Текст книги "I, Ripper: A Novel"

Автор книги: Stephen Hunter

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Jeb’s Memoir

How much more settled could it be? That discovery lifted tonnage from my shoulders. It was clear at last. Now to action.

At exactly ten P.M. on the night of the full quarter-moon, the colonel emerged from his building, an immense pile of brick and morticed stone called Fenster Mansions, on Finsbury Street, and began that instantly recognizeable walk. I was on one side of Finsbury, the professor on the other, and at first it was easy to keep up and keep in contact with the banty little chap. You would know him in an instant; one wondered how he could pass anonymously on his missions. That walk was the walk of a fellow in full command of all faculties, a stout-hearted, unquenchable fellow, born heroic and determined to beat all schedules to his destinations, actual or metaphorical. I couldn’t get a good look at his face, for he wore his bowler jammed seriously low, almost to the brow line, and he hunched as he proceeded. But it was familiar, I suppose, from a hundred odd nightmares: the man in black, dowdy and anonymous, yet with purpose, the knife concealed, swift of hand and sure of cut. Many a time it had jerked me from sleep. And now: no dawdler he, no meandering fool, no drifting sprig on the current. He plowed ahead, our colonel, cock of the walk.

It was on Bishopsgate that the trouble began, for he had a shrewd way of disappearing into crowds, and being of limited stature, he went invisible or at least under flag of camouflage rather adroitly. At least three times I lost sight, had a cold spasm of fear icicle its way into my colon, cursed myself for stupidity, but then caught sight of him and hastened to reacquire enough proximity to observe and trail but not to give myself away.

As for being followed, he gave no sign of notice. It was not in him to go cautious and look about nervously. At the same time, he didn’t walk directly anywhere. At Bishopsgate, as he coursed through the City, he took a hard turn down Houndsditch, then down another crossing street, evading Mitre Square, where poor Kate had taken the knife, and headed straight to the guts of Whitechapel. It was as if he had a course already set; he knew where he was going, and it was something well prepared for. I thought of the professor’s profile of the man: As a scout and raider, he would be aided by familiarity with terrain, knowledge of police pattern, drift of crowd, density of horse traffic, availability of midnight thrush for the plucking, and having settled those details far in advance, now had no doubt as to destination, approach, and execution.

But if he had a plan—and he must have—it was not evident from his journey through and about Whitechapel on that frosty night, a clear one, with the silver arc of lunar glow above and the soft coal-gas-fired lamps below, and the bright spears into the street and awash the sidewalks from the pubs and beer shops, and the forest of shadows created by the locked-down costers’ stalls and the herds of anonymous citizens, Judys, Johns, walkers, the banal, the afraid, and the drear, who gathered and meandered thickly everywhere. It seemed he was driven to set foot on the pavement of all streets. The names flew by as he rushed along, and I could tell that my physical hardness was eroding, as a rock to wind and sea, and my breath came hard, and yet still they flashed by, it just went on and on. Underneath my layers, the heavy Howdah pistol was flopping against my ribs, bringing bruise, while its strap, around the other shoulder at the neck, weighed into the flesh unpleasantly. I was a disaster in brown suit!

The streets were crowded, the costers’ stalls on the big ones impeded vision and progress, a dip across the lane put a stream of horse traffic as further impediment, I felt the bump and jostle of others on the pavement, it was all too much. I first gave up on Professor Dare, as I could not keep track of both him and the colonel, and the times when I was merely guessing at the colonel’s direction and progress became longer and longer. At least twice, as I sank into despair at my failure, I happened to catch a glimpse of him a block farther along or farther back, and so I was off again. I was huffing, sweating, my knees trembling, most of the world gone to fizz and spark in my vision, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I lost him. Another girl would die, nothing could be done. I guessed he did this on all his forays, against the remote possibility that he had been found out. It was a professional’s edge: Assume you are known and act accordingly, that’s the safe track. Never assume you are unknown and expect success without effort or caution.

