Текст книги "I, Ripper: A Novel"

Автор книги: Stephen Hunter

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The Diary

November 11, 1888

I read poor Mary Jane’s letters. Perhaps as an homage to her youth in a reasonably happy family in Wales, she signed them in her Welsh baby name, Mairsian, as Mary Jane translates into that language. They seemed to be to an ideal mother, as her own had abjured contact with her whore daughter, which again seems to me a tragedy. Is not the passion between mother and daughter one of the most intense in human life? It should never be sundered, for the damage it does to both parties is incalculable. It says something for the hideous sanctimony of our age that Mary Jane’s mother cared more for the pressure of society than for any loyalty to the produce of her own loins. A whore daughter was a disgrace, and the poor mum probably sat up nights haunted by ghosts of sexual imagery, which she tried to banish but could not, of what was being done to her daughter by various blackguards and rogues. And yet what is done by them is really, as Mary Jane knew, nothing. It swiftly becomes so routine as to be utterly meaningless.

The Mary Jane revealed is not without interest. She seems bright, though hardly brilliant, at least in her powers of observation and her knowledge of her own self. When I read of her weakness for the taste and blur of gin and how it drove her to destruction, I am not so moralistic (Jack? moralistic?) as to see it as a “weakness,” a flaw that only discipline and punishment can overcome, if one were to make the effort, and since Mary Jane was one of eleven children, no parent could spare the time to make the effort.

Her symptoms seem to me more of a sickness than a weakness. For some reason she needs the drink, it completes her, it fills her with confidence and self-value. Thus it can be treated only with medicine, not moral posture.

Why, in our modern age, has not science created something to relieve the symptoms of alcohol longing? If we can create substances that enslave people—gin, opium, tobacco, laudanum—why can we not create substances to unslave them?

I suppose, now knowing Mary Jane, I wish to construct a dream world in which she was retrieved from her descent, and thus it was not her under the blade of my butcher. She’d had her six kids and was happily married to a mill foreman in Manchester and her brightest boy would go to university, the next would take up a trade, the third would go to service, and the three girls would marry solid men and repeat the cycle. However true that may be, some other unfortunate would have been the subject of my enterprise on November 9, and who’s to say she was more or less deserving of what mad Jack served up that night.

It should come as no surprise that I am by now tired of Jack. His use is at an end. I hope to kill him soon and go on about my life, that is to say, the life I deserve, the life I am destined to have, the life I have so brilliantly contrived and boldly acted to obtain. It’s fine that I feel a little down now. It’s to be expected.

CHAPTER FORTY

Jeb’s Memoir

My prime regret was that I had been so wrong about Major Pullham, and even as we were set to prevent him from getting what he so desired, the actual Jack was stalking Mary Jane. I cursed myself for imposing my prejudice upon Dare’s superior, Holmesian deducting process. I had been a fool to open my mouth.

And all the time I was preening, feeling so brilliant, clever Jack was engineering a carefully wrought scheme: He had to make sure she was alone and asleep, which, it seemed to me, would have involved a careful observation of the site. It’s true she helped him considerably, according to neighbors, by singing until she passed out, alerting any watcher that she was in her dreams and alerting Jack that he had free passage, but again, that information was available only to a careful watcher. It showed all the attributes of the well-planned military mission. Then there was the fact that a few nights before the crime, a barkeep at the Ten Bells named Brian Murphy had been coshed to death on his way home late. Most of the coppers dismissed it as just another robbery crime, maybe pulled off by the High Rips or the Bessarabians, who may have been in cahoots with Murphy, but it was odd that he was known to be conversant with the girls. Could that have had anything at all to . . . Well, it mucked up considerations and clarity, so I tended to dismiss it, so as to concentrate on the play we had before us still.

The truth is, we should have gone with Colonel Woodruff. He was, after all, the better possibility, assuming the professor’s analysis to be correct (I still believed in it and him). I could not but think of a scene in which we smashed out the window as the colonel was about to strike and, seeing the Howdah, knowing the jig to be up, he threw himself toward us and, without thinking, I double-blasted him to hell. Yes, Mary Jane would be alive, yes, Professor Dare’s genius would be proclaimed, but more to the selfish point, I would be the hero and have whatever it was I desired and be the success I believed myself, having achieved my destiny. No, no, all gone, and as I thought about our choice, I realized it was I who had pressed for the major instead of the colonel, on grounds that the theft of Annie Chapman’s rings suggested a material aspect the colonel lacked.

