This trail led upstairs and into the bathroom, where it stopped. There were traces of watered blood in the bathtub and on one of the towels—Flecker’s own.
“Towel?” said Sister Ursula. “But you said Mrs. Carey had made up the laundry bundle.”
“She sends out only sheets and such—does the towels herself.”
“Oh.” The nun sounded disappointed.
“I know how you feel, Sister. You’d welcome a discrepancy anywhere, even in the laundry list. But that’s the sum of our evidence. Three suspects, all with opportunity, none with an alibi. Absolutely even distribution of suspicion, and our only guidepost is the word Quasimodo. Do you know any of these three men?”
“I have never met them, Lieutenant, but feel as though I knew them rather well from Professor Flecker’s descriptions.”
“Good. Let’s see what you can reconstruct. First, Ruggiero de’ Cassis, professor of mathematics, formerly of the University of Turin, voluntary exile since the early days of Fascism.”
Sister Ursula said slowly, “He admired de’ Cassis, not only for his first-rate mind, but because he seemed to have adjusted himself so satisfactorily to life despite his deformity. I remember he said once, ‘De’ Cassis has never known a woman, yet every day he looks on Beauty bare.’ ”
“On Beauty…? Oh yes. Millay. Euclid alone…All right. Now Marvin Lowe, professor of psychology, native of Ohio, and from what I’ve seen of him a prime pedant. According to Flecker…?”
“I think Professor Lowe amused him. He used to tell us the latest Spoonerisms; he swore that flocks of students graduated from the University believing that modern psychology rested on the researches of two men named Frung and Jeud. Once Lowe said that his favorite book was Max Beerbohm’s Happy Hypocrite; Professor Flecker insisted that was because it was the only one he could be sure of pronouncing correctly.”
“But as a man?”
“He never said much about Lowe personally; I don’t think they were intimate. But I do recall his saying, ‘Lowe, like all psychologists, is the physician of Greek proverb.’ ”
“Who was told to heal himself? Makes sense. That speech mannerism certainly points to something a psychiatrist could have fun with. All right. How about Hugo Ellis, instructor in mathematics, native of Los Angeles?”
“Mr. Ellis was a child prodigy, you know. Extraordinary mathematical feats. But he outgrew them, I almost think deliberately. He made himself into a normal young man. Now he is, I gather, a reasonably good young instructor—just run of the mill. An adult with the brilliance which he had as a child might be a great man. Professor Flecker turned the French proverb around to fit him: ‘If youth could, if age knew…’ ”
“So. There they are. And which,” Marshall asked, “is Quasimodo?”
“Quasimodo…” Sister Ursula repeated the word, and other words seemed to follow it automatically. “Quasimodo geniti infantes…” She paused and shuddered.
“What’s the matter?”
“I think,” she said softly, “I know. But like Professor Flecker, I fear making a fool of myself—and worse, I fear damning an innocent man….Lieutenant, may I look through this house with you?”
—
He sat there staring at the other two and at the policeman watching them. The body was no longer in the next room, but the blood was. He had never before revisited the scene of the crime; that notion was the nonsense of legend. For that matter he had never known his victim.
He let his mind go back to last night. Only recently had he been willing to do this. At first it was something that must be kept apart, divided from his normal personality. But he was intelligent enough to realize the danger of that. It could produce a seriously schizoid personality. He might go mad. Better to attain complete integration, and that could be accomplished only by frank self-recognition.
It must be terrible to be mad.
—
“Well, where to first?” asked Marshall.
“I want to see the bedrooms,” said Sister Ursula. “I want to see if Mrs. Carey changed the sheets.”
“You doubt her story? But she’s completely out of the—All right. Come on.”
Lieutenant Marshall identified each room for her as they entered it. Harvey Flecker’s bedroom by no means consorted with the neatness of his mind. It was a welter of papers and notes and hefty German works on Latin philology and puzzle books by Torquemada and Caliban and early missals and codices from the University library. The bed had been changed and the clean upper sheet was turned back. Harvey Flecker would never soil it.
