Ghostly Images (16 page)

David’s hand rested on the shutter. He glanced across and saw that John’s fingers were trembling on the side of his new camera. There was nobody else around, and the gas lamps at the side of the steps gave the place an eerie glow.

They hadn’t brought the lighting trays, and because of the dim lighting, David calculated that it would need at least a lengthy exposure of twelve seconds, with no certainty of success. John was more fortunate. He was using the gelatin-bromide process and could rely on a shorter exposure of one or two seconds.

When the figure was about fifteen yards away, and about a yard from a gas lamp, it stopped moving. Hood gave a hand signal to David and John to take the exposure. After the exposure had been taken, the figure turned and slowly ascended the steps.

“Astonishing!” John whispered. “A phantom spirit!”

Hood puffed on his pipe and nodded. “Phantom Percy, more like.” He burst out laughing at John and David’s chagrin. “Good friends of Mr Hogg have hired us to play a series of practical jokes on him before his birthday.”

Suddenly, out of the darkness, a man came up to Hood making John and David jump. The man whispered something in Hood’s ear and quickly dashed off again. Hood pointed his cane towards Henrietta Street, his expression impassive.

“My associate has just informed me that the third victim of The Whitby Ripper lived a few hundred yards away from here…Her name is Rachel Varley.”

Chapter 26

Thursday 6
th
September 1894

L
EN
T
ANNER
HAD
HIS
FEET
UP
ON
HIS
DESK
IN
THE
POLICE
STATION
. In his hands, he held a mug of tea. Normally, he would have been in the Pier Café for his afternoon cuppa, but the public were increasingly irate with him.

The police station’s tea didn’t taste as good as that in the Pier Café, but at least he could drink it in peace. But the café’s apple pie was the finest in Whitby. He knew that staying away from the café would have at least one positive outcome. It could arrest his ever-expanding waistline.

Len put his feet on the floor and glanced at the correspondence. A letter from The Whitby Teetotal Society expressed their displeasure at the police’s inability to curb the perils of drinking.

Next was a letter from a firm specialising in pyrotechnic displays. Whitby Town Council wanted something special to mark the New Year celebrations with giant bonfires and fireworks. With the murderer still on the loose, the last thing he wanted was a celebration of any kind.

There was a petition signed by more than a hundred local people demanding that the police apprehend the murderer without any further delay. Some signatures were from hoteliers suffering from cancellations, especially from women. And he was aware of another petition circulating in East Whitby calling for his dismissal.

Len rested his feet on his desk again and mulled over the three murders and the possible suspects, as he sipped his tea. He closed his eyelids and his nostrils drew in the tobacco-polluted air of the police station.

That morning he had made further inquiries at the library about Rachel Varley. Judith Bates, Rachel’s friend and colleague, claimed that Rachel had taken a keen interest in David Taylor. Len thought that this needed further investigation. On his way to the studio to interview Taylor, he had suddenly stopped walking. Something kept nagging at the back of his mind. He decided to visit Mrs Jenkins, instead.

Under tough questioning, Mrs Jenkins admitted to Elizabeth Betts’ coming into the studio and the argument about her photograph. Mrs Jenkins claimed she had accidentally knocked Betts to the ground when trying to calm her, and when John Evans tried to help Betts to her feet, she bit him.

Len had Mrs Jenkins in tears by the time he left her house. His wife would have been ashamed of him had she witnessed his treatment of the old woman. He had been far too abrasive and could have got the same information by gentle probing. Len thought about going round later and apologising to her but thought better of it. It might only upset the woman even further.

He visited the photographic studio next, but there was no sign of Taylor or Evans. He checked his notebook for the address of Taylor’s lodgings, gambling that he might find him there. He was in luck. Taylor was in his dressing gown. His hair was dishevelled and there was stubble on his chin. He made Evans wait outside. Taylor was matter of fact in his manner and claimed that he had only seen Rachel Varley once at the library for technical assistance.