The break finally came sometime after eleven. It was the fourth time I had lost contact with him, and when I made a rush across New Road just above Commercial, almost getting trampled in the process, I looked at where I expected him to be and he was not there. I guessed where he’d gone, and when I got there, he was not there. I looked up, down, east, west, south, and north, I changed vantage points, I achieved some height by climbing steps to a stoop, I dashed down a little street, but still: He was gone. I looked for the professor. I could not see him, either.

I cannot tell you what a fool, a failure, I felt. The whole slough of despond emptied its contents upon my head, soaking me in woe. I sat there, feeling the chill as my body temperature dropped in the lack of effort, I sucked for oxygen, having gone without, I yeaned for a sip of water to quench the Arabia that lay behind my lips, I heard the drumming of my heart, I felt the jostle and thud of other passengers in the night as they voyaged by me on the sidewalk, and I faced the reality that he was gone and I had nothing.

I felt the heaviness of the Howdah gun under my left shoulder and felt the strap cutting into my right shoulder. I pulled my slouch hat lower, as if to protect the sweaty nape of my neck from a breeze that evinced itself with aggression, and of all things, I could hear Mother saying, “George, I told you you’d never amount to a thing. Now, be a good fellow, put this London business behind you and return to the export-import business in Dublin, marry a nice Protestant girl, and settle down. Leave the glory to Lucy.” Perhaps I had a moment of Jack madness then, because I realized what pleasure it would be to smash the woman in the face with a balled fist.

However, I quickly put down that reverie and resolved to action. I pulled myself ahead through the crowd and against the aches, pains, agonies of doubt, and self-disparagement, and in time, came to Whitechapel where it intersected with New, turned up it, and headed toward the Aldgate East Station, where Professor Dare and I had agreed to meet at eleven-thirty P.M. if we lost contact with each other or the colonel.

Along the route, there was no sign of either man. I found a pub, seeing that I had more time to kill, and ordered a bottle of ginger beer to break up the ick that had coagulated in my throat. My plan, such as it was, was to reconstitute on the fuel of the ginger concoction, then return to the streets and circle on the hope that I might encounter one or the other. My secret dread was that poor Dare would interrupt the colonel carving, attempt to intercede, and for his trouble be carved himself. He hadn’t the gun that was so necessary to control the transaction.

Circle I did without incident, becoming random watcher as opposed to aggressive follower. I dipped into many black alleys and passageways, hoping to encounter Jack on the job, but instead came across banal business relations between the odd John and Judy and, feeling as if I had breached another’s privacy, departed forthwith. None of the rutters ever noticed me, thank heavens.

At last it was nearly eleven-thirty P.M., and the traffic had somewhat lessened. Though Judys could be seen about, and Johns as well, it was clear that even the randiest of the randy had either had his jizz festival or given up for the night. The chill had to do with this, for no man wants his backside exposed to the cruelties of the north wind; besides, it does much to convince a chuzz to remain at attention. So there I was, ambling disconsolately toward Aldgate East Station, set for rendezvous and redeployment elsewhere, when I saw him.

It was the walk, that bounding, leaping strut, still going full blast as if his internal engine were full of blazing coal, and looking neither left or right, not bothering to check behind, he took a turn into Aldgate East Station, that low structure with mansard roof and the affected symmetry to the architecture of an elegant country house. It took itself all too seriously; after all, it was merely a shed for boarding carts, not the royal court of the Sun King. But more Versailles than shed, it wore its sign, METROPOLITAN RAILWAY, rather proudly above the portico, which was overdecorated in the French Empire way, because it could be done, not because it had to be done.

I paused. I grabbed my pocket watch and saw that it was on to eleven by twenty-eight after and the night’s last train was due in two minutes. Was he dipping in to meet someone? It made no sense. No Judy would be arriving for duty by that last train, the station platform would be deserted, what could the man want except, perchance, to use the loo? I hesitated, and then my eyes lit on a moving figure as it dashed across Whitechapel Road, unimpeded because the horsedrawn traffic had become so light, and recognized by lope, style, fashion, grace, and intent Professor Dare, his tweed cloak afurl on the breeze, his slouch hat low and tight against that same breeze. He had triumphed! He had stayed on the job while poor Jeb had not been up to task! Now, that, I thought, was a hero.

He dipped into the station, unarmed, and I knew that I must get there fast to provide support and use the gun if necessary.

