by David Field
Every day there seemed to be someone close behind her until she turned and the shadowy figure would seem to melt into a shop doorway, or change direction. She never got a good look at whoever it was and she could not be sure that it was the same person on each occasion, but it was almost always a man and she needed no further incentive to keep closely to her room with the door locked once she got home for the day, by which time she was usually so exhausted that she simply fell into bed and passed out until the sun woke her up at daybreak the following day.
She had been trying hard to keep her mind off Jack as the weeks passed, but her stomach lurched with excitement when news of him was passed on to her by Percy Enright during a surprise visit one Saturday. He had sent word up from the kitchen that he need to speak to her and she had taken a deep breath before descending the single flight of stairs.
‘How are you, Esther?’
‘Very well, thank you. It was as well that you called when you did, because I’m now employed fulltime by the people who used to commission sewing work from me on a casual basis and I’m seriously thinking of moving into living accommodation above the work premises themselves. But today is the Jewish Sabbath, so I’m not at work, as you can see.’
Percy’s face became more gloomy as he advised her that she was not the only one who seemed destined to move. ‘I’m afraid Jack resigned from the police force once his leave expired and we haven’t seen him since,’ he advised her. ‘His mother’s going frantic because he hasn’t shown up in Barking yet and that was over three weeks ago. But he must have found work somewhere else, because his landlady finally admitted that he hadn’t yet moved out of his room in Mansell Street, so I’m thinking of laying in wait for him one day and following him to his new place of employment. That’s the least I can do for his mother, irresponsible idiot that he is.’
‘Talking of people being followed,’ Esther butted in, ‘I think that someone’s following me every day as I walk up and back from Lamb Street. I can’t be certain, but neither can I shake off the suspicion.’
‘Do you want me to organise for someone to look out for your safety?’ Percy enquired.
Esther shook her head. ‘Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. No-one’s going to attack me in the street in broad daylight. It was only really obvious that I was being followed that day I found Mary Kelly’s address for you. Did you manage to get what you needed from her?’
Percy shook his head. ‘She clammed up completely, refused to say a word, denied seeking an abortion from anyone and insisted that we leave. I tried again a few days later, on my own this time and she slammed the door in my face.’
‘So you’re no nearer to charging Poll with abortions? How are you going with those awful stabbings?’
‘There haven’t been any more, thank God, so hopefully whoever it was considers their work to be finished.’
‘Well, good luck anyway. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No, thank you all the same. Any message for Jack if I manage to find him?’
‘Tell him that I’m now making my way in the garment industry, that I still love him and always will and that I can recommend a good tailor in Lamb Street,’ she smiled bravely.
Chapter Twenty
Mary Kelly was stony broke again and it was almost certainly due to her generous nature. Joe Barnett had left her in the lurch, walking out over a week ago after Mary let yet another of her prostitute friends spend the night in their room because she didn’t have the fourpence for a doss in a common lodging house. Mary hadn’t eaten any food worthy of that name for two days, although she’d had more than her fair share of gin down the road in the Ten Bells earlier that evening. She was supposed to be saving enough money to take the boat back to her native Ireland, but as fast as she got it she would spend it on the grog that dulled her senses against the thing she hated most, which was laying down for men. But like most women in her position it was all she had to trade with and she could usually command a slightly higher price, despite her rapidly fading former beauty, because she had a room of her own in which her mark could enjoy her lying down naked, rather than with her skirts hitched up in some smelly back alley with the ever-present risk of being disturbed.
If she could only raise a few pounds she could break the vicious circle. With a few pounds in her purse she could go home to her family in Limerick and wouldn’t need to rent herself out to every drunken sailor or fat businessman who had sixpence to spare. If she wasn’t on the game she wouldn’t need to drink and she could keep most of the money she scraped together from charring in the houses of the more well to do ‘up west’, or lining up in the casual queue for a day’s steaming sweaty labour in the local laundry. Then she could take the passage home.
Right now, she needed sixpence if she was to put some coal in the tiny fireplace that came with her room. It was after two in the morning and there were less people in Commercial Street than there had been earlier, so her chances of picking up a decent mark were considerably reduced. But as she walked past the open door of the Queen’s Head a smartly dressed man lurched out and the two of them stood eyeing each other briefly before Mary took the initiative.
‘Looking for a short time, lovey?’
The man nodded and Mary figured out that he was probably good for sixpence. Some sort of Jewish commercial traveller, Mary calculated with experienced eyes. Probably a long way from his home in the Midlands, probably randy with alcohol and probably hadn’t had a woman — least of all his wife — for weeks. Too easy for a woman who might still seem attractive after a night of drinking.
‘I’ve got a place round the corner, but it’ll cost yer sixpence,’ she announced. No point in messing about in polite chat at this time in the morning. The man nodded again and moved forward to put his arm over her shoulder as she led the way. He was carrying a small parcel in his other hand and seemed reluctant to talk as she led him into Dorset Street and on down to Millers Court. They stopped once under a lamp post and Mary leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips; his response was to grope at her breast over her cheap blouse and she reached down towards his groin. He wasn’t hard yet, but Mary would soon remedy that.
