The Ripper's Shadow

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Mick grimaces in disgust. “It’s a dirty, nasty sin!”

  “Lord Hugh is my friend. Try to get along with him. And keep quiet about him for my sake.”

  Mick shrugs. Although I don’t think he would report anyone to the police, I’m afraid he’ll spread the word about Hugh and someone else will. I’m also afraid of how Catherine and the Lipskys would react if they found out about Hugh. The circle that felt so warm and heartening last night is riddled with cracks. I wish I weren’t so inexperienced at solving problems between people.

  Mick and I gaze across the street at Russell’s Fine Books. Three hours elapse. Men enter and leave the bookshop empty-handed. Nature calls.

  “Mick, I have to leave for a moment.” Afraid that the customers will come to buy my pictures while I’m gone, I give Mick the camera. “If anyone comes out carrying an album, you take his picture.”

  “Really?” Awed, Mick holds the camera as reverently as if it were the crown jewels.

  Only days ago, he stole it from me, but I’ve no choice except to trust him. I show him how to use the camera. “Keep the shutter open for ten seconds, if he stays in the frame that long. Hold the camera perfectly still.”

  I hurry off to find a public privy, hoping Mick won’t abscond with my camera and that I’ll be back before the customers arrive. When I return to the alley, laden with food purchased at the market, I find Mick still there, and I sigh in relief. He hands the camera back to me.

  “Somebody bought pictures,” he says, looking woebegone.

  “What’s wrong, then? Didn’t you get a good shot?”

  “I did. She came out of the shop with the red book under ’er arm. She stood there the whole ten seconds, facing straight toward me.”

  Now I understand the problem. “It was a woman?”

  Mick nods. “I don’t think a woman could be the Ripper.”

  I open the camera, remove the case that holds the exposed plate, tuck it in my satchel, and insert a fresh one. Mick and I eat our meat pies and pickled oysters and drink our ginger beer while watching the bookshop. A little after two o’clock, a tall man strides up the street. He’s better dressed than the other people we’ve seen, in an overcoat and hat styled on expensive lines. A mere slice of his face shows between his hat brim and turned-up collar. He slips into the bookshop. I aim the camera at the door. Mick and I wait, tense. Minutes pass before the gentleman reappears. I see his miniature image in the viewfinder. He carries a tiny red album. I open the camera’s shutter. He strides rapidly out of the frame. Not more than two seconds have elapsed. I close the shutter.

  “I didn’t get him,” I lament. “He moved too fast.”

  “Not too fast for me. I’m gonna follow him.”

  Mick runs off before I can warn him to be careful because that man might be a murderer who doesn’t like being watched and doesn’t draw the line at killing prostitutes. I resume spying. Three o’clock comes, then four. Worries multiply in my mind. Is Mick safe? PC Barrett has a propensity for turning up suddenly at the wrong times and places. Will he discover me before I can photograph the third customer? If I can, will the picture be good enough to identify him? What if my theory is wrong and the killer is not one of the buyers? I also miss Mick. Despite his rashness, I’ve already come to rely on his moral support.

  A carriage, drawn by two gray horses, rackets toward the bookshop and halts, partially obscuring the entrance. I hear the door on the far side open, the passenger disembark, and a thump as the door closes. I see a man’s shoulder and back, clad in dark gray, as he enters the bookshop. While he’s inside, I lean out of the alley. I still can’t see the whole doorway, nor the driver. I photograph the carriage, counting off seconds, jittery with impatience. While hurriedly changing the plate, I almost drop the camera.

  The man exits the shop, appears in the viewfinder. Focusing his image in the tiny glass rectangle, I see half his face and a telltale flash of red. He’s holding my last album to his chest. I open the shutter. He vanishes as he climbs into the carriage. I close the shutter and sigh; the exposure was too brief. The door slams, and the carriage speeds down the street.

  13

  Mick returns two hours later, breathless and triumphant. “I got a good look at his face! And I followed him home!”

  “That’s good, because I wasn’t as lucky.” I tell him about the customer in the carriage.

  “At least we know where mine lives,” Mick says, undaunted. “Maybe he’s the Ripper.”