It took me under a minute to get to the station, and it was deserted. I raced to the bank of ticket windows and found them all closed, because there were no outgoing trains requiring tickets, and the man at the turnstile had departed, for there were, of the same reasons, no tickets to be punched. I negotiated the blockage, climbing gamely over with far less grace than ragged hurry, got to the other side, and plunged down some stairs.

Around me, gigantic steel beams buttressed the complexities of the best brick craft in the history of mankind, challenging the ages to destroy them and aware that they would win that challenge. I felt absorbed by the hush of the place and its jags of light and shadow where electrification, rare in the East End, sent a latticework of illumination across my view.

The stairs yielded to the ironwork bridge that spanned the tracks beneath, and I raced down it, amid the intricacy of strut work held stout by fist-sized rivets and baked under bright black paint. It was like being swallowed by the Industrial Revolution itself, and I could hear my footsteps echoing against the iron grid of the flooring. Echoes were everywhere, for I had entered a cavernous space, more cathedral than station, overtopped with a vault of pane glass now dark for lack of sun to penetrate it from above, sustained by yet more latticed girders, all of it heavy with the smell of combustion, for the engines ate coal like hungry monsters, belched smoke and soot and grit, which had already turned the shining structure ancient in effect, with smears of carbon accumulating on glass and polished tile far faster than the architects had calculated. I came to a vast stairway and raced down the glowing marble, to be deposited on an endless platform two feet above the tracks. It was a vast and empty space, unpopulated except by the wild disarray of shadow, and far away, at the end of the platform at the exact entrance to the tunnel through which fled or raced the mighty trains, were the two men.

It was as if they were in primitive combat, like two ancient priests set to battle for control of the cult and policy for the future: the man of science and rationality and the man of pure rage and gift for action, until he was nothing but action. Man of future, man of past. From whence we came against whence we were going. Were they about to fight? Good Christ, what would such an outcome be, the colonel’s skill and evident muscularity matched against the larger size of the other man? The colonel would have tricks, the professor size and weight. The colonel would be fast and mean, but the professor would have righteousness on his side, and although God clearly did not exist, I felt that if He did, He would step in on the side of the professor. If He did not, I would come to the professor’s aid with my trusty double-barrel, which I withdrew from its holster and positioned in my hands so that my thumb abutted both hammers and could quickly adjust them to active condition. I would in my small way speak for civilization, justice, the powerless and truly unmourned unfortunates, and all the high moral noble causes that man has fought for. That is, assuming I remembered to cock the damned thing!

I raced toward the combatants, who, I could see, were circling each other, wily antagonists caught up in the drama of whether it was best to spring or counter-spring. At that point the colonel chose a policy. It was the policy of the spring.

Like a ram, he built off the power of his thighs a lunge that carried him hard against the professor, finding that man ill prepared to meet such a charge. The professor yielded, falling backward and almost immediately setting himself, though not with much in the way of confidence, and they butted together, came apart on impact, closed again, grappled, arms flailing, feet shuffling, leverage sought, strength avoided, both at full strength bent hellaciously against the other. It was not boxing, which I had seen and admired for its science. There was no science, only strength pitted against strength, wit against wit, and in a second, the colonel used some trick to go under and around the larger man and bring him with a thud to earth. The professor took the fall with grace, rolled, and came up to face his antagonist, who had not found footing enough to pursue advantage, and the two crashed together again, all limbs flailing, hands snapping, gouging, each trying to grab something. They were too close, I saw, to unlimber classic punches, so it was all about strength of grip and the clever slipperiness of escape.

It was also horrible. Each face was gnashed in fury, and each had bared fangs, and each set of eyes was clenched into slits behind which each gauged the other, looking for weakness. I got there and heard “You insane bastard, you monster!” from the professor as he leaped and closed on the smaller man, while the colonel shimmied loose and found freedom to throw a hard punch in the midriff, which straightened the professor but did not stop him from landing his own blow flush on the man’s ear, banging the head backward.

They were so caught in their crazed intensity that they had not even recognized my presence. I flew at them, turning at the last second to deliver a cross-body impact with my shoulder and knock them both back and apart. The colonel slipped but was nimble enough to regain his footing.

