The Ripper Secret

by The Ripper Secret (retail) (epub)

  ‘Who was he, sir?’ Thomas Ryan asked, closing and locking the street door.

  ‘To be perfectly honest, Thomas,’ Warren replied, with a calmness that he really did not feel, ‘I have no idea. He had no useful information for me, and in fact he ended up threatening me. I doubt if we’ll see him back here again.’

  Warren returned to the drawing room, stuffed the piece of paper the man had left into his pocket, then climbed the staircase back up to his study and resumed his seat at the desk, unloading his pistol and replacing it in the drawer. But for several minutes he didn’t direct his attention back towards the report he had been reading. Instead, he stared at the opposite wall of the room, his eyes unfocused and blank. Ever since he had found and then removed the menorah, he had been half-expecting to hear a knock at the door and find that somebody, somewhere, had somehow managed to discover what he had done.

  But he hadn’t been expecting anything like the approach which had just been made to him.

  He glanced at the paper he’d picked up. On it, as the stranger had said, was the address of a warehouse in Bermondsey. Below that were another few words:

  The label is to read ‘Consignor Charles Warren, c/o 4 Whitehall Place, London. Consignee Miss S. Winberg, to be collected.’ It is essential that your real name is on the label, for reasons that will be obvious to you. After delivery of the relic, no attempt is to be made to identify, apprehend or in any way impede Miss Winberg, or the circumstances which led to your decision to return the menorah will resume.

  Warren read the words several times, then shook his head. Nothing about the events of that evening made sense. The instructions – if that was the right word – which he had been given were bizarre, though he could see the logic behind them. By insisting that Warren’s name and official address were on the shipping label, the man was clearly doing what he could to ensure that the commissioner wouldn’t dare try to seize both the relic and ‘Michael’ or the Winberg woman, who was presumably his accomplice, after she had collected the crate. If that happened, Warren would have no easy way of explaining how the ancient Jewish menorah, labelled with his name, had come to be in his possession in the first place, and his public disgrace would inevitably follow.

  But that, of course, wasn’t going to happen, because Warren had not the slightest intention of surrendering the menorah, and the veiled threat made by the stranger was too vague for him to give it the slightest credence. The single fact which was unarguable was that the foreigner – the Russian or Russian Jew or whatever he was – had somehow deduced what had happened in Jerusalem nearly twenty years earlier. But as far as Warren could see, there was nothing, not one single thing, which the man could do to threaten him or apply a single iota of pressure that would force him to surrender the menorah. The stranger had obviously been well-informed, but just as clearly he was deranged.

  Warren looked again at the paper and the words written on it. He was about to screw it up and throw it away when he paused. Though he was convinced the man was mad and posed no threat to him, it might be as well to retain it, just in case. He unlocked one of the drawers of his desk, slid the paper inside and then turned the key in the lock.

  Friday, 3 August 1888

  Central London

  The house in which Alexei Pedachenko had secured his lodging faced east, and during the morning the drawing room was bright and cheerful, but was plunged into gloom as soon as the sun passed its zenith. In the afternoon, by far the best light was in the study, at the rear of the property, and this room offered a further advantage in that it was not overlooked by any other house, and no road or path ran near it. So the Russian could work in there without fear of anyone seeing what he was doing.

  Though, in fact, his actions would have appeared to be innocent enough.

  Spread out on the desk in front of him was a map of the East End of London, a map which he was studying intently. Pedachenko was a man who believed in the importance of thorough preparation, and he was not prepared to leave anything to chance. He needed to determine a good place to start his campaign, and that place had to be close to the centre of Whitechapel, because that district and neighbouring Spitalfields were the two areas in which he believed his actions would have the biggest and most public effect. But he also needed to allow for the subsequent events. He didn’t want to go as far to the east as Mile End or Stepney, but he still wanted there to be a reasonable separation between each of the events he was planning.

