A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper
Page 24
I had no choice, my dear son, you must believe that, for I laboured long and hard, and gave thought to all manner of means of helping him, while at the same time protecting him and the world from his terrible curse, but alas, could think of no other way. Upon each visit I read more of the infernal and damnable words contained within these pages, and gradually became more and more convinced of the need to terminate the reign of terror he had imposed upon the fair city of London. I made note of the fact that he referred in the early pages to a man he identified solely as 'T' and convinced him to tell me the man's true name. It transpired that he had been visiting a doctor for some time in relation to the syphilitic infection, and I made a point of visiting the man at his surgery. Without revealing my familial connection to his patient, I was able through our professional brotherhood to convince him to divulge certain of his own thoughts. He assured me that although he has always done his best for his patient, he had grave doubts as to the overall sanity of the man, and had actually entertained thoughts that he may have been connected to the Ripper case, though he never had any proof on which to base his assumption. I, of course, gave no credence to his ideas, and left him after simply assuring him that I was nothing more than a concerned friend to the man. He accepted this without question and we parted amicably.
As to end of the Ripper, I gradually increased the dosage of morphine until he was quite compliant. It would have been impossible to carry out what I intended from his own home, so, in the dead of night, I returned to his abode, and convinced him to come with me in my carriage, which I had driven myself, suitably attired as a nondescript cab driver, having first convinced him to write a note alluding to his desire to end his life, an easy matter in his heavily drugged condition. He allowed me to help him into the coach, where he soon fell into a deep sleep. Believe me my son, I had little stomach for that night's work, but knew that I had no choice if I were to protect the family, and his own, from the scandal and approbation that would surely have come our way if he were revealed as the Ripper. I drove to a quiet area near the great river Thames, where I assisted him from the carriage. He was totally unaware of where he was, and it was all he could do to walk, even aided by my helpful arm. He was no longer the feared and dastardly figure sought by all good-minded people, the sight of him in that state was of a pathetic, sad, and already dying man. Knowing that to be true gave me the strength to do what I had to do, and there, on the banks of the river, I administered his final dose of morphine, ensuring that he would feel no further pain. His collapse into unconsciousness was rapid, and as soon as he slumped upon the ground, I took a number of rocks from the interior of the carriage, which I had brought specifically for the purpose, and placed them in the pockets of his coat, along with the note he had written. It was a simple task to then force his inert body over the low wall, and with a muffled splash, he tumbled into the dark waters of the Thames.
I watched him sink below the surface, and I admit that my eyes were awash with tears as he disappeared from my sight for the last time. He was, after all, the fruit of my loins, my blood flowed in his veins, and had it not been for the tainted side of his otherwise brilliant mind, he might have been a most noble and excellent fellow. Sadly, such was not the case, and his madness had now brought me to this. Though I knew that I was now little better than he, a murderer of a fellow human being, I felt a great weight lift from me as he sank forever into the murk of the filthy water. I comforted myself with the knowledge that Jack the Ripper would never again stalk the streets of Whitechapel, and that the stain of character which had afflicted him would never be allowed to reproduce itself in the form of his offspring.
I was in a sombre mood as I returned to my home that night, and over the following days the newspapers continued to shout for action by the constabulary in apprehending the killer. The thought rose in my mind that at some future date some poor innocent could be arrested and charged with the crimes of the Ripper, and I made a promise to myself that if that were to happen, and an innocent man were to be found guilty, I would have no choice other than to reveal the existence of the journal, and place myself at the mercy of the judiciary. It is my fervent hope that such an eventuality never takes place, for then all I have done to protect those involved would have been in vain.
His body was discovered some days ago, floating near the Torpedo Works in Chiswick, though I had hoped it would remain immersed and undiscovered. It is to be hoped that the note is intact, and that he is believed to have been a suicide case. There will, of course, be an inquest, and I must make an effort to attend, as difficult as it will be for me. I did attend upon him on occasions in the hospital, and it will not appear suspicious that I attend to discover the cause of the death of someone I knew. I just hope that I am not asked to give evidence, as it would be difficult for me to tell untruths under the oath.
It has been such a trial; you must try to understand my son. Had I allowed him to remain among us the danger to everyone would have been immense. Even to see him in an asylum with the possibility that someone might believe his rantings would have placed us all at risk, I had no choice, you must see that. It is better this way, for him, for us all. His name, and that of his family, and ours will not be sullied by the knowledge that he was the most vile killer to walk the streets of London, and, after all, there will be no more killing, his reign is over, and peace will now fall upon the streets of Whitechapel once more. Given time, I am sure that the name of Jack the Ripper will fade from the people's memory, and the series of unsolved murders will fall into the category of a historical footnote. After all, terrible though the crimes were, the victims were not of a social class to command attention for any length of time, and, were it not for the horrendous mutilations carried out upon them, the murders would not have attracted such attention as they have.
