‘Mrs Richardson also stated that she owned both the length of steel and the nail box which we found there. That only left the few items which it would appear the killer had removed from the victim’s pocket, or which had possibly fallen out of it. So far they have yielded neither information nor clues to either the identity or the motive of the killer.’
‘I understood that there was part of an envelope which displayed the stamp of the Royal Sussex Regiment?’
‘That is true, sir,’ Abberline responded, ‘and to begin with we were hopeful that it might shed some light on the identity of the perpetrator, but it did not. One of my colleagues, Inspector Chandler, visited the regiment to compare pay-book signatures with the writing on the envelope, but he was unable to find a match. He subsequently learnt that the Lynchford Road post office stocked a supply of the envelopes which were for sale to the general public, and an inspection of the remains of the envelope showed that the one found beside the victim had been franked at that very post office and not inside the barracks.’
Clarification of this matter came from another witness, a man named William Stevens. He was a painter who sometimes lodged at 35 Dorset Street.
‘I saw her in the kitchen at Crossingham’s Lodging House on the afternoon of the seventh of September,’ Stevens began, ‘and we fell into conversation. She told me that she had been to the hospital and had been given two bottles, one of medicine and the other of lotion, and a box of pills. She showed me these items, but the box which held the pills fell all to pieces as she showed it to me. We couldn’t repair the box, and so she wrapped the two pills which had been in it in a piece of paper which she picked up from the floor of the kitchen. I saw the paper clearly, because she was wrapping up the pills right in front of me, and I am certain that the envelope which the police showed me was identical to that piece of paper.’
But the inquest did produce three witnesses who at least supplied some information, including evidence which cast doubt upon the time of the murder which had been estimated by Dr Phillips, and one of whom clearly saw the murderer with his victim just a few minutes before the killing took place.
Amelia Richardson’s son John was thirty-seven years old. He didn’t live on the premises, but at John Street in Spitalfields, where he worked in the market as a porter. But he also assisted his mother with her packing-case business. Following the theft of some tools from the cellar of the house, John Richardson had been in the habit of checking the security of the door in the mornings after he left his home and before he walked on to his place of work.
‘I arrived at the building at about a quarter to five on the morning of the eighth of September,’ he began, ‘and as is my habit I walked through to the backyard of the house to check that the door to the cellar was locked.’
‘And was it?’ the coroner asked.
‘Yes, sir, it was. But I didn’t leave immediately. One of my boots was hurting my foot, so I sat down on the steps at the back of the house and took out my knife to trim a piece of leather from it. It didn’t take me very long to do this, and then I continued on to the market.’
‘While you were sitting on those steps did you see anything unusual in the yard?’
‘No, but if the body of that poor woman had been there, I would certainly have seen it. The police inspector has told me exactly where it was found, and it was only a few inches away from where I was sitting.’
‘What time did you leave the premises?’ the coroner asked.
‘I doubt if trimming the leather took me more than five minutes, so I probably left at about ten minutes before five.’
The coroner nodded.
‘Thank you, Mr Richardson. That evidence will be very helpful in determining the time at which the murder must have been committed.’
The second witness was a woman named Elizabeth Long who was the wife of a cart minder called James Long. Just after half past five that morning, she had been walking along Hanbury Street and saw a man and a woman talking together near number 29. She was certain of the time because she had heard the Black Eagle Brewery clock in Brick Lane strike the half-hour a few seconds earlier.
‘And you saw these two people clearly?’
‘Yes, sir. The woman had her back to the property, so I could see her face, and I am certain that that woman was the same person whose body I was later taken to see in the mortuary.’
‘Can you describe the man who was with her?’
‘He was standing facing the woman and so he had his back towards me and I didn’t see his face. He looked to me as if he was aged over forty, and he seemed to have a dark complexion and a foreign appearance. He was quite smartly dressed, wearing a brown deerstalker hat and I think a dark coat, though I cannot be certain of the colour. I would describe his appearance as shabby genteel.’
‘Were you able to hear any part of their conversation?’ the coroner asked.
‘Yes, sir, I did. As I passed the two people, the man said “Will you?” to the woman, and she replied “Yes”. I heard nothing after that as I continued on my way along the road.’
The third witness at the inquest was Albert Cadosch, the carpenter who lived next door at number 27 Hanbury Street. He related how he had gone outside at about half past five that morning and had heard voices in the yard of the adjacent property.
‘Could you make out what they were saying?’
‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘The only word I am certain I heard was “no”.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I went back indoors, but then I came out again a few moments later. I didn’t hear the voices any more, but I did hear a thump, as if some object had fallen against the fence between the two properties.’
‘Did you look over the fence or stay in the yard any longer to listen?’
But Albert Cadosch was clearly a man in which any sense of curiosity was entirely absent.
‘No, sir,’ he answered. ‘I left the building to walk to work.’
* * *
Abberline and Chandler walked back from the inquest together.
