Authors: Will Thomas
Tags: #Detective and Mystery Fiction, #Historical, #Traditional
“I was not speaking to you, James. I was speaking to the inspector,” the duke said.
That must have hurt, I thought. Now I understood what he meant when he said he could not control the duke.
“We wanted to be certain that the coach we saw in Whitechapel was yours. There are many who claim this killer commutes from the West End.”
“Are we suspects?”
“Well, sir, sometimes it is difficult to separate the fox from the hounds.”
“How so?” the Duke of Clarence asked.
It occurred to me then that one wrong word from Barker’s lips and we would be off this case and in serious trouble. I looked at him, wondering what he would say next, but then I never could guess what he’d say next.
“The easiest way to find the killer is to eliminate as many people as possible. In the beginning, everyone is a suspect. Your being in the area now and then made both of you ‘persons of interest,’ but having satisfied my concerns, I feel safe to say that neither of you are the man we are looking for.”
“Were we suspects, then?”
“Yes, Your Highness, you were.”
The heir broke into a smile. “Good! Excellent! I’d like to think I had done something to concern Scotland Yard at least once in my life. I’ve spent most of it trying unsuccessfully to impress my father and grandmother. Let them worry for a while.”
“We’ve had Sir Henry worried,” Stephen said.
“Old Ponsy would worry if there was a crack in my morning egg. He worries about all sorts of things that he cannot control.”
And you’re certainly one of them
, I thought.
“You are taking your time in tracking down the fellow,” the duke went on.
“Tell me, Your Highness,” Barker said. “You’ve had the advantage of seeing all there is to see. Is there any person, or type of persons, or any place you think might be of interest to Scotland Yard?”
“There is,” he said, as if glad to tell us where we’d gone wrong. “The sailors. They carry knives, they frequent prostitutes, and they are often foreign and hot-tempered.”
“Because you have suggested it, I promise I shall look into the matter thoroughly. I’ll relay the message to ‘A’ Division and see if we can’t investigate them.”
The royal’s soft-boiled eyes glittered. “Really?”
“Of course. As you say, the two of you have investigated the matter. We take your opinion seriously.”
The duke looked stunned. He looked as if no one had taken his opinion seriously in his entire life. For all I knew, no one had. “Thank you.”
“We must get back to our lessons,” Stephen said.
We all rose.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, sir,” my employer said.
The prince nodded and left. Stephen put his hands on his knees and pushed himself into a standing position. He raised an eyebrow as if to say, “You see what I have to deal with?”
“Can you gentlemen see your way out?”
“We can.”
“Do you really intend to look into the matter of the sailors?”
“We have plenty of constables milling about in the East End. It would not hurt to investigate the docks more thoroughly.”
“Thank you. Am I still a suspect?”
“You are and shall remain one until this killer is caught. If you are not guilty, you’ve nothing to worry about.”
“Ah.”
“James!” the duke called.
“Coming!” the tutor replied, and with a final glance our way, hurried to the door.
“What now?” I asked the Guv.
“We report to Sir Henry that the duke and his tutor are no longer viable suspects in the case.”
“But you just told Stephen he is still a suspect.”
“Just because someone has an alibi doesn’t mean I don’t suspect them. Alibis can occasionally be got round.”
“Can anyone at the Drake Club be trusted, as far as being able to claim Stephen was there at a certain time?”
“Aye. Pigeon.”
“Pigeon?”
“The butler. Henry Inslip occasionally refers to him as his conscience. He’s an old retainer of the family. Honest to a fault. Not that one could find fault with honesty.”
After we returned from the palace, Cyrus Barker led me back to the Frying Pan again without so much as a word, and ordered a shepherd’s pie and some chips to be washed down with bitter. The pie was very good, or maybe I was just tired and hungry.
“You look in a proper mood. What are you thinking?” I asked.
In answer, Barker tugged a small, ripped envelope from his pocket and handed it to me. I could almost see his eyes glittering behind his spectacles. It was a common envelope, but no penny stamp was affixed to it. It had not been posted. Had it been delivered by messenger, perhaps? I pulled out a piece of foolscap and regarded the letter, which had been written in red ink.
