The Night of the Ripper

~ THIRTY-THREE ~

As Mark watched, London went mad.

The murder of Mary Jane Kelly transformed the city into a vast asylum echoing with the outcries of its inmates. Some cowered fearfully behind locked doors, others ran wild, but everywhere the crazed clamor rose — voices babbling terror, wailing protest, screaming vengeance. The hue and cry was hideous by day, but at night the whispers were worse. Whispers of shapes glimpsed in darkness, of fearsome forms lurking in the shadows, of unseen presences stalking and crouching; bloodstained creatures with bloodstained knives, waiting to strike again.

The keepers of the madhouse fared no better than their charges. They heard rumors but no facts. There were investigations but no findings. There were confessions and arrests and incarcerations but none stood the test of truth.

The press spread panic, the authorities compounded confusion, and Sir Charles Warren officially resigned.

And on November 12th the inquest was held.

Early that morning Mark found Dr. Trebor at his office in the hospital, slumped over the desk, face ashen and gray-green eyes glazed.

“I’m not going,” he murmured.

“Not going?” Mark stared at the haggard man.

“What a fool I was!” Trebor’s voice quavered. “Wasting time, watching and worrying about the fate of those who didn’t concern me. And all the while it was coming nearer and nearer, but I closed my eyes because I didn’t want to see. Now it’s too late. She’s gone.”

Mark controlled his features but he couldn’t control his thoughts. Madness is contagious. London Bridge is falling down. They’ve all gone crazy — Trebor too.

He forced himself to speak. “You mustn’t blame yourself. If the police can’t cope, how can anyone come up with an answer? You couldn’t have prevented Mary Jane Kelly’s murder.”

“It’s not Kelly.” Trebor raised a creased slip of yellow paper from his desktop. “The telegram came this morning. My wife is dead.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”

“Nor did I.” Trebor rose slowly. “The next train’s at noon. I’ll be leaving shortly.”

“If there’s anything I can do—”

“Thanks. But don’t worry, I’ll manage.” Trebor consulted his watch. “Abberline said he’d be stopping by on his way to the inquest. I’d appreciate your telling him what happened.”

“Of course.” Mark hesitated. “But I may not go with him. As you say, what’s the use? There’s really nothing I can do.”

Trebor sighed. “Forget what I said just now. It was self-pity, not the voice of reason. I was wrong, Mark — the deaths of those women does concern me. And finding their murderer is a matter that concerns all of us. If there’s the faintest chance of helping, it mustn’t be ignored. When Abberline comes, promise me you’ll go with him.”

Mark promised, and he kept his word.

Later that morning, en route to Shoreditch Town Hall’s mortuary, Inspector Abberline brought him up to date on the events of the past few days.

“A fine kettle of fish,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe the mess. When I got to Miller’s Court that morning the whole area was sealed off. Nobody’d been allowed to leave the premises. Inspectors, detectives, constabulary and four doctors stood outside the locked door to Kelly’s room for over two hours.”

“Why didn’t they break in?” Mark asked.

“Warren’s orders — his last before resigning. Nobody could enter until the bloodhounds arrived.”

“Not again?”

Abberline smiled sourly. “The damned fool still insisted they could track the murderer. What he didn’t bother to find out was that the dogs had been sent back to their owner weeks ago.

“Finally Superintendent Arnold had enough. He was too gutless to take responsibility for breaking down the door, but he ordered the windowpane removed. That’s how the photographer got in.”

Abberline answered Mark’s puzzled frown with a shrug. “Some idiot had sent him down to photograph the eyes of the corpse, on the theory that the image of the murderer was fixed on the victim’s retina.”

“That’s impossible,” Mark murmured. “Surely the doctors must have known—”

“The doctors weren’t much help either. After the pictures were taken, more orders came — this time from Anderson, as the new acting commissioner. The landlord, a fellow named McCarthy, got permission to break the door down with an axe. It was barricaded by a chest of drawers from inside. If you read the papers, you know what we found.”

Mark glanced at the inspector. “Was it really as bad as they said?”

Abberline nodded slowly. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and God willing, I’ll not see such a sight again. That’s when we ran into trouble with the medical men. They were all for examining the corpse, or what was left of it, and we wanted the room cleared for a search. We let them take the remains to Shoreditch mortuary in a carrier’s cart. They say it took a team of two surgeons and four assistants to reassemble the body and do an autopsy. The doctors hadn’t wanted the body removed to Shoreditch because the murder took place in Whitechapel. There was a row about that, but Superintendent Arnold insisted. He said he was following orders.”

“Whose?”

