her blond hair shining in the candlelight. He said, “Stand up. Take off your clothes. Everything. I want a good look at you.”

  He stood at the bottom of the bed as she slid off it and walked primly around to him. She pointed at the jar in his hand. “What’s that?”

  Her voice was like honey. He smiled. “Bit of goose fat. Lizzie says I’m not to hurt you.” He smiled, showing the rotten stumps of his teeth. “But it’s no fun if it don’t hurt a bit, is it?”

  Lottie placed a hand on his chest, and he felt his heart pound. She took the jar from his hand. “Why don’t I put that on for you?”

  “You could. Get undressed.”

  “In a minute,” she whispered.

  Henry raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t used to people going against him. Not really one for the alternative point of view, Henry Savage. But the way she said it, in her upper-crust voice … it excited him. He nodded, and her hand trailed down his chest to his trousers. Deftly, Lottie unbuttoned him, and he sighed as he felt himself spring forward. She slid her hand into his fly.

  “Not too much,” he gasped as her hand brushed past his thick member. “Don’t make me come.”

  Lottie wriggled her hand into his shorts and cupped his balls. He put a hand out for a handful of skirts, and began to pull them up.

  “Ow,” he said. “Not so tight, girl.” She was gripping his balls like she was trying to pull a pair of black puddings from a butcher’s window.

  Lottie continued to squeeze. “That’s enough,” said Henry briskly. “Take off your dress and get on your hands and knees. I’m going to do you good, girl.”

  She continued to stare into his eyes and held on tighter, twisting. “Fuck!” he said. “You’re hurting me! Lottie!”

  She smiled at him, just as she twisted sharply and her nails dug into his flesh, and Henry Savage felt the blood that had filled his groin suddenly spill out into his trousers.

  “My name’s not Lottie,” she whispered. “It’s Maria.”

  * * *

  Rachel had finally given in to Maria’s demands for a horse-drawn cab at the very least, on the grounds that they had to get back to the bawdy house before Lizzie Strutter realized Lottie was missing. They had sneaked into a tumbledown, soot-blackened tenement on Walden Street, and Rachel had pushed her to the stairs, whispering, “Straight up, I’ll go and distract Mum. You just hope Henry ain’t already here.”

  “Which room?” hissed Maria.

  Rachel looked at her quizzically. “Top of the stairs, you silly thing, same as before. Now go.”

  Maria climbed the dark, steep staircase, pausing at the door at the top of the stairs. The whole house seemed damp with shadows, and it was pungent with a musky, earthy stench that had seeped into the walls, the bowing ceilings, the few scraps of threadbare carpet. She turned the handle on the door, fearing what she would find. The door creaked open, the thin light from a single candle revealing …

  “You’re beautiful,” Maria said eventually, after she and the girl on the bed had gaped at each other for long, silent, stock-still moments.

  “You’re … me?” said the girl.

  Maria closed the door behind her and hurried to the bed where the girl sat with her legs drawn up to her chest, weeping quietly.

  “Charlotte Elmwood,” she said. “We have been looking for you.”

  The girl frowned. “My name is Lottie.”

  Maria cursed. Of course. Mesmer’s hypnosis still held sway. Maria took the girl’s shoulders in her hands and said, “Look at me. Your name is Charlotte Elmwood of Winchmore Hill. Your mind has been meddled with to make you forget who you are and think you are what you most certainly are not.”

  Charlotte met her eyes. She really was beautiful, even after several days of living rough on the streets. Maria could not believe she looked anything like this girl. It was like catching a glimpse of your reflection in a shop window and then realizing it was someone else in similar dress.

  “How do you look like me?” asked Charlotte.

  Maria sighed. “It is a story that will take longer to tell than we have time to waste. I must get you out of here now.”

  Charlotte shook her head violently. “No. Mum—Mrs. Strutter—says I’m to make Henry Savage ha
ppy on account of he’s done her a big favor. He’ll be here any minute.” She looked at Maria sadly and began to cry. “She says he’s going to hurt me.”

  “Do you not remember anything of who you are?” asked Maria fiercely. Charlotte shook her head and began to cry even harder, tears flowing down her filthy face. Maria dug in her pockets for a handkerchief. She needed the girl to be in a frame of mind to follow basic instructions if they were going to get out of this. Maria’s hand fell on something soft, and she withdrew it from her pocket.