‘Anything strike you as a bit odd about that, Joseph?’ Abberline asked, as they walked down the street.
‘I suppose you mean why did Dr Phillips refuse to say anything about the mutilations to the woman’s body?’
‘I’ll be having a word with our police surgeon over that later, because we need to find out as much as we can about this killing. No, it was something else that Phillips said.’
Chandler glanced at him enquiring.
‘What do you mean?
‘The time, Joseph, the time. When you told me what had happened that night, you said that Phillips was quite certain that the killing had taken place about two hours before he examined the body, and he was at the murder scene at about half past six in the morning. That puts the time of the murder at half past four in the morning, maybe even earlier.’
Chandler nodded.
‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘That’s what Phillips said today in his evidence, that her death had occurred at about 4.30.’
‘That’s precisely my point. Phillips was basing his estimate on the approximate body temperature of the dead woman, and you told me that he didn’t even use a thermometer but just felt various parts of the corpse with his hands. Probably not the most accurate way of working out the time of death.’
‘But Phillips has got years of experience and he’s a police surgeon. I think he knows his stuff.’
‘On most things, maybe,’ Abberline agreed. ‘But just look at the other evidence, and the other timings. Elizabeth Long is certain that she saw Annie Chapman standing outside 29 Hanbury Street at almost exactly 5.30 in the morning. She’d just heard the brewery clock strike the half-hour. And she positively identified the body in the mortuary as the same woman that she’d seen.’
Chandler shrugged.
‘Maybe it struck half past four, not half past five. She could have been mistaken.’
‘If it was just that one witness, if
it was just Elizabeth Long, then you could be right. But Albert Cadosch was also quite certain about the time, and so was John Richardson, as you’d expect, as both men were leaving home at the same time they did every day to walk to their places of work. And if Richard son’s account is accurate – and we’ve absolutely no reason to believe that it isn’t – it’s simply impossible that he could have sat on the steps in the yard trimming a piece of leather from his boot with the mutilated body of the woman lying on the ground less than a foot away from him.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘I’m simply saying that, despite all of his undoubted experience and competence, on this occasion Dr Phillips has simply got the time wrong.’
Friday, 14 September 1888
London
Charles Warren had returned from his holiday in France to a capital city in a virtual state of siege, but with the enemy already within the walls, a faceless maniac who was intent not just on killing women, but also on hideously mutilating their bodies after death.
And, as the last killing had clearly shown, he was also removing body parts as revolting souvenirs of his work. Despite the curious reticence shown by Dr Phillips at the inquest, it had quickly became common knowledge in London that Chapman’s womb, the upper part of her vagina, most of her bladder and a section of the wall of her belly, including her navel, had been removed from her body, and from the scene. This added yet another dimension to the horror that was afflicting the city.
In the whole of London the only person who had any idea of the identity of the murderer was Warren himself, and even his knowledge was incredibly scanty, far too slight to permit any search to begin for the killer, even if the commissioner had wanted to do so. A middle-aged man, possibly a Russian, and using the alias ‘Michael’, was little enough for even the most talented and committed detective to go on.
Three women – four if you included the unfortunate Emma Smith in this wretched total – had now been killed in the Whitechapel area, and the one thing Warren was quite certain about was that there would be more deaths before the year was out. And though he regretted that the women had been killed, at least on an intellectual level, he found he was still able to adopt a professionally detached attitude towards what was going on. In truth, he was far more concerned about the effect the killings were having upon the population of London and on the reputation of the Metropolitan Police, than in the facts of the deaths themselves.
In his personal opinion, the slaughtering of a handful of destitute and probably diseased prostitutes – brutal and hideous though their killings had been – was of no significance whatsoever when compared to the importance of the menorah, the most sacred relic of the entire Jewish religion. Warren knew that almost any number of murders of that class of person would not be compelling enough to make him accede to the demands ‘Michael’ had made and hand over the relic. But if the killer had selected middle- or upper-class women, women of his own class, Warren knew that his attitude would of necessity have been completely different.
He spent that morning going through his correspondence at home, intending to proceed to his office in Scotland Yard after lunch. Among the routine letters and tradesman’s accounts he found two hand-delivered letters, the handwritten address now easily recognizable. Before he opened them he called Ryan up to his study.
‘These letters,’ he asked, holding up the two envelopes. ‘When did they arrive?’
‘While you were away, sir,’ Ryan replied, stating the obvious, ‘and each time during the afternoon. The first one arrived on the 31st of August and the second on the 8th of September. I was actually here in the hall when the second one was delivered, and I did glance outside to see who had left it.’
‘Who was it?’
‘A common street urchin, sir. I assume that he had been given the letter and a penny to deliver it. But before I could open the door and question him, he ran away from the house.’
Warren nodded.
‘If it happens again, do your best to catch the urchin and get a description of the man or woman who recruited him for the task.’
‘I’ll do my best, sir, but those young lads can certainly run.’
