Authors: Bryan Lightbody
“Do you want a good time, young man?” she said seductively whilst walking with an exotic sway towards him. He could feel himself becoming very hot all over and just wanted to indulge in pleasures of the flesh now the chance had been presented to him. He replied to her advances.
“I have a cab waiting, will join me elsewhere?”
“As long as you are paying, my darling, then anywhere.” They linked arms and walked around a corner to a waiting cab, to which Klosowski had already given the driver instructions to head to the Pasteur Hospital.
They climbed aboard and the driver whipped the reigns to set the horses off at a trot to make their way through the busy Parisian streets. The footways along the boulevards were crowded with ladies and gentlemen taking the air or enjoying some pavement dining along such famous thoroughfares as the Champs Elysee.
“I’m Monique,” she said as she began to unbutton his trousers. He just smiled in return as he felt himself stiffen within his suit trousers and began to unbutton her blouse to reveal her unfettered rounded ebony breasts with large dark brown erect nipples; the shade of them an erotic contrast to the rest of her flawless African skin. She pulled herself across his lap lifting her skirt as she did so, her free hand already working him up and down energetically having freed him. Detecting how hard he now was she allowed herself to sink onto him knowing they would slide together with ease as a result of her last liaison. He grunted loudly burying his head into her bare breasts as she flung her head back and began to pant with excitement lifting her self up and down with her thighs to provide her client with pleasure.
The passionate sounds emanating from within the cab were lost amongst the throng of humanity in the busy streets and the sound of the horse and carriage itself along the cobbled streets. After several minutes of passion their unloving sexual encounter was over, and for Monique so was her life. As Klosowski did up his trousers and she fastened her blouse he pulled his belt from around his trousers. Monique was looking out of the window and speaking to him unaware of his intentions.
“You are my greatest ever lover,” looking round to her client for a response the narrow leather belt was flung around her neck and pulled tight before she could even emit a scream. Fighting for her life she lashed out at her assailants face with her long fingernails to try and inflict enough damage for him to stop, but only making a glancing lunge she failed and within thirty seconds of her blood supply cut off to her brain she was unconscious.
Now pulling up outside the hospital, Klosowski casually replaced his belt and leaned out of the cab to pay the driver and said “Look, my friend, could you help me in with her? She’s fainted.” The driver, curious as to their destination anyway asked no questions so as not to jeopardise his tip. He assisted his fare to the door of the Hospital with the unconscious woman and was rewarded handsomely for his troubles. Now, by himself, Klosowski dragged Monique off to the mortuary. He placed her limp body onto the examination table and began to strip her. He found this dark skinned woman very erotic and once naked he tied her down and gagged her. He wanted one last opportunity with her before she had to be slain. Poised above her, she came round from her temporary coma to find the man who would be her final contact with life upon her and within her. Then he cut her throat.
Klosowski had no concern or remorse as no one in Paris would miss just another colonial whore from the infamous Bois. The only people who could raise any concern were her own kind and the authorities would be unlikely to listen to them. He got to work on the body, after he had made himself a casual cup of coffee, for it to be ready for his client early in the morning.
Tumblety paid Klosowski handsomely for the specimen and hurriedly left from the mortuary to make his way swiftly back to the hotel so as not arouse Mary’s curiosity. Klosowski counted his money and smiled to himself. He now had his money for a ticket to cross the channel and realise his ambitions in London.
Tumblety sat himself in an armchair facing a chaize-longue about ten feet way from him for Mary to pose on. She entered the room in a dressing gown and walked across the room making positive eye contact with her prospective portrait artist. Then standing in front of the chaize-longue she undid the waist tie on the gown allowing it to fall from her shoulders to reveal herself to Tumblety wearing only a seductive smile. He took a deep intake of breath as she did so, still after the time they had known each other taken aback by her beauty. Mary then laid herself out on the couch and got into a comfortable lying position and the ‘artist’ began his work.
