The House at Baker Street

by Michelle Birkby

  Therefore, the best move was to find her. Find a prostitute, in Whitechapel.

  Oh dear.

  For this new line of investigation we needed one of Wiggins’ boys again. He sent along Micky, who was very bright, very shrewd and very young. He had been charged by us to find Lillian Rose, and he had, and now he had come to lead us to her. Micky looked barely six, though he was probably older, but underfed. He had watchful eyes, and a large cap pulled down on his head. Wiggins sent him along with the recommendation that he wasn’t much protection, but he was observant, and knew the people of Whitechapel well, which was exactly what we needed.

  Wiggins had told Micky to do whatever we asked, and whistle if there was trouble. The Irregulars would be around somewhere, and would come running to the sound of their own distinct whistle.

  Some instinct told me to take Irene along too.

  We dressed as shabbily as possible, in stained, worn clothes. In Baker Street we looked like beggars. In Whitechapel we looked rich. Even the better-dressed women had thrice-turned dresses and torn hems. This time we followed the silent, stern Micky, not through the main streets of Whitechapel, but through the alleyways, the yards, the dark corners. We walked down streets that never appeared on any map, squeezed through tiny gaps into silent squares, hurried past dingy bars offering blind drunkenness for a penny. Whitechapel was bustling and busy in the daylight, people plying what trade they could, calling to each other, chattering and flirting and arguing, but there was a tension in the air that wasn’t there before. The Ripper had been a story that was just beginning to fade the first time we visited. Now he was back, hiding behind every door.

  Whitechapel always waited for darkness. At night, the desperate and the hungry and the criminal spilled out onto the streets – but now they felt like someone was stalking them again. They lived with death, even murder, day after day, but they were used to death in pub fights, arguments between couples, a robbery gone too far. But many of them believed that he had just killed again.

  They were waiting to be murdered. They were waiting for Jack to come back. Perhaps he was already here, round the next corner, behind the door, in the back of the dark yards.

  Once Micky stopped, and nodded towards a house on the corner. He was looking at the ground-floor room. I could see the windows were filthy and blackened, as if there had been a large fire inside. One was broken.

  ‘That’s where Mary Kelly was killed,’ Micky told us. It was the first time he’d spoken since we entered Whitechapel. ‘Ripper’s last victim.’

  ‘They still haven’t caught him?’ Irene asked. She had been out of the country for a while, after all. She had left before he struck. She didn’t know. He was still there, still faceless, still haunting.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. We all stood there, stock still, staring at the tiny room. In my mind I could smell the blood, and the flames, I could feel her terror, the horror of the man who found her. By all accounts, this final scene had been devastating. Almost Biblical, someone had said, which I didn’t understand, and then I read the Old Testament again. I shivered.

  Beside me, Mary whispered, ‘Martha, this man we’re hunting, you don’t think . . .’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I told her, more sharply than I had intended. ‘The Ripper destroyed bodies. Our quarry destroys minds and spirits.’

  ‘But the Whitechapel Lady was horrifically stabbed, eviscerated even.’

  ‘Weren’t like the Ripper,’ Micky said laconically, leading us back down Dorset Street, away from Miller’s Court. ‘Us lads, some of us, not me, they saw Mary Kelly’s body, and Billy and Wiggins saw Long Liz and Kate Eddowes too. Wiggins even saw Polly Nichols,’ Micky told us, leading us through the maze of alleyways. People stared at us, hating us, but when they heard the names Micky mentioned, they turned away in silence. ‘It was sickening, they said. Made your stomach turn, all their insides hanging out like that. But it was kind o’ neat and tidy too, they said. Laid out proper. Neat cuts. All their stuff laid out at their feet. All done with a kind o’ order.’

  ‘Wait a minute – Billy saw this?’ I asked suddenly, stopping in the street. He’d never said, never even hinted.

  ‘Mr ’Olmes tried to stop ’im, but ’e insisted. That’s what we were doing down ’ere then, working for Mr ’Olmes. Din’t ’e tell you?’

