The Queen's Accomplice

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “I have a friend,” she said to Durgin, swallowing down dread. “Bronwyn Parry. She’s from Wales, twenty-two, new to London, in town for a few formalities before taking on official duties. She was planning on staying at a women’s hotel in the Baker Street area last night. And she didn’t show up for her interview this morning at one of the SOE offices.”

  Durgin’s face creased into a frown. “She fits the criteria.”

  “You don’t think…”

  Durgin took a slurp of tea. “I can check for you.”

  “Thank you,” she managed. “Now back to our victims. The dates…” She gestured to the board of photos.

  “The Blackout Beast’s dates don’t match the original’s dates,” Mark stated. “Nor do they match the amount of time in between killings.”

  “This is what you two boffins have been working on while I was out? A time line?”

  “Yes, we’re working on a time line,” Maggie explained, “comparing the so-called Blackout Beast’s murders with the original Jack the Ripper killings.” She pulled out index cards with names she’d written in thick blue ink and went to the corkboard.

  1942. She pinned up the names Joanna Metcalf and Doreen Leighton.

  And then, directly below and in parallel, 1888. Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman.

  Then, in a neat row, the rest of the Ripper’s victims: Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly. She then ran a line of brown string between the Blackout Beast’s victims, and red connecting the original Jack the Ripper’s murders. So far, Joanna Metcalf lined up with Mary Ann Nichols and Doreen Leighton lined up with Annie Chapman.

  The rest of the line was ominously blank. Three to go. Brynn…

  She turned to the chalkboard and wrote: SIMILARITIES AND DISSIMILARITIES OF VICTIMS, then made two columns.

  “Both Jack the Ripper’s and the Beast’s victims are female,” Mark said.

  Durgin grimaced. “Thanks for the obvious.”

  “And the Ripper’s victims were murdered over a period of twelve weeks,” Maggie said. “The Beast’s murders are much closer together.”

  “Usually there’s what we call a ‘cooling-off’ period between murders.” Durgin scowled at the chalkboard. “But if he wants the attention of the press…or his urge for killing is that strong…Usually these sorts of murderers stick to a longer pattern. If he’s killing at short intervals, there might be something going on in his life, something new.”

  Maggie wrote, New precipitating stressor?

  “And, the Ripper’s victims were murdered outdoors, while ours were murdered inside, then moved,” Mark offered.

  Maggie wrote it all down on the board, chalk squeaking. “And don’t forget the smell of gas on the victims’ clothes.”

  Mark scratched his head. “Jack the Ripper’s victims were prostitutes, while the Beast’s are not.”

  “Not prostitutes, but professionals,” Maggie clarified. “Independent women—with jobs outside the home. ATS, both of them.”

  Durgin groaned. “God help us all.”

  “But why Jack the Ripper?” Maggie mused. “And why now?”

  “Shows a huge ego and decided lack of imagination,” Durgin muttered.

  “Wait—” Maggie said. “Not so fast. Jack the Ripper is a powerful symbol for violence against women. Look at the women this new killer has targeted—educated professionals, coming and going as they please. This war has turned everything topsy-turvy. Women are now challenging the status quo of nighttime London as a male-dominated space. What if invoking the specter of Jack the Ripper is intended to keep women scared and at home?”

  “Is this what they’re teaching you young ladies at boarding school these days?” Durgin’s eyebrow lifted. “Because you might want to ask for your money back.”

  “No, wait—listen,” Maggie insisted. “During the Victorian era, professional women who roamed London at night triggered fears of women’s independence.”

  Durgin closed his eyes and pretended to snore.

  Maggie ignored him. “The point of the Jack the Ripper killings was to frighten women into staying at home. What if that’s the same cause now? What if someone doesn’t like how women have more freedoms now? Working traditional men’s jobs? Living alone? And so, invoking the mythical Jack the Ripper murders is a way to control women.” She was thinking out loud. “Women are always in danger on the streets and in public spaces, but now even more so, as more women come to London for war work and lead independent lives.”

