“I think you’re out of your mind,” Woods said. “Did I understand correctly that you’ve been here before?”
“Exactly. I came several months ago, as soon as I found the address in the Registry. I wanted a look around.”
Woods wrinkled his nose. “More to smell than there is to see.”
“Use your imagination, man! Doesn’t it mean anything to you that you’re in the very room once occupied by Jack the Ripper?”
Woods shook his head. “There must be a dozen rooms to let in this old barn. What makes you think this is the right one?”
“The Registry entry specified ‘rear.’ And there are no rear accommodations downstairs—that’s where the kitchen is located. So this had to be the place.”
Kane gestured. “Think of it—you may be looking at the very sink where the Ripper washed away the traces of his butchery, the bed in which he slept after his dark deeds were performed! Who knows what sights this room has seen and heard—the voice crying out in a tormented nightmare—”
“Come off it, Hilary!” Woods grimaced impatiently. “It’s one thing to use your imagination, but quite another to let your imagination use you.”
“Look.” Kane pointed to the far corner of the room. “Do you see those indentations in the carpet? I noticed them when I examined this room on my previous visit. What do they suggest to you?”
Woods peered dutifully at the worn surface of the carpet, noting the four round, evenly spaced marks. “Must have been another piece of furniture in that corner. Something heavy, I’d say.”
“But what sort of furniture?”
“Well—” Woods considered. “Judging from the space, it wasn’t a sofa or chair. Could have been a cabinet, perhaps a large desk—”
“Exactly. A rolltop desk. Every doctor had one in those days.” Kane sighed. “I’d give a pretty penny to know what became of that item. It might have held the answer to all our questions.”
“After all these years? Not bloody likely.” Woods glanced away. “Didn’t find anything else, did you?”
“I’m afraid not. As you say, it’s been a long time since the Ripper stayed here.”
“I didn’t say that.” Woods shook his head. “You may be right about the desk. And no doubt the Medical Registry gives a correct address. But all it means is that this room may once have been rented by a Dr. John Ridley. You’ve already inspected it once—why bother to come back?”
“Because now I have this.” Kane placed the black bag on the bed. “And this.” He produced a pocket-knife.
“You intend to force the lock after all?”
“In the absence of a key I have no alternative.” Kane wedged the blade under the metal guard and began to pry upwards. “It’s important that the bag be opened here. Something it contains may very well be associated with this room. If we recognize the connection we might have an additional clue, a conclusive link—”
The lock snapped.
As the bag sprang open, the two men stared down at its contents—the jumble of vials and pillboxes, the clumsy old-style stethoscope, the probes and tweezers, the roll of gauze. And, resting atop it, the scalpel with the steel-tipped surface encrusted with brownish stains.
They were still staring as the door opened quietly behind them and the balding, elderly little man entered the room.
“I see my guess is correct, gentlemen. You too have read the Medical Registry.” He nodded. “I was hoping I’d find you here.”
Kane frowned. “What do you want?”
“I’m afraid I must trouble you for my bag.”
“But it’s my property now—I bought it.”
The little man sighed. “Yes, and I was a fool to permit it. I thought putting on that price would dissuade you. How was I to know you were a collector like myself?”
“Collector?”
“Of curiosa pertaining to murder.” The little man smiled. “A pity you cannot see some of the memorabilia I’ve acquired. Not the commonplace items associated with your so-called Black Museum in Scotland Yard, but true rarities with historical significance.” He gestured. “The silver jar in which the notorious French sorceress, La Voisin, kept her poisonous ointments, the actual dirks which dispatched the unfortunate nephews of Richard III in the Tower—yes, even the poker responsible for the atrocious demise of Edward II at Berkeley Castle on the night of September 21st, 1327. I had quite a bit of trouble locating it until I realized the date was reckoned according to the old Julian calendar.”
Kane frowned impatiently. “Who are you? What happened to that shop of yours?”
