by Sam Gafford
“In your opinion did she enter the yard alive?”
“I am positive of it. I made a thorough search of the passage, and I saw no trace of blood, which must have been visible had she been taken into the yard.”
“You were shown the apron?”
More about the apron, which this very inquest had shown to be irrelevant.
“I saw it myself. There was no blood upon it. It had the appearance of not having been unfolded recently.”
“You were shown some staining on the wall of number twenty-five, Hanbury Street?”
“Yes; that was yesterday morning. To the eye of a novice I have no doubt it looks like blood. I have not been able to trace any signs of it. I have not been able to finish my investigation. I am almost convinced I shall not find any blood. We have not had any result of the examination of the internal organs.”
The questioning continued like a duel. At one point, the coroner asked if the injuries had been self-inflicted, which caused a slight ripple of laughter to run through the room. I assume that the question was a matter of formality but, in this particular case, ridiculous.
Then Phillips started saying something new.
“I am of opinion that the person who cut the deceased’s throat took hold of her by the chin and then commenced the incision from left to right.”
“Could that be done so instantaneously that a person could not cry out?”
“By pressure on the throat no doubt it would be possible.”
“The thickening of the tongue would be one of the signs of suffocation?”
“Yes. My impression is that she was partially strangled. The handkerchief produced was, when found amongst the clothing, saturated with blood. A similar article was round the throat of the deceased when I saw her early in the morning at Hanbury Street.”
“It had not the appearance of having been tied on afterwards?”
“No.”
The coroner excused Dr. Phillips but advised him that he might be recalled. At that point Sarah Simonds, a resident nurse at the Whitechapel Infirmary, made her statement.
“I went to the mortuary on Saturday, with the senior nurse, and found the body of the deceased on the ambulance in the yard. Afterwards, it was taken into the shed and placed on the table. Inspector Chandler told me to undress it, and I placed the clothes in a corner. I left the handkerchief round the neck.”
“You’re absolutely sure about this?”
“Yes, sir, I am. It was still around her neck.”
“And then what did you do?”
“We washed stains of blood from the body. It seemed to have run down from the throat. I found the pocket tied round the waist. The strings were not torn. There were no tears or cuts in the clothes.”
“Sir,” interjected Inspector Chandler, “I did not instruct the nurses to undress the body and to wash it.”
The bantering continued, and I could see little point in it. What difference did it make if the handkerchief was around Annie’s neck or not? So what if the body had been cleaned? Annie was still dead.
The coroner, to everyone’s surprise, adjourned the inquest until the following Wednesday. If this was a typical example of investigative process in England, I wondered that any criminal was ever caught.
Arthur grabbed my arm and we made our way out to the street, followed by an unhappy crowd and Inspector Abberline.
Chapter 46
The truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be.
—Jane Austen
The tone of the people was unpleasant and could easily have turned ugly. Many were glaring at Abberline as if blaming him for the ineffectiveness of the entire police force. He was not oblivious to this.
“It’s getting worse, Fred,” Arthur said. “The people are getting angrier with each passing day.”
Abberline turned angrily on Arthur. “Don’t you think I know that? I’ve got bloody Whitehall pressuring me to make an arrest—any arrest will do. I’ve got blasted Socialist and workers’ groups ready to tear down the West End; and in the meantime, everyone in the East End is yelling for blood!”
“It’s going to escalate, Fred, and you know it. This killer isn’t going to stop until he’s captured or killed.”
“And what do you suggest I do, Arthur? Bring in the army? Do house-by-house searches? And just what would we be looking for anyway? Bloody clothes and a bloody knife? I doubt if there’s a house in Whitechapel which doesn’t have one or the other.”
“Are there truly no clues, Inspector?” I asked, at which Abberline turned upon me with a baleful look that shook me through my bones.
“There are clues everywhere but none of significance. Anyone in this crowd could be the killer. I could make just as strong a case against Arthur or you! In fact, perhaps more, as every time I look around I see you. Then there’s the curious matter of several of my constables from Hanbury Street claiming that an ‘inspector’ questioned them for details about the Chapman murder—an ‘inspector’ who was described as looking much like yourself, Albert!”
I was too stunned to speak.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Fred,” Arthur said. “You know we have nothing to do with this!”
“Maybe not, but I have grown tired of seeing your faces, gentlemen. Have a care that I do not decide to lock them up so I don’t have to look at them anymore.”
Abberline stalked across the street, and I had no chance to respond.
“What makes this all the worse, Albert,” Arthur said, “is that Abberline is looking for a man. In that, he is horribly mistaken.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Arthur looked at me, and in his face I could see that he had aged years virtually overnight. He looked slumped and defeated.
“Albert,” he said slowly, “I give you this chance. You may walk away from all this now. You can go and live a happy, free life devoid of this darkness. None of this is your burden to bear. Take Ann. Go back to Cornwall and life the happy, simple life of a fisherman.”
I considered what he had said. There was a great part of me that wanted to embrace that idea.
