What Alice Knew: A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper

Chapter 10

The mutton is excellent,” said Henry. “Cooked to perfection and seasoned superbly. The potato fritters are a nice touch too.”

“You can thank Katherine for that,” said Alice. “She supervises Sally in the kitchen and has taught her American cooking.”

“Of course, in America they’d be corn fritters,” noted William. “I love corn fritters, Katherine,” he told the woman sitting next to him, who nodded placidly.

Katherine Loring was a tall woman in her midthirties, with a plain, pleasant face. Although she had no disposition to talk unless she had something to say, she did like to listen, making her an ideal companion to Alice, who had, in the course of the past few years, developed a fierce dependence on her. William and Henry understood that the relationship worked, apparently for both parties, and had tacitly agreed not to question it. The one exception, if it could be called that, was in Henry’s recently published novel, The Bostonians, in which a female friendship was unflatteringly portrayed. When confronted, Henry had denied that his fiction bore any relationship to life, and Alice had decided to take him at his word or not care that he was lying. She and Katherine did exist in a possibly unhealthy symbiosis. William had once insinuated that she could not get well because it would deprive her friend of the job of nursing her. To this, she had responded, “It’s expected in a marriage for the two partners to depend on each other in complementary ways. If I were a man, I could go out and do something in the world, and then Katherine could take care of me the way your wife takes care of you. But since I can’t do that, I let her take care of me this way.”

There was no countering such simple and elegant logic.

“You should teach Sally to make corn fritters,” William counseled. “That is, if you can get corn in this country. Can you get corn here, Henry?” He turned to his brother.

“I really don’t know, William. I am not the devotee of corn that you are.”

“I’ll have to ask John Sargent. I’m sure he likes corn.”

Alice, who had barely touched the mutton or fritters on her tray and was instead nibbling on a piece of cake, cut the discussion short. “So the woman’s death yesterday was suicide and not murder?”

William had tried to forget the image of the beautiful dead woman and had no wish to discuss what had happened, but he realized, suddenly, that he had forgotten to tell Alice about the boy. “The woman had a son,” he explained quickly, “ten or eleven years old. A bright-seeming sort of boy, extraordinarily resilient and eager to be of use. I said you might have some errands for him to do.” He spoke apologetically, realizing that Alice might find it presumptuous that he had made arrangements without asking her. “I know it’s an imposition, but his situation is pitiful. He sleeps on the floor of an elderly cripple and scavenges for both of them. And with his mother dead there in front of his eyes—”

Alice cut him short. “Of course, you were right to send the boy to me,” she reassured him with a wave of her hand. “There’s not much work for him here, but I can always find something for him to do. He can wash down the front steps and scrub the walkway. Those tasks supply endless labor, since they are no sooner done than they have to be done again.”

“So many things people do are useless,” noted William. “Their only purpose is to demonstrate that one has the time to do them or the income to have them done.”

“But it’s the gratuitous that constitutes civilization,” objected Henry airily.

“There is such a thing as too much of the gratuitous,” countered William.

“And who’s to determine what is too much?”

“We have only to follow Aristotle: ‘Everything in moderation.’”

“I’m afraid that maxim would not produce much art,” asserted Henry, growing more adamant. “One isn’t likely to write or paint very well on a Fletcher diet.” He was referring to the strict regimen of food and exercise that William and his wife followed and had tried to impose on him, needless to say, without success.

“To return to the subject at hand,” said Alice, interrupting an argument that she knew was capable of producing hurt feelings on both sides, “tell us, William. Have you and your police inspector come to any noteworthy conclusions about this Jack the Ripper?”

William considered the question. He had returned to headquarters with Abberline after viewing the body on Latham Street and had met with Dr. Phillips, the divisional police surgeon in charge of the case. Phillips continued to forward the opinion that had been voiced by Sir Charles that the murderer had knowledge of anatomy. “The general belief is that he is a doctor, perhaps a coroner’s assistant, or at the least a butcher,” reported William. “Abberline and I disagree.”

“You see no surgical acumen involved in the cutting?”

“No. Just because the bodies have been cut and organs removed does not necessarily mean that the murderer knew what he was doing. Indeed, the amount of gratuitous cutting”—he glanced pointedly at Henry—“suggests the opposite. What struck me upon looking at the poor mutilated body of Catherine Eddowes was that the wounds reflected no sense at all of the body in its depth, but a powerful if demented sense of the body as a surface. As Abberline pointed out, the knife follows in certain broad, repetitive strokes. They are utterly uneconomical with regard to surgical procedure, but they still reflect a kind of pattern, though not one proper to a doctor or a practiced butcher.”

“So you’re saying that the murderer may be viewing the body from a context which is not clinical but has its own logic.”

“Precisely.”

“A ritual murder, perhaps? Something with political or religious symbolism attached?”

“Possibly. There was the incident, which you may have read about in the papers, of a message written on the wall near the site of the Eddowes murder. It was a strangely worded piece of writing.” William flipped open his notebook and thumbed through until he arrived at the desired page. “‘The Jews’—spelled here, J-u-w-e-s—‘are the people who will not be blamed for nothing.’ Those were the words written on the wall.”

“Perhaps the work of a Jewish cabal,” Henry suggested.

“Please!” said Alice irritably. “It’s obviously not the work of Jews, but of someone venting hatred against Jews.”

