The Art of Murder (24 page)

The cloud over the moon broke, and for a moment, the cobbled lane was lit up. I could see the woman adjusting her skirts. She looked up as the sliver of moonlight cast its tawdry gleam over walls wet with rain that had fallen earlier. I caught a glimpse of the side of Mary Ann’s pale, pock-marked face. She had no idea I was there until I grabbed her from behind. With my left hand at her throat, I pulled her head back and drew the edge of my knife over her skin. As it slid from left to right, I pulled the
metal back towards me, scything into flesh, right down to the vertebrae.

I have no recollection of the journey from Buck’s Row, the alley in which I had dispatched my first whore, to my lodgings on Wentworth Street. No matter how hard I try, I cannot visualise anything from the moment Mary Ann’s body slid to the floor until I found myself washing my hands and face in a bowl of water I had filled before leaving the room hours earlier. I recall gazing at my reflection in the tiny chipped mirror I used to shave with, which stood propped up behind the bowl. My blondish hair was plastered to my forehead, cheeks flushed. My eyes peered back at me, unnaturally black, the pupils huge. I glanced at the red water, and for an instant I was no longer in the filthy, low-ceilinged room over a corn-chandler’s shop in Whitechapel. I was a small boy again, bent over a desk in my father’s study, my mother’s crimson handkerchief an inch from my nose. I found my face in the mirror again and produced a grin as wide as a Cheshire cat’s.

I could not sleep. Instead I sat close to the window, listening intently to the sounds of the neighbourhood awakening to a new day, waiting for the first indications that the prostitute’s body had been found. Around six o’clock I heard a commotion, the shriek of a police whistle. Checking myself in the mirror, I straightened my tie, pulled on my hat, tucked my sketchpad under my arm and stepped out into the breaking dawn.

There were two men in black suits crouched down beside the body and a policeman standing a few inches away from the dead woman’s head. The officer looked up as I turned into Buck’s Lane, and as I approached the two men beside Mary Ann’s corpse turned to me in unison.

‘And what can I do for you?’ the policeman asked. ‘This is a crime scene. Were you not stopped by one of my men?’

I produced a piece of folded paper from my jacket pocket and handed it to the officer. It was a letter of introduction from Archibald. ‘I’m a newspaper artist,’ I said. ‘Harry Tumbril.’

The policeman glanced at the letter and sniffed. ‘All right,’ he mumbled. ‘Keep out of everyone’s way.’

I nodded and strode along the side of the narrow lane to get a better view. They had turned the woman over on to her back. The gash in her neck looked unnaturally red in the morning light. The blood at her throat had dried. It was now thickly encrusted, like a crimson rope or some bizarre necklace. Her skirt was up and her undergarments rent. I could see two deep cuts along her torso.

‘How long has she been dead?’ I heard the policeman addressing one of the other two men.

‘A few hours, I would say. She’s as stiff as a board.’

I pulled out my sketchpad and started to draw.

‘My God! The poor unfortunate young woman,’ Archibald exclaimed as he held the pad at arm’s
length. We were standing in his office on Pall Mall. ‘But that said, these are quite wonderful, Harry.’ He looked me up and down, his face full of admiration. ‘It’s just … I don’t know, old man. It’s so damned hard to imagine what sort of bastard would do this, don’t you think?’

I nodded. I was beginning to feel tired. Glancing at a clock on the wall, I noticed it was almost midday. I had not slept for more than twenty-four hours. The huge excitement I had felt, and which had kept me going, was fading. I still felt exhilarated, that much is irrefutable, but the heart-pounding thrill of standing beside those foolish plodders in Buck’s Row as I sketched my victim and they pondered the manner of her death was beginning to give way to fatigue.

‘So what do you say we pop along to the Reform? Have a glass or two?’

I shook my head. ‘Not today, thank you, Archibald. Have to say I’m a little weary.’

He frowned and then his expression slid into a smile. ‘Quite understand,’ he said, and placed a hand on my shoulder. I shuddered involuntarily, but Archibald did not seem to notice. Squeezing my shrinking flesh, he added, ‘You get along home. Have a good rest, Harry. I’ll get these pictures into the evening edition.’

