Текст книги "I, Ripper: A Novel"

Автор книги: Stephen Hunter

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“Remember to cock the gun,” the professor whispered.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The Diary

November 7, 1888

This was quite new. Before, they were apparitions in the night. I didn’t see their faces clearly until I’d killed them, hardly to their advantage. The slack of death did a great deal to undercut beauty, if any beauty there had been to begin with.

But Mary Jane, in full bloom, was a lively, roundish specimen who generated goodwill and happiness wherever she went. She was a full-bodied thing, just a bit beyond the age at which you could call her a girl, and it was hard not to desire her, with her blond hair and her buxom figure and her happy smile for each and all.

After the barman’s description, I simply observed and was surprised that I hadn’t noticed her before. I didn’t bother asking anyone to point her out, since it was unnecessary. She was clearly visible from the window of the Ten Bells, so I didn’t have to reenter and risk the barman fixing my face in his memory, as I was sure he had not previously. I could see her sitting at a table with a gaggle of “the girls.” For all their forlorn history, they were a gay, larky lot who enjoyed each other’s presence, enjoyed the hospitality that the Ten Bells offered, and most of all enjoyed the glass of gin set before them. Like women of all sorts, from the Hindu Kush to the Amazon and the Danube to the Yellow and the Mississippi to the Colorado, they spoke a private language of gesture and enthusiasm, loved the thrill of gossip and slander, were united in their contempt for the men who had ruined so many of their lives, and brought out absolutely the best in each other. I could tell all that from their animated postures around the table.

She was the lively one. One could hear her laughter through the glass, perhaps even feel it in the reverberations in the air. Her eyes were blue and her skin pink and firm. She seemed far from The Life, as it was called, even if she was famous within The Life. I knew tragedy haunted her, as it did so many of the girls. They all seemed to come from broken homes, were runaways or had been kicked out of hearth and home, some to turn to the streets, some already drawn to the streets. Her current torment came from the abandonment by the man in her life, a fellow named Joe Barnett, whom I watched visit her every evening. He was a shaggy brute by my standards but maybe a good-hearted man in the end, not too judgmental, willing to accept Mary Jane for what and who she was. His visits suggested some possibility of reengagement, as neither could quite let the other go. At the same time, it wasn’t as if she were making amends to Joe, for she still took tups for pay, let others of her trade sleep in her tiny room on cold fall nights, still hit the gin three, four, sometimes five times a day. She couldn’t say no to it, to her eternal damnation. I don’t know if she turned to drink for escape or she escaped to turn to drink, but it was the core of her existence, as I have observed her over the past few days.

The Ten Bells and the Horn of Plenty were her main spots. She’d wander outside and, sooner or later, find her beau for the next hour. Then the happy couple took a turn down Dorset. This was a dark scut of street that ran a few blocks until it came to an end, and its reality was elemental “English poverty,” if such a style were to be named, meaning brick tenements looming inward on each side, undistinguished by any wit or cleverness, just brick boxes laid end on end one after another, under low chimneys that spewed out coke fume, to combine with London fog into a yellow soup that sometimes smeared the streets. The housefronts were identical but for futile attempts at individuality, such as a flower pot here, a flag there, a yellow door, a rug hanging from a window, otherwise just the dullness of warehouses for forgotten people.

Mary Jane would take her beau a bit down Dorset, and thence—you had to know where to look for it, for it was easy to miss—she’d lead him into a passage wide enough for but one person. That was the entryway to Miller’s Court, and it cut between buildings for fifty feet of enclosed brick closeness, where it opened into the space that earned it the comic designation “court”: This was an interruption between the continuity of the buildings that offered yet more frontage for dwellings, apartments, or really rooms, chockablock, two stories in height, tiny in dimension, in which yet more desperate souls could be stockpiled until they died and were buried in nameless paupers’ fields. Someone owned it, someone collected rent, someone profited, but you wouldn’t house pigs in such shabby circumstances.

Mary Jane was in No. 13. I know because entry into the court was by no means guarded, and because so many of the inhabitants were prostitutes, men came and went without notice at all hours of the day, except perhaps those right before dawn, when even the most wicked seem to need their sleep. So I had, more than a few times at odd hours when I had no pressing business, ventured into it, poked about, nodded at the occasional neighbor who paid me no attention. I had my heart’s fill of preparation on this one. It goes to show that in England today, a fellow in a four-in-hand, coat, and bowler can go anywhere and remain unseen, for so universal is the uniform of Victoria’s tight little island that it confers instant invisibility.

