The Whitechapel Girl

by The Whitechapel Girl (retail) (epub)

  Behind where Walker sat crouched over his book was the door which led to Inspector Grainger’s office. In the office sat the inspector himself, Sergeant Miller and young Police-Constable Jennings. All three listened with varying degrees of interest, horror and speculation as a surgeon, specially summoned from the London Hospital in Whitechapel Road, quizzed Celia Tressing on matters of medical and surgical procedure.

  Much to the sergeant’s very evident distaste, Celia was able to answer accurately and coherently on everything from the sight and the sound of the cutting and lifting of flaps of skin, to the sundry probings and scrapings on various parts of the human anatomy. But it wasn’t until Celia outlined the stages involved in terminating a pregnancy that the sergeant went extremely pale and was forced to leave the office in an extreme hurry, headed in the direction of the lavatory.

  ‘I think you can take Miss Tressing back to the cells now, constable,’ said Grainger, running his hand through his hair. ‘I want to have a word with Doctor Jackson here.’ He took out yet another cigarette from his case. ‘And I think you might sit in on the discussion,’ he added. ‘So move yourself, Jennings.’

  Doctor Jackson said nothing but raised a surprised eyebrow – junior staff in discussions certainly wasn’t how he thought a department ought to be run, but then, he reminded himself, the inspector was hardly a gentleman.

  As Jennings led the expressionless Celia to the door, he almost collided with Sergeant Miller returning from his ablutions.

  ‘I trust that you are quite well now, sergeant,’ said Celia, her face a picture of concern. ‘You did look so very pale.’

  The sergeant nodded mechanically as he stepped back for her to pass. ‘Quite well, thank you, Miss Tressing,’ he said, wondering as he spoke what Mrs Miller would make of it all.

  ‘Doctor Jackson,’ said the inspector, lighting his cigarette and then tossing his match box on to his crowded desk. ‘In your opinion, and considering the scientific categorisation of facial types, do you believe that a young lady of such fair countenance – an angel to look at, some might say – would really have it in her to carry out such atrocities?’

  Jackson smirked with the confidence of one with superior knowledge. ‘A very dated concept, if I might say so, inspector,’ he said smugly.

  Grainger inclined his head in apparent acceptance of the doctor’s wisdom and noted something down on his pad. ‘In that case, let us ask a different question.’

  Jennings slipped quietly back into the room and stood in the corner.

  ‘In your own, honest opinion, Doctor Jackson,’ the inspector continued. ‘Based on your interviewing of Miss Tressing, could she actually have carried out the killings and mutilations?’

  ‘I would like to answer you in the following way,’ said the doctor, picking up his attache case and rising to his feet. ‘Her father, Bartholomew Tressing, has for many years been a colleague of mine. I would have been most reluctant to have come along had I realised the young lady’s identity beforehand. Now, if you will excuse me, Mrs Jackson was expecting me home over five hours ago. I bid you good night, gentlemen.’

  ‘Good night, sir,’ Grainger replied with hardly a glimmer of the surprise he felt. Then, just as the doctor opened the door, he added, ‘Please don’t concern yourself, but we might need to speak to you further.’

  Jackson didn’t answer; he just closed the door behind him.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Grainger, and drew hard on his cigarette.

  ‘Very,’ said Jennings, trying to ingratiate himself.

  ‘Why?’ said Miller.

  Grainger peered at the sergeant through a haze of smoke. ‘It’s been a tough time, Miller,’ he said. ‘Particularly these last couple of days. You must be very tired. Why don’t you get yourself off home for a few hours’ sleep?’

  Miller stood up very straight. ‘I’m fine, guv. Thank you very much,’ he added, and pulled at the hem of his tunic.

  Grainger nodded briefly, then stubbed out his cigarette and said very slowly and deliberately, ‘If the doctor hadn’t suspected that Miss Tressing might possibly be… responsible, then he wouldn’t have been quite so contained, now would he? He’d be demanding to see all sorts of people and protesting at my outrageous suggestions. Are you with me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miller equally slowly. ‘But if he did think she might be…’ He paused as realisation dawned. ‘Oh, I see.’

