by Will Thomas
“What?” I asked, my heart knocking my rib cage with every beat. “How did—”
“Where?” Barker demanded.
“Under the pillow.”
He came around the mattresses and when he reached my pillow, kicked it over. There was a dead rat there, a large one.
“It’s been cut open,” I said, trying to keep myself from being ill.
“More precisely,” the Guv said, looking closer by the light of the candle, “its throat has been cut and its viscera removed. It’s a message for you from the Whitechapel Killer, the real one. He knows who you are and what you are trying to do.”
“My word,” I said.
Barker gave me a grim stare. “At least we know what he was doing tonight.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Several days later I was at work like any other morning, producing garments with mind-numbing regularity. The only difference was that it was the Jewish Sabbath and I would not have to work as many hours as usual. Wolfe and his brother Isaac were bustling around the factory, seeing that we were about our duties with no slowing of production, while Aaron Kosminski had not yet awoken from his slumbers.
Lunch arrived and I washed down a dry sandwich with some tepid water from the pump. I was almost missing the Frying Pan, when there was a sudden rap on the door and a constable entered. The helmet always makes them look taller.
Wolfe Kosminski put down a jacket he was examining and met the officer at the door. There had been trouble in the past about the long hours he had forced upon his employees to work and he was anxious to avoid such trouble.
“What can I do for you, Constable?” he asked.
“Looking for a Welshman, name of Llewelyn.”
All the workers turned and looked at me. I did my best to appear innocent. Privately, I wondered what he was about.
“Mr. Llewelyn is right here, sir. What can we do for you?”
“’Ave you got your papers with you, boy?” he asked.
“No, sir. They are in my room. It’s not far. I could go get them, if you like.”
“You’re not going anywhere without me. We’ll get them and take them to ‘H’ Division.”
“But I need him to work!” Wolfe insisted. “What has the fellow done?”
“We just need to see that his papers are in order. Come along, you.”
He took my arm and hurried me out the door.
“What is this about?” I demanded.
“Hush,” the constable said. “Listen. There’s been another murder. Your inspector is at the location right now.”
“The Ripper?”
“Number five.”
“Where?”
“Miller’s Court. You know where that is?”
“I do. It’s nearby. What happened?”
“I didn’t go into the room, but I got an eyeful from the window. Depraved is what it is.”
“What room are you talking about?”
“Sorry, sir, I’m telling it backward. The dollymop—the unfortunate—had a room in Miller’s Court. She were a cut above the others. Much younger, better looking. Bit of a stunner, I hear, but she ain’t no more. I volunteered to come get you, sir, ’cause I didn’t want the others to see me get ill.”
“Are you coming with me?”
“Not if I can help it, but he wants you there now. ’Op it!”
I began to run. Miller’s Court was a narrow alley to the northeast, not far away, off Dorset Street, but a few streets away from where we slept. The Whitechapel Killer was murdering his latest victim practically within earshot. I felt we were no more a hindrance to him and his plans than a bluebottle fly is to a horse.
Bell Lane became Crispin Street, then I turned into Dorset and came to the entrance to Miller’s Court. I stepped to avoid where someone had been ill. The street was packed with people, their expressions ranging from terror to curiosity to downright excitement. The police were shooing people away, far back enough that no one could see in. I passed under a brick arch, and down a narrow alley to a corner room, with windows on two sides. The windows were being guarded by grim-looking constables. There were nearly as many officers as citizens present. I skirted them and came to the front door. The PC there recognized me and waved me through.
“Brace yourself,” he murmured.
The room was larger than one would expect for a common prostitute to rent, but then I understand the unfortunate who lived there had been uncommon. Her name, I came to learn, was Mary Kelly, and she was from Dublin. She was blond, and what passed in Whitechapel for beautiful. She could have worked in any West End brothel, or married a rich man, but for some reason, she ended up here. Here in this lowly room, she lost her beauty entirely.
