I, Ripper

t was about six-twenty A.M. – I could tell by the clock on the spire of the Black Eagle Brewery just down the street – when I arrived, in pale, moist dawn, a ha’penny’s worth of moon above the western horizon. At 29 Hanbury, there was no cordon of coppers, no wagons drawn up, no sense of municipal officialdom. Rather, I saw something between a group and a crowd of citizens already formed; it lacked the crowd’s anger and purpose, being not packed, angry, clamoring to all get somewhere at once. Too, it was more than a group, for it had purpose and focus, not random togetherness, as its organizational principle. I suppose it was something oxymoronic, like a “crowd of individuals,” that is to say, each of the men – mostly workers – was there but not bonded with any other particular person. They were there because of the fascination of death, fate, slaughter, crime, murder, all those Big Things that have an eternal pull on heart and mind. I was the same, except that I had a mission, not just a fascination.

Thus I slid through them easily, and no one felt pressured to block the way or forbid me passage. It turned out they were clustered at an open door, and I could see that it revealed a passage through past No. 29 to what was presumably a yard in back. I entered the tunnel, again found no resistance, and moved along the shabby walls, the peeling paint, the unvarnished wood, all of it screaming its message of messy squalor, Whitechapel style.

I reached the doorway, took a quick peek out, and saw nothing to impede my progress. Only a single man was there, and he was kneeling over what I knew to be the body, to my immediate left at the foot of the steps, next to the fence, though in the still-dim light, from my angle, I could make no sense of the corpse: It appeared to be some kind of spilled, opened suitcase, as I saw mostly disheveled clothes and could make out no identifiable features. I did what no other would do; I stepped into the yard.

The man looked up, his face grave and his demeanor stilled by trauma. “Dr. Phillips— Say, you’re not the surgeon.”

“No, Inspector,” I said. “Jeb, of the Star.”

“Bloke, Old Man Warren doesn’t like you press fellows mucking about.”

“I’m fine with that, but since I’m here first, I’m a responsible writer and not a screaming lying hack, and I can get your name in the largest newspaper in the kingdom, you won’t mind if I peek about a bit, will you then, Inspector … ?”

“Chandler.”

“First name, rank?” How quickly I made him a conspirator!

“Inspector Joseph Chandler.”

“Thank you.”

“All right, but don’t dawdle, and I’ll show you the particulars.”

That’s how I met the lady who turned out – by eleven-thirty that morning, another Jeb scoop – to be Annie Chapman. I met her; she did not meet me. All she did was lie there, her guts spread to the sun, moon, and stars.

“God,” I said.

“Ever seen an animal gutted?”

I lied. “Many a time, hunting red Irish stag.”

“Don’t know if our boy is a hunter, but he does like the knife.”

I immediately noted, as I bent over her, the difference between her and her sister in martyrdom, Polly Nichols, and that was her tongue. It was bloated like a hideous sausage, so wide an impediment that her lips were distended about it.

“Seen anything like that, Inspector Chandler?”

“Unfortunately. It happens as a consequence of strangulation. He crushed her throat before—”

He pointed. As before, the two deep eviscerations in the left quarter of the throat, leading around to the front before petering out. As before, clear of blood, as it had all slobbered out, sinking into her clothes and the ground and leaving spatters on the fence, where she had been cut. The dawn rendered it more as to coloration but not as to truth; in the pale light it was a kind of purple or lavender. I had yet to see the mythic red.

“Look here,” said Chandler, “this, too, is extraordinary.” He pointed to her possessions, which had been neatly arrayed, as if for an inspection, next to her roughly shod feet, between them and the base of the fence. I wrote down what I saw: a few combs broken and whole, another piece of raw muslin that I thought the ladies secured as a handkerchief for wiping up the fluids generated by their profession. A crumpled envelope lay next to her head.

“Quite tidy,” I said.

“Maybe he’s something of a perfectionist.”

“He certainly did the perfect job on her middle parts.”

“Aye, that he did.”

Yes, no doubt. I will here spare the reader and myself another recitation (vide, the diary, previous chapter) of the destruction.

“Quite nasty,” I said. “Obviously mad as a hatter.”

“You wouldn’t want to meet him in the dark. Not without a Webley, that is.”

Suddenly a third man joined us.

“Dr. Phillips, sir?” asked Chandler.

“Yes, yes. Oh, God, look at that.” He was brought back by the carnage inflicted, as would all men be.