What Alice Knew

by Paula Marantz Cohen

  “And why’s that, mum?”

  “Because our minds are the one thing we have that is truly ours—that no one can take from us. To be able to think is a rare and precious thing, to be protected, no matter what happens to us.”

  “I can see that, mum.”

  “So you’ve gotten along without parents,” said Alice. “You’re a strong boy.”

  “It’s not as I diden wanna have ’em,” said the boy. “I saw other chaps whose mums worried ’bout whether they ’ad a hole in their trousers or a button gone. I used to say, ‘My mum’s gonna whup me for losing that there button,’ jus’ so it would look like someone cared as I lost it. But no one did.”

  “Well, we care here,” said Alice. “And if you lose any buttons, you will have me to answer to. I hope you can begin to feel at home with us.”

  “I do, mum. I feel I got a home now more swell than any a the rest of ’em. Sally, she’s like a sister, only stric’ like a mum. I likes it when she yells at me, which is jus’ as well, as she yells at me a lot.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear,” said Alice, feeling that she ought to have the boy leave the room before she burst into tears. “Tell Sally that she is to continue to yell. And now, I think, I’ll rest a bit. Please close the door quietly when you leave.”

  After he had gone, Alice took Sargent’s parcel from the bed table, where she had placed it. Under the brown wrapping, the painting had been wrapped in newspaper. She carefully spread the paper out on the bed to reveal the picture. Sargent’s masterful rendering of the woman in the red cloak shimmered with new luster under the application of a fresh coat of varnish. She let her gaze rest on the painting for a few minutes, and then her attention wandered to the newspaper on which it lay. Her glance stopped with a jolt. “Of course,” she muttered excitedly to herself, her eyes fastened on the page. “Of course. I understand now!”

  Chapter 22

  Two hours later, when the brothers arrived at Alice’s apartment in response to her message to come at once, they found her in bed nibbling on a brioche. Her eyes were very bright.

  “You’re in time for tea—or rather coffee, since that’s what we’re having this afternoon. And you must try one of these,” she said, motioning to the basket of brioches next to a dish of fresh butter and a jar of preserves. “They’re as light as air, thanks to a recipe that Katherine got from Fanny Kemble, and that Fanny got from the divine Sarah Bernhardt. It’s a brioche with a dramatic genealogy.”

  The brothers sat down at the little corner table and began eating the brioches and sipping the Moroccan coffee that Sally poured into the large mugs that had been given to Alice by her friend, Mrs. Humphrey Ward. Mrs. Ward had an idolatrous admiration for the late Dickens, and the mugs, which she liked to give as gifts, were painted with characters from Dickens’s novels. Henry found the whole thing very gauche (though perhaps he was jealous). He had at first refused to drink from a mug until Alice said that if he didn’t, it would make more work for Sally, at which he relented and took the one with the picture of Mr. Micawber on it.

  They drank their coffee, while Alice kept silent as Henry maligned the mugs and William noted that strawberry preserves were better in America. Suddenly she burst out, unable to contain herself any longer. “I called you here on such short notice because I have an idea about the murders.”

  The brothers looked at each other.

  “We await illumination,” said William.

  “We are all ears,” said Henry.

  Alice ignored their facetious tone and continued excitedly, “It began with certain observations that I made while studying the letters. I examined them closely after that horrible Lancaster woman left and was struck, first, by the handwriting. We’ve already discussed the misspellings as exhibiting what William called ‘disingenuous illiteracy.’ The handwriting appears to show a similar tendency; it is artificially awkward.”

  “Yes,” said William impatiently. “As I said, it’s clearly the work of someone trying to disguise his hand.”

  “But it’s more than that!” exclaimed Alice. “It’s not the sort of handwriting in which the writer is simply trying to deceive. It suggests someone accustomed to using the pen in unorthodox and original ways. The writing is more graphic than it is orthographic, if you follow me.”

  “Not really,” said Henry.