Abberline grimaced. “I wish I knew. I’ve got a bloody lot more questions, but damned few answers. Everything in that room needs explaining. There’d been a fierce fire in the grate, hot enough to burn away part of a teakettle. Kelly’s clothing was untouched, but other clothes had been burned — we found the wirework of a woman’s felt hat, a piece of velvet from a jacket, the prats of a skirt, and there must have been other things that were completely consumed. But why was this stuff burned? And why kindle a fire at all?”

“Perhaps the killer wanted light to work by,” Mark said.

“He didn’t need the grate for that. There was half a candle stuck in a broken wine glass on the table, but it hadn’t been used.”

Mark nodded. “I see your problem.”

“Only part of it,” Abberline told him. “What sticks in my craw is the door, locked and bolted from the inside, with the chest of drawers shoved up against it.”

“Isn’t there a simple answer to that?” Mark said. “Obviously the murderer escaped by climbing out the window, then pulled it down again.”

Abberline shrugged. “Nothing’s simple or obvious about this case. We learned Kelly had been living with a man named Barnett — just between us, the autopsy showed her to be three or four months pregnant, presumably by him, though the fetus is missing.”

“Missing?”

“Like Eddowes’ kidney,” Abberline murmured. “Kelly and her lover quarreled on October 30th — that’s when the glass in the window was broken.” He raised his hand to forestall the obvious query. “We’ve interrogated Barnett thoroughly and he’s not a suspect. He visited her several times afterward, even brought her some money. But both he and Kelly used the window to leave the room after bolting the door from the inside. And they got back in again by reaching through the broken glass and pulling the bolt back.

“You see, according to his statement, the key to the room had been missing for at least ten days before Kelly died.”

“Lost?” Mark asked.

“If so, then how could the door be locked from inside when we arrived?” Abberline paused. “The murderer used the window to escape, just as you said. But before he left he locked the door as well as bolted it. The man who killed Mary Jane Kelly is walking the streets somewhere right now — with the key to her room in his pocket.”

Mark frowned. “But where would he get hold of it in the first place?”

“That’s one of the things I’d dearly love to know. Perhaps the inquest may bring some evidence to light, but I doubt it.”

And at Shoreditch Town Hall, the doubts were confirmed.

When the doctors were sworn in, there was a squabble over the hearing. As Abberline had pointed out, the murder took place in Whitechapel, where Wynne Baxter was the coroner. But Dr. Roderick McDonald was very much in charge here. “Jurisdiction lies where the body lies, not where it was found,” he insisted.

Abberline nudged Mark, whispering. “Somebody wanted to keep Baxter out of this — he asks too many questions. McDonald’s an M.P., you know. I think they picked him because he’d cooperate.”

The jurors had been sent to the morgue to view the corpse, then to the scene of the crime. When they returned the proceedings began.

The first witness was Joseph Barnett, the unemployed fish porter who’d been Mary Jane Kelly’s lover. He spoke of their relationship and quarrel, but added nothing that Mark hadn’t already heard from Abberline.

Then came the women. A neighbor named Cox saw Kelly just before midnight, standing outside her room with a short, stout man who had a carroty mustache and wore a long coat and billycock hat. He had a pot of ale in his hand, and she seemed to be drunk. Mrs. Cox hailed her and she said. “Goodnight. I’m going to have a song.” Kelly started to sing, and Mrs. Cox went out. When she returned at three in the morning all was silent inside the room. Around four o’clock she heard a woman’s voice call “Murder!” but such shouts were commonplace during quarrels between tenants, and the sound seemed to come from outside the court. Since there were no further cries she didn’t bother to investigate and went back to sleep.

Elizabeth Prater, another neighbor, also heard singing from Kelly’s room that night. She went out for a while, but when she came back around one-thirty there was no light or sound from the room. At four in the morning she also heard the scream of “Murder!” but, like Mrs. Cox, she ignored it when silence followed.

Sara Lewis, a laundress, came to visit a woman living across the court from Kelly at two-thirty. Why she chose to pay a social call in the middle of the night wasn’t explained, but as Mrs. Lewis came into the court she saw a man standing outside Number Thirteen. “He was stout, not very tall, and wore a billycock hat.” It being none of her affair, she went on inside to see her friend and later the two women retired. Shortly before four Mrs. Lewis was awakened by a scream. This too was none of her business, so she dismissed it.

A Mrs. Caroline Maxwell, wife of a lodging-house keeper next door, had a different story. She’d seen Kelly around the court for about four months but had only spoken to her once. Mrs. Maxwell said she came outside between eight and eight-thirty in the morning and saw Kelly across the street and called out to her.

“What brings you up so early, Mary?”