I leveled the pistol at him. “Hold, sir, by God, or I’ll dispatch.”

“He has an ally!” screamed the colonel to God. “Mad but with an ally.”

“Thank God, Jeb,” said the professor.

“Sir, draw away so that you are not covered by the gun,” I said, and then the colonel moved against me so fast it was a blur, and in a second I felt the gun yanked hard from my hands. He pivoted to thrust me between himself and the professor, who lurched at me, and for just a second the three of us were in some insane Laocoön of struggle and tangle, the gun the serpent with which and for which we all struggled, and there was then a moment when the colonel managed his trick and stepped back, leveling it, screaming, “Now, by God, you madmen, back and desist or I shall unleash the volley!” and as he turned to rotate the gun to cover the professor, he was the fraction of a second late, and the professor gave him a mighty two-handed shove, and back he went to precipice and over, where he hit with a thud on the tracks, the gun flying away.

I meant to regain it, but in that exact second the colonel, not three feet from and two feet beneath me, was illuminated in the glare of a locomotive’s lamp, and in the next fraction of a second—no watch existed fine enough to measure the speed at which all this transpired—he was gone and the raging engine whizzed by us in its own penumbra of blurred speed, a great burgundy and bronze beast, gleaming and glowing, all parts grinding, syncopating pistons, spraying contrails of steam and spark and sulfurous fume from several sources. It was still a hundred yards of platform from full halt.

If the colonel screamed as fate took him, I do not know; I heard nothing, so loud was the roar of the engine.

And that fast, it was over.

I stood, mind slow to calculate or react, rooted in abject paralysis, gibbering for air and words, finding neither, aware I had the trembles bad, and felt the sweat literally gushing from my body. When I returned to sentience, it was as if nothing had happened. I was standing next to the professor on the platform, the train was at full halt, bringing a sense of light and civilization to the emptiness, a few last passengers were ambling off, hurrying to get to bread, bed, or drink. No alarm had been raised, no crisis seemed to have been unleashed, no whistles, no Bobbies, no rush of witnesses, no panicked crowds.

“He’s gone,” the professor said.

I had no words.

“He went down too close to the engine for the engineer to see him, and it’s too much machine for a tremor to be felt. They’ll find him in the morning. Come on, now, let’s depart.”

“Should we—”

“No,” said the professor. “If it becomes known now, it’s out of our control, and then it’s anybody’s story. Besides, let the little bastard have his half-column in the Times, and everybody will read it as a suicide, and there’ll be a week of ‘Poor old Woodruff, VC and all.’ Then we can do the right proper job of telling the city the story of Jack and what we wrought and why no more gals will be sliced apart, and we will get what is coming to us.”

It made sense then. It makes sense even now. Holmes always gets his man.

“Let’s hence,” he said, bending to secure the butcher knife that lay afoot.

And we went out of the station into the cool December air.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Jeb’s Memoir

After the turmoil of the night, I didn’t think I’d ever sleep again. But I did, dreamless and dark, if anything with the feeling of simple gliding through the night sky. Still, my mind was so provoked, it awoke me within a few hours, so I took a bath, gobbled something of breakfast, happily ignored Mother who happily ignored me, and took a hansom by ten A.M. for the professor’s.

We had said nothing on the way back from the station, as if the ordeal had drained us of all cogency. At that point, I felt too worn down to attempt to make sense of plans or consider ramifications. I considered the same of the professor. He himself answered his door and led me to his study, where he’d been having morning coffee. He offered me the same, but I was too agitated to settle down to civilized ritual. My poor mind was aflutter with doubt. “I turn to you for insight. It would help me so much in the construction of the story. What was driving him? How did his mind work, that it could be so heroic in the one quarter and so malevolent in the other? What was his motive?”

“I have puzzled myself. It was something Beneath, I think. Remember how I believe that there’s always a Beneath to a written piece? Clearly such a phenomenon springs from the fact that the mind itself has a Beneath, which we may not feel, acknowledge, understand, but which guides us.”