  “Let me clarify, then, with something I discovered this afternoon. Look at that.” She pointed across the room, where Sargent’s painting had been hung back on the wall.

  “One of John’s Venetian scenes,” noted William.

  “Not among his best,” said Henry.

  Alice ignored them and proceeded. “John took that painting home the other day because he said it looked dull and he wanted to revarnish it. When he sent it back, it was wrapped in newspaper. Some of the varnish dripped onto the paper. Look here.” She took a piece of newspaper from the bed table and indicated a few small shiny spots on the surface. “I sent Katherine to the Sargents’ to inquire about it. The substance is called megilp, a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine commonly used to varnish paintings. Now,” she said, taking one of the Ripper letters from her bed table with a flourish, “look at this!” She pointed to the spot on the page that they had noted before.

  “They resemble each other,” acknowledged Henry.

  “It’s a shiny, clear substance,” said William peevishly. “It could be anything.”

  “I’ve had Katherine purchase a variety of gluing materials. Nothing except megilp dries this way. So the question is this: why would our writer have reason to employ megilp? This brings me to another observation. The reddish smudge on the other letter that you said yourself did not resemble dried blood. It does, however, resemble dried paint.” She took out a sheet of paper, on which there were multiple splotches in a variety of reddish hues. “While Katherine was at John’s, I asked her to have him put together a sample of some of his reds, which he did with his usual thoroughness. Kindly take a look. This one on the right, which John has marked ‘dark amber,’ is an excellent match. I will have to show him the smudge for verification, but it seems to me reasonable to assume that the smudge on the letter is paint.”

  “Let me see that,” said William, grabbing the sample sheet. He had fleetingly considered that the smudge on the Ripper letter might be paint when he first saw it. He knew what dried paint looked like; he had been a painter, but he had instinctively pushed the idea out of his head because he had no wish to recall that period of his life. He knew the mind could work that way. Elements relating to one thing could slip, without one’s awareness, into affecting another.

  “So the murderer is an artist,” ruminated Henry. “It would explain the fair Lancaster’s assertion that his fingers were stained!”

  Alice waved her hand. The idea of giving credence to a spiritualist almost made her want to dismiss her theory.

  “It would also explain this,” said William quietly, taking the photograph of Polly Nichols out of an envelope in his pocket.

  Alice studied the picture a moment. “Where did it come from?” she asked.

  “From the police. They found it in a book that a Jewish bookseller had for sale in his shop. It was probably delivered to him by one of his vendors. I will try to find out where he got it.”

  “Please do,” said Alice. “There’s no mark of a photographer’s shop on the back. I suspect that it was taken by the murderer.”

  William nodded. As soon as his sister had mentioned her theory, he realized that it could account for the pride on Polly Nichols’s face in the photograph. She was posing in the manner of a painter’s model and was proud to be using her body in the service of art.

  He mused, “Mary Wells said Polly used to do something in the area that she thought was refined, but came back with her sweater misbuttoned.”

  “She was posing for an artist who decided to kill her,” agreed Alice. “It explains the gashes under the eyes of Catherine Eddowes and the symmetrical gashes on the abdom
ens of the other women.”

  “He was painting her body with a knife,” concluded William softly. The idea was grotesque but stunningly obvious. It amazed him that he had not made the connection before.

  “Do you think all the women killed by Jack the Ripper were his models?” asked Henry.

  “Not necessarily,” William responded quickly. “Polly could simply have set the acts in motion.” He realized that his sister’s revelation was compelling, not only because it fit with the pieces of evidence they had gathered, but also because it resolved his theory about the inner workings of perversion, the way it repeated itself in the form of a habit and linked to the instruments associated with the perpetrator’s vocation.

  “If the murders are the work of an artist, what does that tell us?” asked Alice, as though she were quizzing a group of bright students.

  “Artists are inclined to sign their work,” suggested Henry. “They crave recognition.”

  “The letters reflect this,” she agreed.