It is for me to live with my actions, and one day, when I am face to face with He who is my maker, only then shall I face true retribution for what I have done, though rest assured my son, that it was not done lightly, or without a sense of conscience. I shall be forever haunted, not only by my own actions in ridding the world of he who was the Ripper, but by the sight of his face, trusting me to the last, as I administered that final, fatal dose of the drug to him, and of the sound of his body as it splashed into the waters of the Thames, and the complete lack of recognition by him of what was finally befalling him as he sank to his end.
These things will live with me until my own inevitable demise, and I must conceal from all, even you my son, all that I know of the facts of my involvement with the case. Only after my own death will these pages, and my notes be passed into your hands, and you will know the whole sorry truth.
I shall make no further reference on this matter; my confession is known unto God, and now, as you read this, to you also. Judge me not too harshly, I beg you, and my sole wish is that you keep this secret within your heart for as long as you shall live, and if you are blessed with a son, let him find this in the way you have, so that he may know, and be warned, that the blood of Jack the Ripper is mine, and yours, and will live forever in the veins of those who come after us, for I cannot blame his mother entirely, he was as much mine as hers, and I must bear some responsibility, he was of my seed.
I hope and pray that you are never placed in a position such as I have been, that you never have to fight your own conscience, never have to take the awful actions that have blighted what years I have left to me, but if you do find the awful truth of my bloodline raising its head in any way, you will know why, and you alone must decide what must be done.
Tears were streaming down my face as I read this last, and most terrifying and revealing entry in the journal. These were not the words of Jack the Ripper; this was the final and most terribly moving confession of my great-grandfather, who, driven to despair by his conscience and his desire to 'do the right thing', to prevent further atrocities being committed had taken the most terrible and difficult decision to end the life of his own illegitimate son, to fi
nally bring down the curtain on the tortured life of Jack the Ripper. There was so much that was tragic about his words, and so much that was erroneous in the light of history.
I could almost see him, visiting the Ripper in those final days, keeping him drugged and compliant whilst he decided upon the course of action he would take. He must have exhibited great sympathy, earned the total trust of his patient, his son, the man who might have been a credit to his family but who was prevented from being so by fearful illness of the mind and body. It must have caused him such agonies of the mind to finally decide to end the life of one whom he had caused to be born into the world. I could even understand him believing that it was his responsibility and no-one else's to bring the Ripper to his final retribution on Earth. Yet, in the midst of such anguish, my great-grandfather had got something wrong. He thought the Ripper would be forgotten, nothing more than a footnote in history. How wrong could he have been? Then there was the reference to the lack of importance of the victims. Burton Cleveland Cavendish was, after all, a product of the society into which he'd been born. To him, the deaths of a few prostitutes would have been appalling, but not so as to cause any significant ripples in the social order of the day, so it was perhaps natural for him to suppose as he did. If only he'd known how wrong he was!
Then again, I thought that even had he been able to see into the future, he would have acted exactly as he did, for in his mind he was protecting the family name, and to a man of his standing, that would have been paramount. Could I understand him? Of course. Did I agree with his actions? I wasn't sure then, and I'm still unsure. Could I take the awful step of killing my own offspring in order to prevent them killing again, and to keep the secret of that shame within the family? I've asked myself that question so many times since those awful few days, and I still can't answer it honestly.
As I sat in my study, with the fears and tribulations of the last three days at the forefront of my mind, I had to face that final point in my great-grandfather's last entry, was it possible that something in his genes had been imprinted on the male members of our family? Could I be carrying the same defect of the mind in my own psychological make-up? Was I another Jack the Ripper in the making? I thought of John Ross. He was not of my great-grandfather's seed, yet he had displayed those same Ripper-like tendencies as the man who had written the terrible journal I'd just read. It was obvious to me that the defective gene (if one existed), must have come from the Ripper's mother, or at least have been passed through her. My great-grandfather wasn't privy to the kind of genetic information we have available to us today, so it would have been natural for him to think himself responsible for planting the 'demon seed' in his offspring.
I had to think that the genetic 'fault' lay with the Ripper's mother's side of the family, and had somehow been passed to the unfortunate Ross. My own grandfather and father had never shown any such tendencies, and I certainly hadn't, so I was sure that I was safe from such a fate.
