by Tessa Harris
CHAPTER 13
Sunday, October 7, 1888
EMILY
I’m in Green Park in Mayfair, watching poor, dear Pauline. If only she knew. If only I could tell her. The autumn leaves are starting to fall and now and again a gust of wind sets them in a flurry. There’s a bite to the air. It’s not the time to loiter, but she sits on a bench, clutching one of the last letters I ever sent her. Despite the cold, she’s reading it and smiling and crying at the same time. Past events, both happy and not so happy, meld into one long memory, like a photograph in a frame, to make a complete picture of a life. She remembers me with deep fondness. It is important for us to be remembered, as if the very act of remembrance keeps us alive. The trouble is, when what has happened is uncertain, then the picture becomes blurred.
“Emily.” She whispers my name in a long, deep sigh. When she inquired about me at St. Jude’s the other day, she was told, like Constance had been, that I had left without leaving a forwarding address. She has evoked my name out loud, and I feel her thoughts reach out to me, like a gentle breeze that ruffles reeds. I know what I must do. But before that, there is so much more to impart, not to Constance, not yet, nor indeed to Pauline, but to you.
I’ll take you back to April of this year. Sunday in Whitechapel could by no means be regarded as a day of rest; although for most, it still held religious significance, even if not a Christian one. As there were barely any parks or open spaces in this part of London, its inhabitants would take to the streets on a Sunday. Since all the shops were closed, too, there was little to do but stroll in the open air. The roadway was filled with horse-drawn vehicles and the footways were crowded with huddles of people talking. However, if you passed by, you would notice that the language they were speaking would, in all probability, not be English. Whitechapel to the average Englishman was becoming a foreign land. It was evolving into a refuge for Jews. They came from all over Europe: from Poland and Galicia, from Russia and Germany. In fact, they come to Whitechapel from every country where they have been persecuted and hounded out because of their race. For the most part, they are welcomed here, blending in with the indigenous population, while strictly observing their own customs. Their behavior is generally good. Drunkenness among the men is not common and there is little aggression toward women. On the whole, they are a sober, industrious people. Being aliens in faith and speech they are, of course, not under any obligation to observe the Christian Sabbath. Yet, they take this opportunity to see to it that their children are even better versed in the ways of their religion. The attendance at Jewish Sunday schools is fast becoming the envy of many a Christian parish. Thousands of Jewish boys and girls regularly attend these classes and their promotion is rightly seen as ensuring the future of Judaism in London, at the very least.
As I mentioned before, by contrast, our own Sunday school at St. Jude’s was a paltry, halfhearted affair. Attendance was declining and, it seemed to me, there was a general antipathy toward the religious education of young girls and boys. For years, the Sunday school at St. Jude’s had been run by a small committee headed by one Mrs. Hilda Parker-Smythe. I’d had some success running a literacy group for women, and Reverend Barnett felt that my experience might bring fresh impetus to the classes. He, therefore, asked Mrs. Parker-Smythe to allow me to take a regular lesson. By reputation, she was a prickly woman and very set in her ways; and although the committee passed my appointment, she, herself, seemed most reluctant to accept me. Our first meeting certainly reinforced the rumors I had heard. Politely and gently, without wishing to tread on anyone’s toes, I began my classes in March.
I first became aware of Dr. Melksham’s presence after a class in April. Mrs. Parker-Smythe had told me of his arrival. He was the representative of a great benefactor—a titled gentleman, I was told, and had come as his agent to see that the money he’d donated was being well-spent. A dapper-dressed man, in late middle age, his silver hair was brushed back from a thin, narrow face, which was cut in two by a razor-sharp moustache, waxed at the edges. That first Sunday afternoon he was greeted, very cordially, I noted, by Mrs. Parker-Smythe and directed to take a pew at the back of the church. From here, he could watch my pupils recite various passages from the Bible. Constance and I were teaching them about St. John’s Gospel and the children took turns to deliver the particular verses they had been asked to study. They did so with different degrees of ability—some hesitant and shy; others, like Molly Deakin, with a pleasing confidence. Anxious that our guest should be impressed by my students’ efforts, I was glad to see a smile on his face at the end of the lesson.