  ‘Good,’ said Grainger. ‘Now, Jennings, organise some tea.’ Jennings looked disgruntled and Miller looked pleased.

  The inspector might be impatient with the older man’s lack of speed in deduction, but he knew the importance of keeping the hierarchy intact in the force, and the officers on their toes.

  The constable returned with a tray carrying a brown earthenware teapot, a sugar basin, a milk jug and three tin mugs.

  ‘Shall I be mother?’ he asked, with a risky tinge of sarcasm. ‘No,’ said Miller, taking the tray from him and balancing it on the top of the filing cabinet. ‘I’ll be father.’

  Grainger stirred his tea with the end of his letter knife then sucked the drips off the bone handle. ‘Take a seat, gentlemen,’ he said, blinking his eyes in an effort to retain some semblance of being alert. ‘There are a few things I want to go over. Number one.’ He pursed his lips and blew on the scalding tea before sipping gingerly at the steaming mug. ‘We’re all agreed, are we, that she’s the sort of person who could move around Whitechapel at night without arousing the suspicion of others?’

  Jennings dived straight in with an opinion. ‘Definitely. And she would have little trouble being let into the girls’ company because of all the charity work she reckons she’s been involved in. And she’s certainly familiar with the area.’

  Miller decided it was time for him to chip in with his twopenny-worth. ‘And, according to the so-called Miss Smith, the girl has no mother, and her father frequents his club more than his dining room, so she’s got no one to miss her when she’s not at home, guv.’ Grainger nodded thoughtfully. ‘Number two: how about the bloodstains?’

  ‘Easy,’ said Jennings. ‘If anyone found her, she’d have an alibi – she’d been attending a birth. And that would explain her bag of instruments.’

  ‘Good point, Jennings.’

  ‘She could always cover her bloodied clothes with her cloak,’ said the sergeant. ‘I know you two aren’t married,’ he added wisely. ‘But a lady’s cloak can be a voluminous garment, you take it from me.’

  ‘Or she could turn her things inside out,’ said the constable, heady from the inspector’s recognition of his ability, and not wanting to be outdone by a sergeant whom he considered to hold hopelessly out-dated ideas. ‘Even dump her bloodstained skirts and be stark naked under her cape,’ he speculated wildly. ‘It would be a doddle down those dark alleys and passageways.’

  The sergeant looked aghast at the suggestion that Miss Tressing might shed her clothes in public. Murder was one thing, but a young lady without her necessaries – particularly in a public place – was too terrible a thought. ‘No,’ he said, eyeing the constable sternly. ‘She wouldn’t need to do that. Nobody would even think to suspect a young woman. And even if she was seen leaving the house in Miller’s Court, she could quite easily be taken for the victim herself going out to do a bit of business. Especially in the dark. It would certainly keep any suspicion away until the body was found.’

  ‘Good,’ said the inspector, making sure that this time he praised the sergeant. He was delighted that he was provoking the two men into constructive thinking. ‘Now, number three: why would she do it?’ He took another sip of tea. ‘Why?’

  ‘She was sickened by the way of life she saw in the slums, that’s why,’ said Sergeant Miller conclusively. ‘She’s a well-brought-up young lady; should have stayed with her own.’ He pursed his lips in disgust. ‘Enough to turn anyone, all those carryings-on, let alone someone with her sheltered upbringing.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about the sheltered upbringing,’ s
aid the constable, chancing a knowing smirk at the inspector. ‘Not with air the abortions she reckons she’s done. Nor when you think about the things she says her old man’s done to her.’

  The inspector didn’t share the constable’s amusement at the older man’s preference for delicacy and euphemism. ‘Interesting point, sergeant,’ he said, much to Jennings’ annoyance. ‘And apart from Kelly, none of them was expecting. Not even young enough to be that way, some of them.’

  Constable Jennings wasn’t, however, put off from airing his theories. ‘She could be covering up for something else.’

  Grainger looked interested, so Jennings carried on.

  ‘There might be a first killing we don’t even know about. More of an accident really. You see, she could have done an abortion that went wrong – illegal, but still an accident. Then she got the taste for it, killing whores.’

