Not even her father, Edward Walker, a respectable blacksmith in Camberwell, had been able to live with her during her slide into the miserable creature James Maybrick stalked through this rainy and unseasonably chilly August night. Her own father had quarreled violently with her over her drunkenness, precipitating her departure from his doorstep. Her most recent home—and Maybrick curled his lip at the thought of calling such lodgings home—had been the cold, unheated rooms she'd paid for in various "doss" houses along the infamous Flower and Dean Street and the equally notorious Thrawl Street, establishments which catered primarily to destitute whores. Hundreds of such lodging houses existed in Whitechapel, some of them even permitting men and women to share a bed for the night, as scandalous a notion as that was. The "evil quarter mile" as the stretch of Commercial Road from Thrawl Street to Flower and Dean was known, had for years been vilified as the most dangerous, foul street in London.
James Maybrick knew this only too well, for he had lived, briefly, in Whitechapel during the earliest years of his career as a cotton merchant's clerk, had met and married a pretty working girl named Sarah here, where she had still lived, unknown to the wealthy and faithless bitch he'd married many years later and settled in a fine mansion in Liverpool. Florie, the whore, had discovered Sarah's existence not so many weeks ago, had dared demand a divorce, after what she, herself, had done with Brierly! James had laughed at her, told her to consider her own future carefully before taking such a step, to consider the massive debts she'd run up at dressmakers' shops, debts she could not pay. If she hoped to avoid disgrace, to avoid bringing shame upon herself and her innocent children, she would jolly well indulge his appetites, leave poor Sarah in peace, and keep her mouth shut.
James had visited Sarah tonight, before arriving at Dr. Lachley's. He had enjoyed the conjugal visit with his precious first wife, who bore his need for Florie's money and social position stoically and lived frugally on the money Maybrick provided for her. Sarah was a good, God-fearing girl who had refused to leave Whitechapel and her only living relatives and ruin his social chances. Sarah, at least, would never have to walk these streets. Even the local Spitalfields clergy despaired of the region and its violent, criminal-minded denizens.
James Maybrick smiled into the wet night. They would not despair over one particular denizen much longer. Three and a half hours previously, he had quietly followed Polly Nichols down Whitechapel Road as she set out searching for her evening's doss money, the four-pence needed to secure a place to sleep, and had watched from the shadows as his guide, his mentor, Dr. John Lachley, had accosted her. The disguise his marvelous teacher wore had changed his appearance remarkably, delighting James to no end, as much as the secret retreat beneath the streets had delighted him. The false theatrical beard Maybrick had obtained for him from a cheap shop in SoHo and the dye used to color it left Lachley as anonymous as the thousands of other shabbily dressed working men wandering Whitechapel, wending their way from one gin palace to the next on a drunken pub crawl.
Lachley, stepping out into Polly Nichols' path, had smiled into her eyes. "Hello, my dear. It's a raw evening, isn't it?"
The doctor, whose medical treatments had left Maybrick feeling more powerful, more vigorous and invincible than he'd felt in years, glanced briefly past the whore's shoulder to where Maybrick stood in concealment, nodding slightly to indicate that this was Polly Nichols, herself, the woman he had brought James here to help murder. Dressed in a brown linsey frock, Polly Nichols had smiled up at John Lachley with a whore's calculating smile of greeting.
"Evening. Is a bit wet, innit?"
"A bit," Lachley allowed. "A lady such as yourself shouldn't be out with a bare head in such weather."
"Ooh, now aren't you the polite one!" She walked her fingers coyly up his arm. "Now, if I were to ‘ave the coin, I might buy me a noice, fancy bonnet and keep the rain off."
"It just so happens," Lachley smiled down into her brown eyes, "that I have a few coins to spare."
She laughed lightly. "An' what might a lady need t'do to share that wealth, eh?"
"Consider it a gift." The physician pressed a silver florin into her palm.
She glanced down at the coin, then stared, open-mouthed, down at her grubby hand. "A florin?" This pitiful alcoholic little trollop now held in her hand a coin worth twenty-four pence: the equivalent of six times the going rate for what she was selling tonight. Or, marketed differently, six glasses of gin. Polly stared up at Lachley in sudden suspicion. "What you want t'give me an whole, entire florin for?" Greed warred with alarm in her once delicate little face.
