Jack The Ripper: Newly Discovered Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (9 page)

CHAPTER nineteen

Intuition

As the sun began to set, Grant told Holmes they would have to put off the nights’ surveillance due to unforeseen circumstances. He and the other officers would be working on another case. It appeared there was a lull in the murders, and other crimes on the London streets demanded attention.

Holmes was pleased with this turn of events, as he was eager to carry out the investigation on his own. He quickly decided that he and Dr. Watson, as well as Julie, would still visit the bar that night; Holmes wanted to observe the patrons and their habits.

Holmes left Scotland Yard and paid a call upon Julie.  She was in, and answered the door herself—her humble home was a far cry from the orderly, upper-class address of Baker Street.

“Detective Holmes,” she said with real pleasure in her voice—she liked the man, despite his many awkward quirks. “Will we still be trying to catch the Ripper tonight, or have you come with other plans?”

“Inspector Grant and the officers cannot join us tonight,” Holmes said. “But Dr. Watson and I would still like to accompany you to Whitechapel—I assure you that we will not leave you unprotected.”

“Of course. Anything I can do to catch this beast I will do,” she told him.

“We won’t be far from you, as I have said, so you will be safe. I have a notion that this might be the night,” he said. “I want you to know how much I appreciate your help.”

“And I yours. Please, come in—can I offer you anything?”

Holmes knew it was untoward to see Julie without a chaperone present—such things would start a torrent of gossip in proper society—but in Julie’s neighborhood it was unlikely anyone would raise an eyebrow. He gladly accepted, and they sat in her small parlor and discussed the case.

“It’s time for him to kill again isn’t it?” Julie asked.

“Yes. This is Saturday night. It seems he only kills on the weekends, or so far anyway. Inspector Grant believes he is in a lull, or has moved on—but I have an intuition this is not the case. We will all have to be on our toes tonight.”

“I certainly will,” Julie laughed, a touch of cynicism in her tone. “Otherwise it’s my head.”

Holmes knew he needed to go talk to Dr. Watson, so he bid Julie farewell and left.

When Holmes arrived at his friend’s house, he was happy to see there was a late lunch awaiting him. They sat down at the table and ate ham sandwiches with a mug of ale.

“So, we will be on our own tonight?” Dr. Watson asked.

“Yes, my friend. I hope that is alright with you.”

“Quite so. We’ve always worked best alone. I do believe you know something you are not telling me yet. Am I right?”

“Well, let’s just say I think I have a lead on the subject—as I have told you before.”

“And I know you well enough to realize you will tell me nothing else, to preserve your objectivity. I know by now how you work, and I will do whatever you need me to do. We have to stick close to Julie.”

The two men went over the suspect list. Dr. Watson knew the Ripper was on that list. Of course, there is always room for mistake, so they took each person seriously and went over the facts carefully.

“I still suspect there might be someone not on the list. I keep thinking Jack has a partner—an accomplice,” Holmes said.

“That could be correct. We seem to have different descriptions along the way of what he looks like. Maybe one is luring the women to the real Ripper,” Dr. Watson mused.

“Yes, that is a possibility. If there is an accomplice, Jack the Ripper could be anyone—perhaps no one has even set eyes on the fellow leading up to the crime. But if we can catch the accomplice, he might lead us to the bigger prize.”

“Having an accomplice would also make easier the task of framing you,” said Dr. Watson. “If more murders occur, it is only a matter of time before you are linked to one; and you will have only Mrs. Parker as an alibi.”

“That worries me,” Holmes admitted. “Mrs. Parker does not pay much attention to my comings and goings—she knows I cherish my privacy. That leads me back again to my theory of the secret society, one that opposes the Sovereign Order of the Count of Monte Cristo. It would be far easier for them to find a patsy to pin the crimes on me than it would be for an ordinary serial killer.”

“The Sovereign Order of Monte Cristo is powerful, though, my friend. Can’t its members do something to help?”

