The Art of Murder

Chapter 51

Bedlam Hospital for the Insane, St George's Fields, Southwark, November 1888 The hansom passed through the imposing gates of the Bethlehem Royal Hospital and Sonia Thomson heard the cabbie whip the horse to make it speed up. He had not really wanted to take her here in the first place. 'Bedlam?' he had said. 'What d'ya wanna go there for?' She had given him her chilliest look, prompting him to mumble an apology.

The journey had passed in a blur. She was still numb – the result of reading the batch of letters she had received that morning. Arriving together from America on the post steamer, they constituted what was really a single, long missive. At times, it was rambling and muddled, but it had shocked her, terrified her, and, at some points, brought an inner fury bubbling to the surface. She had always loved her husband, always respected him, always considered him to be brilliant, determined, hardworking and dedicated, but she had also always known that, in other ways, he was weak. Weak like most men were. But the graphic way in which the author of the letters, a certain William Sandler, had described Archibald's weaknesses, and had at the same time offered so much information about himself and his own evil-doing… Well, it had left her reeling.

She had as yet barely had time to absorb the contents of the letters, but a part of her – the logical, well-educated part, for she came from a long line of successful academics – had already started to ask some difficult questions. Foremost among them: What could or should she do with the information in her possession? It was clearly some sort of crazed confession, but was it genuine? Was it really a letter from Jack the Ripper? How could she be sure? True, the Whitechapel murders seemed to have stopped with the demise of Mary Kelly. And what of the description of how Archibald had ended up in the sewer? If the toshers she had paid off had told the truth, then William Sandler's version would have been entirely accurate. Even so, that did not mean Sandler – or Tumbril, as Archibald had known him – really was The Ripper. Those parts of the account could have been entirely fabricated.

But it was not this that preyed the most on her mind. Her most pressing problem was not the matter of who the author of the letters might be, but rather what she should do with them. She could not make them public without ruining her husband's name and reputation. Few people knew the truth of what had happened to Archibald. As far as the public were concerned, he was a kidnap victim abandoned and left for dead in a filthy sewer. The Clarion had gone to great lengths to report that their editor was recovering from the physical incapacity caused by his ordeal. She would do nothing to contradict that story. For what good would it do anyone to know that her husband had been so thoroughly duped by Jack the Ripper?

The cab drew to a halt and Sonia climbed down on to the gravel driveway. Walking slowly around the back of the cab, she approached the steps and found Dr Irvin Braithwaite, standing with hand extended in welcome. He was a tall, thin man, not unattractive in a scholarly, distant way. He wore black and his greying mutton-chop whiskers gave him an added air of distinction. He was the Head Physician at the hospital and had been caring for her husband for over two months. In this task he had been nothing but patient and considerate.

'Mrs Thomson,' the doctor said, squeezing her hand and bowing very slightly. He was such an old-fashioned fellow, Sonia thought, nodding back. 'Come, let us see your husband straight away.'

They passed between the portico's massive Neoclassical columns and moved on through the grand doorway and into an echoing entrance hall. Dr Braithwaite led them to the left, through some double doors and into a wide corridor.

'How is my husband?' Sonia asked.

'We are optimistic,' Braithwaite replied, guardedly.

She gave him a doubting look, which he studiously ignored. 'He has recovered well from the lobotomy and is responding to treatment with cocaine. He is much calmer now. I'm thinking of moving him on to a new drug, a substance called lithium carbonate. Some patients have shown great improvement with this. Ah, here we are.'

They stopped outside a metal door. Braithwaite produced a key and turned it in the lock. 'If you'll excuse me, Mrs Thomson, I would like to go first.' He opened the door slowly and peered in. Then he took two steps into the room and beckoned Sonia to follow him.

The room was small but looked surprisingly comfortable, with its barred window overlooking the manicured gardens to the front of the building. It was furnished with a bed, a side table and a couple of chairs. Archibald was sitting at the end of the bed, stiff-backed and staring straight ahead, his face utterly expressionless. He was wearing a dark brown dressing-gown over a crisp white nightshirt. His hair had been neatly combed. Sonia walked up to him and took his hand. It was icy cold, and he did not look up. She caught a whiff of carbolic.

When he had first been admitted to the London Hospital on Mile End Road, Archibald had been barely conscious. Over the period of a week, he had begun to mend. In some ways he had been remarkably lucky. He had suffered rat bites to his legs, but had thankfully not contracted any deadly disease from them. He was malnourished and dehydrated, but the physical ills had been relatively easy to treat. The problems had started just as he was growing physically stronger and begining to remember what had happened to him. Seemingly overnight, he appeared to lose his senses. He began to rant and rave, to shout incoherently. It had been possible to grasp a few words here and there, but nothing comprehensible. He had become violent, uncontrollably so, and as his mental state deteriorated, it became impossible to treat him in the hospital. That was when the decision had been made to move him to Bedlam. For his own good.