  A premature twilight of clouds, chill fog, and thick smoke descends as we trudge homeward. Corrosive mist saturates the yellow haloes around the gas lamps, wet grime coats my face, and every breath I inhale stings. Thousands of people mill about Commercial Street, clustering outside the public houses and market stalls; their voices rise in an excited din. People flock around a man who reads aloud from a newspaper: “‘London lies under the spell of a great terror. The ghoul-like creature who stalks the streets is simply drunk with blood.’” His audience exclaims in gleeful horror.

  “Word of Annie’s murder has spread.” I’m disturbed by the spectacle, the enjoyment my neighbors are deriving from violent death.

  “There’s my mates, by the police station.” Mick points to a group of boys. They are chanting something; I can’t discern the words. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”

  He runs off. I eavesdrop on conversations. A woman says, “There’s been another body found behind London Hospital. The killer left a message written on the wall. It said, ‘I will murder sixteen more.’”

  Rumor or fact? I fear for Liz, Mary Jane, and Kate. At least Catherine is protected by Mr. Lipsky. Mick returns, hopping up and down with excitement. “The police have a suspect!”

  Eager with hope, I ask, “Who is it?”

  “A Jewish shoemaker. The coppers are lookin’ for him. Somebody seen him with Polly the day she died. A big, thick bloke with shifty eyes an’ a black mustache. They calls him ‘Leather Apron,’ ’cause he always wears one.”

  “There was one left in the yard where Annie was murdered,” I recall.

  The street urchins by the police station are chanting, “Leather Apron! Leather Apron!”

  A sign at the confectionary store reads, New today! Leather Apron Toffee! In the window are boxes printed with a sinister drawing of a man in a black apron and mask. For the first time, it strikes me that there are now two separate hunts for the Ripper going on—the one in which my friends and I maneuver like shadows behind the scenes, and the other, official one that has produced this public commotion.

  “Look!” someone shouts. “It’s him, over there!”

  People rush down Old Montague Street. Mick and I join the stampede. Men jostle me, trod on my heels; women push me. The mob is like a rabid, shrieking monster. We come upon a gang of youths circling a man, taunting him. “Leather Apron! Leather Apron!”

  It’s a man in a skullcap, cringing from his harassers. He wears a black suit, not a leather apron, but he is a big Jew with a black mustache. Down the street, more youths hurl blows at two more Jews, who protest that they’ve done nothing wrong. I watch with growing alarm. In this volatile climate, innocent men could be massacred.

  Police whistles blare. The crowd turns and rushes down Commercial Street, carrying Mick and me along. I stumble. Fright slices through me; we could be trampled. Mick grabs my hand. I see, far ahead of us, the tall helmets of policemen who are chasing someone. Blowing their whistles, shouting, “Stop!” the police race down Flower and Dean Street. The mob joins the pursuit. The murders have unleashed the current of insanity and violence that runs beneath Whitechapel’s surface. It’s stunning in its raw, uncontrollable power. The forefront of the mob suddenly halts. People behind Mick and me crush us against those in front. The narrow street is lined with tenements. The mob climbs onto wagons parked in the road, the better to see.

  “Here!” Mick vaults aboard a wagon and helps me up.

  Squeezed between other spectators, we see police armed wit
h truncheons gathered by a tenement, holding back the mob. Howls rise from inside the building. Out of the door bursts a tangle of blue uniforms and pale, thrashing limbs—six police constables wrestling a naked young man, whose clothes have apparently been torn off him. He yowls and fights, his pugnacious features wild with terror. His muscular chest and arms are blue with tattoos, smeared with blood.

  “It’s the Ripper!” the crowd roars.

  “That’s Squibby!” Mick says.

  I turn to him in surprise. “Do you know him?”

  “Yeah.” Mick stares in disbelief as the police force Squibby into a carriage. “If he’s the killer, then I’m Jesus Christ.”

  “Why do you say that?” I don’t think he’s one of the customers from the bookshop, but I wish him to be guilty so that my responsibility for catching the killer can end.

  “He’s small fish. Worst he’s ever done is throw bricks at the coppers.”