As I said, the room was large, with a bedstead, a table, and chair. There had been an attempt to brighten the place with flowers and cushions. That effect had been spoiled now by all the blood, sprayed and dripping down the walls. The chamber had been a light tan in color, but now it seemed mostly scarlet.
She lay on the bed, almost as if lounging there. She had been boned. The flesh had been stripped from her skeleton as if she were a steer. The bed was drenched in what must have been gallons of blood. She had no face, beyond a pair of staring eyes. Her organs had been removed piecemeal, and stacked in a pile on the nearby nightstand. I assumed her throat had been cut to begin with, but now there was no way to tell. Her dress was lifted, and her limbs posed almost provocatively, but the flesh had been carved from her thighs, leaving only bare bone. Never before or since have I seen a sight more revolting, more pitiable, or more inhumane. I would not even wish such a fate on the very man who did it.
I fell back against the wall by the door frame. I wasn’t going to be ill, but I feared passing out.
“Look out there, Constable!” the PC at the door said, touching my shoulder. “That’s evidence there.”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw blood splatters on the wall, from a distance of eight feet or so. This was no surgeon, performing careful surgery. This blade had been flashing up and down, slinging blood across the room. It had been a frenzy. The victim was Humpty Dumpty; all the surgeons of Charing Cross Hospital could not put her back together again. She had been slashed to mere ribbons of flesh, to pulp, in some places.
The Ripper, whom I felt now fully justified the horrific honorarium, had finally got what he wanted. Not the interruption of the murder of Long Liz Stride and the hurried mutilations of Kate Eddowes. Frenzied as it was, the killer had taken his time with this one. He had hours in which to do his terrible deed without interruption. How had it happened? I wondered. But the truth was, I knew. Kosminski must have seen her and followed her, forcing his way in. She would have never allowed such a creature in voluntarily.
I looked at the bed again. In fact, I looked every minute or so. I had a compulsion to look, and to look away, and then eventually to look again. My mind could not accept it. We lived in a society that held women, if not in esteem, at least as creatures that deserved to be treated gently and with polite courtesy. I have seen gentlemen who find the idea of prostitution repugnant nonetheless raise their hats to an unfortunate. If one were to slip and fall, regardless of what she did in the evening, he would help her up again. This fellow, the Ripper, saw them not as human beings, but as corpses awaiting vivisection.
“Ahem,” Barker said, coughing into his fist. I looked up at the Guv. So far I had been concentrating on my own emotions. He was as stoical as anyone I had ever met. He had prayed over Eddowes’s body, but here there was nothing one could touch without putting one’s hand in gore. He sniffed and shook his head. There was a strong odor in the room, the sharp, metallic, iron smell of blood exposed to air, starting to coagulate.
“I need to step outside,” I said.
“You ain’t the first,” the constable at the door muttered. He followed me outside.
There, he reached into his tunic, took out a small cigarette case, and offered me one. Normally, I do not smoke cigarettes. They are made
of inferior tobacco. This one I took, and shared a match with the constable. He was another of the older ones, like PC Kirkwood, who had seen everything. Or almost everything.
“We had one inspector in here that screamed and run out,” he told me. “Reckon he was one of her clients.”
“That’s the worst thing I’ll ever see.”
“You hope. I have a daughter her age. Dunno your governor, but he’s got to help track this devil down. I’ll go without sleep and eat standing up, but we’ve got to catch him. Find some kind of bait and trap him. Anything. I live here. I’ve got a wife. Sisters. Nieces. If he ain’t caught soon, I’ll have to move them all out of town after fifteen years on the force. Even bloody Manchester is better than this.”
I sucked in the smoke and tried not to cough. At least it was better than the taint of blood.
“How does one even find a clue in there, under all that blood?” I asked.
“He’s mental. If he weren’t before, he is now. You can’t do something like that and be sane afterward.”
I put the cigarette in my mouth and put out my hand. “Llewelyn.”