The doctors at the asylum had tried to calm Archibald. They had thrown him into a freezing cold bath, tied him to a bed and left him for twenty-four hours, and then tried spinning him at high speed in a chair for ten minutes. He had simply grown worse, ranting incoherently. Finally, with Sonia Thomson's permission, they had conducted a lobotomy. That had shut him up. Indeed, Archibald had now been silent for five weeks. He had not moved a limb by his own volition. Everything had to be done for him.

At the insistence of Dr Braithwaite, Sonia had stayed away until now. She received formal letters each week, detailing her husband's progress, or lack thereof, and she had done as the doctor advised. Then, upon the prompting of an Oxford Professor of Medicine who had been a close friend of her father's, she had written to Braithwaite telling him that she would be visiting Archibald in two days' time. The doctor could do little other than comply with her wishes.

'I'll leave you alone together, Mrs Thomson,' he said, and turned towards the door. 'A nurse will be outside should you require anything. Please come and talk to me before you leave.'

Sonia heard the door close behind him. She glanced at her husband. He stared back at her, unseeing. She gathered her thoughts. The friend of the family who had advised her to visit her husband had said she should simply talk to him as though nothing had changed. But at that moment, staring at Archibald's marble-still face, she realised that it was no easy thing to do.

'I thought you would like to know that everyone at the paper is thinking of you, my darling,' she began, swallowing back tears. 'They have been very kind. And…' She could no longer stem the tears and started to weep into her hands. Archibald did not react. After a moment, Sonia was able to pull herself together. She cleared her throat and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Then she removed a bundle of letters from her bag.

'I received some letters today, darling. The strangest letters from a man called William Sandler.' She looked into her husband's eyes to see if the name produced a reaction in him. 'I think you knew him as Harry… Harry Tumbril. Does that mean anything to you?'

Archibald stared at her. Silent.

Sonia felt a stab of fury. 'Archibald? Husband? Does this letter mean nothing at all to you?' She waved it in front of his face. He did not react.

She stood up and leaned over her husband. Grabbing him by the shoulders, she shook him hard. 'Archibald!' she shouted, and threw the letters on to the bed beside him. 'Archie… Archie.' She fell to her knees in front of him and started to sob again. Looking up, tears running down her cheeks, she grasped his chin in one hand and started to shake his head. 'ARCHIE!'

She heard a sound behind her. The door to the corridor had opened. A nurse was standing there.

'Is everything…?'

Sonia ignored him and slapped her husband's face hard. His head rocked from the blow, but he simply stared straight ahead.

'Mrs Thomson!'

The nurse ran over and grabbed Sonia's arm just as she was about to hit Archibald again. 'Please, Mrs Thomson!'

Another male nurse appeared in the doorway, then strode in. Between them they turned Sonia away from her husband's blank stare, helping her to leave the room. They had almost reached the door when they heard a sound from behind.

'Tumbril.'

Sonia froze and the men tightened their grip.

'No. Please!' she cried. 'Please stop! My husband spoke to me.'

The nurses looked at each other.

'Please? He said something.' Sonia pulled away, turning back towards Archibald.

'Tumbril,' he said quietly. His lips moved, but his face remained frozen, staring straight ahead. The nurses took Sonia's arms again, lightly now. They too seemed to be transfixed by the sight of the patient speaking.

'Tumbril,' Archibald repeated, his face a blank mask. 'TUMBRIL!' The sound reverberated about the walls of the room, a deafening roar now. The three onlookers stared, petrified and powerless, as Archibald fell forward on to the tiled floor, his forehead hitting the hard surface with a dull thud.

Dr Braithwaite was yelling something incoherent as he ran into the room, a warder a step behind him. 'Out of the way!' he shouted, pushing them aside. He crouched down beside Archibald and, with the help of the warder, slowly turned him over on to his back. Sonia made a strange sound in her throat as though she were choking. The two nurses had let her go and taken a step back.

Dr Braithwaite checked Archibald's pulse and pulled up one eyelid. He let out a heavy sigh and his body seemed to sag. Standing, he walked over to Sonia. 'I'm afraid your husband is dead.'

'NO!' she cried. 'No!

That's not… NO!' She threw herself to the floor huddled next to her husband's body. Then she leaned back, pulling his bloodied head towards her breast and cradling it, sobbing and rocking. The others stood by in silence until Braithwaite crouched down, helped the widow gently to her feet and guided her from the room.