“My name would mean nothing to you. As for the shop, let us say that it exists spatially and temporally as I do—when and where necessary for my purposes. By your current and limited understanding, you might call it a sort of time-machine.”
Woods shook his head. “You’re not making sense.”
“Ah, but I am, and very good sense too. How else do you think I could pursue my interests so successfully unless I were free to travel in time? It is my particular pleasure to return to certain eras in this primitive past of yours, visiting the scenes of famous and infamous crimes and locating trophies for my collection.
“The shop, of course, is just something I used as a blind for this particular mission. It’s gone now, and I shall be going too, just as soon as I retrieve my property. It happens to be the souvenir of a most unusual murder.”
“You see?” Kane nodded at Woods. “I told you this bag belonged to the Ripper!”
“Not so,” said the little man. “I already have the Ripper’s murder weapon, which I retrieved directly after the slaying of his final victim on November 9th, 1888. And I can assure you that your Dr. Ridley was not Jack the Ripper but merely and simply an eccentric surgeon—” As he spoke, he edged toward the bed.
“No you don’t!” Kane turned to intercept him, but he was already reaching for the bag. “Let go of that!” Kane shouted.
The little man tried to pull away, but Kane’s hand swooped down frantically into the open bag and clawed. Then it rose, gripping the scalpel.
The little man yanked the bag away. Clutching it, he retreated as Kane bore down upon him furiously.
“Stop!” Woods cried. Hurling himself forward, he stepped between the two men, directly into the orbit of the descending blade.
There was a gurgle, then a thud, as he fell.
The scalpel clattered to the floor, slipping from Kane’s nerveless fingers and coming to rest in the spreading crimson stain.
The little man stooped and picked up the scalpel. “Thank you,” he said softly. “You have given me what I came for.” He dropped the weapon into the bag.
Then he shimmered. Shimmered—and disappeared.
But Woods’s body didn’t disappear. Kane stared down at it—at the throat ripped open from ear to ear.
He was still staring when they came and took him away.
The trial, of course, was a sensation. It wasn’t so much the crazy story Kane told as the fact that nobody could ever find the fatal weapon.
It was a most unusual murder…
Jack the Ripper in Hell
STEPHEN HUNTER
A perennial presence on the bestseller list, Stephen Hunter (1946– ) has enjoyed enormous success with his contemporary thrillers, beginning with The Master Sniper (1980) and continuing for an additional twenty novels. Several of his most popular books feature Bob “the Nailer” Swagger, a Marine sniper given the sobriquet for his extraordinary skill with a rifle. There are nine books in the Bob Lee Swagger series, beginning with Point of Impact (1993), on which the 2007 film Shooter was based, with Mark Wahlberg in the starring role.
While producing a string of bestselling novels, Hunter also worked as the film critic for The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post, winning a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2003.
Against the wishes of his agent, editor, and publisher, Hunter abandoned his trademark action-based thrillers in 2015 with a period novel, I, Ripper, which
also went to the top of bestseller lists. It is a tour de force in which the gas-lit Victorian era is convincingly evoked in chapters that alternate between pages from Jack the Ripper’s diary and the memoirs of a cocky young journalist whose fame and fortune rest on his coverage of the East End atrocities for the Star, an ambitious little afternoon newspaper competing with fifty others for the attention of a public ravenous for news of the vicious killer.
The editor of I, Ripper decided that one chapter of the manuscript was inappropriate for inclusion in the novel. Although there is a great deal of wit and humor in the dialogue of the book, it is a suspense novel, and the consensus appears to have been that the out-and-out humor of “Jack the Ripper in Hell” carried with it the wrong tone. It appears here for the first time.
JACK THE RIPPER IN HELL
Stephen Hunter
I found myself, rather suddenly, at the front door of a great hall of the sort that dominates and has dominated the English countryside for hundreds of years. This was itself an astonishment; as a skeptic of long-standing, I had expected nothing but nothingness and more nothingness, an eternity of nothingness. It sounded rather keen, actually. But no, there I was, before this large house.