As the pupils filed out of the church past him, under his watchful gaze, I approached him, hoping to be introduced by Mrs. Parker-Smythe, who was standing nearby. When I caught his eye, he granted me a polite nod, but that was all. Mrs. Parker-Smythe clearly had no intention of introducing us. Instead, she guided him away from me and into the vestry, closing the door firmly behind her. I was put in my place. Now I know why.
CHAPTER 14
Monday, October 8, 1888
CONSTANCE
They’re burying Catherine Eddowes today. She was the one they found in Mitre Square with the tip of her nose sliced off and slits cut into her eyelids. Only the other night, an artist took it upon himself to chalk pictures of the victims’ bodies on the pavement. Drew a big crowd, they did. For a few halfpence, you could round off your Saturday night’s entertainment with the sight of women’s innards all ripped out. It’s not my idea of a good time, but Flo was all for it. She and Danny were there, elbowing their way to the front to catch a butcher’s of the squalid cartoons in all their ghoulish detail.
So it’s no surprise that while Ma wants to go and pay her respects, Flo just wants to see the crowds and lap up the atmosphere. If they still hanged criminals in public, she’d have been at the front of the mob. But this is a funeral—the funeral of Jack the Ripper’s fifth victim—so the world and his wife will come out, and Flo is never one to miss the chance to lift a few souvenirs of the occasion. I decide to go with her, not to ogle and gloat, but to mourn in a dignified way, the way Miss Tindall would mourn.
Miss Tindall. She wasn’t at church on Sunday, neither. I asked a few people if they knew where she was—old Mrs. Grimthorpe and Timmy Porter, who’s always got his grubby fingers on the pulse, but no one had seen her for the past six weeks, not since just before Martha Tabram was murdered, come to think of it. Not since Jack chose his first victim. A horrible thought suddenly lands in my head. No, I tell myself. I’m just being foolish. My mind flashes back to the vaults near the Thames and to the wheelbarrow with the remains in it, and a terrible wail rises from somewhere deep inside me. It catches in my throat, but I manage to cough it back.
“You all right, Con?” asks Flo. I stare unseeing into the speckled looking glass I’m polishing above the hearth in the front room.
“Yes,” I say quietly. I see the girl in the mirror give a tight smile. “Yes,” I repeat, more convincingly, I hope, this time. But I am not.
Later that morning, we dig out all the black clothes we can muster. Flo says she wants to show willing. Ma and me—or rather Ma and I—have got black bonnets and Flo’s in her black jacket with its fake-fur black trim. She flings a black boa over her shoulder as well. It’s too showy, but my lips remain shut tight. I think she knows that I find her ways a bit vulgar at times. When I see her act like that, it’s as if there’s a stone in my shoe and I want to be rid of it. Her manners are beginning to irk me. I don’t want us to grow apart, but I fear we are.
Just after one o’clock, we join a steady stream of people heading for the City Mortuary in Golden Lane. Everyone’s keen to give poor Kate a good send-off as the cortege leaves for the cemetery at Ilford. I glance up to see the windows and roofs of the buildings on the route rammed with gawpers. It’s a big do. There’s a fancy hearse, a mourning coach with her relatives and friends inside, and a brougham with the newspapermen. One of her sisters lays a lovely wreath on the pol
ished coffin as it’s placed in the hearse. Real touching, it is. Course I didn’t know her, but it don’t stop me from welling up. I just hope she didn’t know much about it when it happened. Let’s pray she’s in a better place now, away from the dark, dirty alleys of Whitechapel, enjoying the light.
* * *
Even Flo is quiet when we arrive back home later that afternoon. It wasn’t the big party she was expecting. It was quite sad, really; just how a funeral should be. No one deserves to die like that. Catherine Eddowes might have been treated like scum in life, but at least in death, people gave her a bit of dignity. Miss Tindall says that every human being should have certain rights, no matter their religion or the color of their skin, or whether they’re rich or poor, man or woman. It seems to me that a good few politicians haven’t heard that yet. Maybe it’s time they did.
