Lachley’s lethal little merchant with the unfaithful wife might be dull as a butter knife when it came to social matters, but give him a belly full of hatred, an eight-inch steel gutting blade, and a hapless target upon which to vent that explosive rage, and James Maybrick was a man transformed. A true artiste . . . It was almost a pity Lachley had to ensure the man’s execution by hanging. Controlling a mind like James Maybrick’s was intoxicating, far more satisfying than controlling a dullard like Eddy—even if Albert Victor Christian Edward did have prospects far beyond anything the Liverpudlian social climber could ever hope to achieve.
Men in the baggy clothes of the common factory laborer and women in the shabby dresses of cheap kerb crawlers prowled up and down Dorset Street, intent on enacting mutually attractive financial transactions. Maybrick, Lachley noted, followed the prostitutes with a hungry, predatory gaze that boded ill for Annie Chapman once Lachley turned his killer loose on the owner of Eddy’s final letters.
But to do that, they first must find Dark Annie.
And that, Lachley had discovered over the course of the previous week, was no easy task. Annie Chapman did not normally travel from doss house to doss house, as many another destitute street walker did, but she had not been seen in Crossingham’s—the house she had made her more-or-less permanent home—in well over a week. Lachley had seen her during that week, but only twice. And both times she had looked alarmingly ill. During the past two days, he had not seen her at all. Rumor held that she had been injured in a fight with another whore over the attentions of the man who paid a fair number of Annie’s bills. He suspected she had spent the two days in the casual ward of Spitalfields workhouse infirmary, since the last time he’d spotted her, near Spitalfields Church, she had been telling a friend that she was seriously ill and wanted to spend a couple of days in the casual ward, resting and getting the medical help she needed.
Her friend had given her a little money and warned her not to spend it on rum.
John Lachley had not seen Dark Annie since.
So he set out down Dorset Street, casting about like a hound seeking the fox, and led James Maybrick into the opening steps of the hunt. And on this night, after many dark and frustrating hours, luck finally returned to John Lachley. He and Maybrick, on edge and all but screaming their tense frustration, returned to Dorset Street shortly after one-thirty in the morning and caught sight of her at long, bloody last.
Annie Chapman was just entering Crossingham’s lodging house by the kitchen entrance, badly the worse for drink. John Lachley halted, breathing hard as excitement shot through his belly and groin. He glanced across the street at Maybrick, then nodded toward the short, stout woman descending the area steps to the kitchen entrance of her favorite doss house.
Maybrick slipped his hand into his coat pocket, where he kept his knife, and smiled slowly. Mr. James Maybrick had seen the face of his new victim. Maybrick’s face flushed with sexual excitement in the light from the gas lamp on the street corner. Lachley restrained a slow smile. Soon . . . They waited patiently across from Crossingham’s and within minutes, their quarry came out again, evidently not not in possession of enough money to pay for the room. They heard her say, “I won’t be long, Brummy. See that Tim keeps the bed for me.” Whereupon she left Crossingham’s and turned down Little Paternoster Row, toward Brushfield Street, where she headed out towards Spitalfields Market.
They followed her quietly on the same rubberized servants’ shoes they’d worn the night they’d stalked Polly Nichols to her death. It was clear to Dr. John Lachley that Annie Chapman was seriously ill and in a great deal of pain. She moved slowly, but was still successful in collaring a customer outside the darkened hulk of Spitalfields Market, frustrating them in their intention to waylay her, themselves. The man disappeared with her into some refuse-riddled yard full of shadows. Lachley stood in his hiding place, breathing rapidly. Tension tightened down through him until he needed to shout out his impatience. Soon—very soon, now—poor little Dark Annie Chapman would earn a greater notoriety in death than she had ever earned in life. She was about to become the third mutilated victim of John Lachley’s ambition. And the second dead London whore in a week. The anticipation of the terror that would explode through the East End was nearly as potent a delight as controlling the fates of his chosen victims.
Playing God was a sweetly addictive game.
