Requiem for the Ripper

by kindels

  I'd only seen head-and-shoulders shots of Jack Reid previously, and meeting him in the flesh was, to say the least, rather unnerving. Young looking, he stood rather taller than me, and his hair had thinned considerably during his stay at Ravenswood, when compared with the photographs I'd seen of him in his younger days. He stood erect, and his face, at first a mask of apparent indifference, suddenly broke into a most disarming smile, and Reid held his hand out to me in greeting. I cast a nervous glance at Doctor Truman, who nodded to me, and I thus took the proffered hand and accepted the handshake of Jack Reid. As I expected, he had a firm and confident handshake and, as he took my hand in his, he spoke his first words to me.

  " 'Welcome, Mr. Forbes. I've been reliably informed by the patient advocate that you are the finest solicitor on the payroll at Randall and Merryweather. I hope you'll find working with me an agreeable experience.'

  " 'I'm sure I will, Mr. Reid.'

  " 'Please, you must call me Jack. Everyone else here does, don't they Doctor Truman?'

  " 'Yes, of course Jack. We do, but Mr. Forbes has only just met you and may feel it a little improper to be using your first name so soon. After all, he is here in a professional capacity, isn't he?'

  " 'Ah, but we have much to do together. What I have to relate to you, Mr. Forbes, will take more than one or two meetings, I'm sure. As I said, please call me Jack. That is my name, after all.'

  " 'Very well, Jack it is,' I replied

  " 'I'm afraid, Mr. Forbes, that Doctor Truman, here, doesn't quite trust me and has suggested that she remain with us during our talks. I'm not sure if that's acceptable to you. It certainly isn't the way I'd like to do things. Surely, whatever we discuss should remain private, between you and me, under client-attorney privilege, or whatever it's called.'

  "I wasn't sure how to reply. If Reid's psychiatrist felt uneasy leaving him alone in the room with me, who was I to argue? After all, I may be his solicitor, but that didn't mean I had to place myself at risk in any way.

  " 'Well, I'm not sure if ... '

  " 'Listen, Doctor Ruth,' Reid suddenly exclaimed, his whole facial expression becoming animated. 'I know that you have video cameras positioned surreptitiously in the room. Don't deny it. We all know you watch us constantly, even if we can't always see where the cameras are located. Why don't you just watch Mr. Forbes and me on one of those, and leave us to talk in peace. After all, what I wish to convey to my solicitor is of a confidential nature. I don't want you, or anyone else, overhearing what I have to say.'

  "It was plain to see that Reid had planned this all along. It was obvious that the doctor had already told him she'd be sitting in on his meeting with me, but, now he'd managed to manipulate the situation and, indeed, the doctor, into a position where she could hardly refuse. After all, murderer he may be, but he was still entitled to the privilege of confidentiality when speaking with his solicitor.

  " 'Would you be happy enough to go along with that, Mr. Forbes?' Ruth Truman asked.

  " 'Of course,' I replied. 'I'm sure Mr. Reid, er, Jack, that is, has no malevolent thoughts about me. After all, I'm here at his request, aren't I?'

  " 'Well said, Mr. Forbes,' said Reid, apparently pleased at my support of his position.

  " 'Very well,' Doctor Truman conceded. 'I won't be far away if you need me, either of you. If you do feel you need assistance, Mr. Forbes, please press the button on the right-hand side of the desk. It will bring someone immediately.'

  " 'Oh, come now, Doctor Ruth, what on earth do you think I'm going to do? Mr. Forbes is my new friend. I intend to spend a lot of time in his company in the coming weeks. I'm hardly likely to jeopardise that, am I? I need him, and his skills, in order to put my affairs in order. I'm allowed that, at least, aren't I?'

  "Beams of golden sunlight shone in, like streams, through the barred windows of the room as Ruth Truman turned, and took her leave of us, a minute or so later.