They entered the room and Mary locked the door, smiling as he stood there expectantly.
‘Do you mind if I light the fire, lovey?’ she enquired. ‘Then I can take all me clothes off and make it nicer for you.’
She would need to use up the last of her wood, but she could get coals in the morning and the room was damp and chilly in the early November night. She lit the fire and once it was blazing nicely she swiftly peeled off her outer garments in order to engage his full interest, before reminding him, as lightly as she knew how, that, ‘That’ll be sixpence, lovey.’
Her smile froze as she turned and saw the long knife appear from inside the parcel and the eyes of her mark open wide with excitement as he stepped forward.
Chapter Twenty-One
The funeral service was over and Esther had no tears left to cry as she gently took Isaac’s arm and led him back out to the coach that had conveyed Ruth Rosen’s body to the Jews’ Cemetery in Brady Street. He was moaning gently in his own tongue and Esther could only understand part of it as the horse plodded its way into Bucks Court and she tried to recall which of the Ripper’s victims had been found lying here all those weeks ago. A Ripper who appeared to have tired of his gruesome activities; so hopefully life in Whitechapel and Spitalfields could return to normal and Esther could begin to make plans to move into the premises in Lamb Street to look after the weeping wreck of a man who had been so kind to her when she most needed him and who now needed her.
They were halfway down Hanbury Street when she heard the newsvendor’s faint call. She hoped she had misheard what he was yelling at the top of his voice, all but drowned as it was by the combined din of carriages and wagons. She wound down the window sash and leaned out as the coach trundled past the news stand at the junction with Brick Lane. There was only one headline on the board by
his side and it left no-one in doubt as to the breaking sensation that was filling the evening editions.
‘Ripper Strikes Again! Horrible Outrage in Spitalfields!’
She called for the coach driver to halt, leapt from the carriage, extracted a penny shakily from her purse and returned to Isaac’s side as she began to read. He was still moaning and crying, cocooned in his own misery, so she had time to read as the coach swayed and clattered the last few yards across Commercial Street, where Hanbury Street became Lamb Street. She had enough time to learn the name of the victim and the address of the latest atrocity and she prayed to God for forgiveness for having been the one who had made it possible.
Fred Abberline was in a mood best described as ‘cold fury’ as he confronted Percy Enright and Edmund Reid in the latter’s office.
‘We have to buckle this maniac without delay, before we all lose our jobs! Parliament’s calling for Warren’s head and they’ll probably get it. My guess is that Monro will get the top job, then God help all of us if he brings McNaghten in to head up the CID. He may have been good at bullying punka wallahs on Indian tea plantations, but he knows bugger all about police work. I give it five minutes before he’s telling us how to do our jobs and demanding our resignations if we can’t catch a simple slasher of prostitutes.’
‘Are we sure it’s the same man?’ Reid enquired, more in hope than expectation.
Abberline snorted. ‘Either him or his apprentice, although this one was undoubtedly the worst. In my years on the force I’ve seen some gruesome sights, as no doubt you both have, but believe me when I say that this was the most disgusting destruction of a fellow human that I’ve ever encountered. Her guts were all over the room and the place smelt like an abattoir.’
‘We’ve already flooded the streets with uniforms,’ Reid reminded him. ‘Short of giving every street tottie a personal bodyguard, I’m not sure what we can do next.’
‘Somebody must know something,’ Enright pointed out unnecessarily. ‘If only Warren had been allowed to offer that reward, we might have got a vital lead. Can we not organise some sort of indemnity for anyone coming forward with information?’
‘What you’ll get then,’ Abberline reminded him, ‘is a long queue of jokers trying to peach on their neighbours in the vain hope that we officially forgive them their sins before we can test the information they supply.’
‘Do you have any better suggestion?’ Enright challenged him.
Abberline shook his head. ‘All we have is the information we got from witnesses around Dorset Street last night. The victim was last seen with the same man described in connection with some of the other killings — five foot six or seven, “shabby genteel” in appearance, possible Jewish or at least “foreign looking”, with a moustache which varies in colour from ginger to black, according to the light it was seen in.’
‘He must have been covered from head to toe in blood from what you tell us of the state of the victim,’ Enright observed.
It was Reid’s turn to snort. ‘According to various medical experts who’ve testified at the inquests so far that may not be the case if the killer attacked from behind and leaned backwards when the jugular started spurting.’
‘This one may have been different,’ Enright persisted. ‘This was the first — and please God the last — to be committed indoors. You can’t sneak up behind your victim when you’re in the same room as them.’
‘According to the police surgeon — Phillips, again — Mary Kelly died some time between three and four in the morning,’ Abberline advised them. ‘Assuming that the killer didn’t wait around for the morning paper, he’d be long out of there before daybreak, with only the usual early workers on their way through the streets. Nobody reports having seen anyone unusual at around that time, although, just to make our lives more difficult, one of her neighbours swore she saw the victim herself walking down Dorset Street towards Commercial Street at around four thirty. She didn’t get to speak with her because she — the witness, that is — was on her way to get her husband’s breakfast.’
