I, Ripper

Moreover, despite the hue and cry of the newspapers, I noted nothing in the way of Jack the Ripper fear or panic among even the denizens of Whitechapel, to say nothing of the city itself and the larger nation that encompassed it. There were more coppers about, of course, but they were worthless. They had been guided by that General Idiot himself, Warren, who proclaimed that they must be on the lookout for the “suspicious.” In that regard, I saw an amusing scene. Two constables had waylaid a bloke who indeed looked suspicious, as he wore an old shooting coat and a slouch hat; he looked like the very embodiment of seedy danger on the lurk. They had him buttressed against a wall and their billies out for a good cosh if he gave them business. One had already gone to whistle for more Bobbies, and through it all he was yelling, “But I am George Compton Archibald Arthur, Third Baronet of Arthur of Upper Canada and a lieutenant of the Second Life Guards,” while the bigger of the two bruisers was saying, “Sure you are, sir, now you just hold steady while we get to the bottom of all this,” all as I, Jack actually, perambulated by, looking as normal and unsuspicious as Mr. Jackson, traveling representative of Cooke’s Bone, Joint, and Teeth Elixir. That was the point: The beast himself would be unsuspicious, never suspicious.

The lack of general fear had a sound basis in human nature: Each person was secretly wedded to the fantasy of his own immortality and, as consequence, completely given over to the delusion that it couldn’t happen here, it couldn’t happen now, it couldn’t happen to him. I was aware that I was the malevolent god of here, now, you.

At first it appeared there’d be trouble with Mary Jane’s door. How was I to enter it? The door was eternally locked, I guessed by the mechanical magic of a spring-driven mechanism, and I was no lock picker and it was late in life to pick up new skills, especially those as recondite as slipping a betty into the tumblers and turning them. Besides, no one in my circle would know such a thing, and how would I find a teacher?

Since the construction was rather flimsy, I judged a good shove might cause it to give way, but you could never predict how wood split; it might crack like a rifle shot as I broke through it, and wake up all of Miller’s Court, so I’d find myself at the end of an ad hoc vigilante committee rope, dangling off the chimney and making the area by far more famous than it deserved. I assumed that Mary Jane had the key, and I wondered about hiring a fellow to pick her pocket, a trade that was not uncommon in London. Yet that possibility came fraught with difficulties, as in where would I find one of those fellows, why would he not suspect me (I could tell him I was a spurned lover meaning to give her a thump when she got home, but once my atrocity had been delivered, he would be smart enough, would he not, to add two plus two and point me out to the coppers, or at least furnish them with a description that didn’t involved a mysterious Jew man with a gold chain and a beak nose!).

No, no, that would never work. But by nightfall – my third foray into Miller’s Court – I solved the case, verily like Sherlock Holmes. Since the court was empty – it was ten, most of the girls were out on the street but hadn’t brought John home yet; most of the poor folk who were forced to endure the squalor out of lack of other opportunities were well abed – I felt free enough to examine more carefully. Mary Jane’s room was first on the right as you passed out of the entry passageway, but beyond it was a nook or gap where the privy, dustbin, water pump, and trough were set. If you dipped into the nook, you encountered two windows in the wall of Mary Jane’s room, one located in close proximity to the door on the ajoining wall. It occurred to me that through the window, one could easily reach the inside latch of the door and spring it.

I drifted close, made as if to drop a thing and bent to pick it up so as to justify my coming to a halt at that particular spot to unseen watchers, and as I arose, I made the astonishing discovery that the window was absent a pane. I put a quick hand through the opening, moved the curtain, and though it was dark, I could see within easy reach the latch, with its pull button for withdrawing the bolt, a common feature on perhaps 3.9 million of London’s 4 million doors.

I let the curtain fall and, without a haste denoting bad intentions, meandered toward the passageway, checked to see it was clear of incomers, and exited to Dorset Street. I knew I had found my way into Mary Jane’s place for the privacy I so urgently required.