by Tessa Harris
I put down my cup. “What sort of do?” I ask.
Ma leans forward, her bosom propped on the table. “She’s hired out the concert room at the back of the Frying Pan. She’s going to try and contact the dead women.”
Flo slaps a thick slice of bread onto a plate and pulls a face at Ma. “What? You’re having a laugh!” she snorts.
I know she’s not. There’s lots of phonies jumping on the bandwagon at the moment. Only in yesterday’s Star, I read of a séance up north in Bolton, where the medium described Jack as looking like a farmer. She says he’ll be caught in the act of committing another murder.
For a moment, Ma looks a little wounded; then she shifts in her seat and gazes into her teacup. “Madame Morelli says that if anyone can reach the dead gals, she can, so she’s going to try and get in touch with Dark Annie and Long Liz Stride and the others.”
Flo’s expression suddenly turns and she nods thoughtfully. “She’ll make a killing out of that,” she mutters. Then realizing what she’s just said, she lets out a little laugh. “If you’ll pardon the pun,” she adds.
Ma turns to me and reaches for my hand that’s holding my cup up to my mouth. “You’ll come with me, won’t ya, love?” I feel her fingers, cold and rough against my warm skin.
She’s not quite pleading, but I couldn’t say “no” to her, could I? I forgo my sip of tea for a moment. “Of course, I will,” I say with a smile, but I immediately regret it.
EMILY
The Whitehall inquest has left Pauline in a most fearful state. She decides, therefore, to pay a second visit to her brother-in-law—only this time, she is in a less forgiving mood. I can tell from the set of her jaw and the precision of her gait as she climbs the steps to his Harley Street home that she means business. She yanks at the bell.
Dora answers. The door opens wide and the cold of a foggy October day blasts the girl’s face. Despite the chill, she smiles. “Miss Pauline,” she says with a curtsy.
“Good day, Dora,” comes the reply. This time, she does not wait to be invited in. Rather she steps over the threshold, crosses the hall and heads straight toward Terence Cutler’s study. Dora does nothing to dissuade her. The only concession the determined caller makes to privacy is that she knocks resolutely before entering.
“Yes,” comes Cutler’s voice from within. He is shocked when he looks up from his desk to find his sister-in-law striding into the room to stand in front of him. Her expression tells him she is spoiling for a fight. He leaps up from his chair.
“Pauline!” He is almost standing to attention. “Geraldine is still not returned.”
Pauline Beaufroy tugs at the fingers of the glove on her left hand, one by one, as she faces her brother-in-law. “Please don’t play me for a fool, Terence. I wasn’t born yesterday. Tell me where she is. Mama and I are worried sick. We’ve heard nothing from her for more than six weeks now. And what with these terrible murders—”
“What!?” He stops her midsentence and regards her with incredulity. “You think your sister has been murdered?” There is derision in his tone.
“Do not mock me, Terence. I have just been to the inquest into the latest murder. The one at Whitehall.”
His expression suddenly changes. “The torso?”
She nods and bites back the tears, which she feels welling up from somewhere amid her anger. “Precisely. They’re saying the victim was not like the others.”
“Oh?”
“They’re saying she was well-nourished, not a working woman.” She tries to remain calm, but finds it increasingly difficult. “They think she was in her twenties, Terence.”
Cutler suddenly understands her unease and lifts up his palms in a gesture of surrender. He can no longer keep up the pretense. “You need to know the truth,” he acknowledges with a sigh. “You’d better sit down.” He points to a chair and Pauline smooths her skirts. He returns to his own seat and leans forward, his elbows on the desk. “Geraldine has left me,” he begins, almost apologetically, then adds, “but I assumed she’d gone to Sussex to be with you.”
Pauline scowls. The news is not well-received. “Then why on earth didn’t you say before?” She sticks out her chin defiantly and slaps the desk with her palm. “So where is she now?”
Cutler shakes his head. “I’m afraid I have no idea.” His eyes dart around the room as if he is looking for inspiration. He’s playing for time, I can tell. “I thought, perhaps, she was making you tease me. You know she can be so cruel.”