Moreover, despite the hue and cry of the newspapers, I noted nothing in the way of Jack the Ripper fear or panic among even the denizens of Whitechapel, to say nothing of the city itself and the larger nation that encompassed it. There were more coppers about, of course, but they were worthless. They had been guided by that General Idiot himself, Warren, who proclaimed that they must be on the lookout for the “suspicious.” In that regard, I saw an amusing scene. Two constables had waylaid a bloke who indeed looked suspicious, as he wore an old shooting coat and a slouch hat; he looked like the very embodiment of seedy danger on the lurk. They had him buttressed against a wall and their billies out for a good cosh if he gave them business. One had already gone to whistle for more Bobbies, and through it all he was yelling, “But I am George Compton Archibald Arthur, Third Baronet of Arthur of Upper Canada and a lieutenant of the Second Life Guards,” while the bigger of the two bruisers was saying, “Sure you are, sir, now you just hold steady while we get to the bottom of all this,” all as I, Jack actually, perambulated by, looking as normal and unsuspicious as Mr. Jackson, traveling representative of Cooke’s Bone, Joint, and Teeth Elixir. That was the point: The beast himself would be unsuspicious, never suspicious.

The lack of general fear had a sound basis in human nature: Each person was secretly wedded to the fantasy of his own immortality and, as consequence, completely given over to the delusion that it couldn’t happen here, it couldn’t happen now, it couldn’t happen to him. I was aware that I was the malevolent god of here, now, you.

At first it appeared there’d be trouble with Mary Jane’s door. How was I to enter it? The door was eternally locked, I guessed by the mechanical magic of a spring-driven mechanism, and I was no lock picker and it was late in life to pick up new skills, especially those as recondite as slipping a betty into the tumblers and turning them. Besides, no one in my circle would know such a thing, and how would I find a teacher?

Since the construction was rather flimsy, I judged a good shove might cause it to give way, but you could never predict how wood split; it might crack like a rifle shot as I broke through it, and wake up all of Miller’s Court, so I’d find myself at the end of an ad hoc vigilante committee rope, dangling off the chimney and making the area by far more famous than it deserved. I assumed that Mary Jane had the key, and I wondered about hiring a fellow to pick her pocket, a trade that was not uncommon in London. Yet that possibility came fraught with difficulties, as in where would I find one of those fellows, why would he not suspect me (I could tell him I was a spurned lover meaning to give her a thump when she got home, but once my atrocity had been delivered, he would be smart enough, would he not, to add two plus two and point me out to the coppers, or at least furnish them with a description that didn’t involved a mysterious Jew man with a gold chain and a beak nose!).

No, no, that would never work. But by nightfall—my third foray into Miller’s Court—I solved the case, verily like Sherlock Holmes. Since the court was empty—it was ten, most of the girls were out on the street but hadn’t brought John home yet; most of the poor folk who were forced to endure the squalor out of lack of other opportunities were well abed—I felt free enough to examine more carefully. Mary Jane’s room was first on the right as you passed out of the entry passageway, but beyond it was a nook or gap where the privy, dustbin, water pump, and trough were set. If you dipped into the nook, you encountered two windows in the wall of Mary Jane’s room, one located in close proximity to the door on the ajoining wall. It occurred to me that through the window, one could easily reach the inside latch of the door and spring it.

I drifted close, made as if to drop a thing and bent to pick it up so as to justify my coming to a halt at that particular spot to unseen watchers, and as I arose, I made the astonishing discovery that the window was absent a pane. I put a quick hand through the opening, moved the curtain, and though it was dark, I could see within easy reach the latch, with its pull button for withdrawing the bolt, a common feature on perhaps 3.9 million of London’s 4 million doors.

I let the curtain fall and, without a haste denoting bad intentions, meandered toward the passageway, checked to see it was clear of incomers, and exited to Dorset Street. I knew I had found my way into Mary Jane’s place for the privacy I so urgently required.

Upon reaching the street, I turned right and continued down Dorset, now and then pausing to scan behind me, not out of worry but out of general principle. Nothing untoward obtained. And so I crossed Dorset, reversed direction and returned to Commercial, and ambled slowly back to the Ten Bells, in hopes that I might see my darling again.

She was not there. It was odd. Not at the Bells, not on the street, not on her back in her room, doing her duty. Where had the angel gone? I puzzled, worried that she had reunited with Joe Barnett and they’d gone off to get married or something. I found it a rather crushing possibility. And then I saw her. She was with a fellow, not unlike me, dowdier perhaps, but clearly of the largely anonymous middle class, a clerk or tradesman or mechanic, out for his night of purloined bliss on the power of coin he’d not turned over to the missus. The two of them chatted amiably as they wended toward paradise, passing me without noting me, and were on to their tryst and I to my thoughts.

