Ripped, a Jack the Ripper Time-Travel Thriller

by Shelly Dickson Carr

  “All right, Miss Fowler. Let us start at the beginning,” said the coroner patiently. “Who was this man?”

  “Dunno, sir. I just knows what he looked like. Didn’ ask his name.”

  “Are we to understand that you believe you saw the individual who may have committed this terrible crime? Can you describe him for us?”

  “He was tall, and ever so thin, and looked like a gent. And he was carrying a black bag, like what a doctor lugs about when he trots off to visit sick people.”

  “A leather satchel?”

  “Tha’s it!”

  “Describe this satchel.”

  “It were made of pigskin or the like, wiff a brass key lock on the strap, you know the sort, sir. What all them doctors carry, but the handles were ever so worn. I could see finger marks on the handle as if he was gripping it right hard.” Dora was on a roll.

  “This is all new to us, Miss Fowler,” said the coroner patiently. “Let’s begin again. This gentleman that you saw with Mary Ann Nichols the night she died, what sort of clothes was he wearing?”

  “He was wearing a gentleman’s clothing. A black hat on his head. And a heavy black coat, wiff a woolen scarf round his neck. I remembers everythink very particular because I thought it was odd him wearing such a heavy coat and scarf when it was a fair warm day, wiff the sun shining and all. I had a queer feeling that maybe he was a preacher, and the scarf was covering up his collar, or such like—”

  “You said it was night time when last you spoke with the deceased. Now you tell us the sun was shining? I must say, Miss Fowler, there are several contradictions in your statement.”

  “I saw him several times! Once during the day. Once at night afore poor Mary Ann was chived! In and out of the Grey Goose Tavern they was. Seen ’em together several times all day long!”

  “Several times?” The coroner sounded dubious. “You are under the Queen’s oath, Miss Fowler.”

  “And don’t I knows it!”

  Another titter ran around the room.

  “And you took this man to be in what trade?”

  “A gentleman’s trade, to be sure. Tall and mean he was, though. Didn’t have the face of a gent, more like the face of a bricklayer, and full of scars it was, too.”

  “Again, Miss Fowler. I must remind you that you told Constable Neil that the last time you saw Mary Ann Nichols alive was the week prior.”

  “I never said that!” she cried out passionately. “I said the last time I had a proper sit-down chat wiff me best friend, Mary Ann, was a week afore. But I seen her and talked to her on the day she got chived. I swear to the almighty, or he can strike me down as I sit here. What I fink, sir, is you had better have a talkin’ to wiff your officers from Scotland Yard ’oo mixed up my words! That fat one, there”—she pointed across the room to Constable Neil—“talked to me just like the bloke from the London Star, ’oo wrote down my words in his paper, sayin’ I said things I never said. Said if I gave him a full accounting, he’d pay me right proper. But I’m not one to be making a profit from the death of my poor girl Mary Ann. Not me. I wouldn’t take a farthing. Though I did let ’im stand me solid for a warm gin at the public-house, just like I dids with that officer bloke—” Again she pointed to Constable Neil, who flushed bright scarlet.

  A peal of raucous laughter rang out, though it was quickly suppressed when Coroner Baxter gaveled for order. “In the future,” he said severely, glancing over his glasses around the room, “the good citizens of Whitechapel here today shall refrain from making noise of any kind whilst I address my witness!” He turned back to Dora, his grey fuzzy eyebrows arched in displeasure. “Have you anything further to add, Miss Fowler?”

  Dora was losing credibility with the coroner as well as with the good citizens of Whitechapel. As if sensing a shift in tactics was in order, she raised a clenched fist in the air and tilted her chin defiantly. “ ‘Course Mad Willy was lurking in the background. I done seen him skulkin’ about in the shadows.”

  “Mad Willy?”

  “Yes, sir! Mad Willy, her man!”

  “Er . . . um . . . let me see,” the coroner thumbed through his notes. “That would be William Makepeace? Her boyfriend? But you said nothing about William Makepeace being present on the day that Mary Ann died. Mr. Makepeace has an alibi—”

  “I said nothink because Mad Willy’s a mean ’un, sir. He’s the one what fisted her in the mouth. Popped poor Mary Ann a good one when he heard she was steppin’ out wiff another man. And didn’t Mary Ann herself tell me that her new fancy gent was going to do right by ’er? And now . . .” she clutched her hands theatrically to her heart. “And now . . . poor Mary Ann be brown bread ’n’ butter!” She wailed and began sobbing loudly into her balled up handkerchief.

