The Shadow of Reichenbach Falls

by King, John R.

  “What’s this?” he asked, scrabbling to grab his cap even as I tugged his goatee. “Ow!” It was real.

  “No offense, good man,” I said, slipping a crown into his hand. That hunk of silver covered a multitude of sins. Then, as Anna clambered into the coach, I cupped the cabby’s fuzzy ear and whispered, “The Red Gables on Charles.”

  We had a quiet ride, Anna and I. The steady clop of the horse’s hooves sounded mournful on the cobbles. I kept Anna back from the windows, kept the curtains drawn except for a narrow slit of light out of which I peered. There was no sign of Jack or of pursuit of any kind.

  At last, we reached the Red Gables. I paid the cabby well to keep mum about us, and then Anna and I dashed to the door. We knocked. When the doddering old proprietress answered the door, we forced our way inside.

  She wailed, trying to drive us out.

  “It is a matter most urgent, madam,” I told her. “We’re not safe on the street. This is Anna—don’t you remember her?”

  The gray suspicion on the old woman’s face flushed to a pink smile, and she said, “Oh, the girl with Mrs. Mulroney.”

  “Mrs. Mulroney, yes.”

  The proprietress said, “Go ahead then, Anna, dear. I suppose Mrs. Mulroney is expecting you.”

  “You can suppose,” I replied.

  Up the stairs we went, and down the hall we came to our nanny’s room and knocked. She opened the door in nightshirt and cap and stared at us in shock.

  “We’re in desperate need of your aid, Mrs. Mulroney,” I said. “You must let Anna stay here with you tonight.”

  The governess, always a steady woman, gestured behind her to the small room. It held only a bed, a washbasin, and a folded cot. “Anna is always welcome, of course … . But what desperate business is this?”

  “You’ll be safer not to know,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you,” Anna said, stepping into Mrs. Mulroney’s arms and hugging her tightly. After a moment, Anna pulled back and cast a glance my way. “But you must also let Father stay.”

  Mrs. Mulroney’s mouth dropped open. “Anna. It would not be proper—”

  “Quite right,” I replied. “Not my intention: I spied a comfortable settee downstairs in the parlor. It’ll allow me to keep watch over the whole place. I wouldn’t wish to bring danger down on this house.”

  “But you need sleep,” Anna protested.

  “I’ll have sleep,” I told her flatly. Then stepping into Mrs. Mulroney’s room, I embraced both women. “Now, it’s time for you two to get some rest.”

  Anna clung to me as if she knew what mischief I had in mind. At last, I pulled away from her and bowed my thanks to Mrs. Mulroney. “Lock your door, Mrs. Mulroney, and don’t open it for anything until dawn.”

  The door closed on my words, and the bolt snicked into position.

  Turning, I stalked away down the hall. I had no intention of sleeping on a settee that night. I would occupy my own bed, but only after I had made it—and all the world—safe from Jack the Ripper.

  Descending the stairs, I went to the kitchen of the Red Gables and found a long knife. Secreting it in the sleeve of my coat, I left the Gables out its back door and listened with satisfaction as the flustered proprietress locked it behind me.

  There was no fear left. I was on the hunt. Perhaps this was how the Ripper felt night after night—knife in hand and murder in heart.

  Jack was, of course, in our apartments, waiting in ambush. He would watch out the bay window to see my approach, would listen for my key in the keyhole and would slide into position to take me unawares. A marvelous plan, except that he had failed to factor in my own thirst to kill.

  I did not approach up the front walk, but came through the back alley. Also, I did not enter through the back door, but instead climbed a trellis two houses down and made my way over slick slates, rooftop to rooftop, until I stood just beside my bedroom window. It was a simple thing to slide the tip of the knife beneath the sash and pry it slowly, soundlessly up. Then I extended my leg in over the sill and drew myself within.

  The air inside was stifling. The apartments had a closed-up feeling. My hope began to fade. I stepped lightly across the floor, avoiding the boards that creaked, and made my way to the bedroom door.

  Beyond, the parlor looked empty. The curtains were undisturbed.

