Whitechapel

by Sam Gafford

  It was the exact experience that Arthur had gone through with Mary Kelly as children. I read onward, my eyes scanning over the pages, searching for clues and confirmations, when I came upon this entry—which made my blood run cold:

  I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And I must not say who the Nymphs are, or the Dôls, or Jeelo, or what voolas mean. All these are most secret secrets, and I am glad when I remember what they are, and how many wonderful languages I know, but there are some things that I call the secrets of the secrets of the secrets that I dare not think of unless I am quite alone, and then I shut my eyes, and put my hands over them and whisper the word, and the Alala comes. I only do this at night in my room or in certain woods that I know, but I must not describe them, as they are secret woods. Then there are the Ceremonies, which are all of them important, but some are more delightful than others—there are the White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies, and the Scarlet Ceremonies. The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best, but there is only one place where they can be performed properly, though there is a very nice imitation which I have done in other places.

  There was no mistaking it. The diary closely followed much that Arthur had told me and more that he had only hinted at. The nanny disappears in later entries, and it is never explained what happened to her, but my guess is that it was something unpleasant. Further pages talk about finding an initiate and preparing for the Scarlet Ceremonies, but no description is provided of their nature or purpose. The diary ended suddenly after an entry written before an attempt to perform some ritual, possibly the Scarlet Ceremonies itself or one of the others. The remaining pages were blank.

  I had to speak to Arthur. Fortunately, I knew where I could find him.

  *

  On the 23rd of October the inquest into the death of Liz Stride finally came to an end. Now on its fifth day, it was being held in the Vestry Hall in St. George’s-in-the-East and, if the papers were correct, it was another example of people standing around talking about everything they didn’t know.

  The room was crowded, but I managed to get inside. I could see Arthur seated off to the left; Abberline was nowhere in sight. This gave me some comfort. I felt sure that our next encounter wouldn’t be so friendly. Not that I would blame him: to an outsider, my continued presence in this case was, at the very least, annoying and, at most, criminal.

  When I arrived, Coroner Wynne E. Baxter had just received the verdict from the jury. In a deep and melodramatic voice, he read from the document in front of him, “The jury finds that the victim died as a result of willful murder from some person or persons unknown.”

  A fellow at my side grunted in disgust. “There’s a bloody surprise,” he said. “Five days to decide what anyone else here could have told them in an hour.”

  He filed out of the room with the rest of the group. I threaded my way through the crowd to Arthur, who was shocked to see me.

  “Albert? What are you doing here? I didn’t send for you.”

  I somewhat roughly ushered him through the crowd and out one of the side doors.

  “No,” I replied, “you didn’t; but we need to talk privately. Come on.”

  I could tell that he was not prepared for my brusque manner, but I had had enough of everyone else knowing more than I did.

  I roughly pulled him a little way down the street and into a side alley. There was no one else there, so I felt confident in being able to speak freely. I took the diary out of my pocket and held it up.

  “What is this, Arthur? Who wrote this?”

  “Ah, yes, I’d have thought that was painfully obvious by now. That’s Mary Kelly’s diary from when she was a child.”

  I knew or feared that, but was still taken aback by his unabashed frankness.

  “So you knew? All this time? How did you get this?”

  Arthur stepped a bit to the side, unable to look me in the face.

  “If you recall, I mentioned that our friendship ended after a certain ‘event.’ We were not allowed to see each other. Do you remember?”

  I nodded. “Yes, you said she ended up moving away.”

  “That . . . wasn’t exactly the truth of it. Her parents found this diary the day we went to the hill up on Isca Silurum. They gathered some men and they found us up there. They stopped her . . . right before she could kill me.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “Good God, man! How could you even befriend such a creature now?”

  He shook his head. “It’s as hard for me to explain as it is for you to understand. Mary opened my eyes to so many things back then—to another world, really. I was devoted to her. In my child’s mind, it was just another game we were playing.”

  “But when you saw her again here in London, what were you thinking?”

  His back stiffened. “I was thinking that here was an old friend whom I had not seen for many years and who had suffered horribly for what she had done. I showed her mercy and forgiveness.”

  “Suffered? How did she suffer? However it was, it wasn’t enough!”

  He turned and looked me straight in the eye. His gaze has hard and cold—something I’d never experienced from him before. When he spoke, his words were rough, as if spoken through clenched teeth.

