by Will Thomas
“I don’t need to come here to be insulted. I can do that all day over there.”
Barker brushed past me and headed for his smoking cabinet and his chair. The salver on his desk contained a half-dozen messages from people wishing to hire his services, all of whom had gone away disappointed. Just because the hoarding had come down didn’t mean no one knew where Barker’s door was. I don’t know if Jenkins had much of an opinion about what went on here on normal days, but I suspected he encouraged potential clients to leave messages, hoping our employer would change his mind and give up this folly he had undertaken.
Once my employer was in his chair, with his pipe going, his feet up on the corner of his desk and his hands folded across his waistcoat, he spoke. “Now, read out the letter to me again slowly, lad, if you will be so kind.”
I did so, even describing each misspelling and punctuation lapse. When I was done, he stared at the tin squares on the ceiling as he sent plumes of smoke their way.
“Boss. Job,” he repeated. “That sounds like an American to me. Those aren’t words I would ever use.”
“They are English words, but out of usage here. They are probably an example of words still used in the colonies that fell out of favor a century ago here. Certainly ‘grand work,’ ‘get buckled’ and ‘proper red stuff’ are English enough.”
“His whole manner of speaking sounds theatrical and artificial, don’t you think? He strikes me as an educated man attempting to appear as an uneducated one.”
“Precisely,” I said, holding up my notebook. “Why use an apostrophe in ‘wouldn’t’ but not in ‘won’t’? He mashes sentences together here and here, but uses grammatical sentences over here.”
“You note how he is pleased when the police make statements about being on the right track? He says ‘talk’ as if he were present when someone from Scotland Yard spoke, but I don’t believe anyone from the Yard has ever spoken openly to the public about the case. They’ve been ordered not to. Is it possible that this so-called Ripper has some kind of connection to the police in order to make this statement? I’ll have to ponder that.”
“He’s so bloody gleeful. He’s killing people, women, and he makes it sound like a lark, like stealing a policeman’s helmet. Do you suppose he’s a misogynist?”
“Perhaps he’s a coward,” Barker said, pushing himself out of his chair. When he is angry, he paces with his head down and his arms akimbo, fists planted firmly against his kidneys. “He’s not harming men, or even strong young women like the matchstick girls. Why even bother killing Dark Annie? Her lungs were in such poor shape the winter would have probably finished her.”
Beneath that rough-hewn exterior beat a soft heart. Barker cared, even about a sickly, drunken, part-time prostitute that even her husband had given up on. It angered him that the Whitechapel Killer had done in that particular woman, whom he had never even met save in a police file.
“The act was unspeakable, small wonder his English is as well,” I remarked.
The Guv held up a warning finger. “No, don’t fall into the assumption that the person who killed those women also wrote this letter. We have no proof of that. This could be the work of an individual claiming to be the killer, or something else. Something we haven’t encountered before.”
“Is it common for people to write in to the newspapers and confess to killing someone? Anonymously, I mean?”
“It is. Apparently, it happens all the time.”
“There are a lot more strange people in London than I realized. Small wonder Europe considers us a nation of eccentrics. It would never occur to me to write and confess to something whether I did it or not. I happen to have a profound respect for the Metropolitan Police, having felt their truncheons against my rib cage on more than one occasion.”
“Do you know how many gates there are in London? Official gates?”
I looked over at him, wondering what the relevance of his question was. “No, sir, I cannot say that I do.”
“There’s one at Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace to protect the royals from harm. And there’s one at Scotland Yard, which we passed through not half an hour ago. Do you know why it’s there?”
“I never thought about it. I suppose I thought it for show.”
“It is, in a way. When the force was first formed a half century ago, the populace resented it. They were frightened by how much power the peelers might attain. The Yard in turn feared retaliation, even armed rebellion. The gate is not merely for show. When the CID was formed and later the new Plainclothes Division, the protests occurred all over again. When the average East Ender looks at a constable walking his beat, he doesn’t see the helpful officer keeping order in the town that the West Ender sees.”
“Is it as bad as that? I know Israel and his band of intellectuals are trying to bring socialism to the East End, to improve conditions there, but are you implying the government itself might be in danger?”
“Not just the government, lad. The monarchy.”
“Are you serious? All because a man killed two prostitutes?”
“A fire begins with a single spark.”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Most of the East Enders just want a dinner and a few pints in them at the end of the day. They’re not politically motivated, or at least that’s what Israel tells me.”
“Precisely. And what would motivate them is a sudden seeming lack of safety, like a man with a knife roaming the streets at night.”
“But he only kills unfortunates.”
“Say rather that he has only killed unfortunates so far. If you had a wife or daughter walking these streets, would you consider them safe?”
The thought occurred to me then that Rebecca Cowen traveled through these very streets. Her synagogue was nearby and she had friends here. Were she to leave an acquaintance’s home too late one night … I cringed at the thought.
“No, I suppose not. So, it’s on Scotland Yard’s shoulders to capture this fellow for everyone’s sake.”