Dear Push,
here you have thrown in your lot with Scotland Yard. Don’t rightly care what bloodhounds nip at my heels I’m having too much fun ripping whores. I’ll get another one before first snow. don’t count yourself smarter than a common peeler
Catch-me-if-you-can.
P.S. Try the kidne pie Ha ha
Carefully, I put it back in the envelope and returned it to the Guv.
“Where did this come from?”
“It was shoved under the door of our room overnight. Do you think you can dissect the letter for me?”
I would rather have sat back and ordered another pint, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I suppressed a sigh and took the letter out of the envelope again and stared at it. Taking a final swallow of my tepid ale, I wiped my mouth and began to speak.
“First of all, he knew who you are, and that you were staying here. I suppose that’s not surprising the way word travels around here. Also, we have not gone out of our way to disguise our presence in the area. There has to be some curiosity about us, as Mr. Lusk and his vigilantes knew all about us. I would speculate that this makes our work more difficult, since he will be able to recognize us, while we won’t recognize him.”
“Continue,” Barker said.
“He’s not afraid of you, which means he’s either as good as he thinks he is, or else very stupid. Or he’s trying to put up a brave front and convince himself. The fact that he’s addressing you is a sign you have attracted his attention, for all his claims.”
“Mmph.”
“The ‘ripping whores,’ the ‘catch-me-if-you-can,’ those are cadged from a previous letter. This one hasn’t called himself Jack the Ripper, either. The mention of the kidney pie is his way of saying he was here at some point, eating and drinking while we were walking Whitechapel. He intends to demoralize us by claiming he was under our very noses.”
“To some degree,” Barker said. “Nearly all correspondence between criminals and their hunters is bravura. He is boasting that I cannot catch him. Or rather, that I cannot catch the Whitechapel Killer, for whoever wrote this is patently not him.”
“On what evidence do you base this?”
“Logic,” Barker said. “A syllogism: most people in Whitechapel are illiterate, the Whitechapel Killer lives in Whitechapel, therefore the Whitechapel Killer is illiterate, and therefore cannot have written that note.”
“What of this?” I asked. “The Whitechapel Killer is literate, only Jewish people in Whitechapel are literate, therefore the Whitechapel Killer is Jewish.”
“Do you believe the killer is Jewish?” the Guv asked.
“On the one hand I agree he lives here in the area, as you have maintained, but he must be very savvy in order to have survived so long as a free man. He is intelligent, even educated. Where else can such a person be found in the East End besides the Jewish quarter?”
“It runs counter to my theory, but I do not dislike it,” Barker admitted.
“Did I get it right?”
“I’m sorry, but this is not an agricultural fair. You do not win a blue ribbon for occasionally deducing a plausible idea.”
“Double or nothing.”
“Rascal,” he said, and swatted at me with his hat. I dodged from the would-be blow.
“As a matter of fact, I cannot claim the Ripper is Jewish until I’ve reached a few conclusions,” I stated.
“Such as?”
“Are the Jews covering up for him? I have a difficult time believing a man can inflict such damage all by himself. People have friends, relations. Whitechapel is densely populated. Surely someone will spot him eventually. Or already has.”
“He is taking a terrible risk each time, murdering women for sport, or worse, unless perhaps part of it is the chance of getting caught. He likes danger.”
“I wonder if there are odds among the bookies concerning the Ripper, if and when he will strike again.”
“I can just about guarantee it,” the Guv said.
I pinched the letter between my fingers, feeling the crisp paper. “I imagine they would love to see this.”
He took the letter and envelope. “That they never shall.”
“Have you shown this to Scotland Yard yet?”
He tucked it back in his pocket. “It’s addressed to me. They have several of their own. Besides, it doesn’t say ‘Jack the Ripper.’ It could be from anyone.”
“Anyone that ‘rips whores’ and is being pursued by Scotland Yard.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“Do you think the duke or his tutor, or both of them together, is the man for whom we are looking?”
