I followed Haines and Beckworth down a canyon of Tudor
shops, their upper stories leaning out above the pavements. The seamen stopped at a vintner’s shop for a bottle of wine and had the cork out and the first swigs down before they had even emerged. With bottle in hand, they sauntered up to a mustachioed fellow with an apron across his broad belly and a little iron oven at his feet. He was baking great doughy pretzels in the oven, skewering them on bamboo, and selling them for a halfpenny each. Money changed hands, and the sailors snacked.
I began to grow nervous. What murderer buys pretzels?
As Haines and Beckworth reached the heart of Whitechapel—the throbbing center of prostitution, drug trafficking, and gambling, the game changed utterly.
Beckworth’s hand sneaked into the hand of Haines.
I stopped, heart pounding. These two had come to Whitechapel not for prostitutes but for each other. They weren’t interested in women at all—dead or alive—but only in the rites of Sodom.
It was a fatal error. Neither of these men could be the murderer, which meant … .
A whistle sounded—long and shrill and desperate. “Anna.”
The bottle of gin fell from my nerveless grip, and I pelted down the street, trying desperately to track the sound of that whistle. Beyond the garrulous laughter, beyond the snort and humph of ill-used horses and the melody of an oblivious piano, there came that shrill tone. I rounded a corner and heard it the more: strident, terrified. As I dodged past the bleary walkers, I saw her: Anna. Alive. Blowing that damned whistle. She stood by a lamppost, her newspapers spilled out across the ground but the nightstick in her grip.
I rushed up to her and slid to a stop. “Where? Where!”
She was white-faced and horrified, her arm jutting toward a stairway across the street.
“Stay here, and stop blowing that thing!” I snarled, and then ran, dodging traffic to reach the stairway.
It was ancient and decayed, descending between two buildings into a dark emptiness. I wished I’d brought a lantern but grabbed the sap, the next best thing. My feet struck the stairs, and I bounded down them, three at a time, to the landing, and down again.
At the bottom, I bolted out into an abandoned square bathed in the blue light of a gibbous moon. Hip-high weeds jutted up through the paving stones, but some had been trammeled down into a narrow path ahead. Stalking along that trail, I heard a gurgling sound. I lifted the sap high, ready for Jack the Ripper. Instead, moonlight revealed a woman lying in the weeds—the dying form of Elizabeth Stride.
Of course, I didn’t know her name then, but it lives with me now, forever. Long Liz lay in a wreck of weeds, eyes wide in terror as her slit throat bled onto the ground. I knelt beside her and lifted her head in my lap. I pressed my hand on the slit, but there was no way to stop the blood flow.
“Too late, my darling,” I said even as her eyes fluttered. “Too late to save you.” She shivered once and was still. I kissed her and embraced her. The tall Swede, the sad lady, lay dead in my arms.
But Jack the Ripper was still alive.
Anna’s whistle sounded again—two short bursts, and then silence.
“Anna!” I laid Elizabeth among the weeds and ran back toward the stairs. My heart thundered as I vaulted to the top.
Anna caught me and dragged me to a stop. She had crossed the road to peer down into the darkness, and she was terrified. “He was here,” she gasped.
“What?”
“He came bolting up this way, just a minute after you’d
gone down. John Harder. Jack the Ripper.” Her hand went to her throat.
I dragged her fingers away, checking her neck. It had not been cut, but there were red welts rising on either side. “What happened?”
“He took my whistle,” she said. “He knew I was the one who called you. He said, ‘You squealed.”’
I stared in terror at her. “That’s it? That’s all he said?”
“That’s all he could say. You came running up the stairs the next moment.”
“He must have been in the weeds the whole time—must have skulked away even as I found her.”
“Wait—he—he did say one other thing: ‘Not done tonight.’ Then he bolted across the street.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.” She turned, pointing east along Whitechapel Road. Men and women, horses and carriages, the great roiling serpent of desire coiled down that road, but there was no sign of John Harder.