When the young man thought the interview had ended, Len brought up the matter of Elizabeth Betts and his glaring failure to tell the police anything about his photograph of her.

Taylor rubbed his head and, once again, claimed to have met Betts only once when he took her photograph at the studio. He made light of the incident inside the studio when Betts became upset. Perhaps Taylor had led her on, only to cruelly disappoint her. He reminded Taylor that he was a suspect.

He made Taylor wait outside the room while he interviewed Evans. He inspected the bite marks on the red-haired man’s hand. They were ugly, battered, and scarred. Possibly the hands of a killer. Had Evans assisted Taylor in these murders? Evans was not at all forthcoming and nervously bit his nails during the course of the interview. Len regarded Evans as a suspect too.

Not for the first time, Len believed that Taylor and Evans had forfeited the right to be treated as respectable citizens the minute they began associating with Hood.

His tea was going cold. He sipped the remains from his mug. He had to consider other suspects, including Hood.

Rosie Marr, a flower seller, witnessed Rachel Varley speak to Hood
.
Marr was protective of Hood when questioned, but what else could he expect of a dollymop from the east side? According to Marr, Hood and Varley had an innocent chat about flowers.

Len was glad to have more helpful witness to Varley’s encounter with Hood. According to Jake Little, the owner of Morton’s Chemists, Varley had rebuked Hood, in no uncertain terms, about stealing books from the library. Consequently, Hood had a motive to kill her. Len couldn’t find any link between Betts and Hood, but in time hoped to discover something. There was also Hood’s motive for killing Eleanor, particularly since she did some work for him. Was she trying to blackmail Hood? She was in a position to discover some of Hood’s dirty secrets.

Len had heard further reports of Ben Updike’s venomous hatred of outsiders and had gone to see him at the amusement arcade. When Len approached, Updike was sitting outside using his knife to prize open a tin of meat. Len had never witnessed anyone opening a tin like that before. It was akin to a frenzied attack. Updike launched numerous stabling blows, leaving beef splattered on the ground beside him. He couldn’t rule out Updike as a suspect, particularly as the three murdered woman were all “outsiders.”

His stomach rumbled. On his desk were some scones his wife had baked for him. He took one and nibbled tentatively, frowned, and tossed the scone into the bin at the side of his desk.

He loved his wife dearly but that love did not extend to her scones. Isabella was a kind and sensitive woman and badly hurt by the cruel comments she’d hear about him whenever she went out of the house. It had been over a week since she had last been out. She desperately wanted to leave Whitby for a quiet little spot in the Derbyshire countryside to be near their son Christopher. Len resisted the idea of early retirement, but the thought of resigning and moving to the peace of the countryside got stronger with every passing hour.

He realised that in mulling over likely suspects, he’d omitted Gordon Deakin and Melvin Shank. Len needed no convincing that Shank had viciously murdered a fisherman and disfigured a prostitute, but he didn’t have enough proof. Shank had no qualms about threatening or killing any unfortunate victim bold enough to go to the police. If anything, Deakin was worse than Shank.

Len was in a quandary. The murderer might well be a resident of East Whitby, but he couldn’t rule out West Whitby. And he had alienated what little support he had in West Whitby after interviewing Frank Hawk, Mrs Jenkins, and a number of other respectable citizens. He didn’t consider these people capable of murder but had to follow the police procedure in the search for information. Whatever people might say about him in East Whitby, he was a fair copper. He played it by the book. Unfortunately, not even this reason sat well in West Whitby.

If he finally did decide to leave Whitby, he hoped that a few people at least would fondly remember him and give him praise for being a conscientious and fair chief constable.

He knew he wouldn’t find that praise over the swing bridge on the east side of the town. If anything, there would be wild celebrations at his departure.

Chapter 28

Friday 7
th
September 1894

A
THUNDERCLAP
FOLLOWED
BY
A
LIGHTNING
BOLT
appeared over Whitby Abbey, bathing the ruins in an eerie glow as David and John walked across the cobbles and over the bridge. David likened it to the ignition of a giant photographic lighting tray. Suddenly, the piercing shout of a newspaper vendor a few yards away with a large pile of freshly printed newspapers made them stop.