Professor de’ Cassis’s room was in sharp contrast—a chaste monastic cubicle. His books—chiefly professional works, with a sampling of Leopardi and Carducci and other Italian poets and an Italian translation of Thomas à Kempis—were neatly stacked in a case, and his papers were out of sight. The only ornaments in the room were a crucifix and a framed picture of a family group, in clothes of 1920.
Hugo Ellis’s room was defiantly, almost parodistically the room of a normal, healthy college man, even to the University banner over the bed. He had carefully avoided both Flecker’s chaos and de’ Cassis’s austerity; there was a precisely calculated normal litter of pipes and letters and pulp magazines. The pin-up girls seemed to be carrying normality too far, and Sister Ursula averted her eyes.
Each room had a clean upper sheet.
Professor Lowe’s room would have seemed as normal as Ellis’s, if less spectacularly so, if it were not for the inordinate quantity of books. Shelves covered all wall space that was not taken by door, window, or bed. Psychology, psychiatry, and criminology predominated; but there was a selection of poetry, humor, fiction for any mood.
Marshall took down William Roughead’s Twelve Scots Trials and said, “Lucky devil! I’ve never so much as seen a copy of this before.” He smiled at the argumentative pencilings in the margins. Then as he went to replace it, he saw through the gap that there was a second row of books behind. Paperbacks. He took one out and put it back hastily. “You wouldn’t want to see that, Sister. But it might fit into that case we were proposing about repressions and word-distortions.”
Sister Ursula seemed not to heed him. She was standing by the bed and said, “Come here.”
Marshall came and looked at the freshly made bed.
Sister Ursula passed her hand over the mended but clean lower sheet. “Do you see?”
“See what?”
“The answer,” she said.
Marshall frowned. “Look, Sister—”
“Lieutenant, your wife is one of the most efficient housekeepers I’ve ever known. I thought she had, to some extent, indoctrinated you. Think. Try to think with Leona’s mind.”
Marshall thought. Then his eyes narrowed and he said, “So…”
“It is fortunate,” Sister Ursula said, “that the Order of Martha of Bethany specializes in housework.”
Marshall went out and called downstairs. “Raglan! See if the laundry’s been picked up from the back porch.”
The Sergeant’s voice came back. “It’s gone, Loot. I thought there wasn’t no harm—”
“Then get on the phone quick and tell them to hold it.”
“But what laundry, Loot?”
Marshall muttered. Then he turned to Sister Ursula. “The men won’t know of course, but we’ll find a bill somewhere. Anyway, we won’t need that till the preliminary hearing. We’ve got enough now to settle Quasimodo.”
—
He heard the Lieutenant’s question and repressed a startled gesture. He had not thought of that. But even if they traced the laundry, it would be valueless as evidence without Mrs. Carey’s testimony…
He saw at once what had to be done.
They had taken Mrs. Carey to the guest room, that small downstairs bedroom near the kitchen which must have been a maid’s room when this was a large family house. There were still police posted outside the house, but only Raglan and the Lieutenant inside.
It was so simple. His
mind, he told himself, had never been functioning more clearly. No nonsense about stripping this time; this was not for pleasure. Just be careful to avoid those crimson jets….
—
The Sergeant wanted to know where he thought he was going. He told him.
Raglan grinned. “You should’ve raised your hand. A teacher like you ought to know that.”
He went to the back porch toilet, opened and closed its door without going in. Then he went to the kitchen and took the second-best knife. The best had been used last night.
—
It would not take a minute. Then he would be safe and later when the body was found what could they prove? The others had been out of the room too.
But as he touched the knife it began to happen. Something came from the blade up his arm and into his head. He was in a hurry, there was no time—but holding the knife, the color of things began to change.
—
He was half-naked when Marshall found him.
