Death at Whitechapel

by Robin Paige

  Fred Abberline read the enigmatic telegram one more time. He folded the flimsy yellow paper, pushed it into the pocket of the woolen shirt he wore under his mackintosh, and stared out to sea, where the gray of the sky and the gray of the water met with no perceptible boundary. He had come down to the pier, as he often did these days, to be alone, to think, and to remember—remember things he desperately wished he had never learned and fervently hoped he might someday forget.

  But that was a fool’s dream, he thought wearily. What he had discovered would be with him to the day he died, an albatross chained around his neck, a leaden weight on his heart. Worse yet, it was a burden he could not lighten by speaking of it, except to Sickert, who already knew the worst of the horror. He could not speak of it to Sheridan, before whose integrity he felt compromised and dirty; nor to his wife, Emma, whose only joy in life was the house he had bought her with the coin of his complicity. He could not tell the world that he knew who committed the crimes that had riveted the attention of the entire Empire, the murders that had appeared to baffle even Scotland Yard. He could not tell, because his knowledge was now a state secret, and to reveal it was not merely madness, but treason.

  Abberline had joined the Metropolitan Police as an idealistic and naive young lad of nineteen and had risen swiftly through the ranks: to Sergeant in two years and Inspector in ten. He had been a good policeman; more, he had been an honest policeman. This had been a rare and a hard thing, especially after he was assigned to the Whitechapel C.I.D. The division was rotten to its core. Payoffs were routinely accepted as part of the policeman’s salary, and corruption was a part of the policeman’s world—but not for him. He had risen above the rot even in that God-forsaken part of London, and through the strength of his moral character and reputation he had succeeded in the nearly impossible job of keeping his hands clean for over twenty years.

  But a decade ago, he had been pulled, willy-nilly, into a succession of terrible events. He had been captured in their inexorable grip just as he himself had captured hundreds of criminals and delivered them into the swift embrace of justice. Except that it was not justice that had seized him, but the rot. Struggle as he might to keep himself clean—and he had struggled, hadn’t he?—it had at last gathered him into its filthy embrace and pulled him down.

  In the spring of ’88, Abberline was transferred from Whitechapel to the West End and instructed to keep an eye on the young Prince Albert Victor, called Eddy, who seemed to be hell-bent on getting himself into as much trouble as possible. Eddy believed him to be a bodyguard, but Abberline was in actuality a spy, paid above his ordinary salary to report directly to Francis Knollys, private secretary to the Prince of Wales. He was to tell Knollys where Eddy went and with whom, and was also directed to be on the lookout for prostitutes who might attempt to approach the young prince. Eddy was to be kept from women, at all costs.

  The surveillance duty was not difficult and Emma had happily welcomed the extra money it brought, but it wasn’t long before Abberline felt uncomfortable with the work. Eddy was rumored to be incapable of learning, but Abberline found him sweet and simple, and suspected that it was the young man’s deafness which made him appear backward. In fact, Abberline saw, the prince’s deafness was so severe that it opened him to influence and possible corruption, an easy mark for men who did not have his best interests at heart. Abberline felt increasingly protective toward the prince, who seemed to be driven by some sort of inward despair and anger, and even though he felt himself a Judas each time he made his report to Knollys and collected his additional wage, he comforted himself with the thought that he was doing Eddy a good service by looking out for him.

  The duty continued less than six months, however. Knollys abruptly terminated his employment around the middle of August, and Abberline was sent back to Whitechapel. The first of the murders occurred at the end of August, and he was given responsibility for the investigation, to which dozens of detectives were assigned. In the beginning, he had been glad to get back to the routine of police work and the company of his colleagues, and began to systematically pursue the leads his detectives turned up. But then the second murder occurred and he began to sense that something was wrong, that the rot was rising around him. The third and fourth murders, on September 30, convinced him that the ritual mutilations were a kind of secret code and that the vocabulary of the code was Masonic, some of the details of which he had encountered in a book called Freemasonry Exposed, written by an American Freemason who had been murdered for his revelations.

