Gods of Riverworld (23 page)

If the book had been issued in his Earthly lifetime, Burton would have been outraged by its preposterousness. Or would he? Would he not on reflection, knowing what he did of the secret maneuverings for power by those on high, knowing of the inhuman and totally unjust deeds done by the government and upper-class individuals in the struggle to keep their power, would he not have considered that the conclusions drawn from the events described in the book were valid?

What Mr. Knight had shown after deep and wide research and illuminated and illuminating deductions was:

In 1888, the masses, the poor people, of England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland were, or seemed to be, on the edge of revolution. The radicals of the left, the socialists and the anarchists, were loudly voicing the oppressions and sufferings of the working class. The government was not just alarmed, it was scared stiff, and many of the ruling class believed that the monarchy itself was threatened. They were overreacting; their ignorance of the masses made them unaware of the deep conservatism of the people. What these wanted was not a change in the structure of the monarchy but steady work with good pay, food, adequate housing, and some economic security. They wanted to live as human beings should, not as rats.

Queen Victoria, the ruling class thought, would not be overthrown, but she was old and, at that time, unpopular. When she died, her son Edward (“Bertie”) would sit on the throne. And he was a lecherous, pigheaded, and totally immoral man whose activities could not be concealed.

There were then many Freemasons in the upper echelons of the British government, including the marquess of Salisbury, the prime minister. Knight claimed that these highly placed Masons were the power behind the throne, and they were afraid that when the monarchy went, they and their secret society would go, too.

Prince Edward’s oldest surviving son, the duke of Clarence and Avondale, Albert Victor Christian Edward, “Eddy” to his intimates, would ascend the throne if his father died. He was a pathetic creature (from the Victorian standpoint), liked to mingle under an assumed name with artists and other Bohemians, was bisexual, and had once frequented a male brothel. Even worse, after falling in love with a shopkeeper’s assistant, Annie Elizabeth Crook, to whom he had been introduced by the painter Walter Sickert, the duke had married her in a secret ceremony. It was an illegal marriage in several respects, but the most offensive and and dangerous was that Eddy had taken to wife a Roman Catholic. By law, no English monarch could marry a Catholic. Eddy was not the king, but he could easily and soon become the king. A number of people had tried to assassinate the queen; she was old, and Eddy’s father, Prince Edward, could die from overindulgence in food and drink, a venereal disease, a bullet from a jealous husband, a revolutionist or a maniac, or from any of the diseases against which there was then no prevention and for which there was no cure except the afflicted’s natural resistance.

Adding to the heinousness of Eddy’s deeds was the birth in April 1888 of his daughter by Annie Crook. The infant was the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and the first cousin of those men who were to reign as Edward VIII and George VI.

This was too much for the queen, who sent an angry note to the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, demanding that he assure that the newspapers and the public not be made aware of the scandal.

Salisbury, in turn, gave the queen’s physician, Sir William Gull, a fellow Mason, the responsibility for the coverup. Gull was a brilliant man and a great physician, by Victorian standards, and was also distinguished by a grotesque and perverse sense of humor and an obvious schizophrenia (obvious to a later generation). He could be very kind and compassionate but at other times was cold, cruel, and callous. The latter behavior was, however, only evident when he was dealing with lower-class patients and their families. He was a kind master to his own pets, but he had justified, to his own satisfaction, a vivisectionist who had slowly baked live dogs in an oven until they died during his experiments.

Following Gull’s secret orders, transmitted through the police commissioner, also a Mason, special police agents raided the apartments of Walter Sickert, Eddy’s old companion, and Annie Crook. They hustled Eddy off from Sickert’s to the palace and Crook to an asylum. Gull certified that Annie was insane, though she was not at that time, and she spent the rest of her life in asylums and workhouses. In 1920, truly mad, she died. Eddy never saw her again.

The police had intended to pick up Mary Kelly, a young Irishwoman who had witnessed the illicit marriage. Probably, Gull would have certified her as insane, too. Whatever he intended for her, he was frustrated. Somehow, she escaped the police net and dived deep into the labyrinth of the East End. Later, she took care for a while of Alice Margaret, Eddy’s and Annie’s child. Both accompanied Sickert on his long trips to Dieppe. While in France, Mary Jane Kelly changed her name to Marie Jeannette Kelly.

