by M. J. Trow
‘I’d heard he’d gone to ground in Clerkenwell.’ Lestrade peered into the gloom, trying to make sense of the dim shapes in the corners.
‘I’d have been happier if he’d gone to ground in Abney Park,’ Wensley muttered.
‘Now, don’t be ungrateful, Fred. If anything comes of this, it’ll be a feather in your cap. Just think, you’ll be the man who caught Jack the Ripper. Tell me, was your tip-off a usual nark or anonymous?’
Wensley did not reply.
‘Come on, Fred. This is Sholto, your old mate. No need to be coy. Fred? Fred?’
But Wensley had gone, vanished into the shadows, merged with the dark. And he had made no sound.
Lestrade turned slowly, sensing eyes everywhere. The hairs on his neck stood on end. This was no child’s play with cricket bats and vaulting horses. Chubb Rupasobly played for keeps. He edged the brass knuckles forward so that the switchblade clicked out and gleamed in the faint light still streaming from The Britannia behind him. There was no sound but the thump of his own heart and the tiny scream growing inside his brain. Don’t shiver, he told himself. They’re watching. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
‘Chubb Rupasobly!’ he suddenly shouted.
Silence.
He slid sideways like a crab, feeling the rough brick at his back and a wall of fear ahead. A click in the darkness. Another. Then the unmistakable sliding of bolts and a shaft of light slashed across his Donegal. In the doorway the diminutive figure of Chubb Rupasobly shrugged. ‘Now, now, Mr Lestrade,’ he lisped, ‘no tricks, please. I’ve done you the favour of opening the door for you myself. Believe me, that’s an honour.’
Lestrade ostentatiously folded away the blade. ‘No tricks,’ he said.
‘Come in.’
Lestrade followed the swaggering little figure up a staircase to a candlelit room. The dwarf scrambled over a table, with the agility of a mountain goat, and sat in the huge, gilded chair. He picked his teeth with a gold pin and clicked his fingers. An enormous lackey poured two large brandies in the half-light.
Rupasobly quaffed one, shooting the cuffs of his frilled, white shirt, the stubby little fingers glittering with diamonds. He clicked them again, and the lackey crossed to Lestrade, obliterating him with his shadow. Lestrade took the glass.
‘Where is Inspector Wensley?’ he asked the dwarf.
‘Mr Vensel?’ Rupasobly gave him his Chosen name. ‘When you leave here, Mr Lestrade, assuming we can do business, Mr Vensel you will find chained with his balls to the railings along Thrawl Street. Just a little precaution.’
‘Precaution?’ Lestrade said.
‘Come now,’ the dwarf chuckled in an Eastern European sort of way, ‘I know you, Mr Lestrade. And I don’t forget. I could have been Mr Big around here.’
Lestrade looked at the rings, the cut glass and he sniffed the brandy. ‘You’re doing all right,’ he said.
‘Perhaps,’ Rupasobly shrugged, ‘but I could have done better.’
‘Wensley said you could help.’
‘With the Whitechapel murders, yes.’
Lestrade sat down uninvited. Rupasobly clicked his fingers and a second lackey provided him with a footstool.
‘Cigar?’ The Inspector produced two from his pocket.
‘No, I only smoke Turkish.’ He clicked his fingers and a third lackey lit up for him, then for Lestrade.
‘What’s the deal?’ Lestrade asked.
‘No deal.’ Rupasobly shook his head. ‘I want this bastard caught. He’s queering my pitch.’
‘So you’ll give me his name and Fred Wensley back – for nothing.’
‘Let’s just say I’m a public-spirited citizen.’ Rupasobly’s eyes sparkled in the candlelight. ‘Besides, this man’s a Jew. And I’m a good Methodist. Ask General Booth if you don’t believe me.’
‘I might just do that,’ nodded Lestrade, savouring the cigar. ‘I didn’t know there were any Polish Methodists.’
‘Polish?’ Rupasobly almost choked on his brandy. He clicked his fingers and a lackey hurled an empty glass to the floor. ‘How dare you, Lestrade! He snarled. ‘I am Hungarian!’
‘Yes, of course you are,’ the Inspector beamed. ‘I apologise.’
Rupasobly bridled, adjusting the white tie and flicking down the diminutive tails.
‘The man’s name, then?’ asked Lestrade.
‘Oh, no,’ Rupasobly dissented, ‘I’d planned to give you his head.’