  Then he had an idea. He opened one of the desk drawers and took out a newspaper cutting from the Daily News of 6 April 1888 and read again the article which had been the inspiration for his plan. He jotted down ‘Osborn Street’ on a slip of paper and then turned his attention back to the map, looking for that location.

  He found it quickly enough. Osborn Street lay just to the north of Whitechapel High Street and very close to the largest junction anywhere in the district, where Commercial Street, Leman Street, Commercial Road and Whitechapel High Street all met at a single intersection. It was as near to the centre of Whitechapel as made absolutely no difference, and would be as good a spot as any to begin his campaign.

  Pedachenko smiled slightly, and nodded to himself. It was fitting, he decided, that he would start very close to the site of this incident, as a kind of silent and unacknowledged homage to the woman featured in the article.

  He drew a rough circle around Osborn Street on the map. Anywhere within that area would be a satisfactory starting point for the first of the two triangles he planned to create. As a check, he then took a ruler and drew a narrow triangular shape, the apex of which lay a short distance to the west of the Cambridge Road and the left-hand base point in the centre of Spitalfields. That, he decided, would do very nicely. He would link the second, wider, triangle to the first, but the dimensions of that could wait until he had completed the first one.

  He sat in thought for a moment as he considered the date. The sooner the better, obviously, but he expected that the streets would be very busy over the weekend, and possibly on the Monday as well, because 6 August was a bank holiday. Nevertheless, that would be the date he would start looking. If he didn’t find a suitable combination of circumstances that night, he still had plenty of time left. But he would also walk the area on both Saturday and Sunday nights, to ensure that he knew the warren of streets and alleys as well as possible, but also, and even more importantly, to work out the patrol route of the beat police constables, because in this venture timing was everything.

  His campaign to force Sir Charles Warren to hand over the menorah would start within the week.

  Pedachenko nodded in satisfaction, folded up the map and replaced it in the desk drawer. Then he opened another drawer and took out a heavy knife with a six-inch blade in a leather sheath, a second and smaller knife, also in a sheath, and a whetstone, and for the next hour he sat quietly at the desk, running the blade of first one knife, and then the second, up and down the whetstone until both were as sharp as he could get them.

  When he was satisfied with his work, he cleaned both knives carefully and then replaced them in their respective sheaths.

  He was ready. Unless he was thwarted for some reason, within four days he would have completed the first event he had planned. And then all of London would know about it.

  Night of Monday, 6 August 1888

  Whitechapel, London

  The public house was crowded, as it was almost every night of the week, but the crowds were even bigger because of the bank holiday. Every seat was occupied. Groups of people stood around the premises laughing and talking and arguing and, above all, drinking. The furniture in the pub was sturdy, basic, discoloured and badly scarred with scratches and gashes and tobacco burns, and the floor was covered by a fine layer of sawdust to help soak up spilled drinks, blood, vomit and anything else that landed on it.

  At one end of the long wooden bar a drunken soldier was singing loudly and entirely tunelessly to the enthusiastic accompaniment of his equally dru
nk companions. A small scuffle had broken out at the opposite end of the room between two prostitutes who were arguing over a man who had passed out – or possibly even died – in the chair between them. Numerous other prostitutes, many of them already drunk and several virtually incapable, plied their trade around the room, moving from one man to another as they offered their services for the price of a drink or two.

  In short, it was a typical night in a typical East End pub, and the Angel and Crown was virtually indistinguishable from dozens of others in the area.

  Tucked away in one corner, sitting around a tiny wooden table, were four people. Mary Ann Connelly – better known to her friends and clients as ‘Pearly Poll’, a tall and somewhat masculine-looking prostitute who lodged in Crossingham’s doss house in nearby Dorset Street – had her arm around the shoulders of a uniformed soldier, and the man had already agreed to meet her price. She was only waiting for her companion, Martha Tabram, sometimes known as Martha Turner, to complete her negotiations. Then they could do their business and move on to their next clients of the evening. Or have another drink, or even find somewhere to sleep.