  Another stir of excitement went round the room.

  “That will be all, Miss Fowler. Seeing as the witness is upset and has apparently begun to contradict herself due to her obvious distress, we shall ask this witness to leave the stand in order that she might collect herself.”

  Dora rose, faced the jury, and in a small but confident voice declared that Mad Willy “must’a done it!”

  The coroner told Dora to step down at once.

  Several news runners standing by the exit doors dashed out in order to get Dora’s testimony into the papers by the afternoon deadline. It appeared from the look of frustration on Coroner Baxter’s face that he was not giving credence to Dora’s sworn evidence. The next witness was much more credible.

  Katie leaned forward when Jeffrey Nichols, printer’s machinist and father of the deceased, took the witness stand. Mr. Nichols was very pale with a full beard and moustache threaded with grey, and he was wearing mourning clothes: a tall silk hat, black frock coat, black tie, and trousers of a dark material. The clothes, Toby told Katie later, must have been hired for the occasion. A printer’s machinist couldn’t afford expensive mourning attire. East Enders hired suits for weddings and funerals.

  “My daughter was given to foolish pride, God forgive her, but she didn’t deserve such a fate. Prettiest and kindest of all me nine children, and unlike her mother, my little girl was not going down the path to ruin. Mary Ann’s mother was much given to drink afore she run off with that Spitalfields tinker.”

  In his rambling testimony to his daughter’s character, Mr. Nichols took every opportunity to belittle and blame his wife who had abandoned him because she was besotted in equal measure by the gin bottle and the tinker’s man. “Had the missus been home tending to her god-given duties, my poor little Mary Ann wouldn’t have been given to foolish pride, thinkin’ herself above ’er class. Steppin’ out with gents on a regular basis. She be full of foolish pride, but there was no harm in her, no harm a’tall.”

  Jeffrey Nichols began sobbing, and Katie felt sure that his tears, unlike Dora’s, were in earnest.

  Toby leaned over and whispered, “It’s time to leave.”

  “What? Now? But—” Katie sputtered.

  “Yes, right now. Major Brown’s been staring at your boat race for a full five minutes. He’s on to us, I’ll wager. We’d best scapa flow.”

  “Scapa—?”

  “Go.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Oranges and Apples say the Bells of Whitechapel

  Outside the Working Lads Institute, Katie scurried behind Toby as they all hurriedly strode toward the carriage stand. It wasn’t easy to walk fast with her long, billowing skirt rustling over the multi-tiered underskirts and with the pillow-padded hump on her back. As they swept along, Katie tried hard to remember exactly what she had read on the plaque under the waxwork figure of Dora Fowler at Madame Tussauds. On December 1, in Birdcage Alley off Hosier Lane, within earshot of two police officers and just half a block from where her fiancé was hurrying to meet her, Dora Fowler would become Jack the Ripper’s seventh victim. Dora Fowler was famed for her talking parrots, which she trained and sold at the bird market on Clavell Street. She would be murdered six days before Lady Beatrix
.

  “He’ll strike close to midnight,” Katie said more to herself than to Collin and Toby. “And if we don’t stop him”—she glanced up at the two boys, her words muffled behind her thick veil—“Dora Fowler will die in Birdcage Alley off Hosier Lane, where she sells parakeets and parrots, on her way to meet her fiancé. Her wounds will be even more brutal than Mary Ann Nichols’s. We’ve either got to stop him dead in his tracks or warn Dora and keep her away from Birdcage Alley.” Katie shuddered just thinking about it. Was it possible to change history? Could Dora actually be saved? Was forewarned, forearmed? Or would another girl have to die in Dora’s place? You can tweak the small things, Katie, but not the big ones. Toby Becket’s words rang in her ears. Words he had spoken to Katie in the twenty-first century.