Eventually, Kelly had to hide again in London’s vast people warren, the East End. Here she began the slide downward that ended with her becoming one of the many thousands of alcoholic and diseased whores living miserable and hopeless lives. Like her sisters in the profession, she considered herself fortunate if she earned just enough money to buy gin for a few hours’ numbness, enough food to stave off outright starvation, and a roof over her head.

Kelly was not without friends, however, the closest of whom were Mary Anne Nichols, Anne Siffey, alias Chapman, and Elizabeth “Long Liz” Stride, all drunks, diseased, malnourished, and doomed to die soon even if “Jack the Ripper” had not existed. When Kelly met these in taverns or in their lousy apartments and the gin bore discretion away on the golden waves of alcohol, she revealed to them the Prince Eddy–Annie Crook liaison and its terrible results. And, during one of these roaring sessions, the idea for blackmailing Prince Eddy was born.

Knight had suggested that the four had tried the extortion scheme because they were forced to do it by a group of dangerous thugs, the Old Nichol Gang.

Whatever the motivation, the idea was very dangerous and stupid. Salisbury had let the search for Kelly drop because he had not heard from her nor had his police spies heard that she was disclosing anything about the affair. As long as she kept her mouth shut, she was no peril to the establishment that Salisbury represented. Now, however, on receiving a message demanding money for silence, Salisbury put the machinery of retribution in motion.

Urged by Salisbury, Gull lost no time in reacting. The prime minister had given him orders to put the lid back on, but Salisbury probably had no glimmering of how Gull intended to do this. Certainly, desperate as he was to silence the blackmailers, he would have been horrified if he had known what Gull intended. It was one thing to imprison a lower-class woman in a series of hospitals and workhouses for life, a regrettable but necessary deed from Salisbury’s viewpoint. But to murder and butcher the women was a deed that Salisbury could not have ordered. Once the slayings had started, however, Salisbury could only let them go on and do his best to protect “Jack the Ripper.”

John Netley was the coachman who had driven Prince Eddy to the Sickert home and other places where Eddy did what a prince of the realm was not supposed to do. Gull had insured his silence with threats and bribes after Eddy and Alice Crook had been abducted. Knowing Netley’s character, Gull now told him, in general terms, what his plans were for the blackmailers. Netley was eager to serve him. And, since Sickert knew the principals in the affair, was well acquainted with the East End, and had accepted money to keep his mouth shut about Eddy and Crook, Sickert was enlisted by Gull. Though reluctant to take part in the murders, he knew that if he did not, he would himself be killed.

The coach, driven by Netley, holding Sickert and Gull, drove into the Whitechapel area. After a number of reconnoiterings, Gull and Sickert lured Mary Anne Nichols into their coach by requesting her services. Flattered that two such elegant gentlemen would even look at her, though doubtless wondering what kinky acts they had in mind, Nichols got into the coach. Gull offered her a glass of wine containing a drug (Knight had suggested he used poisoned grapes), and, when she was unconscious, he cut her throat from left to right, disemboweled her, and stabbed her. Sickert leaned out of the coach and vomited.

Afterward, the coach drove to the dark and momentarily deserted street of Bucks Row, where Netley and Sickert carried the body from the coach and laid it out. They knew the schedule of the patrolman, but, even so, they drove off only a few minutes before he arrived.

Eight days later, the three struck again, Anne Siffey, alias Chapman, was found dead in the backyard of No. 29, Hanbury Street. Her throat had been deeply cut from left to right and back again. Her small intestines and a flap of the abdomen were on her right side near the shoulder, still attached by a cord to the rest of the intestines in the body. Two skin flaps from the lower abdominal region were lying in a pool of blood above the left shoulder.

This time, Gull had the unconscious woman taken from the coach to the backyard, where he performed the ritualistic mutilations in the dim light.