I felt uncommonly tired. Once I’d reached Wentworth Street I simply collapsed on to my bed and slipped into a dreamless, undisturbed sleep. When I awoke it was dark outside and quiet. I pulled
my watch out and was staggered to see it was almost ten in the evening.

Now, if you’ll please excuse me, Sonia, I must explain a few more things before I proceed with my story. I need to say a word or two about how an artist works. For I realise I have been steaming ahead, forgetting that you are but a simple woman who knows nothing of such things.

The fact is, an artist must employ a structure. By this I mean that for a work to be successfully executed, there have to be rules, guidelines. There must be discipline. Without this, art is mere anarchy and therefore valueless. I would go so far as to say that what distinguishes a true artist such as myself from a mere dauber is the way in which one such as I approaches each piece: with rigour and intelligence. And this was certainly how I approached my masterpiece. I had decided before initiating a single stroke of the knife that I would kill four women, and had developed a detailed plan of campaign. I had the names of my victims and a sizeable dossier on each of them gathered from weeks of research. I knew their movements and their habits. I knew their associates, and I knew a fair amount about the background of each of the ladies. I also knew exactly how I was going to arrange the representation of their corpses on canvas and what the incidental details captured in the pictures would be. Lastly, I had selected the colours I would be using. I had prepared the paints and the canvases. I knew exactly what I was doing.

Now, having said all that, art, be it painting, sculpture, music, even the written word, is not an automatic process. It is not a rigid, inflexible thing. It is organic, alive, ever-changing, vital and unpredictable. The crucial element of the unexpected is what makes the role of creator so satisfying. So, I had my plans … only to see them dissolve and be washed away by the irresistible force of spontaneity. Perhaps I was overwhelmed by the thrill of it all. Maybe I had begun to loosen my creative control. It doesn’t matter. The simple truth is that as I woke up in that fleapit of a room I felt the unquenchable desire to kill again … and right away.

I deliberated over my disguise. It was essential to get it just right, not only for my own protection but because I wanted everything to be correct and precise in order to satisfy my artistic sensibilities. I had procured a black wig which fitted snugly over my own hair. I exchanged my usual suitably ragged top hat for a fashionable brown deerstalker. I applied colour to my face to darken my naturally pale complexion, and glued on, with great delicacy, a black-and-grey-flecked beard and moustache. Looking in the mirror over the wash bowl, I spent a few extra moments perfecting the line of the beard around my lower lip and positioning the deerstalker just so. At length, smiling at my reflection, I felt ready for anything.

Elizabeth Stride was to be my second victim. She was forty-seven, five foot tall and plump. A mother
of three, she was a stereotypical Whitechapel whore who was fond of her drink and had ended up separated from her husband, estranged from her children, and living in a doss house in Spitalfields. I knew just where she would be that night. Just where she was every Tuesday and Thursday evening: on the corner of Hanbury Street and Spital Street.

I walked north along Osborn Street. A hansom passed me, splashing water over my boots, but I barely noticed. Turning into Hanbury Street, I saw Elizabeth some fifty yards ahead of me. She was leaning against a brick wall. She had a small bag in her hands and was swinging it: left, right, left, right. Coming closer, I could hear her voice. She was singing something I half-recognised from the Pav, a silly musical hall ditty. ‘
Oh! Mr Porter, what shall I do? I want to go to Birmingham. And they’re taking me on to Crewe. Send me back to London, as quickly as you can. Oh! Mr Porter, what a silly girl I am!
’

‘Good evening,’ I said.

She seemed startled. My approach must have been quieter than I had realised. But then I could see she was drunk and caught the tang of gin on her breath. She pushed herself away from the wall and gave me a practised solicitous smile, an action she could perform no matter how drunk she was. ‘Well, good evenin’ to you, guvna,’ she slurred. ‘And what may I be doin’ ya for?’

I gave her a brief encouraging smile. ‘Well, I have a vivid imagination.’

‘Lovely,’ she replied, and, taking my hand, pulled
me along a few paces until I found myself in a narrow alley that stank of fish and cabbage. ‘Over ’ere,’ Elizabeth said, and I felt her fingers slip from mine. I could only just make out her shape in the gloom. But then her silhouette appeared with a sallow light behind it from a gas lamp set in a tenement window.