Instead of rising to her sister’s defense, Pauline lets out an odd little laugh and nods. “I know she can be very strong-willed,” she concedes. “But twisted? I think not, Terence.” She shakes her head and allows her eyes to wander over the study at the bookshelves, a large framed etching of a woman’s uterus and a somewhat unnerving human skeleton in the corner. Unlike her sister, she has always felt uncomfortable in the presence of such objects. She forces herself back into the moment. “Had you quarreled?” There’s an icy silence as even she realizes she has overstepped the mark. “I’m sorry, Terence.” She rolls her eyes. “I should not be so harsh on you, but I am so very worried.”
Cutler leans back in his seat and tents his fingers. He is feigning a look of offense. “Would you like a tea?” he asks in a conciliatory tone. He reaches for the small bell on his desk to summon Dora.
Pauline ignores his question. “You see, I know,” she tells him before he has the chance to ring.
“You know?” Puzzled, he tilts his head and sets down the bell. “What do you know, pray?”
Suddenly losing a little of her bombast, Pauline dares not look at him. “I know that Geraldine could not give you the child you both so desperately wanted.”
“Ah.” She has come to the crux of the matter and Cutler seems temporarily stunned. He studies his fingernails for a moment. He scrubbed them so hard with carbolic soap the other day that he has grazed the skin. He starts to pick at the scab that has formed. He is grateful that his sister-in-law has no notion as to what caused Geraldine’s barren state. “It’s true it has caused a certain ”—he searches for the word—“tension between us.”
Pauline knows that “tension” is an understatement. Her sister had so often written to her bemoaning her apparent inability to bear Terence a child. But more recently, her deep disappointment had manifested itself in a resentment of other women, too. In one of her latest letters, she had highlighted the irony of her situation. Silently Pauline recalls her words: “I have a gynecologist for a husband who helps women conceive, and yet he cannot help his wife, because I am beyond all hope.” In a subsequent one, she had even admitted that she envied all those women who were mothers because of Terence’s expertise. The cruel irony of the situation was lost on no one. At the very least, she might try and harm herself; at the very worst, she might have fallen victim to a crazed murderer. The thought seizes Pauline violently.
“I fear we need to notify the police.” They are the words she has dreaded hearing herself say for days, but now say them she must. Yet, she is not prepared for Cutler’s reaction.
“No! Not the police. I beg you, no!” The words come tumbling from his mouth far too quickly. He continues to shake his head.
“But we must!” she protests. “Geraldine could be roaming the streets, confused.” She pauses and gulps hard, thinking of the inquest. “She may even be . . .”
“No,” Cutler says again, more calmly this time, but with desperation in his eyes.
“Why ever not?” asks Pauline, frowning in disbelief.
Cutler slumps back in his chair. “My work,” he says, his eyes flicking to the nearby bureau, where he keeps his unsavory images of diseased female parts.
“What about it?” Pauline snaps. She is losing patience.
“Sometimes it takes me to Whitechapel.” He squares up to her, as if bracing himself for her reaction.
“Whitechapel?” she repeats. The name clearly tastes bitter on her tongue. ”But I thought you worked at St. Bar
tholomew’s.”
He works his jaw again, then looks at his grazed fingers. “I sometimes treat women . . .” His eyes swivel in their sockets.
She looks at him in an odd way. He is ashamed, she thinks. “Women,” she says slowly, as if trying to make sense of what he has just told her. “You treat . . . ?” Then the realization dawns and a look of shock scuds across her face. Her eyes widen. “You treat fallen women?” The color rises in her cheeks, but she manages to keep her emotions in check. After contemplating this newfound information for a moment, she asks him: “Does Geraldine know?”
Cutler nods slowly. “She found out about six weeks ago.” He sighs deeply. “We had a guest in the house.”
She stops him. “A guest?” She recalls Geraldine’s letter, informing her about my arrival. Her brother-in-law is corroborating what she already knows. He will try and pin the blame on me. Yet, I am blameless. I had no idea when I mentioned to Geraldine that I’d seen her husband at the infirmary, that it would cause such a terrible rift between them.
“Yes,” he goes on. “A do-gooder . . .”
