And that, Warren suddenly thought, might give the police a way of catching the perpetrator, if he was definitely attempting to create recognizable geometric shapes on the ground by killing prostitutes in specific locations. The line between the first two murders ran almost exactly south-west to north-east, and Warren knew perfectly well the approximate angle between the two legs of the pair of compasses on the Masonic symbol. In order to replicate that on the ground, the next killing – the third murder which had already been committed – would have occurred either due west or due south of the location of the second killing. And it would have to have been about the same distance away as the separation between the first and second murders.
He picked up the police report from his desk, noted the precise location where the body had been found, and then turned back to his map. He took up his pen and ruler, marked the new spot with the name ‘Chapman’ and the date, and then drew a line between ‘Nichols’ and ‘Chapman’.
As he’d expected, the place where Annie Chapman’s body had been discovered was almost due west of the site of Nichols’s killing, and about the same distance from it as the second body had been from where Martha Tabram’s corpse had been discovered.
Hideous though the concept was, the murderer had done precisely what he had set out to do. He had replicated on the ground, with these three brutal killings, the shape of one of the two ancient pieces of equipment which together formed the symbol of the Masonic movement.
It was time to look at the last note sent by ‘Michael’. His left hand, Warren noted almost dispassionately as he reached for the second hand-delivered letter, was trembling slightly.
Friday, 14 September 1888
London
‘We’re being crucified in the press,’ Detective Inspector Andrews murmured, as he flicked through the pile of newspapers in the tiny back office at the Bethnal Green police station.
The papers spanned the previous week, ever since the discovery of the butchered body of Annie Chapman in Hanbury Street, and in all that time the stories of the London murders hadn’t moved from the front pages of virtually every paper.
Andrews picked up a selection and addressed the other two detectives sitting in the cramped back office.
‘These are all from this week,’ he began. ‘This is the Pall Mall Gazette. Their headline is “A Fourth Woman Foully Mutilated”. Reynold’s Newspaper calls it “Another Fiendish Murder”. And it’s not just the cheap papers either. This is the Observer from the beginning of the week. “Yesterday morning the neighbourhood of Whitechapel was horrified to a degree bordering on panic by the discovery of another barbarous murder of a woman at 29 Hanbury Street.” Even The Times has got in on the act, though obviously its report isn’t quite as sensational. That just says: “This latest crime even surpasses the others in ferocity.” Which is true, but obvious.’
‘Typical of The Times,’ Moore commented.
Andrews grunted and picked up another newspaper from the pile in front of him.
‘All those reports,’ he began, ‘just deal with the murders, and that’s at the core of most of the stories.’
‘You’d expect that,’ Abberline chimed in. ‘As far as I know, Britain has never seen such a series of murders before, certainly not with the degree of mutilation that’s been inflicted on these poor women. And that’s the other component. The women of Whitechapel, and especially the prostitutes, obviously, think they’re under deliberate attack by a ruthless and faceless enemy. To make matters worse, a lot of the papers still seem to think he might even turn out to be a doctor, a man who’s supposed to save lives, not take them.’
Andrews nodded, then spoke again.
‘As I said, those just talk about the murders, but there are now an awful lot of articles complaining about how inept the Metropolitan Police force is proving to be. I know this one is only a minor newspaper, but I think the reporter has hit the nail firmly on the head.’
‘Which paper is it?’ Moore asked.
‘It’s the East London Advertiser. The leader states that the police “have no basis to go on. They do not even know the kind of class from which to select the criminal. They have not a single notion of his whereabouts. They do not know his motive, except so far as our guessing psychologists have enabled them to decipher it. He has left no material trace, and practically no moral trace.” What they’re saying, in short, is that this killer is essentially invisible, and we’re never going to catch him. And a bit further down in the same article, the reporter says “what is likely to happen is this: there will be more murders, and the ruffian’s heels may be tripped by chance, if not by the foresight of the police .” And that’s more or less what we’ve decided, isn’t it? We’ve got no way of knowing where or when he’s going to strike next, and no clue about who his next victim will be. So our best hope is that some patrolling constable or a Whitechapel resident will manage to see him – or, even better, catch him – in the act, because as far as I can see there’s nothing else we can do.’
‘Oh yes there is,’ Abberline countered. ‘I agree with what you say, but we can still fall back on good old-fashioned police work, and I’ve already given instructions to the officers here to start making detailed enquiries in Whitechapel. I’ve organized some extra men from Scotland Yard to help out – both uniformed and plainclothes – and they’re going to have to visit every doss house – and there are over 200 of them – within about half a mile of the murder site, and question everyone they find in them, both staff and residents, as well as undertaking all the normal house-to-house enquiries which have been going on ever since the body was discovered.’
‘And do you think that will achieve anything?’ Andrews asked.