  “I was perceived to be her victim, so I was left alone. Do you know what it is like to be branded a ‘witch’ in an area that still believes in such things? She was beaten—severely. She was locked up in the town square where people would throw dirt and stones and filth at her. Eventually, yes, she did leave the area, but she was sent to a secret convent where the nuns believed in beating the devil out of her. You’ve asked me before why I am not a conventionally religious man, and it was this that first made me question such petty concepts as ‘faith’ and ‘sin.’

  “As for how I obtained the book, I stole it. I switched it with another book that looked the same, and her parents burned it unread as I knew they would. Even to open that diary again, much less read more of it, would have cost them their souls (or so they believed), so it was not difficult to do. As part of my ‘healing,’ I actually placed the false diary on the bonfire and let it burn.

  “I know now that whatever creature walks this earth in the guise of Mary Kelly, it is not human. Nothing remains of my childhood friend. My only regret is that my epiphany came so late.”

  I wanted to hit him. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to hit a man so much in my life up to that time.

  “You knew. All this time you knew what she was and yet you said nothing. And now Ann is missing. She’s probably already dead, used in one of these damned ‘Ceremonies’ of yours.”

  “No, she’s not dead, Albert. You have to trust me on this. The rituals require the blood of the young and pure of heart and mind. They need children. Mary must have taken Ann for a different reason, and I fear it is because she needs an ally. I think she wants to train someone to follow her teachings. I failed her in both regards all those years ago. You discovered that Martha Tabram was probably her pupil—and she failed as well. I think she wants Ann as a disciple.”

  My head felt as if it were about to explode. I gripped it in my hands and nearly screamed in anguish.

  “Think! Think! THINK! That’s all you do! Every day I have been out there in the streets looking for Ann while you go to your inquests and read your papers and think. I am in hell, sir! Placed here by you because you showed this devil some sympathy.”

  Arthur hung his head. “I do not disagree with you,” he said. “I’ve had to stay close to Amy. She has not been well.”

  A sudden realisation came to me. “You’ve been protecting her, haven’t you?”

  He shook his head but would not look at me. “No, no, it’s not like that.”

  “Y
es, it is. When I told you that Ann and Amy were disappearing together and probably with Mary, you knew what was going to happen. And when your wife fell ill, you thought that Mary had leeched onto her. That’s why you’ve been staying home: that way, you could make sure that Amy didn’t leave to meet Mary and Mary didn’t sneak her way into your house. And what about today, Arthur? Who’s watching Amy today?”

  Ashamed, he replied, “Rose. She has strict orders not to allow anyone inside the house or for Amy to leave. I’ve told her that the doctor has ordered this, but that was a lie, of course. But, Albert, do not think me spared in all this. Although her body has recovered, there is something broken in Amy’s mind. She is not the same.”

  I felt guilty about this, although none of it had been my fault. Amy didn’t deserve this any more than Ann did, but I could not quell all my rage at Arthur.

  “I am sorry for Amy, Arthur, but given time, she may recover. Ann may not have such a luxury. Get me those damned blueprints—and this time you are coming with me, come hell or high water.”

  I stormed away, barely able to contain myself.

  “As sick as Amy may be,” I shouted back at Arthur, “at least you know she’s still alive!”

  Chapter 73

  London doesn’t love the latent or the lurking, has neither time, nor taste, nor sense for anything less discernible than the red flag in front of the steam-roller. It wants cash over the counter and letters ten feet high.

  —Henry James

  My anger would not be easily abated, so I walked around the East End in the most foul mood I’d ever known. All along, Arthur had known about the type of terror that Mary represented; but, other than vague warnings, he had never said or done anything about it. Now I knew why he had always been so insistent that the Ripper was not just an average lunatic. Somehow he had connected the murders to Mary’s insane ‘Ceremonies,’ which, despite his assurances, meant that Ann was in as much danger as Catherine Eddowes, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, and Mary Ann Nichols had been. I did feel that Arthur was correct in that Mary had a deeper, more nefarious plan for Ann, but I couldn’t fathom what that might mean. And even though Arthur claimed he couldn’t either, I felt unable to trust him to be truthful with me. More than ever, I needed to find Ann or Mary as quickly as possible.

  That night, I finally got my first real tip.

