by kindels
The police investigation continued, hampered slightly by the fact that Eddowes' body had been discovered within the boundaries of the City of London, thus coming under the jurisdiction of the City of London Police Force, as opposed to the Metropolitan Police who had been in sole charge of the case up until that time. A public clamour soon broke out, with demands that the police take action and discover and bring to heel the murderer. There were demands for the resignation of the Commissioner of Police, and vigilante committees were formed, taking to the streets at night in the hope of catching the killer.
Despite the police flooding the streets with uniformed and plain clothes officers, not one shred of viable evidence was ever found that might have led to an identification of the man responsible for the terrible crimes that were being perpetrated, seemingly at will, upon the citizens of Whitechapel.
Within days, however, the killer had an almost universally known name, as the Dear Boss letter appeared in the press and the name of Jack the Ripper was being shouted from every street corner by the newspaper sellers, and the fear, that had gripped the East End of London, grew with every passing day that brought no results in the police investigation.
October passed without another killing on the streets of Whitechapel, and though the public continued to demand action from the police in tracking down the killer, the public outcry that had greeted the first four murders began to dissipate. Perhaps, some thought, Jack the Ripper had gone, left the country, or simply ceased his evil ways and that the terror had passed. They couldn't have been more wrong. Jack the Ripper's most heinous crime was yet to come, an act of barbarism and butchery so terrible that grown men, hardened police officers used to seeing the most hideous sights that man could inflict upon his fellows, actually broke down and cried when confronted with the scene that met their eyes on the morning of 9th November 1888.
In a room in Miller's Court, off Dorset Street in Whitechapel, the body of Mary Jane Kelly was discovered by Thomas Bowyer as he attempted to collect the rent she owed on her room. Aged around twenty-five, Mary Kelly proved to be the youngest victim of The Ripper, and the mutilations carried out upon her body were so terrible and so vile that little was left of the woman that could be positively identified.
Her breasts had been cut off. The right arm was slightly abducted from the body and rested on the mattress. The whole of the surface of the abdomen had been removed and thighs had been removed, and the abdominal cavity emptied of the viscera. The tissues of the neck had been severed all the way round, down to the bone. The viscera were discovered in various places around the body. The uterus, kidneys, and one breast were found under the head, the other breast placed by the right foot. The liver was between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the right side of the body. The flaps of skin that had been removed from the abdomen and thighs had been laid on a table. The woman's face was gashed 'in all directions'. The nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears were all partly removed. The lips had been cut by several incisions down to the chin. The neck was cut through, together with the other tissues, down to the vertebrae.
In short, Mary Jane Kelly had been murdered, and then systematically butchered, by the most heinous killer yet known to the British Police, or to the public at large!
Those are the crimes of Jack the Ripper, David, told to you in as succinct a manner as I can condense them to and, of course, to this day, no one has ever named the killer, though the list of apparent suspects has grown over the years, as numerous so called experts have added their own theories to the case. I'm sorry if some of what I've told you has been graphic in its descriptive content, but, I assure you, I have only told you these things because you must know, and understand, as much about The Ripper as possible if you are to later understand what I have yet to reveal to you."
"Don't apologise, William," I responded. "I've heard many terrible stories in my time; I can assure you of that. Yes, what The Ripper did to those unfortunate women was truly horrendous, but many modern serial killers have far outdone him in terms of the outright savagery of their crimes, I fear."
"Maybe," Forbes went on, "But none of them came back to haunt the living in the present, did they?"
I avoided giving the man a direct answer to that one and, instead, glanced at the clock, which read six-thirty. He'd talked for longer than I'd thought and the first pangs of hunger were now beginning to gnaw at my stomach. Time, I felt, for a break. We had to eat, after all.
"I think that you've reached a good point for us to rest a while, William. Perhaps we should eat, and if you don't feel too tired afterwards, we can return to your narrative?"
Forbes appeared to welcome the thought of a good meal.