“I have been hesitant to draw my old friend Dantes into this,” answered Holmes. “He is a busy man with worries of his own. If the situation worsens and I am indeed linked to the crimes, I will not hesitate to reach out to him—but I still think we are close enough to capturing the Ripper that it won’t be necessary.”

“I shudder to think that any group of intelligent men—even those with reason to hate the Sovereign Order—would use innocent women as pawns against their enemies.”

“I do as well, Watson. No civilized man would take such action. But then again, enemies of the Order may not have anything to do with this. Jack the Ripper might well be only one man, moved to do his horrible acts by inner conflict. We will just have to see how things play out.”

CHAPTER twenty

Revelations

The man knew he had to go out that night. He readied himself and ran over in his mind what sort of woman he wanted to find. His blood pounded hotly in his veins, his heart beating faster with excitement. That killer instinct would not stop. He got such a thrill out of what he had been doing. Nobody was the wiser, and for all he knew, even though he might have been on Scotland Yard’s suspect list, he wasn’t a very viable one. He was smarter than that dumb detective, Holmes—otherwise Holmes would have caught him by now.

He stared at his somewhat stocky physique in the mirror—though often he lived on the streets, he now had enough money from his benefactors to rent a room whenever he wanted; he had also purchased some fine clothes. Though he was only of medium height, women seemed to find him attractive, even when he acted like an everyday bloke with no polish or education. The Ripper liked playacting. In his mind, all a woman really cared about was where her next dollar was coming from. Of course, many men merely wanted their manly urges satisfied, and whores were there for the taking. They were despicable cows doing anything for precious coin, and most of them were drunkards. If he was forced to admit it, most of them were harmless. This didn’t matter to the Ripper.

Their insides were all the same. That he knew for sure. It was such a treat to get to see them from the inside out. Who would suspect him? What a thrill it gave him to feel their blood on his hands and the touch of innards sliding through his fingers—it was poetic, in a way. He didn’t have sex with them. That did not interest him at all—only what they were and how they used their power over men. That’s what mattered.

He must hurry and get ready. It was almost midnight. He had to make his appearance tonight, or those who now funded his lifestyle would be most displeased with him.

Out of the door he walked.

Julie was sitting at her place at the bar, attired in a black gown. She had arranged her hair in tumbling curls, atop which she had pinned a red and black hat. Multiple men approached her, offering a drink or something more, but she brushed them off—none of them fit the description of the man for whom she waited.

Holmes sat at a back corner table in disguise, while Dr. Watson lounged at the other end of the bar. They would not leave Julie unattended. Holmes had noticed three of the men on his suspect list in the bar that night. None of them had approached Julie, and all had left the bar alone. He was pretty sure none of them was the man he was looking for. Still…the night was young. Holmes remained hopeful.

Around 12:30 A.M. a short, stocky man, sharply dressed, walked in and took a place at the bar. He had been sitting for about half an hour when he looked over at Julie and nodded. She nodded back—he fit the description perfectly. Holmes and Dr. Watson watched him carefully, their bodies relaxed but their eyes bright and alert. This could be the one—Holmes was certain the man was one of the suspects on the list, though he couldn’t be entirely sure in the dark bar.

The man eventually moved to a vacant stool next to Julie. They chatted for a while, Julie giggling and acting intoxicated. The man appeared to be entranced by her flirtatious behavior. He leaned over to whisper in her ear, and then steered her toward the door.

Julie’s eyes searched for Holmes as she went with the man, but Holmes had already slipped outside. He had left as soon as the man started to pay his tab.

Julie and the stranger walked out onto the cobblestoned street, their heads inclined toward one another. Julie noticed that although the man’s tone was relaxed, his body was tense—she sensed he was nervous. The street was lined with drunks and women of the night. Some of the prostitutes leaned in alcoves, quietly talking to men.

As Julie and her would-be suitor walked toward the end of the street, she was relieved to have spotted Holmes. Dr. Watson would not be far behind.

“What do you charge for a night of your companionship?” the man whispered in her ear.