  As the door to the consulting room closed behind her, I found myself, for the first time, alone with Jack Reid, serial killer and, possibly, deranged psychopath. Did I feel afraid, you might ask? You can bet I did, despite my forced aura of outward calm. I couldn't be sure, exactly, what this man wanted to tell me or what he expected from me in the coming weeks, but the warmth of the day, and the brilliance of the sunbeams that played around the room as I waited for him to begin, couldn't take away the sudden chill that gripped my heart and my mind as he settled back in his chair, and I in mine, with notebook and micro tape recorder in hand.

  Without further preamble, Jack Reid began to slowly relate his story, one which would take me back a hundred years, and more, before slowly bringing me back to the present. I'd embarked on a time machine of terror, though, as he launched into his strange and, at times, terrifying tale. I wasn't truly aware of just what I'd let myself in for. That would only become evident later, much later, and by then it would be too late for me to do anything to prevent the terrible events that were simply waiting, patiently, to reveal themselves.

  For now, though, the voice of Jack Reid spoke softly, almost hypnotically, as it transported me back through the mists of time, back to when, according to him, his story really had its birth. To a time when terror had been not just a word, used loosely by the popular press, but a real feeling that gripped the hearts and minds of a people who lived in a microcosmic world within a world, the denizens of the nineteenth-century East End of London and, in particular, the streets of the areas of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. This, then, would be the world of Jack the Ripper, a world that Reid was about to introduce me to, though precisely how, or why, I would have to wait to discover."

  Forbes hesitated. I smiled in encouragement and, for a few seconds, I could have sworn that, though he sat in the same room with me in my home on Skerries Rock, his mind had drifted far, far away, to another time and another place as his eyes glazed over, and he appeared to be in close communion with someone or something I couldn't identify. As quickly as he'd entered that fugue state, he appeared to snap out of it; his mind, his thoughts, returned to his body and the present time. I waited; but, for a short time, the only sound in my sitting room was the gentle ticking of the grandfather clock that stood to the rear of my chair. Forbes sat silently until, with a sigh and a shrug of his shoulders, he readied himself for whatever he was about to reveal.

  Chapter Six

  The Birth of a Monster?

  What I'm about to relate is the story, as told to me, by William Forbes. These are his words, as recorded on my own voice recorder, so I make no apologies for any seeming irregularities or exaggerations in the tale.

  "This machine can hold two hours of conversation. Will it take any longer?" I enquired, as he prepared himself for his narrative.

  "Much longer, I'm afraid," he responded. "We may need a couple of days, with rest periods accounted for too."

  "In that case, I'll let you know when the tape's running out. You must give me time to change the tape and check the batteries. If your tale is so extraordinary, I don't want to miss a word of it."

  He nodded his agreement. I could see he was anxious to unburden himself.

  "You may be surprised that I'm not referring to any notes when I tell you this incredible tale," he began, "though there are notes in my briefcase, I can assure you I don't need them. I've lived with this for so long now that every word of Jack Reid's story is engraved and embedded deeply in my mind, as though the words were my own. Believe me, Doctor Hemswell, I will tell the story exactly as it should be told."

  "You must tell it to me in your own way, William. Please, go on."

  He nodded and clasped his hands, as though he were about to pray, but, of course, what followed was anything but a religious homily; it was, rather, a tale of terror and utter degradation as told to him by a notorious and extremely intelligent psychopath.

  "And so," Forbes now went on, "my story, or at least the Jack Reid story, really begins some twenty-five to thirty years before the streets of Whitechapel ran w
ith the blood of the victims of Jack the Ripper. What I'm about to recount to you is, for the most part, established fact, but with regards to the Cavendish family history, I had to rely on the words of Jack Reid himself. Most of what he'd learned had come from reading the so-called 'Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper' which, he assured me, had been handed down from generation to generation within his family.

