The Night of the Ripper

~ TWENTY-THREE ~

Sitting beside Dr. Trebor in the stuffy little room at the Guilders Green mortuary, Mark wondered if he was experiencing déjà vu. The inquest under way seemed familiar, as though he’d heard the same proceedings before.

That much was true. Only a few days ago he and Trebor were seated in a very similar chamber in Vestry Hall, attending the inquest of Elizabeth Stride.

This, it was disclosed, had been Annie Fitzgerald’s real name. “Long Liz,” the first victim of the double event, used an alias, like so many others plying her trade.

And just prior to the time of her murder, three witnesses, one of them a police constable, testified they’d seen her talking to a man in Berner Street. One took no notice of him at the time, but another said he was stout, dressed in a cutaway coat and a round peaked cap. The constable noted that he had carried a newspaper parcel about eighteen inches long and six inches wide, and wore a dark felt deerstalker hat.

The doctor in charge concluded that the killer probably caught his victim by her scarf, pulling it backwards and cutting her throat while she was falling or when she was on the ground, to avoid the spurting blood.

Now Mark was hearing it all again. The second victim had also used other names — Kate Kelly and Kate Conway — but here she was identified as Catherine Eddowes.

Once more there was a witness; this time a man named Joseph Lavende saw the deceased with a stranger just off Mitre Square shortly before her death. He said the woman’s companion wore a cloth cap with a peak.

Again the doctors agreed that the mutilations occurred after death, with the victim on the ground so that there’d be less chance of staining the murderer’s clothing with blood.

As the medical testimony droned on, Mark made a mental resolve to discard his deerstalker cap, and he wondered if Dr. Trebor had formed a similar resolution. But then he wondered about many other things concerning the older man. Since the night of the double slaying they had never discussed Trebor’s mysterious absence during the previous week, nor his sudden reappearance at the scene of the first crime. Only one thing seemed certain; if Trebor had been at Berner Street when it occurred, he couldn’t possibly be involved in what happened at Mitre Square a half-mile away.

But did Inspector Abberline know that?

Mark glanced toward the rotund figure seated on his right at the end of the row. Abberline was ignoring him; he seemed totally absorbed in listening as Dr. Brown, the police surgeon, answered the questions of Mr. Crawford.

“I understand you found certain portions of the body removed,” Crawford said.

“Yes.” Dr. Brown consulted his notes. “The uterus was cut away with the exception of a small portion, and the left kidney was cut out. Both these organs were absent and have not been found.”

Over the murmurs of the coroner’s jury, Mr. Crawford continued. “Would you consider that the person who inflicted the wounds possessed great anatomical skill?”

Dr. Brown nodded. “He must have had a good deal of knowledge as to the position of the abdominal organs and the way to remove them. The way in which the kidney was cut out showed that it was done by somebody who knew what he was about.”

Mark stiffened. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Abberline’s head turn swiftly; now the inspector was staring directly at him and Dr. Trebor.

And when the inquest concluded he was still staring. The coroner’s verdict was a simple one; “Willful murder by some person unknown.”

But the look in the inspector’s eyes gave Mark the uneasy feeling that Abberline didn’t agree.