by James Reese
And what do I want? Why do I go into the slums these nights as the summer sun sets? I cannot warn the women who stand about or saunter in groups of two or three—yes, ladies: Seek your safety in numbers!—or who sit on the stoops, chaffering good-naturedly about this or that though the alleys behind them recede to the very depths of Erebus.24
Of course, as both night and their needs deepen—the need for mind-dulling drink and the need for 4p. to secure a night’s bed—they turn in earnest to their time-dishonoured work. Oh, but the questions remain: What do I want & why do I go? I go, yes, to assess, if somehow I can, the type of Tumblety’s possession. But I go, too, because I want to know these women. I go to learn how, how any Child of God can be ripped as that woman was in George Yard—may God rest her well, and relieve her soul of what horrors she witnessed her last moments on earth—…ripped and let to bleed to extinction, and still not have a name these ten days later? Was she not her mother’s daughter, her father’s, too? Was she not some woman’s sister, friend, or confidante? Some man’s helpmate or scourge? Some child’s mother? I wonder. And I wish to learn. Already I know that the women are not worthless, and so each night as I walk Whitechapel, my ire rises: How dare he, and how dare his demon? And anger steels my step.
FROM THE METROPOLITAN POLICE FILES25
METROPOLITAN POLICE
H Division
24th day of August 1888
SUBJECT Murder, 7.8.88
I beg to report that Mr. George Collier, deputy Coroner for South East Middlesex, resumed the inquiry at the Working Lads’ Institute, Whitechapel Road, at 2pm 23rd instant, respecting the death of Martha Tabram, alias Martha Turner, alias Emma, who was found dead in George Yard Buildings, Whitechapel, at 4.45 am, 7th inst.
Mr. Henry Samuel Tabram, 6 River Terrace, East Greenwich, attended and identified the deceased as his wife who left him about 13 years ago, at which time the witness allowed her 12s. a week, but in consequence of her annoyance he stopped this allowance ten years ago.
Henry Turner, a carpenter staying at the Victoria Working Men’s Home, Commercial Street East, Spitalfields, proved living with the deceased about 12 years, until about three weeks prior to her death when he left her. As a rule he was, he said, a man of sober habits, and when the deceased was sober they generally got on well together. Witness allows that he did not know deceased had lately retaken to the streets.
Mary Bousfield, wife of a wood cutter and resident at 4 Star Place, Commercial Road East, proved that the deceased and Turner rented a room at her house for about four months and left in debt 6 weeks ago without giving notice.
Mary Ann Connelly, alias Pearly Poll, a widow and an unfortunate, stated that she was drinking ale and rum with the deceased and two soldiers at several public houses in Whitechapel from 10 till 11.45 pm, 6th, Bank Holiday night, when they separated she (Connelly) going up Angel Alley with one of the soldiers whom she believes had stripes on his shoulder and a white band round his cap, and the deceased going up George Yard with the other soldier, and she saw nothing more of her till she saw her body in the dead house next day, since when the witness threatens to drown herself, but she only said it as a lark when I required that she remain available to the investigation, as careful inquiries are being continued.
[signed] Edmund Reid, Inspector
BRAM STOKER’S JOURNAL
31 August, Fri., 3 p.m.—Horrid night, last; horrid day, this.
Must tell all in its turn. Must write this Record for a reader. (Q.: Is this—of all my scribblings—destined to be my sole written legacy?) Have come to the theatre to do so, to record; for he has again fouled my house, has run me from it with blood.
The Record, this Record is all; and so I steady myself to record that:
I went into Whitechapel last night at dusk, undisguised. This has been my way of late; for, were I to encounter Abberline, I alone, without Caine, haven’t fame enough to justify a disguise. Best to be Bram Stoker, and simply so. Best to let the Inspector think I slum. And a slummer I would have seemed—standing on the shadowed corner of Flower and Dean Street, watching the women and being watched in turn—when I heard the first of the fire bells.