  During the latter half of the nineteenth century, in 1856, so I'm told, an eminent doctor, a psychiatrist to be exact, fell in love with the wife of another man. Obviously, such occurrences are commonplace in our modern world, but to have admitted to such an affair, in the days of Queen Victoria, would have been to invite scorn and approbation from all who knew both the doctor and the lady. So it was that Doctor Burton Cleveland Cavendish and his paramour kept their affair, and their love for each other, a closely guarded secret. The lady's husband, a colleague of Cavendish's, would surely have cast his wife out had he known of the affair, and the ensuing scandal would have ruined Cavendish's career, without doubt. As fast as it had begun, the affair appeared to end when the woman begged Cavendish to leave the small country town, where he'd visited her and her husband, and return to London, never to see her again, for fear of the repercussions should they be discovered to have indulged in their adulterous liaison.

  Reluctantly, but understanding the motives for her request and sharing her dread at the potential results of disclosure, Cavendish left his lover behind, returned to London, and threw himself back into his work, his own wife never suspecting his infidelity. It appears that Cavendish truly loved his spouse, despite having tarried with the 'other woman', and he set about making life happy for the two of them, though he always clung to the bitter-sweet memories of his short and passionate dalliance.

  Some time later, he received a communication, by letter, from his former lover who informed him that she'd fallen pregnant. She begged him, however, never to return to the little country town where she resided with her husband who professed himself overjoyed at the thought of a child of his own. Only she and Cavendish would ever know the truth, but she implored him, for the sake of the child, to never make any attempt at contact, as to do so might jeopardise not only her marriage, and Cavendish's too, but would also result in their child being declared a bastard, which would bring about his automatic disinheritance by her husband who would bring the child up as his own. Burton Cavendish, therefore, relinquished not only his love for the woman, but for the child he thought he'd never know.

  Cavendish's career blossomed in the following years, and he rose to a position of some eminence within his profession. His wife and son had no inkling of the brief encounter that had seen him father a child he had all but forgotten when, some thirty-two years later, a knock on his door brought a stranger into his life, one who would have a terrible bearing on the future of not only Cavendish, but on the annals of crime in not only England, but throughout the world. The man who stood before Cavendish bore, as his credentials, a letter of introduction written by his late mother, identifying him as the son that Cavendish had fathered so many years previously. It appeared that the woman had fallen ill, had been confined to a lunatic asylum, and subsequently died in that sad and sorry institution. So, along with her husband, the only father the young man had ever known, also dead some years previously, Cavendish found himself as the only living relative of the stranger who presented himself at his door. He had no doubts as to the young man's story, as apparently he bore a striking resemblance to his mother, right down to the fact that his eyes, as Cavendish put it in his notes, 'were those of his mother, without a doubt. He shared the same, dark, gypsy-like looks and exhibited the identical lilt in his voice that meant he could be the son of no other woman'.

  The great psychiatrist was crestfallen to hear of the death of his one-time lover, and even more saddened to hear of the circumstances of her illness and subsequent death. The young man appeared to have been well-educated, spoke with a polished accent, and testified that he bore Cavendish no ill-will and merely wished to become better acquainted with his natural father, having come to terms with his mother's dying revelation of his true birthright.

  So, Burton Cavendish set about trying to make amends for his years of absence from his son's life. He helped him to gain certain social acceptance, introduced him to a number of gentlemen's clubs, and tried to help in furthering the young man's chosen career. Only later did Cavendish discover that his illegitimate son bore the same defective gene that had seen his unfortunate mother descend into madness and despair. Even then the psychiatrist did all he could to try to alleviate and treat the younger man's symptoms. He prescribed laudanum to help with the incessant headaches that beset the man, and tried to counsel and advise him, even though he could have, and perhaps should have, seen that his efforts were in vain. At no time did Cavendish consider placing the young man in an asylum, where the psychiatric care of the day would leave much to be desired by today's standards. He preferred to give his illegitimate son the benefit of the doubt, even when his symptoms began to grow more violent and pronounced, even when the younger man confessed to him during one of his bouts of intense melancholia, that he was, in fact, the man who all of London sought and reviled, the man who the police were unable to lay their hands on, despite a massive and previously unprecedented manhunt. Bedevilled by syphilis and its accompanying madness, the young man became further and further detached from reality, and descended into the bowels of society where his new blood lust could be satiated. Still, Cavendish stood by him, and refused to believe what lay before his eyes.