I saw that I was wrong! The truth was, I didn’t want it to be the colonel. No one did or could. The long years of service, the VC, the blood spilled by him and from him, all spoke to a kind of nobility, and that such a man could commit such crimes seemed not merely grotesque but in some way an indictment of humanity. It was too dark a message to be acknowledged.

Yet it had to be the colonel!

It just had to!

But how could we know?

It was here that a little bug began to whisper in my ear. Louder, louder, little bug, I need to know more. Well, sayeth yon bug, if it is indeed the colonel, and he is indeed “dyslexic,” as the spelling on the Goulston Street wall suggested under the auspices of Professor Dare’s learned eye, then would his condition not be obvious in his official reports or his own private writings?

If the latter, insisted the bug, the only way to obtain such was to secretly enter his rooms and make a search. But the consequences of such a foray going to disaster were so ominous and humiliating that I knew it to be a gambit I could never bring off. I began to quake even in thinking about it.

The bug had an excellent idea: Contact Penny again and see if it were possible for him to talk the colonel in the War Office into filching for just a bit of something written by the colonel in his own hand. Anything, actually. I needed a few minutes with it to see if there was some weird spelling event where letters drifted this way and that or vowels dropped in unexpectedly, as if for tea, and such and such and such.

I will spare the reader and myself the efforts it took to facilitate such an occurrence. No need to dramatize what is essentially a bureaucratic process that involved two or three meetings, much energetic flattery on my part, some shunting around and dipping up and down. We’ll pass on the details, and the truth is, I’m not sure I’d remember them even if pressed.

Needless to say, it all came about, though not without considerable ramification. I found myself in a pub on the far side of the Thames, trying not to attract suspicion as I awaited my visitor while consuming a ploughman’s lunch and pretending to drink (I actually only gargled) a glass of ale.

He was late, slipped in, seemed nervous and hardly military. Tall, slim fellow, rather handsome, no names involved, he was dressed in civilian finery of the higher aristocratic caste, while I chose to wear the brown suit.

“All right,” he said, “Penny vouches for you and I owe Penny much, even if I don’t care for the Star, particularly its pacifist politics and love of Irish mischief.”

“Sir, I have nothing to do with politics. I’m merely a fellow working out possibilities on this horrid Jack thing.”

“I would hate to believe a man such as Colonel Woodruff were involved. He served the crown with fidelity and courage for thirty-five years.”

“I mean him no disrespect. I do not suspect him.” How easily I had come to the lie, which was another reason to get quit of journalism before it debased me too much. “I hope by this means to exclude him from any suspicion.”

“All right,” he said. “I have purloined two handwritten pages from his report on events at Maiwand on July 27, 1880. I will give you ten minutes with them. You will understand immediately why he never made brigadier. He writes too well. He lacks that turgid coroner’s sensibility and always takes responsibility. The brilliant staff officers who rise have the gift of evading consequences and covering themselves not in glory but in a fog of innocence. They are never responsible for any balls-up. With pen in hand, they produce a cold porridge of bromide, vagueness, flattery, and evasion. Thus Burrows, with experience at nothing but boot licking and arse caressing, is the top boy, and a hero like the then-captain is off on a flank, stuck in the muck of battle. This is why we just barely win our wars.”

“I see.”

“As you join the colonel, you will understand immediately that you could not have come at a worse moment. His regiment was located as anchor at the bottom of a loop the idiot Burrows had put out, against which Ayub Khan was supposed to dash his advance units and be scattered. Alas, the Khan had arrived with his main force, twenty-five thousand strong, many of them mounted, and they had the advantage of numbers as well as ammunition, rations, water, artillery, and familiarity with the territory. As for Burrows, it was his first battle, and it was enough to get him permanent placement in the British army hall of dunces, along with Cardigan at Balaclava and Chelmsford at Isandlwana.”

