by Sam Gafford
*
The weather was chilly and cold and suited my mood. The dampness soaked through my clothes and to my skin before I could find a hansom willing to take me home. By that time, the rain had become a torrent and I looked every bit like a rat caught in a sewer flood. I quickly got out of my wet garments and settled into some comfortable clothes.
To my surprise, the house still seemed to be empty. I called for Mrs. Hutchins and Ann but got no answer from either of them. Curious, I walked to Ann’s room and knocked on the door. There was no sound, but oddly the door swung open. I would have sworn that it had been locked earlier. I peered in but saw no one there.
Once again I was surprised at the change that had come over the room. There was nothing of any personal value. No photos. No books. Not even a hairbrush on her makeup table. I looked in her closet and found that there was a mere fraction of the clothes that I had seen her wearing in the past. Even the gown she had bought for the party at Arthur’s was gone. I carefully moved the clothes around on the closet pole and, as I stepped forward, felt a floorboard creak underneath my feet.
Bending down, I discovered that there was a loose board, so I slowly took it out. Because of the low light in the closet, I couldn’t see much, but it looked as if there were a small bundle wrapped in cloth in the now opened hole. I picked it up and brought it out to the light of the room. Unwrapping it, I gasped involuntarily.
It was the small clay figure that I had seen earlier and about which Mrs. Hutchins had such strong suspicions. This time it was different and had taken more of a definitive shape. It was, beyond a doubt, a male figure; and as I looked closer at the face, I was shocked to realise that it had been carved to look exactly like me.
I was about to smash it onto the floor when I heard Ann yell out behind me.
“How dare you come into my room? What are you doing?”
She lunged at me and grabbed the clay figure out of my hands.
“Ann, what is that thing? What are you doing with it?”
I grabbed at her and tried to calm her down.
“You piece of filth!” she screamed. “How dare you touch it? You know nothing! I will see you crushed and broken before me, you pathetic worm. Let me go! Your very touch makes me retch!”
She tore away and scratched violently at my face. I could feel blood dripping down my neck as she ran out of the room and out of the building, screaming vile epithets at me every step of the way.
By the time I get to the street, Ann was gone. There was not even a hint of her perfume in the air. It is as if she has completely vanished. But I was sure where she had gone. Ann had fled back to the East End, and I was certain that I knew where.
Chapter 62
London Bridge is broken down,
Dance o’er my lady lee,
London Bridge is broken down,
With a gay lady.
How shall we build it up again?
Dance o’er my lady lee.
—Unknown
After some mistakes and confusion, I finally found the small courtyard and the house where Ann had led me over a week before and where Edwards had abducted me. Because the event was not completely clear in my mind, I took a few wrong turns, and that delayed me further.
This time I did not bother with any pretence of caution. I had my revolver in my pocket and kicked in the door only to find . . . nothing. The large room was completely empty. There was a door which led to a long hallway with many smaller rooms connected to it, but they were all empty and dust-ridden. There were no footprints in the hall or the other rooms. No one had been there for some time.
In the front room, which I could now see was more of a receiving room, much of the dust had been disturbed, and I found several large drops of dried blood. This was clearly where I had been assaulted and taken. But there was nothing else here. No clues of any sort. I could not even find so much as a scrap of paper.
Dejected, I left the building and walked back out to the street. The sun was going down and a chill was falling. The rain fluctuated between a light mist and a heavy downpour. Before long, I had lost my sense of direction and grew tired. I would never find Ann at this rate. When I saw the lights of what I thought to be a tavern, I decided to have a drink and then—well, I wasn’t sure what I would do then. Perhaps, my dream now shattered, I would just take a cab to Waterloo Station and take a train as far away as I could afford to go.
The pub was the Bricklayer’s Arms Public House and was a rough-and-tumble affair. It clearly catered to the labouring trade, as most of the men there were covered with various plasters and dust which I assumed had to do with their work. I walked up to the bar and ordered a large ale. As I started to drink it, I was surprised to see Walter Sickert sitting near the end. The man had clearly been drinking for some time and was barely able to keep his head off the bar.
“Sickert!” I said louder than necessary to get his attention. “What are you doing here? Tired of drinking at salons?”
He looked at me, trying to focus his eyes. Then, recognising me, he showed a complete air of disgust.
“Ugh, it’s you. What have I done to deserve you? Can’t a man sit and be drunk in peace?”
I sat down next to him. “That’s no way to speak to an old friend,” I said and motioned to the barman. “Once again, if you would.”
Sickert looked at me. “I don’t need your money. I can pay for my own drinks.” But he drank the glass of gin I ordered, and no coins escaped from his pocket.
“What are you doing around here anyway? Arthur let his pet off the leash, eh?” He laughed at his own witticism.
“Well, truth be told, I was looking for someone. A woman. Actually, you know her. She was with me at Arthur’s party and she accompanied Amy Machen at your gallery opening about a week ago.”
Sickert just glared at me. “What are you on about? Amy never came to that opening. I had two good canvases in that show which I was sure she’d buy, but she never even showed up. I waited all bloody night, too. Stupid fops were just looking for ‘pretty-coloured pictures.’ Do you know one fat bitch actually told me to put more green paint in my painting because then ‘it’ll match my wall paper better’! Stupid cow. Wouldn’t know art if it pissed in her face.”