"Why, that would be wonderful. I haven't eaten properly for days," he said, "and yes, I suppose this is a good a place as any to stop and refresh ourselves. I hope you'll allow me to carry on afterwards, though?"
"Of course. We've nowhere else to run away to, have we? I want to know where this tale of yours is leading, after all."
William Forbes now relaxed once more, his shoulders sagging as he released the tension that must have existed within every muscle in his body. He appeared to shrink before my eyes as he lolled back in the armchair, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes for a full five seconds as though by doing so he could shut out... what?
"Do you want to wait here while I rustle us up something to eat? Cheese omelette and salad alright with you?"
"Sounds excellent, but, if it's all the same to you, I'll keep you company in the kitchen. I don't want to fall asleep again, David. You've no idea what those things do to me while my eyes are shut and my guard is down."
With that, the two of us rose from our seats and made our way to the kitchen where I soon had our evening meal prepared. We sat in a comfortable and companionable silence at the old oak table that served as work surface and dining table in my home, and Forbes looked to me like a man who hadn't eaten in days; so quickly did he devour the simple, yet stomach-filling meal I'd prepared for us. It was clear to me that it wasn't only his mind that had been affected by whatever trauma had ensued from his connection with Jack Reid. He had so obviously not taken care of himself in a dietary capacity as well, and, as such, had laid himself open to illness in more ways than one.
As the pall of night settled over Skerries Rock, and the last of the crockery was washed, dried, and put away in my kitchen cupboard, Forbes and I made our way back to the living room, where I poured us both a large brandy before motioning to Forbes to retake his place in my fireside chair. Heavy rain was once more lashing down outside, and the drumming of the raindrops on the windows, and the sound of the wind as it skirled around the building, sounding like an out-of-tune set of bagpipes, appeared to raise the levels of nervousness in my guest once more. He sipped at his brandy, his eyes again furtively glancing around the room, checking for some unseen and unknown apparition to appear, perhaps, and then, drawing himself up in the chair, he took a deep breath before continuing his extraordinary tale.
Things were about get extremely interesting as Forbes once again set out to reveal some of what may, or may not be the true and, as yet, unknown facts surrounding the Jack the Ripper murders. I couldn't yet envisage just how interesting and terrifying his tale would be!
Chapter Eight
The Confession of Burton Cleveland Cavendish
"You must understand," Forbes reminded me, "that what I'm telling you is the story as related to me by Jack Reid. I checked the facts surrounding the Jack the Ripper case, of course, just to be sure they were accurate and, I can assure you, they are. The next section of my story is the part I have to take on trust, for the most part, as it relates to Reid's recollection of the journal he says was bequeathed to him by his uncle, Robert Cavendish, and which he himself received in a similar fashion on the death of his father. The journal would appear to have become something of a Cavendish family rolling legacy of evil, according to Reid, who, as Robert Cavendish's nephew, became the first
non bearer of the Cavendish name to receive it."
Forbes paused, just long enough to look at me, as I nodded and urged him to go on with his narrative.
"So, the police were baffled. Jack the Ripper had committed the most heinous and revolting of his crimes, the murder and butchering of Mary Kelly. Despite the offer of a reward, and the largest manhunt England had ever witnessed, the murderer was never identified, much less apprehended and brought to justice. Even during the time of Queen Victoria you might think that someone, somewhere, would have had an inkling as to his identity, would have picked up a clue that a relative or friend, perhaps, might be behind the killings. Well, David, it appears that someone did!