“Frankly, no, I do not. The Duke of Clarence has been in Scotland until yesterday, so Sir Henry has informed me, and Stephen has been watched very closely. He was in the palace during the double event.”
“So going there has been a complete waste of time,” I cried.
“It was necessary to eliminate them both as suspects.”
“So many wasted hours. And visits to the Drake Club. Unnecessary!”
“It’s worse than that, Thomas. We have been manipulated from the very beginning. Where do you suppose this came from?”
So saying, Barker reached into his pocket and removed the Royal Command.
“From Robert Anderson.”
Barker’s mustache spread out in a smile. “Robert has no connection to the palace. Who do you suppose gave it to him?”
“I don’t know. Who?”
“One of three men, all of them working on the same side: Inspector Littlechild, the home secretary, or James Munro.”
“Then Anderson was working for them!”
“Not necessarily. When it was offered to him he had no reason to assume it was being used against us. He thought it might be helpful. And it has been, to some extent.”
“Then why were we given it?”
“To embroil us in this possible royal scandal, which I’m sure Munro has known about for months. To slow us down.”
“The duke and Stephen really had nothing to do with the killings?”
“Nothing save the same morbid curiosity you and your friend Zangwill displayed.”
I took a gulp of my ale and slammed it down on the table more heavily than I had intended.
“Who else?” I asked. “Who else is working for Munro? Swanson?”
“Of course. He is closely watching his chief suspect, the man Munro believes is the killer.”
I snapped my fingers. “It’s Druitt. That’s the fellow’s name.”
“Exactly.”
“We never saw his file.”
“You never did. I may have strolled into his office once when he was out of the building.”
“Through a locked door, no doubt.”
“There is no locked door for a man with skills, Thomas.”
I smiled. “So, what is it with this Druitt fellow?”
“He’s a teacher and a barrister, studying for the bar. Almost as brilliant a scholar as Stephen. But there is madness in the family. In Montague Druitt’s case it is hereditary. His mother was institutionalized, and his father was a drunkard. This past year he has been subject to bouts of depression and lapses of memory. Not to draw out the story too much, his family believes he is the killer, and he himself suspects it.”
“That’s it, then. If they have the case in their pocket, we have no way to solve it.”
“Not necessarily, lad. He may be convinced he is the Whitechapel Killer, but he hasn’t convinced me.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“The man has no knowledge of Whitechapel. I suspect the killer has a knowledge of the area that is greater than our own, we who have walked the streets every night. It’s how he appears and disappears so quickly.”
“Then who is it?”
“Someone we haven’t considered well enough. We must start over.”
“Back to the beginning.”
“Don’t sound so dispirited. The beginning is always a good place to start.”
“We’re back at the beginning, and everyone is in Munro’s pocket: Littlechild, Matthews, Swanson, the palace—”
“Bulling.”
“The reporter?”
“Who do you think told him we had shut our doors and joined with Scotland Yard?”
“Who else?”
“Lusk. He tried to stop us not long after Bulling was not successful in warning us away.”
“I suppose at least half of Scotland Yard would like us to fail to track the killer.”
“At least that, Thomas. The rest would rather their own find him, rather than a ‘special inspector’ and his constable.”
“It’s just you and me, then,” I said.
“Of course.”
“Against everybody.”
“Aye.”
“Marvelous.”
“Isn’t it? That’s the way all our cases are, Thomas. You and me, tracking down our quarry. Truth to tell, I prefer it that way.”
We began our nightly tour of the ’Chapel, and I was glad to say nothing of any import occurred. No one threatened or harassed us, or harassed anyone else, for that matter. No windows were broken in any Jewish establishments that evening. However, when we returned to our rooms, there was a new envelope on the floor, having been slipped under the door, and it was addressed to me.
“Do I get my own letter from the Ripper?” I asked, picking it up.
“It looks to be better paper than mine,” the Guv remarked.
I opened it. It was written in a formal hand on buff paper.
“It’s just an address. And a time. Two o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”
Barker examined the note. “A feminine hand, and an appointment during calling hours.”
“What do I do?” I asked.
“Attend, obviously.”