  She began to pace. “Our so-called Blackout Beast is drawing on these cultural fantasies we all share—our issues with the female body, about the dark labyrinthine city, the Minotaur, the madman.” She was warming to the topic, remembering a paper she’d written for a Women in Victorian Novels class at college, drawing upon William Thomas Stead’s book, The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. “Our killer’s continuing a long-running theme of male violence and women’s helplessness against it. And so today’s women are conditioned—reconditioned—to stay at home and not ‘provoke’ a man’s violence. Well, sod that!”

  “It’s all very interesting, theoretically, but why now?” Durgin crossed his arms.

  “Don’t you see? Not only are women enjoying unprecedented freedoms, but London’s wartime blackout has created the perfect cover for women to vanish. Thousands upon thousands of young women have come to London since the war broke out. It’s a sea change in the way women are allowed to exist. In the context of history, it’s huge! Enormous!”

  Maggie spun on her heel. “All of these unmarried young women, released from the protection of their homes and permitted—encouraged even—to work and live without their families or a husband. Women who once would have gone straight from their father’s home to their husband’s are now living on their own or with flatmates. Don’t you see? Women are everywhere in public life now—postwomen, bus drivers, tram conductors, dispatch riders on motorcycles, telegram messengers, Red Cross workers on bicycles…”

  “You might be onto something, Miss Tiger,” Durgin admitted. “There have always been disappearances in London, but there was a sharp uptick in the vanishings of young women with the blackout.”

  “Well, what do you have?” Maggie asked.

  At his desk, Mark picked up a heavy tome, The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. “According to the author, who’s allegedly an expert, injuries to the original Ripper’s victims were crude, not made with any sort of surgical precision.”

  Maggie wrote crude injuries under the Jack the Ripper column. “But where the original Ripper’s crimes were of passion, with rough slashes, the injuries to the Blackout Beast’s victims are deliberate.” In the other column, she wrote precise.

  “Jack the Ripper—he had a need for control. Killing provided such a sexually satisfying”—Durgin looked to Maggie. “Sorry.”

  “Please continue.”

  “—sexually satisfying experience, he was compelled to repeat the fantasy with multiple victims.”

  “But there’s no evidence of that,” Mark pointed out.

  “You’re being literal,” Durgin countered. “He might be using his scalpel as a stand-in.”

  “Charming,” Maggie commented. “Impotence, plus sadism, plus need for control. Could that equal murder?”

  “The links to sequential crimes are the sort of victim, the modus operandi, and the signature,” Durgin explained. “So, here we have similar victims, consistent method of killing, and a quite literal signature—Jack is back. He may or may not have a criminal record. He’s probably done any number of antisocial things, but if he’s slick enough, or if his pater’s powerful enough, he might have gotten away with them and not have a police record. He’s most likely handsome, or at least inoffensive looking.”

  “Why do you think that?” Maggie asked.

  “He didn’t have to hurt them to get them to come with him—all of the injury was done later. His victims, at least initially, didn’t see him as a threat. They trusted him.
”

  Detective Durgin gazed off into space, as if picturing life through the eyes of the Blackout Beast. “He’s a copycat killer, but he thinks he’s better than the original Ripper—he’s showing him up. That’s why the injuries are the same, but more precise. He wants to be bigger than Jack the Ripper. Do the crimes better. Become even more famous. His ego—it’s huge. And he’s smart.”

  Mark’s forehead creased. “How do you know?”

  “No physical evidence. He knows about fingerprinting—enough to wear gloves. And I also suspect our man has a history of paranoia, which he may be able to hide quite well in public. Probably stems from some sort of childhood trauma—the early death of a parent, or witnessing a violent accident or crime. The kidnapping, the killing—it gives him back a sense of power. My hypothesis is he’s trying to erase the memories of a brutal father, who may have abused him and his mother. A man contemptuous of women.

  “Then the murderer’s experiences of witnessing his mother’s abuse and/or absence led him to feel victimized as he faced losses and rejections in his later life—while also unconsciously identifying with a violent masculinity that dominated women. He had issues with Mummy—and so now with all women. Or, at least, the women he sees as powerful—a threat.”

