Annie and the Ripper Page 18

  "Go easy on them," Abberline said. "Just be sure you extract a promise of silence."

  "If they were actually there, and he threw this knife, that'll be tough to do," Cody surmised. "I'd be bustin' to tell everybody I knew, or be selling my story to The Police Gazette.”

  "Well, a few weeks from now, it probably won't really matter," Abberline said. "Other crises and scandals will hit the papers. The Ripper will be history."

  CHAPTER 19

  Three Days Later

  "We're almighty lucky," Doctor Llewellyn said as he stepped outside the autopsy room with Abberline. The late November wind was sweeping across the cobblestone courtyard beside the City of London Hospital. "The cold water has preserved the body to a remarkable degree."

  "Lucky to have a body at all," Abberline added, breathing deeply of the cold, clean air that was blowing down from the north. The biting wind was preferable to the stifling odor of formaldehyde and urine inside.

  "Snagged on brush in a bend of the river not three miles downstream," the doctor said.

  "And found by a fisherman," Abberline finished. "Well, it may be luck, but we deserve a bit of luck, as hard as we've all worked on this case."

  "It has certainly provided the newspapers with plenty of material."

  Abberline nodded. "Now with the body being discovered, there will be a lot more from the papers. They're all clamoring to know his identity."

  "That's still up in the air," the doctor said. "The word is out in the district for anyone who wishes to come and look at him before the autopsy starts to see if they can identify him. The body is being kept on ice."

  "What about his fingerprints?" Abberline asked.

  Doctor Llewellyn shook his head. "Surgeon Brown and I thought about that, but the skin has deteriorated just enough that no fingerprints can be obtained."

  "Wouldn't really matter, anyway," Abberline said. "That science is so new, Scotland Yard and the London Police haven't built up a base file of criminal fingerprints to compare them to. So, identifying him that way would be a very long shot, indeed, unless he has an extensive criminal record and has been fingerprinted before. I suppose it was too much to expect that he'd have something in his pockets to tell us who he is. Even his cape burned up in the fire at the Police Athletic Club."

  "Part of a watch chain was hanging from a buttonhole in his vest, but the watch must have been lost in the river. You want to take a look at him?"

  "I saw him when they brought him in," Abberline said. "How have you preserved him?"

  "Packed in ice in a metal box, with his face showing through a glass like a coffin."

  "Let's hope someone knows who he is," the doctor said. "The official photographer has made several exposures of his face and his body, so the pictures will be on file, in case someone comes along later who knows him. But I'll lay odds he'll be recognized by someone in the Whitechapel district."

  "I'd hate for his true identity to remain anonymous for all time," Abberline said. "Will his body go to a pauper's grave?"

  "London Hospital has requested his brain for study."

  "Think they'll find anything unusual?"

  Llewellyn shrugged. "It's worth a try, I guess. If there's some deformity or chemical imbalance, it might account for his vicious, bizarre behavior. If not, the cause could be hidden deeper inside the brain cells. Or…the result of undetectable phobia, lust, a violent fixation on whores from something in his past. Who knows? Brains of geniuses and madmen have been studied before and revealed no variant from an average, normal brain."

  "Something more spiritual than physical," Abberline concurred.

  "As to his body, I've heard talk among the medical students that it should be preserved in alcohol and sold to the highest bidder as a curiosity, and the money distributed to the poor prostitutes in the East End."

  "A bit of poetic justice."

  "Yes. There aren't many cases of actual justice in this Vale of Tears."

  "The body on display…a modern equivalent of a criminal's head being stuck on a pike at the city gates," Abberline said. "We haven't progressed very far from the time of Cromwell."

  The doctor pulled up his overcoat collar. "Let's go inside. I'm about to freeze in this wind."

  Doctor Llewellyn was right. At three that afternoon, after a steady stream of men and women had filed through the open door of an anteroom to view the remains, a woman named Martha Kimball, landlady of a lodging house on Goulston Street, said the dead man was Archer Preston, a boarder at her house whom she hadn't seen in the past four days.