The colonel, the professor said, never really left Afghanistan. He was forever in the war. “Give the man credit. He understood that he was damaged, he understood that he was dangerous, and perhaps more heroic than the action that earned him his VC was his struggle against the demons that had infiltrated his Beneath. He tried to adjust, he tried to discipline himself from his impulses by concentrating on his Pashto dictionary, or if his dreams, anguish, memories, physical pain got really bad, by smoking the opium. But it was no use. He lost in the end.”

I was astonished how empathetic Professor Dare was in regard to a man who had within the past twelve hours come within a hair of murdering him. But such, I felt, was the greatness of the man. Under his sarcastic exterior, his own Beneath was compassionate and humane.

“He was haunted by the screams of young soldiers gutted in the night by Afghan women in the retreat from Maiwand, and he had to bring surcease to it. He had to make the screaming stop. Vengeance, even symbolic, was his final recourse. He could not deny it. So he went out on his own missions and did to them what they had done to his men. It was a narcotic. It took more and more violence to satisfy him. We cannot really blame him; he is, after all, us. He is the consequence of empire.”

“Yes,” I said, “that I understand.”

“Thus, motive is not a meaningful term here: impulse, undeniable desire, total and compelling need, those terms are more realistic.”

“He was, then, Jekyll and Hyde?”

“I think Louis Stevenson simplified by making each unaware of the other’s presence. No, no, it’s a matter of integration, merger, that somehow the Beneath takes over and manipulates the sentient. The Beneath, I believe, is like the iceberg, the seven tenths that lurks beneath the water. It is therefore the more powerful, the more masterful, the more brilliant.”

“I suppose I see,” I said. “I hope I can make the world see.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“Then I’m off to the Sholes machine, and I will—”

“Now hold for a second,” he said. “I do have, since you have convinced me that this is the course you mean to pursue, a suggestion.”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

“This is a precipitous time for your enterprise, and I wonder if you are aware of that fact.”

“I am aware that the public is desperate for an end to the menace and terror of Jack,” I said.

“Not exactly. As of December of last year and more so since June of this year, a great many members of the public, particularly people of our sort, who matter and determine the course of our nation’s mental drift, have come to believe in the moral and intellectual authority of the amateur detective. As a figure, he is enlarging in the public imagination, even while that of the professional police detective has diminished. You yourself, to judge by your comments, are in his thrall. The horror of Jack and the utter failure of Warren’s coppers to halt or solve it has perhaps multiplied this condition. The people want a heroic detective to solve it. In their bosom, they yearn for a man to emerge who has insights, understandings, analytical and deductive powers, forensic attributes, a knowledge of darkness and its methods, and the will and righteous energy to project such on the malefactor while protecting the public. The public yearns for Sherlock Holmes.”

“Of course,” I said. “I had admired the creation. I see him and Watson in us, I must admit.”

“I have at last read A Study in Scarlet, in the Ward Lock edition. It seems to have entered that zone of private but vast awareness. Because Conan Doyle, an opthalmalogist, as I understand it, created the ideal detective. Sherlock Holmes: a man of science, a man of deduction paramount and refined, a man of calm, overall a man of complete rationality who sees what others have missed and is able to put facts in their proper order and context.”

“Exactly,” I said, quite pleased that the living Sherlock Holmes had validated my insight.

“The structure is also interesting. He himself does not narrate. He is, rather, observed by a junior partner, a fellow of keen observation as well as astute literary powers. This would be Watson, an MD actually, recently retired from military service. Holmes solves the case, Watson tells the tale.”

“You are suggesting—”

“What I am suggesting is that before you write your story, you reread Conan Doyle’s. In that way you will learn how someone has done it masterfully, the rhythms between the narrator and the hero, the careful placement of clues, the cycle of interpretation and revelation, all reported in oak-solid, dead-lucid English prose. That is, read A Study in Scarlet again and then write your story in the penumbra of its influence. Thus will you prosper. Thus will you do justice not only to Dare and Jeb but to Polly, Annie, Long Liz, Kate, and poor Mary Jane, and in a way, even to poor Colonel Woodruff, God rest his tormented soul.”