*
“She was there to torment me, Albert. As she has done every day since I found her again in London.”
We were in a cab after the Chapman inquest. I would have preferred to walk, but Arthur seemed more tired than usual and wanted the privacy of a hansom. My mind was consumed with Arthur and Mary Kelly. They were linked in some way; and the more I thought about it, the more I felt that there was something connecting them both to these hideous murders.
The cab moved slowly. Outside, the normal world moved along as usual with the normal comings and goings of man’s petty concerns. Inside the coach, we travelled into darkness.
“It is a very old story, Albert, and not one that I ever thought to speak of again. As you know, I lived in Wales as a child, and there is scarcely a place to compete with Wales for foreboding hills where the world becomes wild.
“We met as children.”
Here Arthur paused, lost in his recollections. I waited until he took his tale up again, hanging on his words.
“She was . . . unique. Other children were dull and boring, with no imagination. Their minds were filled with their lessons or their farming or their religion. They did not look at a dark wood and see the eyes peering back at them. They did not hear the beckoning cries of things cavorting in the night. But I did.
“And so did she.
“It was not surprising that we came together. No one else felt the things we did or yearned for the things we desired. Soon we would make daily explorations into the wood, listening for the whispers of fairies and the grunts of the creatures in the earth. I quickly learned that, though younger than I, she had probed further, learned more than I had. So she began to teach me.”
Arthur leaned closer to me, as if every word he uttered were causing him physical pain.
“There is a hill, Albert, not far outside o
f Caerleon-on-Usk, that rises unnaturally in the forest. Tall trees surround it, and there are sturdy shrubs that protect it from view. I remember the first time that she brought me there.
“It was her very special place, and one that she would not take me to until she was certain I was ready. By then, I’d spent many hours practising what she had taught me. I’d learned to make the Voorish Sign and write with the Aklo letters. I’d even learned some of the secret history of circles and what they meant. But to be admitted to this most holy of holies, I had to practise.
“Mary would demonstrate for me and I would have to duplicate her movements exactly. It was necessary, she said, because if you do not move the right way and say the right things and make the right faces at the right time, then you could not enter. Oh, you’d get to the hill well enough, but it wouldn’t be the right hill.”
Arthur leaned back and closed his eyes.
“You have to understand that we were children and had no idea what we were doing. All we knew was that we had stumbled upon this gorgeous mystery that belonged to us alone. Mary had learned most of what she knew from an old governess (or so she claimed) who would show her things about the woods and what lay behind the curtain.
“She took to her role of teacher with a tenacity that was truly frightening. Constantly drilling me on the signs and the movements and the looks and the language until such time as we could communicate privately using words and sounds no one had spoken for hundreds of years or, at least, hundreds of years on this side of the ground.
“My first time, I failed in my approach.
“The timing was off or my spins were not correct, and when I pierced through the bramble there was only the hill there to greet me. No Mary. Just the everyday sounds of the forest and the light breaking through some low clouds.
“From a distance, I could hear her voice admonishing me.
“But she was not there.
“I looked around and called her name but could not see her. Then, near the side of the hill slope, the light bent inward. I can think of no other way of describing it. It was like when you take a slice of bread and fold it in two except, when it unfolded, there was Mary . . . and she was very cross.
“It took some time to win back her confidence.”
Arthur looked wistfully out of the carriage window.
“At least, she led me to think it took some time.”
He stared at his hand, unable to look me in the eye.
“She had been planning something else, you see. But I’d no idea about that at the time. So I worked on my drills far harder than I ever worked on my English or math lessons. Then she let me try again, and I made my approach. My feet felt as if they were guided to the correct spots, and my hands moved by their own accord. My face made the appropriate looks and my sounds were exact. When I took the last movement I spun into the heath, not unlike a babe expelled from its mother. I looked up and saw the hill; but this time it was different.
“Where before there had been blocks and broken pieces of Roman stone, now there was a large, flat stone within a circle of grooved rocks. The light itself had changed, and it shone as if it were charged with an electrical current. There was not one sound other than my breathing.
“I had passed through the veil.”
Arthur paused, and I waited for him to continue.
“Mary was waiting there for me,” he said softly. “She clapped and cheered, and yet . . . it wasn’t Mary. I had the impression there was something else there, something that was wearing Mary as a disguise.”
I was startled. It wasn’t the first time I had heard such a description.
“She was different. Her hair and her clothes and her face were the same, but something was off. I cannot explain it any better than that. She was like a reflection in a cracked mirror.
“I took a step backward, but she caught my hand and pulled me forward. There was something that she wanted me to see. We climbed to the top of the hill where the flat stone lay, and I could see something lying in the centre.
“It was a small clay doll of a man.
“Some twine was wrapped around it, and there were a few leaves as well. Mary stood near it, as proud as a parent. She’d made it herself, you see. This was the first time it had worked.
“I asked her what she meant, and she only laughed. She said she’d tried making them before but always got it wrong somehow. I asked her what it was and what it was supposed to do.