I have seen things burn before. It humbles one. It puts one in mind of God, or leastways Nature; and, as a dose of Nature seemed prescriptive whilst I stood on that corner, attending the unnatural, attending Tumblety’s call—which had come two of the three nights prior—I set out to follow the fire bells to their cause. As I did so, my thoughts hied to H.I.; for, when he returns to-morrow to hear of Shadwell having burned, he will regret his late return to London, too late to see such a show, such a study.26
For Henry Irving never passes on the chance to study anything that may someday require re-creation upon the stage. So it is that I have walked at his side listening to the rain as it fell, first on slate, then stone, then wood, then tin, &c. So it was I once accompanied him to Bath to see that city in flood; though the floodwaters fast receded, and Henry came away disappointed. So it was we once sailed in a steamer from Southsea to the Isle of Wight to assess the roll of the sea, later adjusting The Merchant’s gondolas accordingly. And so it is that, here in the XO of the Lyceum, there sits a log in which, at Henry’s direction, I have described the London light at this or that time of day, in this or that season: no more than a sentence or two, but which yet comprises the whole of my creative work of late. “What is the effect?” Henry asks of the rainfall, the sea, the light in its various states, &c.; for it is this—as realistic an effect as possible—that he wishes to impart to his audience, always. And so the effect of the fire was foremost in my mind as I approached as near as possible to the burning Shadwell docks.
The fire would not submit, neither to the men fighting it nor to the rain that now drove down on it; and drove down, too, on us several hundred spectators who stood watching the flames vie with lightning for supremacy in the sky. It seemed the fire and the storm fed each other; and just as the warmth of the one and the wet of the other conduced to send me home—or if not home, then elsewhere: back to the Lyceum to ready it for Henry’s return, to work till tiredness overtook me and set me onto the office sofa—…just as I readied to turn from the fire, yes, I felt a hand clamp onto my shoulder.
“Are you well, Mr. Stoker?” It was Abberline. “Last I saw you, you seemed unwell.” And the silence that followed seemed somehow accusatory.
“I am, sir; thank you.” My heart was yet hammering, and thus I stupidly said, “So we meet again, Inspector.” A trite line, this; one I would cut from any play script in which it appeared. I answered his next question, when finally he deigned to utter it, with more aplomb—the question, of course, concerned the health & well-being of Henry Irving—and then I queried him in turn, asking if the cause of the fire were known. His laconic response told me it was no concern of his, and neither did he suppose it should be one of mine. I took my leave as soon as I was able, all the while wondering if the warmth at my back were owing to the fire or to Inspector Abberline’s too-steady regard.
With haste, with thirst, I betook myself fast to The Frying Pan public house, corner of Brick Lane and Thrawl Street. There I sat with a pint of stout, watching the browns and beiges of it swirl—as sad men will—and listening, yes, but avoiding converse of any kind.
It was whilst drinking—and wondering still who she might be, this unfortunate lately done to death in George Yard—that I heard his Stoker, Sto-ker, followed once again by laughter. The laughter came coincident with my seeing a woman stumble from The Frying Pan out into the fiery streets. She was much the worse for drink, and though she sought, quite vocally, 3p. for a pint of gin,27 I might not have noticed her but for the design upon her brown ulster, that dirty, dripping-wet, brass-buttoned overcoat showing a woman astride a horse riding to the hunt. It seemed too apt a decoration, for the woman sporting it…, well, in her way, she was riding now to the hunt as well.
Sto-ker, Sto-ker. So, too, was the laughter repeated.
I spun ab
out, looking this way and that. No-one. Nothing. Wondering, dare I say hoping he were outside on the street, I followed in the footsteps of the woman, coming so close behind her that I could smell the wet-dog scent of that woolen overcoat. Were those violets I smelt amidst the smoke, or was it the woman’s perfume? I did not know. Out on the street, I heard again that sickening trill—“laughter” seems not the word for it. Though the rain had abated, still the sky was bright from both fire and lightning, and by a flash of the latter I saw…no-one. No-one and nothing. No-one but the woman, stumbling down Thrawl Street to disappear into the sulphurous dark.
By now it was past midnight, and when neither the call nor the laughter recurred—and I walked some while, listening—I thought it time to take my dampened self home, and so I would have done, save I’d no wish to go there alone. Here was a new fear, such that now I wonder if I didn’t somehow know, somehow sense…
Regardless, instead I went by cab to the Lyceum, entering by the Burleigh Street door and proceeding to the XO by torchlight. I lit a lamp, locked the door behind me, and tasked myself with Henry’s mail, lest he return to find it piled upon my desk, as then it was. I pored over the correspondence for three, nearly four, hours, leaving only as day broke over London. It was dawn, yes, when I headed for home.