He initiated her portrait with a soft leaded pencil in his shaking hand sketching a basic outline of the furniture and Mary’s form lying within it. As he got the detail flowing he worked his way along the outline of the body he had created on his pad filling in detail and shading. Excitement bubbled within him and his quivering nature grew rather than subsided, feeling himself driven by the voices to pay attention to the distinctively female attributes of her body creating what amounted to a female caricature, with emphasis on her breasts with prominent nipples, making them now out of proportion with the rest of the pencil drawn body and the same with her crutch area paying particular detail to it and emphasising it unnecessarily, an area he had become obsessed by. The voices and their various tones then caused him to freeze. From hearing a jumble of pitches he now picked up on and could only sense one specifically speaking to him.
‘Coward, take your own trophies, let some whores blood. Who do you think you are, sketching, you should be drawing the life from her.’ Finally he recognised it and its familiarity. It was his own voice within what was becoming an ever more tortured mind.
During the sketching process Mary could see from his face that he was becoming more and more troubled by the experience. But why? They seemed to get on well and have an intimate relationship, so why was his expression becoming more stern and tortured? She noted he was beginning to perspire heavily too. The voice raged in his head.
‘A whore, she’s a whore like them all, you cannot trust her, do your work and take a trophy, you pathetic sexually inadequate fool.’
In his own mind Tumblety was replying ‘Leave me I will not succumb to you, she is innocent, she is good, I will not kill her, she is my salvation.’
‘She will deceive you and hurt you like all the others.’
‘She isn’t the others, this is Mary and I love her.’
‘Romantic imbecile, what is love; male gullibility born out of female sexual temptation, kill the whore!’
Suddenly he shouted aloud “No I will not!” Tumblety grabbed the paper from his pad, and ran from the room and away down the hotel corridor.
Grabbing her gown Mary pulled it on and ran after him but found him gone and nowhere in sight. Alarmed she returned to the room and stared blankly around. She had observed bizarre behaviour from him before but no outburst such as this. Just as she thought her life was beginning to find it’s way again, now this. She noted that the pad was still present but minus the top sheet. However, it had left an imprint on the sheet of paper below it of what Tumblety had been sketching which she began to examine. What she saw bothered her. Aware of the sensuality of her own body she was disturbed by the emphasis that this sketching put on the sexual areas of her body. What was going on in his mind? Where was he going to on those early mornings?
She walked over to the window and stared out across the Paris skyline. On the window ledge was a carafe of red wine, pouring herself a glass she took a refreshing mouthful of the sweet alcohol which she had started to avoid so well, but now felt drawn to. He then reappeared in the room.
“Francis, what the hell is going on?”
“I can’t talk now, I need to sleep.”
“What? You behave like that, sketching some filth version of me and you need to sleep, what about me?”
“Leave me alone, we’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Francis, I may not be here tomorrow.” The voice in his head interrupted Tumblety’s reply, ‘You maybe more right than you know.’
“NO!” Tumblety screamed.
“Francis, you’re scaring me.”
“I promise we’ll talk in the morning.” Tumblety stormed off shutting himself in the so far unused second of the two bedrooms the suite possessed. Mary pounded on the bedroom door pleading for him to let her in so they could talk. He ignored her calls and laid out on the bed holding his hands over his ears, the only voice that he could hear was the evil sound of himself screaming within to ‘Kill all whores!’
The next morning Mary woke to find Tumblety out. She decided to look in his arts materials bag.
***
Before returning to Mary from his early morning trip to the mortuary, Tumblety out in the fresh air of the Paris Streets, felt in control of himself again this morning and decided to take action to appease and apologise to Mary. Stopping off along the Champs Elysee he entered a jewellers to purchase a necklace as a gift and an engagement ring, he felt the time maybe right whilst in Paris to ask Mary for her hand in marriage, and the necklace may help smooth over his bizarre behaviour from the night before. Moreover, he felt that such strong emotional actions may help overcome what he now identified as his own dark side.
