“It’s a last-ditch sort of thing,” I said, finally grasping the concept through the irony.
“Indeed. And what better to have along if, by chance, we jump Jack and he jumps back. I doubt we can argue him into dropping his knife, brilliant though we may be, so it’s on you to cock and fire. The caliber is something called 5-7-7 Kynoch, whatever that means, but the size of it will certainly dissuade Jack from further fuss.”
“It’s loaded?”
“Half the weight is the ammunition, my friend.”
“I don’t know if I could shoot a man,” I said.
“The knife in his hand and the smile on his face will convince you otherwise. Furthermore, it’s much better to have it and not need it than the opposite.”
Strapping the belt together, I realized it was meant to be slung over one shoulder so that it dangled under the other. Affecting this process, after accommodating my jacket and mac to it, I found it nested comfortably enough there, although its weight was not borne by any part of my body but rested on the bench.
Then we settled back. We were nestled in a copse of trees at the center of the square, near the statue of Hoxton, whoever in hell’s name he happened to be; no Bobby could see us unless he came through the square itself, and Professor Dare assured me they never did.
“The rich,” he said, “need no extra patrol. They are quite safe behind their walls of rectitude.”
And so we sat, and so the time passed, the clouds grew thicker, and the occasional beams of wan moonlight ceased to pop through the clouds; perhaps the wind increased, although perhaps it was merely that I grew cold in the waiting, with my nether side resting on the cold stone of ceremonial bench. A hansom now and then passed, and occasionally a party of pedestrians, usually loud under sway of drink, came by, but no one entered the square, and there was no business from the house.
Finally, when I could stand it no longer, I pulled my pocket watch and made out that it was well past one. Over two hours of sitting.
“It’s begun to look like nothing,” I said.
“I agree. He’s at least an hour’s walk from Whitechapel’s loins, which would move his action to two, then he’s got to find a bird, engage her, move her toward privacy, rip her, and head back. Quite an agenda to finish before—Hello, what’s this?”
Hello, indeed.
A figure emerged from the major’s house, definitely male, well prepared against the coldness and oncoming rain, dashed across the street, where there were fewer gaslights, and began a hunched though purposeful stride in the direction of Whitechapel.
“By God, sir, it’s him,” said the professor. “I’ve seen the walk from afar many times in the past week. He’s a strider, of no patience nor elegance, hungry for the advance, and so is that one.”
“Let’s—”
“No,” he said, “he’ll turn at the corner, but not before issuing a look-see. Military training. We stay still until the turn, and then we’re off.”
We watched as he receded, and as the professor had prophesied, he stopped at the corner and had a good look around. It being deserted in this happy little nook of London, two blokes as weird as the professor and I would have stood out like clowns had we been upright and mobile. But even at that distance, it was clear his eyes picked out nothing in the trees in the center of the square, or anywhere, and in a second, he was off. And so were we.
We rose—oof, suddenly taking the full weight of the Howdah against my shoulder, I realized how heavy the blasted thing was!—and were after the fox. We pushed ourselves, our strides determined, and reached the corner he’d negotiated a little before he reached his own next corner, and saw him again.
The professor produced opera glasses, gave them a look, and confirmed that he was no longer cautious but was bounding ahead, his destination presumably Kingsland Road, which led to Commercial and thence to the guts of Whitechapel’s flesh trade.
“All right,” he said, “let’s ourselves straight to Kingsland. He’s cutting diagonals to save time. At Kingsland, we’ll hail a hansom and take it toward Whitechapel, looking for him. If we see him, we pass him and set up on either side of the street ahead of him, and one watches from across, signaling the other, who never looks around.”
“Have you done this before?”
“Hardly. If you’ve better, please inform.”
“I’m the total novice.”
“Then let’s hither.”
And we did, cutting hard three blocks to Kingsland. Damn the luck, no hansoms in sight, the traffic sparse, the thoroughfare largely empty, as this was no dolly land. We gamely thrust ahead, down the street, aware that our vertical to his diagonal had probably put us six blocks behind him by now, and we cursed our luck, and our curses had effect.
The hansom seemed to arrive from nowhere, and the fellow behind said he was going off duty, but I told him I’d pay a premium and he said yes to that, and in we went as the vehicle trembled ahead. It was a relief to get the weight of Dr. Howdah off my shoulder and keep it from banging hard against my hip, where it surely would bring bruises. It was also a relief to catch up on oxygen, produce some saliva to wet my dry lips, and sip air at leisure instead of desperation.
We rumbled along, clippity-clop, clippity-clop, keeping a sharp lookout on either side. Guessing the major would be on the right, I yielded that position to the professor and set myself to examine all the pedestrians along the left side of the street. As it became Shoreditch, by that enraging and confounding London tradition the population on foot grew thicker, then thicker still when it took its angled right on Commercial and headed down that long stretch of well-lit and quite busy thoroughfare, darting in and out between the delivery wagons that plowed the road twenty-four hours a day, even as the pedestrians were darting in and out of the now mostly closed costers’ stalls. The gaslights did their duty, the pubs and beer shops and odd retail cast their light as well, but it had the kind of crazed affect of chiaroscuro, expressing an emotional value but no specific imagery. Jangle-jangle was how it felt, the whole thing with a mad carnival flash to it, made more urgent by the stress I felt and the fear I also felt that I might miss something and have the blood of a victim on my hands the next—
“Dr. Ripper, I presume,” proclaimed the professor.