Would that I never had.
Having first checked the front sills and stoop, I went down the left-side alley to enter by the scullery door. I found no footprints upon the path. Once inside the house, I knew with chilling clarity that no, he was not there at present, and yes, he had been there of late. Still, I could find no sign of it. No death-gift given. No note. And so: Might I be mistaken? I went room to room, checking every window and sill. I even looked twice in the letterbox. But I must have been fearful of what I might discover in the dining room; for I was late in going there, late in finding two bags of blood pendant from the gaselier.
Yes…. The lamp that overhangs the dining table is longer than it is wide, its brass arms reaching out towards the table’s ends, and equidistant from the large light at its center there depended two bags of a thin, translucent sort, akin to wineskins. Dawn showed the bags’ contents to be red, blood-red. As their bottoms had been pin-pricked, the blood dripped, dripped down to splash and spread upon the table. By the evident heft of the bags, by the slow dripping, by the still-pooling blood that had not yet spread to the table’s sides, I concluded the bags could not have hung there over-long: an hour, no more.
From the scullery, I returned with a scissors to cut the cords by which the bags had been fastened, for the rude knots would not surrender to my shaking fingers. The knots were clumsily done, yes, and twice-or thrice-tied. Freeing the first bag set the second to slipping down the lamp’s arm, and one of the lesser green-glass shades overbalanced, falling to shatter, to break into bits amidst the spilled blood. When finally I freed the second bag, I set both in a basin I’d brought in as well. Only when I lifted the basin—and it was the bags’ weight that made me retch—only then did I realise I cried, nay had been crying and was crying still, crying and shaking so badly I was barely able to set the basin in the sink before I spilled the contents of my stomach beside it. There lay my spew beside the shivering bags of blood, bags which seemed like new-delivered…things.
I slit the bags with a butcher’s knife and turned from the sight of the sluicing blood, turned, too, from the smell; but when finally I peered down into the scullery sink, I saw that the bags had contained bits of flesh, which now I had to pluck from the drain lest the blood back up. Whence the flesh came, I cannot say, but some of it I knew for skin.
When finally I’d raised a fierce enough fire, I burned both the bags and the rags by which I’d removed all the blood. Washing my hands, scouring them, I saw glittering on my skin, nay in my skin, green bits of the broken shade. I had cut myself in cleaning. I had married my own blood to that of the bags. One minute, five minutes, fifteen may have passed before I turned from the sink to stare into the fire. I confess to wondering, to wanting to send the whole house up, set it to burning like the Shadwell docks. I wondered, too, if I would run from such a fire or take to my bed and make of it a pyre, lying down upon it to die.
No more now. I cannot.
Later. Lately it has seemed he wants something of me. Now I know he does; and I suppose, too, that I know what it is. Oh, but first…
First let me say that I took hold of myself, or rather tried to—this shaking hand testifies that I have not yet succeeded;28 and, seated on the stairs, near the front door—which I’d found locked along with all the windows, such that the mystery of his in-and egress remains—I gathered up my scattered thoughts as earlier I’d gathered up the glittering shards of glass, and I found them no less sharp; specifically:
…Caine must come back…. Florence and Noel cannot…. Why does the fiend torment me so? What can he want?…Speranza has to be told of this…. Must hide the knives taken from the cabinets in Albert Mansions, for oughtn’t I to expect Abberline here in the near future?…Is this silence in support of Caine wise? Would I be betraying him in telling all & everything to Abberline? Would his ruin follow, perforce?…&c. What to do? What to do? And recurrent was this more immediate question: Whence had all that blood come?
Now I know. To-day’s newspapers all but tell me.
HORRIBLE MURDER IN WHITECHAPEL29
The Central News says;-Scarcely has the horror and sensation caused by the discovery of the murdered woman in Whitechapel some short time ago had time to abate, when another discovery is made, which, for the brutality exercised on the victim, is even more shocking, and will no doubt create a sensation in the vicinity of its predecessor. The affair up to the present is enveloped in complete mystery, and the police have as yet no evidence to trace the perpetrators of the horrible deeds, which they admit are likely the work of one individual.