  I’d been drinking in the Ringers. At first I had started drinking because it enabled me to blend in with everyone at the pub, but I was beginning to notice that I had developed a taste for it. That glass of gin that I could barely swallow a few short months ago now went down as smooth as mother’s milk. There was a part of me that was worried about that, but another part of me felt that, more than anyone, I deserved a drink or two. Normally, I would spread the wealth around a bit in order to build trust and loosen tongues, but this night I just wanted to be alone and brood.

  A small voice came from behind me. “Are you the gent who’s looking for Mary, then?”

  I turned around and saw a short, older man, covered in the dirt and grime of the Thames, and instantly took him for a Tosher. “What if I am?” I said, annoyed at the man for interrupting my bad humour.

  “No skin off my apple, mate. I just thought you’d like to know where she lived, is all. Ta!”

  I reached out and grabbed the man, ignoring the muck that squirted through my fingers at the touch. “What do you know about Mary Kelly?”

  He looked at me knowingly. “So I guess you do wanna know, eh? Reckon it’s worth something to you?”

  Taking a shilling out of my pocket, I showed it to him. He reached for it, but I pushed him back. “Talk,” I said.

  The old man looked at the shilling and at the bar, mentally calculating how much booze he could buy with it. “Way I heard it, she and Joe Barnett is kipping together in a room off of Miller’s Court. She’s been hiding there because of the Ripper.”

  “This better be on the level,” I said, “or I’ll thump you.”

  “God’s truth,” he said and pretended to make the sign of the cross. “Like I said, she’s been there hiding. Thirteen Miller’s Court. Now, can I have my coin, guv?”

  I gave him the shilling, and he ran right to the bar. Like moths to a flame, the prostitutes gathered around him, but he shouted them away. The money was for his drink, no one else’s.

  *

  It wasn’t easy to find Miller’s Court because it’s one of those places that you can only get to through other alleys and side streets. There is no direct access by cart, and if you’re not looking for it, you’d probably never find it.

  As I tracked it down, I noticed that the area seemed rather familiar to me, as if I had been there before. I put it down to just some misplaced memory from all the walking and climbing I’d been doing in trying to find Ann as well as the various ‘errands’ I’d done for Lusk. Still, I would have thought I’d have more than a vague memory if I’d visited here recently.

  Eventually, I found number 13. It was a small unit, probably no more than a main room and perhaps some sort of cubbyhole beside. The door, like the entire area, looked worn and threadbare. A stiff breeze would likely send the entire group of buildings swaying from side to side. There was a four-paned window next to the door, and I noticed that the pane closest to the doorlock was broken.

  I was debating my course of action. Should I simply bash down the door, in the hope that Mary or even Ann was inside? There was no sound coming from the place. Or should I just knock on the door and see what greeted me? The decision was taken out of my hands when someone grabbed my shoulder and pulled me around.

  It was Joseph Barnett, whom I remembered from the night in the pub so many weeks ago when Sickert had pointed him out to me as Mary’s lover.

  “Here,” he said angrily, “what you want at my door? ’Ey?”

  There was no sign that he recognised me, so I gave him none either.

  “I’m looking for Mary Kelly,” I said and, in a last-minute burst of inspiration, adding, “Lusk sent me.”

  “‘Lusk sent me.’ Oh, did he now?” Barnett looked rather amused at that thought. “Well, you go back and tell your precious ‘Mishter Lusk’ that I kicked Mary out on her arse and she don’t live here no more. Let him go look for her somewhere else.”

  My disappointment must have shown on my face. The first real clue I’d gotten had ended up being nothing after all.

  “What you kick her out for?” I asked, trying to sound as ignorant as I looked. “Lusk says she’s quite the ‘looker.’”

  Barnett spit into the gutter. “Looks ain’t everything, mate. Mary Kelly ain’t nothing but a whole heap o’ trouble—trust me on that one. She kept bringing other women here and giving them free kip but not giving me any part of it.”

  “Did—did she ever bring a blonde girl here? Very fair-skinned.” Fumbling, I felt in my coat pocket for Ann’s picture, letting my finger slide over the dagger that had never left my side. I took out the photo and showed it to him.

  He nodded his head. “Yeah, I remember her. Mary brought her here all right. About a fortnight ago. I thought she must have been touched in the head or something.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Barnett shrugged. “She didn’t say more’n two words, but Mary ordered her about the place, saying, ‘Ann, pick that up. Ann, sit on the bed and don’t move.’ Like she was some kind of puppet or sumthing.”