  Tabram was cheaply dressed, wearing a black bonnet over her dark hair, a long black jacket over a dark green skirt, brown petticoat, stockings and spring-sided – elasticated – boots. All her clothes, and especially the boots, were old and in very poor condition. She was about five foot three inches tall, thirty-nine years old, slightly overweight, and attractive by the somewhat liberal standards applied to her profession in those days.

  She had been born Martha White on 10 May 1849, at 17 Marshall Street, London Road, Southwark, and had had a difficult childhood, her parents separating and then her father dying when she was only sixteen. She had been married at the age of 20, in fact on Christmas Day 1869, to Henry Samuel Tabram, a packer at a furniture warehouse. The couple had had two sons, but within six years husband and wife had separated, the root cause being Martha’s heavy drinking.

  For some three years afterwards, Henry Tabram had supported his wife financially, paying her twelve shillings a week in maintenance, but when he discovered that she had established a relationship with another man – a carpenter named Henry Turner – he had reduced the sum to only two shillings and sixpence.

  She’d lived in the East End for some thirteen years, the last decade off and on with Turner, hence her alias as Martha Turner. But in August 1888, Henry Turner had lost his job and he and Martha were trying to eke out a living as hawkers, selling small articles such as needles, pins and trinkets on the street, and had for some four months been lodging in a house off Commercial Road owned by a Mrs Mary Bousfield. But they had left that property about four weeks earlier, without giving notice and owing rent money.

  Martha’s relationship with Turner, too, had suffered because of her habitual drunkenness, and the couple had split up at about the same time as they left Mrs Bousfield’s premises. Since the break-up, Martha had been occupying a bed in a common lodging house at 19 George Street, Spitalfields, and was supplementing her erratic daytime income as a hawker with casual prostitution at night on the streets of Whitechapel.

  ‘Come on, Emma,’ Connelly muttered, using the familiar name she usually called Tabram. ‘Must be nearly midnight, and I still ain’t got the price of a bed.’

  Tabram glanced over at her friend, but didn’t reply, her attention fixed on the soldier sitting beside her.

  ‘Sixpence too bloody much,’ the man said, his voice slurred with drink. ‘Give you three. Thas my best offer.’

  ‘Four, then,’ Tabram replied, reducing her price to clinch the sale. ‘Four pence, and we can do it right now.’

  ‘What, in here?’ the soldier said, and burst out laughing.

  ‘No. I know a place, just round the corner. Nice and private.’

  ‘Right. Four pence. That right?’

  Tabram nodded, drained the last swallow of gin from her glass and stood up. She needed to get the man outside, and get the business done, before he passed out in the bar and she lost her opportunity.

  ‘C’mon, Poll,’ she said, grabbed the soldier’s left hand firmly, and began weaving her way slightly unsteadily through the throng crowding the pub. Connelly and the other soldier followed her lead, and moments later all four of them stepped outside to stand for a few moments on the rough pavement. It was about fifteen minutes before midnight.

  ‘Where you two going?’

  ‘I know a good spot in George Yard, nice and quiet.’ Tabram said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘We’ll go to Angel Alley,’ Connelly said. ‘It’s not far. See you later.’

  The two couples separated, Tabram leading her client, who seemed even more drunk and unsteady on his feet now that he was outside the building and in the open air, down Whitechapel High Street as far as the White Hart Inn. Then they stepped through a covered archway and turned into George Yard, a narrow alley oriented north–south which connected Whitechapel High Street to Wentworth Street. Angel Alley, the spot chosen by her friend Pearly Poll for the completion of her business with the soldier, actually ran parallel to George Yard, just a few tens of yards distant.

