The Ripper's Wife (24 page)

Katie. She was the liveliest of the lot. A trampled red cabbage rose with an untrammeled spirit, that’s how I shall always think of her. However had she kept her hopes alive in Whitechapel all these years when it seemed to suck the life out of everyone else?

She was a dainty bit o’ fun. The top of her head scarcely reached my shoulder, with bright hazel eyes and a mop of deep auburn curls, clean for a whore in this dirty city, apple cheeks, a pointed chin, and a cheery smile beaming from beneath the brim of a black straw bonnet with amber and green glass beads.

When I happened upon her, she was leaning beneath one of the sparse street lamps, having a smoke from a clay pipe, to steady her stomach, she explained. She’d been drinking all night and was just out of jail. She’d been having “a bit o’ fun” marching up and down Aldgate High Street pretending to be a fire engine, “bringin’ a bit o’ cheer” to the crowd that had gathered to watch her, when a constable came along and took her off to jail, to sleep it off.

“My man’ll give me a damn fine ’idin’ when I get ’ome,” she groused.

I just smiled. I knew what she didn’t know—she would never go home again.

She was fresh up from the country, “been ’op pickin’ with my man down in Kent I ’ave.”

Apparently the “lady” lacked luggage; she was wearing every bit of clothing she possessed. I teased her about being plump as a Christmas goose, but she said, “No, ’t’ain’t really so, gov; I’m really turrible skinny. See!”

She juggled the fulsome folds of her paisley silk shawl to better free up her arms, hiked up her grimy gray apron, and proceeded to reveal herself to me layer by layer. I was instantly reminded of the set of Russian nesting dolls I had given Gladys last Christmas. With increasing amusement, I watched as Katie lifted a dark green alpaca skirt, with an ornate pattern of golden lilies and Michaelmas daisies, a rich castoff from a stall in Petticoat Lane no doubt, another of brown linsey trimmed with black silk braid, followed by a much-soiled sky blue with three red rickrack flounces—she was so proud of those flounces!—then the petticoat her man had just given her to mark their anniversary (“been together eight years we ’ave!”), a triple-flounced pale pink chintz with a pattern of tiny bright flowers.

But she didn’t stop there. With a playful smile, she lifted a rank, ragged yellowed chemise stained with spots of reddish brown that must have been blood shed in months past, and showed me a pair of stick-skinny legs in brown ribbed stockings rising out of a pair of mismatched mud-caked men’s work boots.

She giggled and lifted her fat armful of skirts even higher and showed me her hairy cunt. The hair was deep red like that on her head, the color of freshly drying blood. I couldn’t wait to stab it!

I’ll leave this one her heart, since she’s already given it to “her man,” I charitably decided. Her liver or perhaps a kidney will do nice enough for me! “You must let me add something to your layers,” I said, caressing the bare skin above her bodice where ruffles galore framed her plump little breasts. “I’m afraid you will catch cold if I don’t.” She giggled as I tied another of Edwin’s gaudy silks around her neck. “There! It brings out the red in your hair and cheeks.”

She led me to Mitre Square. “It’s dark an’ quiet this time o’ night an’ we can take our time an’ be alone there.” The poor little whore was
so eager
to please me!

“Are you
sure?
” I blew playfully on the back of her neck and whispered, “It’s haunted, you know. Are you not afraid of ghosts?”

I told her the story of the mad monk, Brother Martin. Driven insane by lust, he had murdered a nun upon the altar of the church that used to overlook the square during the reign of Henry VIII.

Katie laughed. “Lord love ya, no! I ’aven’t a cowardly bone in me ’ole body! There’s not a ghostie or a beastie o’ the two- or four-legged sort that frightens me! An’ if me word’s not good enough to prove it, I’ll tell ya somethin’ more. . . .” She glanced swiftly from side to side to make sure no one was near enough to hear us, but we were quite alone; I had already made certain of that. “I’ve come back to London early, to earn the reward for capturin’ Jack the Ripper. I think I know ’im!”

