by Tessa Harris
Flo, on the other hand, never goes to St. Jude’s, like Ma and me, although Ma says she needs to start going, otherwise the vicar won’t let her wed her Danny in church.
I’m just about to stir my stumps when suddenly there’s a hammering on our door. Flo throws off the blanket from over her tousled head. “Who the bleeding hell is that? Don’t they know it’s the Sabbath?!”
Then we hear an urgent voice. “Flo! Flo, it’s me, Sally!”
“What the f . . . !” Flo scrambles out of bed, pulls up the sash and sticks her head out of the window. “Sal!” she cries as soon as she sees her friend waiting outside. “What the fuck you doin’?”
“I’ll have none of that dirty talk, my gal!” Ma calls through.
I join Flo at the window. Sally Richardson can’t stand still. She’s dancing around like a Hottentot. “There’s been two more!” she shouts up.
A sash on the opposite side of the street is thrown open. “Two more murders?” shouts Mrs. Puddiphatt.
Sally, liking the attention, cups her hands to her mouth to proclaim the news. “Two more bleeding murders overnight!” she yells at the top of her voice.
“Wait up!” hollers Flo. “We’ll be down in a jiffy!”
Soon Flo is a tangle of stockings and petticoats and laces and pins. She can’t find her boots and her hair’s a right mess, but she gets dressed as if her life depends on it, and then she sees me. I’m just sitting on the bed, watching, and she gets angry. “Hurry it up, Con!” she snaps.
“What if I don’t want to come?” I reply.
She’s got one arm in the sleeve of her coat, but she stops, like she can’t believe her ears. “Don’t want to come? But, Con, why ever not?” She’s looking at me with those puppy eyes of hers that she sometimes uses on Danny.
My objections suddenly melt away. I can’t tell her that I don’t want to come because of a nightmare. I shake my head. “If I must,” I tell her, and her face splits into a broad smile before she rushes to the window.
“Give us another tick, Sal!” she tells her waiting friend. But she needn’t worry. Sally’s being kept busy by the neighbors who are huddling round her, wanting to be kept up to date with all the momentous news.
It’s another five minutes before I’m ready and we make our way toward Duke Street. I can tell straightaway that something’s wrong. I count four or five coppers and see there’s a huddle of people standing by Church Passage. Flo’s eyes are open wide and I just feel sick. She grabs hold of an old woman passing.
“Where’s the murders?” she asks her.
The old biddy throws a look over to Duke Street. “One of them was in Mitre Square,” she says, showing the blackened stumps of her teeth. “Cut her guts out, ’e did,” she says, beaming.
Her words break my dream. I feel like I’m going to swoon and stagger a little on the pavement. My legs start to buckle and I have to steady myself against a wall.
“You all right, Con?” Flo asks. “You look ever so pale.”
“My dream,” I gasp.
“Yer what?”
I mumble my reply: “I had a dream there was a murder, right here in Duke Street.” Luckily, she does not hear.
The murders are the talk of Whitechapel. With it being a Sunday, there’s no newspapers, but word has spread, all right. And not just round the East End. By the afternoon, there’s omnibuses and carriages coming in from the West End and beyond, disgorging hundreds of people at a time to see where he’s claimed his latest victims. It’s like they’re tourists, all eager for a good day out. The Jews have set up their stalls again, only they’re not happy. It’s said that they found a piece of Catherine Eddowes’s apron in an alley off Goulston Street and above the spot, written on the wall in chalk, was something against the Yids: The Juwes are not the men who will be blamed for nothing. That’s what it said, or something like that. Anyway, the coppers rubbed it off before it caused any trouble. No one wants the Jews to riot. But it makes you wonder, don’t it? He’s so sick and twisted. They’ve got to catch him soon, haven’t they?
CHAPTER 9
Monday, October 1, 1888
EMILY
I find myself in Whitehall, just by Big Ben. I can hear its chimes, but I cannot see the tower. It is barely light and a ghostly mist is rising from the river, making it even harder for ordinary people to see. But, of course, I see everything. I am standing on the banks of the Thames at Whitehall. My grandfather was a member of Parliament, so the vicinity is well-known to me. The plot where I find myself was originally earmarked for a new opera house, and I remember how excited Grandpapa had been at the time. Then later, how angry he was to hear that cultural excellence was to be sacrificed to the more mundane requirements of the Metropolitan Police. The building site is to be their new headquarters.