“Her voice lowered and she said, ‘It’s a dhole, and it’s here to do whatever I tell it to do.’
“She leaped away from me, scooped up the dhole, and began dancing around the hilltop. Her body moved in ways that I had never seen before, and her voice sang words that no human throat should sing. Looking back now, I can see that there was a certain bestial sexuality to it, but I knew nothing of such things back then.
“All I knew is that the sky was getting darker and the wind was growing stronger.
“Terrified, I ran back down the hill and into the bushes. Mary laughed behind me and, upon my soul, something else laughed with her.”
The cab continued to move forward, but I was too mesmerised to care.
“I stayed away from Mary after that—for a while, at least.
“But my dreams were horrible things. I would be back on that unnatural hill with the sky black as pitch during midday and the sounds of rough, angry beasts coming up through the earth from below. And I would be dancing and singing with Mary.
“There was something to be finished, I felt—some duty left uncompleted. A compulsion, like a burning itch on the small of your back that you can’t reach, that overpowered my reason. I eventually sought out Mary and found her back at the hill.
“She had always known I would come back, you see. The dhole was there, and we danced around the flat, shiny stone and made the proper signs and sang the wicked words. And as we danced the stones around the hill would spin like tops and lumber about like giants in a frenzy of activity, and Mary took my hand and there was a sharp pain and blood and the dirt and the mud and the sounds and the cries . . .
“When I awoke, I was in my bed in my home. I could hear loud whispers of the adults in the other room but couldn’t make out what they were saying. There were words like ‘sinful’ and ‘unholy,’ and Mary’s name mentioned several times.
“I didn’t see Mary after that day and no one ever spoke about her to me again—nor, I confess, did I ever ask. I had seen things that no one had seen in centuries and could not describe to anyone else. Even now, Albert, I am telling you only the smallest fraction of my experiences. How can I explain about the pebbles singing tunes that I later knew to be original versions of old folk and tavern songs? How do I describe the animals who spoke with human accents? How do I describe that final thing I saw before I lost consciousness and collapsed?
“Near as I know, no one ever found that hill again, even though they looked for it. But how could they? They did not know the song.”
I sat and stared at Arthur. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Chapter 47
It was a Sunday afternoon, wet and cheerless; and a duller spectacle this earth of ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London.
—Thomas De Quincey
We had stopped in at a pub, where I found the ale to be flat and the meat tasteless. I imagine anything would have seemed pedestrian after Arthur’s revelation. The weight of everything seemed to be bearing down on me, and I was having difficulty even accepting that I was sitting in a pub on a busy London street. The very nature of reality was now in question.
Looking at me closely, Arthur finally said, “You don’t believe me.”
I took a healthy swig of ale and wiped my mouth, appearing unintentionally dramatic. “Can you blame me?”
He sank back into his seat. It was clear that I had disappointed him. “I suppose not. I’d hoped that you would be a little more open to the unorthodox. After all, are there not tales of ghost ships that run agroun
d on the rocks of Cornwall?”
Nodding, I said, “There are, and there are also legends of fairies and dwarves that live under the hills—but they are just stories.”
By his look, I would have sworn that I had just insulted his ancestors. “There is far more than you think, young Albert.”
He leaned forward, his face earnest and compelling. “Listen, I do not ask you to believe. At least, not just yet. But I hope that you will not be closed to the possibilities. I ask you this, Albert, because, before this is over, I will need your help to stop them.”
“I cannot dispute,” I replied, “that I am greatly troubled by Mary Kelly and the man in the theatre box. If you had not been by my side, I would have sworn that it was you.”
“That was not a man. It is my belief that what we saw was a dhole that had taken my form and face. For what black purpose, I do not know.”
“Don’t know? Or can’t say?” My incredulity had become strained to the breaking point. Such things could not be true, not in a London on the brink of the twentieth century of science and progress.
A gloom came over him. “Even at this point,” he finally said, “there is still much I don’t know and can only speculate about. That is why I have asked the Golden Dawn and others for help. I hope that they can shed some light on what is happening.”
I drained my ale and felt its weight in my bladder. “Arthur,” I said slowly, “you’ve mentioned something about ‘Ceremonies’ in the past. What did you mean by that?”
His brow furrowed, and I could sense that there was something of a struggle going on in his mind; but finally he relented. “I suppose,” he said, “that what I’ve been calling ‘Ceremonies’ you would know better as ‘rituals.’ There are many, of course, with many different goals. Some are simple, such as making someone fall in love with you, while others are more complicated and full of darker purposes.”
“Are we talking about witchcraft?” I asked, suddenly becoming uneasy.
“No, not specifically, although those who have practised such things have, in the past, been called witches and burned alive for their deeds. To call such a thing witchcraft would be akin to calling a bucket of water an ocean. Technically, you could be correct, as a bucket of water would appear to be an ocean to an ant, but you are truly only seeing one small part of a much larger landscape.”