“Whitby in Rage!” cried the hawker.

Soon, a large crowd had surrounded the man, all of them eager to buy the latest edition. David waited patiently and bought one. He read the front page to John, “‘Mr Joshua Betts claims the police are incompetent and should have caught the Whitby Ripper by now…Citizens of East Whitby incensed by ‘vermin’ remark made by the chief constable…civil disorder beckons.’”

“We should leave Whitby and get as far away from Hood as possible,” urged John.

“Do you really want to leave Laura?”

John’s blush betrayed him.

“The truth of the matter is that we’re trapped. Tanner suspects us, and we can go nowhere until the killer is caught.”

“You’re right. And I don’t want to leave Laura. Would you be upset to leave Lucy?”

David waved his hand, annoyed. “Let’s concentrate on our work.”

“But we’ve already completed the print of the children and faked an image of Loach’s sweetheart!”

“We still need to take a photograph at the séance.”

“I don’t want to go to Hood’s house and see
that
.”

“I’d prefer it if you came along.”

“We’ve been through this already. You’re always going for a swim and leaving all the work for me. Plus, I did everything while you were sick. Well, today, I want to see Laura, so you’ll have to do it.”

David sighed. “Give Laura my regards.”

“Cheer up, David.” John tapped him on his shoulder.

David reciprocated the gesture. “I would if it wasn’t for the chief constable putting me near the top of his list of suspects.”

“Is there anything else? Something about the paranormal that’s troubling you?”

“In my heart, I can accept that the paranormal is real and genuine. Intellectually, it is more troublesome, making sense of how the camera can be a time machine—seeing the future before it happens. Having read Tate’s journals, he also found this extremely difficult.”

“Tate says folk can have a sixth sense to help them see into the future. He gives an example—”

“Of women sensing panic when their husbands were due to depart on their fishing vessels then losing them in a storm,” David supplied.

“If people have this ability to see into the future, then a machine like a camera can take this a step further. I can understand what he’s saying here but not that stuff about electro-magnetic energies or the concept of time.”

“That’s my difficulty as well. At a push, I can see that individuals might sometimes have a subconscious ability to divine the future but not his theorising that the distinction between the past, present, and future is an illusion, nor that a bridge can be built between them by the right electro-magnetic energies.”

“Could trying to make sense of all of this have sent Tate mad?”

“Quite possibly. It’s going to be very hard to make scientific headway.”

“That could apply to other things apart from the Tate camera. Are things always so clear cut in science and chemistry?”

“Not always.” David scratched his chin and realised that John had made a telling observation. The laws of science and chemistry had gaps in them. There were things men of science didn’t know and might never discover.

“By the way, when you were mixing chemicals in the darkroom earlier today, Thomas Loach called into the studio to collect his photograph. I’m glad we decided to fake an image of a young woman instead of the old man with the nasty scar on his left cheek.”

“I’m sure the scar was on his right cheek.”

John gently tapped David on his left arm. “You’re wrong. I’ll wager you two pints if you are correct.”

David responded by tapping John on his right arm. “You’re on.”

The two lads shook hands on the wager.

“I happen to have it with me.” John grinned and reached into his pocket, taking out the photograph. All colour drained from his cheeks.

“What’s wrong?” David glanced over his friend’s shoulder at the photograph. “Damn! You gave him the wrong print! That’s the image of the woman we faked on his portrait.”

“Well...” John scratched his ear. “Maybe Thomas might not be too disappointed if it’s the image is of a father or grandfather he loves.”

“You’re probably right,” replied David. “You’d better go and see Laura now. I need to get the equipment and head off to Hood’s home.”

F
IFTEEN
MINUTES
LATER
, David entered Hood’s house clutching his camera and equipment. The door was ajar, and he went inside cautiously making his way through the piles of books as if it were an obstacle course.