  ‘No, he did not,’ I said quietly. This had been soon after John had married. Mr Holmes had been quiet and brooding. I knew at the time he might have been working on the Ripper case, but I assumed it was from his rooms, reading the newspapers, gathering information, thinking, perhaps going over the ground after the event. I never knew he had come here, seen the bodies, almost stepped in their blood. And to take Billy, too!

  For a moment I was so angry I could barely see straight. How dare he involve the boys in this case, of all cases! But then I stopped. What else would Mr Holmes have done but investigate the Ripper? And as for Billy – you could never stop him when he was set on doing something. He had kept it secret, but then what were Mary and I doing?

  Well, we were in Whitechapel, hunting down a horrific murderer, led by children, with no intention of telling Mr Holmes anything.

  For me to be angry would be the pot calling the kettle black, to say the least.

  I calmed down and nodded at Micky, who was staring at me worriedly.

  ‘’Ave I said the wrong thing?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Micky, I think you said exactly the right thing,’ Irene said gently. ‘So 221b is a house of secrets?’

  ‘More than we realized,’ Mary said dryly. ‘Still, that’s a problem for another time,’ she added briskly. ‘Let’s get on, shall we? Micky, you said you saw the Whitechapel Lady’s injuries?’

  ‘Not me, some o’ the older lads,’ Micky told her. ‘Before the police got there. Blood everywhere, they said, all torn up, but left just to lie. No neatness. Insides just tossed about all over the room. Like someone trying to be the Ripper, but not knowing how.’

  ‘I see,’ Mary said quietly. ‘Anything else we should know?’

  Micky looked around, then lowered his voice.

  ‘The Whitechapel Lady – she ’ad her tongue cut out. And that was worse, ’cos we all know what that means.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Mary said, her jaw set. ‘“Don’t talk”. I do hope Lillian Rose hasn’t heard about that.’

  Micky led us on through cold gazes and filthy streets and chilly sunshine. About ten minutes later he took us round a corner into a street with two houses that glowered at each other across the sewage between them. They looked crooked and rickety, set to collapse at any moment. Micky led us into the one with the faintly green door. The house itself was crowded, every room let, every corner of the rooms sub-let. The stairs swayed as we climbed them, the banister crumbled to woodworm dust beneath our hands. There were no loud noises, just a constant rumble of moans and groans and complaints. The stench of boiling day-old cabbage just about shoved aside the foul odour of the drains.

  Right at the top of the fourth and final set of stairs, Micky paused outside the door just to the right. Several of the panels had been kicked in long ago, but someone had nailed wood across them, and whitewashed the door.

  ‘This is Lillian Rose’s place,’ Micky whispered. ‘Take my advice, just walk in. If you knock, she’ll think you’re the rozzers and be out the back window and across the roofs in a flash.’

  ‘We can’t just walk in, she may be . . . you know . . . busy!’ Mary said significantly. Lillian Rose was a working girl, after all.

  ‘At eleven in the morning?’ Micky said scornfully. ‘She’ll just be getting up.’

  As it happened, when I opened the door, Lillian Rose was awake, out of bed, and very angry.

  ‘Who the bleeding hell are you?’ she demanded, hands on her hips. I was momentarily disconcerted. She was not what I had expected. I’d pictured someone blowsy and garish, colourful but ragged clothes slipping off grubby shoulders, hair dyed an unhealthy shade of blond. Or someone thin
and gaunt, with hollow cheeks and over-bright eyes, already dying of some foul disease.

  What I saw was a neat young woman with a rosebud mouth, a sweet complexion that owed nothing to make-up and neatly arranged black hair, wearing a very demure blue dress. With a shock I realized she could pass for a lady, if one in reduced circumstances, in any part of town. Only her green eyes were wrong, challenging and defiant, yet promising, in a way our eyes could never be.

  The prostitute who doesn’t look like a prostitute. Lillian Rose was clever.

  The tiny room was too crowded for all of us, so Micky stayed outside, along with Irene, who’d taken an interest in the odd, bright little boy. I stood fully inside the room, in the centre of a faded rag rug, watching Miss Rose. Mary slid in beside me, staring round at the shabby but clean bed, the splintering wardrobe, the one small window and the single picture of a lake cut out of a paper and pinned to the wall, with unabashed and fascinating curiosity.