“He’s going to kill again,” I said, taking her hand. It was all unraveling now, and I was not going to let go of her. “Damn it, and God damn it,” I murmured. “He’s seen you. It’s just like Jeremy Bachman all over again. He can trace you.” I dragged her with me down the busy street.
“What are we going to do?” Anna asked, dodging past a crowd that watched Punch beat Judy.
“We’re going to catch him—tonight.”
HUNTING THE RIPPER
FROM THE MEMOIRS OF PROFESSOR JAMES MORIARTY:
A
nna and I jostled down the Whitechapel Road amid the welter of humanity. “Stay sharp! Watch everyone! Look for that greatcoat.”
We passed a five-year-old urchin begging for food, a dozen men watching a pair of mongrels fight in an alley, a hurdy-gurdy man whose monkey shivered more than danced, a pair of teamsters groaning as they rolled a cask up a street, a fifty-year-old woman troweled with makeup to hide her pox … .
I grabbed the woman’s arm. “Did a man proposition you, moments ago?”
“Yor a man, ain’t ya? Yor positioning me, yeah?”
“I mean another man. We’re on his trail. Jack the Ripper.”
“Ho! Ho!” the woman cried. “Like I ain’t heard that one a million times. You ain’t hustling ole Bette off lest’n I see the money first.”
I shook my head grimly. “Beware, ole Bette. Jack’s killed once already tonight. He’s prowling for another kill.”
“A double job, then, is it, guv—? ‘Cause I got another double job in mind for you an’ yor boyfriend.”
“Achh!” I growled, stepping away and pulling Anna along with me. As we dodged along the pavement, I craned to see past all the top hats and bowlers. “I just wish I could get a clear view.”
Ahead, a lamplighter made his way along the road. He
paused at a pole, leaned his slender ladder against it, mounted up, and reached with a tall wand to ignite the gas. The lamp flared, casting a lurid glow over the downturned heads below.
“That’s it!” I charged to the lamplighter, fished a crown from my breast pocket, and slapped it into his sweaty palm.
“Whoa, now, guvnor. What’s this?”
“I’m renting your ladder,” I said, pushing him aside and climbing up to gaze out over the crowd. “Just for a moment.”
“A crown says you can stay up there all night.”
“I haven’t got all night.”
There, two blocks away—where Whitechapel Road crossed Thomas Street—a veiled woman spoke to a man in a blue greatcoat.
I leaped down from the ladder and, holding tight to Anna’s hand, ran forward through the throng.
“You saw him?” Anna asked.
“Two blocks up. We’re lucky he didn’t turn off.”
“He’s just going where the prostitutes are.”
“Yes—but he’s also taunting us. He knows we’re on to him, and he’s got a new victim—right under our noses!”
We reached the first street and crossed it, leaping the slops channel in its center. On the block beyond, the mob so packed the pavement that we had to thread our way between a line of parked cabs and the rumbling stream of traffic.
At last we could see the street corner where Jack had spoken to the woman in the veil—but both of them were gone. Anna and I ran up to the spot and turned in circles, searching the crowd in vain. “Do you see them?”
“No,” Anna said, her voice tremulous.
“Damn,” I growled, only then noticing another prostitute across the street—a different woman. Her lips were as red and curved as a heart. “Let’s find out what she saw.”
We bolted across the road, almost getting run down by a black coach. Seeing our desperate dash, the prostitute smiled with drunken amusement.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” I said breathlessly as we approached.
“Such manners!” she replied, her teeth splaying in a smile. “Nothing to excuse. Name’s Mary.”
“Mary, did you see the woman across the street—the other woman?”
“Kate, you mean? You’re too late for her. Somebody else got her.”
“That someone was Jack the Ripper,” I said gravely.
Mary’s eyes clouded. “Now that ain’t nothing to kid about.”
“I’m deadly serious. Did you see which way they went?”
“Up Thomas Street,” she said, and beneath the makeup on her face, her cheeks trembled. “You don’t think—?”