The sales assistant was a brisk and business like young Parisian smartly turned out with a good command of English and a confident manner. He reminded Tumblety of himself when he first returned to Rochester having found his fortune. His success in generating his wealth had brought with it problems. Following the unfortunate incident when a patient had died under his care, he had had to go on the run to avoid almost certain prosecution. He discovered that keeping money banked was quite restrictive to this end so after that incident he withdrew all his money barring a checking account and invested it in diamonds. Easy to conceal and carry, for a man of his obvious social status a commodity that he could easily exchange for cash. He had invested his fortune wisely and had a collection of two flawless emeralds, the cheaper end of his investment, fifteen high carat value diamonds and one huge flawless diamond about an inch and a half round of an almost immeasurable carat value due to its perfection. It was his main fortune. Casting his mind over the thought of his investments he bought a pretty emerald encrusted necklace which he felt would compliment Mary’s eyes and a ring with no stone to carry one of the diamonds from his collection. He would marry the two items together and have them mounted in a few days.
He returned to his carriage which had been perambulating him around the city for the morning’s duration and left for the Monmartre Hotel knowing nothing of Mary having fled. Walking up the stairs having claimed his key from reception he felt very positive and upbeat about the new life ahead he would be forging for himself. He seemed to have the love of a good woman, although he realised that the previous night had been tense, and as a result was gaining control of his dark side, which had plagued him ever since that fateful marriage. Although the one bizarre link between these two women who had so invaded his life was that they both had the most striking green eyes he had ever witnessed. How coincidental that he should be drawn to two women with the same physical feature, although Mary’s were somewhat bluer. That must have been what had subliminally drawn him into investing in the emeralds and he felt sure that with mind to previous experiences ‘lightning could not strike twice.’
He turned the key in the door and called happily “Mary, I’m home,” but heard no reply of her gentle Irish brogue. “Mary?” He began pacing around the suite looking for her, but to no avail. Then he spied his artist’s bag open on the bed with items strewn from it including the jewellery box. ‘My God!’ he thought, ‘where has she gone, what has she done?’ The specimen jars were everywhere, she had discovered his dark obsession, but to top it all, opening the jewellery box he discovered that the main diamond and a handful of the smaller diamonds were gone.
He now stood to be ruined socially by her discovery and also now certainly financially unless he recovered that stone. Rage began to develop and as it did so he heard a familiar voice.
‘I told you, you soft centred sentimental fool, she’ll destroy you.’ But now all he could hear was himself echoing the sentiments of the distant voice which had belittled and driven him to the brink of insanity so far.
‘I should have listened, you were right all along. Now that thieving harpee must die, I will not be wronged twice. I shall be down on all Whores….’
When in London he always took a room in the finest hotels such as the Ritz and only indulged his sordid vices in the squalid East End of London, now with more purpose than ever. In so doing he was safe in not besmirching his reputation amongst the well-to-do of London’s West End society who knew him. He knew London well having frequented the ‘old enemies capital’ as he called it on three previous occasions. These trips had given him an intimate knowledge of the Whitechapel area and its surrounding districts and it was here that he suspected that Mary Kelly may well have settled.
Months had passed since the ill fated trip to Paris with Mary and he had developed a new rationale in his thinking. He had succumbed to the voices and would soon start on his work in ‘the blood letting of whores’. In creating an agreement with his dark side it allowed him to think without intrusion. This was a logical place for Mary to come. As a simple country girl might think it easiest to get lost there amongst the crowds. He had discovered from enquires in Wales using a private detective that she had spent a time whoring herself there before they had met, which drove the knife into him more deeply. With this in mind, if she was in London she would be perhaps living in the West End if she had decided to trade in the gems, or if she was too stupid to have done anything but keep them, which he hoped she had, she would be working in Whitechapel or Spitalfields. With her looks wherever she was working, if working she was, she would never be short of clients.