by Sam Gafford
“Took a ship to America. I had him followed after he left Newgate. He stopped at a solicitor’s office and then went straight to the docks. He’s in the wind now.”
This gave me little comfort.
I made to leave. “You’ll let me know if you find Ann, yes?”
Abberline nodded. “Albert, you must take me for some kind of fool, and I don’t appreciate that. Someday you are going to have to tell me what all this is about, and I mean it. I want the whole truth.”
“Oh, you’ll get it, Inspector,” I answered, feeling rather confident that I wouldn’t be alive long enough to have to fulfil that obligation.
Chapter 80
Thou stately stream that with the swelling tide
’Gainst London walls incessantly dost beat,
Thou Thames, I say, where barge and boat doth ride,
And snow-white swans do fish for needful meat:
—George Turberville
November 7–9, 1888
I spent the next days in a chaotic frenzy of trying to find Mary Kelly.
From pub to pub I ran. I searched through dosshouses and workhouses but found nothing; which is not to say that Mary had not been seen by others.
It was like some frustrating comic farce. Everywhere I went, Mary had been there earlier or had just left. She had not been hiding but seemed to be intent upon having as many people as possible see her out and about. On Wednesday the 7th, she had bought a candle from McCarthy’s shop and ‘Indian Harry’ saw her talking to a man that night in the street.
I had checked Miller’s Court even before going to talk to Abberline the previous day and found it in a state of abandonment. I was convinced that they had quit the place because they knew I was aware of it.
After that, it was a series of near misses.
A neighbour of Mary’s, Lizzie Albrook, had been drinking in the Ten Bells and told me that she’d spoken to Mary, who had told her, “Whatever you do, don’t you do wrong and turn out as I did.” The woman was hopelessly drunk, however, so could not recall exactly where or when the conversation had taken place.
On the night of the 8th, I was at the Ten Bells just before midnight and discovered that Mary had been there drinking with another woman two hours earlier. When I arrived at the Britannia around 1 a.m., I was told that she had been there at midnight with a man no one recognised.
It began to rain. A squall turned into a downpour. Exhausted from running all over Whitechapel, I holed up in the Ten Bells with the hope that, eventually, if I waited long enough, Mary Kelly would come to me.
Sun Tzu once wrote, “If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy float by.” London was my river. Now it was my time to sit.
*
It was the morning of November 9th. Around 5:30 a.m.
I was trying to keep myself awake with strong coffee when I heard a woman’s voice singing. It was a mournful song—one that seemed familiar to me. Her voice was old and weak and not worthy of the tune, but it caught my ear all the same.
“Scenes of my childhood arise before my gaze,
Bringing recollections of bygone happy days.
When down in the meadow in childhood I would roam,
No one’s left to cheer me now within that good old home,
Father and Mother, they have pass’d away;
Sister and brother, now lay beneath the clay,
But while life does remain to cheer me, I’ll retain
This small violet I pluck’d from mother’s grave.”
As I drank my coffee, I tried to recall why I knew that song. The words were strong emotionally, written to elicit great sadness. In my mind, I could hear it accompanied by a piano . . . and then I remembered.
It had been the song that Ann had sung at the Machen’s party. That was the night I had had the vision and then that unholy séance. Desperately, I looked around for the singer.
There was an older woman sitting near the end of the bar. Almost with the force of a madman, I confronted her.
“Where did you hear that?” I nearly screamed at her. “Who taught you that song?”
“Here! Git off o’ me!” she yelled. Although completely drunk, she was still able to punch hard.
“Please! You’ve got to tell me. Where did you hear that?”
“What’s all this fuss about an old song for? I heard one o’ my neighbours singing it. Wot of it?”
I grabbed her a little more forcibly than I intended. “Who?”
“Mary Kelly,” she said, as the fear made the drink wear off. “Over at Miller’s Court. She was singing it earlier this morn, she was. Now git off!”
Fear gripped me. A universe of realisation crashed down around me. I should have been watching Miller’s Court, not sitting in a pub waiting for someone to walk in.
Dawn was beginning to creep in as I ran down the streets, darting around the few people and carts. Within minutes, I was at the door of 13 Miller’s Court.
There was no sound coming from inside.
I took my gun out of my pocket and slowly tried the door. It was locked from the inside. Desperate, I considered knocking the door down and taking whoever was in there by surprise, but then I remembered the broken window. I reached through it and around until I could feel the lock, which I turned as quietly as I could.
I slowly opened the door.
I was greeted with a scene from a charnel house.
On the bed, against the wall opposite from the door, lay a grotesque mockery of a woman. At first I thought it was some mannequin, as it looked so unlike a person that it must have been false. But then I was hit by the smell and I knew it was real.
There was blood everywhere.
Not believing what I was seeing, I moved closer. The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat, but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was resting on the left cheek.
She had been torn apart as no other woman ever had been.
The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs had been cut off and her internal organs removed and spread around the bed. Her breasts had been cut off, her arms mutilated by several jagged wounds, and her face had been hacked beyond all recognition. Her neck had been severed right down to the bone.