  Mrs. Kimball, a widow, had a stricken look on her long, pale face as she faced Abberline and Dr. Llewellyn in a private office at the hospital. "I didn't want to force the lock on his door until I was sure he wasn't coming back," she said, wringing a handkerchief in her hands. "But that's him, all right. I'm sure of it. I can't believe he's Jack the Ripper. He was kind and considerate to me. Always paid his rent on time. Oh my! The reputation of my place is ruined," she wailed softly. "To think that I housed Jack the Ripper under my roof!"

  "It's no fault of yours, Mrs. Kimball. But we do need to see his room. I'll get Constable Carrington, and the three of us, along with Doctor Brown, will come straightaway."

  Mrs. Kimball opened the second floor room with her passkey and led the way inside. A foul, musty odor, and the smell of rotting meat washed over them.

  "Oh, my!" she exclaimed. "He must have let some food spoil in here."

  Abberline sniffed, and his stomach nearly rebelled. "Open that window, Carrington."

  Even with the window up and a slight, cold breeze moving the curtain, the stench was nearly overpowering.

  Doctor Llewellyn pulled back a drape hanging at the end of the iron bedstead. "Ho! What's this?"

  A tiny bedside table covered with a black cloth supported a human skull. On either side were two thick candles in brass holders.

  The four men crowded around the table.

  "An altar," Abberline said. "Facing north." A geometric symbol he recognized as a pentagram, was painted on the black altar cloth. A more powerful odor came from underneath the altar, and Abberline bent down for a closer look. "Some kind of rotting meat," he said. pulling out a bowl.

  "Hard to tell, but appears to be a piece of kidney," Doctor Llewellyn said. "Maybe the part he didn't eat or send you in the post."

  Doctor Brown slid back the fancy grillwork from the coal grate. "More in here. Didn't all burn." He took a poker and raked it out. "Looks like the remains of a liver."

  "Oh, this is frightful!" Mrs. Kimball said, standing in the open doorway.

  "Where do you suppose he got the skull?" Carrington asked.

  "Maybe from one of his earlier victims," Abberline said. "Or, he could have robbed a grave or even stolen it from a medical school. The important thing is, he apparently was practicing devil worship."

  "Well, I know very little about the occult," Doctor Brown said.

  "Nor do I," Abberline said. "We'll call in an expert on the subject. But, from all appearances, he was offering sacrifice of human organs. We'll seal this room off and have it examined, inch by inch."

  "Did you have any indication this was going on, Mrs. Kimball?" Carrington asked.

  "Oh, no!" She seemed horrified by the idea. "I knew he liked to cook some of his own meals up here. I didn't object. It allowed him to save a few shillings, you know. But I was constantly warning him about the danger of fire outside the grate. And, all the time, he was really cooking and eating parts of human bodies of women he'd killed. And worshipping the Prince of Darkness to boot."

  For a few seconds, Abberline thought the old lady was going to faint, and he moved quickly to her side. He helped her to the only seat—a straight-backed wooden chair.

  The men spent another ten minutes examining the room, but found nothing but a few garbled notes scribbled on sheets of paper in the table drawer. There was even a prayer to Satan. Abberline took some of these as handwriting samples.

  They found
no knives in the room. Abberline half expected the man had more than one, but apparently the long, sharp blade he used to slit throats and disembowel his victims had gone into the river with him and not been recovered.

  Abberline questioned Mrs. Kimball about the man's habits, and asked if several names written on a slip of paper were names of other men, or aliases. The names were not familiar to her.

  It was after six when the two doctors, the constable and Abberline left the lodging house after cautioning Mrs. Kimball to say nothing to anyone else about this until the investigation was complete.

  "What's next?" Abberline asked Doctor Llewellyn as the four men went downstairs to the street.

  "Doctor Brown and I will perform the autopsy first thing in the morning. You're welcome to come watch if you like."

  "Thanks. I might pop in and out. Strong drink and post mortems are two things my stomach doesn't handle well before noon."