  Knowing that Freemasons were involved in the murders had not taken him any closer to the actual perpetrators, however. For one thing, he could not imagine a motive. He discovered that Nichols and Chapman and Stride were acquainted, but that didn’t mean a great deal—the three women had lived close to one another and frequented the same taverns. But when Mary Kelly was murdered and he began to trace various leads into her past life, a clearer picture began to emerge. As a skilled and experienced investigator, he found out a great deal about Mary Kelly within a few days of her death. He learned that she had once worked for a confectioner in Cleveland Street, then was hired as a nursemaid for a woman named Annie Crook, who had been married in the chapel of Saint Saviours to (it was said) some member of the royal family, a close friend of the painter Walter Sickert. He learned also that Annie Crook had been kidnapped and mistreated, and that Kelly had returned to the East End and gone to drinking and, with three of the other dead women, had resorted to blackmail.

  Yes, the details had come quickly, and when he put them all together, he realized, with mounting horror, that Annie Crook had been married to Prince Eddy and had borne him a daughter, that the women had been killed to silence their tongues, and that the killers were Freemasons, although at that point he could not name the murderers themselves.

  But it wouldn’t have done him any good to name them, if he could. By the time he had understood the Masonic implications and pieced the rest of the details together, he knew that the rot had swallowed the entire case, and Scotland Yard and Whitehall with it. For his two superior officers, Robert Anderson and Sir Charles Warren, Assistant Commissioner and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police respectively, were both high-ranking Freemasons and obviously committed to a cover-up. He could point to a half-dozen instances of their mismanagement and interference with the case—not the least of which was Anderson’s leaving for an extended holiday in Switzerland the day after Chapman’s death; Warren’s order to the divisional police surgeon to suppress the details of the mutilations; and Warren’s otherwise incomprehensible erasure of the Ripper’s chalked message. To top it off, Warren himself resigned as commissioner just hours before Kelly’s death, and his failure to notify Abberline of his departure had led to enormous confusion and delay at the crime scene, and the potential loss of evidence. The Home Office followed by illegally removing the inquest from Whitechapel to Shoreditch Town Hall, placing it under the direction of a coroner who aggressively suppressed important evidence. The next day, Abberline was told to turn in his notes and close his investigation. But these events came as no surprise. He had known since Chapman was killed that the fix was on.

  From that time forward, Abberline understood that there was no getting out of the rot. His next significant case came seven months after Kelly’s death. It was the Cleveland Street brothel affair, where he was ordered to make sure that the important men—Eddy, Lord Arthur Somerset, and Lord Euston, even the brothel owner—escaped before he closed in on the two minor suspects he was told to arrest. In due time these two unfortunates were allowed to plead to minor charges, served short terms, and disappeared. After that ridiculous debacle, which lost him the respect of the few police officers who still believed in him, he was assigned once again to tag after Eddy, who was rumored to be suffering from syphilis and certainly looked the part. Realizing that the extent of his knowledge about the crimes and the cover-ups put him in danger, Abberline tried to keep his head down—but still, there was
a near miss or two, and he began to be afraid.

  Then came the shocking news, in February of ’92, that Eddy was dead, and Abberline was hit as hard by the blow as if the prince had been his son or his brother. And on the day after this devastation, there came another. He was contacted by Walter Sickert and taken in great secrecy to talk with a man named James Stephen, who had been confined for the past few months to a lunatic asylum in Northampton. Stephen, who was a barrister and poet, as well as Eddy’s one-time tutor, long-time friend, and brother Freemason, seemed to Abberline to be perfectly lucid. He had a story to tell and names to name, and he urgently wanted, he said, to set the record straight.

  Abberline listened carefully, mentally checking the dates, the details, and the evidence Stephen offered against what he knew as fact from his own investigations. The names Stephen named—Dr. Gull, Lord Randolph, and John Netley—confirmed Abberline’s own suspicions, although he had not been able to find any direct incriminating evidence. The story was entirely plausible, entirely possible, and the teller’s present condition—he was clearly dying—gave to his tale the added significance of a deathbed confession.