  “And every artist has a distinctive style,” William noted.

  “So what is Jack the Ripper’s style?”

  “Hardly traditional, I would say,” said William. “He’d be in the modern impressionist school.”

  “But not one of the pretty impressionists,” qualified Alice. “Not lily pads and sunsets.”

  “No,” agreed William. “His palette would be dark. We will have to ask John Sargent. He knows everyone.”

  “Yes,” Henry added, bemused. “We can certainly trust John. His pictures are pretty, he loves his sister, and he is too fastidious to commit murder.”

  “Though sisters may drive even the most fastidious man to murder,” William couldn’t resist noting.

  “This is no time for jokes,” Alice intervened sternly. “This is an important discovery, and we must act on it, quickly, each of us according to our abilities.” She spoke with the authority of a commander laying out a plan of battle. “I will continue to study the evidence and consider how it may bring us closer to the murderer. William, you are to learn what you can from Scotland Yard and trace the source of Polly Nichols’s photograph. Henry, you must inventory the art world and consider who has the motive and opportunity to commit these crimes.”

  “But Wilde’s dinner party is tonight,” complained Henry. He suddenly imagined being trundled off to thumb through the membership lists of the minor art clubs and having to dine late on Mrs. Smith’s unprepossessing fare.

  Alice happily contradicted his assumption. “No need to miss your party,” she said. “I want you in society, mixing with the fashionable world, but alert, if you don’t mind my adding, which means indulging in less wine than you are probably used to.” She gave him a severe look and continued. “Wilde has a wide circle of friends and knows artists, high and low. Keep your eyes and ears open for anyone who seems suspicious. As a novelist, you have an instinct for the incongruous detail; bring this to bear now, where the stakes are the highest.”

  Having spoken, she laid her head back on her pillow. The exertion of the past hour had taken its toll. “We are dealing with an artist of murder,” she murmured. “We must use our much vaunted intelligence and creative skill to catch him.”

  Chapter 23

  Despite the momentous discovery of the afternoon, the identity of the murderer was far from Henry’s mind as he prepared to attend Wilde’s party that evening. He had heard from some of his friends that his countryman, Samuel Clemens, had just arrived in England, and that Wilde, who had met Clemens during his American tour, had invited him to be the promised surprise guest. As much as Henry enjoyed Wilde’s dinners, the thought of sitting across the table from this much touted personage did not appeal to him. He did not like the homely demeanor that Clemens affected, and he liked even less the man’s great success with it. Clemens was selling books and giving lectures, while Henry had stacks of unsold volumes moldering in a warehouse somewhere and had not been asked to lecture to anyone.

  When he arrived at the Albemarle Club, the bohemian enclave that Wilde favored for his more festive gatherings, Henry made his way to the private dining room where the party was being held, ordered himself a brandy, and surveyed the company. Wilde had not yet made an appearance, but most of the other guests were already seated. There were a number of pedigreed women and the usual literati with whom Wilde liked to ornament his dinners. A surprising addition was the venerable Robert Browning, who was fielding questions on the subject of his late wife. How awful, Henry thought, to have to drag around someone else’s literary reputation and have it eternally eclipse your own.

  There were a few Germans talking loudly about the scientific study of aesthetics (leave it to the Germans to turn art into science), and a contingent of Frenchmen looking superior for no other reason than that they were French.

  Also present was a diverse sampling of artists. A handful of eager Pre-Raphaelites were listening with rapt attention to their mentor, Burne-Jones, who seemed to be lecturing them on the china plate. Two members of the Newlyn school, who specialized in Cornish landscape, were whispering about two members of the Marble school, who specialized in neoclassical subjects. Du Maurier was there, sketching a cartoon on his napkin, and a few minor portraitists were looking jealously at Sargent, who had just received a handsome commission for his portrait of a Liverpool factory owner’s wife. He had earned it through his ability to give her the eyes of a duchess and remedy her lack of a chin.

