Ripper

by Michael Slade

  The graffito has been a matter of controversy ever since. Scotland Yard had the clue erased less than three hours later without being photographed. Were the words written by the murderer? Was the sentence actually The Juwes are not The men That Will be Blamed for nothing? Did the writer intend to expose, confess, cast suspicion on, or refute Jewish association with the crime? Did Juwes mean Jews?

  Why did Stephenson begin his piece with this clue? And how’s it linked to the theory that follows:

  “There seems to be no doubt that the murderer, whether mad or not, had a distinct motive in his mutilations; but one possible theory of that motive has never yet been suggested. In the nineteenth century with all its enlightenment, it would seem absurd, were it not that superstition dies hard, and some of its votaries do undoubtedly to this day practice unholy rites.

  “Now, in one of the books by the great modern occultist… Eliphaz Levy [sic], Le Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, we find the most elaborate directions for working magic spells … Black magic employs the agencies of evil spirits and demons … He gives the clearest and fullest details of the necessary steps for evocation by this means, and it is in the list of substances prescribed as absolutely necessary to success that we find the links which join … necromancy with the quest of the East End murderer. These substances in themselves are horrible and difficult to procure. They can only be obtained by means of the most appalling crimes, of which murder and mutilation of the dead are the least heinous. Among them are strips of the skin of a suicide, nails from a murderer’s gallows, candles made from human fat … and a preparation made from a certain portion of the body of a harlot. This last point is insisted upon as essential and it was this extraordinary fact that first drew my attention to the possible connection of the murderer with the black art.

  “Further, in the practice of evocation the sacrifice of human victims was a necessary part of the process, and the profanation of the cross and other emblems usually considered sacred was also enjoined. In this connection it will be well to remember one of the most extraordinary and unparalleled circumstances in the commission of the Whitechapel murders, and a thing which could not by any possibility have been brought about fortuitously. Leaving out the last murder, committed indoors … we find that the sites of the murders … form a perfect cross.”

  Tautriadelta, DeClercq thought.

  Cross-three-triangles.

  Did the Ripper claim seven victims, not five? Crowley’s Confessions mention seven ties. Stephenson continues: “Did the murderer, then, designing to offer the mystic number of seven human sacrifices in the form of a cross—a form which he intended to profane—deliberately pick out beforehand on a map the places in which he would offer them to his infernal deity of murder? If not, surely these six coincidences (?) are the most marvellous event of our time.” Eliminating Kelly—“committed indoors”—Stephenson adds Emma Smith and Martha Tabram to his cross. A common trait of murderers who taunt the police is to wrap the truth in deliberate subterfuge. DeClercq was a cop who stuck to the facts, so he placed a sheet of paper over the map of Whitechapel in one of the Ripper books, and traced just the five accepted murder sites. Eliminating Kelly, as Stephenson suggests, he joined the other locations with a black felt pen.

  Tautriadelta.

  A Hebrew tau cross?

  In November 1888, just after the last murder, Stephenson was admitted to London Hospital with typhoid fever. Dr. Evans, who shared his private ward, was visited nightly by Dr. Morgan Davies. One evening, according to Stephenson, Davies performed a graphic and overexcited reenactment of the Ripper’s crimes, pretending to sodomize a woman while cutting her throat from behind, then ripping the body apart when it was on the ground. Later Stead told Stephenson (erroneously) the Mary Kelly autopsy found she was sodomized. Released from hospital and unable to interest Stead in his plan, Stephenson struck a deal with George Marsh, a man he met in the Prince Albert pub, to split any reward paid for reporting Davies to the police.

  Marsh went to Scotland Yard on Christmas Eve and told Inspector Roots Stephenson was the Ripper. “He wrote the article in the Pall Mall Gazette in relation to the writing on the wall about Jews. He had 4 pounds for that. I have seen letters from Mr. Stead in his possession about it … Stephenson is now at the common lodging house No. 29 Castle St., St. Martin’s Lane, WC and has been there three weeks. His description is: Age 48, height 5 ft 10 in, full face, sallow complexion, moustache heavy—mouse coloured—waxed and turned up, hair brown turning grey, eyes sunken. When looking at a stranger generally has an eyeglass. Dress, grey suit and light brown felt hat—all well worn … Stephenson is not a drunkard: he is what I call a regular soaker—can drink from 8 o’clock in the morning until closing time but keep a clear head.”