“Right. And heaven help them if they don’t.”
Just then light dawned in the old Llewelyn noggin. “Therefore,” I said, “it is the responsibility of all men to lay aside their normal activities for a time and hunt down this killer for the good of the community.”
“Aye.”
“Even if it means taking down a shiny brass plaque one has had engraved at some expense.”
“Sacrifices must be made.”
“For the common good.”
“For the common good, as you say.”
I tried to cudgel my brain into more insights. “This fellow, Jack—”
“No. I will not call him that. We have no actual proof that the killer and the author of this missive are one and the same.”
“Leather Apron, then?”
“That is worse. If the East End believes that the killer is a Jew, all the worst scenarios you might consider will come to pass. It could be the flashpoint for pogroms and riots that will dwarf what happened in Pall Mall last year.”
He was speaking of Bloody Sunday, when troops were brought in to quell an impromptu riot of radicals on the orders of Commissioner Warren. He was still in trouble over that, politically speaking.
“How bad could it get?” I asked, as much to myself as to my employer.
“Whitechapel isn’t Whitehall, Thomas. The first is plaster and wood, the second brick and marble. The entire East End could burn to the ground and countless lives lost.”
“Because of one madman.”
“Now you see what I fear.”
“I assumed you feared nothing, sir.”
Barker gave that wintry smile again. “There is paralyzing fear and there is motivational fear. It is better to do anything than nothing.”
“This may sound naïve, sir, but is this rare, that a madman could kill and keep killing periodically?”
“Very rare, and I’d like to keep it that way. Of course, there are multiple murders every now and then, but they are generally all at once
, a man destroying his entire family, for example. But this, a lone man, moving about, seeking whom he will devour; he is an anomaly, and we must see that he stays that way. His very presence fractures the safety of society. It is not merely the death of a few prostitutes. It is what society does afterward to compensate the citizens’ fears. Imagine curfews. Imagine gates everywhere. Imagine a much larger police presence.”
“Won’t Warren like that?” I remarked. “Those are dire possibilities. Do you really think it might lead to that?”
“Not if we capture him in time.”
“Do you think he can be captured?” I asked. “More likely, he’d end up dead.”
“I would prefer he live and be locked away where he would never have the opportunity to harm another person, but if he dies I must confess I will not lose much sleep over it.”
I nodded. “What do you suppose set him off?”
“You conjecture some kind of catalyst, an event in his private life? If so, it could be anything. The smallest event, even no event at all. A thought that occurred to him, or the desire to give in to the impulses in his brain.”
I snapped my fingers. “There is a novel I just finished reading, sir. It is called Crime and Punishment, written by a Russian named Dostoyevsky. He wrote about a young intellectual who kills out of ennui, for the mere experience of doing it. Then he regrets it as he is inevitably tracked by an inspector and is finally caught and sent to Siberia. Ultimately, he finds redemption.”
“Redemption is fine, Thomas, and I wish it upon him. Right now, though, forgive me if I want to get my hands about his throat.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I am a naturally curious person. Given a stick and a hornet’s nest, I will inevitably poke it. We were sitting and discussing the letter when something Munro said came back to me. I spoke before the consequences of such an action occurred to me.
“So, Munro once turned down your application at Scotland Yard.”
“Just so,” he said coolly.
Cyrus Barker does not like to answer questions about his personal life, but if one can find him when he is feeling nostalgic or in a contemplative mood, he will discuss his past. I suspected this might be just such a time.
“That must have been shortly after you arrived in London.”
“Well, to begin with,” Barker said, “I had decided it was time to leave China and come to Europe again.”
“Why?” I asked.
Barker looked a trifle discomfited. “After her husband’s death, Philippa had tied up all the legal matters and was anxious to return to England to inter his ashes and assume the running of Tulsemore, her estate in Sussex. Her father had passed on in her absence and she had inherited it, you see.”
“And you?”
“And I had intended to follow after her.”
“Is that it?”
“What do you mean, is that it?”
“When you last mentioned this event, your mortal enemy Sebastian Nightwine had tricked you into going to Peking on some sort of errand for the dowager empress. The errand for which she gave you Harm.”
“Let us not discuss the errand,” Barker said.
“As I recall, you claimed it was ‘indelicate.’”
“So it was.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” I said with excessive grace. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Continue.”
“Very well. So I was sent to investigate a case in the Forbidden City, my very first, and I solved it successfully. Ho and the crew had brought the Osprey up the coast to Tiensen, where I met them, and we proceeded—”
“No, no, no,” I interrupted, putting up my hand.
“Is there a problem?”
“There is. You’ve told me enough about the way things are run there to know you don’t just leave the Forbidden City like that. If they like you, you stay forever. If they don’t, they kill you. One doesn’t simply walk out the front gates with a cordial ‘Cheerio.’”
“Confound it, when did you become such an interrogator?”
“Since you taught me. Don’t change the subject. How did you get out?”
“Over the wall.”
“That’s more likely. Why?”
“I didn’t care for the positions the dowager empress offered me as her personal employee.”