It had lots of windows, gables, walls, chimneys, bushes, gardens, nooks, crannies, stables, ponds, crests, crowns, the usual muckety-muck that the tiny percentage of druids, dwarves, and fools bred to rule have always occupied. Forthwith, the imposing door was opened by a snooty footman in livery, from his slippers to his pouffy periwinkle, complete-to-obviously-insincere beauty mark upon his powdered face, his splendid red-silk tunic over ruffles and flourishes, his tight pantaloons, his white silk stockings and his buckled slippers. He was a bit fat, however, and his gracefulness was somewhat undercut by the ample size of his ass.
“Hell?” I inquired.
“Indeed,” he said. “You are expected.”
“Why, of course I am!” I replied.
He led me through the great house and of course it was lit by candle, not gas, its rooms were spacious, if jammed with bric-a-brac, damask hangings depicting long-forgotten hunting triumphs, dead animal heads from same, intricate furniture with much refined carving upon it, wood chiseled to flower and beast and texture of great ingenuity, and everywhere porcelain figurines of dubious taste. Far be it from me to criticize hell, but most country houses are assembled with better wit. They needed to redecorate the place!
In several rooms, it appeared that formal balls were being held. In one, I saw, sweating profusely, the emperor Napoleon dancing an Irish jig. I waited for the music to stop but it never did and he danced and danced, though his face radiated embarrassment and discomfort.
“He got his,” I said to the servant, who was too imperious to notice me.
We climbed a grand stairway, went through a room where a man I believe to be Attila the Hun, or possibly Genghis Khan, was attempting to needlepoint a lovely thrush onto a stiff cloth brace but couldn’t quite get the hang of it, much to the chagrin of his instructress, a small, sanctimonious English lass of about eight.
“You are not paying attention,” she rebuked him sternly. “It’s five then three.”
He too was getting his, unto eternity, and I could read the suffering from his tragic eyes.
Finally, I found myself in what I took to be the Head Man’s office. He was there, too, though not what I expected. This being eternally 1755 or whatever, horns and tails and blazing red faces were definitely recherché. Instead our Dear Boss sat daintily cross-legged at his desk, behind a feather quill, attending to paperwork in great swirly penmanship, itself a specimen of ruffles and flourishes. He, too, had a periwinkle (perhaps hiding the stubs of horns?), a blue silk tunic over the usual frothy folds, powder on his face (hiding the red complexion, it being hell and all) with a completely ridiculous beauty mark. Everywhere that there wasn’t blue silk there was white lace. He eventually laid down his quill, and took a snuff break, forcing some appalling brown and sugary substance up his left nostril. He had a nice sneeze, very satisfying, and then turned to face me.
“Dr. Ripper, I presume?”
“That is I, sir. And you are He, of many names but eternal malice, are you not?”
“I am indeed, sir.”
“Interesting place you have here,” I said. “I thought it would be more sulfurous fires and screaming as hot irons were applied.”
“That’s all in the cellar. We can arrange it for you, if you are so interested.”
“If there are other options, perhaps we should discuss them.”
“That is the point. I like to chat with new boys and discuss what lies ahead. It’s just better that way, I’ve found.”
“I think it’s quite responsible of you,” I said.
“One tries,” he said.
At this point, he reached inside his tunic and emerged with a pince-nez which he wedged onto the bridge of his nose. He turned, retrieved the document upon which he had been laboring, and seemed to read its truth.
“Five, I see,” he said. “Rather brutally, too, I’m afraid. I do so hate messes.”
“If you examine carefully,” I said, “you’ll note that the so-called ‘messiness’ was all achieved post-mortem. It looked far worse than it was. Only one, which I deeply regret, suffered, when strangulation became necessary. Mistakes do happen. For the others it was a swift blur, perhaps a sting or pinch, and then they went away. In all cases, wherever they ended up, it was a better place than they’d been.”