EMILY
What a sad affair these funerals are: an earthly show of both pomp and sorrow for those departed. Better to bury our bodies under trees so that we can at least feed the soil as we decay. In death, we should nourish those still in life.
Reflecting today on Catherine Eddowes’s short, tragic time on earth has inevitably led me to think about my own. Do I regret what I did? Of course. I was shortsighted, selfish, if you like. But I was also desperate. I could see no other way. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but even now—now that I have the gift of it—I am not certain how I could have done things differently. I felt like a cornered animal. I suppose I could have put my head in the sand. I could have kept quiet, not raised questions. But it was not in my nature to remain silent when I suspected that something was so terribly wrong. As it turned out, my initial suspicions were grounded. I was right all along, but no one would believe me; or if they did, they were too afraid to add their voice to mine and speak out about the wickedness that was being perpetrated under their very noses.
* * *
I know Pauline would’ve believed me. As Constance watches a funeral procession a few miles away, Pauline Beaufroy sits straight-backed at the Sessions House in Westminster. The place is packed to the rafters. The great, the good and the darn-right evil are all eager to hear the lurid details of the Whitehall torso at the opening of the inquest. It does not surprise me to see Pauline amongst them. Her visit to her brother-in-law has done nothing to allay her fears about her sister’s whereabouts. If anything, it has compounded them. After she had drawn a blank at St. Jude’s, she decided to return home to Sussex, but with the discovery of this new victim in Whitehall, her fears for Geraldine have turned into anguish. So she has returned to London and I watch her as she sits, notebook and pencil in hand, jotting down various facts.
The coroner, John Troutbeck, seems capable enough, given that his witnesses are of very little help. They are comprised of the workmen on the site; the foreman and several laborers can add nothing of any value to the proceedings. In fact, it is only when Dr. Bond, the medical examiner, takes the stand, that evidence of any import comes to light. Pauline starts scribbling frantically as he speaks. His examination of the torso has uncovered several interesting facts. For example, he estimates the woman was well-nourished and of mature age—twenty-four or twenty-five years, perhaps. She would have been tall, with fair skin and dark hair. The date of death would have been from six weeks to two months ago, and the decomposition occurred in the air, not the water. Most crucially to the press, her uterus has been removed. Jack has struck again, or so it seems.
“Was there anything to indicate the cause of death?” asks Mr. Troutbeck.
Dr. Bond shakes his head. “Nothing whatever.”
“Could you tell whether death was sudden or lingering?” presses the coroner.
The doctor pauses thoughtfully before his reply. “All I can say is that death was not by suffocation or drowning. Most likely, it was from hemorrhage or fainting.”
Next the coroner asks about the woman’s possible height.
“From our measurements,” replies Bond, deferring to his colleague Mr. Hebbert, seated nearby, “we believed the height to have been five feet eight inches. That opinion depends more upon the measurements of the arm than those of the trunk itself.”
Ah, yes, the arm. This limb, I should tell you, was uncovered several days previously on the shore of the Thames at Pimlico. Once joined to the torso, it was, according to Dr. Bond, “a refined hand” and one not used to manual labor.
“Was the woman stout?” asks Mr. Troutbeck.
“Not very stout, but thoroughly plump; fully developed, but not abnormally fat,” comes the reply. She has not borne any children.
I listen intently to what he has to say. He impresses me. Yet, it is not enough. He also states that the adhesions to one of the dead woman’s lungs indicate severe pleurisy at some stage. Despite such helpful analysis, however, Mr. Troutbeck seems just as baffled as everyone else as to how the torso arrived on the scene in the first place. Exasperated, he adjourns the inquest for two weeks.
No doubt Constance will be keen to read an account of this initial session, news of which will be plastered all over tomorrow’s scandal sheets. Their accounts, I’m sure, will only fuel her fears.