“Well, it depends on what you want,” Julie said, deliberately slurring her words a little. “I have to pay my bills, ya know—and if you haven’t noticed, I am a beautiful woman. We don’t come cheap.”

“Let’s walk down this alleyway here and discuss it.”

“Whatever you say, darling,” Julie said as she let herself be led down the dark street. “As long as you’ve got the coin to keep me, I’m yours.”

They walked a ways down the alley, until the narrow passage expanded into a wider road. There were others in the vicinity, but none too close. The man guided Julie off of the path and into a dark corner of the street. All at once, he pulled up her skirts over her head and pushed. She fell at once to the ground and the glint of the knife shone in the moonlight.

“Stop!”

The man froze, his body tensed for flight.

“I said stop! And turn around.”

The man slowly turned to face Holmes, who was pointing a pistol at him. Julie scrambled up and ran behind Holmes for protection.

“Well, we finally meet,” the man said. “What took you so long, Inspector?”

“I had a feeling it was you, and I even think I know why you sought to frame me. You were on my list, I hope you know. I would have caught you in the end, even without tonight’s subterfuge.”

“I must respectfully disagree—I wasn’t so sure you would catch me. Though now that you have, I must say I’ve had more fun than I imagined. This has been quite the sport for me.”

The man was Francis Thompson, a poet and a writer. Exactly as Holmes had thought—though at first he had had trouble believing that a sensitive, intelligent man could commit such atrocities.

“It won’t be so easy as you think to bring me to justice, however.”

“Whatever do you mean? I have caught you red-handed—and I have a pistol, while you have only that knife. I think we both know who has the advantage here.”

“Turn around,” snapped another voice from behind Holmes.

As he turned, Holmes saw his friend, the coroner’s assistant Donald Hamilton, pointing a gun at him.

“Well, my friend. You quite surprise me, although I had a strange feeling about you. I suppose you are the one who left my personal effects at the murders. It was so easy for you to get to my desk, wasn’t it? And I suppose into my home at well.” Holmes waited for an answer.

“Yes, it was very easy. Almost laughably so.”

“Why are you helping this lunatic?”

“It all happened quite innocently. I nearly caught him one night, and he needed a lookout. I couldn’t turn down what he offered—and I was in the perfect position to help him. The pay has certainly been good.”

Jack, or rather Francis, cleared his throat.

“Put down the pistol, Holmes. It appears the world’s greatest detective has been outsmarted. Now, you will watch me punish this girl for your hubris—and then I will disappear. You will have it on your head, and I daresay the police may even begin to suspect you. Especially when I kill again, and leave something of yours on the body. I’m sure you received the little present I left on your desk—and you know I have other belongings of yours, as well. How careless of you to drop personal effects at the murder sites! I would never be so foolish.” Francis laughed, an edge of mania in his voice.

Holmes did as he was told. The darkness enveloped them as Francis strode over and grabbed Julie by the arm to pull her back to him. At that exact moment, an arm came out of the darkness and snaked around Donald’s neck. A loud crack sounded and Donald fell to the ground.

Holmes, Julie, and Francis turned to see what had happened. A smile crept over Holmes’ face...

CHAPTER twenty-one

Dealing with the Devil

Dr. Watson stood behind where Donald had fallen. He had been in the military for many years and knew how to cleanly and efficiently snap a man’s neck—without mess and without noise, just instant death. Though he regretted having another life on his hands, it had been the only way to save Holmes and Julie.

Holmes pointed the pistol at Francis once more. “Drop your knife and let Julie go,” he commanded. Julie, shaking with fear, ran to Dr. Watson’s side, keeping her eyes steadily away from Donald’s body on the ground.

“Are you going to kill me?” said Francis, a coward now that his life was at stake.

“I still could,” answered Dr. Watson. “But I know that my old friend has some questions he must ask you first.”

Holmes nodded. “I suspect that your motivations are not merely the love of the kill—if my intuition serves me right, I would say you were sent by the Illuminati to destroy me because of my affiliation to the Sovereign Order of Monte Cristo. That is why you had Donald plant evidence linking me to the murders. Tell me it isn’t so.”