  The doctor chuckled.

  "You know, Annie's heart and uterus could have been next on that sacrificial altar," Abberline said as they stepped out into the November dusk.

  CHAPTER 20

  Next morning, while the autopsy was underway, Abberline stopped by his office to compare the handwriting samples to the "Dear Boss" letter. The samples matched.

  Buoyed by this finding, he went on to visit Janelle Stafford at her aunt's home. It was an unusually warm, sunny day for late November, and he found her seated at an easel, painting a watercolor in the enclosed courtyard behind the house. She was copying a scene from a travel handbill showing the sun shining on the white cliffs of Dover.

  "Ah, inspector. It's wonderful to see you." She rose and extended a slim hand. She looked a bit peaked in the wan sunshine. But, as he took her hand, he realized he'd seen her only in the yellow glow of coal oil lamps at the Police Athletic Club.

  "I would've come to check on you earlier, but…"

  "I know," she smiled, waving off his apology, "you've been one of the busiest men in London. It's all over the papers." She sat down and patted the stone bench beside her. He sat.

  "I haven't been by to look at the club. Is it a total wreck?"

  She shook her head as she swished her brush in a vial of water, and wiped it on a cloth. "Not really. The damp fog and lack of wind probably saved it. But it'll take months to repair and rebuild part of it—the back part mainly, where he threw the lantern. It'll be closed down for a good while." She smiled. "You won't have anywhere to work out or play tennis."

  "More to the point, you won't have a job."

  "I was told I could work part time in an office at the Yard." She made a wry face. "Not sure I could stand that. I'm not the clerical type."

  They chatted for another half hour while her aunt brought them tea and tiny cinnamon buns.

  Finally, the sun went under a cloud and a chilly wind sprang up, gusting across the courtyard, turning the sunny day into one reflected by cold gray stones of the enclosing walls. All too soon such pleasant respites were over, and it was back to the hard reality of his job. Some day, he promised himself, he'd take a proper holiday to some warm climate—maybe Jamaica. That had been his dream for years. He wasn't getting any younger. It was time to withdraw his savings and go. The work at the Yard could be done by someone else. He wasn't indispensable. He didn't want to become one of those old codgers whose life was defined by his job.

  He pulled out his watch. Doctor Llewellyn would be close to finishing his autopsy. As he slid the watch back into his waistcoat, Janelle, instead of offering her hand, stepped up, slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  "Well, I won't question the reason for that," he said, taken aback, "but it's the best reward I've had in a long time."

  "Thanks for coming to my aid that night," she said. "The Ripper would likely have killed me. At the very least I would have died of fright."

  He took her by the shoulders. "Give me a few days to clear up this business, and I'll look in on you again. Get plenty of rest, and do something to keep your mind off The Ripper. He's dead and gone, and will never bother us again."

  She smiled. "I have my painting and my books. My aunt and I go shopping." She sighed. "But I'll never get over the sight of those eyes of his." She shivered visibly and pulled her smock close about herself.

  Annie had mentioned the same thing. Abberline didn't recall anything particular about the man's eyes. But unlike these women, he hadn't seen them up close with death staring out from them.

  "Winter is coming on," he said. "Maybe you need a vacation with your aunt to some sunny place where there is a nice white sand beach, and a place to have dinner and dance."

  She laughed with a sound like softly chiming bells. "The very thing I was thinking of. Inspector, you're a mind reader after all. You could probably know what The Ripper was thinking."

  "I'm afraid not. If that were the case, I'd have stopped him long before now."

  "I suppose you're not going to tell me who this mystery woman was you recruited to bait the killer. The newspapers are speculating about her identity. They've named everyone from Bertie's mistress to your landlady."

  "I chose a woman with the musk you told me about. She lured him in, but it apparently wasn't an amorous attraction."

  She laughed.

  "Maybe someday I'll tell you."

  She escorted him out the gate and around to the busy street where he hailed a passing Hansom.