  Charlotte stared at it for a long moment, the flow of tears dwindling, her eyes widening.

  “Oh,” she said. “Dolly.”

  Maria stared at the rag doll in her hand, the one that she had unwittingly taken from the Elmwoods’ house when she fled. Charlotte Elmwood’s favorite childhood toy. She handed it slowly over to the girl. “You remember Dolly?”

  Charlotte took the doll and buried her face in it, closing her eyes tight and drinking in the memories imbued in the toy’s faded gingham dress and woolen plaits. Eventually she opened her eyes, looked around in a panic, and asked, “Where am I? Who are you?”

  “Welcome back, Charlotte,” said Maria with a smile. She turned as she heard a heavy tread on the creaking stairs. “Now listen very carefully. We need to act quickly.”

  * * *

  One hand gripping the front of his filthy shirt, the other tearing at his groin, Maria forced Henry Savage back against the door with a strength that caused surprise to flare up on his face, mingling with the pain. But mostly it was the pain. Maria didn’t know Henry Savage from Adam, but in an instant he had become every man who had ever wronged every woman, from the despicable Crowe who had forced her to dance while he pleasured himself in Professor Einstein’s tumbledown house to the ruffians who had abused Gloria Monday outside the Britannia Theater to, even, as her anger became a red fog that enveloped her mind, the idiot men who wrote those stupid etiquette books that dictated how a woman should walk and talk and wear her hair.

  She could hear Henry Savage taking in a vast breath with which to issue a leviathanlike scream. She twisted once, twice, three times and dug her nails in even harder, until his scrotum split and gave up its pathetic little treasures, the cause of all womankind’s problems since history began.

  Her eyes met Henry’s. He stared in uncomprehending horror for a split second, then started to release his bellow. Maria pulled her hand, soaked with gore, from Henry’s trousers and pressed it against his open mouth, stuffing what felt like two hazelnuts deep into his throat, then clamping shut his foul lips with her hand. Henry went quiet, then purple in the dim candlelight, then still as Maria let go of him and he slid down the doorway to the floorboards.

  Quickly, Maria crossed the room to the window shutters, the padlock she had broken off earlier hidden on the floor. She opened the shutters and peered out of the open window. There was no sign of Charlotte Elmwood. Good. Hopefully she would be on her way to 23 Grosvenor Square in a cab with the money Maria had given her before lowering her down to the street and taking her place in the bed.

  With one slightly guilty look back at the body of Henry Savage slumped against the door, a spreading dark patch covering the front of his trousers, she swung out of the window and began to climb down.

  19

  EL HOMBRE DE NEGRO

  Aloysius Bent had begun to think that through some bad fortune, conspiracy, or sheer carelessness he had lost everyone in the house. He had arrived at the Britannia Theater to find the place half-empty; there was some drag queen having cabbages hurled at her in the smaller of the theater’s auditoria, and Bent suspected there were only as many people as there were watching the warbling renditions of popular music hall songs because the main attraction, Markus Mesmer’s hypnotism show, had been canceled—“due to unforeseen circumstances” was all the theater management would say. A flower seller pushing her cart up and down Hoxton Road had said there’d been gunshots heard from the Britannia early in the evening, but she stank of cheap gin and Bent had thought her an unreliable witness, until he chuckled and remembered that before his luck had turned and he’d wound up in Grosvenor Square on Gideon’s coattails, he’d largely stunk of cheap gin himself, and he had always been—in his own esteemed opinion—a very reliable witness indeed.

  Still, there was nothing for it but to head home, where he found no sign of Gideon, which he’d been resigned to, of Maria, which he found worrying, or of Mrs. Cadwallader, which he found surprisingly perturbing. With a decanter of warming brandy by his side, he’d ventured into the study and began to haul books from the shelves until, two hours later, the volumes spread across the table, chairs, and most available floor space, he’d found what he was looking for.

  “Destreza!” he said, laughing so loudly he didn’t hear the front door bang open. “Gotcha! Effing gotcha!”

  A sudden, bitingly cold wind riffled the pages of his books, and Bent looked up, realizing that someone had entered the house. Mrs. Cadwallader, back from her mysterious errand? Then Maria appeared at the open door to the study, and Bent’s jaw dropped.

  “Eff me, girl, what the bloody hell has happened to you?”