‘Frankly, no. It’s as much an exercise to show the people of Whitechapel and Spitalfields that we’re doing something to try to bring this man to justice. I doubt very much whether any of the information they collect will help us in our enquiries, just because of the type of man we’re looking for. He may not even live in the area. In fact, if it was me doing these killings, I’d find myself a nice cosy billet somewhere well away from Whitechapel and only go there when I wanted to do another one. That way, there’d be no clues to find anywhere in the district; and I’d be quite surprised if our mystery killer didn’t think the same way, because whoever this man is, he’s certainly not stupid.’
Abberline reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper.
‘Just while we’re all here,’ he went on, ‘I’ve had a few more suggestions sent in by concerned members of the public.’
Both Andrews and Moore smiled at this. The two men had studied dozens of letters sent to the Metropolitan Police about the Whitechapel murders, and many of them had contained ideas that were simply ridiculous. Perhaps the most ludicrous was the suggestion that they should place spring-operated female dummies in certain areas of Whitechapel, dummies which would then in some way leap into action and grasp hold of anyone who touched them. The correspondent had unfortunately failed to suggest any way in which such mechanical traps should be made, or where they should be positioned.
‘Right,’ Abberline said, ‘we’ve got the usual crop of silly ideas, but there are a couple that might be worth considering. The first one is really simple. This man has suggested that we issue all our beat constables with rubber soled boots, because he makes the point that you can hear a police constable coming long before he’s in sight, just because of the tramping sound of his hobnailed boots. In fact, I’ve had a word already with the officers working out of here, and several of them have already begun doing something about this, nailing strips of rubber on the soles of their boots to cut down the noise. I’m going to make this an official request, but obviously it will take some time to get new boots issued.
‘Another letter writer thinks we should try to improve the lighting in the back streets of Whitechapel, which is undeniably a good idea, but it would take months, maybe even years, before the whole area could be improv
ed, and I’m hoping to catch this man a lot sooner than that.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. The last idea actually ties up with something I’ve been thinking about ever since the killing in Hanbury Street. I think we’re all agreed that conventional police work isn’t going to catch this man, just because of the way he seems to work. So we need to think about doing something different, of trying to come up with a completely different approach.’
Abberline selected another letter and held it up.
‘This man is on the right track. He’s suggesting we recruit women to act as police officers and become decoys. We send them out into the streets of Whitechapel in the early hours of the morning, and hope that one of them gets chosen by the killer.’
Andrews and Moore looked horrified at the suggestion, and Abberline smiled at them.
‘Now obviously we can’t even think about doing that. It’s not appropriate for women to serve in the police force and, even if it was, I wouldn’t be prepared to subject female officers to that kind of danger. But we do have quite a lot of young constables, men in their early twenties who could perhaps pass for women at night, in the poor illumination of Whitechapel. And this is something I think we should try. I want you two to take a look at the constables working out of this station and try and pick out half a dozen or so who might be suitable. Try not to pick any with moustaches, obviously. I’m not going to order them to do this – it will be on a volunteer basis only – but if they agree, we’ll get them out onto the streets as quickly as possible.’
‘You’ll arm them, I suppose?’ Andrews asked.
Abberline nodded.
‘Definitely. This man is too dangerous to take any chances with. Each constable who volunteers will be issued with a small fully loaded revolver – a British Bulldog or something of that sort – which he will keep in the outside pocket of whatever dress or skirt we can find for him to wear. Plus he’ll have his whistle to summon assistance. What I’m hoping is that our killer will see one of these “unfortunates” and approach him. And then we’ll have him.’
‘Actually, Fred, that’s a pretty good idea. Using an apparent prostitute as bait on the streets might just draw him in. We’ll just have to hope that our decoys don’t get too enthusiastic and start shooting holes in innocent clients.’
The three men chuckled at Moore’s comment.
‘One other thing,’ Andrews said. ‘On that note, I’ve heard a few reports that some of the regular prostitutes in Whitechapel are now carrying weapons – mainly knives, I think – for their own protection.’
Abberline shook his head.
‘That might make them feel better, but I think the chances of any woman, and especially a malnourished 40-year-old unfortunate, being able to take on this man and come off best, even if they are carrying a knife, are pretty slim. Whoever he is, our murderer is fit and strong and determined, and I think he’ll make short work of anybody like that who stands up to him.’
Friday, 14 September 1888
London
Warren opened the second envelope and extracted the piece of paper it contained, expecting another cryptic message. He wasn’t disappointed, though the two sentences on the page were longer than those he’d received before. The third note from ‘Michael’ read: ‘The northern end of the base of the first performs the same function for the second. The interlocking square and compasses, base to base and slightly distorted.’
Warren switched his attention back to the map on which he’d marked the location of the three killings. It wasn’t a perfect triangle, in that there was a very slight difference between the lengths of the two longest sides, but it was close enough, and if the killer was trying to create the shape of the Masonic compasses on the grimy streets of Whitechapel, he’d actually done a fairly good job.