  ‘So how would that explain the missing bits of body?’ asked Grainger. ‘And the mutilations?’

  ‘How d’you explain madness?’ said the constable in a flash of inspiration.

  The inspector rubbed his hand over his face. His chin was harsh with stubble from want of a shave. It had been another very long night.

  ‘Sergeant,’ the inspector said, stifling a yawn. ‘It’ll be light soon. Send a couple of men round to see if Miss Tressing’s father is back at his home address yet.’ He drained his tea-cup, then leant back exhausted in his chair. ‘And make sure you send a pair who know how to behave. We’re dealing with an eminent surgeon here, not a market trader.’

  ‘Right away, sir,’ said Miller. ‘Jennings can go with Walker.’ Jennings jumped to his feet, unsure whether the sergeant was being sarcastic or not.

  ‘Oh, and sergeant,’ said the inspector, gingerly lifting his aching legs and balancing his heels on the only empty bit of his desk.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I think we can let Protsky go.’

  * * *

  ‘Walker,’ said the sergeant to the young man behind the front desk. ‘I’ll take over here till the next shift comes on.’

  ‘Ta, sarge,’ said the constable with a wide grin.

  ‘No need to look so pleased with yourself,’ said Miller. ‘You and the future Chief-Constable Jennings here are going to run a little errand to Belgravia for me – if you can tear yourself away from your cowboy book, that is.’

  ‘Yes, sarge,’ said the chastened Walker, shoving the thin paper book uncomfortably up the sleeve of his tunic. ‘Right, sarge.’ And he lifted the flap of the counter.

  ‘Hold hard, Walker lad,’ growled the sergeant. ‘Who is it that you’ve let doss down in the corner? Not a lady friend of yours, I do hope?’

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ said Ettie, opening her eyes sleepily. ‘What do you take me for? A copper’s tart?’ She stretched her arms high above her head. ‘I’ll just nip out for a bit of breakfast,’ she said to the now puce-faced sergeant, ‘then perhaps you’d be so kind as to organise for me to see Miss Tressing.’

  Chapter 39

  As Ettie breakfasted on cold toast scraped with dripping, and stewed, dark-brown tea at a coffee stall in Alie Street, thinking with a heavy heart about her mother and Celia, little did she realise that Jacob was at that moment being released from the very same police station where she had just spent such a tormented and uncomfortable night.

  ‘Right,’ barked the burly police-constable responsible for Jacob’s bruised and aching ribs, his cut eye and bloody nose. ‘Gawd and Inspector Grainger alone know why, but they’re letting you go again.’

  The officer pushed his face up close to the bars.

  ‘Now, if it was up to me, I know what I’d do to you, you murdering, foreign bastard. I’d chop your whatsits off and stuff ’em down your throat. What do you think of that? Or are you too busy thinking about butchering the next poor cow?’

  Jacob glared contemptuously at the man. He certainly didn’t feel like giving him the distinction of an answer, so he merely stood up, collected his cape from the hard, wooden platform on which he had lain awake all night, and walked over to the barred cell door.

  ‘Haven’t you got nothing to say for yourself?’ sneered the officer as he turned the jangling bunch of keys over and over in his hand.

  ‘And have you no explanation for why you kept me here and why you maltreated me?’ asked Jacob, with his head held high.

  ‘Get out of my sight!’ spat the officer, swinging the door back on its hinges. He was hardly able to contain himself as Jacob stepped past him. ‘Go on. Before I do something you might regret.’

  All the while, as Jacob walked as calmly as he could along the corridors and up the stairs which would lead him back up to the almost normal atmosphere of the public part of the police station, the police-constable continued to provoke him.

  ‘You reckon you get in touch with the spirits, don’t you?’ he jeered. ‘Funny how they never warned you that you were going to have that little accident in the night, when you bashed your face up against the cell wall.’

  Jacob kept walking. He knew better than to antagonise a man with a heavy bunch of keys in his hand.

  When they reached the big double doors which opened on to Leman Street, the officer folded his arms and stood belligerently, half blocking the exit, waiting for Jacob to have to push past him.