I watch the burly man, a carpenter by trade, and his companion as they collect their tools from their usual hiding place. They’re behind some boards that have been laid across one of the many vaults that run like veins below ground on the Scotland Yard plot. Theft is all too common on the building site and the men often come up with ingenious ways to conceal their precious hammers and chisels from the errant grasp of their fellow workers. On this particular morning, as the carpenter reaches into the blackness for his tools, he feels something soft on the ledge. Striking up a match, he squints into the half-light and can just about discern a large parcel wedged up tight in a niche against the wall. He scratches his graying head in thought and glances up toward his waiting companion, who is whistling tunelessly through gappy gums. He needs to get on, so he grabs his bag and sets off to start work on the floors above, giving scant thought to his discovery. Little does he know that the parcel’s contents are about to put all of London, if not the entire country, into even more of a frenzy.
CONSTANCE
We stay close to home today. Two murders within an hour of each other! He’s the Devil Incarnate! Our nerves are rattled and jangling like a jailer’s keys. I wasn’t keen on flogging all the way to Covent Garden, and Ma says we needn’t go farther than Farringdon. So I’m not selling and we’re just biding our time. I distract a geezer and Flo lifts his wallet early on and the two notes inside will keep us going till the end of the month, so we’re feeling pleased with ourselves. But all that changes as soon as we see the Daily News. The newsboy has arrived at the corner of Farringdon Street not two minutes before. He’s laden with the first edition. Soon he’s donning his sandwich board and pacing up and down the pavement, shouting at the top of his lungs. At first, we can’t see what it says on his board, or hear what he’s calling. The clip-clop of hooves drowns out his cries, but whatever it is, it’s drawing in the punters. Soon people are jostling to buy their copies and I look at Flo with a frown. Without a word, we join the scramble and soon I catch sight of the headlines and realize what all the palaver is about. Flo glares at me and I know what I must do. With my basket braced like a shield, I barge into the throng and bump into a clerk who’s carrying a folded newspaper under his arm.
“Will you mind where you’re going?” I says, all hoity, and I sniff the air like a French poodle. Meanwhile, Flo has relieved the gentleman of his copy without him catching hide or hair of her and it’s mission accomplished.
“Well?” Flo is ratty. She gets ratty when she’s nervous and she’s registered the look of panic on my face.
“It’s full of it,” I tell her. I call out the headlines as if I’m reading from a menu card in a fancy restaurant. “‘Shocking mutilation of a body. Exciting scenes.’ ”
“Exciting scenes?” Flo raises an eyebrow and gives a long whistle. Danny has taught her how. Even she thinks that’s a bit rich when two women have been butchered for some sick pervert’s pleasure.
My eyes race down the columns, over the residents’ lurid accounts and the paper’s own opinion on the matter, to read about an arrest.
“An arrest?” echoes Flo.
I clear my throat to read the first sentence aloud. “ ‘Yesterday morni
ng a tall, dark man wearing an American hat entered a lodging-house in Union-street, known as Albert-chambers.’ ” I tell her that his fellow lodgers thought he was acting dodgy, so the duty keeper called the cops. “‘On the arrival of the officer the stranger was questioned as to his recent wanderings, but he could give no intelligible account of them, though he said he had spent the previous night on Blackfriars Bridge. He was conveyed to Stone’s End Police-station, Blackman-street, Borough, ’ ” I say. But the account doesn’t fool us.
“Don’t prove nothing,” Flo says with a shrug. Despite a moment’s hope that the fiend was behind bars, the respite is short-lived.
“Oh, my Gawd!” I blurt out a second later.
“What is it?” Flo crowds in on me, shoving her head in my view. I push her away, but my mouth’s so dry the words are like ashes on my tongue. I’m trying to read what it says. “He’s sent a letter,” I tell her.