“You have him?”
“Walking as bold as Cecil Rhodes across Africa with a pocketful of diamonds,” he said. He looked up, poked open the spy hole that allowed contact with the hansom driver, and said, “Two more blocks, then drop us on the left.”
“Aye,” said the driver, “but mind your bloomin’ ’eads, sir, as she’s started to rain.”
What impact would that have on things? Jack had never worked in the rain. Perhaps it would drive him back. Or perhaps he’d try to work indoors or make some other arrangement, I thought, and realized that if so, we’d never catch up, and this one would go down as a miss. The professor paid the driver.
We pulled away, took up a kind of boys’-spy position behind a shuttered coster stall—we would have looked quite mad to passersby, had they noticed, but of course they didn’t—and waited, and yes, here came, recognizable by his powerful gait and lack of patience, Major Pullham of the Royal Irish Hussars, now wrapped up like Private Pullham of the Royal Irish Horse Shitscoopers. He was, by the rules of his class, in mufti.
He appoached, drew even with us, and then forwarded his way along.
“I will go on the advance,” said the professor. “You stay on this side of the street. I will look back at you, but never at him, for your signals. Understood?”
“Excellent,” I said, and that is just what we did. The professor dashed across Commercial, set himself up, and walked briskly a hundred feet ahead of the major. He never looked back at the major but looked across to me, as I had positioned myself fifty feet behind the man, though on the opposite side of the street. Block after block I signaled straight ahead. Passing Fashion Street, then Wentworth, the professor gambled that the major would go right on Whitechapel,
and plunged around the corner without hesitation. The major cooperated and we continued our little game of tag down the avenue.
Another pause as he went into the Ten Bells, right on the corner of Commercial and Fournier, across from Spitalfields Market, and had a draft of beer while we twiddled thumbs outside in the lightly falling rain.
“I’m guessing he was checking for Peelers,” said the professor. “He goes around, checks for knots of them, for the direction of their foot patrols; he looks for plainclothesmen in the crowds. I’m also guessing he has a spot already picked out, one he’s not used before, and after he quaffs his fill, he’ll ease out, taking his time, and at a certain spot slide up to Judy and ask for her company. Agreeing, she’ll lead him into a dark alley or down a dark street. Having scouted, he’s anticipated her choice.”
“I follow,” I said.
“I think we should abandon our magic following trick. We might have to move faster. If he takes her into the alley, we have to be on the couple instantly. He never hesitates. He’ll go to knife, but before he can hurt her, we have to call him out and secure him. The gun will control the transaction.”
“Shouldn’t we alert a Bobby?”
“Do you think it wise?”
“Ah—” I considered, seeing as many pitfalls as possibilities. “I’m agnostic at this point.”
“Perhaps it’s too much to control. Following, interceding, capturing, restraining, and calling a Peeler? Too many tasks, easy to mix up or forget or execute without confidence. We’re on him now, exactly as we thought; we’ll play it out and take the prize.”
I swallowed involuntarily. I made a secret promise to myself not to get too close. The man was fast with the blade, and in a blinding second, before I had time to react, he’d have my heart in his hand, munching it like an apple. No, no, I told myself, Jeb, old boy, you think too highly of yourself to end up that way. Keep your distance, remember to cock the damned gun, and if he steps toward you, send him to hell. Be the hero. Welcome the endless love. Just remember to cock the damned gun!
We stood there, across from the pub and could see him hunched at the bar. In a bit, more people within moved about, obscuring him, but he couldn’t have come out, as there was only one exit.
“He’s coming,” said the professor. “Oh my God, he’s got one, he’s got a Judy!”
Indeed it was so. He emerged, dawdled, and in another few seconds a young woman came out, by her demeanor and wardrobe of the whore subset and the smaller still prey subset. She moseyed ahead until out of view of the patrons in the bar through the broad windows and, once in shadow, paused to look back. He leaped to her side with mock gallantry, which made her smile.
“Here we go,” said the professor.
We rushed crazily across Commercial, hearing the shouts of drivers as we interrupted their rights to passage through the muddy concourse. Meanwhile, the rain pelted down, stinging our faces and forcing us to squint, but somehow we made it with no incident other than additional mud to our boots from the glop that had become the road surface. We arrived on that side of Commercial about fifty feet behind the happy twosome as they walked down the street, arm in arm. They had elected not to try Fournier but ambled down Commercial, past Christchurch and its towering steeple, and down another block. I got a good view, and I must say, if this were Jack, the public would be shocked.
Far from the creepy, anonymous skulker, his face cadaverous, his eyes haunted, his teeth pointed, this Jack was a merry seducer. We could see how totally engaged he was in charming her. Perhaps that was the plan, to gull her toward defenseless love with wit and then cut her down. Perhaps he enjoyed the moment when she saw the knife and knew the cad was her killer and the shock stunned her face.