“Are there any secluded spots up that way, somewhere out of the public eye?”
Mary’s eyes shifted in thought. “There’s alleys aplenty that way, and little nooks behind the wool warehouse and the rendering house.”
“Take us there,” I said, gripping her arm.
Just then, a faint shout came echoing down Thomas Street. “It’s him, Mary! It’s the Ripper!”
Mary flung my hand off her. Her eyes flared. “You’re him, ain’t you? You’re trying to lure me away. Help! Help! The Ripper!”
I stood rooted to the ground, astonished. “No. No! We’re trying to catch him.”
“Jack the Ripper!” she shouted, pointing at me.
I glanced around, seeing angry men turn their faces my way. The bloodstains on my trousers didn’t help my case. I growled to Anna, “Run!”
Anna and I darted up Thomas Street in the direction that Mary had indicated. I harbored some vain hope we might find him, might stop him, but running was perhaps our greatest mistake. It triggered the predatory instincts of that predatory mob. They ditched their smoldering hunks of meat and their dancing monkeys and their dogfights and gave chase.
This was disaster. We’d never catch him now. We’d never outrun—
A foot hooked my ankle, and I tripped, sprawling out on the pavement. I let go of Anna’s hand. “Run!” Then the air was blasted from my chest as man after man piled on me. I tried to squirm free, but they were too many, their hot breath blasting my neck.
“That’s right, boys. Hold him down till the coppers nab him. Saucy Jack!” said a craggy voice—a voice I was sure belonged to the Ripper himself.
Before I could call him out, though, the men on my back lunged in as one, and the crushing weight of them made me go black.
I AWOKE to a hot lantern shining into my eyes. I was tied to a chair, and in the stuffy darkness beyond the lamp, figures shifted listlessly.
“So, the Ripper awakes.”
I gave a little laugh, which resulted in a slap across the face. The blow stung, and, if nothing else, woke me fully.
The man who had struck me paced slowly, just beyond reach of the lantern. “My name is Inspector Lestrade. What is your name?”
“It’s bloody well not Jack the Ripper,” I said. “I’m Professor James Moriarty, chair of Maths and Physics at Jesus College, Cambridge.”
“A long way from Jesus, aren’t we?”
“I know you won’t believe me, but I will tell you anyway: I came to London to track down Jack the Ripper, and I have discovered his identity.”
“Truly?”
“His name is John Harder, master of the tops of the steam cutter
Union Jack
, even now docked at Wapping.”
“You talk a pretty story, Jack,” said Lestrade.
And so began another night of monstrous inquisitions. They asked about the blood on my hands and all down my front, and I told them of the first woman that Harder had attacked, told them how I was only a few seconds too late. Rueful smiles flashed in the darkness. I indicated where they would find her body—that she was not mutilated like the others because I had interrupted the Ripper. I had been that close behind.
“So close, you might be one and the same man.”
“The woman died in my arms.”
“I bet she did.”
“There was nothing else I could do for her, and I was determined to capture the Ripper, and he attacked my daughter so that—”
“Your daughter?”
I explained Anna’s presence, disguised as a paper seller. The hyena grins all around me only grew. Lestrade snarled question after question at me, wondering why a professor would be so stupid as to bring his daughter to the hunting grounds of the Ripper, why he would disguise her as a paperboy, why he thought a whistle would keep her safe. I tried to dismiss all these issues, driving instead to the Ripper’s words to Anna: “I ain’t done yet.” I told how Anna and I had given chase, had seen him at the corner of Whitechapel and Thomas with a prostitute named Kate.
“Oh, good guess! Every whore’s named Kate!”
They jeered, certain they had gotten their man. As the horrible night wore on, I grew quiet, not only because I had testified to everything five times over, but also because I knew that Jack was still out there, carving up Kate. And once he was finished with Kate, Jack would make his way to Scotland Yard, would somehow find out the name of the man that the police were questioning, and would come after me—and Anna.