John Lachley gave her a warm smile. "It's a small token of appreciation. From a mutual friend. Eddy sends his regards, madam." He doffed his rough cloth cap. "It has come to his attention that another mutual friend, a young man by the name of Morgan, loaned you a few of his personal letters. Eddy is desirous of re-reading them, you see, and asked me if I might not do him the favor of speaking with you about obtaining them this evening."
"Eddy?" she gasped. "Oh, my! Oh, blimey, the letters!"
Deep in his pocket, Maybrick gripped the handle of his knife and smiled.
John Lachley gave the filthy little trollop a mocking little bow. "Consider the florin a promise of greater rewards to come, in appreciation of your discretion in a certain, ah, delicate matter."
"Oh, I'm most delicate, I am, and it's most generous of Mr. Eddy to send a token of ‘is good faith. But you see, I don't exactly ‘ave those letters on me person, y'see. I'd ‘ave to go an' fetch them. From the safe place I've been keepin' ‘em ‘idden, y'see, for Morgan," she added hastily.
"Of course, madam. Shall we meet again when you have obtained them? Name the time and place and I will bring a far better reward than that paltry florin, there."
"Oh, yes, certainly! Give me the night, say? Maybe we could meet in the morning?"
Maybrick tightened his hand on the knife handle again, in anger this time. No! He would not wait a whole day! The bitch must be punished now! Tonight! Visions of his wife, naked in her lover's arms, tormented James Maybrick, drove him to a frenzy of hatred, instilled in him the burning desire to kill this filthy prostitute posturing in front of them as though she were someone worthy of breathing the same air they did. Polly Nichols was nothing but a blackmailing, dirty little whore...
"You must understand," John Lachley was saying to her, "Eddy is most anxious to re-read his letters. I will meet you again here, later tonight, no later than, say, three-thirty in the morning. That should give you more than adequate time to fetch the letters, buy yourself something to drink at a public house and get a little something to eat, perhaps even buy yourself a nice new bonnet to keep this miserable rain off your lovely hair."
She bobbed her head in excitement, now. "Oh, yes, that'd be fine, three-thirty in the morning, no later. I'll be ‘ere, I will, with them letters."
"Very good, madam." Lachley gave her another mocking bow. "Be sure, now, to find yourself a nice bonnet, to keep out the wet. We don't want you catching your death on a raw night like this." Lachley's lips twitched at the silent joke.
The doomed whore laughed brightly. "Oh, no, that would never do, would it? Did you want to go someplace dry and comfy, then?" She was caressing Lachley's groin vulgarly.
The thought tickled Maybrick's sense of humor, that this dirty little trollop would sell herself to the very man who was bringing about her murder. The thought excited him, almost as much as the thought of killing her did. He hoped Lachley dragged her to the nearest private spot and commenced banging her as hard as possible, toothless blackmailing bitch that she was.
John Lachley gave her a wry little smile. "Indeed, madam," he lifted his cap again, "little would give me greater pleasure, but duty recalls me to Eddy's side, I fear."
"Oh! Well, then, tell Mr. Eddy I'm that grateful for the money and I'll buy a proper bonnet before we meet again."
Maybrick reined in his seething frustration and disappointment with barely r
estrained violence. He gripped the wicked new knife inside his pocket until his whole hand ached. He wanted to strike now, curse it! But he had to wait until the tart found Lachley's letters, had hours to wait, yet. I will rip her apart, he thought savagely, rip her wide open and let the rain wash the filth from the bleeding womb she sells so freely...
Lachley gave her a courteous bow she did not merit and left her walking down Whitechapel Road. Maybrick's clever mentor had carefully instructed him in the exact method he must use to murder this bitch, to keep the blood from splashing across his clothes when he struck. The brilliant physician and occultist had guided him to the worst of the slatterns walking these streets—deserving targets of the monumental rage he carried against the bitch who lay with her lover, tonight, in Liverpool. Maybrick almost loved his mentor, in that moment, as he thought of what delights lay ahead. As Polly wobbled drunkenly off into the night, Lachley circled around silently, sent a secretive little smile in Maybrick's direction, and followed Polly Nichols once again.