  With knife out before me, I crept through the parlor. The curtains revealed no one. I opened the cloakroom door and stabbed through the coats, but the knife found only fabric and air. Next, I checked Anna’s room—in the wardrobe, beneath the bed. Then the kitchen, the larder, the dining room … .

  I’d been a fool. I’d overestimated the man. Jack may have had my initial—Mr. M.—but he didn’t know my name, didn’t know I was Professor Moriarty. He couldn’t have found out where I lived.

  A breeze from the bedroom gusted into the hall, rolling tiny motes of dust across the floor and against the toes of my shoes. I should shut the window. Going into the bedroom, I stepped past the bed, along the open wardrobe—

  I saw him out of the corner of my eye, leaping from the wardrobe.

  Jack the Ripper smashed down on my back, legs around my hips, arms grappling my shoulders, knife at my throat. Ugh, the weight of the man—not a big man, but bony, wiry. Bent on killing me. As I collapsed to the floor, I managed to shove my left hand up over my throat.

  He drew his blade. It slashed the back of my hand. I hardly felt the cut, the knife was so sharp, but only pressure and the warm gush of blood.

  Jack felt the blood, too, and he laughed, sitting up on my back. “So easy. Like a whore, you are. Go down hard and stay down with throat gushing.”

  He couldn’t see my bleeding hand—laid open along the tendon from wrist to ring finger. He thought it was a neck wound. I gurgled and shuddered to keep him thinking it. Best of all, though, he couldn’t see the knife from the Red Gables lying just under the bed, just within reach of my right hand.

  Jack’s tone changed to mock regret. “Sorry, Boss. I’d have left you alone if you’d have left me alone. I’m not down on professors like I’m down on whores—but you hunted me. You and your girl did. And you found out who I was. Couldn’t let you go telling everyone who Jack is.”

  I let the gurgling sounds subside and released a long, sputtering groan. Then I lay still, hoping he would get off me before I had to gasp another breath.

  “Too bad you got wise about my little trap. Climbing in the way you did. Leaving your daughter somewheres. I’ll find her, I will. Not hard to get information from people. Just smile and seem a little daft and a little in trouble, and they tell you whatever you want. That’s how I got your name, by the bye. Just showed up at Scotland Yard, pretending to be an idiot, asking them to let my brother go, crying, getting hysterical, saying he wasn’t no Jack the Ripper—making them tell me it wasn’t my brother they’d caught, but some fellow from Cambridge. ‘My brother’s from Cambridge!’ I said to them, and they barked out, ‘Is your brother named Moriarty?’ Ha-ha, that’s when I had you. Mr. M., I called you—not knowing you were a professor and all.”

  My stamina was running out, but so was his story.

  Jack gave a sigh and patted my back gently. “Well, there it is. I won’t be cutting you any more. You’re not my type.” He pulled his knees up and stood, still straddling me.

  I chanced a slow, silent breath, filling my lungs for an attack.

  Jack lifted his right leg to step away. “’Course, that daughter of yours—”

  I grabbed the Red Gables knife, flipped over, and slashed across the back of Jack’s left thigh—just above the knee. His leg was planted, his knee locked, and I bore down with all the fury in me. The knife severed fabric and folded back skin like warm butter and laid open tendons and made them snap. Jack’s hamstrings leaped up in pain, bunching beneath his buttocks.

  He jolted on that uncertain leg, staggered, could not bend his knee to catch himself, and crashed down on the floor beside me.

  I scrambled
to my feet. My left hand ached, blood falling hot from it, but the rest of me felt magnificent. I was standing, knife in hand, over the convulsing figure of Jack the Ripper. He looked small now, with a pale, pinched face and a weak jaw. “Is this how it feels, Jack, to stand above a person and hold life and death in your hand?”

  He tried to scrabble away from me, crab-walking on his hands and his one good leg. He’d lost his razor, and now it lay on the floor beside a wide trail of blood from his sliced knee.

  I kicked the razor away and stepped up to him and drew my knife across the back of his other knee. Now he was truly hamstrung. “There’ll be no escape, Jack.”

  He twisted in pain, teeth gritting. How like a frightened child he seemed—caught—shifting from belligerence to bargaining. “So, it’s the police for old Jack, after all.”