Pauline springs to my defense. “I will not have you speak about my dear friend so!” she protests indignantly.
Cutler is checked, but only for a second. “Of course, I was forgetting you knew her,” he says, but, nevertheless, he remains unrepentant. “When she recognized me, then Geraldine discovered, well . . .”
“So you’d kept your work there a secret from her?”
“Of course, I had! You know what she’s like,” he sneers. “She would have tried to put a stop to it instantly. As it was, she was disgusted at the thought of my treating ‘fallen women,’ as you call them. What would people say? That would soon put an end to the dinner parties and the coffee mornings. We had an almighty row. And that’s why she walked out on me.”
Pauline shuts her eyes for a moment to try and regain her composure. “And you haven’t seen her, or heard from her since?”
“No.” Again he shakes his head at the recollection of the incident and a pulse suddenly throbs in his temple. “No. I have not.”
Pauline eyes him incredulously. “And you do not fear for her safety?” She shakes her head. “There is a maniac on the loose in London, possibly even two, and you are not out on the streets looking for your wife? What sort of a husband are you, Terence?”
The question is left hanging in the air for a moment before Cutler calmly replies: “Your sister is a strong woman of independent means. I have every confidence she can take care of herself.”
What he fails to tell Pauline, of course, is that Geraldine, while going through her husband’s correspondence, as she often did, had come across an envelope addressed to Mr. T. Cutler, Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary. In it was a sum of money and a note assigning the cash, For services rendered. She knew that could only mean one thing. She had confronted her husband and found out her darkest suspicions were well-founded. Terence Cutler was an abortionist. The following day, she left.
Pauline rises from her seat. “Keep me informed of any new developments, won’t you?” She is telling her brother-in-law, rather than simply asking him. She does not share his confidence in her sister’s ability to look after herself.
CHAPTER 16
Thursday, October 11, 1888
CONSTANCE
My carnations went down well today and Flo’s fingers went down even better. We made five shillings and threepence. To celebrate, Flo suggests we pop into the pie shop down the road. I agree, even though I’ve not the appetite. I’ve been thinking about the excursion to Madame Morelli’s this evening and that feeling has come back again: that awful sense of foreboding I felt after I’d had that dream about another murder and it turned out to be true. It’s like I foretold the future. So maybe Madame Morelli really does have a special power. Maybe there are people who can see into the future or speak to the dead. I know that Mr. Bartleby says that Madame Morelli’s out to make a quick tuppence, just like we all are. But what if it’s not a scam? What if some people know what’s going to happen before it does or talk to them in their graves? The very thought of it scares the living daylights out of me, because I just might be one of them.
I watch as Ma wrestles with her coat. “Give us a hand, then, Con,” she gasps, and I walk across the room and help her. “That’s it,” she says, fumbling with her buttons. “We mustn’t be late, must we?”
There’s a queue outside the side door of the Frying Pan. It stretches all the way round the corner into Thrawl Street. It’s a colorless draggle of people, mainly women. The men that are there have been coaxed along by their wives, or else they’ve come to heckle. You can tell that from the banter.
“Polly Nichols! Polly Nichols! Are you there?” calls a joker in a shrill voice.
A couple of clever Dicks have clearly downed a few pints to pump up their courage. While some of the other punters chortle, the women nearby tell them to shut it and one of the older ones clocks the joker with her bag.
There’s a bruiser on the door, stopping people from entering. He reminds me of a bulldog, his nose all flat and his jaw sticking out from beneath his baggy lips. It’s cold and I can see my breath rise like fog on the air. I’m stamping my feet to keep warm as we shelter in the lea of the building when I spot a familiar face.
“’Ere,” says Ma, suddenly nudging me. “Ain’t that Peggy Johns’s boy? Mr. Bartleby says he’s one of the lads helping out with the Vigilance Committee.”
Ma’s outburst makes Gilbert look our way. He’s one of the bouncers, hired to keep order. They had a few problems last month when they had some gals wrestling in the altogether, and Pat Collins, the fiery Irish publican, don’t want the same thing happening tonight.