“Wait, Amy never showed up? Nor did Ann?”
“What’re you, deaf? No, they never came. I just figured Arthur had found out she was coming to see my work and he wouldn’t let her go. What makes you think your woman’s hanging around here anyway? Can’t she find someplace, or someone, better?”
“She does missionary work sometimes for the Reverend Barnett. I thought I saw her go into a house in a small court near Dorset Street. Do you know it?”
The man could barely focus his thoughts.
“What? On Hanley Court?” he finally replied, and I nodded.
Sickert laughed. “You’re a little late for that place. That house cleared out near a month ago. Shame, too. Very lovely girls there. Very taken with artists, if you get my meaning.”
Understanding was not swift with me, so Sickert elaborated. “It was a whorehouse, yer nibs! A bordello! Right nice one too. Well, it was after.”
“After what?” I asked.
Sickert sneered. “After Mary Kelly left it. That’s where I met her, the bitch.”
I drank my beer and considered this. Ann had to have known about the building and the fact that it was empty. Could Mary have been the one to tell her?
“Well, ‘left’ isn’t exactly the right word. They kicked her out.”
“Was she stealing?”
Sickert shook his head. “No, not in the sense you mean. She was stealing all the other girls’ high-paying clients. Left a few raving in the street, so’s I heard.”
“Mary Kelly seems to have a habit of leaving broken men in her wake.”
Sickert waved his glass in a mock toast. “That’s our Mary! Here, hang on, you don’t mean you’re looking for that girl that Mary coaxed into singing at Arthur’s party, are you?”
I nodded. “I am. Have you seen her?”
A look of pity and hopelessness washed over him.
“Ah, here,” he said as he pushed his half empty glass over to me, “you need this more than me then. Has your girl been spending a lot of time with Mary lately?”
I drank some more. “I suppose. I’m not entirely sure. But it seems that everywhere I turn Mary’s name keeps coming up.”
“Aye, well, take my advice. If she’s fallen under Mary’s influence, she’s lost. It’s happened before.”
“What do you mean?”
Sickert shrugged it off. “There was talk, a while ago, that she had a woman she used to cat about with. I forget what her name was. Anyway, it didn’t end well—for Mary’s friend, that is. What was her name? Tab-something or other. Martha was her first name.”
I stood frozen. “Martha Tabram, you mean?”
“Yeah! That’s the one. What, you knew her? Ended up getting herself stabbed to death is what I heard.”
The sound of the downpour crashed through the room as the door opened. A couple of men were trying to enter but were blocked by a tall woman and a smaller man who were openly groping each other in the doorway.
The shorter man was respectfully dressed in a billycock hat, mourning suit, and coat, and looked very out of place. I noticed that he had a dark moustache and sandy hair. Despite the man’s eagerness to leave, the couple did not seem willing to brave the torrent. The two men from behind brushed aside them and came inside. Instantly, they tried to cajole the small man into coming into the bar.
“C’mon, guv! It’s too wet out there. She’ll keep. Come and have a drink!”
The short man ignored them and continued to kiss and grope the tall woman.
When, at least, they braved the rain, one of the labourers who had teased him shouted out to the woman, “That’s ‘Leather Apron’ getting round you!”
His friend and others in the house laughed, but when she looked back as they left I could tell by her look that the joke had disturbed her. Then they were gone and the torrential downpour swallowed them up.
It was about 11 p.m. I remember that because time would become important later on.
*
“If you were a smart man,” Sickert mumbled, “you’d knock your lady fair over the head and spirit her out of this place and away from Mary Kelly. Don’t even give her a chance to resist. Just take her and go. This city, everything it touches, dies.”
Sickert would not accept a ride home, nor would he even consider leaving the alehouse. “I’m working,” he said. “All great artists are supposed to be mad or drunks, or both. I come by only one of those easily.”
I left him there and ventured back onto the streets. The rain moved in sheets but slowly began to lessen. For as long as I could, I walked through the crowds and stopped in every bar or tavern I could find.
There was no sign of Ann anywhere. No one had seen her. A few confessed to having seen her about often in the past, but none had laid eyes on her in days. If I was going to find her, I might have to go deeper.
September 30, 1888
I’d heard the church bells toll midnight and was worn out on my feet. My breathing was becoming more forced and I could feel the blood pulsing wildly through my body. I had to get some rest. It was too far to walk back home; and with the hour quickly approaching 1 a.m., the probability of finding a cab willing to fare me was slim at best.
I’d have to find some corner somewhere that I could collapse into with a modicum of safety. To this end, I had just turned up Commercial Street from Berner Street when a strange tableau spread out before me. On my side of the street, some hundred yards or so distant, I could see what I thought was a man bending over a woman. I could not see them clearly.
However, on the other side of the street, another man stood almost parallel away from the strange couple, and I had the impression that he was keeping watch. Further beyond him, a third man came onto the street and, astonished, stopped and stared at the activity mere steps away from him.