When the snatch of report that the colonel had removed for me begins, Colonel—then Captain—Woodruff has noted with alarm that the “loop” is collapsing and that men, both British and Indian, are fleeing, many having dropped their arms. He realizes his company, E of the 66th Foot, must stand strong to cover the retreaters, else they’ll be slashed down by the Khan’s cavalry before they make it a fiftieth of the way back to Kandahar. This he does until in danger of being overrun, and when no more retreaters can be seen, he orders a fighting withdrawal to the village of Khig, where better cover may be found. His surviving troops take up position to repel the charging Afghans, and although I can’t quote an extended passage from memory all these years later, I remember the extreme vividness with which the then-captain expressed himself, mostly its coolly precise language, so perfect for evoking a desolate and brutal day of death and slaughter in the baking sun and swirling dust of a far-off place not worth a tuppence and a crust of bread on any street corner in London. I think it went something like this, only much better:

I noted that Khig was overlooked by a hill immediately to its southern extreme, flanking our lines. Fearing the enemy in such placement would have angle advantage to bring fire, I determined to send a small unit to secure and then defend the hill until out of ammunition. I chose Color Sergeant Matthews to lead, not merely because he was sound and salty but because among my senior noncommissioned officers, he alone was ambulatory. He had only been wounded twice. He was also one of those hearty lads who enjoys a good brawl, and the more desperate the circumstances the more fun it is for him. He took twelve equally hearty lads and made his way to the top of what I privately christened “Little Round Top,” to make his stand, exactly as Chamberlain had done at Gettysburg, though I doubt the pious Chamberlain could fathom Mattuwes’s exquisite gift for expressive profanity, so common among the better class of our magnificent cockney warriors.

While we on the low ground turned back multiple direct charges until our Martini-Henrys were near to glow with the heat of the firing, and at one point were firing at ghosts so shrouded in dust you could only know a hit when you heard the slap of lead on meat, I noted much churn and drama atop Little Round Top. Fearing the loss of so many men and realizing that were they left up there as we retreated, they were doomed, I decided to withdraw them. I looked for an orderly to bear the message, but all were either dead or absorbed in bayonet work. I assigned myself to the task.

I had a brisk run up the slope. It is exhilarating to be shot at and missed, and it does provide energy where none had seemed available. I recognize that in the British army, officers in charge normally do not fight but merely lead, but alas, this noble tradition was not acknowledged by the Pathans. I felled four with my revolver, the last so close I could smell his stinky breath. Then, the gun being empty and my belt devoid of cartridges, I tossed it away and devolved huenceforth to Wilkinson. Again I was set upon by dervishes, each more colorful than the last, all armed with scimitars of great curve, sweep, and gleam. They slashed, I parried, attempting to rotate such that they were never able to put a front together and attack simueltaneously. In this way, one after another, I prevailed. Wilkinson should be commended for its excellent craftsmanship, as even when my grip grew slippery in the blood that close combat inevitably produces, at no time did the weapon loosen or turn in my hand or did its edge dull in all the cutting I was required to perform.

Making the crest, I saw that the situation was desperate. Of the twelve, but five remained alive, all wounded. Color Sergeant Mattuwes had taken many cuts and lost much blood. Another charge was brewing. Picking up a rifle, I organized the survivors into a ragged line, waited until the hordes were upon us, and commenced a volley, followed by rapid fire. I myself, again in violation of order and tradition, fired my rifle as quickly as I could, until it appeared the wooden forearm had been set afire by the heat of the barrel, and a tendril of smoke rose and drifted from my piece. I looked and it was the same for all the boys, their weapons leaking vapor into the dusty air. Oh, for a Gatling; it would have made such a difference. In any event, our sustained fire broke the charge, and it appeared we held once again.

In the lull, I ordered the survivors down the hill and off they went, spryly, happy to be sprung from Little Round Top’s death trap. I must say that however much our arms failed on the battleground that day, no man of Company E, 66th Foot, retreated before being ordered to do so, and when ordered, did so in good order, keeping fire discipline throughout the whole process and applying bayonet where necessary. What superb soldiers they were, and how privileged I was to command them!