  So it was that Burton Cleveland Cavendish, disbelieving the man's confession, and dismissing it as the result of his dementia caused by the illness that Cavendish diagnosed as having befallen him, found himself as the father-figure and unofficial physician to a man who the rest of the world would eventually come to know, first of all, as The Whitechapel Murderer, though within a short space of time that name would change to the more famous (or should that be infamous?) one by which he remains known today.

  By the strangest and, perhaps, most unfortunate set of circumstances, one of Victorian London's most eminent psychiatrists found himself to be the father, though he refused to believe it for a long time, of none other than Jack the Ripper. It would be many weeks after the killings began that Cavendish finally began to believe that the unfortunate young man he'd fathered, all those years before, had degenerated into the most hated and hunted man in the kingdom. Of course, in those few autumn weeks, so much would happen, and so much blood would flow, that the Victorian Press had no compunctions about dubbing those weeks as quite simply 'The Autumn of Terror'.

  It would be remiss of me not to give a brief resume of what took place in those few brief, but bloody weeks as the streets of Whitechapel ran with the blood of The Ripper's victims, and the population of the East End of London became gripped with a fear such as had never been seen before."

  At that point, Forbes sighed and stretched, as though suddenly overtaken by a great tiredness.

  "I'm sorry, David," he said wearily. "I didn't realise how exhausted I am. It's tiring me just to talk and tell you the story. Maybe the long journey and the stress I've been living under is catching up with me. Would it be possible to have some coffee perhaps? It might serve to rejuvenate me a little."

  "Of course," I replied, rising from my chair and heading for the kitchen. "Stay there and try to relax. I won't be long."

  "Thank-you," Forbes spoke wearily. "I'm sorry, I don't want to delay things, but I can hardly keep my eyes open."

  "No need to apologise, we're in no real hurry. Now that you're here, it's okay to relax and tell me whatever you have to in your own time."

  I spoke encouragingly, though I admit to being a little frustrated at Forbes having interrupted his telling of his story so soon. No matter, we weren't going anywhere and it would only take me a few minutes to prepare a refreshing and, hopefully, revitalising pot of coffee for the two of us.

  I worked
fast, hindered only by the time it took for the kettle to boil. As I waited, I pondered on Forbes's introduction to the story. If what he'd related to me so far proved true, then Jack Reid had given him the only recorded account of the birth of Jack the Ripper, though, of course, he'd appended no name to the bastard offspring of Burton Cavendish thus far. I hoped that would come soon, as Forbes delved deeper into his story. I knew that what he was telling me might prove to be nothing more than the ravings of a psychotically deranged madman, and yet, there remained the tantalising possibility that this could be the one and only definitive, biographical account of the life of that most heinous of Victorian serial killers, Jack the Ripper himself.

  Returning to my sitting room a mere ten minutes later, eager for Forbes to resume his narrative, I was disappointed to find my guest slumped in the armchair, where I'd left him. He was snoring loudly, one of his arms draped over the arm of the chair, his other arm supporting his head, using it as a makeshift pillow against the other chair arm. The tiredness he'd felt earlier had obviously been more exhausting than he'd realised and had taken its toll on his consciousness. I felt he needed to rest and refresh his body and mind, so, though disappointed at the early interruption to his strange tale, I relaxed into my own chair and poured myself a mug of hot coffee. I pulled up a footstool from beside the chair and put my feet up. I glanced toward the window. The light outside was growing dim, and the twilight darkness of evening raced the incoming high tide to be first to arrive at my island home.

  The rain had, thankfully, long-since relented and passed us by and, after finishing my coffee, I stood at my open front door for a few minutes, enjoying the calm and peaceful serenity that had descended upon Skerries Rock. The sound of the

  Atlantic rollers breaking against the rocky coastline of the island reached me, and brought with it a feeling of permanence, as though my island was an indestructible fortress that had withstood such tides for many a century, and would continue to do so for many more to come.