The man on my side of the street instantly saw the newcomer and pointed him out to his parallel as he yelled “Lipski!” The other man, seeing the interloper, quickly broke and ran after the eyewitness, who naturally took off at a terrified pace.
As quickly as I could, I ran up the street and came upon a man with his back to me, leaning over the body of a woman.
“Hey!” I cried. “What are you doing to her?”
Startled, the man turned around and glared at me. His face was that of a madman. Truly, there was no trace of sanity in his eyes, which rolled wildly in their sockets. His fair was fine and light and, as he moved slightly back, I could see that it was the face of my friend Arthur Machen, looking back at me.
Stunned, I stopped in my tracks. In his hand he was holding a long scalpel-type knife that dripped with blood. The woman was lying on the sidewalk, dead from a violent cut across her neck. Her head looked as if it were barely attached to her body. To my horror, I saw that this was the woman I had seen leaving the Bricklayer’s Arms Public House, but this was not the man she had left with that night.
“Arthur!” I screamed.
In response, he hissed at me like some wild thing. I could not believe that this was my friend, the one who had saved me from my own death, now standing over a dead woman, but I could not deny the evidence. It was definitely he; but then, as I looked closer, his face seemed to ripple slightly like the waves on a small pond.
I reached out for him, but he slashed away at me with his knife and took off running up the street. I kneeled down to check on the woman, but it was quite obvious that she was beyond any help I could give. However, at least I had spared her any future atrocities.
There was the sound of a cart coming up the street and a man softly humming some tune, but I could not wait for him or call for help. I had only one alternative. I would have to chase down my friend and bring him to the police. My friend and colleague, Arthur Machen, was the Whitechapel killer.
Chapter 63
To the person who has anything to conceal—to the person who wants to lose his identity as one leaf among the leaves of a forest—to the person who asks no more than to pass by and be forgotten, there is one name above others which promises a haven of safety and oblivion. London. Where no one knows his neighbour. Where shops do not know their customers. Where physicians are suddenly called to unknown patients whom they never see again. Where you may lie dead in your house for months together unmissed and unnoticed till the gas-inspector comes to look at the metre. Where strangers are friendly and friends are casual. London, whose rather untidy and grubby bosom is the repository of so many odd secrets. Discreet, incurious and all-enfolding London.
—Dorothy L. Sayers
My lack of knowledge of the area plagued me. I followed what I thought was the sound of Arthur running, but in a very short time I had lost the trail of him. I ran aimlessly from street to street, looking for some sign of him, but found nothing. The longer it took for me to find him, the longer Arthur would have to dispose of evidence. Without it, I’d have little to show the police or Abberline.
Somehow, I’d entered a part of the city of which I had little familiarity. This was part of the City of London, which not only was one of the oldest areas in the city but also had its own police force—one, I recalled, that had boasted in the papers that if the Whitechapel killer had dared to commit his crimes there, it would have him locked up in short order. It was a boast that did little to reassure their residents but did much to increase the animosity between the two forces.
There was a small street that looked promising; and as I was beginning to see that it led to an enclosed courtyard, a man came barrelling down the alley and straight into me. He knocked me flat on my back and bounced into the opposite wall himself. He had taken the brunt of the collision, and I was about to chide him for his foolishness when he looked at me and I saw that I had found Arthur Machen for the second time that evening!
<
br /> I lunged for him, trying to grab his greatcoat, but he shrugged me off with a grunt and another unnatural hiss. Blindly, I shoved him hard into the brick wall and felt his body give with a disgusting softness.
“Damn you, Arthur!” I yelled. “Come hell or high water, I’m bringing you to Abberline!”
Arthur growled and I hurled him back into the wall for good measure. When I did, he screamed in pain, and suddenly his face went blank. I don’t mean that it lost all expression; it lost all details. It was as smooth as a piece of silk. His eyes were gone, covered with a film of skin. His mouth gaped as it stuck together, became a thin line, and then disappeared altogether. Nowhere on his face or head was there a trace of any hair. Even his nose flattened.
In shock, I backed away. Arthur’s face reappeared, but was ill-defined as he pushed me away and ran off into the darkness. My mind could not comprehend what it had seen. I stumbled into the courtyard and there, near the centre, a dead body was lying. I walked up to it slowly and then felt the urge to vomit at the sight.
The woman had been ripped apart.
Even in the poor light, I could see that her throat had been cut. The killer had sliced her open, dug out her intestines, and threw them to the ground over her left shoulder. They were still attached. Although I couldn’t see the details, the copious amounts of blood on her face told me that parts of that had been cut or carved as well.
Now I was even more determined to catch Arthur and ran off in the same direction he had gone a few moments before. I was sure that I must have injured him somewhat, which should have made him run slower, but I could still not catch up to him. His footsteps echoed mockingly before me.
Finally, turning down Goulston Street, I thought I saw him ahead of me and ran faster. The figure saw me coming, dropped a piece of chalk, and took off faster than anything I had ever seen in my life. My injuries were beginning to tell on me, and my step slowed. I presently lost all sight of Arthur altogether. He had disappeared back into the depths of the same East End that was hiding Mary Kelly and my Ann. I would never find them myself. I would need some help.