Lestrade froze. He looked at the dwarf, the distorted features a livid white in the flickering light. He knew he meant it.
‘That won’t do,’ he said. ‘If you give me his head on a plate, we’ll never know, will we?’
‘Know what?’
‘If he was the Whitechapel murderer. If he was Jack the Ripper.’
‘So?’
‘So,’ Lestrade leaned forward. ‘Just imagine it. No one will ever know for certain who the Ripper was. What will future generations say of us? That we couldn’t catch a cold? But what if future generations record the name of Chubb Rupasobly for all time?’
The dwarf sat upright slowly. ‘For all time?’
‘Yes,’ Lestrade nodded through the smoke. ‘A hundred years from now. In . . . let’s see, nineteen eighty-eight somebody or other will write a book about you. You. Chubb Rupasobly. You will be . . . immortal.’
‘Immortal,’ repeated the dwarf in a rapture of vanity. He looked at Lestrade. ‘What’s in it for you?’ he scowled.
The Inspector leaned forward. ‘Read your papers, Chubb.’ He said. ‘You can’t have failed to notice what a load of Charlies we’ve been made to look recently? I don’t like that. I want this bastard nailed to a wall. But I want to nail him.’
There was a silence. Then Rupasobly smiled. ‘His name,’ he said, ‘is Kosminski. He lives here in Whitechapel and is a Polish Jew.’
Lestrade stood up. ‘Thank you, Mr Rupasobly,’ he said. ‘Can I have the Inspector back?’
‘You’ll find him as I said,’ the dwarf told him. ‘No tricks. Goodnight, Mr Lestrade.’
And there weren’t any tricks. Though by the time Lestrade had reached Thrawl Street there were two policemen near the railings. One was hanging there like something in Smithfield Market, the other, solicitous, flapping, was about to blow his whistle to summon aid. Lestrade stopped him.
‘Good of you to hang around, Dew,’ he said. ‘Oh, you too, Fred.’
The Inspector grunted something basic in Yiddish or Dorset. He was capable of either.
‘But I don’t think we want the whole neighbourhood alerted to Mr Wensley’s position. There could be talk,’ and the laugh he had been stifling in the collar flaps of his Donegal erupted. ‘Of course,’ he screamed, in an effort to become serious, ‘I don’t like these things.’ He examined Dew’s whistle. ‘When I started, you had a wooden rattle or you bashed the pavement with your truncheon. Well, that’s progress, I suppose.’
‘Talking of progress, Inspector, Wensley hissed through gritted teeth, ‘could you possibly get me out of these chains?’ He rattled them, for all the world like a Gothic Horror. ‘I assume that was what Constable Dew here had in mind when you stopped him.’
‘Ah, but you see, the embarrassment, Fred,’ smiled Lestrade, striking a Lucifer on one of Wensley’s chains. ‘Constable Dew blows his whistle, the whole of Whitechapel comes running. Mr Lusk and his charmers, armed to the teeth; that tall, rather masculine judy he’s been looking for. Not to mention the eighty or more blokes who’ve had their collars felt by Abberline over the last six weeks. As it is, I shall have to report all this to Rodney. Who’ll pass it on to Anderson, assuming Sir Charles has actually vacated his premises by then. I hear he’s loth to go.’
‘What do you mean, report?’ Wensley asked, struggling now.
‘Come on, Fred, you’ve written as many of them as I have . . .’
‘All right,’ sighed Wensley. ‘What do you want?’
‘Ah,’ Lestrade smiled. ‘The address of one Kosminski, her
e in Whitechapel.’
‘Kosminski? Kosminski? Hanbury Street, I think. Yes, Number thirty-six.’
‘A few yards from Annie Chapman’s murder.’
‘That’s right. Is he our man?’
‘I’m not sure. Rupasobly seems to think so.’
‘That was the lead?’
‘Yes, as you’d have found out if you’d stayed with me.’
‘Sholto!’ Wensley shouted, then calmer, ‘I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. All I knew was I had a sack pulled over my head and I was carried here.’
‘Any injuries?’
‘None,’ fumed Wensley.
‘Ho, ho,’ chuckled Lestrade. ‘Wait till the lads hear about this.’
‘Sholto . . .’ Wensley was beside himself.
‘All right, Fred, keep your combs on. It’s a chilly night.’