  But was it the truth? Abberline had to admit that Sickert and Stephen might have concocted it between the two of them, perhaps to cover up their own involvement. Through their relationship to Eddy, they themselves were deeply involved in the case, in one way or another. Had they participated in the murders, as well? Should their names be added to the suspect list? It was possible, but there was no way to know, now. The investigation was ended. The case was closed. The rot had triumphed.

  Within a few weeks, Stephen was dead, of self-imposed starvation, according to the official report. By this time, Abberline had heard the rumors that were circulating about Eddy—that he had not died of pneumonia, but of poison; alternatively, that he was not dead at all, but in exile. Both seemed equally plausible to Abberline, given what he knew of the way the marriage had been handled, and what had been done to the women. He continued to give Stephen’s story a great deal of careful thought, measuring the names of Gull and Churchill and Netley against the evidence he himself had collected, and concluding, on balance, that Stephen spoke the truth.

  Several days after Stephen’s death, Abberline went to see Robert Anderson, who was still the head of his department. He told Anderson that he had written down what he knew and surmised about the Ripper’s crimes and had put the document in a safe place, leaving instructions for it to be released to the public if he were to die suddenly. He was not yet fifty, but he was ready to retire, if the department could do without him, and if one or two minor requests were filled, such as the payment of his pension and perhaps a little something extra on account of faithful service. Anderson replied, straight-faced, that the department would be devastated by his loss, but he would see what he could do. The next day, his resignation was handed to him. He signed, and received an envelope containing the first of the payments that still continued to come to him, in cash. Emma found the house of her dreams in Bournemouth, and that was the end of his career as a policeman.

  The sky was dark now, and the gaslights on the High Street were winking on. He had missed his tea, but no matter. Emma’s sister was visiting and the two of them would never miss him. But his table was waiting at the Dog and Pony and a stein or two of ale would do very well in lieu of tea, with perhaps an eel pie to go with it. Tomorrow morning, when Mr. Peters opened the post office, he would send a telegram to Sheridan. He already knew what it would say.

  YES STOP NO STOP REGARDS TO WALTER STOP GOOD LUCK TO YOU. STOP. ABBERLINE

  35

  Would that I could discover truth as easily as I can uncover falsehood.

  CICERO

  De Natura Deorum

  The room was so silent that the fall of ash in the fireplace seemed loud and startling. Jennie’s face was turned toward the fire, and Charles was sitting in his chair with his head flung back, his eyes closed. Kate sat quietly beside Jennie, watching them both and thinking about the fantastical story Charles had told them. Prince marries commoner, marriage destroyed by Prince’s family, blackmailers murdered by half-mad Freemasons, police officials conceal the truth, Prince removed from the succession and imprisoned in secret exile. The whole thing was so riveting, so utterly compelling, that it deserved to be the plot of one of Beryl Bardwell’s novels, if nothing else.

  But the central question was not whether Sickert’s tragic tale held the listener’s breathless attention or compelled fear and horror and anger—although it certainly did all of that. What mattered was whether the story was true, and as to that, Kate could not be sure. It seemed almost too novelistic a tale to be true, the plot elements too neatly contrived, the details too fully explained. But she had to remind herself that Charles, who got the story straight from Sickert himself, seemed to believe it—and Charles was not easily persuaded. What was more, certain parts of the narrative were authenticated by the fragments of information she herself had gathered from other sources. Still, a great deal of the story could not be confirmed. It depended only upon eye-witness testimony, and most of the witnesses were either dead or deranged. Except for Sickert himself, of course. It was entirely a question of veracity. One either believed him or one did not.

  Jennie roused herself. “Thank you, Charles,” she said quietly. She sounded sad and resigned. “I suppose I knew, even then, although I should have denied it to Heaven.”

  Charles opened his eyes. “It can’t be proven,” he said. “Most of it is merely Sickert’s word, and the rest of it—what he says James Stephen said, for example—is merely heresay. It would be helpful if Abberline had uncovered some corroborating evidence, but if so, I doubt he will tell me. He was a good policeman, but his silence has been bought and paid for.”