“You do?”
I arched my brows and leaned forward eagerly. “Truly, I am agog with curiosity! Won’t you tell me who he is?”

But she laughed and playfully jabbed me in the ribs. “Get on witcha now; I ain’t tellin’! Lose me reward, I should think not!”

“Oh my dear.” I drew her close and kissed her brow. “As if I could
ever
deprive
you
. . .”

Oh, Katie
. . .
if you only knew what I had in store for you. . . .

I smiled and followed this ragged coquette into the darkened square.

I swiftly scanned the dark, empty windows of the warehouses that surrounded it as I maneuvered her into a corner and turned her to face the wall. I nuzzled her from behind, but she was wearing so many layers I doubted she could even feel my cock.

“Oooh . . .”
she purred. “Fancy it from behind, d’ya?” With a gay little laugh she leaned forward and flipped up her flounces like a French dancer and swished her bare bottom at me.

I reached for the handkerchief around her neck and gave it a jerk and a savage twist. I pulled her back and watched her eyes bulge out as her nails clawed frantically at the red silk, trying to loosen it. “Breath and voice gone forever,” I whispered in her ear. “Who did you think he was? Surely not
me?
Well, it doesn’t matter now; you were wrong, and you won’t live to tell!”

She went limp and I lowered her to the ground. I eased off my overcoat and stood staring down at her as I stripped off my gloves. The life had gone out of her eyes. I closed them. Her arms lay limp and loose at her sides, palms up, like a desperate woman begging for mercy or alms. I searched the blind eyes of the windows again and then took a deep breath.... I had much to do and so little time....

I fell upon her in a frenzy. I flung her skirts up, over her head, and slashed and jabbed like mad. There were so many layers that sometimes they fell down and got in my way. I didn’t stop; I cut them too. I ripped her from breast to cunt. I cut so deep I feared I would lose myself in her. I tore and flung her innards out. My hand closed around a kidney. I severed it. Maybe it would make a nice supper? Surely it couldn’t be worse than that womb.

Breathless, I sat back on my heels and spent in my trousers. Her face bothered me. It seemed so peaceful, as though she had gone to a better place, a safer place, and was now mocking me with the tranquility of the shattered husk she had left behind her. My fist tightened around my knife and I slashed off her nose, then each of her earlobes. I meant to take them away with me, to send to the police, but I forgot. I remembered Long Liz’s fine cheekbones and laid Katie’s open to the bone. Beneath each eye I carved an inverted V. If you ignored the space between, where her nose had been, and put them together ^^ it formed the letter
M
—
M
for
Maybrick.
But the police are such fools they’ll
never
see it for what it is—a clue!

I cut a corner from her apron to wipe the blood from my knife. Before I put it away, my trusty friend, my steel prick, I kissed it.

With silent mirth I swiftly pulled on my gloves as I stood and stared down at her. There was a brooch at her breast, nearly lost amidst all the ruffles, a little pink flower under glass now stained with blood. Was this cheap trinket another gift from her precious man? I pocketed it—another souvenir for my collection.

Shaking with silent laughter, I tipped my hat to Katie, lying dead at my feet with her bent legs splayed wide so that the bobbies when they came bumbling onto the scene would see another cheap pink flower, only this one sprinkled with drops of blood instead of dew.

As I was leaving the square, I passed a young bobby on the street and nodded politely to him and wished him good night. “Same to you, sir,” he said. I
do
hope he was the one who discovered what I had done to Katie! Would he remember me afterward and always wonder if he had said good night to Jack the Ripper? I hope the thought will haunt him
all the rest of his life.

I knew they were looking for me, the hunter had once again become the hunted, but I also knew they wouldn’t catch me. I strode confidently, swift and sure, through the dark, mean streets, every twist and turn leaving them farther behind me, lost like blind rats in a maze.