According to the journal, which Reid asserted as having been written by The Ripper himself, The Ripper had visited his father, Burton Cavendish, on a number of occasions in the months leading up to, and in the course of the weeks during which he committed the murders. He professed to be suffering from terrible headaches and to the hearing of voices in his head. Cavendish, perhaps blind to the reality of the situation due to his feelings towards the man's mother, chose not to read the signs of his symptoms correctly. As a psychiatrist, he should perhaps have recognised the paranoia that appeared to have infected his illegitimate offspring, who was indeed hospitalized on at least two occasions in the summer and autumn of 1888. On both occasions, Cavendish helped secure his release without him being referred to an asylum for treatment of his apparent mental aberrations. This was despite the fact that on one occasion, heavily under the influence of the drug laudanum, the man confessed to being The Ripper to his father, who chose to disbelieve his son. Instead, he put such confessions down as part of the ramblings of a disturbed mind, rather than a true revelation of the facts. The journal even listed a further murder, committed in Leith, near Edinburgh, during the long lull between the killings of Catherine Eddowes and Mary Kelly in London. Jack Reid told me that the journal described, in great detail, not only The Ripper's journey by rail to the Scottish capital, but also gave a graphic and particularly gory account of the murder of a young Scottish prostitute, whose body he disposed of by dumping the remains into the Firth of Forth.
By the time Burton Cavendish eventually accepted the truth about his illegitimate son, it was too late for him to do anything without confessing to his own shortcomings, not to mention his long-ago indiscretion with the man's mother. In a letter to his legitimate son, Cavendish confessed to having visited The Ripper every day after his last gruesome atrocity until he eventually arrived at the final decision that would put an end to Jack the Ripper once and for all. The poor man's mind must have been in a terrible turmoil, as he decided to put an end to the reign of terror, of Jack the Ripper, in the only way that would keep the secret of his birth, and his identity, from being made public and bringing shame and ignominy on his family: His illegitimate offspring must die!
"Surely, David, we can only guess at the inner turmoil that Cavendish must have endured. There he was, recently united with a son, born to the woman he'd loved so many years previously, only to discover that his offspring had grown up to become the most reviled killer in England's history. Then it must have taken a Herculean effort to decide to end the life of the man, who was, after all, seriously mentally ill, and would, today, in all likelihood, have been incarcerated in a top-security mental hospital, at the very most, in terms of punishment. It would seem that Cavendish kept The Ripper under sedation for a number of days, while he made his plans for the final disposal of the man, before eventually taking him to the banks of the River Thames, where Cavendish loaded his pockets with rocks, to ensure he would sink, and then pushed the man under the dark waters of the river, watching him as he sank forever into oblivion. Cavendish then took the journal from The Ripper's lodgings, and made sure it remained carefully hidden for the rest of his life. I can't guess as to why he never destroyed the infernal document; but, instead, he bequeathed it to his own son, Robert Cavendish's grandfather, with a series of notes and letters written by himself, in which he detailed his own involvement in the case. That journal thus became the twisted and evil legacy that would be handed down through the generations of the Cavendish family, always through the male line.
What Cavendish was obviously unaware of, and his descendants only found out far too late, was that the journal bore more than just the words that told of the deeds of The Ripper. Although it would appear to have missed out a couple of generations, it would appear that the pages of Jack the Ripper's secret journal were imbued, in some way, with the soul, and the living embodiment, of the evil that The Ripper had brought to bear during his life. Perhaps, one had to be born with a certain mental gene present in order for the journal to carry out its infernal task, but it certainly had a dramatic and, eventually, lethal effect on Robert Cavendish, Jack Reid's uncle, as it also did on Mark Cavendish, Robert's brother, thought to be the man who actually carried out the Brighton murders that Reid was convicted of, only to be exonerated in due course. Of course, on Mark's death, the journal then took a firm hold on the mind of Jack Reid, and the latter-day Whitechapel murders were the result.
"It was believed that the journal, if it existed (there always remained official scepticism on that line of thought), had been totally destroyed when Mark Cavendish was killed in a car accident in Warsaw, which saw his body, and the contents of his case, including the journal, incinerated in the ensuing fire after the crash. Only fragments remained and were produced in evidence at Reid's appeal hearing, and they indeed helped, in many ways, to secure his release. Those fragments were, of course, sealed away with the case files where, I suspect, they must remain to this day. No one imagined, however, that a section, a whole page of the journal remained untouched, and unharmed, by the flames.