  Two days later, Boxing Day, Stephenson went to the Yard. He told Inspector Roots the Ripper was Dr. Morgan Davies, accusing the man in a five-page statement, then showed him his agreement with Marsh: “24 Dec 88—I hereby agree to pay to Dr R D’O Stephenson (also known as “Sudden Death”) one half of any or all rewards or monies received by me on a/c of the conviction of Dr Davies for wilful murder.”

  Roots disregarded both Marsh fingering Stephenson and Stephenson fingering Davies. Under the heading “White-chapel Murders, Marsh, Davies & Stephenson” he wrote in the file: “When Marsh came here on 24th I was under the impression that Stephenson was a man I had known 20 years. I now find that impression was correct. He is a travelled man of education and ability, a doctor of medicine upon degrees of Paris & New York: a major from the Italian Army—he fought under Garibaldi: and a newspaper writer. He says that he wrote the article about Jews in the Pall Mall Gazette, that he occasionally writes for the paper, and that he offered his services to Mr Stead to track the murderer … He has led a Bohemian life, drinks very heavily, and always carries drugs to sober him and stave off delirium tremens.”

  Playing with police, wrote DeClercq. Like Jack the Ripper and Jolly Roger.

  Stephenson, it occurred to him, had the perfect cover. Not only did he live in the area of the Ripper murders, but he was out and about covering them for the Gazette, no doubt with receipts from Stead for previous articles in his pocket. Also in that pocket was a stupifying drug, legitimately carried to ward off the d.t.‘s, spirits of chloroform being a common prescription of the time. With all this known to the police who thought him a meddling crank, here was a drug-abusing surgeon versed in the black arts, one of which was hypnotism. “Hermetics have to know all the practices of the ‘forbidden art’ to enable them to overcome the devilish machinations of its professors.”

  DeClercq had reached the point where he came in with Jolly Roger.

  Crowley’s trunk.

  PIERCINGS

  Reno

  9:01 A.M.

  Before there was Ed Gein (Mr. Psycho himself), and Nilsen and Dahmer (the latest cannibals), there was Albert Fish. Fish was sixty-five years old when he was tried for murder in 1935. In 1928, the prosecution alleged, he offered to take twelve-year-old Grace Budd to a party. Instead, they traveled to Wistaria Cottage in rural New York, where, stripping himself naked, Fish strangled the girl. Using a meat cleaver to behead and dismember her, he cooked the flesh and organs in a carrot and onion stew. For nine days the meal kept him in a state of sexual arousal.

  Six years later, Fish wrote a letter to the girl’s parents describing in detail what he’d done to Grace. The envelope was traced to New York City where he was arrested in 1934. Tried in White Plains the following March, Fish confessed to killing six more kids, hinting at dozens of other murders while boasting he’d molested a hundred-odd children. His plea of insanity led to psychiatric tests.

  “Fish’s sexual life,” Dr. Wertham testified, “was of unparalleled perversity … There was no known perversion that he did not practice and practice frequently.” Raised in an orphanage, Fish was introduced to the joys of spanking by a female teacher. His masochism grew with time until he was hitting himself with a nail-studded pad
dle. Twenty-seven needles were embedded in his scrotum, some there so long they had rusted to pieces. “Experiences with excreta of every imaginable kind were practiced by [Fish] … He took bits of cotton, saturated them with alcohol, inserted them in his rectum, and set fire to them. He also did that to his victims … Finally, he developed a craving [for] … cannibalism.”

  Fish suffered from “religious insanity.” Visions of Christ and Hell, Wertham testified, drove him “to torment and kill children … He felt that he was ordered by God to castrate little boys … ‘I had to offer a child for sacrifice,’ he said, ‘to purge myself of iniquities.’ ”

  The plea of insanity failed.