On September 29, Gull killed two whores. The first murder was hastily done because Long Liz Stride refused to get into the coach. Netley and Sickert left the coach, seized her, and held her while Gull cut her throat. But Gull did not have the time to do what he would have liked. He heard loud voices nearby and so did not want to risk being seen carrying her body into the coach. The three left hurriedly.

Later that evening, the second murder was done with plenty of time for execution. Catherine Eddowes was found in Mitre Square (not a part of the Whitechapel area), part of her nose slashed off, the right ear lobe almost cut off, her face and throat worked over with a sharp instrument, her bowels removed, and her left kidney and uterus missing.

Unfortunately, from Gull’s viewpoint—and Eddowes’—Sickert had mistaken Eddowes for Marie Kelly. She had not been Kelly’s confidante, was totally unaware of the Eddy-Crook events, and died because the painter had thought, in the dim light, that she was Marie Jeannette Kelly. Though he had discovered his error immediately after her throat was cut, Gull insisted on performing the ritual. Why waste his time? Besides, she was just a whore, and if, by any chance, some policeman had an inkling of the plot, she would be a false clue.

In the late evening of November 9, the last and most important target, Kelly, was subjected to the most savage butchering of all. The ritual took two hours. And the Jack the Ripper murders ceased.

Burton had located the recordings of Gull, Netley, Kelly, Crook, Sickert, Salisbury, Prince Eddy, and Stride. For some reason the Computer could not explain, Chapman’s and Nichols’ were unavailable. The Computer, however, continued looking for them.

Burton viewed the events from the meeting of Eddy with Annie Crook through the slaying of Kelly via the eyes and ears of the recordings. He replayed some of these several times, though he vomited twice, the first time watching Gull working on Eddowes, the second time during Kelly’s dissection. He had thought that he had a strong stomach, but he had overestimated its tolerance.

He then had the Computer run some of the episodes from the Riverworld life of each of the participants in the Ripper affair. Annie Elizabeth Crook had been raised on The River with her sanity restored but with most of her memory from 1888 to 1920 missing.

Sir William Gull’s schizophrenia seemed to have been eliminated. Twenty years after the first resurrection, he had become converted to a religious sect, the Dowists, by the founder himself, Lorenzo Dow.

John Netley, the coachman, had been deeply affected by the shock of drowning in the Thames and then awakening on the Riverbank. For six months, his behavior could have been described as Christianlike (according to the ideal, not the practice of most Christians). Once the shock had worn off and he was fairly sure that he was not going to be punished for his sins, he reverted to his Earthly self, an opportunistic, lecherous, self-centered, and cold-blooded criminal.

Walter Sickert, the painter, early converted to the Church of the Second Chance and rose to the rank of bishop.

Long Liz Stride and Marie Kelly were resurrected in The Valley within a few feet of each other. For five years, they had been good friends and close neighbors. Neither had continued as a prostitute, though they had taken a series of lovers, and they drank as much as they could get. Then Stride had gotten religion and joined a popular Buddhist sect, the Nichirenites. Kelly had left her, gone upRiver, and, after many adventures, settled down in a peaceful area. Both had died during the terrible times following the grailstone shutdown on the right bank of The River.

The long journeys of all were ended, for the time being, anyway. They were locked up in the physical recordings and the
wathans
that floated whirling in the central well.

22

His investigation of the Ripper affair was completed; the mystery, solved. Now he could take residence in his private world, but, for some unfathomable reason, he was still reluctant to do so. Nevertheless, he could not put off moving long. It irked him to be unconsciously opposing himself; he would not put up with it.

Before going, though, he considered what he had been living through, vicariously, these past two weeks. He was shaken and appalled, especially by the world as seen through the eyes of the whores. He had witnessed many savage and grisly deeds and much injustice and oppression, but none matched the grisliness and inhumanity of the deed that was the East End of London in the 1880s. In this relatively small area were jam-packed eight hundred thousand people, hungry most of the time, eating swill and glad to have it, drunk if they could afford it and often when they could not, dwelling in small, dirty rooms with sweating, peeling walls alive with vermin, cruel to each other, ignorant, superstitious, and, worst condition of all, hopeless.