“Oh. Carrie, I do feel so bad. I’ve had a glass of beer and brought it up again.”

Mrs. Maxwell went on to Bishopgate to get her husband’s breakfast from a shop, but on her way back around a quarter to nine she noticed Kelly standing near the Brittania pub, talking to a man.

Mark heard the jury murmur as she spoke, and he listened intently when the coroner questioned her. “What description can you give of this man?”

“I couldn’t give you any. They were some distance. But I’m sure it was the dead woman. I’m willing to swear to it.”

“You are sworn now,” Dr. McDonald reminded her. “Was he a tall man?”

“No. He was a little taller than me — and stout.”

“What clothes was he wearing?”

“Dark clothes. He seemed to have a plaid coat on. I could not see what sort of hat he had.”

There was confusion in the room, compounded when the coroner reminded Mrs. Maxwell that Mary Jane Kelly had apparently met her death before dawn. But Mrs. Maxwell stuck by her guns.

Then Inspector Abberline was called to the stand. His statement followed along the lines of what he’d told Mark on the way over, only adding that a man’s clay pipe had been found in Kelly’s room. But Joseph Barnett said it was his; he’d smoked it many times.

Finally Dr. Bagster Phillips was summoned. He described how the room was broken into and the body was found, but the coroner cautioned him not to give the gruesome details — these could be described at a later date. Phillips stated that the immediate cause of death was severance of the right carotid artery.

Now Coroner McDonald took over. In his opinion there was no need for further testimony. “If the coroner’s jury can come to a decision as to the cause of death then that is all they have to do. From what I have learned,” he continued, “the police are content to take the future conduct of the case.” He didn’t want to take it out of the jury’s hands, he said, but unless they wanted to meet again in a week or a fortnight, they could deliver a verdict now.

Mark glanced at Abberline sitting across the way, and read his reaction. The coroner was making it all quite simple, merely a cut-and-dried matter of confirming the cause of Kelly’s death. Obviously he wanted the inquest closed now, once and for all.

And the jury didn’t argue. The foreman delivered the expected verdict — willful murder by some person or persons unknown.

The inquest was ended.

As the spectators filed out of the room, Mark joined Abberline. Neither man spoke until they reached the carriage and started off for Scotland Yard.

”Well?” Mark said.

Abberline’s forehead furrowed. “It’s a cover-up. The whole thing was prearranged, starting with the order to take the body to Shoreditch. I still don’t know who was behind that move, but my guess would be Salisbury himself.”

“The Prime Minister?”

“I’m not sure, but it must have been someone very high up.”

“For what reason?”

“God only knows.” Abberline winced as though in pain, and Mark noted his reaction.

“Never mind me.” the inspector said. “It’s just that stomach of mine.”

“Something you ate?”

“Something I can’t swallow.” Abberline grimaced. “Did you hear how those witnesses contradicted each other about the last time they saw Kelly? And the contradictions in their descriptions of the man they saw with her?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Mark said.

“That’s why I asked you to come along to the Yard with me now. I’m told there’s a chap waiting who has more to tell. Perhaps he can shed some light on the confusion.”

But in Abberline’s office at Scotland Yard. George Hutchinson only added another piece to the puzzle.

He was an unemployed laborer who’d known Mary Jane Kelly for some time, or so he claimed. Around two o’clock on the night of the murder, walking the street with no place to sleep, he saw a man standing on the corner at Thrawl Street. Moving past him, he met Kelly at Flower and Dean Street. She asked him for sixpence but he told her he had nothing. “I must go and look for some money,” she said.

“Then what happened?” Abberline asked.

“She went on toward Thrawl Street. The man standing there came up and put his hand on her shoulder. He said something I couldn’t hear and they both burst out laughing. They went past me together, he with his hand still on her shoulder. He had a soft felt hat on. drawn down over his eyes. When they walked across the road to Dorset Street I followed them at a distance and watched. They stood at the corner of Miller’s Court for about three minutes and I heard Kelly say she’d lost her handkerchief. The man pulled a red handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to her. Then they went up the court together.”

“You say you stood at a distance,” Abberline murmured. “How could you see a red handkerchief so far away?”

“It caught the lamplight,” Hutchinson told him. “He waved it about like a bullfighter and made her laugh.”

“And then?”

Hutchinson shrugged. “I went into the court to see if I could see them, but I couldn’t. The light was out in Kelly’s room and I heard no sound. I stood outside for about three quarters of an hour to see if they’d come out again, but they didn’t, so I went away.”

“Did you have any reason to wait?” the inspector asked.