“Allowing that you speak the truth as you see it, I must point out that that is your diagnosis of the situation. They, and I have discussed this with them quite thoroughly, none of them had any eagerness to leave the place they were. It was not the best place, to be sure, and none were ‘happy’ in the way that a wealthy young woman with a brilliant fiancé and an unlimited wardrobe budget might be happy, but none was so at ends that she would have chosen death over life.”
“Well said. However, by my way of thinking it was necessary to achieve certain ends which were of paramount importance to me. I weighed their needs against mine and found my case more convincing. Banal, sir, I am sure, but banality is the commonplace of murder, is it not?”
“Quite so. The dreary tales I hear of why so and so had the absolute right to tup so and so. It’s the worst part of the job, but one must do what one must do.”
“I hope that you appreciate that. I will not stoop to the argument that they did not matter. Of course they mattered, to self and loved ones and, in the abstract, to the conventions of society which cannot formally accept the insignificance of any individual, even if every battle, flood, fire and shipwreck proves how meaningless the individual is. Thus, considered objectively, it’s hard to argue that my crimes in any way but the formally legalistic would be considered a sin. Am I not right in suspecting your interest here is sin, not legal finding?”
“You are, sir, indeed. My profession is sin, my expertise is sin.”
“Then again, allow me another tangent.”
“Please continue.”
“You have people here who have killed in the millions. I didn’t see him but I guess Tamerlane is here.”
“He is. Downstairs. We don’t like to show new boys what we had to do with that chap. Quite horrifying. Involves broken glass on an endless stairway to heaven. He bleeds out, screaming, then awakens to do it all over again. Forever. Oh, well, it was his choice.”
“And Alexander the Great.”
“The cities that one put to sword. Appalling. Hundreds of thousands, all totally innocent. He’s on a cross. If it was good enough for my friend Jesus, it’s good enough for him.”
“My point exactly. So far beyond me.”
“Yes, but you, sir, are self-aware. Tamerlane and Alexander never thought they were sinning. You knew you were sinning. So in a certain way, your five weigh more heavily than their millions.”
“I take your point. However, sir, it does seem to me that simply sticking me on a skewer and rotating me
over coals for a million years is rather beneath you. It is clear from your surroundings that you are a man of taste and discrimination. I might have done with fewer porcelain collies, but that’s another issue altogether. Surely you have subtler stratagems in mind for so bold and profligate a brute as me than the old up-the-arse and onto-the-fire routine. I would be so disappointed.”
“You flatter me, sir, and, alas, it is true that one aspect of hell the various religious fellows have never quite comprehended is the importance of flattery. I, after all, invented flattery. It is one of the most basic of sins, and the one sure road to my cellar, more specifically the skewer/flambe wing of the cellar.”
“That is justice,” I said.
“But flattery applied to me, as is yours? I do so enjoy it! Oh, yes, goody goody! Most are too terrified. They beg and mewl. It’s so unfortunate and it does them no good at all. I find your sangfroid truly amusing, to repay flattery with flattery. Jack knew his knife but when it came time to pay up, he could try to outtalk der teufel selbst.”
“I have always been the chatty sort, sir. I have a gift for jibber-jabber.”
He leaned back. “This is the fun part of the job. Coming up with just the right thing for a true bad boy.”
“Napoleon doing a million years of jigs was quite a stroke, if I may say so.”
“Yes, I rather thought so. Now…What for Jack? Hmm, your vanities would seem to be a positively gargantuan sense of self-entitlement, which causes you to do monstrous things.”
“It is true. I must get my way and when I do not, there is hell to pay. Well, not this hell, but a sort of earthbound hell, one might say.”
“Among the reasons you believe you are so entitled is that you consider yourself a man of taste, of erudition, of intellect, a superior being in all matters.”
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 163