But he was laying it on with a trowel. I could see him whispering in her ear intimately; evidently he was a wit and quite experienced in the art of making women comfortable (an attribute I sadly lacked): Her face, turned admiringly toward him, radiated rapture at his performance and affection for the man behind it. I watched as she seemed to gradually melt in to him, until they were not two walking side by side but one, of four-legged persuasion, in perfect unison and of one heart, easing their way down the sidewalk, too close to worry about costers’ stalls, too close to note the others passing them by at a far faster pace, and too intent on each’s response to the other to notice the two hooded gentlemen fifty feet behind them, matching perfectly their pace.
At last they came to a side street on the left, and I saw them put their heads together as they came to a halt, and then she giggled and he guffawed and they turned left.
“All right,” said the professor. “Now it gets dicey. Get that gun out so you don’t have to pull it while he’s cutting off your ears.”
I obeyed, sliding it out by one hand and easing it more or less under my mac, and we nodded, each took a deep breath, and steeled self against the upcoming. The rain was really falling now, cutting horizontally, propelled by angry wind, and a chill lay upon all and every. Perhaps hoarfrost in the morning? Who knew what morning would bring? At that moment, we took the corner hard and stepped into the blackness of an alley and saw in a second the figures of two people, enmeshed.
“Remember to cock the gun,” the professor whispered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Diary
November 7, 1888
* * *
This was quite new. Before, they were apparitions in the night. I didn’t see their faces clearly until I’d killed them, hardly to their advantage. The slack of death did a great deal to undercut beauty, if any beauty there had been to begin with.
But Mary Jane, in full bloom, was a lively, roundish specimen who generated goodwill and happiness wherever she went. She was a full-bodied thing, just a bit beyond the age at which you could call her a girl, and it was hard not to desire her, with her blond hair and her buxom figure and her happy smile for each and all.
After the barman’s description, I simply observed and was surprised that I hadn’t noticed her before. I didn’t bother asking anyone to point her out, since it was unnecessary. She was clearly visible from the window of the Ten Bells, so I didn’t have to reenter and risk the barman fixing my face in his memory, as I was sure he had not previously. I could see her sitting at a table with a gaggle of “the girls.” For all their forlorn history, they were a gay, larky lot who enjoyed each other’s presence, enjoyed the hospitality that the Ten Bells offered, and most of all enjoyed the glass of gin set before them. Like women of all sorts, from the Hindu Kush to the Amazon and the Danube to the Yellow and the Mississippi to the Colorado, they spoke a private language of gesture and enthusiasm, loved the thrill of gossip and slander, were united in their contempt for the men who had ruined so many of their lives, and brought out absolutely the best in each other. I could tell all that from their animated postures around the table.
She was the lively one. One could hear her laughter through the glass, perhaps even feel it in the reverberations in the air. Her eyes were blue and her skin pink and firm. She seemed far from The Life, as it was called, even if she was famous within The Life. I knew tragedy haunted her, as it did so many of the girls. They all seemed to come from broken homes, were runaways or had been kicked out of hearth and home, some to turn to the streets, some already drawn to the streets. Her current torment came from the abandonment by the man in her life, a fellow named Joe Barnett, whom I watched visit her every evening. He was a shaggy brute by my standards but maybe a good-hearted man in the end, not too judgmental, willing to accept Mary Jane for what and who she was. His visits suggested some possibility of reengagement, as neither could quite let the other go. At the same time, it wasn’t as if she were making amends to Joe, for she still took tups for pay, let others of her trade sleep in her tiny room on cold fall nights, still hit the gin three, four, sometimes five times a day. She couldn’t say no to it, to her eternal damnation. I don’t know if she turned to drink for escape or she escaped to turn to drink, but it was the
core of her existence, as I have observed her over the past few days.
The Ten Bells and the Horn of Plenty were her main spots. She’d wander outside and, sooner or later, find her beau for the next hour. Then the happy couple took a turn down Dorset. This was a dark scut of street that ran a few blocks until it came to an end, and its reality was elemental “English poverty,” if such a style were to be named, meaning brick tenements looming inward on each side, undistinguished by any wit or cleverness, just brick boxes laid end on end one after another, under low chimneys that spewed out coke fume, to combine with London fog into a yellow soup that sometimes smeared the streets. The housefronts were identical but for futile attempts at individuality, such as a flower pot here, a flag there, a yellow door, a rug hanging from a window, otherwise just the dullness of warehouses for forgotten people.
Mary Jane would take her beau a bit down Dorset, and thence—you had to know where to look for it, for it was easy to miss—she’d lead him into a passage wide enough for but one person. That was the entryway to Miller’s Court, and it cut between buildings for fifty feet of enclosed brick closeness, where it opened into the space that earned it the comic designation “court”: This was an interruption between the continuity of the buildings that offered yet more frontage for dwellings, apartments, or really rooms, chockablock, two stories in height, tiny in dimension, in which yet more desperate souls could be stockpiled until they died and were buried in nameless paupers’ fields. Someone owned it, someone collected rent, someone profited, but you wouldn’t house pigs in such shabby circumstances.