As for me, I could not leave Mattuwes to the fate of the Afghan women and their cruel knives. Lord Jesus, how I hated what those vicious harpies did to our wounded boys, as I had seen far too much of it. I managed to get Mattuwes up and, with him leaning on me, the two of us made it down the hill. At one point, three more Pathans joined the scrap and I was forced to send them to their happy warrior’s paradise, although I took a bad cut on my arm. The last fighter was on me with his dagger when I managed to get the bayonet, grabbed off the desert floor where a retreating fellow had dropped it, thank heavens, into him. I saw no other place to enter but his neck, cutting arteries and veins and producing torrents of a blood as red as my own. To see a man die at such close range, nose to nose as it were, is a terrible thing, no matter how fiercely one hates the enemy. Somehow I got the sergeant back to our redoubt and immediately issued orders for a retreat under fire.

Game little bastard, our Huw, eh? He charges up the bloody hill, kills three men with pistol and three more with sword, commands a last volley to drive the beggars back, sends the other men off the hill in the lull, and then drags his wounded sergeant down the slope to safety. Halfway there, three brigands jump him, but he’s swift enough to cut them all down—I’ll bet that was, as we say in Ireland, one hell of a donnybrook—while nearly getting his arm chopped off. Having sent the enthusiasts with the scimitars straight to hell, he continues to drag the sergeant, who, though I don’t know because further adventures were contained on pages I did not have, I dearly hope survived. You may hate the soldier’s cause, but it is hard to hate the soldier.

Yet that is not why I was there, not to admire the guts of one Huw Pickering Woodruff, but instead to check his spelling. And so I looked carefully, hoping there would be no anomalies, and for a time, so it seemed. But then: for henceforth, “huenceforth.” And for Matthews “Mattuwes.” And “simueltaneously” from simultaneously. Under certain circumstances, perhaps fear, fatigue, confusion, or other battle pressures, he insisted upon inserting a “u” for “e” and moving the “e” into the next available vowel position, or if none was available, sticking it in or forgetting it altogether. What would make such a thing happen? He couldn’t even see it. It was some bizarre crick in the mind, brought on by who knew what, meaningless except as an identifier.

And the rest: the hatred of the Afghan woman, easily generalized. The calmness in the face of the close-by cut to throat and the gush of crimson it produced. It was all there.

“And what have we learned?” asked the colonel.

“Nothing of note,” I lied. “He is indeed a brave man. Do you know much of his background, may I inquire?”

“Welsh-born, Sandhurst grad, third son of a Methodist minister, not much money in the family but a strain, clearly visible in the colonel, of brilliance. Now doing nothing but dictionary work, whereas in a sane world he’d be a cabinet minister.”

I nodded, though tried to hide how disturbed I was by the unassailable logic I had uncovered that the bravest of the brave was indeed Jack the Ripper.

“Now I shall be off, Mr. Jeb. Jeb, what kind of name is that, by the way? It seems I’ve given up some confidential information to a man whose name I do not even know. Come now, sir, at least explain yourself.”

“It’s a journalistic trope,” I said. “I was called as a youth various things, sometimes even Sonny. But I was in the register as a junior, even if my father was a drunkard and I cared not to be known by his name, so to some I went forth by his initials, which were G.B. My sister, a wonderful girl, could not keep the two letters apart, and in her mouth they elided into Jeb. So that is me, and for the record, sir, since you have asked, the moniker would be Shaw, George Bernard Shaw.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

The Diary

Undated

Egress

I slipped out of the court, down the narrow passageway

and took my right to whatever street it was.

I cannot remember

though it was but hours ago. Had a plague come

as I was to work, and had it taken the rest of humanity?

It seemed I walked for days through the gray drift of the inclement,

my eyes squinted against the sting of the dagger-like drops,

a shiver running through my body as it tried to adjust to the cold.

Emptiness and echo everywhere, bits of paper blowing loose and tattered,

a dog with slattern ribs and no hope in its rheumy eyes, the smell

of garbage, shit, piss, and of course blood riding the cold breeze.

But in time, I saw them. One, then two, then three or four,

humans, that is, gradually assembling to face the day and whatever hell that meant.

I saw a teamster drive six mighty steeds down the street to deliver barrels of whatever,

I saw a copper standing vigilant, on duty however ineffectual, I saw a scatter of children,

full of energy and long and fast of leg, perhaps off to school or mischief,

I saw a mum or two, in a hansom carriage I saw a gentleman, maybe that was a Judy off the next block, maybe the small hunched gentleman a barrister or a barrister’s clerk,

a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, a tinker, a tailor, a beggarman, a thief.

None of them so much as acknowledged me.

And why should they? After all, I was one of them.