Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

26

While describing my recent experiences, I have more than once remarked that reality parallels fiction. Indeed, the story of Jane Eyre seems eerily prophetic in hindsight. Now, after fleeing the Lake District, I found myself living her flight from Thornfield Hall. Both of us were leaving all that was familiar, comfortable, and dear, to venture into an uncertain future.

Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment. Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!

There were profound differences between her situation and mine, however. Jane had run from Mr. Rochester, in order to save him and herself from sin. I was running toward John Slade, and I must prove him and myself innocent of terrible crimes. Jane drew comfort from nature-a lovely summer day, sunshine, pastures, and streams. On that cloudy morning when I arrived in Whitechapel, I found slums, dirt, and unwashed humanity. She had lain down by the roadside to die; I followed the trail to Niall Kavanagh. Yet neither of us had second thoughts about the wisdom of our actions.

No reflection was to be allowed now: not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. The burden must be carried; the suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled.

I had endowed Jane with the strength to survive. Now I drew strength from her. If she could prevail, then so could I. Furthermore, I had advantages that I’d not given Jane. Lord Palmerston had sent me off from Osborne House with a pocketbook full of money. I was able to buy a ticket for a first-class carriage on the train to London; and, when I arrived, to secure a room in a first-class hotel. I went shopping and splurged on three expensive frocks, with accessories to match. I also bought an imitation-gold wedding ring. Standing before the mirror in my room, I looked every inch the fashionable London matron. If Wilhelm Stieber and the police were looking for a bedraggled fugitive in prison uniform, they would never spot me.

The neighborhood where Dr. Forbes’s friend had seen Niall Kavanagh had been affluent and respectable years ago. The white stucco building on Flower and Dean Street was part of a terrace left over from the Regency era-three row houses with ironwork balconies and curved bow windows. On the corner was a tavern where foreigners sat drinking. Across the street rose grimy, newer brick tenements. The terrace itself had fallen into disrepair. The stucco was gray with soot, the ironwork rusty. As I mounted the cracked stone steps, a man left the tavern and sauntered toward me.

“You want room?” He was stout and wore the sort of clothes common to London bankers. His hair was as sleek as mink’s fur, topped by a black skullcap. “I landlord.”

I halted, intimidated by his size, his foreignness, and the suspicion in his dark eyes. “No, I am not looking for a room to rent.”

“Then what you want?”

“I’m looking for Dr. Niall Kavanagh. Does he live here?”

“He gone.”

I was disappointed, even though I’d known it was too much to expect that I would find Dr. Kavanagh on my first try. “When did he go?”

The landlord shrugged.

“Do you know where he went?”

“No.” Irritation darkened the landlord’s features. “Why so many people come ask about Kavanagh?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear I wasn’t the first. “Who else asked you?”

“A Russian. He didn’t give name.”

Excitement filled me. “What did he look like?”

“Why I should remember?”

I felt sure the Russian was John Slade. He must have found out about this house from one of his mysterious sources. I had picked up his trail! “When was he here?”

“Two, three months ago.”

My heart sank: Slade’s trail was very cold. Another troubling thought struck me: “Has anyone else asked about Dr. Kavanagh?”

“Two English policemen. They don’t wear uniform, they don’t say they were police, but I know police. They the same in every country.”

I had expected to hear that three Prussians-Wilhelm Stieber and his two henchmen-had come. I was very glad that they had-n’t. “Did they say why they wanted him?”

“No, and I don’t ask. I don’t trust police, I don’t poke my nose in their business. I tell them same thing I tell you: I don’t know where is Kavanagh. Now I am tired of talking about him. Go!”

He pointed emphatically toward the street. His belligerence and my disappointment were too much for me. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I said humbly.

I started to tiptoe away, but the landlord underwent a sudden transformation. His anger melted; his hard gaze softened. “Please don’t cry. I don’t mean hurt you. I’m sorry.”

It appeared that some things were the same in every culture: some men cannot bear to see a woman cry. Many women take advantage of this fact, but I had always thought myself above employing feminine weakness to get what I wanted from the stronger sex. But now my involuntary use of the tactic served me well.

“I make it up to you,” the landlord said. “When Kavanagh go, he leave some things here. I show you. All right?”