Hutchinson smiled sheepishly. “You know how it is. If the chap left, I meant to ask Kelly if I could spend the night in her room, me being skint and all.” His smile faded. “But the bugger stayed.”

“This man,” Abberline said. “What did he look like?”

“About five feet six or eight inches tall, and around thirty-five years old. He had a dark complexion and a dark mustache turned up at the ends. He was wearing a long dark coat trimmed with astrakhan, a white collar and a black necktie. There was a horseshoe pin fixed in it. He had a pair of spats over button boots. His coat was open, and I saw a gold chain on his weskit with a red stone in a big seal hanging from it. Looked like a foreigner to me.”

“You saw all this while they were talking?”

“Yes, they were under the light. And I noticed something else.” Hutchinson’s voice lowered almost to a whisper. “He was carrying a small parcel in his left hand, about eight inches long, with a strap around it, or a piece of string. It looked as though it was covered with dark American cloth.”

“Oilcloth?” Mark meant to speak further but Abberline silenced him with a warning look, then fixed his eyes on Hutchinson.

“Why didn’t you volunteer this information before?” he asked. “You could have offered it at the inquest.”

“And put my neck in a noose?” Hutchinson shook his head. “Much good that’d do me! I don’t mind telling you, or talking to the newspaper chaps, just to show I’ve nothing to hide. But how do I know a jury’d believe me?”

“What makes you think I do?”

“Because you’re a copper. You know a bloke doesn’t come forward with such a story unless he’s got nothing to hide.”

“I see.” Abberline rubbed his hand across his chin. “In that case, suppose you tell me something else. What time did you say you left off watching outside Kelly’s room?”

“Three o’clock. I can give you that for sure, because the church clock struck the hour just as I was leaving.”

“And where did you go then?”

“Like I say, I’d no money for a kip. I walked the streets until dawn. Then I spied a pile of sacks in an alleyway and curled up on them for a bit of sleep.”

“All right.” Abberline nodded. “I’m letting you go on about your business, though I warn you there may be need to see you again. Leave word at the sergeant’s desk where we can reach you.”

“At your service, guv’nor.” Hutchinson smiled in weary relief. “But I’ve told you all I know.”

When he left, Mark turned to the inspector. “Do you believe that fellow?” he said.

Abberline walked to the window and stood before it, staring out at the gathering darkness beyond. “If he wasn’t lying, it helps clear up some of the accounts we heard at the inquest.”

He retraced his steps, speaking slowly. “Let’s try to put the pieces together. Mrs. Cox sees Kelly outside Number Thirteen before midnight talking to a short stout man with a carroty mustache. They’ve been drinking, and Kelly takes him into her room for a bit of business.

“Elizabeth Prater hears her singing in the room when she steps out, but when she comes back there’s no sound or light coming from there.

“Kelly’s customer couldn’t have stayed long, because she goes out again and Hutchinson meets her on the street. Maybe the first chap doesn’t pay her, because she asks Hutchinson for sixpence. He watches while she picks up another man — taller, better-dressed, with a dark mustache. They go to her room and Hutchinson stands waiting outside.

“Most likely Hutchinson was the one Sara Lewis saw around two-thirty, since he says he stayed in the court until three. When he leaves all is quiet.”

Mark nodded. “That would explain discrepancies in descriptions of the man the witnesses saw. There were actually three different men — Kelly’s first drunken customer, the second fellow who accosted her in the street later on, and Hutchinson himself.” He hesitated. “But how can we be sure the women told the truth?”

“I think they did,” Abberline told him. “Because all of them — Mrs. Cox, Prater, Sara Lewis — say they heard a voice crying ‘Murder!’ at four o’clock or thereabouts. Which pretty much corresponds with the medical opinion as to when Kelly was killed.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” Mark said. “The other woman, Mrs. Maxwell, swore she saw Kelly alive between eight and nine the next morning.”

“I’m not forgetting it.” Abberline’s face was grim. “And I don’t think the coroner forgot it either. If I’d been presiding you can be sure the inquest would never have been closed until we got to the bottom of that business. Just what did she see and what did she really say? According to her testimony, Mrs. Maxwell had only spoken to Kelly once before, but here she has the two of them calling each other by their first names, just as though they were well-acquainted. Is this the truth or was Mrs. Maxwell elaborating on the story to make sure she’d get her name in the papers? Believe me, I’d have asked a good many more questions before I was done with her. But the coroner chose to brush the whole thing aside, along with the missing key to Kelly’s room. There has to be a cover-up!” He shook his head. “Trouble is, I can’t prove it.”

“Perhaps you can.”

At the sound of the soft voice both men turned and stared at the man standing in the doorway — the man with the burning eyes.