  “How can you possibly know—about his mother and father? Those are feelings, not facts. Guesses.”

  “Hypotheses,” Durgin corrected. “And I trust my gut. My gut’s always right.”

  “A ‘gut’ can’t possibly be right or wrong.” God help us, thought Maggie, who preferred facts and science to feelings. She remembered a bad call she’d made trying to protect the Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle because of her dislike of one of the ladies-in-waiting. She’d sworn at the time never to let her personal feelings get in the way of solving a case again. “Your so-called gut is merely a collection of organs, connective tissue, and blood.”

  Durgin patted the starched shirt covering his lean midsection. “Don’t disparage the gut, Miss Tiger. It has almost twenty years of experience with killers, thieves, and the like.”

  “If I ever said I had a ‘feeling’ about something on a case, it would be labeled ‘feminine intuition’ and I’d be laughed at before I was kicked off,” she retorted.

  Mark looked up at the blank spaces. “With the way he’s killing, we don’t have much time.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Maggie said, “but those aren’t places for murder victims to come—rather, those spots represent women we can save, opportunities for us to thwart our Beast. I think we should start with these books.” She pointed to a few volumes about Jack the Ripper that Frain’s secretary had left.

  “At the Yard, we don’t catch killers by reading books,” Durgin stated, pouring himself more tea.

  “Ah yes, you use the ‘tummy tingles.’ ”

  “I told you—the gut. Don’t disrespect the gut.”

  “Forget the gut—what we have now is a lack of data. We need more evidence.”

  “You’re not going to find it in books, Miss Tiger.”

  Maggie was undeterred. “But you see, our killer is using the same Ripper story we have here. But maybe there are more victims? There are the canonical Ripper murders, but what about the noncanonical victims—Martha Tabram, Annie Millwood, and Ada Wilson? We can look up those women, then check the morgues to see if any murder victims match the descriptions. And we’ll need to check the hospitals, too—it’s always possible our Ripper went after women inspired by the noncanonical murders. Maybe one or more of the present-day women survived.”

  Durgin jiggled his knee. “But there’s a reason those particular murders are considered noncanonical—because Jack the Ripper didn’t commit them.”

  “What you, or I, or the author of this book, or Jack the Ripper himself thinks—the only thing that matters is whether our Blackout Beast thinks Jack did them or not. And if the Beast does think Jack committed the noncanonical murders, and if he began this rampage with victims who match the noncanonical victims, as a sort of practice run, it would give us more data to work with.”

  “Martha Tabram may have been the Ripper’s first victim. But she’s not considered part of the canon because her throat wasn’t cut. The murder of Martha Tabram doesn’t fit the pattern,” Mark told them.

  “Patterns change,” Maggie mused. “Evolve. Just as in nature. It’s practically Darwinian. There would be practice victims, honing the craft, a development of technique. The murders our monster’s taking credit for, they are what he considers his statement. But what if he had a few dress rehearsals? Or even more than a few?”

  She picked up one of the dusty books on Mark’s desk and paged through it. “Martha Tabram’s throat wasn’t cut, but she was stabbed thirty-nine times in her abdomen and neck. It’s the kind of injury that would be relatively easy to track down.”

  Durgin exhaled. “All right, I’ll see what I can do—call the Yard, check the hospitals and morgues.” He looked up at the clock. “See if anyone has injuries matching those descriptions.”

  Mark sniffed. “Use the telephone in the office next door if you’d like.”

  As Durgin left, Maggie said, “I’ll need a map of the area. I want to plot the points where the victims’ bodies were left.”

  Mark rifled through his drawer and came up with a folded London map. “Perfect.” Maggie pinned it to the corkboard, then pulled out two bright red tacks. “Joanna’s body was left here,” she said, piercing the map with one at Regent Park’s Outer Circle, near the entrance to the Queen Mary Garden. “And Doreen’s body here,” she added, “at the intersection of Harley and New Cavendish streets.”

  “What does that tell us?”