"On his release from Ravenswood, Jack Reid returned to his parents' home, where he found the last remaining, complete page of the journal, hidden away in his room, waiting for him to come home and reclaim his legacy. Now, David, I think I should bring you up to speed with the facts of Jack Reid's case, in case you're not fully conversant with them."
"I only know what I've read in the newspapers over the years, William," I replied. "I'm sure you'll be able to tell me so much more than the press was ever allowed to report."
"Oh yes, David, I can indeed. I can tell you much, much more. I know you think I'm mad, and perhaps you're right to do so, but maybe you'll change your mind as my story goes on."
"I'm listening, William," was all I could say. I admit to becoming engrossed in his tale. It sounded outlandish and impossible, but then there existed a certain degree of sincerity, about Forbes, that meant I could do no more than grant him the decency of a fair hearing of his story. I had many questions forming in my mind, based on what he'd told me (and indeed, hadn't told me) so far, but I'd agreed to let him continue, unhindered, as far as possible and, thus, for the moment, I held my silence and allowed him to go on with his tale of events.
Accordingly, as the shadows of evening gave way to full-blown night, and the wind whipped in swirling gusts around the solid walls of my croft, William Forbes left the Victorian years behind, and his story arrived, firmly, in the twentieth century. The shocks, however, were only just beginning.
Chapter Nine
The Cavendish Legacy
"I've no idea what happened to the journal between the time that Burton Cavendish read it and its re-surfacing, years later, when, eventually, it was passed on to his grandson, Doctor Robert Cavendish, his great grandson and Jack Reid's uncle," Forbes continued.
"From what I can deduce, the effects of the journal don't seem to strike at every generation. Like I said, perhaps there is a gene within the recipients that makes them susceptible to The Ripper's words. Who knows? I do know that Robert Cavendish was the last person, before Jack Reid, to have close contact with the journal and, although he appeared to be immune to the murderous aspects we've come to associate with Jack Reid, it's certain that reading the journal had a profound and disturbing effe
ct on him.
He was involved in a car crash that killed his own father and left Robert in a coma, for quite some time. When he eventually awoke from the coma, he insisted that he'd been in the presence of Jack the Ripper, and that The Ripper had shown him all manner of terrible scenes that depicted the awful mutilations he'd carried out on his victims. Cavendish also claimed to have witnessed the tortured souls of the victims, trapped in some kind of limbo from which they couldn't escape. He reported to his wife that he'd been reading the secret journal of The Ripper and, yet, it wasn't until some weeks later that he received a call from his solicitor, informing his that his father had bequeathed him a package in his will, and that package, Jack Reid swore to me, contained the journal.
Did Robert Cavendish, therefore, dream of the contents of the journal, or was he simply in a coma-induced, hallucinatory state, as suggested by the doctors? Or, and this is the scary bit, David, did he, during his coma, actually connect, in some way, with his long-dead, illegitimate ancestor? Did Jack the Ripper somehow break through time and space, and reach out to fill Robert's head with the scenes and sights and sounds that haunted Cavendish for the rest of his life? He died soon afterwards, you see, of a brain tumour. It all happened so suddenly, and no one was ever able to find out what really happened to Robert, but it's reasonably certain that his mind became seriously unhinged by whatever he'd read, real or imagined.
And now, David, we come to Jack Reid himself. From the official records, and from what Reid himself told me, the young Jack Reid had a fairly troubled childhood. The youngster was beset by a sort of blood-fixation, and his parents were sufficiently worried by his obsession with all things to do with blood that they sought the help of a child psychologist. Over the years, Reid was also subjected to examinations by psychiatrists, and therapists of all types and, eventually, he'd been thought to have been cured of his obsession. That is, until he bit off the ear of a schoolmate, during a playground fracas, after the boy had taunted him about being a weirdo. Reid ended up completing his education in a special school for troubled children; but, again, by the time he reached his late teens, he was considered free of his previous obsessions and problem behaviour.