There was a breast placed near her right foot. Something I presumed to be the liver was between her feet. Her intestines had been scooped out and laid by the right side of the body, while a fleshy mass was on the left side. The other breast and more internal organs had been placed under her head. There was a pile of flesh, presumably removed from the abdomen and thighs, resting on the table. Her face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.
Turning away, I could see a pot in the fireplace that had been nearly melted from extreme heat. Indeed, the room was still stiflingly warm. I poked at the thing and could see a burnt piece of flesh that looked like a closed fist still in it.
When I turned, I could see a pile of clothing on the chair. My heart stopped. They were Ann’s clothes. She had been wearing them the last night I saw her. They had been neatly folded and placed there, as if they were meant for me to see. I slumped against the wall and could feel my legs go weak under me.
This body was not Mary Kelly. It was Ann, my Ann! Because I had stopped the Ceremony, this was Mary’s revenge upon me. She had not only killed Ann but had systematically and dispassionately took her body apart and left the pieces.
I could not endure it any more.
On weak knees, I limped out to the courtyard and in a dark corner vomited until my stomach stopped heaving. At that point, my tears were a part of that flood. Exhausted, I sat down out of the way and contemplated taking my own life.
The gun was in my hand and it was loaded. It would take but a second, and it would be all over. It would b
e so easy.
But I couldn’t. Not just yet. Mary was still out there somewhere. I had to find her and end this. Except that I couldn’t convince my muscles to work. So I just sat there.
Eventually a fat, balding fellow came walking purposefully down the court and stopped at number 13. He knocked loudly a few times, called Mary’s name, but got no response. Curious, he peeked through the window and pushed the curtain aside. Then he screamed and ran.
I got up and walked around to the front side of the court soon enough to see the fat man leading another, more self-important man back down to Mary’s door. As before, he moved the curtain aside and looked in the room. This man didn’t scream, however. I could hear him order the fat man to stay there while he ran off to the Commercial Street Police Station and fetched help.
The chaos began to grow. After the first policeman verified the scene, more arrived and secured the area. A crowd was already starting to gather, so I simply mixed in with them and watched, waiting for anything I might have missed.
There was some muttering about having to wait for the arrival of the bloodhounds (presumably the ones Arthur and I had seen chasing Sir Warren), but after nearly two hours Superintendent Arnold grew tired of waiting and ordered the landlord to break down the door.
Only Arnold and one other constable entered the room. When he emerged, Arnold called for the photographer to be brought. The other policeman came out and promptly vomited.
Lost among the mob, I eventually walked away.
I had one possible lead to follow: Mary’s lover, Joseph Barnett. I’d find him and make him tell me what he knew or I’d beat him to death.
Chapter 81
London, thou art of townes A per se.
Soveraign of cities, semeliest in sight,
Of high renoun, riches, and royaltie;
Of lordis, barons, and many goodly knyght;
Of most delectable lusty ladies bright;
Of famous prelatis in habitis clericall;
Of merchauntis full of substaunce and myght:
London, thou art the flour of Cities all
—William Dunbar
There is a tradition in London called the Lord Mayor’s Parade or the Lord Mayor’s Show. Every year, a new Lord Mayor of the City of London is elected, and on the day after his inauguration there is a procession which is a ceremonial parade that takes the new Lord Mayor from Guildhall, via Mansion House and St. Paul’s Cathedral, to the heart of the City of London and the Royal Courts of Justice on the edge of the City of Westminster. There, the new Lord Mayor swears allegiance to the Crown. It is a ceremony that has been enacted since the first Lord Mayor was chosen in 1189. Although not as powerful a position as it once was, the title still holds some power and significance in London. In 1888, the new Lord Mayor was Sir James Whitehead, who had made his fortune in fan-making and retired to public service.
The parade itself is a long, massive thing full of bands and livery and artillery companies, the Royal Fusiliers, floats, colourful marchers, and the Lord Mayor’s Coach, from which he waves as he passes by. It is an interesting spectacle that owes as much to carnival and old folk traditions as to pomp and circumstance. Virtually the entire city turns out for this yearly spectacle. Even the poor of the East End come to see it, even though it doesn’t matter to them who the Lord Mayor is from one year to the next. They enjoy the free music and the spectacle and a chance to forget, however briefly, their wretched existences.
The parade occurs on the same day every year: November 9th—which meant that, on that particular day, revellers crowded the streets as the police were dealing with the most gruesome ‘Ripper’ murder to date. All the while, I was trying to find one man in the middle of the mob.
At the Ten Bells, my questions brought the information that Barnett had been staying at Buller’s Boarding House in Bishopsgate. I was about to run over there when someone else added, “If you’re looking for Barnett, don’t waste your time going there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
It was an old man who barely had any teeth left. Presumably, that was why he preferred to drink his meals. His clothes were slovenly, but he had once been respectable.
“I mean he ain’t there. The coppers brought him in on account o’ Mary Kelly being killed. Reckon they think he might have done it.”
“What a load of codswallop!” another man replied. “Mary Kelly ain’t dead. I saw her this morning around ten, walking down Dorset Street, pretty as you please.”
