Jack The Ripper: Newly Discovered Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (4 page)

“Inductive reasoning is the process of drawing a conclusion from a set of observations—but this process only works if there is absolutely no scenario in which the premises you’ve proposed are true and the conclusion is still false. Inductive reasoning gives weight to probabilities but not certainties; however, it can still be a useful tool for explaining all angles of a situation, though it should not be your primary tool.

“Deductive reasoning—there is the key! It gives us something a bit more concrete and reliable with which to work. With deductive reasoning, A invariably leads to B.

“I have said it to other audiences before, but it bears repeating—deduction is reasoning backwards. Take the conclusion, and all the data at hand, and try to go back—step by step. Don’t theorize before you have all of the evidence—look at the conclusion without bias. Observe, but do not judge; keep your mind free of emotion, for it clouds your thoughts. 

“If you can notice even the smallest, most insignificant detail—you may realize that it is not so insignificant at all, and may lead to a groundbreaking discovery.

“In sum, deductive reasoning helps you eliminate everything but the truth. While this thought process takes time to develop, it will be of immense value to you—and even I was once as new to it as you are.”

Holmes stopped speaking abruptly and turned away to go about his day; he was thinking of the great man who had taught him the intricacies of logic: Edmond Dantes. The officers likewise returned to their duties, but Holmes’ impassioned advice would stay with them for the rest of their careers, and it improved the work of many a Scotland Yard detective. 

The streets of Whitechapel remained quiet for the next few days, and no new clues came to light. Everyone went about their daily routine of interviewing witnesses and comparing notes. The officers in Scotland Yard even thought the first letter was a hoax and that the murders had ended, but their hopes would soon be dashed. The precinct received a postcard in the mail. It read:

I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you’ll hear about Saucy Jacky’s work in the news tomorrow—double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn’t finish straight off. Ha not the time to get ears for police. Thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to.

Jack the Ripper again

The letter was posted and distributed. All of the officers were on the alert that they might find another murder victim at any time. Holmes
knew
there would be at least one more victim. He had to stay on his toes to see if the murderer planted any more clues that would lead to his capture. Holmes wondered to himself why the fiend was committing such crimes, and whether perhaps he had met the maniac before.

Holmes went back over to the morgue to ask the coroner’s assistant a few more questions. Donald was welcoming and friendly, and he led Holmes into a back room for privacy.

“Mr. Hamilton,” Holmes started. “We’ve met before—how good to see you again. How many people have been in to view the body?”

“Well, right off the top of my mind I cannot tell you, but I will have a look at the log,” Donald said. He left the room and returned a few moments with a leather-bound book.

“Let’s see. You, of course, Inspector Grant, Inspector Jones…”

“Here, let me look please.”

“Of course.”

Holmes noticed that a few of Annie’s friends had come and identified the body early on. Other than that, nobody else had viewed the victim other than those involved in the investigation.

“Thank you, Mr. Hamilton.”

“You’re welcome. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Not at this time—I merely wanted to see if any of the names jumped out at me as a potential murderer. If the Ripper could possibly get away with it, I think he would be amused at viewing the body of his victim so close to Scotland Yard, and yet walking away. And I must inquire, for the satisfaction of my own curiosity, how do you work around all of these dead people day in and day out?” Holmes asked.

“I guess you just get used to it. They are all people. These just don’t carry on a conversation,” Donald said, trying to lighten the moment.

“I do not believe I could do it,” Holmes answered him.

“Well, we are each suited for our jobs. You find the criminals to keep our streets safe, and I help prepare those who have left this earth before they go to their final resting place.”

“Yes, that is a good way to look at it,” Holmes said, and then he thanked the assistant again and walked back to his desk in the precinct.

Two questions whirled in his brain:
What had he missed? When was the next murder coming?
Holmes had a suspicion that the Ripper’s next act might be a double murder from the wording in the letter. He hoped he was wrong.

CHAPTER eight

Double Cut

Louis Diemshutz was a salesman of cheap jewelry. He was on his way home at about 1:00 A.M. in his horse-drawn cart. As the horse trotted into the alley connected to his back yard, the beast jolted to the left and almost turned over the cart.

“You silly horse,” Louis scolded. “What a mess you almost made!”

The man glanced over and noticed a bundle lying on the ground. Louis got down off the cart and lit a match as he leaned over for a better look. A puff of wind quickly cast him back into darkness, but he got a quick peek and noticed the figure was that of a woman. He actually thought it was his wife, who had the occasional habit of getting drunk and passing out wherever she was. He took the horse and cart on to the shed. After the horse was curried and fed, he walked back over to where he thought his wife was sound asleep. On the way, he saw his wife through the kitchen window. He went inside.