“Yes, you are correct. Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. My benefactors paid me well, and I must say that with each murder I felt my creative powers growing. It was almost as if I’d been singled out by God—he gave me the key to unlock my gift. You should see how inspired I am after I kill—I write for hours! A man named Aaron Kosminksi approached me after my first murder—he said he was with the Illuminati, and he thought we could have a mutually beneficial partnership. Just how the Illuminati figured out the first murder was mine I will never know—but Kosminksi offered me a handsome sum to begin leaving clues that pointed to you. It made no difference to me whether or not you were caught—and I must say I grew to enjoy it. Murder is a delicious thrill—as perhaps your dangerous Dr. Watson knows.”

“There is a difference between slaughtering the innocent and protecting the ones we love,” interrupted Dr. Watson stiffly. “We are not the same.”

“Perhaps—perhaps. Tell me, though—how did you figure out the killer was me? There must have been more obvious suspects to investigate.”

“Once I began thinking that the Illuminati was behind not the murders themselves, but rather was behind my personal effects being left at the murders, I started to look at the situation quite differently,” Holmes explained. “I asked myself if there was some connection between the murders besides the mutilation, but it wasn’t until my housekeeper mentioned lighting a candle to St. Raymond for her daughter that I began to piece it together. You see, her daughter is with child and she lit the candle to pray for her daughter’s continued health; when I asked her what day she had done so, she told me August 31. The feast day of St. Raymond fell on the day of the first murder—and St. Raymond is also the patron saint of innocence. How ironic, to murder a prostitute on that day!”

A smile began to spread across Francis’ face.

Holmes continued, “I then researched other saint days, and I realized that the other murders fell on symbolic days as well—Annie’s murder was committed on the feast day of the patron saint of butchers, while Liz and Catherine were killed on the feast day for the patron saint of doctors. More damningly, each body was left in a place that would once have been considered a place of sanctuary—land surrounding a chapel that would provide safe haven for the accused.”

Dr. Watson seemed to have forgotten where he was—he was listening to Holmes intently, fascinated. “And how on earth did you connect this to the Illuminati?” Dr. Watson asked.

“The Illuminati has long been dedicated to working against the Catholic Church,” Holmes answered. “This would have been just their sort of clever joke—one that very few people would perceive. And now I see how Kosminski fits in as well—do you remember the message on the apron, Dr. Watson?”

“Yes!” Dr. Watson said, realization lighting up his eyes. “‘
The juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing’
—how strange I thought that, and now I understand!”

“That tells me how you connected the Illuminati to the murders,” interrupted Francis, “but not me.”

“I am getting to that,” answered Holmes. “One of the witnesses mentioned you to me as someone to interview; she told me you lived as a vagrant, though you had a privileged background, and said that very little happened on the streets of Whitechapel that you didn’t know about. In my search for you, I discovered you are an opium addict, given to hallucinations—and your sister even gave me a box of writings you left behind when I wrote to her inquiring about your whereabouts. In that box were some very disturbing stories and poems—and in them you write passionately about disemboweling women, in the same manner the victims were killed. And yet the stories were obviously written before the murders occurred. When I also learned you had studied to be a surgeon, I realized I had identified the killer.

“But I still needed to know this beyond a doubt—and so I turned to the method I originally thought would be the key to solving the crime, fingerprint analysis. You see, iodine fumes reveal prints on paper—and I had the postcard and note left at my house. Though I was not able to lift a print off the bodies, I did find a bloody print in Mary Jane’s room that appeared to match that on the missives. I had your writings as well, and the prints there connected it all together.”

“It is rare a man has the ambition to turn his greatest fantasy into reality,” said Francis. “Yet I have done so in my work as Jack the Ripper. Those writings are juvenile—I have grown immensely in talent since, and I should have burned them. I shall, if I can get my hands on them again. I cannot believe it was something so simple that led you conclusively to me!”