  Abberline reached London Hospital ten minutes before Doctor Llewellyn and Doctor Brown finished their post mortem. Abberline held his breath and entered the autopsy room, sliding up behind the cluster of med students, police and selected spectators. Looking between two pairs of shoulders, he could see the pale, naked body stretched out under the glare of the gaslight. He'd never seen a corpse so white. But that was no surprise, considering the amount of blood the man had lost, and his having been in the cold river for nearly three days.

  Doctor Llewellyn turned from the table, and Abberline caught his eye, motioning with his head toward the courtyard. The doctor nodded, and the inspector edged back out of the crowd and went outside. It was nearing high noon, but the air was still cold, an overcast having hidden the weak sunshine.

  Fifteen minutes later, the doctor came out, rolling down his sleeves. He slipped into his tweed jacket. He seldom wore a hat except to ward off rain or snow, and the fitful breeze ruffled his thick gray hair. "Let's walk," he said, striding ahead.

  Abberline fell in beside him as they started toward Turner Street. The doctor didn't say anything for the first five minutes, as if he were letting the cold wind clear his head. "How about a pint and a bite to eat?" he finally suggested, nodding toward the White Horse pub.

  The Inspector followed him inside. It was lunchtime and the place was crowded with a mixture of laborers and office workers, along with employees of the nearby hospital. They sought out a booth, ordering Porter and ham sandwiches, with hot mustard.

  "While we were gone to look at The Ripper's room, George Hutchinson came in and identified the body as the man he'd seen and described to you," the doctor said.

  "Good. Another confirmation," Abberline said. "Just as I suspected, the man lived close by. He was seen around Whitechapel and nobody gave him a second look; too mild and ordinary looking. Carrington said the man was one of many questioned by the police weeks ago, but they had no reason to hold him, even on suspicion. A regular in the neighborhood. Mrs. Kimball, his landlady, said he'd rented the room six months ago, and she showed me the agreement he signed. According to some of those papers in his drawer, he apparently went by many aliases—Robert Cinatas being one—which happens to be Satanic, spelled backwards. A schoolboy joke. She said he didn't appear to have a job, and kept odd hours, coming and going at all times of day and night. He also called himself Thomas Janklow, Abraham Pottsworth, and Gabriel Sanderson. Unless some relative comes forward, it's not likely we'll know who he actually is—or was."

  "And who is going to publicly admit bei
ng related to Jack the Ripper?" the doctor asked, sipping the foam from his glass of dark Porter.

  "Precisely. That's why the official photographer took several exposures so that if someone turns up later, we have images on file."

  "There's no doubt we have the right man, anyway," the doctor said. "As to the autopsy, it was rather routine, with a couple of exceptions. The cold water preserved the body so it was almost as if the corpse was put on ice at the time of death. We found a .45 bullet that had apparently snapped the gold watch chain in two, deflecting upward, broke a rib, clipped the aorta and lodged near the spine. He had what appeared to be a knife wound in the side of the neck. At least something sharp barely sliced the muscles on the left side.

  "Probably a Bowie knife, but I'll fill you in on that later," Abberline said.

  "Annie didn't know it, but she got him a second time with one of her last off hand shots. Normally, I'd attribute that hit to luck but, in her case, it had to be skill. Lying on the ground, she anticipated where he was by the sound of his footsteps in the fog, and winged him. Bullet passed completely through the muscle of his upper arm without hitting anything vital. Even if he hadn't already received a mortal wound, that through and through arm injury must have made it very difficult to climb."

  "What was the actual cause of death?"

  "Water in the lungs indicated he was alive when he hit the river. As far as the exact cause of death, Doctor Brown and I aren't so certain. More than likely, it was due to a combination of factors—shock, hypothermia, suffocation by drowning, and loss of blood." Doctor Llewellyn took a deep breath and stroked his sidewhiskers, pausing for the aproned waiter to set down their two sandwiches.

  "Will that be all, gentlemen?"

  "Yes, thank you."

  The waiter withdrew.

  "You were saying?" Abberline prompted.

  "There was evidence of massive hemorrhaging."