“There is a woman lying in our back yard, Molly. I thought it was you. Come with me to check on her,” Diemshutz said to his surprised wife.

They both walked out with candles and saw that the woman was not merely passed out—she was dead. Her throat was cut down to her spine, and blood pooled on the ground beneath her. The shaken couple went to their neighbor’s house and sent for the police.

Holmes was still awake, reading his notes, when a messenger knocked at his door and gave him directions to the new murder scene. He hurriedly dressed and caught a carriage to the destination, not knowing any details.

The scene was bustling with police by the time he arrived. Grant came up to Holmes and filled him in quickly on the situation. Dr. Llewellyn was there, bending down by the body. Holmes walked up to him and grabbed the man’s wrist before he could touch the dead woman.

“Wait,” Holmes said abruptly. “I suppose you won’t be the first one to touch the body?”

The coroner looked confused. “Hello, Inspector. No, both the man who found her and several policeman have probably had some contact with the victim by now—why do you ask?”

Holmes sighed—it was enough to drive a man to swear. He would never get useable fingerprints at this rate. “No matter, sir. I will speak to Inspector Grant about it later. Tell me, is there anything different about this victim, in your opinion?”

“Well, this one is a little strange. I do believe the murderer was interrupted before he was completely finished. The only mark on the body is her throat being cut from the left side. Only one cut…on the other victims there were two,” the coroner said. “There are no organs removed either. I think that when Diemshutz came into the yard with his cart, the culprit was still here and spooked the horse—Diemshutz said the horse almost overturned the cart. The murderer was probably hiding in the bushes. Had Diemshutz and his wife alerted the police at that moment, we may have found the fellow in the vicinity.”

“That would have been a great feat to accomplish. But as it is, he had opportunity enough to escape, as the witness put up his horse and fetched his wife first. That probably took a fair amount of time,” Holmes said thoughtfully.

Holmes searched the bushes to see if he could find any sign of where the killer had hidden. There were several places where the grass was tamped down, and Holmes knew the thickness of it had probably muffled the sound of footsteps retreating. The murderer could so easily have been seen if it had not been dark!
Drat! This could have been the end of it,
he thought.

Holmes caught an officer and had him go around and take the names of everyone at the scene and the neighbors for a list of witnesses. Holmes would go over the list at the precinct and arrange for the witnesses he needed to come in for an interview. He stayed alert for any item or clue that could have been associated with himself, in case the killer had left something to tie him to the crime. This time, though, it appeared The Ripper was in such a hurry that he did not have time to plant false evidence.

About the time the body was being loaded into the cart that would take it to the morgue, a ripple of disturbance and intense whispering swept through the crowd. Holmes noticed his friend Dr. Watson walking toward him at a brisk pace.

“What has happened?” Holmes asked him.

“There has been another murder in Mitre Square, London City.”

“What?” Holmes asked in surprise. “Another, so soon?”

“Are you finished here?” Dr. Watson asked.

“Yes, for the time being. They are taking the body now to the morgue. We will go there later, but now we must go to the new scene,” Holmes told Dr. Watson as he motioned to Inspector Grant and told him of his plans.

“I have brought my horse and carriage, so we can be on our way,” Dr. Watson told Holmes.

They arrived on scene about 2:30 A.M. The place was already full of police from London City. Holmes and Dr. Watson found out the woman had been dead for only half an hour. That meant the killer had come there straightaway and committed the murder—perhaps he had been frustrated at not being able to properly finish up the last one.

The victim was Catherine Eddowes, forty-three years of age. Jack the Ripper’s signature cut was there, through the throat to the spine, and her abdomen had been cut open. Part of her large intestine had been draped over her left shoulder and another piece had been cut and placed under her right arm as if for some sort of decoration. Her arms were outstretched and one leg bent. Her left kidney and part of her uterus had been removed. Something different had been done to this victim, though. Her face had cuts and bruises on it; her eyelids were cut through. There was no blood below the middle of the body, although an ungodly amount from the waist up. Her left earlobe had been cut off. There was no blood on the front of her clothes, but there were buttons scattered everywhere in the blood that surrounded her shoulders.

Holmes bent down as he saw something glinting through the blood; the item was caught in the glare of the gaslights. He picked it up with a handkerchief.  Nobody was around except Dr. Watson as he looked at the item. By jove! It was his cigar cutter, engraved with SH!

“But how?” Dr. Watson started.

“Shhhh,” Holmes said as he discreetly slipped the handkerchief into his coat pocket. Nobody was the wiser. Holmes broke out in a cold sweat—he had lost his cool, collected manner.