  When they slowed down at the curb, Collin shot Katie an annoyed look and in a mock-Cockney accent chortled: “I’m bleedin’ fed up wiff all this talk of Jack the Slasher! You’re giving me fair goosepimples.” In his own voice, he said, “You can’t be serious! Your visions tell you that this bloke will murder again? How is that possible? No one would cut up a girl a second time. Why would they? For what purpose? You heard Dora Fowler. She as good as said that the boyfriend, Mad Willy, did it. Why would he strike again? Surely these prophecies of yours might be wrong? And if you know that Dora Fowler is going to be murdered, you must have an inkling as to who the killer is. These clairvoyant visions of yours seem to be very selective. Mightn’t you wake up tonight, snap your fingers, and thwack! the slasher’s name will come to you?”

  “Ripper. His name is . . . or, will be . . . Jack the Ripper. That’s what the world . . . er, the newspapers are going to start calling him after he murders his next victim.”

  “So in your dreams this ne’er-do-well killer has a nickname, but no identity?” Collin persisted. “That seems odd, don’t you think? And at the inquest no one referred to anybody named Jack. Are you sure about all this, Katherine? Absolutely sure—”

  “Yes! Yes! A gazillion times, yes! I could have psychic visions until doomsday, but I still won’t be able to tell you who Jack the Ripper is. That’s why you’ve got to help me. Why we need to do this together.”

  “Like the three musketeers!” Collin shouted, punching his fist wildly in the air. “One for all, and all for one.”

  “Gawd help us.” Toby rolled his eyes.

  “But look here. Are you absolutely sure you can’t conjure this bloke up in your mind’s eye? Try it again. Go on, squeeze your eyes shut, and give it a whirl.”

  “Damn it, Collin!” Katie exploded. “How many times must I tell you? I don’t know who the Ripper is. No one will ever know unless we expose him . . . or her.”

  Collin looked dejected and a little apprehensive. “You mustn’t swear, Katie. How many times must I tell you that? It’s simply not done. Not acceptable in polite society. Not whilst you’re a guest in the Twyford household.” Collin jabbed his umbrella at a crack in the walkway and sighed heavily. “Maybe you could conduct a séance tonight. Or try now. Close your eyes and concentrate. Who knows . . .?” he muttered, shrugging his shoulders heavily.

  “Grrrrr.” Kate made a noise deep in her throat, then unhooked her heavy veil and swept it backward over the crown of her black bonnet. She scrunched up her face and closed her eyes as if in deep concentration. She counted slowly. One-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississippi. When she reached ten-Mississippi, she kept her eyes tightly shut, but said in a cackling, other-worldly voice: “The . . . only . . . vision . . . I see . . . before me”—her eyes flew open — “is you!”

  Collin stepped back, startled.

  “Boo!” she shouted.

  Collin turned white.

  Katie laughed. “The only faces I saw when I closed my eyes were yours and Toby’s. Unless you two are in cahoots as cold-blooded murderers, you’ll have to take my word for it that I haven’t got a clue who the real killer is.”

  A flush of crimson spread across Collin’s cheekbones and long, freckled nose.

  “That’s not bleedin’ funny!” Collin bellowed.

  Toby stepped between the two and glared at Katie. “If indeed you possess the gift of inner sight,” he said through clenched teeth, “you’ll be struck down cold if you abuse it, or use it to frighten others. That’s what Cockneys believe. Making fun of others using clairvoyance is like dangling a dead fish in a bloke’s face—do it once too often and you’ll end up tugging fish scales out of that thick skull of yours.”

  Toby strode off down the street. Katie realized, as she watched the color flood back into Collin’s face, that being thought of as clairvoyant in an age where superstitions ran rampant, provoked a nerve-racking fear in Collin, and maybe Toby, too. People were still jailed here for practicing witchcraft. Katie would have to tread more carefully. Her sense of humor was definitely not appreciated.

  As Collin was still looking queasy, Katie gently touched his arm, but when she did so, he visibly flinched. She immediately told him she was sorry. “I was only kidding around, Collin. Of course, I didn’t see your face or Toby’s. And I promise you, I can’t now, nor will I ever be able to conjure up the identity of the killer. Once I have a vision about something, I can’t have another,” she assured him, making it all up.