“But the wording of the message is odd,” said William. “It sounds like a formal proclamation.”

“On the contrary,” protested Alice vehemently, “its syntax is common to the lower orders of society.”

“And how do you know that?”

“I know because I read the newspapers and listen to people.” As she spoke, she picked up the little bell on her night table and rang it. “But I don’t need to argue this with you. I can demonstrate.”

A few seconds after the ringing of the bell, a strapping girl of perhaps sixteen, whom Alice and Katherine had hired from one of the local orphanages, came bustling into the room.

“Did you call, mum?” asked the girl, making an awkward curtsy.

“Yes, Sally dear. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“I’m not agin you asking me nothin’, mum.”

“You’ve been here six months now, dear, and I must say you’ve done fine work. Do you think you would like to stay on?”

“I woulden want to be goin’ nowhere, mum.”

“So you would like to stay?”

“I’m far from unhappy, mum.”

“Let me be perfectly clear on the matter now. You’re satisfied with your employment?”

“Oh yes, mum! That’s what I said. Everything at your house is so lovely and refinedlike, and you treat me so nice and polite. I’ll be grateful till my dying day, mum.”

“Well, you’ve been a great help in the household, Sally, and a great comfort to me. Now there may be a boy coming by to help you with some of the housework. I know there’s not much for him to do, but he’s a poor soul who needs to be occupied. His mother did away with herself, you see. I trust you’ll be kind to him.”

“I woulden be nothing else, mum, seein’ as I’m a poor soul myself.”

“Thank you, Sally. And by the way, what are we having for dinner tonight?”

“The oysters with mushrooms, as Miss Katherine taught me, if yer not agin it, mum. I know Mr. James likes it. I think he diden say no to two helpins last time.”

“The oysters with mushrooms?” recalled Henry, pleased. “I think I didn’t say no to three helpings, now that you mention it.”

“You mayn’t be wrong there, sir.”

“Thank you, Sally. I think that will do for now,” said Alice.

“Extraordinary!” exclaimed William, after the girl left. “I’ll have to write a paper on the use of the double negative locution in lower-class British speech.”

“It could be a boon to your social reformers,” said Henry. “Teach the unfortunate to speak in positive declarative statements and eradicate poverty.”

“There’s something to that, you know, language as social destiny,” mused William. “I wonder what Spencer and the Darwinians would make of it—”

“Yes, well, you can debate the linguistic fine points of the impoverished classes another time,” Alice intervened. “I was only proving the point that the message you mentioned was probably written by an illiterate cockney with a conventional grudge against the Jews. The Jews and the Irish are always useful scapegoats when there’s no one else to blame.”

“But there was also the odd spelling of the message,” noted William. “As I said, Jews was spelled J-u-w-e-s. Warren thinks that it may be some secret reference, perhaps from some book used in the inner circles of the race.”

“Nonsense!” asserted Alice angrily. “It’s simple illiteracy. Besides, the point could be easily checked. Don’t you know any Jews you can query on the subject, Henry?”

“I could ask Lady Asbury. She was Jewish once.”

“Not Lady Asbury!” said Alice. “She’s the last person who would know. Either the chief rabbi of London or Samuel Isaacson, who owns the pawnshop down the street. But certainly not Lady Asbury.”

“Perhaps the murderer is an anarchist,” Henry proffered, changing tacks. “Very unpredictable sorts of people. Or a member of one of the purity leagues. Some of those women are lunatics; give them a knife—”

“I believe your imagination is running away with you,” chided Alice brusquely. “As I see it, the idea of a conspiracy is unlikely. The letters printed in the newspapers make no mention of a cause or an allegiance. And there hasn’t been any of the secret insignia or code words that such groups go in for. No—as I see it, the murders are the work of a singular, demented individual. But even a demented mind must have a motive in order to kill with such regularity and pattern.”

“Yes.” William nodded. “There is generally a method in madness if one supplies the right context. Knowing childhood influences, forms of abuse, disappointments, rivalries, and so forth can provide the logic for seemingly incoherent behavior. There is never an effect without a cause.”

“That’s a law to be respected in the writing of fiction,” piped in Henry, who was feeling left out. “It’s Louis Stevenson’s problem, in my opinion. His effects exceed their causes.”

Neither his brother nor sister appeared to care.

“When you see the letters, perhaps you’ll be able to supply the context and deduce the cause,” Alice instructed William. “Pay special attention to the quality of the paper and the ink. Look for patterns in the formation of letters. Note the sentence formation, the use of fragmentary exclamations, and repeated words.”

“I think, as a trained scientist, I know what to look for,” William responded. “I am familiar with standard methods of research and investigation.”

“Yes, but it’s always good to be reminded. And you’re not trained in the investigation of murder.”

“And you are?”

“No,” acknowledged Alice, “but I’ve had more time to think about it. I lie in bed and imagine what might have happened. I have been doing such things since childhood.”

“Are you saying that you have feared being murdered by us?” Henry laughed.

“Yes, and of murdering you,” she added gravely. “It is in the nature of the nervous invalid to create such extreme scenarios. We get ill because imagining them is enough to scare us out of all action.”

William considered the comment. “And Jack the Ripper is somehow empowered to live out the fantasy that frightens the neurasthenic. He is the obverse of what you are, your imagination turned real.”

“Yes,” said Alice, “which is why I am the person to catch him.”