My tears dried up. If Kavanagh’s things should provide clues to his location, this peace offering would be a gift beyond compare. “Did you show them to the police or the Russian?”

“No. I don’t go out of my way to help them. But for you, madam-” The landlord beckoned me down a flight of steps to the cellar. “Come.”

I know better than to go into cellars with strange men, but I ignored prudence. We stepped into a black cavern that smelled of damp and decay. The landlord lit a lamp and shone it around the room. The cellar looked to be a repository for items that no one wanted, that had accumulated since the house had been built. Picture frames, washboards, a laundry mangle, broken furniture, and pieces of machinery stood on the earthen floor. wooden boxes were stacked high against the brick walls. The landlord fetched two boxes that looked newer than the rest. He set them and the lamp on a desk that was missing its drawers and said, “I wait outside.”

My heart beat fast with anticipation as I opened the first box. It contained oddly shaped glassware-cylinders with measurement markings etched on them; flat, round dishes with lids; a rack of tiny tubes; a globe with a long, angled neck. If I were educated in science, they might have given me an idea as to the nature of Dr. Kavanagh’s work; but alas, I have no scientific knowledge whatsoever.

The second box held dirty clothes. I wrinkled my nose as I examined them. Kavanagh had left nothing in the pockets. In the bottom of the box lay a journal bound in black leather. Under it was a mess of papers. I opened the journal. The pages were warped, some stuck together. The first bore the inscription, “N. K.” The next pages contained lines of handwriting that was full of dramatic flourishes. The ink had run in many places, and even where it had not, the text was unintelligible-scientific terms, symbols, and equations. Not until I had perused the journal almost to its end did I find any entries written in plain English.

The words “Mary Chandler” leapt off the page at me. That was the name of one of the women murdered in Whitechapel! My heart began to pound as I saw two other familiar names. The entries read: Mary Chandler. Age 28, streetwalker. Height 5 feet 1 inch. Weight 120 lbs. 21 October 1849, initial contact, St. George’s Yard. 23 October 1849, 1st examination; exposed. 25 November 1849, 2nd examination; sacrificed.

Catherine Meadows. Age 19, streetwalker. Height 4 feet 11 inches. Weight 100 lbs. 2 January 1850, initial contact, Old Montague Street. 3 February 1850, 1st examination; exposed. 7 April 1850, 2nd examination; sacrificed.

Jane Anderson. Age 29, streetwalker. Height 5 feet 4 inches. Weight 131 lbs. 13 April 1850, initial contact, Commercial Road. 17 May 1850, 1st examination; exposed. 20 June 1850, 2nd examination; sacrificed.

I puzzled over these cryptic notations. It appeared that Niall Kavanagh had known all three murder victims. His notes suggested a scientific rather than a sexual interest in them. I remembered Dr. Forbes telling me about the students who’d claimed they’d been poisoned by Kavanagh. They thought he’d made them unwitting subjects in his experiments. Had he done the same with Mary Chandler, Catherine Meadows, and Jane Anderson?

The three women had belonged to the most impoverished, desperate class of humanity; their kind was at the mercy of the men they solicited. A nauseous chill crept into my stomach as I envisioned the scene that must have taken place on the dates when Niall Kavanagh had his “initial contact” with each woman: On a dark, lonely street in Whitechapel, she stands under a gas lamp. His shadowy figure approaches her through the fog. She calls an invitation to him; he stops; they bargain. She takes his arm and walks off with him, never imagining what evil designs he has in mind.

I gazed upon the last word of each entry: sacrificed. One didn’t need to be a scientist to deduce what that meant. A parson’s daughter understood the word in all its permutations. To sacrifice was to destroy or surrender something for the sake of something else, as Jesus had sacrificed his life on the cross. To sacrifice meant to make an offering of a human, animal, food, drink, or other valuable thing, to a deity, as Abraham had been willing to slay his son Isaac at God’s bidding. Sacrifice had age-old associations with violence and murder. As my lips silently formed the word, I could almost taste blood. A thunderous shock reverberated through me.

Niall Kavanagh had killed those women. I’d come looking for a scientist who’d invented a gun that could change the world, and I’d discovered the identity of the Whitechapel Ripper.