It was becoming late, the fog still lay like a shroud, and Sarah was coming home the next day. I had stayed up until the early hours of the morning, and had completed my journey through the journal of Jack the Ripper ahead of the deadline I'd set myself earlier. Though I was still shaking from the emotional turmoil created by the words that almost seemed to breathe as they met my eyes from the surface of every page, I felt as if the worst were over. The trail had led to an almost inevitable conclusion, and there was little if anything left for me to fear. My great-grandfather had confessed to the murder of Jack the Ripper, yet I couldn't bring myself to condemn him, for he had possibly saved the lives of a number of other women by doing so. That the Ripper was my relative, albeit a distant one, would live with me for ever, as would my great-grandfather's words. But despite all the unsettling and nerve-jangling episodes of the last three days and nights, I now felt safe as though there were nothing left in the journal that could harm me, or Sarah, or cause any further disturbance to my life.
I closed the book, the back page rustling as it closed over the preceding pages, and the journal seemed to sigh with resignation as though its work were done.
As I rose from the chair and made my weary way up to bed to grab a few precious hours of sleep, intending to be as fresh as I could be for Sarah's return the next night, I could have sworn, just for a moment, that a second faint shadow was keeping mine company as I trod the stairs to bed. But then, that couldn't have been, could it? I was safe, the journal was ended, the Ripper dead and buried, and the truth of my great-grandfather's involvement explained in full.
The warm feelings of safety and of mental equilibrium wrapped themselves around me as I climbed under the duvet and fell into a deep sleep. It would soon be morning, and I knew in my heart that the nightmare was over, and of course it was over, wasn't it?
Chapter Forty Two
Nothing is Ever Quite as it Seems
The double strike of the blade into my chest literally took my breath away, as both lungs were punctured in rapid succession. I felt the blood begin to rise in my throat and tried to scream, but the scream was strangled at birth as the gleaming blade slashed viciously across my throat, severing the carotid artery, and my precious life-blood spurted like a horizontal shower from the resulting gash. My eyes clouded over and I looked up to see the hideous grinning figure of the Ripper staring down at me with a look of intense satisfaction, and grim fascination on his face, as though he were savouring every second of my pain and confusion.
As I felt the last dregs of life draining from my almost lifeless body I tried to form the one word, 'Why?' but of course it wouldn't come. My voice was nothing more than a hissing gurgle as I felt my life ebbing away, becoming nothing, floating, joining with the writhing figures materializing from the air around me, wrapping themselves around me, gathering me up, and lifting me above myself until I looked down and saw below me the lifeless corpse of what had once been me, with the haunting and hideous figure of the Ripper still hunched over the body. The killer looked up as though seeing the tableau being enacted above him and his lips peeled back in a grim rictus of a smile, and he laughed, a gruesome and hideous cacophonous laugh that felt as though it encompassed all the evil in the world, bringing it all to this one point in time and space, and the walls around the room shook as the laugh trailed away to nothing, and he looked up once more, and melted away into nothingness.
The things that were the spirits of the Ripper's victims welcomed me with an outpouring of screams and wailing, their agonies still tormenting them after over a century of death, for they were not at peace. They pulled at me, drawing me nearer and nearer to the ceiling, and I saw a vast portal begin to open where the ceiling should have been. Once through that doorway I knew that there'd be no turning back, and I would be trapped forever in the nether-world of the damned and restless souls, doomed to wander forever in the ether that surrounds the living world, forbidden the right to enjoy eternal rest.
As the formless shapes pulled harder and harder at the remnants of my soul, I fought back with everything I had, resolutely refusing to give myself up to sharing their fate. One of the things came so close to me that I could smell its fetid breath as it opened its mouth in front of me and the mouth became a huge maw threatening to engulf me and carry me away into the void. I struggled against the thing that was pulling me into itself, and suddenly, as though I were being reborn into the world a loud scream escaped from my lips, the things surrounding me disappeared as quickly as they'd appeared and I was enveloped once again by the silent darkness of the night.
I was awake, though not awake, a sensation I'd felt before during the last few days. Nothing seemed real, I didn't know what was real or what wasn't any more, and then, through the darkness I heard a familiar voice calling to me, softly at first, then louder and louder, the intensity of the voice imploring me to return to the land of reality, to live again, to be whole.
"Robert, Robert my darling, can you hear me? Doctor, his eyelids are moving, I think he can hear me!"
I felt as though someone was trying to peel my eyelids back, and then a piercing light flickered across my line of sight.
"You're right, Mrs. Cavendish," a voice said in what seemed to be the distance. "I do believe he's coming round."
"Oh, Robert, please open your eyes, my love, just let me know that you can hear me, anything, please, just give me a sign."
I felt Sarah take my hand in hers, and without really realizing I was doing it, I squeezed her hand gently.
"Oh thank God," I heard her say, and with a superhuman effort I slowly forced my eyes to open. Sure enough Sarah was sitting by the side of the bed, but it wasn't our bed. It was one of the all too familiar purely functional beds beloved of the National Health Service. I was in a hospital! But how; why? I was confused, and it took more than a little effort to ask the simple question…