Warren waved his dismissal and Ryan turned on his heel and walked out of the study. As soon as he was alone again, Warren slit open the first envelope with a paper knife, extracted the sheet of paper it contained and read the message.
Like the previous communication he’d received, it was both brief and cryptic. It read: ‘Second of the first three. Apex of the compasses. First the triangles, then the star.’
Two things immediately struck him. The first was simply the timing, which was nothing more than another confirmation to him of what was going on. He had received the first letter immediately after the killing of Martha Tabram, and it was too big a coincidence to be accidental that the second communication had arrived at his home straight after the second murder. He was quite certain that the sender of the letters was also the killer roaming the streets of East London, just as he was quite certain that the murderer was the stranger who had demanded that Warren hand over the menorah to him.
The second point was the reference to geometrical shapes: triangles and a star, which had meant nothing to him until that moment. He realized that the only thing that they could refer to was the physical location of the murders, the places where the bodies had been found.
As a part of his preparation for taking on the job of Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis, Warren had purchased a number of maps of London, in order to provide information about the vast area that he would he required to control. And, as a trained surveyor, he was very used to working with maps of all types and descriptions.
On one side of his study was a map cabinet, a handsome piece of furniture made of walnut, which contained about a dozen shallow, but long and wide, drawers, each holding maps of various scales which covered different areas of London. The third drawer down held maps relating to the East End, and Warren sorted through these until he found one which he hoped would serve the purpose. He had already cleared his desk, and laid the map out flat on the polished wood surface, anchoring the four corners of the sheet with paperweights and other objects to hold it in place.
He looked carefully at the map, which was monochrome, grey-black markings on a white background, and selected a pen containing bright blue ink. Then he shuffled through a pile of reports until he found the one he was looking for, the summary prepared by Detective Inspector Edmund Reid of H Division of the Metropolitan Police, the division covering Whitechapel, who had been in charge of the investigation into the death of Martha Tabram. He scanned the type-written sheet until he found the precise location where the body had been found, in George Yard, off Whitechapel High Street. Then he took his pen and marked that spot on the map with a neat cross, adding the name ‘Tabram’ and the date of the murder – 7 August – beside it.
The report on the killing of the second woman was on top of the other papers, and he quickly read the appropriate section again, to identify the place where she’d been murdered. That location, too, he marked on the map with a small cross, adding the date and the name Nichols. Finally, he took a long ruler and drew a line between the two crosses, a line which he noticed was aligned almost perfectly north-east to south-west.
As an afterthought, he referred to another one of the early reports, this one dealing with the killing of Emma Elizabeth Smith, and marked that location on the map as well. Strangely enough, that mark fell precisely on the line he’d already drawn, but that had to be a coincidence, because the Metropolitan Police already knew that Smith’s killing had been the work of a gang of youths and young men, and had been different in all respects from the two subsequent murders. Apart from anything else, Smith had been able to explain exactly what had happened to her, although she had then fallen into a coma and had died in hospital the following day.
Warren looked back at the two cryptic notes he’d been sent by the foreigner who’d called
himself ‘Michael’. The first read: ‘Remember the symbol. George Yard. The first of six and the first point of the first triangle. The apex is next.’ The second was a good deal shorter: ‘Second of the first three. Apex of the compasses. First the triangles, then the star.’
Both mentioned a ‘triangle’ and the ‘apex’, and the second ‘compasses’. As a trained surveyor, Warren was very familiar with the use of compasses, and the more he looked at the two notes and the map he’d prepared, the more disturbingly obvious the meaning became.
‘Michael’ had obviously decided not only to put pressure on Warren, as the head of the Metropolitan Police service, by killing prostitutes on the streets of Whitechapel, but he was also clearly trying to suggest that there was some sort of a Masonic component to the murders. That much was clear from the repeated reference to the ‘compasses’, because a set of compasses, along with the square, was the best-known of all the Masonic symbols, and the two shapes together formed the badge of the organization. That was a second threat to Warren, or at the very least another way of putting pressure on him, because he was known to be an enthusiastic Mason.
And it looked to Warren as if ‘Michael’ was also going to try to implicate the large and diverse Jewish community in London, because of the last sentence on the second note. The only obvious interpretation of that line – ‘First the triangles, then the star’ – was to the Star of David, the symbol of the Jewish faith which was itself formed by two overlapping triangles.
He leant back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the line he had drawn across the map. The location of the killing of Emma Smith had to be a coincidence. The place just happened to fall on the same line as the places where Martha Tabram and the second victim had died, nothing more. But Warren was quite certain that these three killings had been perpetrated by ‘Michael’, and that the murders of Martha Tabram, Mary Ann Nichols, and now Annie Chapman, would not be the last. The note had said as much, very clearly. The second killing had been positioned at the apex of a ghastly triangle, and that meant that the location of the third murder would have completed the shape.
The Ripper Secret Page 21