Suppose, then, I worried, on the night hence when all was set for, I penetrated and she was not there? She and Joe were at the pier in Brighton or walking a country lane outside Dublin, as I had heard the Irish trill in her voice. Or some bully had coshed her and run off with her purse and she was nursing a lump in some charity ward. All could happen as easily as not, and that was the problem of orienting to a particular place and time. You could not control the comings and goings of others. The possibility simmered in my stomach like an undigested lump of beef, turning sour in the bile. Agh, the frustration in it jabbed me immensely, and the prospect of losing all the careful planning and reconnoitering I had invested in the effort irritated me considerably. It occurred to me that instead of my careful plan, I might have to improvise another. I determined to put one together now so that I didn’t have to, come the night in question, on the fly.

I reasoned that, were I in this neighborhood on the hunt for Mary Jane and I encountered her absence, the next place to go was the Bells, as it seemed to represent a coagulation of girls. The barman might recognize me, as unlikely as that might seem, for he was a man who daily encountered three hundred faces, but the place was so widely windowed, I could pass by on the outside and determine if the Judys at rest inside for refreshment might soon exit. Noting one, I could wait until she moved, and I saw in my mind’s eye a play like the others: I approach, utter a banal “how do ye do?”, receive an invitation to accompany, and begin a mosey down this part of Commercial, which, though closest to 29 Hanbury, was still virgin territory for Jack. Where would I take her, where was my goal? As I wandered back down Commercial after parsing it for signs of ladies of the trade—they were there, as usual, in abundance—and after passing the lofty and majestic Christchurch, which was the Bells’ next-door neighbor across Fournier, I passed another block and came across a nice little alley. I examined it. Ah, excellent. It was obscure, another brick passageway that almost certainly went undocumented on all but the most precise maps. Peeking into it, I saw how easily I could lure my theoretical Judy into it to do her job, and there do my job. It might be better, even, for so close to Commercial—it would be the closest yet to a throbbing concourse—it could have the impact I so desired and needed. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind for Mary Jane, but it would do, and it served the purpose of calming my apprehension.

Well satisfied with the day’s labor, I headed back to other duties. Whatever happened, I believed, I was well prepared.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Jeb’s Memoir

I had my thumb splayed across the twin hammers of the Howdah, which I gripped by the wooden forearm under the double barrels. I could easily crank them back, and that momentum would drive my hand to grip and triggers, and I could dispatch Jack in under a second if it came to that.

Dare and I approached, and I felt my heart hammering against my chest, my breath hot and dry in my nostrils, the bitter cold of the rain having vanished in the urgency of the action unfolding in which I was a key player.

He stood over her, leaning against the brick wall, while she seemed to have fallen to her knees. Were we too late? Had he already unleashed the death strokes, and had she in turn tumbled to earth to spurt dry of blood in the falling rain while he looked down, watching her die? That was what the scene suggested to me, and it filled me with rage.

Here at last was the beast.

Here at last was Jack, in flagrante.

We were too late for this poor pretty bird, yes, but by God, there’d be no more gutted women in London, as we had tracked and felled the brute.

Without consciousness, I drew back the hammers and felt each lock in its place as my hand slid down, acquired the checkered curve of the wooden grip, grabbed it stoutly, felt my trigger finger extend to lay across the twin levers with just an ounce of preshot pressure, and braced myself for the explosions but an ounce or two away.

We moved on the oblique to see more clearly and . . . no, she was not dead. In fact, on her knees, facing him, she was quite active. My rage transmuted to befuddlement as I tried to make sense of the posture. Her face was close in on his waist, perhaps a bit below it, her hands were gripping tightly against his flanks, and her head seemed to be somehow pumping in a certain rhythm that was primitive, even elemental, in its need.

“Yes,” I head him cry, “my God, yes, oh yes, oh yes, so close,” and then a guttural shudder arose from deep in his being as he seemed to endure a spasm and undulated in one powerful thrust and his cry became “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“Come on, then,” said the professor in my ear. “This is not what we thought. Quick, turn and out.”

With that, we abandoned the alley. By now the rain fell in thunderous quantity, quite soaking us. It cut visibility. We got back to street, I with dangerously cocked and loaded Howdah pistol in my hand, now a veritable ticking bomb whose explosion could kill or maim, and would embarrass if we were spared those outcomes.

“Put that bloody thing away,” the professor said.

I dipped next to the building, under some sort of commercial overhang, and using both hands, I decocked gently, tripping one trigger with hammer secured, then easing that liberated arm down and repeating the ordeal for the other barrel. The weapon was appropriately rendered safe for holstering, which I did, and pulled my mac tight around it. The drama over, I could now feel the treachery of the rain. I shuddered even as, ahead of us, Major Pullham, just as jaunty and perhaps even jauntier than before, bounded out of the alley. His face was split by a large, happy grin, he seemed impervious to discomfort, and he passed us by without noticing our strangeness as he called, “Cab! Oh, say, cab!”

A hansom pulled up, and the driver leaned to pop the door. In leaped the major and was away in a trice, disappearing down Commercial in a glaze of rain. Meanwhile, his poor employee—or, I suppose I should say, his ex-employee—emerged and turned the other way, heading back to the Bells for a rest after her exertions and possibly to spend her thruppence on a nice gin.