  I laughed. “No. They’re on your side. They held me while you did your last job. No. There’ll be no police.”

  Jack smiled broadly. His rumpled face smoothed so that his head seemed a jack-o’-lantern. “You can’t rip me, Doctor. You can’t rip the Ripper.”

  I growled low, “My wife was killed by a man like you, murdered in this very apartment. It was because of her that I came after you. And now you’ve threatened my daughter. I very much can rip you.”

  His grin faded away, and his mercurial face now resembled only a wadded-up gunnysack. “I’ll squeal.”

  “Then squeal. I’ll still cut your throat. And when the police arrive, I’ll tell them what happened, that you ambushed me in my own bedroom and tried to kill me—that you said you’d kill my daughter. They won’t care about the hamstringing. You’re Jack the Goddamned Ripper. I’ve got all the testimony I need to prove it. It’ll be an inconvenience for me, of course, with all the interrogations, all the news stories, but in the end, I’ll be the man who killed Jack the Ripper, and you’ll be just a cut-up little corpse.”

  He looked sullen. Resigned. “And if I don’t squeal?”

  “If you don’t squeal, I’ll slit your throat and dispose of your body, and your legend will live on.” A light entered his eyes, and I knew I had him. Here was a man concerned about his trade name, a man who wanted to live forever in infamy. Demonic. “And whenever another hacked-up body is found, folk will whisper that perhaps it was Jack the Ripper.”

  The light in his eyes intensified, becoming an actual glow. In those dark apartments, Jack’s eyes shone red like the eyes of a cat in moonlight. So uncanny was that aspect, so preternatural the effect, that I paused for a moment, the knife hanging loose in my hand.

  And then Jack said, “I’ll not squeal. I’ll be a lamb.”

  “Yes. You will.” I gripped the knife tight and leaned in and set it on Jack’s neck and drew it so fiercely across his throat that the blade grated on his spine.

  Jack’s neck boiled, and he slumped. I stepped back to watch him die, stepped back as blood pooled across the planks.

  But there was something strange about that blood. It glimmered. Something energetic scintillated through it. It was teeming like a puddle full of pollywogs, like a pond with mosquito larvae twisting and transforming and taking wing. And suddenly, those points of light boiled up out of the blood and rose into the air, forming a red mist. It danced between us, a luminous vapor—a soul.

  I stared. Never before had I seen such a thing. My own wife had died in my arms, and I’d seen no soul ascending. I’d held Long Liz as she died, and not even a gray shade came from her. But here, when this son of hell died, some eternal spirit rose from his wretched blood!

  And then I knew. I was not seeing a soul. I was seeing a demon.

  31

  BECOMING THE RIPPER

  FROM THE MEMOIRS OF PROFESSOR JAMES MORIARTY:

  John Harder lay dying on the parlor floor, but above him, the demon soul of Jack the Ripper boiled and seethed, very much alive. It seemed a red mist, rising in tendrils from his blood and gathering above his body. There was intelligence in that cloud. It watched me … and it lunged.

  I staggered back and gasped, and the mist rushed into my nose and throat. It burned like whisky. I snorted to blow the red stuff out, but then I had to breathe again, and more came in. I collapsed on the bed. The red cloud engulfed me. Thrashing, I rolled to my feet and ran for the door, unable to shake the stuff. It clung to me like oil, and my lungs screamed for air.

  I breathed.

  The red mist filled me, suffused me. It stung, but it also intoxicated.

  Ah, what sweet relief, to surrender, to fight no longer, to give myself in to the possession of my enemy.

  Another breath. I understood all that I had once despised. Let him in. Let him take over.

  Another breath.

  I became him.

  For years I had feared death. Now, I was death.

  I had killed twice now, without consequence—killed Susanna’s killer and killed Jack the Ripper, and the only consequence was this new, fearless life: this power.