  Collin grunted. “Is that like once you’ve had typhoid fever, you can never get it again?” he asked, furling and unfurling his umbrella and moving slowly down the brick lane.

  “I don’t know anything about typhoid.” The only thing Katie could remember about the disease was something about a woman named Typhoid Mary who infected dozens of people in New York City.

  “But I do know this,” Katie continued, taking his elbow and scurrying alongside him, trying to match him stride for stride and failing miserably in her cumbersome skirt. “Jack the Ripper will strike again unless we stop him. And if we don’t find out who he is, no one else on the planet will ever discover his real identity. He’ll go down in history as the most notorious, unidentified killer in British history.”

  “Are you telling me that this mystery man can continue to slit throats all over London and the police will never catch him?”

  Katie nodded and apologized again for having spooked him.

  “You didn’t frighten me, Katie, you startled the living daylights out of me!” Collin was laughing. “Whatever possessed you?”

  “Gallows humor, I guess. But honestly, Collin, why in the world would you think I thought you were the killer?” Katie inclined her head, then it was her turn to be startled.

  “Not me,” Collin whispered. “I know I’m not this Ripper bloke.” He lowered his voice even more, “I thought you meant . . . Toby.”

  “What?” Katie gasped. She raised her eyes and stared at Toby’s retreating back as he stepped off the curb and strode across the cobbled street.

  “Toby has a way with the girls. Especially East End girls. Of course, I know Toby didn’t do it. But when you pointed your finger at me . . . for half an instant I thought . . .” his voice drifted away. “You are haunting my thoughts with all your mumbo-jumbo supernatural visions. What if you’re right? What if these other girls are murdered by the same person? I tell you, Katie, it half scares me to death. I couldn’t sleep last night. I woke up in a fair sweat. I wish it was me. I wish I was the killer so I could tell you no other girls will die. But that’s not going to happen, is it? These other girls you mentioned, and Dora Fowler, are going to die, aren’t they?”

  “Not if we can stop Jack the Ripper.”

  “That’s it, then. We can’t let Jack the Ripper slice up Dora Fowler or anyone else.”

  Katie nodded as together they stepped off the curb. “Toby! Wait-ho!” Collin called out, tap-tapping the cobbled road in front of him with his umbrella as if it were a blind man’s cane. “Hold still. What’s your hurry?”

  Toby slowed down and when they finally caught up with him, Collin asked why he was in such a dashed-darn hurry. Toby’s voice was stiff with emotion when he answere
d.

  “I want to find Georgie Cross before the bluebottles drag him in front of a magistrate and lock him behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  “What’s a bluebottle?” Katie asked.

  “A large buzzing blowfly,” Collin explained, “that lays its eggs in decaying plants and animal matter. It’s also the name of a blue cornflower. But, in this case, it’s the Cockney name for the police.”

  “Because of the blue uniforms they wear?”

  “No. Because Cockneys don’t trust the police. It’s a derogatory term.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would calling a police officer a blue fly be derogatory?”

  Toby shot Katie a sour look. “Because they cluster around criminals like bluebottle flies around a festering sore.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  No. 29 Hanbury Street, site of the second murder

  The long line of attached row houses on Hanbury Street, where Georgie Cross lived with his grandmother, rose up into the London sky like a steep, pockmarked cliff. Bird droppings and loose bricks gave the once beautiful eighteenth-century facades an air of nineteenth-century neglect.

  And though the pilasters flanking the front doors showed decay, and the ornamental fretwork had long since been cut up for firewood, the Cockneys who lived on Hanbury were hardworking and respectable. At No. 29, in the middle of the street, the stoop had been newly scrubbed and the front door glistened with a fresh coat of shiny black paint. The heavy bronze doorknocker was so highly polished it glinted in the afternoon sun.

  It was half-past three in the afternoon when Toby, Collin, and Katie began wending their way down Hanbury, leaving the Duke’s carriage parked two blocks away on Brick Lane. All along the street dozens of children were jumping rope, tossing jacks, and playing hop-the-stone, their gleeful cries filling the air. The girls wore starched, white pinafores; the boys, knickers and paddle-boat jackets. And though their clothes showed patches and mending, none of the children were barefoot or wore rags, except for one boy with a deformed leg, who hobbled with a wooden crutch.