The facts are these;-As Patrolling Constable John Neil was walking down Buck’s-row, Whitechapel, about a quarter to four o’clock this morning, he discovered a woman lying at the side of the street with her throat cut right open from ear to ear. The site of the crime is said to be oddly bloodless.30 Flashing his lantern, Constable Neil was answered by the lights from two other constables at either end of the street. These officers had seen no man leaving the spot to attract attention, and so the mystery is most complete.
Upon conveyance of the body to Whitechapel mortuary at half-past four this morning, when it was still warm, it was found that, besides the wound in the throat, the lower part of her person was completely ripped open. The wound extends nearly to her breast, and must have been effected with a large knife. As the corpse of the woman lies in the mortuary it presents a ghastly sight.
The woman has not yet been identified, and the only way the police can prosecute an enquiry at present is by finding someone who can identify the Deceased, and then, if possible, trace those in whose company she was last seen.
With this macabre tableau, Tumblety tells of not one murder but two: the one done in George Yard, certainly, but last night’s as well; for the blood he brought me must be hers: that same unfortunate I watched disappear down Thrawl Street, both she and I wrong in thinking she walked alone.
Later; nearing nine. Still at the Lyceum, to which I returned after having set right the house; leastways having ranged it, for how can it ever be set right now? And in doing so, I discovered that his knives are already gone. Damn! He has reclaimed them from beneath my bed, where they were hid. And in searching the house, searching it—horrid, this!—he also discovered and stole the kukri knife given me by Burton. Its perch upon the mantel is empty. Damn him, indeed! And though surely it is better that my property be amongst his, rather than his mine, that’ll be a small matter indeed in the mind of an Abberline: We two will be allied if all the knives are found together and the link forged! What to do? What to do?
…Alas, I am decided: I shall remain here till 10 p.m. o/c, whereupon I shall train and steam to Dublin with the night mails. I will be in fam
ily arms by dawn. (Mem.: Wire Thornley: Matters most urgent. Arriving a.m. Must see you first, before Flo.) Meanwhile, I shall render this Record current and write that what Tumblety wants from me. I was a long while wondering indeed; but now I know, though it fell to Lady Wilde to tell me:
“Say again, Mr. Stoker, what it is you saw.” We sat in her salon. I had told her the tale as written above. She had already seen the newspapers. “Repeat yourself.”
I did so, prompting Speranza to muse, “The tableau…. Why, it is perfectly clear, Bram! He made with the bags and gaselier a balance. A scales. He wants you, needs you to be party to his plan.” The instant she said the word “scales” I saw it all too clearly. A scales, of course!
Is he then ready to begin his weighing, that ritual by which Set seeks redemption? If so, he must surely have the heart of the Buck’s Row woman. (Mem.: Solicit details of Scot. Yd., at once.) But however can the fiend think I will co-operate?
I took my leave of a worried Lady Wilde and headed here. She of course thinks it wise I go away. Indeed, she encourages me to stay away some while; but I shan’t: a week at most. Meanwhile, to-night, I’ve much to do to ready the Lyceum for Henry’s return to-morrow, the which I shall be glad to miss. By then I shall be in Dublin, blessedly too distant to hear him holler how dare I not be here to dance attendance on him?
BRAM STOKER’S JOURNAL
8 September, Ely Place, Dublin.31—It was indeed she in the coat, she whom I saw the night of the Shadwell fire.
Mrs. Mary Ann Nichols, by name. May her worthy soul rest. And may I someday absolve myself of having let her disappear into the laughing dark.
FROM THE METROPOLITAN POLICE FILES32
METROPOLITAN POLICE
J Division
6th day of September 1888
SUBJECT Murder of M.A. Nichols at Whitechapel 31.8.88
P.C. 97J Neil reports that at 3.45 on the 31st August he found the dead body of a woman lying on her back with her clothes a little above her knees on a yard crossing at Bucks Row, Whitechapel. It is supposed in safety that the murder was committed where the body was found.