  Sergeant Miller looked up briefly and said, ‘Everything all right, Parsons?’

  Parsons nodded. ‘Sir,’ he said in his deep, booming voice.

  ‘Good man,’ said Miller, begrudgingly getting on with the endless round of paperwork that the inspector insisted on for everything they did: everything from listing every single maniac who came in claiming to be the Ripper, to ordering more bloody paper to do the writing on in the first place.

  Jacob took a deep breath and with a curt, ‘Excuse me,’ he stepped round the constable and grasped the brass door-handles with both hands, his final barrier to freedom.

  One of Parsons’ rough, pudgy hands closed around Jacob’s pale, slender fingers. He gripped hard, but Jacob didn’t dare show any sign of weakness by complaining.

  ‘Do everyone a favour, yourself included,’ Parsons warned him in a low, deep rumble. ‘Tell all them posh old girls who flock round you that you’re a con merchant. Oh, yeah, and piss off out of it back to where you come from.’

  Jacob turned round and looked long and hard at the man who had beaten him repeatedly throughout the night. ‘They wouldn’t believe me if I did,’ he said, without any trace of emotion. ‘People need to have hope of a better life when they live in this Hell.’

  Then he summoned all his strength and flung open the doors and stumbled humiliatingly down the steps into the cold, predawn light of Leman Street.

  Jacob was aware that no cab would stop for a man in his condition: he looked too much like the drunks who were always to be found staggering around there on their way back to their ships. So, ignoring his aching chest and the pains in his limbs, he set off walking swiftly in the direction of Bow.

  The door creaked loudly as he tried to slip quietly into the hallway. He didn’t want to alarm Ettie by waking her before he’d had a chance to clean himself up a bit. He knew exactly what he’d say to her when she did wake up. He’d spent the whole, agonising walk from Whitechapel working it out. If he’d got it right, then she’d be sure to forgive him and they would go off and start afresh – he certainly had plenty of experience of that. And this time it would be so much easier with Ettie by his side.

  When he was satisfied that his face looked as presentable as he could make it, he made a pot of strong tea and carried it carefully into the bedroom. He set it on the side-table and went over and drew back the curtains.

  At first he couldn’t take in what he was seeing – the room was exactly as he’d left it when the police had come and taken him away three days ago: the bed was still unmade, his nightshirt flung across the chair, his book open where he’d left it on the bedside rug.

  He closed his eyes, trying to block out
what he knew had happened: Ettie hadn’t been back since she’d run off in the night. She’d threatened it enough times lately, but this time she really had left him.

  Mechanically, Jacob pulled a leather overnight bag from the top of the wardrobe and threw in a couple of shirts, some underclothes, and a pair of trousers. Then he went into the sitting room, took down a book from the top shelf, and opened it.

  The book was a sham, a hollowed out cover in which he kept a sheaf of bankers’ orders and a bag of gold sovereigns – he had fled before and knew always to have money where he might readily lay his hands on it.

  Jacob next sat at his desk and wrote a letter which he sealed in an envelope addressed to Ettie. Then he stood up and propped the letter on the mantelpiece against an alabaster carving of a cat, where, if she ever did come back, she would be sure to see it. Finally he sorted through his papers, selecting a few of the files which he packed in his bag, and stuffed the rest into the grate and put a match to them.

  As he poked at the charred remains, he glanced over towards the window. So much had happened to him, and yet the day still hadn’t fully dawned. Satisfied that he had done everything that needed to be done, Jacob picked up his bag and left the rooms overlooking Victoria Park for the last time.

  Under cover of the fog-bound, early morning streets, Jacob Protsky made his way back in the direction of Leman Street. But this time he had no intention of going to the police station; this time he was heading for the docks.

  Chapter 40

  Sergeant Miller nodded Ettie through into the shabby little side room with the two chairs and the rickety unpolished table, where she and Celia had first waited to see Inspector Grainger.

  Celia was sitting sideways on to the table, staring down, ashenfaced, at her hands which rested in her lap. Only when the sergeant left the room, closing the door shut behind him, did she look up.