  * * *

  Bent helped Maria—her skirts torn and muddied, her right hand and arm covered in blood, her hair tousled and hanging out of its bun in thick wisps—into the armchair, where she reached for his snifter of brandy and downed it in one.

  He stared at her. “You drink?”

  She blinked at him. “It has a most pleasing effect on my human brain, I have discovered. And I believe people imbibe during times of stress. That seems entirely appropriate.”

  “Where have you been?”

  She looked at the book open in front of her. There were pictures on the page, diagrams of a figure adopting different positions, holding out a thin sword. Of course. That was why it had seemed so familiar, the man’s black costume in the alley.

  Of course.

  “Why are you looking at this, Aloysius?”

  He gestured impatiently. “It’s called destreza. It’s a Spanish technique of swordplay, fencing. Something I picked up from that idiotic detective from Marylebone, maybe to do with the Jack the Ripper killings. It isn’t really pertinent right now. For God’s sake, girl, where have you been?”

  She continued to stare at the diagrams. “Oh, I think it is pertinent, Aloysius. I think it is very pertinent indeed.” She looked up. “I went to the theater. I found out what happened to Gideon. I rescued Charlotte Elmwood. And I think I might have been attacked by Jack the Ripper.”

  Bent opened his mouth, but all that came out was a tiny, strangled “eff.” He cleared his throat, poured himself a large brandy, and said, “I think you’d better start from the beginning.”

  * * *

  “So Charlotte Elmwood did not come here?” asked Maria with a groan after completing her summary of the evening’s events. “I had her in the palm of my hand … had that horrible man not been at the door I would have escaped with her, but I feared if he found the room empty he would raise the alarm and we would be recaptured immediately.”

  Bent stared at her, his hand over his mouth. “You fed Henry Savage his own effing bollocks? Jesus Christ.”

  Maria met his eyes. “I fear I have killed him, Aloysius,” she said levelly. “I was somewhat … enraged. I am afraid I might have made him a scapegoat for all the ills in modern society.”

  Bent shrugged. “Better than he deserved, Maria. He was a bad lot all around, Henry Savage. He was always going to meet a rough end.” He chuckled. “Bet he wouldn’t have seen that coming, though. Choked on his own balls. Dearie me. Nobody can say you’ve not got a sense of effing irony, love.”

  There was a noise from the hallway, and Mrs. Cadwallader appeared at the door, dropping her umbrella to the polished floor with a clatter and throwing her hands up in horror. “Land’s sakes! Miss Maria! You’re covered in blood!”

  Maria smiled. “I also have a number of bullet holes in my back
that could benefit from your invisible mending skills. And I really should give that broken pipe some more attention.”

  “I’ll send a telegram to the Elmwoods, see if they’ve heard anything,” said Bent. “I won’t tell them we’ve seen her. Don’t want to get their hopes up in case she hasn’t made her way there. Then we need to share our information about Jack the Ripper.” He held his forefinger and thumb half an inch apart. “We’re this close, I can feel it. This effing close.”

  Maria stood. “I shall effect my repairs and clean up this blood, then we shall speak again.” She picked up a scrap of paper from the table. “What does this mean?”

  Bent looked up. “Hmm? Oh, that. Gobbledegook, I think. Apparently the final words of the Ripper’s last known victim.”

  “Lost yon toe,” said Maria, making a face. “Lost yon toe?”

  Mrs. Cadwallader laughed. “Lo siento, more like. It means ‘I’m sorry.’ In Spanish.”

  The housekeeper frowned as Maria and Bent both stared at her. “What?” she said crossly.

  Maria looked down at the book of Spanish fencing positions, thought of why the man in black’s outfit seemed so familiar, remembered his final words to her in the alley, and met Bent’s eyes.

  “You speak Spanish, Sally?” said the journalist. “You speak effing Spanish?”

  * * *

  “Before I came to London,” said Sally Cadwallader, “I harbored dreams of a more cultural life than the one I eventually fell into. Oh, do not get me wrong; I would not swap my time keeping house here at Grosvenor Square for all the tea in China.” The housekeeper paused, gazing into the flames of the fire that crackled in the study hearth. “My family was by no means affluent, but my father always ensured there was enough money from his job down the pit so that I could attend an operatic society in Aberystwyth on Saturday afternoons. We used to put on all kinds of productions, and we went to see all the visiting professional operatic companies in Cardiff and Swansea.”