John Lachley was well on his way to becoming a sweetly addicted player.
From where he stood in a grimy doorway, John Lachley couldn’t hear anything of Annie’s encounter with her customer, but twenty minutes later, they emerged, the man breathing heavily and Annie Chapman flushed, her skirts disarranged. They went together to the nearest pub. Lachley and Maybrick entered the pub, as well, finding separate places at the bar, where they drank a pint and watched the woman they had come to kill.
Annie’s customer bought her a hearty meal and several glasses of rum, which she downed quickly, like medicine. John Lachley suspected she was using the rum in precisely that fashion, to kill the pain he could see in her eyes and her every slow, awkward movement. From the cough she tried to suppress while in her customer’s company, he suspected consumption, which meant she would be suffering considerable pain in her lungs, as well as difficulty breathing. Clearly she hadn’t the means to buy proper medications. Doubtless why she had resorted to blackmail, buying Eddy’s letters from Polly Nichols. Lachley hid a smile behind his carefully disguised face and wondered how much terror Dark Annie had felt upon learning of poor Polly’s violent end?
She remained with her customer from Spitalfields Market for the whole frustrating night, drinking and eating at his expense, disappearing with him once for nearly half an hour, presumably to renew their intimate acquaintance. Then she and her customer sat down to another round of rum, listening to the piano and the pub songs sung by drunken patrons, watching other prostitutes enter the place and find customers of their own and disappear outside again to conduct their sordid business, until the pub closed its doors. When Annie Chapman and her customer left the public house, he took her through the dark streets to what was presumably his own house, a miserable little factory cottage on Hanbury Street, which she entered and did not leave again until very nearly five-thirty in the morning, at which time her customer emerged dressed for work.
He gave her a rough caress and said, “You ought to see a doctor about that cough, luv. I’d give you sixpence if I ‘ad it, but I spent all me ready cash on your supper.”
“Oh, that’s all right, and thank you for the food and the rum.”
“Well, I’ve got to be off or they’ll lock the factory yard gates and dock me wages.”
They separated, the man hurrying away down Hanbury Street while Annie Chapman lingered at his doorstep, visibly exhausted.
“Well,” she muttered to herself, “you’ve had a good supper and the rum’s been a great help with the pain, but you’ve still got no money for your bed, Annie Chapman.”
She sighed and set out very slowly, moving in the general direction of Dorset Street once more. John Lachley glanced quickly along the street and saw no sign of anyone, so he stepped out of the doorway he’d been leaning against and crossed the street toward her. Since he didn’t want to startle her into crying out and waking anyone, he began whistling very softly. She turned at the sound and sent a hopeful smile his way.
“Good morning,” John said quietly.
“Good morning, sir.”
“You seem to be in something of a bind, madam.”
She glanced quizzically into his eyes.
“I couldn’t help but overhear you, just now. You need money for your lodging house, then?”
She nodded slowly. “I do, indeed, sir. You realize, I wouldn’t ask, if I weren’t desperate, but . . . well, sir, I can be very agreeable to a gentleman in need of companionship.”
John Lachley smiled, darting a quick glance at Maybrick’s place of concealment.
“I’m certain you c
an, madam. But surely you have in your possession something of value which you might sell, instead of yourself?”
Her cheeks flushed, the right one bruised from the fist fight she’d been in with the other whore earlier in the week. “I’ve already sold everything of value I own,” she said softly.
“Everything?” He stepped closer. Dropped his voice to a mere whisper. “Even the letters?”
Annie’s blue eyes widened. “The letters?” she breathed. “How—how did you know about the letters?”
“Never mind that, just tell me one thing. Will you sell them to me?”
Her mouth opened, closed again. From the distant tower of the Black Eagle Brewery, the clock struck five-thirty A.M. “I can’t,” she finally said. “I haven’t got them any longer.”
“Haven’t got them?” he asked sharply. “Where are they?”