  We’d interrupted Miss Rose in the middle of throwing her few possessions – another dress, green, lower-cut, some paste jewellery and a book, I could not see what it was – into a cardboard suitcase.

  ‘You’re running away?’ Mary burst out.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Miss Rose demanded.

  Her voice was rough, the accent sounded just like those of the people downstairs, yet it felt forced, as if it were a voice she had learnt. It was another hint that underneath the Whitechapel prostitute was someone else, a long way away from here, a lifetime ago. Lillian Rose had been better than this, and something told me she would lie, steal, perhaps even kill to be better than this again.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m Mary Watson,’ Mary said impulsively. ‘And this is Mrs Hudson. We’ve been investigating the death of the Whitechapel Lady, amongst other things.’

  ‘Fancy yourselves detectives?’ Miss Rose said scornfully. ‘Isn’t it nice, the games some people play? Bet you never get your hands dirty.’

  ‘They’re filthy now,’ Mary snapped back. ‘She died because of us.’

  Miss Rose looked closer at Mary and must have seen the anger in her eyes.

  ‘So you, being a detective, figured out I was your next port of call?’ Miss Rose said softly. ‘Leading him right to my door, aren’t you?’

  ‘You needn’t be afraid of Sir George Burnwell,’ I assured her.

  She snorted derisively. ‘Him? No, I’m not afraid of him.’ Her accent had modified since she heard ours. She was obviously a woman who could adapt herself to any company. Her story must have been fascinating. I wish I could have heard it.

  ‘Then the other man,’ I said to her. ‘The man you passed Sir George’s secrets on to.’

  She froze, utterly still. She did not even breathe. Only the scarf around her throat fluttered in the draught.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. The colour drained from her face, and she swayed where she stood.

  ‘We know what you did,’ Mary said, not ungently. ‘We know you were there to steal letters from Sir George Burnwell.’

  We didn’t know, it was a guess, but a lucky one. Miss Rose stared at Mary, her eyes wide.

  ‘Letters women had written to Sir George,’ I said, almost making it up as I went along, feeling for the next step, judging my way by the shock on her face as we hit the mark over and over again. It felt cruel to distress her like this, but it also felt so intoxicating, so exhilarating. I could not stop now, no matter how mean it was. ‘Were you given names? No, I believe not. You were expected to use your own judgement. You were to study these letters, and choose the most devastating, the most shaming, the most damaging. You were to pick the plums of the collection. You must be very clever.’

  ‘Cleverer than them,’ Miss Rose said, defiant again, but quieter, one hand resting on her hip, wanting to challenge me. ‘How stupid of them, to put it all down in paper and ink like that. They wouldn’t whisper those things they wrote, not them, but they wrote them easily enough. Then they’re surprised when it gets used against them? Idiotic women.’ Her voice belied her words. It was soft and sad now, a sob choked in her throat. Her accent was pure as mine. I wondered perhaps if there was a letter somewhere in her past.

  ‘Why not just break in and steal the letters?’ I wondered. ‘Sir George was hardly the type to warn these ladies. Was it perhaps because some of the letters were not kept there?’

  ‘The cream of the crop!’ Miss Rose cried bitterly. ‘He’d lodged them with Sir Peter York, his solicitor,’ she explained. ‘He called it his “insurance policy”. I was to get those. It wouldn’t be hard. He wanted to impress me. I have that effect.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ I said dryly, looking at the woman stood before me. She could be challenging, and unreachable, and yet somehow promising. It must be an irresistible combination.

  ‘This man . . .’ Mary said.

  ‘No names,’ Lillian Rose said quickly, her hand dropping from her hip. ‘I won’t tell any names.’

  ‘Of course. He must have offered you a lot of money.’

  ‘Thousands,’ Miss Rose confirmed. ‘Enough to get out of here. Enough to keep my mouth shut.’

  ‘We just need a name,’ Mary coaxed. ‘Nothing else, just a . . .’

  ‘Are you mad?’ Miss Rose snapped, and her hand shot to the scarf at her throat. How odd, that a woman with barely enough to eat should wear a scarf like that. She pulled it and twisted it as she spoke. ‘You saw what he did to the Whitechapel Lady. He cut her open and tore out her innards, and all she did was ask a few questions!’