“Excellent advice,” I said. “I shall forthwith. We must publish the day after the funeral, even if they have not found the body. It is imperative that we name the colonel, so that the police may open his rooms and there, no doubt, find Annie’s rings, perhaps a knife, perhaps some pickled bits of Judy, some bloody rags, all signs of his perfidy, making our case air-tight.”

I stopped at Mudie’s on New Oxford and bought the Ward Lock & Company edition of A Study in Scarlet.

And so it was that afternoon that I reintroduced Mr. Holmes and his amanuensis, Dr. Watson, to my life. It was a cracking good read. Conan Doyle wrote clearly and directly, without affectation or ruse. Moreover, he had a gift for vigorous narrative that perhaps approached Louis Stevenson’s or Dickens’s even at this early stage of his career. I roared through the thing a second time, transfigured and pleased to be in the company of two such interesting gentlemen. While I saw a lot of Holmes in Dare, however, I saw very little of Watson in myself, except by structure of the story. Where Watson was wise and well salted, I was impetuous, ambitious, perhaps too brilliant to do anybody any good as an assistant, having a need for my own way and the prime spotlight. Knowing that, I told myself, would be very fine guidance for the long article I was about to write, for I would be able to control my love of self enough to let the true hero, Professor Dare, have center stage. It would benefit not only him but me as well.

When I was finished, I found myself exulted. I saw exactly how the professor thought the book would excite me to my best effort, as it was sure to do—I was so filled with energy, I was ready to buckle down right then and there!—but I had to admit there was more to Holmes than met the eye. Conan Doyle, as seen through the behavior of Mr. Holmes, was clearly a wise man and had thought at length about darknesses of the heart and the tricks to which so constructed people will go to achieve their own ends, and the responsibility of he who investigates to see the truth and not the illusion created. “There’s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colorless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.” That was indeed what our real-life Holmes and Watson had done in re: Jack, was it not? That was what Professor Dare and Reporter Shaw had done, was it not? We had skillfully understood what Jack’s acts inferred of him as to experience, type of mind, and skills available, and using them as our guideline, we had uncovered a pool of such men and tested our thesis to the point where we had found the man with knife in hand—and stopped him by the intervention of good fortune. Subsequent information would only prove our point. It was a triumph of cool rationality over clumsy attempts at mantrapping, the only thing the police departments could manage.

I was most furiously proud of one thing. It was Holmes’s own description of method, and I saw how brilliantly we—the professor, that is—had put it to work. “Before turning to those moral and mental aspects which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering the more elemental problems.”

And what would the most elementary aspect of the case be?

What made Jack Jack?

It was not that he killed, as many have, and will, kill. That is the sad part of human nature. That was the scarlet thread. No, it was that he did so silently, efficiently, and then got away.

That was the elemental essence. He got away. How did he get away? Well, the professor had many ideas, all pertinent: He planned well, he had superb night vision, he had experience in night work and knew just how much moon he needed to give him advantage, he reconnoitered his sites, he was slight, so he could get out of tight spots as in Dutfield’s Yard, he was—

That was it. His slightness was key to the whole thing, and the professor had foreseen that, applied it to the case, and unlocked it. It was clear how Colonel Woodruff had used his slightness.

One thing lay ahead. I had to go to Dutfield’s Yard. I had not seen it, having spent that night first in Mitre Square, for the second of the “double events,” being the end of poor Kate Eddowes, and then on Goulston Street, where the dyslexic “Juwes” clue had been left. I must get to Dutfield’s, I thought, and have a look around and understand this aspect of the elemental.

I awoke merrily, had a nice breakfast and even a half-decent chat with Mother, who was all alight—knowing nothing of my triumph—because Lucy would sing a small role in La Traviata at the great Paris Opera House. She was beginning to make her way in the professional world.

I think that breakfast was the peak of glory for me. I remember thinking, Oh, but Mother, if you only know what your dim son, the failure, the disappointment, the bearer and inheritor of his drunken father’s dreams, has been up to and what glories await him.

It was brisk out, and I decided to walk. I had not gotten far when I came upon a crippled old gent by the wayside, his mangled leg affecting his whole progress, sending tremors through him, and suddenly he seemed to stumble, and I reached magnanimously to help him. He pivoted not to accept aid but to ram a Webley revolver into my guts.