Sister Ursula leaned against the jamb of the kitchen door. She felt sick. Marshall and Raglan were both strong men, but they needed help to subdue him. His face was contorted into an unrecognizable mask like a demon from a Japanese tragedy. She clutched the crucifix of the rosary that hung at her waist and murmured a prayer to the Archangel Michael. For it was not the physical strength of the man that frightened her, nor the glint of his knife, but the pure quality of incarnate evil that radiated from him and made the doctrine of possession a real terror.
As she finished her prayer, Marshall’s fist connected with his jaw and he crumpled. So did Sister Ursula.
—
“I don’t know what you think of me,” Sister Ursula said as Marshall drove her home. (Sister Felicitas was dozing in the backseat.) “I’m afraid I couldn’t ever have been a policewoman after all.”
“You’ll do,” Marshall said. “And if you feel better now, I’d like to run over it with you. I’ve got to get my brilliant deductions straight for the press.”
“The fresh air feels good. Go ahead.”
“I’ve got the sheet business down pat, I think. In ordinary middle-class households you don’t change both sheets every week; Leona never does, I remembered. You put on a clean upper sheet, and the old upper becomes the lower. The other three bedrooms each had one clean sheet—the upper. His had two—upper and lower; therefore his upper sheet had been stained in some unusual way and had to be changed. The hasty bath, probably in the dark, had been careless, and there was some blood left to stain the sheet. Mrs. Carey wouldn’t have thought anything of it at the time because she hadn’t found the body yet. Right?”
“Perfect, Lieutenant.”
“So. But now about Quasimodo…I still don’t get it. He’s the one it couldn’t apply to. Either of the others—”
“Yes?”
“Well, who is Quasimodo? He’s the Hunchback of Notre Dame. So it could mean the deformed de’ Cassis. Who wrote Quasimodo? Victor Hugo. So it could be Hugo Ellis. But it wasn’t either; and how in heaven’s name could it mean Professor Lowe?”
“Remember, Lieutenant: Professor Flecker said this was an allusion that might particularly appeal to me. Now I am hardly noted for my devotion to the anticlerical prejudices of Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris. What is the common meeting-ground of my interests and Professor Flecker’s?”
“Church liturgy?” Marshall ventured.
“And why was your Quasimodo so named? Because he was born—or found or christened, I forget which—on the Sunday after Easter. Many Sundays, as you may know, are often referred to by the first word of their introits, the beginning of the proper of the Mass. As the fourth Sunday in Lent is called Laetare Sunday, or the third in Advent Gaudete Sunday. So the Sunday after Easter is known as Quasimodo Sunday, from its introit Quasimodo geniti infantes…‘As newborn babes.’ ”
“But I still don’t see—”
“The Sunday after Easter,” said Sister Ursula, “is more usually referred to as Low Sunday.”
“Oh,” said Marshall. After a moment he added reflectively, “The Happy Hypocrite…”
“You see that too? Beerbohm’s story is about a man who assumes a mask of virtue to conceal his depravity. A schizoid allegory. I wonder if Professor Lowe dreamed that he might find the same happy ending.”
Marshall drove on a bit in silence. Then he said, “He said a strange thing while you were out.”
“I feel as though he were already dead,” said Sister Ursula. “I want to say, ‘God rest his soul.’ We should have a special office for the souls of the mad.”
“That cues into my story. The boys were taking him away and I said to Rags, ‘Well, this is once the insanity plea justifies itself. He’ll never see the gas chamber.’ And he turned on me—he’d quieted down by then—and said, ‘Nonsense, sir! Do you think I would cast doubt on my sanity merely to save my life?’ ”
“Mercy,” said Sister Ursula. At first Marshall thought it was just an exclamation. Then he looked at her face and saw that she was not talking to him.
The Ripper Experience
DANIEL STASHOWER
Blending fictional characters, real-life people, historical events, and original storytelling is no small task, but Daniel Meyer Stashower (1960– ) has managed it with great success. His novels and short stories have featured Sherlock Holmes, Harry Houdini, and others from different eras.