He worked the point of his switchblade in Rupasobly’s padlock. ‘You can always tell one of Chubb’s,’ he said. He heaved against a link until his eyes stood on stalks and his face turned purple. ‘It’s no good, Fred. It won’t budge.’
‘You’re just not trying, Lestrade!’ Wensley snapped, growing more embarrassed and more uncomfortable by the second.
‘Dew,’ said Lestrade, ‘lean on that railing, will you?’
The constable obliged, cursing and swearing. ‘Oh, shit a brick . . . begging both your pardons, sirs.’
There was a crack and a railing broke free of the others, releasing Wensley with it.
‘Tut, tut,’ said Lestrade, ‘look at the workmanship in that. I don’t know about the slums of tomorrow. We’re looking at the slums of later on today. Come on, let’s hop it before someone insists we pay for the breakages.’
Wensley shuffled along behind them.
‘I didn’t mean it literally, Fred,’ Lestrade said.
‘Dammit, Sholto, Dew may have broken the rail away from the fence, but he hasn’t separated me from this particular one.’
‘We’ll do that at Leman Street,’ said Lestrade.
‘You must be joking!’ Wensley stopped. ‘I’ll never live it down. Can’t we find a smithy somewhere?’
‘All right, but Kosminski first. It’s funny how attached to things you can get, isn’t it?’ and Lestrade skipped away as Wensley aimed a blow at him.
Tadeusz Kosminski lived in a common lodging house, typical of thousands of its type. Grey washing hung limp in the dawn drizzle, strung across the narrow courts, as Lestrade and Dew climbed the fire escape, negotiating rubbish and sleeping down-and-outs, perched perilously on the rusted rungs. In the street below, the carters began to emerge on their way to work, tying scarves and straightening caps. Any one of them, Lestrade told himself, could be the man he was after. Below him too, pressed into a doorway, trying to keep his railing out of sight, huddled Fred Wensley. People were already giving him funny looks.
Lestrade peered in through the grimy window at the third floor. He could make out a bed, a table, a chair and little else.
‘Now!’ he shouted to Dew and lashed out against the glass and wood with both feet. He landed badly, rolling hard against the far wall and it was left to Dew to handle the understandably miffed figure in the nightshirt who sprang onto the Inspector’s back. The constable hooked his truncheon under Kosminski’s chin and hauled him upright, only to jack-knife seconds later as the Pole’s foot caught him in the necessaries and he went down. But it had given Lestrade a breathing space and he drove his knee hard into Kosminski’s groin and cuffed him around the head with his forearm. It was only a playful tap in the great scheme of things, but Kosminski huddled on his bed, crying inconsolably.
‘Is your name Kosminski?’ Lestrade asked.
A sob in reply.
‘Tadeusz Kosminski?’
Another sob.
‘Sob once for yes and twice for no,’ muttered Lestrade. ‘Dew, are you all right?’
‘I think so, sir,’ the constable was looking for his helmet.
‘Nothing Mrs Dew can’t put right, eh?’ Lestrade smiled, watching his constable turn crimson.
‘All right, Kosminski.’ Lestrade climbed onto the crawling bed and turned his man over. ‘Give me your bull’s-eye, Constable.’
Dew complied and Lestrade shone it in the Pole’s eyes.
‘I am Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard,’ he said. ‘I’d like to ask you some questions.’
‘It about them women,’ sobbed Kosminski. ‘Them judys.’
‘That’s right. I’d like you to tell me where you were on the nights in question.’
‘I work,’ said Kosminski, blowing his nose in his bedsheet. ‘All night.’
‘Then why are you here now?’
‘I sacked,’ sobbed Kosminski, ‘because of my habits.’
Lestrade looked at Dew. ‘Habits?’ he asked.
‘Habits.’ Kosminski repeated.
‘Tell me, Kosminski,’ Lestrade stood back from the bed, just in case, ‘do you like women?’
Kosminski spat copiously into a corner. ‘I hate them’ he growled; ‘filthy, disgusting, that’s what they are. They are not fit to live.’
Lestrade circled the room a few times. It did not take him long.
‘Is that why you killed them?’ he asked.
‘Kill?’ Kosminski had stopped crying now and was staring hard through the shattered window pane whence his visitors had entered. ‘Oh, yes, I could kill. Women. Any women,’ and he spat again.
Lestrade threw the man his trousers and shirt. ‘Get dressed,’ he said, ‘you’re coming along with me.’