“Jerrold,” he responded, shaking it.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flask. I took a pull at it. It was Irish whiskey. I passed it back to him surreptitiously, and took another puff of the cigarette. He took a nip and returned it to his pocket.
“If you hear something, I’d appreciate it if you passed the word along. Don’t you think it would be tragic if some toff got away with it because he had a barrister with the Queen’s Council?”
“What would you do?” I asked.
“Whatever needed to be done. A bunch of us down here have decided it would be best if this didn’t go to trial.”
I tried not to turn a hair, but secretly I was shocked. But then, I had no sisters and daughters in the East End. If I had, perhaps I would have felt the same. I nodded. There was nothing else to say.
Crushing out the fag end of my cigarette, I tried to go back inside, but a medical examiner was there, dismantling the macabre scene. I stepped back, and heard the clatter of hooves from a vehicle in Dorset Street. Commissioner Warren was coming, with Swanson at his elbow, looking as grim as pallbearers. I stepped back against a wall and tried to look like I wasn’t there. Warren passed by and went into that room. Thinking it best to acquaint myself with Miller’s Court, I walked to the far end, which was a cul-de-sac. It was nothing but bare, anonymous brick buildings, with doors and covered windows. One wall had been plastered with a poster offering a reward for the capture of Jack the Ripper. When I returned, Barker was standing outside the door.
“What now?” I asked.
“You’ve got to be back at work.”
“I’m not sure I can handle it,” I admitted.
“We have to know if young Aaron Kosminski is tucked up in his den.”
I put my hand on top of my head. “My God! He could be washing off the evidence this very moment!”
“No, lad, if I know anything about it, he is not cleaning himself at all. The voices forbid it.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “You need to get back. We don’t want to tip our hand to Wolfe Kosminski that today is different than any other day.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I walked through the door of the mantle factory and took my seat at the bench as if what I had just seen had not utterly terrified me. My heart was in my mouth, as the saying goes, and to tell the truth, it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. I had to resist the urge to gag. Time and again the sights in that small room would come back to me, all new and vivid and terrible. Something like that stays with a man. Some scars are not physical.
As the door opened, I wondered if I could retain my incognito, or whether I would burst out and inform them I was a police officer come to arrest their brother. Did they secretly know? Did they suspect? Then Wolfe Kosminski’s face appeared at the door.
“You’re back,” he said, frowning.
“Yes, sir.”
“What did the constable want?”
“Simply to see and verify my papers.”
“You’re not in any sort of trouble, are you?”
“No, sir, as you can see. They released me immediately, but then they were awfully busy. It looks like there has been another murder.”
Wolfe suddenly seized my shoulder. “Where?” he demanded.
“Nearby. Up near Dorset Street, I heard.”
“Right, well, it doesn’t concern us. You may get back to work. You were gone almost a half hour. Those minutes will be docked from your wages.”
“Of course,” I said. “I hope it won’t disturb Sabbath for your family.”
I went back to my seat and picked up a needle and thread, feeling his eyes upon me. He suspected me of something, but of what, precisely? I began to thread the needle, but I was listening for some sort of movement from Aaron’s room.
A few minutes later I heard something, one of those barely audible sounds one hears in another room. It was more of a suggestion than a sound, the kind that makes one wonder if one’s ears are playing tricks. I’d have given it up if I didn’t see that Wolfe heard it, too. He turned his head in answer just an inch. I turned to face Aaron’s door and put down my needle.
Then we heard a loud sound from Aaron’s room, a booming, metallic noise that made both of us jump. It pulled me toward the door, almost as a magnet is attracted toward metal, but there was something in the way. It was Wolfe Kosminski.
“Mr. Llewelyn,” he warned.
He tried to seize me, but I warded him off with a move Barker had taught me, the Butterfly Palm. The hands open together, forming the wings of a butterfly, as they push someone away. To tell the truth, I was amazed I had used it in the middle of an encounter. I had thought the move too flowery to be of much use.
