I, Ripper

Upon reaching the street, I turned right and continued down Dorset, now and then pausing to scan behind me, not out of worry but out of general principle. Nothing untoward obtained. And so I crossed Dorset, reversed direction and returned to Commercial, and ambled slowly back to the Ten Bells, in hopes that I might see my darling again.

She was not there. It was odd. Not at the Bells, not on the street, not on her back in her room, doing her duty. Where had the angel gone? I puzzled, worried that she had reunited with Joe Barnett and they’d gone off to get married or something. I found it a rather crushing possibility. And then I saw her. She was with a fellow, not unlike me, dowdier perhaps, but clearly of the largely anonymous middle class, a clerk or tradesman or mechanic, out for his night of purloined bliss on the power of coin he’d not turned over to the missus. The two of them chatted amiably as they wended toward paradise, passing me without noting me, and were on to their tryst and I to my thoughts.

Suppose, then, I worried, on the night hence when all was set for, I penetrated and she was not there? She and Joe were at the pier in Brighton or walking a country lane outside Dublin, as I had heard the Irish trill in her voice. Or some bully had coshed her and run off with her purse and she was nursing a lump in some charity ward. All could happen as easily as not, and that was the problem of orienting to a particular place and time. You could not control the comings and goings of others. The possibility simmered in my stomach like an undigested lump of beef, turning sour in the bile. Agh, the frustration in it jabbed me immensely, and the prospect of losing all the careful planning and reconnoitering I had invested in the effort irritated me considerably. It occurred to me that instead of my careful plan, I might have to improvise another. I determined to put one together now so that I didn’t have to, come the night in question, on the fly.

I reasoned that, were I in this neighborhood on the hunt for Mary Jane and I encountered her absence, the next place to go was the Bells, as it seemed to represent a coagulation of girls. The barman might recognize me, as unlikely as that might seem, for he was a man who daily encountered three hundred faces, but the place was so widely windowed, I could pass by on the outside and determine if the Judys at rest inside for refreshment might soon exit. Noting one, I could wait until she moved, and I saw in my mind’s eye a play like the others: I approach, utter a banal “how do ye do?”, receive an invitation to accompany, and begin a mosey down this part of Commercial, which, though closest to 29 Hanbury, was still virgin territory for Jack. Where would I take her, where was my goal? As I wandered back down Commercial after parsing it for signs of ladies of the trade – they were there, as usual, in abundance – and after passing the lofty and majestic Christchurch, which was the Bells’ next-door neighbor across Fournier, I passed another block and came across a nice little alley. I examined it. Ah, excellent. It was obscure, another brick passageway that almost certainly went undocumented on all but the most precise maps. Peeking into it, I saw how easily I could lure my theoretical Judy into it to do her job, and there do my job. It might be better, even, for so close to Commercial – it would be the closest yet to a throbbing concourse – it could have the impact I so desired and needed. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind for Mary Jane, but it would do, and it served the purpose of calming my apprehension.

Well satisfied with the day’s labor, I headed back to other duties. Whatever happened, I believed, I was well prepared.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Jeb’s Memoir

I had my thumb splayed across the twin hammers of the Howdah, which I gripped by the wooden forearm under the double barrels. I could easily crank them back, and that momentum would drive my hand to grip and triggers, and I could dispatch Jack in under a second if it came to that.

Dare and I approached, and I felt my heart hammering against my chest, my breath hot and dry in my nostrils, the bitter cold of the rain having vanished in the urgency of the action unfolding in which I was a key player.

He stood over her, leaning against the brick wall, while she seemed to have fallen to her knees. Were we too late? Had he already unleashed the death strokes, and had she in turn tumbled to earth to spurt dry of blood in the falling rain while he looked down, watching her die? That was what the scene suggested to me, and it filled me with rage.

Here at last was the beast.

Here at last was Jack, in flagrante.

We were too late for this poor pretty bird, yes, but by God, there’d be no more gutted women in London, as we had tracked and felled the brute.