  At last I knew how it felt to stand above a still-warm body, to hold absolute power over it. My knife was sharp. Why not find out what the Ripper was made of? Why not draw the blade thus across his belly and see the great sac that was his stomach? Why not slide the knife between the pink snake of gut and this great gray pudding of pancreas, to feel the ducts sever one by one—thup! thup! thup! And, where is that thunder coming from, that panicked rumble that runs through his viscera? Ah, of course, a heart pumping itself dry, dying all the while! And by cutting thus and twisting the knife between the ribs so and reaching my hand in and yanking. Oh! Yes! This was how it felt to stand victorious above a foe and hold high the still-flailing heart!

  The human body is endlessly entertaining. So many crannies, so many glands. How long I was at it, I do not know. By the time I was finished, though, the Ripper could fit into three small trunks. I know because I put him in them and set them by the door. The blood was all out of them, so they wouldn’t seep. Then I set about to mopping. It was somehow not the chore it had been when I cleaned up the last time—almost a pleasure, as if I were waxing the wood with Jack. Bucket after red bucket, I worked, toting them two at a time to the sewer in the alley and then drawing more water at the well where the whole neighborhood drank. I worked in shirtsleeves, head held high in the biting night air. I worked with the cheerful demeanor of a man who has nothing to fear.

  By morning, the work was done. The blood was up, and dawn winds sluiced through the apartments from bay window to bedroom sash, drying the floor. I changed my clothes and threw the blood-soaked ones into the fire. Meanwhile, Jack waited by the door, packed for a picnic in the country—someplace nice and secluded. I’d have to buy a shovel.

  A furtive knock came at the door. I threw back the bolt and flung the door wide, startling poor Mrs. Mulroney and Anna, who trembled on the landing outside. Mrs. Mulroney held a protective arm before my daughter and frowned. “You didn’t sleep at the boardinghouse.”

  “I got restless.” I flashed her a smile. “Business to attend to.”

  Anna entered the parlor and looked around. Our curtains billowed like ghosts, and the floor was still puddled in places with pinkish water. “What’ve you been up to?”

  “Business.”

  She cradled her hand to her mouth. “Not—Jack?”

  I pointed to the three trunks by the door. “We’re taking him on holiday.”

  IT WAS a whole new life for me, life on a new scale. No longer was I mired in the everyday struggles of everyman. I had transcended them. Fear, worry, dread, grief, remorse—these poisons were gone from my being. In their place, I had a new, voracious appetite for knowledge—and power.

  Anna refused to accompany me and Jack on our picnic. It was just as well. She would have simply fussed the whole while—might even have had a crisis of conscience and run to the police.

  The porters complained about the weight of my trunks, but a few crowns shut them up. At Ely, I rented a farmer’s wagon, complete with fork, flail, and shovel. As chance would have
it, I did not need any of them, but only a peat bog and the rope I had brought and a few large stones. Jack would have liked the spot. Peat water works like formaldehyde, so Jack’s flesh, as well as his legend, would be immortalized.

  I committed one other act to ensure Jack’s immortality. I brought half of one of his kidneys back to Cambridge with me, placed it in a jar filled with wine, boxed it up, and sent it to George Lusk, president of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. With it, I attached the following letter.

  From hell.

  Mr. Lusk,

  Sor

  I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only watse a whil longer

  signed

  Catch me when you can Mishtr Lusk

  Sending that letter was my final act on behalf of Jack. I did not need to do more. The police and the press and the public together kept him alive. So did other killers—men who needed a scapegoat for their crimes. For example, on the ninth of November, five weeks after Jack’s own death, a Mary Jane Kelly was found slain in her small apartment in Spitalfields. The murder was entirely different from the others, though. The victim was about twenty years younger than Jack’s targets, she was far more mutilated than the others, and she was killed indoors. Despite these discrepancies, all of London credited the killing to Jack the Ripper.

  But I knew who Mary Jane’s real killer was. I’d already incorporated him into my grand algorithm of crime in London. He was Joseph Barnett—an extortionist and opium addict, and also the victim’s lover. He would get his. My algorithm would make sure of it.

  And so, I returned to the mathematics of crime. After a few weeks, I’d filled in the last of the modern personalities that ruled London’s criminal underworld. Then, a handful of calculations revealed the lynchpin—a pet cat owned by a gang lord named Jacob Ferny, a cat he was convinced was the reincarnation of his beloved mother. Skin the cat, and the whole organization would self-destruct.