I passed beyond him, still being drawn relentlessly into that room, that horrible charnal house that was Aaron Kosminski’s bedroom. I pushed open the door and stepped in. As usual, the wall of foul air met my nose, so that I was forced to press my forearm against it to keep from gagging. The room was empty. No one was there, and yet I’d heard a sound. Two sounds.
Then it came again, this time like a sack of coal being dropped. There was an old screen against a wall, and as I watched, a limb stretched into the room, led by a dirty foot. The limb contorted, and soon a form began to squeeze inch by inch through the opening. It dawned on me then. There was a coal chute there behind the screen, just wide enough for a skeletal figure to squeeze through. I couldn’t have done it, but someone determined and obsessed with doing so could have. Someone, of course, like Aaron Kosminski.
Aaron finally drew his head through the small aperture, then turned, spying me for the first time. He was covered in blood. It was in his hair, dried on his skin, and his shirt and the inside of the coat was splattered with it.
“Aaron,” I said, but as I spoke, so did his brother Wolfe, who was standing behind me. I turned and looked at the elder Kosminski. His eyes were wide at the sight of his brother, dripping with crimson. He backed away, still staring at him, as he left the room. He had been willing to protect him to a point, but not this creature bathed in blood. He left the room, but I didn’t.
“Aaron, how are you?” I asked, trying to calm him down. He was trembling as if he would shatter at any moment.
“Dybbuk,” he murmured. It was the only word he ever said to me. It was one of the few Yiddish words I knew. It meant demon. What twisted thoughts were swirling about in his head after slaughtering a young girl that he should call me “demon”?
“It’s going to be all right. I’ll send for help.”
From his pocket, he pulled a pair of scissors. But no, now that I looked at them, I saw it was only half a pair. It had been unscrewed, and he held a half. One very sharp half. Then another part of the puzzle fell into place. He had attacked his sister-in-law with broken scissors. A pair of scissors without their connecting bolt is still broken, is it not? This was the Ripper’s b
lade, a single scissor ground to the sharpness of a scalpel. He jabbed at me and I jumped back.
In a trice he came forward, and the fingers of his left hand seized me by the throat. Even Barker, I believed, did not have the finger strength of that skeletal hand about my windpipe. I tried to break his hold, but as I did so, I saw him cross his arms, preparing to slash my throat deeply from right to left. He hoped to be drenched in blood yet again.
He wouldn’t, not if I had something to say about it. He may have fared well against overweight, middle-aged prostitutes, but I was another matter. That’s why I jammed my knee where it would do the most good. It made him scream. That’s the thing about multiple murderers, I think. They’re cowards, and they have a low threshold for their own pain, while loving to inflict it upon others.
He fell back and rolled on the floor howling while I figured what to do next. I was in a room with possibly the most dangerous man on earth, alone, and unarmed. I circled him and absently patted my pockets. One waistcoat pocket held my threaded needles, but the other held something more promising. A small brass tube. My police whistle. I took a breath, brought it to my lips and began to blow.
It echoed in the small room and Aaron clasped his hands over his ears, continuing to howl. Then, without warning, he launched himself off the floor at me. I could not believe how quickly he moved. He was like a gibbon, all sinews and tendons, and shrieking hysteria. He leaped on me and knocked me over onto the bed, and before I had the chance to react, I felt the point of the blade pierce my shirt and slice into my side.
I grunted, and for a moment I lost the breath I was pushing through the whistle. But I still had the needle in my hand. I jabbed it toward his eye. He turned just in time to avoid it, but the needle entered the skin just beside it and was pulled from my weak grip. Blood dribbled from the pin sticking out of his skin, and I took another breath, ignoring the pain of my own wound, and I began blowing again.
There was no way for me to know whether Aaron understood that the whistle would summon the police, or whether he merely could not stand the sound. He began clawing me, and scratching me with his filthy nails, but I seized the wrist which still held the blade slick with my own blood and then we rolled off the bed onto the floor.