Maybrick trailed at a leisurely distance, smiling to himself, now, and caressed the handle of his concealed knife with loving fingertips. Polly Nichols, stumbling ahead of them, first visited an establishment that sold clothing of dubious origins. There she acquired a reddish brown ulster to keep off the rain, which fastened up with seven large brass buttons, and a fetching little black straw bonnet with black velvet trim and lining. She giggled as she put it on, then paraded down the wet streets to pub after pub, steadily drinking the remaining change from the silver florin.
Twice, both he and Lachley paused in dense, wet shadows while she disappeared into a secluded spot with a customer to earn three or four pence "for my doss money" she explained each time. And twice, after she had earned a few more pence, they followed along behind again as she found yet another pub in which to spend the money on gin. Well past midnight, she staggered out of the locally famous Frying Pan Public House, just one more in a long series of pubs, and found herself another customer with whom to earn another fourpence. She spent this money just as quickly as she had the rest, pouring it down her alcoholic gullet.
And so the night waned into the small hours. At nearly one-thirty in the morning, she returned to a lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street and remained inside its kitchen for several minutes, until the lodging house deputy escorted her to the door and said, "Get your doss money, ducks, an' don't come back ‘til you ‘ave it."
"Won't you save a bed for me?" she asked the man. "Never mind! I'll soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet I've got now?" And she touched the black, velvet-lined straw hat with caressing fingers. "I've ‘ad money tonight and I'll get more just as easy, I will, an' I'll be back wiv my doss money soon enough."
And so out onto the streets she wandered again, clearly searching for another customer to procure more gin to while away the time before their three-thirty appointment—presumably having retrieved the letters Lachley sought from the room she was not yet able to pay for and would not be needing, ever again. Maybrick followed her silently, as did the all-but-invisible John Lachley, a mere shadow of a shape in the darkness ahead, the paler blur of Lachley's skin lit now and again by the lightning flaring across the sky. The rumble of thunder threatened more rain. It would need rain, to wash away the blood James would spill into these streets...
Polly Nichols stumbled and staggered her way through the better part of an hour, approaching and being turned down by one prospect after another, leading James and his mentor eventually toward the corner of Whitechapel Road and Osborn Street. There, she put out a hand to brace herself and greeted a woman coming up Osborn. "Well, if it in't Emily ‘olland," she slurred, "where you been?"
Emily Holland was a woman considerably older than Polly Nichols, closer to Maybrick's own age, he suspected, although she looked considerably older than Maybrick's fifty years. Emily greeted the drunken prostitute with considerable surprise. "Polly? I didn't expect to find you at this hour! Whatever are you doing wandering around so late? Me, I've been down to Shadwell Dry Dock. To see the fire." Emily gestured toward the distant docks, where the sky glowed a sullen red from the dockside disaster. It was the second fire that night which had reddened the clouds scudding so low above Whitechapel's broken and dilapidated rooftops. "What are you doing out at this hour, Polly? I thought you were coming back down to Flower and Dean Street, with Annie and Elizabeth and me. You were at the White House with us last night."
" ‘At's right," Polly nodded, slurring the words. "But I've got to get me doss money, yet. Bastard wouldn't let me stay ‘til I've got it."
"Polly, it's two-thirty in the morning!" Almost as an echo, a nearby church clock struck the time. "Hear that? Why don't you have your doss money by now?"
"Oh, I ‘ad it. Three times today, I've ‘ad it." She touched her pretty new bonnet in an absent little gesture. But she didn't explain about the florin and the letters, which was just as well, since that would have required Maybrick to murder this new trollop, Holland, also. Lachley had made it clear that none of these filthy whores must be allowed to know about such important letters. Truly, Maybrick was doing all England a great service, ridding the streets of the kind of filth Polly Nichols represented.
