The Cutthroat

“Retired early from the Yard. Used to be C.I.D.”

“H Division?”

“Detective sergeant.”

“Where would I find him?”

“Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He got himself made keeper of the Lock Museum. What would you call that in America? Manager?”

“Or curator. It’s after hours. Where would I find him? Right now?”

“He lives at the museum. They gave him a wee room up in the garret. But I would stay right where you are, if I were you.”

“Why?”

The old copper downed the last of his beer, licked his mustache, and flashed a yellow-toothed grin. “Word’s out, a Yank is asking about the Ripper. Nigel Roberts could never put old Jack out of his mind.”

* * *

“Mr. Bell, I presume?”

It was late, and the Parliament members who had run off to vote had returned, looking triumphant, when a striking figure with long white hair and glittering spectacles sidled up to Isaac Bell at the bar. He looked haggard but good-humored, and Bell had the impression of a man vaguely surprised to have awakened one morning to find himself old. There was a restlessness to him, a sign of the sort of impatience that Bell looked for in a top-notch detective.

“Mr. Roberts?”

Roberts returned a cheerful nod. “Servants are addressed by their surname in England. Better call me Roberts.”

“Why does a retired Criminal Investigation Division detective call himself a servant?”

“Coppers are ‘housekeepers.’ Which is to say, Scotland Yard keeps the wrong element out of the right element’s houses.”

“Is that why you retired early?”

“No. Sir-ing my governor because he sucked up to Commissioners born in Mayfair finally reminded me of a lesson I learned as a boy — but ignored when I joined the Yard.”

“What lesson?”

“Power pollutes. Obedience enslaves.”

“Sounds like you were born in Whitechapel,” said Bell.

“Close enough.”

“How did you escape?”

“A rich silk mercer died back in Shakespeare’s day. He left his fortune to found a school for penniless boys.”

Bell said, “I saw you in the pub when I came in. Were you waiting for me?”

“Word got around you were asking about the girl in the cellar.”

“Sounds like the Jack the Ripper case is still alive.”

“To me it is.”

“Did Jack the Ripper put her body there?”

“The newspapers said he did.”

“I’ve read them.”

“Everyone in London thought so, too. Do you know about the dog?”

“The Commissioner’s bloodhound,” answered Bell. The newspapers had had a field day when the Police Commission tried to track whoever had left the body in New Scotland Yard with a bloodhound.

“Not that dog. While the Commissioner was traipsing after his hound, a private citizen let his dog loose in the cellar. The Yard had searched high and low, but the dog dug up the girl’s leg buried a few inches under where they had looked.”

“It was her leg?”

“The Met surgeon conducting the postmortem thought so.”

“How long had it been there?”

“Around two months. The general consensus was he went to the cellar twice. Buried her leg first, then dropped off the bundle with her torso sometime later.”

“Is it possible that our cellar girl was a foreigner?”

“What makes you ask that?”

Bell said, “According to Mark Twain, London is a city of ‘villages.’”

“Hundreds,” said Roberts.

“The newspapers printed stories about her body being found in New Scotland Yard. And yet no one stepped forward to claim her body. No one said, ‘Oh, that’s my missing daughter, or girlfriend, or cousin.’

“In actual fact, a girl from Chelsea went missing back in July. Her mother thought it was her. Her description fit the well-fed torso — a healthy young woman — and her mum had the impression that her daughter had taken a housemaid job in a rich man’s house. But there was no head to identify. Nothing to discourage the Yard from insisting that the Whitechapel Fiend was a homegrown working class fiend who restricted his depravities to penniless, drunken prostitutes. Much neater that way. Besides, who can be disappointed in our police if all the Ripper is killing are fallen woman who will die soon of drink anyhow? In the end, she is just another mystery.”

Bell asked, “Could she have been his first victim?”

“The one who started him off? What a marvelous question. She could be, except for one wide-open question.”

“What question?” Bell asked, and Roberts said exactly what Bell had told his Cutthroat Squad back in New York. “How many bodies did he hide so well, they were never found? All we do know is that our cellar girl’s killing predated Jack’s first ‘official’ victim.”

“Polly Nichols. August thirty-first.”

“You’ve been bit by the Ripper. You know the dates.”

Roberts signaled the barmaid and ordered two whiskeys.

“Why don’t we raise our glasses, Mr. Bell? To our Lady of the Cellar, a living girl who lost her life to the Ripper — or another monster like him. And then we’ll drink to the Yard that made nothing of her dying but a mystery.”

Bell tossed back the whiskey and signaled for refills. “I wonder why she was different than his other victims.”

“Other known victims. How do you mean different?”

“Well-fed. Not poor. What if he had known her personally…”