  The carriage driver cracks his whip, the horses plow through the mob, and the carriage—engulfed in hundreds of raised arms, thumped by fists—rocks and nearly overturns. The mob surges after it. Soon Flower and Dean Street is deserted. Mick helps me down from the wagon. Plodding toward my studio, I am weak with residual panic, suspended between overexcitement and fatigue. My heart won’t stop racing, but I could fall asleep on the roadside. Mick skips along, chattering about the spectacle we’ve just seen. Then he abruptly stops and falls silent.

  Lord Hugh, elegantly attired in top hat and tailcoat, is leaning against my door. Hope of good news quickens my pace toward him, but Mick lags behind.

  “There’s a frightful mob hereabouts,” Hugh says. “What’s going on?”

  I tell him about Leather Apron and Squibby. Mick sullenly watches Hugh from a distance.

  “Our lads in blue have been busy,” Hugh says. “I came to tell you what I learned from my friend in the press. Leather Apron’s real name is John Pizer. He allegedly loiters outside public houses, waits for a woman to come out, and follows her. He corners her on a dark street, pulls a knife, and demands money. If she’s uncooperative, he beats her. The police have found at least three women who’ve sworn statements against Pizer. And there are seven other suspects in custody. The police are getting so much pressure from the top, they’re arresting people right and left. Too bad we can’t tell them that their investigation is going in too many wrong directions.”

  “Inspector Reid would demand to know why we think so.” I feel more than a little responsible for the public unrest, the innocent people attacked and incarcerated.

  “How was your expedition to the bookshop?” Hugh asks.

  I describe our clash with Mr. Russell. Hugh laughs, says, “I’d have paid a quid to see that,” and tousles Mick’s hair. “Good try.”

  Mick recoils. “Keep yer hands off me!”

  Surprised by his hostility, Hugh frowns, then looks at me. I shrug regretfully, at a loss for words, then tell Hugh about the photographs that Mick and I took.

  “What are we waiting for? Let’s develop them,” Hugh says.

  Inside my studio, I light the gas lamps and carry the negative plates to the darkroom. Hugh tosses his hat on the rack and follows me, but Mick says, “I’ll wait out here.”

  I can tell that he wants to watch the photographs develop, but he doesn’t want to be close to Hugh in the cramped darkroom. I close the door, sorry for Mick yet bothered by his attitude.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Hugh asks as I fill trays with chemical solutions.

  Knowing Hugh’s secret doesn’t make me comfortable talking about it, and for the first time since we met, I’m shy with him. “He knows about you. He’s seen you picking up men.”

  “Oh.” Hugh looks mortified, shaken. “My God, how many other people have seen me?”

  “You’ll have to be more careful.” My cheeks warm because it was a stupid, obvious, useless thing to say.

  Hugh rubs his mouth. “Do your other friends know?”

  “No. I haven’t told them. I won’t tell anyone. Neither will Mick.” At least I hope not.

  Hugh still looks worried, and I glimpse the awful fear he must live with every day. Now he’s afraid that Mick will spread the word about him, it will filter up to his level of society, and he’ll be ruined. My heart sinks because Hugh might quit our group rather than risk his reputation. I extinguish the lights and, in total darkness, remove a tiny negative plate from its case. I feel as if Hugh has already disappeared and left behind only his pleasant odor of bay rum, so unlike Inspector Reid’s harsh scent. Relying on touch like a blind woman, I lay the plate in the developing solution and set the timer. The timer ticks off the seconds. Hugh and I wait in silence until it rings. I transfer the plate to the stop bath, then the fixative. I repeat the process for the other three plates, then light the safe lamp. Hugh reappears, colored eerie red by the light. I rinse the plates in water, then lay them out.

  “Hmm.” Hugh sounds disappointed.

  “It’s hard to tell anything from negatives, especially when they’re so small.” I’m trying to keep up our hopes. “But we have to wait for the plates to dry before I can make enlarged prints. Let’s have a cup of tea.”

  As we leave the darkroom, I hear voices. Catherine and Mr. Lipsky are in the studio. “We’re on our way to the theater,” Catherine says with a bright smile for Hugh and me. She ignores Mick. Her gaze moves to the darkroom, then back to Hugh and me, and her smile fades; she’s wondering what we were doing in there. “We came by to see if there’s any news. Mrs. Lipsky sent this.” Catherine holds up a basket.