  Fish was executed at Sing Sing Prison on January 16, 1936. At sixty-six, he remains the oldest person ever put to death in New York. Fish faced the electric chair eagerly, claiming it was “the supreme thrill, the only one I haven’t tried.” He helped the executioner affix the electrodes to his body. It took two massive jolts to kill the old man. The first was short-circuited by the needles in his groin.

  The airport security guard had never heard of Fish.

  But he knew there was something fishy here.

  “Empty your pockets, sir, and walk through again.”

  Garret Corke filled the plastic tray with change, adding his lighter and watch for good measure, then stepped back through the doorlike tunnel. Again the buzzer complained.

  “Arms out,” ordered the guard, engaging Corke hand to hand with a metal detector. Bzzz … Bzzz … the wand snitched as it passed over his chest. The guard poked Corke’s pecs and felt the rings through his nips. Bzzz … the wand tattled when it reached his belly, ratting to the guard about Corke’s navel ring. Then Bzzz … Bzzz … Bzzz … Bzzz … the wand went wild as it neared his cock and balls. The guard was no homo. He wasn’t patting there.

  “Sorry, sir. You’ll have to follow me.”

  They stepped into the strip-search room off Reno airport’s security area. Without being asked, Corke loosened his belt and dropped his Wrangler jeans. Chin in and spine stretched to look more official, the guard cleared his throat before dropping his eyes to check the guy’s basket. No underwear, the swinging dick had more silver than the Comstock Lode.

  A horizontal Frankenstein bolt spiked the glans of his penis. Common to areas around the Indian Ocean, the ampallang is often inserted as a puberty rite. Because it enhances sexual pleasure, many women deny intercourse to men who aren’t pierced. Like a ring of Saturn through the underflesh, a European frenum circled the head of Corke’s cock behind the ampallang. Fitting snugly in the groove around his glans, the cock ring increased the size of an erection. Originally used to firmly secure male genitalia in either pant leg while wearing crotch-binding trousers, a Prince Albert dressing ring vertically pierced the urethra of Corke’s glans. Legend has it Prince Albert wore the device to retract his foreskin and keep his organ sweet-smelling for the Queen. Behind Corke’s penis, a hafada pierced the left side of his sac. Believed to stop the testes from returning to the groin, the ring signifies an Arab youth’s become a man. Corke had adopted it from French Foreign Legionnaires fighting in Africa. Common to men of the South Pacific, a guiche pierced the ridge of skin between his scrotum and anus. The guard couldn’t see it so Corke hooked a finger through the bangle and gave it a tug.

  “Sir,” the guard said. “You are weird.”

  Eyes half-mast, jaw slack, pores sweating goat, Corke gripped his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it down.

  Tattooed upside down on his inner lip, now right side up facing the guard, in big block letters were the words FUCK YOU.

  Approaching Vancouver

  12:12 P.M.

  For Zinc Chandler, his mission was also a test, but a test of toughness in a different way. He had to know if his mind and body still worked.

  For five years he’d done nothing but prepare for this trip. Not this trip exactly, but a challenge like it. The Cutthroat case had taken everything: his lover, his mother, his ex-girlfriend, his son, his job, and his health. Forty years of life and he was back at the beginning: relearning how to walk, talk, and think. Back to basics. An adult child.

  The months he’d spent in Hong Kong were to patch his brain, forced convalescence to repair his torn flesh. The years he’d spent on the farm were to rebuild his body, physical labor for his muscles, woodworking and whittling for his hand-eye coordination. Now it was time to road test his mind.

  To be a cop you had to think like a cop.

  Had Cutthroat’s bullet robbed him of that, too?

  Months ago, DeClercq had said, I made a promise I may have to break. A woman named Elvira Franklen asked me to provide a “real sleuth” for a Mystery Weekend to be auctioned off in aid of Children’s Hospital. Chan said he’d do it, but now that’s changed. With Jack MacDougall on holidays, I need him for this case. The mystery takes place this weekend. So I have a favor to ask.

  The thought of being a phony cop hadn’t thrilled Zinc, but after mulling it over, the challenge intrigued him. Here was a test of his intellect with nothing to lose—nothing, that is, till Franklen phoned to say a $50,000 prize was at stake. Now the test was one to see if his mind could help sick kids.

