I, Ripper

I went quickly, unrolling my sleeves, sliding into my coats, replacing my steel. Fastening my scarf, pulling the coat tight to button, restoring my hat and pulling it low over eyes that showed nothing. At that point a perversity yet beyond afflicted me. I went to, pulled up, and stuffed in my pocket the letters I had noted on the table. Now I had to read them, having shattered the vault of her body so as to shatter the vault of her privacy. It gave me a shiver of extra pleasure. I, Ripper, I, Evil, I, Tomorrow, I, Forever. Then I took my exit. When the door shut behind me, I heard Mary Jane’s efficient lock clicking obediently as it bolted itself closed and the world out.

The rain still fell. I thought of an old verse and appropriated it to my usage: “Western wind, when wilt thou blow, the small rain down can rain.” I thought, “Christ, that I were in my bed and my love in my arms again,” knowing bitterly that my love would never be in my arms again, and that the world would be – had been – made to pay for that folly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Jeb’s Memoir

t was the usual muck-up, only worse. At least the rain had ceased to fall, though its moisture hung in the gray air, and it left puddles and sloughs of congealed mud everywhere it could, mischievous devil that it was. In this miasma, the crowds intensified on Commercial, and the hansom driver had to whip his horse to drive it among them down Dorset. Meanwhile, newsboys with placards and clumps of papers were already selling the news, EAST END FIEND SLAYS AGAIN, that sort of thing. You had to look carefully to see the day’s other big news, which is that by that insane coincidence which the God who does not exist seems to enjoy so heartily, just before Jack started hacking, Sir Charles Warren had resigned. So I supposed it could be said that on the night of November 8/9, 1888, Saucy Jacky sent off two, not just one. He was a busy lad, he was.

I pushed my way to the narrow passage by yelling, “Make way, Jeb of the Star,” and, though grudgingly, the Whitechapelians drawn to slaughter admitted my passage. Forcing my way through the narrow passage, I entered the court, which was jammed with coppers and plainclothesmen and the usual newsrag riffraff of the Jack beat who had been accorded a close-up perch to the little room that I presumed held the body, and would perhaps be allowed a quick and tasty glimpse of what Our Boy had wrought this time out. I saw Cavanagh of the Times and Renssalaer of the Daily Mail and several others, plus the motley assortment of penny-a-liners, as well as a boy from the Central News Agency, who looked a bit shaky. If this was his first Jack experience, the buzz in the crowd (“I ’eared ’e done ’er right good this time. Ain’t nothin’ left but guts ’n’ ’air!”) suggested he’d be losing his breakfast soon.

I didn’t deign to join them, and they hadn’t spotted me, so I peeled off and spied my friend Constable Ross standing quiet sentry to the left and edged to him. I didn’t want to confer in public, so as to embarrass him, so worked my way not to him but near him, and shielded in the crowd, whispered, “Ross, it’s me, Jeb. Don’t turn around, but get me up to date.”

He didn’t react, but I knew he’d hear and figure out a way to make the exchange easier. He turned, held out his broad arms, and began to chant, “’Ere now, back it up, then, people, let us do our work.” Nobody backed up, but it brought him to whisper distance.

“Hello, Mr. Jeb,” he said. “Oh, this one’s a dandy, it is.”

He gave me the rest. At ten-forty-five A.M. Thomas Bowyer, an agent from Mr. McCarthy, the owner of the court, knocked on Mary Jane’s door to make another attempt to get her to pay rent, which was several weeks in arrears. No answer. Knowing the property, he moved around the corner, where, owing to the odd angles of the court’s haphazard design, two windows permitted vision into her room. He reached in one with a broken pane, pushed the curtain aside, and saw her remains on the bed about ten feet away. Horrified, he ran back to his office, and he and McCarthy went to get the blue bottles, and the circus commenced. Now, nearly three hours later, all the stars were in accord: I noted Arnold, chief of H Division; Dr. Phillips, the examiner; and a chap who seemed to have stopped off on his way to his bank or brokerage. That had to be the famous Inspector Abberline from downtown. Abberline a hero in some accounts but not in this one, was of standoffish mien, his thinnish hair creamed over his pate, his mustaches drooping, his suit – not a frock-coat fellow, I’ll say that for him – immaculately pressed.

Any mysteries that the court may have contained were by now obliterated by the wanderings to and fro of coppers, reporters, citizens, the curious, maybe even, for all we knew, Jack himself. Yet for all the activity, there was no activity.

“Why is no one doing anything?” I asked Ross.