Someone came running up, saying they had found the woman’s apron on the street not far from the scene of the killing. It had something scrawled on it:

“The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.”

Holmes asked the lead detective for that district to have a witness list sent over to him when they had it, and the detective assured him they would. Then Holmes told the officers he was going to the morgue.

Once they were safely in the carriage, Holmes removed the cigar cutter from his pocket once more and held it in his hands, his mouth set in a straight line.

“I do think leaving the business card was just to get my attention,” Holmes said grimly. “And perhaps even to connect me to the crimes in Inspector Grant’s mind. This cigar cutter, though—it means the fellow has been in my house, and has been watching both Mrs. Parker and I to ensure he won’t get caught. If one more thing is found like this at the crime scene, I may find myself behind bars.”

Dr. Watson felt a flutter of panic, but kept his voice calm for his friend’s sake. “You have faced grave danger before, sir,” he said. “This time is no different—and no one could ever believe you to be a murderer! We will catch this monster before he strikes again, and you will be able to rest easy.”

“We must catch him,” said Holmes. “Who knows what he will leave at the next scene—and more frightening, who knows who will find it first.”

CHAPTER Nine

Brutality Rising

Upon arriving at the morgue, Holmes and Dr. Watson were met once again by Donald Hamilton.

“I didn’t expect to see you here so early, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Well, I haven’t been here long. John Brooks is the other assistant, and we work twelve-hour shifts and swing our hours sometimes. His daughter is getting married today, and I agreed to cover for him.”

“Well, it looks like you got stuck with the worst of it from these two murders. You will have another body coming fairly soon. They are almost done at the crime scene,” Holmes warned him.

“Yes, I’ve heard. I guess you will want to see Elizabeth Stride, the first victim. Sign the log and we will proceed. I have been collecting evidence and getting her ready for my boss to perform the autopsy. He may even have to hire additional help if this keeps on. We seem to have had a full house lately.”

Holmes liked Donald. Anyone who could keep his chin up in a place like this and maintain a pleasant demeanor even in the face of gruesome death was a special sort of man.

It did not take long to examine Elizabeth’s body. The deed had obviously not been finished, and there seemed to be no other clues. As for now, there was nothing else that could be done.

As Holmes and Dr. Watson were preparing to leave, the police delivered the body of the latest victim. Holmes asked the coroner to send him a report as soon as he could, and they took their leave. He would get to work on the partial witness list that he had and familiarize himself with the women’s histories.

Elizabeth, called Liz by her friends, was not known to be a full-time prostitute. She made money in a variety of other ways, including doing housework or sewing. She was also known to drink heavily and could get quite rowdy.

When she left the boarding house on the evening of her death, she had a little money from cleaning. Off into oblivion she went—which Holmes noted seemed to be a pattern with the victims. A drunk woman was less likely to be alert and would prove much easier to overcome than a woman in complete charge of her faculties.

The investigation also revealed that many people had seen Liz before her death. As Constable William Smith was walking his beat that night, he saw Liz talking to a man around 12:30 A.M. He said the man was about thirty years old, very short—about five foot five inches tall—and had dark features. He was dressed in a dark coat, with a deerstalker hat on. He had a package in his hands.

Another witness, Israel Schwartz, saw a man talking to a woman about 12:45 A.M. The man shoved the woman into the street and she cried out softly three times. Schwartz did not see that the woman was in any immediate danger, and, thinking it was only a domestic dispute, he walked on. He did, however, notice another man of about thirty-five years old and height around five feet eleven inches, who was standing and watching the woman while smoking a pipe. Schwartz also noticed that the other man called out to the man with the pipe.
Perhaps there is even a pair of killers
, Holmes thought.
It is something to consider.

William Marshall had been standing near the murder site about 11:45 P.M. He said that he had also seen Liz talking to a middle-aged man wearing what he called a “sailor” hat. The man looked to be about five feet six inches tall, was a little stout, and spoke like an educated man. It might not have been the murderer, since the conversation occurred almost an hour before the crime, but Holmes wouldn’t rule it out.

James Brown was another witness who had seen Liz talking to a man of about five feet seven inches in a dark, long overcoat, minutes before her death. He heard Liz tell the man “not tonight, some other night.”

These three witnesses had described someone who might have been the same man, Holmes thought, if you put all of their accounts together.

Holmes turned to the task of reading about and interviewing witnesses for Catherine’s murder.

Catherine, until she was twenty-one years old, lived with her aunt because her mother and father had died. She did not appear to be a prostitute like the others, but one could not be sure of this if times were tough—perhaps she had just recently turned to the streets to make a living.