Misery pinched her face, turned her complexion sallow. “I’ve been ill, you see, with a cough. I needed money for medicine. So I sold them, but I could get them back or tell you who bought them, only . . . could you give me a few pence for a bed, if I do? I need to sleep, I’m so unwell.”
“You could maybe get them for me?” he repeated. “Will you?”
“Yes,” she answered at once. “Yes,” she whispered, leaning against the brick wall in visible weariness, “I will.”
He dropped his voice to a whisper and asked, “Who’s got them?”
“I sold them to Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes . . .”
Footsteps behind him told Lachley they were not alone. He swore under his breath, careful not to turn his head, and listened with a trip-hammering pulse until whoever it was continued on their way, rather than interrupt what must look to any observer like a whore and her customer in serious negotiations. When the footsteps had died away again in the distance, Lachley took Annie Chapman by the arm, pressed her back against the shutters of the house they stood in front of, bent down to whisper, “All right, Annie, I’ll give you the money you need for your bed . . . and enough to re-acquire the letters.”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out two shining shillings, which he handed over.
She smiled tremulously. “Thank you, sir. I’ll get the letters back with this, I promise you.”
The passing of the money between them was the signal James Maybrick had been waiting for all through the long night. He appeared from the darkness and walked toward them as Lachley caressed Annie’s breast through her worn, faded bodice and murmured, “Shall we go someplace quiet, then? You do seem a most agreeable lady on a cold night like this.” He smiled down into her eyes. “A mutually delightful few moments of pleasure now, then I’ll meet you this evening at Crossingham’s,” Lachley lied. “And I’ll buy the letters from you, then.”
“I’ll have them,” she said earnestly. “There’s a nice, quiet yard at number twenty-nine,” she added softly, nodding down the street toward a dilapidated tenement. “One of the girls I know oiled the hinges,” she added with a wink, “so there’s no chance of waking anybody. The second door, there, leads through the house to the yard.”
“Lovely,” Lachley smiled down at her. “Perfect. Shall we?”
Lachley eased open the door, aware that Maybrick trailed behind, silent as a shadow. Lachley escorted Annie through the black and stinking passage, then down the steps to the reeking yard behind. Very gently, he pressed her up against the high fence. Very gently, he bent, caressed her throat . . . nuzzled her ear. “Annie,” he murmured. “You really shouldn’t have sold those letters, pet. Give my love to Polly, won’t you?”
She had just enough time to gasp out one faint protest. “No . . .”
Then his hands were around her throat and she fell against the fence with a thud, all sound cut off as he crushed her trachea. Her terrified struggles spiraled through his entire being, a giddy elixir, more potent than raw, sweating sex. When it was over, the shock of disappointment was so keen he almost protested the end of the pleasure. Morgan had lasted much longer, struggled much harder, giving him hours of intense pleasure. But they couldn’t afford the risk out here in the open, where all of London might hear at any moment. So Lachley drew several deep, rasping breaths to calm himself, then lowered her lifeless corpse to the filthy ground beside the fence. He stepped back, giving her to the impatient Maybrick, who gripped his knife in eager anticipation. The sound of that knife ripping her open was the sweetest sound John Lachley had heard all day.
He bent low and breathed into Maybrick’s ear, “Return to Lower Tibor when you’ve finished. Use the sewers, as I showed you. I’ll be waiting in the secret room.”
Then he slipped from the yard, leaving the maniacal Maybrick to vent his rage on the lifeless corpse of Annie Chapman. He was not pleased that he must track down and kill two more dirty whores, two more potential blackmailers in a position to destroy his future. In fact, as the trembling delight of stalk and strike and murder gradually waned in his blood, he cursed the foul luck that had prompted Annie to sell her precious letters to raise money for medicine, cursed it with every stride he took, cursed Prince Albert Victor for writing Morgan’s goddamned letters in the first place, and cursed brainless whores who acquired them only to sell them off for ready cash. Two more women to locate and silence! Dear God, would this nightmare never end? Two!