  “Well,” Maggie admitted, “not much. Yet. But mathematics is the science of patterns. Plot the data and we just may learn something. Do you have another map? I’d like to keep one in my handbag as well.”

  As Mark handed her another, smaller map, she rolled her eyes heavenward. “His gut, can you believe it?” she murmured, tucking the map away in her purse. “As if his innards could speak. As if we were studying haruspicy, and could figure everything from the position of the liver. And people think women are erratic and emotional….Mark?”

  “What? Er, sorry.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” It was late and Maggie suddenly realized she was exhausted. “I’ve never dealt with a serial killer before, of course—unless you count the Nazis, that is. There’s a definite parallel with our Jack and the Nazis’ need for domination, fear, and control by intimidation and violence—as well as issues with women. But what I do know is we need more data.”

  “Serial killer—”

  Durgin called from the office next door: “ ‘Sequential murderer’ is what we call it at Scotland Yard!”

  “These are killings in a series,” Maggie called back. “Therefore, he is a ‘serial killer’!”

  Durgin’s voice rang out. “Sequential! Murderer!”

  “Is that what your gut said to call them? ‘Sequential murderer’—fine,” she muttered at Mark, who grimaced in reply.

  Putting the map of London in her handbag reminded Maggie of the envelope Peter Frain had given her. She pulled it out. It was plain brown, and simply addressed. Inside was yet another envelope, this one ivory-colored, sealed with crimson wax. Maggie flipped it over, noting the embossed golden lion-and-unicorn insignia. “Do you have a letter opener?”

  Mark handed her one that looked like an ancient dagger, and she slit open the envelope and pulled out the heavy cream card inside. It was engraved:

  Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth

  Requests the pleasure of the company of

  Margaret Hope

  At an Afternoon Tea Party for Women in the Services

  On Monday, 30 of March 1942 from 15h30 to 17h30

  Buckingham Palace

  London

  Dress: uniform / day dress

  This Invitation Will Be Requested Upon Arrival

  Tomorrow, Maggie rea
lized. Of course, it’s taken a while to get the invitation….

  Durgin returned with a notepad, pencil behind one ear. “What’s that?” he asked, taking in the fancy card.

  Maggie smiled, dropping it back in her handbag. “Tea with the Queen, if you please.”

  “Oh, of course, Miss Tiger—or should it be Lady Tiger now? There’s a Scottish tiger cat, you know—looks like a fluffy housecat, that is, until you get too close—then the claws come out.” He blinked grayish eyes. “If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. Besides, I have news—at the London Clinic, we have a female victim named Gladys Chorley, age twenty-two, with a massive lump on her head and thirty-nine—yes, exactly thirty-nine—stab wounds.”

  Maggie inhaled sharply. “We need to talk to her!”

  “Now, hold on a tick, Lady Tiger—she’s in a coma.”

  “We can talk to her doctor—”

  “And he’ll be in tomorrow morning at eight. We can all meet up at the hospital, in the lobby, at quarter to.” Durgin was already on his way out the door.

  He stopped and turned back, face serious. “By the way, I asked after your friend,” he said to Maggie. “Bronwyn Parry.”

  Maggie’s heart beat faster. “Yes?”

  “No one with her name or fitting her description in any of the hospitals or morgues.”

  Maggie felt relief mixed with even sharper fear. “So, she might still be out there. He could have her—”

  “Look, maybe she got cold feet is all,” Durgin interrupted. “Maybe she missed her mum and went back home, or ran off with a particularly handsome Yank to Palm Beach, Florida.” He shrugged and began to walk down the hall.

  “Maybe.” Maggie considered the tall figure walking away from her. “And what does your oracle-speaking gut tell you about her?” she called.

  Durgin didn’t turn around. “That she’s still alive and she’s out there. And that we’d damn well better find her.”

  —

  The first night Brynn spent conscious in her underground cell, she lived through a wild, panicked fear. As she lay awake in the flickering candlelight, she tried to distract herself by studying the strangeness of her surroundings. Her bed was hard, and each time she turned over, she realized she could hear scratches and rustles through the walls, the occasional squeak.