‘I under arrest?’ Kosminski retreated again into his huddle.
‘No,’ said Lestrade, ‘I just want to ask you a few questions, that’s all.’
And he came meekly as a lamb.
Tadeusz Kosminski had a string of convictions, it turned out, for assault and grievous bodily harm. He had broken the jaw of one woman who had looked at him funny, and kicked several prostitutes quite hard while they plied their trade against various walls in the Whitechapel area. What he did to their surprised clients was not recorded. But Lestrade was not happy. On no occasion had Kosminski used a knife; his shaven head and squat appearance fitted none of the eye-witness accounts of men seen talking to any of the deceased shortly before their deaths and, above all, he had a watertight alibi for two of the murder nights. He was in the cells at Cannon Row for punching temperance marchers and a lady Salvationist. Two other factors weighed heavily on Lestrade. The first was that Kosminski was raving mad. The second, that if he went around arresting every foreigner in sight he would be branded with Gregson’s reputation. If he arrested every misog . . . myssog . . . everybody who hated women, he would be linked indelibly with Honeybun, who had now told the News of the World that he had been ordained by God to rid the world of vice. If he arrested anybody at all, people other than Rodney would start calling him Abberline.
‘So why did Chubb Rupasobly finger him in the first place?’ Wensley asked one morning after a gruelling session in the Charge Room.
‘Kosminski’s bad for business,’ said Lestrade, sipping his tea as though his life depended on it. ‘Quite a sizeable portion of Chubb’s income comes from poncing. You know, he’s probably the biggest cash carrier in London.’
‘And Kosminski was a threat?’
Lestrade nodded. ‘As Rupasobly said, “he’s queering my pitch”. His girls are going in terror of their lives.’
‘But they’re still there, Sholto,’ mused Wensley, ‘on the streets. They’re still good natured, dearie – and they may still be killed.’
‘You don’t think Kosminski’s our man, then?’ asked Lestrade.
‘No, I don’t. Any more than you do.’
‘There is another name I’d like to follow up,’ said Lestrade. ‘Kosminski gave it to me in one of his more lucid moments.’
‘Who?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way.’ He snatched up Donegal and bowler and made for the stairs. ‘Time for Bedlam.’
‘Mr Lestrade, isn’t it?’ asked the man in the white coat.
‘It is,’ he answered. ‘This is Inspector Wensley, also of the Yard.’
‘Gentlemen,’ he shook their hands. ‘Walk this way, would you?’ and he clumped off down the darkened corridor, swinging his leg wide. After a few paces he stopped. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said quietly, ‘one thing which is vitally important in the treatment of the deranged is that they obey, quickly and implicitly. There must be absolute trust, you see. I wonder . . . I hate to ask it of you, but could you walk this way as I asked. Not to do so would weaken the position of authority I hold. You will notice some of the inmates,’ he gestured to the wrecks of human beings who wandered the halls, giggling or in solemn silence. ‘They appear not to observe you, but they do. Please . . .’ and he swung on as first Lestrade, then Wensley did likewise, until all three of them were hobbling along the corridor like so many war veterans.
A large, suited figure emerged suddenly from a side door, flanked by two more men in white coats. ‘Thank you, Dick, I’ll have my coat back now.’
The man with the limp spun round. ‘No, you promised,’ he screamed.
‘Tomorrow,’ the big man beamed, patting him on the head. ‘Now, go with Harry and Bert. Time for the water treatment.’
Dick gripped the man’s lapels. ‘Oh, Doctor, can I hold the hose?’ he positively slavered.
‘Well . . .’ the doctor began, ‘oh, very well.’ He patted Dick indulgently and the little man limped off, swinging his leg wide, while Harry and Bert did likewise, all of them craning to the left simultaneously as they staggered back down the corridor.
‘I’m sorry about that, gentlemen,’ he said, ushering them into an office. ‘I really am Dr McGregor.’
‘Who was that?’ Lestrade asked, taking the proffered chair.
‘That was Dick,’ McGregor smiled. ‘That’s the third time this week he’s pinched my coat.’
‘He had an authoritative air,’ commented Wensley. ‘Not that we were fooled, of course.’
‘You should have been.’ McGregor adjusted his pince-nez. ‘He was my predecessor here at the hospital.’
The Yard men looked at each other, wondering in their silence whether all doctors at the Bethlehem Hospital ended up as patients.