He knew that ‘Michael’ was just playing with him, picking the time and the place and the victims to suit his own timetable and purpose. And if it was the last thing Warren ever did, he was determined to find the man and bring him to justice. He would only rest easy when he saw his adversary dangling from the end of a rope at Tyburn Tree. But it would be even better, he rationalized, if the man could be killed in the commission of another murder, because the last thing Warren wanted was for the murderer to have the opportunity to stand up in court and explain precisely why he had been carrying out these appalling crimes. If that did happen, he would just have to hope that what the man said would be dismissed by everyone as the ravings of a lunatic or homicidal maniac. But first, of course, the police had to catch him.
Only when ‘Michael’ was dead would Warren feel safe. And then he realized something else. If he’d stayed in London, if he hadn’t gone on leave to France, and had made the same deduction about the triangular shape a couple of weeks earlier, he could have flooded police officers into the two most likely areas for ‘Michael’ to strike, one to the west of the site of Nichols’s death, and the other down to the south.
But even then the problem would have been predicting the ‘when’ as much as the ‘where’. There had been over three weeks between the killings of Tabram and Nichols, but only eight days had then elapsed before the murderer took Annie Chapman’s life. Even if Warren had deduced approximately where ‘Michael’ would strike again, the third murder would very probably have taken place before the commissioner could have got his men into position, because he wouldn’t have expected the man to strike again for at least another week or ten days.
And now, Warren knew, he’d missed his opportunity, because ‘Michael’ had completed the shape of the first triangle with his third killing. The bodies of Tabram and Chapman marked the two ends of the base of that geometrical shape, and Nichols the apex.
It was some small comfort that his deduction had been right about the area that the man chose for his third killing, even if he would probably have guessed wrong about the timing.
Then there was, he knew, another problem which was rather more pertinent. Although Warren was effectively in charge of the Metropolitan Police, he would still need to produce some reason, some reason that made sense, for issuing orders for his officers to concentrate their efforts is in one particular area of Whitechapel. And what he certainly couldn’t do was explain that he believed the murderer was positioning his victims in the shape of a Masonic symbol, because everyone from the Home Secretary downwards would immediately assume that he had lost his mind.
Even if they did believe him, they would obviously wish to know upon what evidence he was basing his theory, and he certainly wasn’t prepared to admit that he had met the man he was convinced was responsible for the killings, or that this man was trying to persuade him to hand over a Jewish religious relic of incalculable importance and value which he, Warren, had stolen from underneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
If at all possible, ‘Michael’ was going to have to be silenced without being given the chance to explain anything to anyone.
The way Warren read it, the third note suggested that the location of Chapman’s corpse would, in due course, come to indicate one end of the base of the next triangle – which, it was obvious, ‘Michael’ was intending to represent the mason’s square from the Masonic badge. The only difference between the two triangles would be the angles, because the angle at the apex of the square had to be ninety degrees – that was what a ‘square’ meant – whereas the angle of the apex of the compasses on the badge was about forty-five degrees.
On the Masonic symbol, the ends of the compasses overlaid the ends of the square, and so if you replaced the two objects with triangles of the same shape, you ended up with two triangles overlapping each other, base to base, just as ‘Michael’ had suggested in his note. The problem was that he could choose almost anywhere for his next killing, and Warren had no way of predicting where it would be, except in the most general terms. If he assumed that the killer would be trying to describe on the ground a similar sized triangle to the first one he had created, then the base of the second sha
pe would have to be considerably longer than that of the first, simply so that the angle at the apex of the new triangle could be ninety degrees, or close to it.
If that were the case, and if the triangles were to intersect each other, then that could suggest that the next killing would take place in the districts which lay to the south of Commercial Road and to the east of Leman Street, perhaps even as far out as Shadwell. The problem was that without any other indication of the likely location, that was far too big an area for Warren to cover with police reinforcements. He simply didn’t have enough men to make that a viable option.
He had, he realized, only one possible option, and he didn’t like it at all.
He would have to wait for the next killing, wait for ‘Michael’ to strike for a fourth time. That would provide him with two of the points which would define the shape and size of the next triangle. From that he could work out the approximate position of the apex, and this time he would make sure that no matter how long it took, that area of Whitechapel would have more policeman stationed in it than ever before during the hours of darkness.
This time, he knew he had to succeed because, despite his personal view that the lives of the ‘unfortunates’ were of no particular value, that was not a sentiment likely to be shared by the residents of Whitechapel, and especially not by the women. And if the Home Secretary ever discovered what was going on, Warren would at best be dismissed from his post in disgrace, and at worst end up in the dock at the Old Bailey charged with God knows what. Even if that didn’t happen, Warren knew that if he couldn’t stop the murders he would definitely have no option but to resign just to stop the carnage.
He looked at the map for a few minutes more, measuring the angles and calculating distances, and trying to work out how to handle the problem. Then he picked up the map and returned it to the chest on the other side of the room, closing the drawer and locking it securely. Though there was nothing on it which even hinted at his somewhat bizarre theory, he certainly didn’t want Ryan or anybody else to see what he had been working on.
The Ripper Secret Page 22