CONSTANCE
So we’re sitting by a fire that’s just clinging onto life like a sickly child. We haven’t lit the candles and the room’s all gloomy, like our moods. Flo’s made us all a brew. We sip the tea in our own wordless worlds, and no one mentions food. For once, none of us is hungry. It’s like the sorrow of the afternoon’s events and the fear that lies below it have hollowed us out inside, and we’re not ready to be filled again. We’re just lost in our own thoughts. Ma’s chest is bad. It always is when she’s upset or tense; and for a little while, the only sound to be heard is her wheezing, like a kettle on the hob, and the odd tinny rattle.
Eventually her breathing steadies and after a while she says she’ll go up to bed. Flo and I are left alone. It’s that cold that we’re still wearing our coats and Flo draws her chair closer to mine. At first, I think she just wants to keep warm, but then I see her reach into her jacket pocket.
“I heard two old fellas talking about the body in Whitehall,” she tells me in a half whisper. She cocks her head over to the door to make sure Ma isn’t there. “The Whitehall Mystery, they call it,” she says to me, and she pulls out a square of newspaper. She draws the lamp near so that its faint light falls on her hands and starts to unfold a page of today’s Star.
I don’t bother to ask where she got the bit of newspaper from. All I’m interested in is the headline: WHITEHALL DISCOVERY.
“Well,” she says, nudging me impatiently after a moment.
I look up at her with a frown. “It says they’re looking for a toff,” I tell her.
“A toff,” she repeats, then scans the newspaper again, as if she can understand the letter.
I read verbatim, as Miss Tindall would say: “ ‘Rumor at times like these invariably gets in advance of truth, but in what are known as Government circles highly sensational revelations are anticipated.’ ”
Flo is staring at me, openmouthed. “What’s that mean?”
“It means they think someone important did it,” I tell her, but my eyes are already straining to read the next few sentences. “They’ve found more bones at Guildford,” I say. My voice dips as I conclude: “But they belong to a bear.” My forefinger flies up: “ ‘and therefore have no relation to the human remains found at Westminster.’ ”
Flo’s shoulders slouch. She seems disappointed. She thought she was onto some juicy new revelation and she turns her face to the shadows. But it’s the last sentence in the report that suddenly catches my eye. I don’t bother to read it out loud. I read it only to myself. It says: A feature in the case of the discovery of the mutilated body at Whitehall is the number of missing women brought to the notice of the authorities by persons making inquiries respecting the remains. A cold shiver again. How can it be that so many women are missing? The terrible thought seizes me by the throat once more. Could Miss Tindal
l be one of them?
CHAPTER 15
Tuesday, October 9, 1888
CONSTANCE
We’re up with the larks as usual. But today our plan is different. Because they’re digging the tramway along Commercial Street, it’s causing chaos on the footways, especially in the mornings when everyone’s rushing to work. All herding together like cows, they are. Some carriages are even dropping off their well-heeled passengers at the end of the road to avoid the diversions. Therefore, Flo and I have been and got some white carnations for gents’ buttonholes. We reckon they’ll go down well with City types. “A bloom to brighten your day, sir!” I say with a smile. Some of the swells fall for it. They think they’re only parting with a penny, but there’ll be a fair few bankers who find they’ve “mislaid” their wallets before they get to work if Flo has her way. They’ll be so distracted by the navvies and the cranes that they won’t notice her fingers in their pockets.
After market, we come back home for a brew before we start work. That’s when Ma asks me. Wheezing like a steam train, she is, and I see that she’s been rubbing her thumb again to make it bleed. She sits down with us at the table. I pour good, strong cups for us all and Flo slices the bread, which has already started to go moldy. The tea soon seems to perk the old girl up, and after a moment or two, she’s back smiling again when we tell her our plan for the day. Then I see her fixing me with her weather eye. She looks a bit cheeky, more like Flo than usual, and she says to me, “Madame Morelli’s holding a special do tonight.”