His beautiful Greek prisoner had known, somehow; had seen clairvoyantly into his future and known he would not succeed tonight. Curse it! He would have to question Ianira more closely about what she had seen in that vision of hers. Clearly, he could do nothing further today. It would be getting light soon and Maybrick had to return to Liverpool today, to meet social and family obligations.
Lachley was tempted to find these women himself, to end their miserable lives with his own hands, without waiting for Maybrick’s return. But that was far too risky. Maybrick must be involved; that was critical to his plans. He must have a scapegoat on which to pin blame for these murders. All of them, including the next two. He narrowed his eyes. Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes . . . He’d never heard of either woman, but he was willing to bet they were common prostitutes, same as the recently departed Polly Nichols and the even more recently departed Annie Chapman. Which meant they ought to be quite easy to trace and just as easy to silence. Provided the bitches didn’t tumble to the truth of what they possessed and run, bleating, with it to the constables or—worse—the press.
It was even possible that someone would connect “Eddy” and Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward. Lachley shuddered at such a monstrous vision of the future. These filthy whores must be silenced, whatever the cost. He made for his own little hovel in Wapping, beneath which was the entrance to the sewers which led to his underground sanctuary. James Maybrick knew the way there, already. Lachley had shown him the route shortly before Polly Nichols’ murder, introducing him to Garm, to help him escape detection. Since Maybrick couldn’t very well walk around with blood on his sleeves, he’d needed an escape route that was certain. The sewers were the most sure escape route possible.
So he’d showed Maybrick how to find his hideaway where Morgan had passed his last hours screaming out his miserable little life, and had arranged to meet Maybrick there again, after Annie Chapman’s murder. Maybrick ought to be arriving there shortly to change his clothes and rid himself of any physical evidence connecting him with the murders, including the knife. He’d left the long-bladed weapon at Lower Tibor after Polly’s death and collected again this evening, before setting out in pursuit of Annie. Lachley had planned to drug Maybrick after this latest murder, to use his mesmeric skills to erase the merchant’s memory of Lachley’s involvement, then send the knife and an anonymous tip to the Metropolitan Police’s H Division with the instructions that a search of Battlecrease House in Liverpool would yield written evidence of the identity of the Whitechapel Murderer.
Putting that plan into action was clearly out of the question, now, at least until he had obtained the letters from Stride and Eddowes, curse them.
It was now September the 8th, nearly two weeks since he’d first determined to kill Morgan and finish up this sordid business. Yet he was no closer to ending this miserable affair than he’d been the day Eddy had arrived at his house with the unpalatable news in the first place. He wanted this over with! Finished once and for all!
When James Maybrick finally arrived in his underground sanctuary, only to break the news that he couldn’t possibly return to London until the end of the month, due to business and social commitments, it was all John Lachley could do not to shoot the maniac on the spot. He stood there breathing hard, with the gnarled oak limbs of his sacrificial tree spreading toward the brick vault of the underground chamber’s ceiling and the smell of gas flames and fresh blood thick in the air, and clenched his fists while James Maybrick changed his clothes, burned the coat and shirt and trousers he’d been wearing, and secreted some hideous package that reeked of blood in an oilcloth sack.
“Took away her womb,” Maybrick explained with a drunken giggle. “Threw her intestines over her shoulder, cut out her womb and her vagina.” He giggled again, hoisting the grotesque oilcloth sack. “Thought I’d fry them up for my supper, eh? Took her wedding rings, too,” he added, eyes gleaming in total madness. He displayed his trophies proudly, two cheap brass rings, a wedding band and a keeper. “Had to wrench them off, didn’t want to leave holy rings on a dirty whore’s hand, eh? Went back for a second helping of her, took part of the bladder, when I realized I’d forgotten my chalk. Wanted to chalk a message on the wall,” he added mournfully. “To taunt the police. That fool, Abberline, thinks he’s so very clever . . . not nearly so clever as Sir Jim, ha ha ha!”
Lachley thinned his lips into a narrow line, wishing to hell the maniac would simply shut up. God, the man was sick . . .
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