“A letter?” She looks back at the newssheet and I notice my hands are starting to shake. “Sent to the Central News Agency, it was. Written in red ink.” Or is it blood, I ask myself.
“What’s he say?” She’s as keen as mustard to know what he’s written. They’ve published all of it, every word of evil, every syllable of hatred. So I read it out loud, and as I do so, I hear my voice is spiked with shock.
“ ‘Dear Boss,’ ” I begin. “ ‘I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won’t fix me just yet.’ ” I look up and see the fear creep across Flo’s face as I read the rest of the sick diatribe. But there’s more. “He’s given himself a name, and all,” I tell her.
“A name?” Puzzled, Flo stiffens her neck.
“Signs himself Jack the Ripper, he does.”
“Jack the Ripper,” she wheezes, as if repeating the name robs her of her own breath. In our heads, we can both hear him say it.
EMILY
So today, murder has a new name. Of course, it’s nothing new around Whitechapel. It lurks down pinched alleys and in dark courtyards. It lies on the cobbles in the fetid slums, and crouches behind locked doors and in filthy rented rooms. But now it’s been given a macabre immortality. Thanks to Scotland Yard’s publication of the letter, the Whitechapel murders will live on in the imagination of the public for many years to come. From this day forth, the name Jack the Ripper will strike fear into the hearts of everyone who hears it. And that is exactly what he wants.
CONSTANCE
We’re not late home that night. Early, in fact, and Ma, peering out at us from under a rag over a hot bowl of friar’s balsam, is glad to see us back. She frets for us a lot these days.
“Thank the Lord,” she says when she sees us, patting the condensed steam from her face. “I don’t like you two dillydallying.” The balsam eases her breathing, but the moisture’s made the front of her hair all frizzy. “Worries the life out of me, it does, you being out with that monster on the streets.”
Just then, there’s a knock at the door and she jumps, even though she’s expecting Mr. Bartleby again. He bumbles in, all wrapped up against the cold in a big brown coat, with the collar turned up, and a bowler hat.
“ ’Evening, ladies,” he says, wiping his feet on the doormat and his nose with the back of his hand. His gold rings flash in the lamplight.
Flo and me smile politely. Even though he’s got his faults, we’re glad he’s come. It makes us feel safer having him in the house. We’re all on edge and Mr. Bartleby knows it. There’s a copy of the Star under his arm, but he looks at the table and sees we’ve already got one.
“Couldn’t wait, eh?” he says.
Ma shakes her head. “Such a terrible business. It’s just not safe round here, Harold.” She hardly ever calls him by his Christian name in front of us. She’s rubbing her thumb with her forefinger, making it sore. It’s a sure sign her nerves are getting the better of her.
Mr. Bartleby, on the other hand, looks like the cat that got the cream. He’s grinning from ear to ear. He says: “Have no fear, ladies. All will be well.”
So Ma blurts out: “Have they caught ’im? Have they?”
Mr. Bartleby shakes his jet-black head, but he’s still beaming. He takes off his hat and coat and hangs them on the peg near the door and replies like he owns the place. “It won’t be long now, Mrs. P. Not with me on the case,” he says.
“You?” cries Flo. There’s scorn in her voice, more than is seemly to show.
Ma scowls at her, and Mr. Bartleby suddenly looks like a nipper that’s been punched in the playground.
“What’s happened?” asks Ma, trying to rescue his pride.
It seems to do the trick. He draws himself up and clears his throat, like he’s going to make some big announcement. And he does, of sorts. “I’ve only been appointed to the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee.”
That’s the committee formed by George Lusk, the builder, after Annie Chapman copped it. They set up the patrols on the streets. There’s other tradesmen that are members, too—carpenters and grocers, all full of their own self-importance. Mr. Bartleby’s in good company there, all right. He’s with his own kind.
“How come?” Flo says, although I’m pleased that this time her tone is a little softer. Even so, his face drops. He turns to us. He’s waiting for Ma and me to say something. The silence makes me want to cringe, but Ma steps up after a second or two.
“That’s wonderful news,” she says. I can tell that smile of hers is forced. “Congratulations, Harold.” Her voice is all funny and stiff.