  There were a number of premises, the George Yard Buildings, on the east side of the alley, and Tabram found a quiet corner easily enough. Most prostitutes wore no underclothes and routinely conducted their business in the open air, in any spot that offered even a bare modicum of privacy. Such couplings were clumsy, hasty and usually of short duration, and Tabram didn’t anticipate that her present encounter would prove to be any different to the others she’d endured during that day.

  But there was something she needed to do first, before she lifted her skirts and offered herself to the drunken soldier. She was well aware of the effect alcohol had on the male physique, one bit of it in particular, and if the man couldn’t perform, that would be his fault, not hers. But if they were unable to complete the act, some of her clients had refused to pay, and she’d spent too much time talking the soldier into purchasing her services to just walk away now.

  ‘Let me see the money,’ she murmured, boldly rubbing her hand across the man’s groin.

  Her action produced a physical reaction she could feel even through the thick and rough material of the soldier’s uniform, so she guessed he wasn’t so drunk as to be incapable. But she still wanted payment in advance, just in case.

  ‘‘Ere you are, you old trollop,’ the soldier said, taking a few coins out of his pocket and handing four copper pennies to Tabram.

  ‘A bit less of the “old”,’ she replied, swiftly checking that she’d been given the right money and then slipping the coins into one of her pockets. ‘Now we’ve got that out of the way,’ she added, ‘I’m all yours.’

  She reached down towards her knees and, with the ease that comes from long practice, pulled up her skirt and petticoat to expose her naked groin.

  ‘All right like that?’ she asked, spreading her legs wide and leaning back against the wall of the adjacent building. ‘Or do you want me round the other way?’

  ‘You’ll do like that,’ her client replied, sounding slightly more sober.

  He looked down at her naked white flesh, unbuttoned his trousers and took a couple of steps forward.

  Their coupling was brief, slightly painful because of the absence of any kind of lubricant, and unsatisfactory for both parties. As soon as it was concluded, the soldier stepped backwards and rearranged both himself and his clothes.

  All Martha Tabram needed to do was drop her skirt and petticoat down again, and then she was ready for her next customer.

  ‘That all right, love?’ she asked, not caring in the least whether it had been or not.

  ‘Yeah. Suppose so.’

  ‘I’ll be off then,’ she said, turned and started walking back along George Yard to Whitechapel High Street.

  Reaching the road, she loitered for a few minutes near the end of Angel Alley, waiting for Pearly Poll to reappear, but when she didn’t, Tabram decided to wait for her in t
he White Hart Inn, at least until it closed. She found a seat near the bar where she had a view of the street outside the window, and bought herself a glass of gin. She had always been a heavy drinker, frequently consuming enough alcohol to cause fits.

  She didn’t see Pearly Poll on the street outside, and her fellow prostitute didn’t enter the inn either, so Tabram continued drinking. By two in the morning, she was again out on the street, and had spent all the money the soldier had paid her.

  Somewhat belatedly, her befuddled brain registered that she had no money even for a bed in a doss house, and that she needed to find another customer, or she would probably end up having to sleep on the street or in the minimal shelter provided by some doorway. She stared around, hoping to see a single man whom she could persuade to hand over money in exchange for her sexual favours. But the street seemed virtually deserted, the only people visible a man and woman turning off Whitechapel High Street into George Yard, presumably on their way home.

  Tabram shook her head, leant against the wall of the White Hart Inn for a few moments while she got her bearings, then began staggering down the street in the general direction of the now-closed Angel and Crown pub. Perhaps, she thought, she might find someone down there.

  But as she made her way along Whitechapel High Street, a figure seemed almost to materialize directly in front of her, stepping out of a doorway.

  The man, for the figure was clearly male, was neatly and casually dressed, and Tabram immediately realized from a single glance at his clothes that he probably had money. Or at least, certainly more than enough money to buy her a bed in one of the nearby doss houses. And right then, that was her highest priority.

  She stepped boldly over to him and took his arm.

  ‘You lonely, my love?’ she asked. ‘Looking for some company, are you?’