Polly was saying in a deeply slurred voice, "Three times, Emily, I've ‘ad me doss money, but I've drunk it all. Every las' penny of it. Three times. Never you fret, though. I'll ‘ave my doss money before long, I will, and I'll be back wiv you and the girls." She patted her pocket and let out a drunken giggle. "Won't be long at all, now."
Whereupon Polly took her leave of Emily Holland and staggered away on a new course, down Osborn Street in the direction of the Shadwell dock fire, where she might presumably find paying customers in abundance. The other woman called a low-voiced "Good night!" after her and watched Polly for a moment longer, shaking her head sadly, then shrugged and pulled her shawl more tightly about her shoulders and continued on her way, down Osborn Street in the opposite direction. James Maybrick waited impatiently until Emily Holland had disappeared into the wet night before moving down Whitechapel Road in pursuit, once more. John Lachley also broke from hiding.
Polly's voice, badly slurred, drifted back to Maybrick. "Be nice, ‘aving an ‘ot fire to warm me cold fingers by." She laughed drunkenly and reached the edge of the crowd which had gathered at Shadwell to watch the docks burn. Utter chaos reigned. Firemen swept continuous streams of water back and forth across the blazing dry dock and several doomed warehouses. Fire boats in the river added their drenching spray, trying to contain the inferno before it spread to any other warehouses with valuable contents.
More than two centuries might have passed since the Great Fire, but London had never forgotten the devastation which had destroyed all but one tiny corner of Britain's capital city. The only good to come of that fire, which had forced thousands to flee, only to watch their homes and livelihoods burn to ashes, had been the complete eradication of the Black Death. Afterwards, plague had never broken out in London again.
Not a plague of that sort, in any case. A plague of whores and prostitutes and bitches, however, had swelled to number in the thousands. Tonight, Maybrick would begin his campaign to eradicate this latest deadly plague to strike the greatest city in the greatest Empire on the earth. He smiled, marshaled his patience, and kept watch on Polly Nichols as she trolled for customers.
Despite the late hour, thousands of spectators jammed the narrow streets to watch this latest London fire. The electric thrill of danger was a tangible presence in the wet night. Maybrick hung well back, as did Lachley, losing sight of the drunken Polly Nichols in the crowd. The atmosphere in Shadwell was a carnival madness. Alcohol flowed in prodigious quantities. Maybrick, seething like the jagged lightning overhead, downed pint after pint of dark ale, himself, feeding his rage, nursing the hunger in his soul. John Lachley, too, had vanished through the crowd, leaving Maybrick to wait. He wanted to shout obscenities, he was so weary of walking and endlessly waiting. He gripped the handle of h
is knife so tightly he was sure there would be bruises across his palm by morning.
Nearly an hour later, with the fire still blazing furiously, Maybrick finally caught another glimpse of Polly Nichols' black, velvet-trimmed bonnet. She was just emerging through the door of a jam-packed public house which had thrown open its doors in all defiance of the closing-hour laws. She staggered mightily under the influence of God-only-knew how much more alcohol. She passed Maybrick without even seeing him, stumbled straight past a doorway from which John Lachley subsequently emerged, and headed down Osborn Street toward Whitechapel Road.
It was time for her to keep her rendezvous with murder.
The game was in Maybrick's blood, now, the stop and start of shadowing his prey down wet streets with the growl of thunder snarling overhead like a savage beast loose in the night. They waited, strolling quietly along, until they were well away from the crowd at the fire. Polly reached the now-deserted Whitechapel Road and turned east, moving unsteadily toward the spot they'd agreed to meet. John Lachley started out into the open, making his move to retrieve the letters. Then halted abruptly. So did Maybrick, cursing their foul luck. A rough man dressed like a dockhand, also coming from the direction of the Shadwell Dry Dock fire, had appeared at the end of the block and accosted her first.
Maybrick and his mentor melted back into the shadows of dark overhanging doorways, on opposite sides of the narrow street. The dockhand and the drunken whore bent their heads together and spoke quietly. A low laugh broke from the man and Maybrick heard Polly say, "Yes." A moment later, the two of them sought deeper shadows, so close to James Maybrick's hiding place, he could literally smell them from where he stood.
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