Mr. Bartleby’s face has lifted a little now and he sticks out his stomach and pulls back his shoulders. “They, or should I say, we, ”—he throws Ma a gleeful smile—“want to offer a reward.”
“A reward?” echoes Flo.
“They want to put up fifty quid for information that leads to the butcher’s arrest.”
“And they asked you for the old spondulicks?” Flo has the measure of him.
He huffs a little. “Indeed, they did.” He seems proud they touched him for a quid or two. “George Lusk, he says to me, ‘How about a pound, Harry?’ And I says, ‘I’m willing, George, just as long as you’ll let me on your committee.’ ” He chuckles.
“So you bought your way in?” Flo just can’t leave it alone.
“Now, look here. . . .” Old Bartleby’s at the end of his tether.
“Hold your tongue, young lady!” snaps Ma.
Mr. Bartleby stiffens his neck and nods by way of thanks. “My first meeting’s tomorrow night, and I’ll get on this evil maniac’s trail.” He throws Ma a smile and hooks his thumbs under his braces. “I’ll have the fiend behind bars in no time at all.” He rocks back on his heels, wanting to look like a copper. But Flo and me know he’s just a plonker. A well-meaning one, maybe. But a plonker, nonetheless.
Ma returns the smile a little awkwardly as he draws close to her. She doesn’t have as much faith in him as he has in himself. None of us does.
CHAPTER 10
Tuesday, October 2, 1888
CONSTANCE
Today we’re in Whitehall. Jim Dylan, the old joker, said he’d a load of timber to take to a building site at New Scotland Yard, so Flo and me got a lift on the back of his cart. We had to listen to his terrible jokes all the way there. “I had a thought the other day, ladies,” he said, all serious like. “Then it got lonely!” He cracked up laughing and Flo giggled. I just smiled politely. It was like that all the way there.
You can’t go to the same patch too often in our line of work. Old Bill always keeps a lookout for our sort, but maybe now with the murders, he’ll have his eyes open for Jack the Ripper, too. Still, you can’t be too careful.
It was a right bumpy ride from the City, I can tell you. The Strand was busy, too. A wagon had shed its load of barrels and that didn’t help, neither. It’s a good job I’ve put my Pa’s old vest on, too. Winter’s arrived early this year and I’m wearing my mittens for the first time. And the cold doesn’t do Flo’s chest no good, neither. Ma says she’ll cough her guts o
ut one of these days. She’s a fine one to talk!
Anyway, it’s after midday when we arrive and we plant ourselves by the Houses of Parliament, near the river. We reckon the toffs round here might buy a flower or two for their wives—or mistresses—and be touched for a few shillings, or a pocket watch, while we’re about it. We get to work.
Business is slow at first, but it soon picks up and Flo’s nimble fingers are kept very busy. There’s an old dear, blind as a bat, with her butler, who stops to sniff my roses. So while she’s making up her mind about which one smells the sweetest, Flo gets to work and relieves the geezer of a bob or two from the butler’s purse. He doesn’t even notice anything’s missing when he comes to pay. After them, there’s a young couple. So in love, they are, that they only have eyes for each other. They don’t see Flo helping herself to a crown when the girl’s choosing her bloom. Sometimes I wonder how she has the heart.
EMILY
I have returned to Whitehall, to the Scotland Yard building site, to watch events unfold. The carpenter I saw yesterday, who goes by the name of Frederick Windborn, happened to mention his strange find to his foreman, one William Brown. Mr. Brown is a curious fellow, so during a break for lunch, he asks to be shown the parcel. Together the two men stoop low into the vault and Brown is immediately struck by the smell.
“A bit of old bacon?” ventures Windborn, reaching for the large packet. He hauls it down from the shelf, disturbing a few feasting flies as he does so. Brown is not so sure. He watches with growing anxiety as the full horror of the contents slowly reveals itself to them. Wrapped in old newspaper and material and secured by various lengths of string, it soon becomes apparent that the “old bacon” is, in fact, human flesh. The two men have accidentally stumbled upon the naked torso of a woman.