“Get off,” an older woman said. “She was done in early in the morning, so’s I hear. Like about four a.m. She wasn’t up and walking six hours later, Lewis. She’s in the bleedin’ morgue, she is!”
“I know what I seen, and I seen it. Mary Kelly. Plain as day. And what’s more, she was carrying a baby in her arms!”
“Aw, you’re full of it, you are. Mary ain’t had no baby. Besides, you’re half blind and daft besides.”
“I know what I seen,” Lewis continued to assert, and no amount of coercion could make him change his mind.
For me, the most chilling part of his testament was not that he had seen Mary Kelly alive and walking the streets but that he had seen her carrying a child. There had been no infant in that unholy murder room at 13 Miller’s Court. My grief had been so great at finding Ann butchered that I had completely forgotten about how she had been so pregnant when I saw her in the underground temple. Mary had obviously cut the child out of Ann. I could only pray that she was already dead when that happened.
On shaking legs I made my way back to the Leeman Street Station, where Freddy was no doubt eagerly questioning Barnett. If they chose not to arrest him, Barnett would be set free and I’d be waiting. I hid in the shadows across from the back of the building and tried my best to be patient. I wanted to run into that station and pull Barnett out by his hair; but I had to wait and, as I waited, I could not keep from thinking dark thoughts.
Where were Mary and the child now? And, more horrifyingly, what dark plans did she have for it?
It was well after 5 p.m. when I finally spotted Barnett sneaking out of the rear entrance of the police station. He had been in there for at least four hours. He had the look of a haunted man and was constantly looking over his shoulder. I tried to keep a safe distance, following him with my hat pulled down low. When he turned down a side alley, I could not contain myself any longer and made a run for him. Panicked, Barnett started running, but I was on him too quickly for him to get very far. I grabbed him and threw him into a stack of garbage and wooden fruit crates. When he pulled himself up and saw me, he nearly burst out laughing.
“You?” he said. “You gave me quite a fright, boyo. I thought you were something else chasing me.”
I didn’t give him a chance to recover himself and punched him hard in the stomach. I brought my knee up to meet his chin as he doubled over. The impact nearly flipped him over. As he struggled to his feet, I was happy to see that he was bleeding from the mouth, and it looked as if he had lost a tooth or two.
He came up with a knife in his right hand.
“I guess you didn’t like the little present we left for you this morning!”
The knife swung, but I evaded and brought my elbow down on the back of his head as he wheeled by. I’d gotten unexpectedly good at fighting during the last few months and wasn’t going to hold anything back on him.
Barnett dived forward again, and I grabbed his hand and pulled him towards me. My head made a satisfying whack as it connected with his face. Stunned, he was now bleeding from the nose and mouth.
He backed up slightly and I pounced. Grabbing his jacket, I hurled him into the brick alley wall and kicked him in the back as he bounced off it. Down on the ground, I kneeled on his chest with my legs pinning his arms to the ground. Then I punched until my knuckles were raw and covered with blood.
I wanted to kill him. I wanted to cut him the way that Mary had cut Ann; but I still needed information, so I pulled him up into a sitting position
and slapped him until he woke up again.
“Where is she? Where’s Mary Kelly?”
Barnett laughed but started to choke on his blood.
“Where’s Mary Kelly? God, you’re a stupid cocksucker, aren’t you? Never knew anything. She’d been pluming your chicken for weeks right under your nose and you never saw it. And she was easy, she was. Took to it like a babe to a tit. And you know what? She loved it. Every last second of it.”
I punched him hard in the side and could feel one of his ribs crack.
“You never even recognised me that night in Berner Street, did you? Remember? ‘Lipski! Lipski!’ Stupid fucker.”
That’s when it hit me. Barnett had been the other man on the street when Liz Stride had been killed. He was the lookout for the dhole with Machen’s face. That meant that he had been involved in this from the beginning.
“Why’d she do it, Barnett? Why kill those women?”
“Kill those women? Fuck if I know. She’s a loon. Kept talking about using ’em as sacrifices and how everything had to be done in just such a way or else it’d be ruined. She targeted your bird right away, she did. That night at the party. She said that your girl was sweet, and tasting her was like tasting purity. And you never knew a thing.”
I pushed in his side a bit, and he winced from pain. Some red foam started to appear at the sides of his mouth.
“Why, Barnett? Why?”
He gritted his teeth. “Why? She kept saying something about ‘piercing the veil’ or some such crap. Said that there was another world out there, and that’s where she belonged. She was right: she’s too crazy for this world. Using that freak to cut up women and take pieces out of them. Heh! You didn’t even see me get them out of that underground place when you and that bloody writer barged in. So stupid.”
“Where is she? You are going to tell me right now where she is.”
I had taken his knife and was pointing it at his groin. In case he didn’t get the hint, I pressed the point into him. This got his attention.
“Where she is? She—she ain’t here. She’s not in London anymore, I swear. She got on a train this morning, around eleven, from Waterloo Station. I put her on it myself.”