It started to rain and I felt water spatter my face. ‘Over ’ere, darlin’,’ I heard the woman say, and her fingers closed around my privates. I gasped and felt a sudden wave of nausea. I reached my right hand into my jacket and extracated my favourite knife.

Elizabeth glanced down, saw the steel glinting in the dim light. ‘Oh, no!’ she mumbled, and then her face froze as I covered her mouth with my left hand and slid the metal between her legs. Pulling the blade away, I spun her round and brought the knife up to her throat, ran it across her neck and let her slump back as her warm blood ran over my fingers and down my wrist.

I had plenty of time, having decided days earlier exactly what I was going to do with the
material
at my feet. In the event, it did not take as long as I had anticipated. I made the incisions across Elizabeth’s face, cutting the shape of a triangle on each cheek. I then set about the torso, opening her up and removing her womb. I draped a length of her intestine over her left shoulder and took out the right kidney. Pocketing this last item, I checked that no one was close by. I heard nothing. Standing up from my crouching position, I stretched, releasing the
tension in my back. It ached rather. Removing a piece of chalk from my trouser pocket, I walked over to the brick wall a couple of yards from where Elizabeth Stride’s feet lay. On the wall I wrote a message: ‘The Juwes are not the men that will be blamed for nothing’. Stepping back, I surveyed my evening’s work in the pale glow cast from the tenement.

I was back on Osborn Street in a moment. Pulling my hat low over my brow, I strode along the wet street, heading south towards Whitechapel Road. Within two minutes, I was at the corner of Wentworth Street, turning towards my lodgings on the left no more than twenty yards down the road.

Two police officers were walking towards me. I don’t know why, but I overreacted. Perhaps it was simply the fact that I had just dispatched a woman and ripped her open. Or maybe it was because I had one of her kidneys in my pocket, oozing blood into the fabric of my coat. I turned as casually as I could and walked back towards Osborn Street, then, dodging the passing carriages, I reached the far side and afforded myself a glance backwards. The policemen were nowhere to be seen.

I was on Old Montague Street. I knew it well from my researches. Twenty yards beyond the busy junction with Osborn Street there was a narrow lane on the left that led to Finch Street. I ducked into the inky dark, letting the sounds of the late-night revellers, the braying of horses and the splashing of water on brickwork fall behind me.

Ten yards along the lane, I could barely see my hand when I held it in front of me. I crouched on the ground close to the left-hand wall of the lane. Withdrawing the bloodied knife from my coat, I quickly gouged a hole in the filthy wet dirt. I used my fingers to scoop out the soil, then plunged my hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out the grey kidney. It felt like a fat sausage before it is placed in the pan. I let it fall into the soil and then used both hands to shovel the dirt back over it. I patted the ground flat, wiped my palms together and rose to my feet.

I walked back the way I had come, guided by the widening funnel of light between the lane’s brick walls. Emerging on to Osborn Street, I kept my head down. A voice startled me. ‘Watch out!’ Glancing up, I was just in time to see a hansom cab bearing down on me. I reacted with amazing alacrity, stepping back and missing the oncoming horse’s hoofs with barely an inch to spare. Water splashed my trousers and boots and I almost tripped over the high kerb.

Now, let me ask you this, dear lady: do you believe in serendipity? I always have. It is a mercurial force, but one that is nevertheless very real. Well, whether or not you believe it to be a part of the flux of Nature, I myself experienced a serendipitous moment as I caught my balance and steadied myself while the hansom rushed past me and the cabbie bellowed a malediction. The third woman on my list, Catherine Eddowes, was standing directly opposite me, on the far side of the street, soliciting for business.

Catherine, you may remember, worked at the Pav. She was, you will recall, the woman your husband was with the night I first met him. She was dressed in green and black, and on top of her long auburn hair wore a black bonnet trimmed with green velvet. She was clearly drunk, swaying unsteadily on the narrow pavement. I watched her as she tried her luck with a passer by. When the gentlemen rejected her, she swore at him, her voice muffled and lisping thanks to the fact that most of her upper teeth were missing.

Sauntering across the road, I stopped a few feet from her. She stank of booze. With a subtle nod, I indicated she should follow me down a narrow lane a few yards away along the street, another of the thousands of dark alleyways that splintered and dissected Whitechapel.