“Now it is my turn to ask a question,” said Holmes. “Why murder prostitutes, rather than any woman you found alone in the street?’

Francis lost his smile at this question, and his lips curled into a snarl. “Because they are vile, lying trash,” he said. “Once, I believed I had found the love of my life—and I begged her to leave the streets, and let me take care of her. She would take my money willingly enough, but would not agree to become my wife—and eventually I heard she had been mocking me openly behind my back. True, she was older than I—and society may never have accepted our love—she broke my heart. I do not know where she has gone, but I hope she reads of these murders and cannot sleep at night from fear.”

“The last piece of the puzzle,” muttered Holmes.

“So do you now march me to Scotland Yard, to bask in the glory of catching Jack the Ripper?” Francis said with a sneer.

“I have a deal to make with you,” Holmes said as he glanced at Dr. Watson’s forlorn face. “I do not want Dr. Watson to have to go through the rest of his life being publicly saddled with the death of this trash who lies before us. I also want the Illuminati to leave me alone, as well as my friend the Count of Monte Cristo,” Holmes said. “You have to make them stop. Do you have the power to do that?”

“Yes, I believe I do,” Francis said warily. “I know many of their names and they will not want to be associated with me. They are people in high places.”

“If we reach an agreement, we must not ever mention this night to anyone. We will leave Donald’s body to be found by someone else. You will return to your family, leaving London, and try to live the rest of your life out of the public eye,” Holmes continued. “You will resume life as a poet and scholar, and will devote your writings to some safer subject—God, perhaps. If I see similar crimes being perpetrated in our fair country, I will not hesitate to send a tip to the authorities of any city in which you reside. You must stop this madness.”

“You would set free a murderer to save your friends?” Francis asked. “How can you be sure I will keep my word?”

“I cannot—but I know you are a smart man, and probably wish to spend the remainder of your life pursuing your art, rather than finding yourself at the end of a hangman’s noose. Of course, you will have to find some less violent source of inspiration. I, myself, will write an account of what has happened tonight. It will be sealed and left among my belongings, with the instructions that the letter is not to be opened for one hundred years after my death. Then the world will find out the truth about Jack the Ripper.”

Holmes still had his pistol pointed directly at Francis. A savage, dark part of him wanted to pull the trigger and bring justice to the murder victims—but Holmes knew that Dr. Watson and Edmond Dantes would be better served by letting Francis go free. He could leverage Francis to blackmail the Illuminati, and protect them all—at least for a while.

Holmes slipped the gun inside the pocket of his overcoat, but kept his hand upon it and the barrel pointed at Francis. “Though you have proved yourself to be no gentleman, I trust you not to betray our agreement,” said Holmes. “You will leave tomorrow—you will think of some clever excuse, I am sure, for your hasty return home—and then we shall never hear from you again. And you will write to those men you know in the Illuminati, as well, and threaten to reveal them if they ever again attempt to besmirch my character, or that of Edmond Dantes. Dr. Watson, please escort Julie home and return home yourself—I will see Francis to the station and help him procure a passage to his parents’ home.”

Holmes had more complex reasons for waiting with Francis as the sun rose than merely making sure he left London—he wanted first-hand insight into the mind of a serial killer who would speak freely, as there was no consequence for his crimes. And speak freely Francis did, describing each murder in detail and with relish. Holmes listened intently, though at times the man’s twisted nature sent chills down his spine. Holmes learned that most of the details in his profile had been perceptive and correct, though a few were disproven.

When he had seen Francis off, Holmes knew he must return to work. He had to think about what to say to Grant. He guessed the investigation would have to go on for a while longer, even though there would be no more murders. Scotland Yard would not be convinced the Ripper’s reign of terror had ended for quite some time, he was sure. Holmes would also have to coordinate a story with Julie and Dr. Watson, but he trusted them implicitly and had no doubt this secret could be kept for one hundred years—as long as Francis did not take up the Ripper’s sharp knife once more.