  I unpack the picnic supper while Hugh tells Catherine and Mr. Lipsky about the photographs from the bookshop. Mr. Lipsky glares at Mick, who’s miserable in the presence of these two men he despises. Catherine flirts with Hugh. She needs to know that she’s barking up the wrong tree, but how can I tell her without giving away Hugh’s secret? Mick realizes that Catherine is interested in Hugh; he looks hurt, jealous, and more hostile toward Hugh than ever. I’m uncomfortably aware that it’s up to me to settle things but have no notion as to how. Tonight the circle feels like a whirlwind, full of self-destructive energy.

  After Catherine and Mr. Lipsky leave, Mick and Hugh and I consume Mrs. Lipsky’s cabbage rolls stuffed with meat and rice. Hugh and I make stilted small talk until the negative plates are dry. While Hugh waits outside the darkroom, Mick watches me insert one negative plate at a time in my enlarger, adjust the image size, and light the gas lamp to expose a sheet of photographic paper. After processing the papers in chemical solutions, I carry the damp prints out of the darkroom and spread them on the table. Hugh points to the gray figure smeared across the bookshop, in the photograph I took.

  “I can’t make him out.”

  “Neither can I. But Mick followed him and found out where he lives,” I say.

  “Good work,” Hugh says.

  Mick scowls.

  I study Mick’s photograph. “This is excellent.”

  My praise earns a hint of a smile from Mick. “Beginner’s luck,” he says modestly.

  The woman stands outside the bookshop, the album tucked under her arm. She’s perhaps thirty-five years old, wearing a voluminous dark cloak and a dark bonnet that hides her hair. Both garments are long out of fashion. Her hands, raised to her throat, appear to be retying the bonnet’s ribbons. Her fingers are blurred by motion, but her face is sharply focused. Her lips are thin and prim above a double chin.

  “She’s not a person one would imagine stabbing and mutilating women,” I say.

  “She reminds me of my old governess, who only tortured children with spankings that left red handprints,” Hugh says.

  My attempt at capturing the last customer resulted in a blurry image of the man who’d been briefly visible before climbing into his carriage.

  Hugh glances at it and does a double take. “Look at this!” He points at the carriage door.

  Part of an oval design is cropped off, but I can see a griffon clutching an
arrow in its talon. I didn’t notice it before. Sometimes, while photographing, I lose sight of the subject and am later surprised when the picture contains details that my eyes missed.

  “That coat of arms belongs to Alfred Palmer, the Duke of Exford,” Hugh says.

  “Could he really be the killer?” I, like the public, have a mental image of the killer as a blood-spattered monster, certainly not a nobleman.

  Hugh frowns. “I would be surprised. He has an impeccable reputation. Member of the House of Lords. On every important charitable committee. Never a hint of scandal.”

  “How well do you know him?”

  “Not very. He moves in higher circles than mine.”

  My spirits fall. My head aches from the chemical fumes. The memory of Inspector Reid pressed against me in the swaying cab makes me nauseated. “It seems we have the same problem as the police. Multiple suspects and no evidence.”

  “But we know they bought your pictures,” Mick hastens to say.

  “It doesn’t prove one of them killed Martha, Polly, or Annie,” Hugh says. “Sarah is, unfortunately, correct.”

  Mick bristles, taking Hugh’s words as a put-down. “Oh yeah? I’ll get proof.”

  “I’d better go.” Hugh rises and retrieves his hat from the rack. I can tell that he wants to avoid a quarrel with Mick, who could, if antagonized, expose his secret. “I’m late to a ball.”

  Although I hate to side with Hugh against Mick, I say, “We haven’t any authority to interrogate the Duke of Exford or the man Mick followed. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Think, Sarah!” Hugh urges. “You’ve gotten us this far.”

  A plan springs into my mind.

  It’s so risky that I don’t want to air it and be talked into it, but I can’t cease my hunt for the killer that the police seem unable to catch. Annie’s murder and Inspector Reid have made that impossible. I can still hear shouts, running footsteps, and police whistles outside; Whitechapel is a powder keg ready to explode across all of London at the spark of another panic.

  “I have an idea,” I say reluctantly.