  ‘Questions?’ I asked.

  ‘Questions,’ Miss Rose confirmed bitterly. ‘Just lately, just to the women on the street. About if they’d ever been paid for letters. Or helped a blackmailer. Barely anything, really, and she ended up ripped!’

  My stomach sank. I glanced at Mary, who looked as horrified as I felt. After we had left her, the Whitechapel Lady must have decided her sedentary life was no longer enough. She must have decided to track down this man herself – and she ended up in a pool of blood.

  ‘We’re sorry . . .’ Mary stammered, but Miss Rose shouted her down.

  ‘Do you think she was the first, eh?’ she cried. ‘A death like that doesn’t just happen, he’s had practice. There were others, women who talked, women who fought back. He’s swimming in blood, and no one’s ever done a damned thing to protect us!’

  Mary suddenly gasped.

  ‘There were reports in the papers,’ Mary whispered, turning to me. ‘When I was researching the society ladies, there’d be reports of chambermaids and prostitutes and governesses, some hanged, some poisoned, a lot with a cut throat or wrists. Most were considered suicides, one or two perhaps seen as murder. But, there were so many, so separate, all in different places, most of them not even seen as suspicious. How do you link the death of a duchess in London to the suicide of a nursery maid in Glasgow? I only saw them because I was reading so many newspapers. I never thought . . . I never realized it was connected.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Miss Rose continued, her voice shaking. ‘Why would you? We’re not the rich ones. We’re not ones he likes to break. We’re just the ones he uses and then discards. What use does he have for us? Even the ones that got away!’ She ripped the scarf away from her neck.

  A livid scar ran across her throat, raised and red.

  ‘He didn’t try very hard with me,’ Miss Rose said. ‘Just tried to cut my throat. Not for much, just for talking to a policeman I liked. He thought I was telling on him. As if I dared! But I survived and came here, and I was making a life, and then he found me again. Just one job, he said. Get the letters and I’ll let you go. And I was leaving.’ Her voice dropped to almost a whisper, and a tear ran down her face. ‘He told me last night I’d done enough, and he gave me the money, and he walked away. I had escaped. But now you’re here, and he’ll know, and he’ll track me down, and he won’t be so careless this time.’

  She looked up at me, her eyes full of tears,
a hunted animal finally knowing it must lose.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ she told me.

  ‘He won’t know . . .’ Mary started to say.

  ‘He’ll know!’ Miss Rose spat. ‘He knows everything!’

  She tied the scarf back round her neck, then turned to the suitcase and snapped it shut. She reached out to the picture on the wall.

  ‘Almost,’ she whispered.

  ‘Go now,’ I said urgently. ‘We’re getting closer, he’ll be concentrating on us, he won’t have time for you.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Go to King’s Cross and go to Scotland, right in the Highlands. I know a place, a private place.’ I took down the picture of the lake and on the back, with a scrap of pencil from Micky, I wrote the address of someone my mother had known, long ago.

  ‘It’s not far enough,’ Miss Rose said.

  ‘Far enough for now,’ Mary said. ‘It’ll give us time to stop him.’

  ‘You?’ Miss Rose said, disbelieving. ‘You’re going to stop him?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, straightening my back and clutching my handbag. I was, as Mr Holmes would have said, the very embodiment of British Empire.

  Miss Rose almost smiled. ‘Maybe you will at that,’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘He’ll never see you coming.’

  And with that Lillian Rose slipped out of the room and down the stairs.

  I felt my solid spine give way, and I sat down heavily on the bed. Mary leaned against the wall.

  ‘A murderer too,’ she said slowly.

  ‘We knew that,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Not the scale of it. She’s right, though, to leave a scene behind like the Lady’s, you have to have done it a few times before.’

  ‘He’s not the Ripper, Mary,’ I insisted.

  ‘I didn’t think he was, not now,’ Mary replied. ‘I mean, all those murders she said he did – no one ever linked them together. He just killed them, slipped away, and no one ever knew they were done by the same hand.’