Despite the cold, Gilbert’s wearing shirtsleeves that are rolled up so that he seems ready for fisticuffs if anyone gives him any lip. I’m thinking he’s a bit of all right, but he sees me looking and tips me a wink. I feel myself blush before I turn away.
We don’t have much longer to wait, thank goodness. Bulldog is soon opening the double doors into the concert room and the queue piles in. We follow suit and find ourselves in a room that’s not much bigger than the saloon bar itself, only there’s a raised platform at one end. On it stands a table draped with a red plush cloth, but it’s hard to see much else. The candles are lit, but there aren’t that many of them, so my eyes strain into the gloomy corners. I suppose that suits Madame Morelli.
The seating is a free-for-all, but Ma manages to nab a couple of chairs at the front. I’d prefer to be at the back, out of Madame Morelli’s creepy glare, but Ma says she’s expecting us and she wants her to know she’s there.
So everyone finds a seat. Those that don’t, they have to stand at the back. Despite the temperature outside, it’s soon stuffy inside, and sweat and smoke and beer hang heavy on the air. We number no more than fifty, but we’ve all paid our sixpence and we expect a good show. There’s still a bit of jostling and elbowing from those that clearly don’t take the séance seriously; the smart alecs and the nay-sayers. And me? Well, before my nightmare and the murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square, I’d probably have been with them. I held no truck with such music hall gimmicks. Granted, Ma’s sessions with Madame Morelli have brought a lot of comfort to her, but I always thought the wily old Italian to be a bit of a charlatan. I doubt that she can speak to the dead any more than Mr. Bartleby can, but there’s this feeling inside me that makes me think there might be something—something beyond. It’s nagging like a pain, but I can’t put my finger on it. Miss Tindall would know what it is, I’m sure of that. It’s like there’s this ache inside me that’s growing and spreading and taking me over, as if someone is trying to get into my very soul and share it with me. And I’m very much afraid it has to do with him.
Someone starts to snuff out the candles, one by one. It’s a signal for the audience to be silent and the noise fades with the light, although there’s still the odd snuffle and giggle in the back seats. A moment lat
er, Pat Collins—his red hair sticking out in wild tufts from both his head and his face—strides to the front of the platform. He clears his throat, like there’s a growling dog at the back of it. I’m so close to him I can hear the phlegm rattle and smell the spilled beer down the front of his apron. Red Pat, as we call him, looks real serious.
“Ladies and gents,” he says. I catch his expression in the candle glow. I can see something in his eyes and he’s tugging at his fat hands. If he’s putting it on, then he’s a better actor than I thought he’d be. “Now there’ll be no need for me to tell ye that tonight’ll be a special one,” he tells us in his singsong Irish jabber.
“It better be, or I’ll be wanting my money back!” barks a wag standing at the side. But the audience turns on him and he’s told to shush in no uncertain way by some old matrons in front of him.
Red Pat isn’t put off his stride. He goes on: “I don’t need to tell ye that the monster that calls himself Jack the Ripper is terrorizing our streets. None of us can sleep sound in our beds at night as long as he’s roamin’ Whitechapel.”
All around me, heads are nodding in agreement. He’s got them eating out of the palm of his hairy hand. “Six women is dead now, if you count the one at Whitehall the other day.” Ma gives me a quick glance and I swallow hard. “And I don’t need to tell ye that his sort won’t stop at six. He’s got a taste for the killing and the blood.” He’s getting more worked up now and a fleck of spittle arcs from his mouth and hits me on the cheek. “Many of ye will know that Madame Morelli is a respected medium about these parts, so she is.” I stifle a snigger. “She’s in regular contact with those who’ve passed. May God rest their souls.” A few heads nod knowingly. Red Pat goes on: “That’s why tonight she has agreed to try and contact one of the victims.” There are a few loud gasps in the audience—as if they didn’t know that that’s what the evening is all about. “That’s why tonight, ladies and gents”—his voice is rising—“we may walk away knowing the identity of this fiend that stalks our streets.” There are even more gasps from the audience. “Ladies and gents, I give ye Madame Morelli,” says Red Pat, waving his hand and retreating to the side.