Holmes discovered from police records that Catherine had spent the night before in the police station. Officers had found her in a drunken stupor, propped up against a fence. The officers put her in a cell to sober up. She was so intoxicated that she did not even know her own name.

She woke up and was released at 1:00 A.M. on September 30 and was last seen walking in the direction of Mitre Square at the same time the murderer would have been traveling to the same destination.

Holmes had a note that Joseph Lawende, a cigarette salesman, had seen Catherine and a man talking on the street about 1:35 A.M., just ten minutes before her murder. Lawende said the man looked to be about thirty years old and stood about five foot seven inches tall; he had a mustache, a fair complexion, and a more or less average build. He was dressed like a sailor with a gray jacket and a red handkerchief tied around his neck. Lawende had said Catherine seemed relaxed, and perhaps had been familiar with the man.

Holmes had not eaten any breakfast, so he went over to a table where food and coffee and tea had been set up for all to enjoy. He had already helped himself to a sausage and a steaming cup of tea when Inspector Grant walked up.

“We are going to release the letter and post card today,” Grant told Holmes. “The public has the right to know what we are up against so they can try to protect themselves. Perhaps if people see this is indeed a serial killer, they will be more cautious as they go about their lives.”

“I agree, sir.”

“Have you started to work on your witness lists yet?”

“Yes, but they are not complete. The remaining information should be brought in soon. I am looking over the coroner’s report, but it may not tell us any more than we already know.”

“Well, delegate your work. We are all in this together.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Holmes went back to his desk and found Dr. Watson waiting there for him, sipping a cup of tea.

“Hello, old friend,” Holmes said. “The case is turning out to be trickier—and more personal—than I’d like. We must put an end to these murders, if only to keep from getting wrapped up in them ourselves.”

The coroner’s report for Catherine had appeared on Holmes’ desk, and they read it slowly, trying to absorb the information fully and connect it to anything else they knew.

As the coroner had undressed and cleaned the body, a piece of the deceased’s ear had dropped from her clothes. This was something new. The body had even still been warm when it had arrived to the mortuary for the examination.

There had been many bruises on the body. Some had been old, but some were recent. The face was particularly mutilated, cut viciously. The left eyelid was severed almost all the way through. The nose was almost cut off. The cheeks had been cut and peeled up. The throat was cut across about seven inches. The liver had been cut as well. The larynx had been cut to the bone. The carotid artery had been cut, and Catherine had bled out fast. It seemed that the killer’s rage was growing with every murder—or perhaps he had been taking out his frustration on not being able to properly mutilate the body of Liz.

All of the cuts to Catherine’s body had been done after her death, and the perpetrator had used a very sharp knife, estimated to be six inches long. She had also been split from her vagina to the rectum. Considering the cuts, there would not have been that much blood to get on the murderer, as the attack had taken place from below the waist. The slashed throat would have prevented her from screaming, and it seemed to have occurred once she was already on the ground. There appeared to have been no struggle according to the officers who found the body, and there was no money on Catherine’s person.

Holmes kept reading and was shocked at the brutality of it all. However, the specific mutilations done to the body re-confirmed for him that the murderer must have had some sort of medical training.

“Why do you think this one was so brutal?” asked Dr. Watson.

“I’m a few steps ahead of you there, old friend,” answered Holmes. “I think it is because the murderer could not finish with the first victim to his satisfaction. Not much was done to her before he was interrupted. Of course, there was reference to a double homicide in the letter, so he had planned on two anyway.”

“Have you been able to interrogate many witnesses yet?”

“No, but I see here I have two lists and should get to work. I am glad you’re here to help me sort through this. The other detectives have been hard at work too, and have left me their notes.”

The first witness, George Clapp, lived in a house that was right next to where the murder occurred. He and his wife and a nurse for his wife were sleeping with their windows open that night and had heard nothing.

John Kelly, Liz’s suitor, was called in to speak with Holmes.

“Did you know the victim well?” asked Holmes.

“Yes sir. We lived together. She was a good woman although she liked to drink. She had told me the day before her murder that she was going to visit her daughter and would be back in the late afternoon,” Kelly told him. His face was pale with sorrow, and his shoulders trembled as he continued his story. “When she didn’t return to the boarding house I wasn’t very upset. I knew she had pawned some shoes of mine and was probably out drinking up the money. I heard on the street that a lady had been arrested for being drunk, and I thought that it might be her.”

“Did you check to see if it was Liz?”

“No, because I was too angry. I just went to bed assuming I would find her in the morning. I wish I had gone to the station now.”

There wasn’t much else Kelly could tell them and witnesses verified his alibi, so they let him go. Holmes sincerely doubted the true murderer would target someone he was involved with; it would bring him too close to authorities for comfort.