After winning a Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Detective Fiction to work at Oxford University for a year, Stashower produced his first novel, The Adventure of the Ectoplasmic Man (1985), which featured Sherlock Holmes and Harry Houdini, the fictional mystery blending with the author’s real-life fascination with magic and conjuring; it was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best First Novel. Houdini became a favorite protagonist and appeared in several of Stashower’s subsequent novels: The Dime Museum Murders (1999), The Floating Lady Murder (2000), and The Houdini Specter (2001).
Although established as a writer of excellent mystery fiction, mainly historical novels set in the years preceding World War I, Stashower has enjoyed even greater success in recent years with his nonfiction works. He has continued to focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writing Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (1999), for which he won his first Edgar. He followed this with additional critically acclaimed works on a variety of subjects, including such highly readable tomes as The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Invention of Murder (2006), which narrates the true story of the brutal murder on which Poe based his second C. Auguste Dupin story, “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and the Edgar-winning The Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War (2013), which recounts the Pinkertons’ tireless efforts to thwart an assassination plot during Lincoln’s journey to Washington, a plan that could have divided the nation forever.
“The Ripper Experience” was written especially for this collection and has never previously been published.
THE RIPPER EXPERIENCE
Daniel Stashower
“I’m Jack the Ripper,” Jayson said. He picked up a cinnamon latte. “How’s that? Or maybe just I’m Jack.”
I was running late that morning. “Sorry,” I said, “there was a—”
He waved it off. “No worries. We’re trying to come up with something for the T-shirt.”
Martha, one of the new content coordinators, looked up from her notes. “I’m Jack the Ripper,” she said. “Have you picked a font?”
“Nightbird. Bold. With blood drips and maybe that knife-slash effect? See how it looks.”
“Nightbird.” Martha wrote it down. “Are we done?”
“No, I’m not sure I like it.” Jayson leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the conference table. “Got Jack? No, that’s terrible. I’m with the Ripper. With a bloody arrow pointing to the person next to you. God, that’s even worse.” He glanced over as I set down my heavy canvas courier bag. “Annie? You got anything?”
I sl
ipped into my chair. “Fear the Ripper.”
Jayson shook his head. He was drumming with both hands now, nervous about the day ahead. “Keep on Slashin’. No, don’t write that down. Keep Calm and Fear Jack. No. Terrible. My Grandmother Was Murdered in Whitechapel and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt.” He pushed back from the table and stood up. “This is hopeless. Annie—you decide.”
“Keep it simple,” I said. “Like always. Exhibition logo on the back; title on the front. Saucy Jack: The Ripper Experience.”
Jayson gave a tight nod and pointed at Martha’s note pad. “Write it down.”
—
People are clueless about museum exhibitions. Your average visitor—we call them “guests”—has no idea what it takes to mount a full-scale installation, or even a smaller traveling show. They think you just slap a few things on the wall and print up the tickets. There’s no respect for the process, no awareness of what happens behind the scenes. Let me tell you, it doesn’t happen overnight. There are a hell of a lot of moving parts. We have a lighting specialist. We have an audio guy. We have a videographer. We have a team of designers and fabricators. We have consultants to oversee the accessibility and educational compliance, especially with the interactives. And if you don’t have interactives—the hands-on stuff—you’re dead in the water. Trust me on this.
All of it takes money. We’d already spent months writing proposals, applying for grants, and pulling together a sales pitch for MuseumExpo. We had charts to estimate the average dwell time, a mock-up of traffic flow, and bullet points for the STEM-compliant educational benefits. That’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. If all went to plan, most of our funding would come from educational foundations, so we had to check all the boxes. But Jayson also wanted to hit the critical-thinking initiatives, which meant an extra layer of classroom handouts and study guides. That’s why we needed Arthur Furman, and that’s where our troubles began.
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 122