  Henry considered his sister’s hypothesis. Were any of these people capable of a grisly series of murders? It seemed unlikely, though appearances could be deceiving.

  He had ordered himself a second brandy and was beginning to relax when there was a bustle near the door, and Wilde finally appeared with his entourage, which included a number of young gentlemen with the comfortable air of stupidity that seemed to accompany hereditary privilege. Several others entered as well, and Henry caught a glimpse of a face that seemed both familiar and strange. Before he had a chance to take it in, his attention was diverted to a middle-aged man in a checkered suit with wild hair and a bushy, oversize mustache. Clemens. The very sight of this homespun creature was annoying.

  “Attention mes amis,” said Oscar, tapping his spoon to his glass. “Bienvenue, à tout le monde. I want to offer a special welcome to our special guest, Mr. Samuel Clemens, or as we know him on the page, Mark Twain. He has just arrived in England and is already the toast of Europe.”

  Henry winced. He had been in Europe for more than a decade and was still not the toast of it.

  “I’m mighty glad to be here,” said Clemens, in what Henry believed was an affectedly flat, nasal accent, but by which the company appeared to be immediately charmed.

  “What inspires your writing, Mr. Clemens?” asked one of the pedigreed women.

  “Alcohol, my dear…and debt,” answered Clemens, to appreciative laughter.

  “Do you think that your writing suffers from your country’s dearth of history?” asked an eager Pre-Raphaelite.

  “Not at all,” responded Clemens. “I wish we could continue to avoid history, but I suspect we will soon have some of it.”

  There was more laughter.

  “I was struck by the use of dialect in your novel about the young boy and the runaway slave,” said a bluestocking woman who had lately taken up linguistics. “Did you study the structure of American Negro speech?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Clemens. “I did not study Negro speech; I listened to it.”

  A group of young men, normally intimidated by the bluestocking’s erudition, found this comment hilarious.

  “Do you Americans have any women poets of note?” queried the great Browning.

  “We have our poets in petticoats,” acknowledged Clemens, “but we try to avoid reading them.”

  Browning looked taken aback, but Clemens proceeded to soften the remark in his genial drawl. “You see, we are a vast, untamed country and so tend to favor a more rugged style for the present. I am sure we wi
ll have our women poets in time, but for now we are carving our literature out of mud and rock.”

  Henry felt his mood growing increasingly sour. It was grating to hear Clemens turn his country’s demerits into badges of honor. One could laud what was low and vulgar as much as one pleased, but that hardly prevented it from being low and vulgar.

  Fortunately, the soup, lobster bisque, arrived as a momentary diversion. Henry was seated across from a group of young men of very slight appearance. “Are you partial to the Uranian school?” one asked him softly.

  “Uranian?” asked Henry, confused. Sargent whispered that the Uranians worshipped boys, and Henry shook his head vigorously and turned away.

  The meal progressed slowly. There was talk at the other end of the table about the relative merits of New York and London, Grover Cleveland and William Gladstone, Lillian Russell and Lillie Langtry. Clemens explained the American electoral system and the issues in the upcoming presidential election. He spoke about his business ventures, the advisability of reparations to former slaves, and the hoped-for production of a play he had written with his friend, William Dean Howells. These topics showcased his ingenuity, beneficence, and collaborative energy, thereby causing Henry’s mood to deteriorate further. That Howells, his own good friend, would collaborate with this creature—and not approach him first—was especially irritating.

  During the discussion, Henry remained quiet and, despite Alice’s admonition, repeatedly motioned for his wineglass to be refilled. At one point, he turned to Sargent. “Did you know Alice thinks Jack the Ripper is a painter?” he asked abruptly. He had wanted to build gradually to this revelation, but the proceedings of the evening had caused him to lose patience.

  Sargent opened his eyes wide with surprise. He and Emily had wondered why Alice had wanted samples of the different reds, but had been too discreet to ask.

  “She has amassed considerable evidence to support her theory,” said Henry smugly.