In Goulston Street I paused to catch my breath. I leaned against a wall, tore off a glove, and shakily sprinkled arsenic onto my bloody palm. As I lapped up its power, I remembered the chalk. I had put a piece in my pocket, in case a clever little rhyme and the opportunity to write it came to me. I had hoped inspiration would strike while I was standing over a whore with a convenient wall behind, but you never know when the Muse will call; she’s fickle like any other bitch.

Upon the black dado wall of a darkened tenement, I scrawled in stark, startling white against the dead black:

Take it and make of it what you will, you damned, bloody fools with all your speculation about doctors, butchers, Jews, and Yids! You’ll stop and scratch your confounded heads and beat them bloody against the wall trying to figure it out, and I’ll be on to the next whore and then the next while you’re
still
trying to make sense of it.

If the fools have wits enough to realize it really is a message from me, I hope it will free the Jews from suspicion. They’re hated enough as it is and I’ve nothing against them.

When I was an apprentice lad, so hot for Sarah but unable to have her, I used to notice the Jewesses walking through Whitechapel in their black wigs. Their religion decrees that they must shave their heads after marriage and let no man but their husbands see them uncovered.

There was one young, shapely wench I always admired. A young bride with a face as pretty as a cameo beneath her black wig. One day, when I was burning with pulsing, mad lust for Sarah and sure I would go mad if I did not soon possess her, the beautiful young Jewess crossed my path. Acting on a sweet, mad impulse, I snatched the wig from her head and ran up an alley. Of course, she followed me.

Weeping with shame and trying to shield her naked head with her shawl, poor thing, she begged me to give back her wig. I backed her against the wall and hoisted her skirts. Tears ran down her face and she wouldn’t even look at me as I filled her. When I tried to caress her face, she jerked her trembling little chin away, still refusing to look at me. That only excited me more! I pushed her to her knees and spent all over her sacred bald scalp.

She never let me catch her alone after that; I never saw her again except in a gaggle of Jewesses. I’ve
always
remembered her fondly.

“For the fair Jewess,” I saluted my scrawl. I wouldn’t want one of her relatives to be molested or hanged for my naughty deeds. My soul is
still
kind, after all! It’s only whores I’m down upon.

I flung the scrap of bloody-shitty apron I’d used to wipe my knife down beneath it, another calling card from Jack the Ripper.

I heard the church clock strike three. Maybe they had bloodhounds after me? I’d read some such speculation in the newspapers. But I was like a bloodhound myself, relentlessly drawn to the scent of sex. Mary Jane was near. I was
so close,
I fancied I could almost smell her cunt. I thought of my succulent ginger tart—my spicy, ribald Mary Jane lying in her bed with her gin bottle, a song on her lips, her stained and sweaty shift hiked up to her hips, and her fingers fiddling away like mad. It was a most amusing habit she had; some women fidget with a lock of hair, a piece of jewelry, or the trimmings on their gown, but Mary Jane plays with herself. There was a little fountain set just a few feet off the road, for the denizens of Dorset Street to wash in, and I quickly peeled off my gloves and washed my hands and made myself presentable. I remembered to take the prayer book and brooch from my pocket and lock them in my black bag where Katie’s kidney was biding its time, waiting to become my dinner.

What a rare treat it would be for me, juicy with blood and red, red wine. I couldn’t wait to taste it! Maybe I would share it with Mary Jane or take it home to dine with my wife-whore? Or maybe the press or police would care to partake? Wouldn’t that be jolly? Let’s all make a feast of Katie’s kidney! So many men have had her in life, why not a few more in death? My bag was equipped with a good, sturdy lock. As an added precaution, I had left the key back in my bolt-hole. You can
never
trust a whore, and if I fell asleep Mary Jane might riffle my pockets. I smoothed down my clothes. The best thing about black is that it doesn’t show blood, especially in the dead of night. If there was any spot of blood on my white shirt, cuffs, face, or hands I would claim a nosebleed, mention it even before the bitch had the chance to notice it.