So, it was with both relief and terror that I greeted Anna as they brought her into the room. Her very appearance at Scotland Yard—a sixteen-year-old girl disguised as a paper seller—did much to quiet those laughing mouths. Her story then did even more. She corroborated my account in every particular. She also had her own adventures to tell about:
“The mob brought my father down, sure enough, just where you found him. They thought he was the Ripper, but that’s only because Jack himself had stirred them up. I saw him—Jack in his blue greatcoat standing in an alley, calling my father out and taunting the mob. But when a few of those brutes looked up to see who was shouting, well, then old Jack turned and vanished into the shadows.”
“Oh, simple enough to claim,” Lestrade said. “So the real Jack got away up an alley?”
“No. He didn’t get away.”
“Then where is he? If he didn’t get away, then you must have captured him. Where are you hiding him?” Lestrade mocked.
“I didn’t capture him—but I did follow him.”
I said, “Foolish!”
“I was careful,” Anna said. “I didn’t see Kate with him, so I was afraid it was all a trap to ambush me. I hung back—until I heard the scream.”
Lestrade’s expression grew intent. “His next victim.”
“Yes. One quick scream, and then nothing more. It sounded … cut off.”
Grim chuckles rumbled around us.
“Well, I went slowly, looking in every dark place. Without the sound of a scream to follow, it was blind man’s bluff. At last, I came to Mitre Square, and in the corner opposite me, I saw a man hunched over in the dark, and I knew that greatcoat on his back, and I screamed. He looked back at me. It was John Harder, all right, but his face was striped in blood. He turned, and something small and white flew off the knife in his hand. I think it was the woman’s ear. It went in a bush, and he went to get it, but I screamed again, and he stalked toward me. ‘Triple job!’ That’s what he said. ‘Triple job!”’
“You should have run,” I said.
“I started to, but then a crowd of people came charging up behind me. Some were from the same mob that had grabbed Father. They’d heard me scream and they came running and they saw John Harder, too. They saw that he was the real Ripper. He turned and dashed away.”
“Didn’t anyone chase him?” Lestrade asked.
“They started to, but then they saw … they saw … poor Kate.”
Lestrade asked, “What did she look like?”
“Mutilated. Throat cut. Belly cut. Guts pulled out …”
“All right, all right,” Lestrade said, waving away the testimony. “This has all been very interesting and dramatic, but all these intimate details—the names of the victims, the locations of the killings, the types of wounds inflicted, the fact that you and your father tell exactly the same story—they all might simply mean that you two planned and carried out these killings as a team.”
“Except that,” said Anna with a fierce look in her eyes, “when the police came, they brought ten of us back to testify.
There are nine others waiting to describe Jack the Ripper to you.”
“You’ve got all the evidence, now!” I said. “Sweep down to Wapping and snatch this monster from the
Union Jack
!”
At last, we’d gotten through to Inspector Lestrade. He sent one of his men to the docks, though he retained Anna and me while he interrogated the other witnesses. Every last one corroborated our story.
An hour later, the officer returned, panting and covered in cold sweat. “It’s as he said. Wapping, the
Union Jack
—even this John Harder fellow, master of the tops—”
“And? And?” Lestrade prompted.
“And the ship sailed again before dawn.”
“Where’s she bound?”
“Paris.”
“Paris?”
“She’s a steam cutter. Fast ship. No one’ll catch her.”
Lestrade leaned his knuckles on his desk, jaw working, eyes fiery as if they could burn through the wall. “We’ll send another ship to intercept. We’ll send a man to the Continent to wire the French. God damn it—the French! They’re not going to nab Jack the Ripper. I’ll go myself, will wire ahead from Normandy and then beat him there on the train and be ready to nab him at the dock at Paris.”
“Inspector,” broke in a new voice—a young officer who entered the interrogation room and waved a postcard in the air. “He sent it to the Central News Agency—and they sent it on to us.”