  Jennie sighed heavily. “It is sad to think that Randolph could do such things, although you must believe me when I say that it was his illness that drove him. Perhaps it is even sadder to think, though, that the government would go to such lengths to cover up a scandal.” She shook her head. “But there have been an untold number of other scandals, all hushed up. I don’t suppose we should be terribly surprised by this one.”

  Kate stood, feeling the need to step away from the story. “It’s rather late. Shall we see what’s become of dinner?” She was reaching for the bell when the door opened and Richards came in. Winston was behind him, dressed formally, his hat under his arm, as if on his way to a dinner party.

  “I’m sorry to barge in,” Winston said when he’d been announced, “but I must speak to Lady Randolph. Urgently, I’m afraid.”

  “Thank you, Richards,” Kate said. “You may go.”

  Sotto voce, Richards replied, “Dinner is just ready, your ladyship. Will Mr. Churchill be staying?”

  “Winston,” Kate said, “we’ll be eating soon. Will you join us?”

  “I’m sorry, no,” Winston said. He seemed flustered. “I’m on my way to dinner with Lord Balcarres, and I’ve only a minute. I shan’t keep you from your dinner.”

  Richards withdrew and Winston stood, awkwardly, for a moment. Finally he sat down beside his mother and said, almost in a whisper, “Another letter has come, Mama.” He drew an envelope from his pocket. “I came in from Bath in a tearing hurry, caught up the post, and opened your envelope in error.” His voice rose. “There’s another press clipping—and he says you must give him five hundred pounds or he’ll go to the police and tell them that you were at Finch’s on the day of the murder!”

  “Not now, Winston,” Jennie said wearily, waving away the envelope. “Not tonight. It’s too much. I just can’t bear any more.”

  “But Mama!” Winston protested. “Something must be done! We can’t just hand over—” He stopped and gathered himself up. “I think you should go away. To France, perhaps. Or to India, to visit the Curzons.” He turned to Charles and said, in a commanding tone, “Lord Charles, tell her that she must go to India, straightaway.” His face darkened. “Once she is safely out of
harm’s way, this person can be ... dealt with.” The last few words were almost a snarl.

  Kate took the envelope out of Winston’s fingers and handed it to Charles. “Thank you, Winston,” she said quietly. “I believe the situation can be managed without sending your mother on such a long trip—or resorting to violence.”

  Winston stood, hand on hip. “But what’s to be done?” he demanded. His jaw jutted and his large round eyes were hard as glass. “If the man is paid, as Finch was, he’ll just keep on asking for more. If he isn’t—”

  “Winston,” Jennie interrupted, “why don’t you go on and enjoy your dinner. Lord Charles will take care of this matter.”

  Winston was sputtering. “But—but—”

  Charles stood up. “Be a good chap, Winston,” he said wearily. “There shall be time later to go into it. You have an engagement, and we are all very tired here.”

  It was true, Kate thought. She herself was fatigued, and Charles was drawn and pale.

  Winston looked from one to the other of them. “Quite right,” he said at last, making a visible effort to calm himself. He bent down and kissed his mother’s cheek. “I do hope you’ll give consideration to my idea of India, Mama. We could go together, for I have decided to return there myself, very quickly. For the polo tournament.”

  “But I thought you intended on beginning your political efforts!” Jennie exclaimed, startled. “I’ve been moving heaven and earth to give you your chance. And now you say you’re going back to India—for a foolish game?”

  Winston smiled, but did not make a very good show of it, Kate thought, and his explanation sounded lame. “But it is a very important game, Mama, and I owe it to the Fourth to play my part. And the time shall not be lost, of course. I shall take my manuscript with me, and work on it en route.” He gave her a smile. “I am booked on the S.S. Osiris. Come with me, dearest, and we shall make a fine holiday of it. It is a good way for you to escape from these threats, and from that tiresome George, too. And we shall have such fun together.”