“Which were?”
“Eunuch was one of them.”
“Well, I could see where you might have some objection to that. And the other?”
“Paramour.”
“Ah, yes. Mrs. Ashleigh might have some objections. So, the decision to leave China was not in fact a decision at all.”
“Very well. We were being actively pursued. Chased, if you prefer, by the Imperial Navy.”
“Why?”
“The empress revealed to her soldiers that I was not, in fact, a eunuch, which in the Forbidden City is punishable by death, though all of them had been complicit in bringing me there, knowing full well that … Well, as I said, it was indelicate.”
“You’re blushing, sir.”
“I do not blush. Anyway, we were pursued south along the coast, and Philippa had gone ahead by steamer packet.” He stopped and stared at me as if I were going to challenge him on it.
“Proceed,” I said, the Grand Inquisitor.
“We continued through the China Sea, losing the Imperial Navy completely, and into the Indian Ocean.”
“Around the Cape of Good Hope?”
“No, up through the Suez Canal. I spent a few days in the Holy Land while we provisioned, then continued through the Mediterranean and around France to Britain.”
“To Seaford?”
“Aye, that’s where we docked. We put ourselves up at a little place nearby called the Owler’s Inn and tried to get our land legs again. Philippa had just arrived and her home was still swathed in sheets. It was where my crew broke up. Some took their pay and signed on to other vessels. The rest of us went to London to seek our fortunes.”
“No,” I said. “You already had your fortunes.”
“I suppose we did. Anyway, Ho wanted to open a tea shop, and Etienne to train as a chef in Paris. Eventually I found myself alone.”
“Stop!” I cried. “That won’t do at all. The fortunes! How did you make them?”
“I assumed you had worked that out by now. You often hear of men coming back from the Orient having made their fortunes.”
“I have, but how? Everything’s vague and nothing is explained. I’ve known you for years and I still don’t know how you made money. For all I know, you were a pirate.”
He pulled a face. It was not exactly a denial. I jumped out of my chair.
“You were! You were a pirate!”
“No, lad, not as such. What we did was illegal and very dangerous, but not exactly piracy.”
He left it at that, or would have preferred to. I wouldn’t.
“Well?”
He sighed. “If you must know, we were treasure hunters. A good many ships were sunk over the years, loaded with gold bound for England. Tea and opium money. I purchased a diving bell and built a hoist on the Osprey and we settled in Bias Bay, which I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know is infamous for its piracy. We amassed enough money in six months to retire. It was then that Sebastian Nightwine informed the empress dowager that I could solve her problems for her. Is that enough for you? May we move on?”
“Sorry, sir,” I said. “But what about London? There you were, a rich man. Why did you not set yourself up as a gentleman?”
“I tried it, for Philippa’s sake. She wanted it very much. But I cannot do nothing. I’ve worked all my life. I’m unable to sit about and I bore easily. I love to read, but even books became tiresome on a continual diet of them. Then one day, I passed through Whitehall and there was the famous Scotland Yard, and I thought, ‘That’s for me.’ I’d solved the empress dowager’s problem readily enough.”
“Did you go in and apply?”
“I did, right then and there. In my folly, I believed they w
ould jump at the chance to acquire someone who had worked for the empress dowager of China.”
“I take it they did not.”
“They had never even heard of her, though she rules over a tenth of the earth. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that I had little written proof of my claim and what I had was in Chinese. Even translated, there was no way to assure the authorities that my papers were genuine. Plus, I was over thirty, not a particularly young man to be starting as a constable. Then there was the matter of my spectacles.”
“They would not accept them?”
“Against regulation. In fact, everything I did seemed to arouse the suspicion of the inspector who was put in charge of verifying my claims.”
“James Munro.”
“Aye.”
“So that’s the source of the bad blood between you.”
“He would not stop provoking me to remove my spectacles. He claimed I had a secret. He claimed I was a half-breed, someone’s illegitimate whelp. He accused me of being blind in one eye. Anything to force me to take them off.”
Then he pulled the offending articles from his face and threw them on the desk.
I leaned forward and stared intently at him. There was a scar bisecting his right eye from the outside corner, extending nearly an inch above the brow to the inside, extending down the cheek. At one point, someone must have slashed him across the eye with a sharp blade. The cut had sliced through both eyelids, and they had been sewn together poorly. The top was creased with scar tissue. The bottom had barely been repaired at all. There was a V-shaped nick in the lower lid, through which one could see the white. A milky groove ran vertically down the eye itself, where the blade had cut it.
“Can you see through it?” I asked.
“Almost perfectly. I was wearing my spectacles at the time, and they were broken off my face. If I hadn’t been wearing them, the damage would have been irreparable.”
“Who did this to you?”
“An old foe from my youth. I’ve had it for almost decades.”
I eyed the scar again. “Katana?” I asked.
“You are correct. The injury happened while I was in Japan.”
“The lost years.”
He smiled grimly. I don’t like to use adverbs when I can help it, but he smiled, and his smile was grim.