“Look,” said the professor, “it’s late, it’s raining, we’re soaked, we almost killed a man innocently whoring along with his tart, and I suspect with the weather, Jack has awarded himself surcease. Let’s return to quarter, begin again tomorrow night, and this time focus on Colonel Woodruff.”

“Since he never goes out, that should be a boring sit,” I said.

“He will surprise you, I feel it. Cab?”

“Yes.”

He hailed a hansom and in we climbed. Since mine was the farthest out, the cabman took me home first, and I climbed out, a miserable wet rat, longing for tea, biscuits, and bed.

“Then tomorrow, eleven P.M., outside the colonel’s rooms, well dressed for night action in November.”

“Indeed.”

“And wipe down the Howdah before you retire. Drops of water can rust the finish.”

“I will,” I said.

With that, he tapped the roof of the cab, the driver’s whip snapped, and the vehicle lurched off. I turned up the walk to the dark house, entered, trudged up the stairs, and stripped my clothes off. The mac would be all right if I had need of it tomorrow; the wool suit might be damp. To hasten its return to norm, I hung it off a chair near the fireplace and lit a small log via some kindling, knowing that it would glow all night. I toweled off the Howdah and did not return it to holster, discerning that leather might attract moisture, but instead let it sit on the desk while the leather cured next to the suit on the chair. I trudged barefoot and naked to the bed, threw myself in it—it was close to five, according to my pocket watch—and pulled up the covers. I was asleep in seconds, though not without a return to the moment when I almost pulled the twin triggers and sent poor Major Pullham and his Judy to the next world, not that there was a next world.

If there were dreams or nightmares, I have no memory of them. Instead, it seemed that not ten seconds later, Mother was shaking me hard, pulling me from sleep. I uttered unintelligible sounds as I emerged from unconsciousness and found her over me, the usual look of contempt and dismissal on her severe and formerly beautiful face.

“Get up, get up,” she said. “There’s a cabman here. Dress and be gone. I cannot have strange cabmen standing around in my foyer.”

It took a few seconds as cobwebs full of butterfly wings, fly legs, dustballs, and the odd dead leprechaun cleared themselves from my mind. Finally I achieved a version of clarity. “What’s he want?” I said.

“He says he’s from O’Connor, and he’s here to take you somewhere you’re needed. I must say, this whole newspaper business you’ve got yourself in is very annoying to me. Now I find you have a Goliathan pistol over there, capable of blowing down a wall.”

“I’d be happy to loan it to dear sister Lucy, Mother. Perhaps she can play with it in the garden. Do tell her to look down the barrels and pull the triggers to see if it’s loaded.”

“You are too loathsome for words,” she said. “Now hurry. I am giving the cabman your tea this morning because he is working and you are lazing about like a dog. Hurry, hurry.”

She left in high snoot, as if that were different from any other form of being for her, and I pulled on my clothes, locked the Howdah in the desk drawer on the general principle that anything so dangerous should be locked away, and headed downstairs.

“Now, then, what’s all this about?” I demanded of the cabman.

“Sir,” he said, “Mr. O’Connor has requested that you be conveyed swift as possible to 13 Miller Court, Whitechapel.”

“God in heaven, man, why?”

“Sir, there’s been another one, that’s what Mr. O’Connor told me to tell you. This one beyond imagination, so the early reports suggest. You’re to get to it and get details fast for the next edition.”

November 8, 1888

Dear Mum,

I ain’t sent you the other letters but now my plan is to wrap them up with this one and send ’em all along, so you and Da can have a good laugh.

It’s a happy time down here. It’s been such a while since Jack has been about, we girls are sure he’s gone. They say he favors a quarter-moon, coming or going, but he’s missed a couple now.

Maybe he’s gone to try his luck in America! Maybe Sir Charles’s Peelers have done scared him off, as they’re everywhere these days. Maybe he fell in a hole and got eaten by rats, the cheesy bugger.

Joe says we are quit of him, and that he’s a lucky lad, because if Joe had gotten ahold of him, he’d of hammered and chopped him so bad, wouldn’t be enough to put on sale at the fish market.

Anyhow, thought you’d want to know.

I did get a little rowdy tonight after my gins, but didn’t have no customers, as it’s raining. I sang too loud and Liz upstairs pounded on the floor to get me quiet. Sorry, Liz! Hope I didn’t wake Diddles the cat! Sorry, Diddles!

Anyhow, I’m feeling right safe and good now. It’s pouring out and not even the Ripper would go out in that cold soaking. I’m locked in my little room, I’ve had my gin, the fire’s burned low and tomorrow’s a new day and I am full of hope.

Best and love, Mum.

Your loving daughter,

Mairsian