  ‘Tis action makes the hero, his mother used to say.

  Zinc felt renewed.

  He had a noble goal.

  To prepare, he’d galloped Buckwheat to the local bookmobile, his real horse named for the plastic one he’d ridden as a child, his “Rosebud” from Citizen Kane. The bookmobile was driven and staffed by Miss Deverell, his grade three teacher. Zinc had once put a whoopee cushion on her chair, the class breaking up when she let out the world’s longest fart. “I want the most challenging mystery novel you have,” he’d said, “but one that’s scrupulously fair with its puzzle.”

  “Try this,” she’d replied, choosing a battered book, the spine of which was engraved The Judas Window by Carter Dickson.

  “In a locked-room novel,” Miss Deverell had said, “the deduction stakes are doubled. Not only do you have to figure out whodunit, but you must also determine how the murder was committed. The crime seems impossible as it transcends earthly laws.”

  “Give me an example?”

  “How do you hide a razor in plain view of everyone in a room yet no one sees it?”

  Zinc shrugged.

  “Attach it to the blade of a whirling fan.”

  “Got another?”

  She smiled mischievously. “You’re a policeman. Consider this situation. A man has committed murder and is alive in your custody. You can try him and convict him, but you can’t send him to jail. Why?”

  Zinc scratched his head. “Give me a clue?”

  “Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes. The only help you need is his classic proverb of deduction: It is one of the elemental principles of practical reasoning, that when the impossible has been eliminated the residuum, however improbable, must contain the truth.”

  “The man’s committed murder? He’s alive in my hands? I can try him and convict him? But I can’t send him to jail?”

  Miss Deverell nodded.

  “I give up. Why?”

  “Because he’s inextricably joined to his Siamese twin. Imprison the guilty half and you imprison the innocent.”

  “That’s a locked room?”

  “That’s an ‘impossible crime.’ A ‘locked room’ is the epitome of such puzzles.” She indicated the book in his hands.

  Now as the plane banked over the ocean to land on Sea Island, Zinc bookmarked The Judas Window two chapters from the end. While wondering if the Mystery Weekend would have a locked room, his brain was pierced by a sharp stab of pain. Epilepsy, he thought, dropping the book.

  What’s the bottom line, Doc?

  You have epilepsy. Seizures will be a danger for the rest of your life.

  Treatment?

  We ‘re back to four caps of Dilantin a day. They worked for the past year, and should suppress onset in the future. You
must avoid alcohol and sleeplessness. And never—I repeat never—miss taking your drugs …

  Vancouver International Airport

  12:22 P.M.

  Unlike Albert Fish who pierced himself for kicks, Corke performed the ritual to master pain. The first vivid memory he had of early life was his dad pulling the “witch doctor” from his workshop drawer. Young Garret had broken a window and his dad was a Marine, so he’d been court-martialed, found to blame, and stripped below the waist. The “witch doctor” was a black crosshatched rubber strap shaped a little like a beaver’s tail. The callused fingers of one hand gripping the nape of his son’s neck, the man bent the boy over a wooden sawhorse, warning him, “Flinch and I’ll repeat it. Cry and you get it twice.” One smack from the doctor and the lad was bruised for a month.

  Garret’s dad ran his “quarters” like a boot camp, telling his wife who was tranked all the time, “The boy needs toughening up.” This was in the Fifties when there were Commies under the bed, and every house near the Fort flew the Stars and Stripes. Soon “taking the doctor’s medicine” was the boy’s game as he learned to psychologically remove himself from the pain. Jackknifed over the sawhorse, he didn’t flinch or blink, priding himself on his stoicism while suffering abuse. His dad became a Commie torturer in East Berlin when he discovered fantasy was the key to enduring pain. He shifted the agony he felt from the bite of the doctor’s teeth to his dad whom he commando-stalked behind the Iron Curtain.

  When Garret was eleven, push came to shove. By then there were rings in the workshop floor to tie him over the bench, his dad mimicking a drumroll before each whack. One day the youth raided the shop while his dad was on parade, kidnapping the doctor from the drawer and cremating it in the lane. The plume of black smoke stunk up the Marine base.