‘So we have no way of moving this forward?’ Red enquired. ‘Is there nothing we can do?’
‘You any good at praying?’ Allerdine enquired sarcastically.
Jack Enright slid further into the alleyway across the road from where Esther was supervising the loading of her few possessions onto the carrier’s cart and made an intelligent guess that Esther was changing her address for that building in Lamb Street where she seemed to spend every day. So much for happy memories, he reminded himself, as he recalled playing cards with Esther in the small kitchen at number 19 and calling around for her on Sunday afternoons, his heart full of hope and ambition that somehow his mouth had never got around to expressing in words. If only he’d managed to pop the question before his interfering mother had opened her own stupid mouth; if only he’d made it clear to Esther that he was entranced by her personality, her courage in the face of the adversities that life had thrown at her, her positive attitude towards life in general. But then, life was full of ‘if onlys’, like his now defunct police career.
So what was he doing here, out of work and aimlessly following Esther like some love-lorn puppy? His only answer to that question was that what was left of his world would come apart completely if he didn’t get to see her every day and reassure himself that she was still alive. But what would he do if he saw her one day with another young man? No, he couldn’t allow himself to even think that dreadful thought and as long as she was locked away in that burned out old ruin of a former tailor’s shop whose name — ‘Rosen’s Bespoke’ — could still be made out in the charred stonework above the door, then she’d not have any opportunity to meet someone else and Jack would be secure in the only world left to him — watching her daily from what he hoped was a discreet distance.
The carrier handed down the last of Esther’s bundles and she extracted the three shillings from her purse and thanked him for his assistance. Then she walked sadly into the place that was to be her new home. ‘Sadly’ because she’d been obliged to say goodbye to the happy memories of Jack’s Sunday visits and her inspired nights spent writing poetry about how much she loved him. She wasn’t to know then that she wasn’t the right ‘sort’ for him and that ‘happy ever afters’ weren’t intended for the poor — at least, not the honest ones.
Isaac smiled as he came from behind the curtain and saw her carrying in the final bundle.
‘You may have the room above us, tochter. For me it is full of memories that are not now the happiest, but for you — who knows?’
‘And where will you sleep?’ she enquired suspiciously.
‘For an old zokn like myself, sleep is not something that is much required. Your old room can be made fit to house my old frame when I need rest and now that the business is back on its feet, thanks to you, we can perhaps call in the painter. Or perhaps I still have skill with a paintbrush. Do you know that when we first moved into here, I was the one who made good with the brush?’
‘I do, because you told me,’ Esther replied with a smile. More than once, she added silently.
At least Isaac had been correct regarding the state of the business. Once Esther made it possible for accounts to be paid before garments were actually handed over, their incomings began exceeding their outgoings by encouragingly increasing amounts, as Esther’s weekly account balances accurately confirmed. Isaac insisted on sharing the success with her and Esther could never before in her life have even dreamed of being in receipt of five pounds per week, a sum she stored carefully in a tin box under her bed, as some sort of consolation for still being a spinster seamstress, albeit a highly paid one.
Isaac was also still a good cook, if somewhat kosher in tastes, and Esther’s once slim frame began to fill out as she gratefully accepted matzoh ball soup one day and cheese and potato boreka the next. It was as well that she was able to let out her gowns and jackets from time to time. Jack would hardly recognise her now, she mused, before rem
inding herself that he probably already had another young lady on his arm — one more acceptable to a certain party in Barking.
In the third month of her new life Esther was on the far side of the curtain working on her accounts when she heard the front door open and Isaac speaking in his quiet gentle way with a loud-mouthed woman who was demanding something that Esther could not quite hear above the noise of the street traffic audible through the still open door. Then Isaac’s puzzled face appeared through the gap.
‘This lady, she is asking for you, bubbeleh. If she is offering you work, please do not forget the needs of your old foter.’
Puzzled, Esther stepped out from behind the curtain and found herself face to face with Pearly Poll.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘What do you want?’ Esther demanded, her heart in her mouth.
‘Fer all yer boss knows, I’m ’ere to enquire after the price fer a dress ter be altered,’ Poll smiled back as she all but whispered, ‘so let’s pretend that I am and step out inter the street for a minute or two.’
Assuring Isaac that she would be back in less than a minute, Esther accompanied Poll outside, where, amid the noise of the mid-morning traffic trundling and rattling up and down Lamb Street, Poll looked Esther all over before commenting, ‘Yer look as if yer ’ad that little service performed that you was askin’ me about durin’ our last little conversation, so who did it?’
Esther thought quickly, giving thanks to God for her foresight in looking the point up in an old medical book she found lying around at the Rosens’ house, mainly out of curiosity, but just in case.
‘I was fortunate enough to lose it naturally,’ she advised Poll. ‘At least, I hope so. There was this horrible rush of blood and something worse I think and then I started bleeding as normal last month, so I hope I’m in the clear. Do you think I am?’