Riptide (11 page)

“Originally.”

“So was Jack, of course.” He smiled. “You two have something in common.”

eleven

It was after ten PM when Jennifer e-mailed Draper her report on the Diaz case. She knew she ought to rest and take a fresh look at the diary in the morning. But she couldn’t leave the rest of it unread.

Carefully she turned to the last page she’d seen, marked with a dried splotch of blood “fresh out of whitechapel,” the word rendered in lowercase.

The blood, noted the diarist in a subsequent entry, had belonged to Annie Chapman.

A timeline of events was included in one of the books she’d purchased. The Ripper’s second victim was Annie Chapman, killed in the backyard of an East End home.

And the first victim was Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly to her friends.

The names matched. Whoever wrote the diary either was Jack the Ripper—or thought he was.

She continued reading. Some of the lines were struck through—an increasing number as time went on. The handwriting grew more frenzied and illegible, the forward thrust of the cursive becoming almost savage. The man’s self-control was breaking down.

There were frequent references to
the Met
. It seemed to stand for the Metropolitan Police, who investigated some of the Ripper murders.

In other passages the word
costermonger
cropped up, straight out of Dickens. Street names were hyphenated—
Hanbury-street, Aden-yard, Mile-end-road
. Presumably this was good Victorian usage.

Throughout, the diarist’s rage became more palpable, his grandiosity more exaggerated.

Brainless blue bottles have no more chance of buckling me than of nabbing their own shadows.

They call me wicked, fiend, ruffian. Hypocrites, double-faced asses! I do what they desire to do. They would follow in my footsteps if they had the will.

Next one I do I’ll be up her arse and shoot sponk up her then tickle up her ovaries with my fine sharp knife.

By the time he reported the next victory in his war against the “unfortunates” of the streets, his mood was giddy.

To-night a triumph—
two
of them dead—Berner-street and Mitre-square—two of the filthy creatures permanently suppressed—two less of the deuced vermin to fill the cots of the padding kens—

Couldn’t finish the first as I’d hoped—she was a fighter, had a knife of her own—I snatched it away, used it on her
ha ha
turnabout is fair play—short knife, not like mine—didn’t cut deep—no good for draining blood—would have done her properly but some Yid carman interrupted—him and his pony and cart—

Damnable shame not finishing the first but it turned all right—

My blood still hot I found another—did her good—she had no more blood in her than a stone when I was through—I took away a piece of her in my tobacco pouch—

She had eyes like Kitty's—wide staring eyes—

According to the timeline, two prostitutes—Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes—were killed on the same night. Eddowes’ kidney had been taken.

Fried up part of the kidney. Was greasy. Needed salt.

Jennifer felt her stomach recoil.

Now they say I hate Jews. All because of some nonsense scribbled on a doorway. Donkeys!! I left no message. The bit of bloody apron they found by the door—I must have dropped it—carelessness, no more.

Anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered near a scrap of Eddowes’ apron.

The woman on Berner-street is said to have been accosted by some ruffian while another lurked in the shadows—
ha ha
— another false trail for the bloodhounds. It must have happened before I met her. No wonder she had her short knife ready.

The diarist no longer bothered to record his victims’ names. They were not people to him.

They make it all so complicated—conspiracies—slanders on the Jews—lookouts in the shadows—political motives, religious mania. They can not conceive of how simple it is.

Betrayed by a whore, I seek satisfaction from all their kind. And from Kitty herself, one day.

But not yet. Not whilst she still may be linked to me. I am clever, superlatively crafty. I bide my time and outwit them all.

His megalomania was escalating. She expected further signs of overstimulation and personality disintegration.

Drinking too much. Can’t sleep. Out at all hours. Come home late. Pace floor.

Passed woman on street. She shrank from me. Saw something in my eyes. Must beware of giving myself away.

Wisp and the others regard me strangely. Students whisper. They don’t suspect. They only know I’m not myself.

Kidney is gone. What happened to it? I remember nothing.

Mystery solved. Lusk, head of the vigilance committee, got the kidney in the post. Wrapped in a note. I have no memory of writing it. Damned lucky I didn’t give myself away.

Half a kidney in a brown pasteboard parcel was mailed anonymously to George Lusk, who had started a kind of neighborhood watch organization to combat the Ripper. It was accompanied by a semicoherent note datelined “from hell.”

The note gave her an idea. She opened a book that reproduced letters purportedly from the Ripper. Thumbing through the pages, she found a large photo of the most famous one, known as the “Dear Boss letter,” in which the name Jack the Ripper first appeared. She compared the handwriting with that of the diarist.

She was no graphologist, but as best she could tell, the writing matched the careful copperplate of the diary’s earlier entries. There were the same oversized capitals—especially the word
I
, narcissistically enlarged—the same dangling descenders, the same tendency to underline key words for emphasis, the same minuscule periods and apostrophes that often nearly vanished altogether. There was minimal punctuation, notably a scarcity of commas. And there was the repeated and underlined interjection
ha ha
.

A postcard followed the letter. Though it had been lost, a photo of it, taken by police at the time, remained extant and was reproduced in the book. The card had been written quickly, with none of the panache of the first letter, but the writing seemed to match that of the Dear Boss letter and the less disciplined diary passages.

She kept turning pages until she found the cover note from the package with the kidney. This one was written in a frenetic scrawl. The diarist had implied he was drunk when he composed it. The ragged scribbles matched the wildest entries in the diary, the ones showing the greatest decay of self-control.

In the days after mailing his ominous parcel, his condition worsened.

Go out nightly. Roam the streets. Constables everywhere. No opportunities. My head rarely clear. Thoughts run like a millrace. Too much gin and ale. Insufficient nourishment. Wasting away. Must put myself together. Scarcely recognise myself in the cheval-glass. Even Vole remarked on it. Asked if I were ill. Smirked when he said it. They
mock
me. They don’t know who they are dealing with. I am more than any of them. I have thrown the city into a panic. Every policeman hunts me. Every whore imagines my fingers on her throat. Newsboys cry themselves hoarse on every footway seeking to slake the disgustful curiousity of the multitude.

His penmanship was wildly erratic now, many of the words barely legible. He was breaking down—breaking apart.

This night will bring a great new victory. I sense it. As if with psychical powers I foresee the future.

Oceans of blood.

A blank page followed, as if to mark the momentous event. On the next page there was just one line of small, neat, careful script.

Done
. It is done. Can not write of it this morning. There are no words...

The Ripper’s fifth victim was Mary Kelly. Photos had been taken of the crime scene, grainy black-and-white images of appalling slaughter. The woman had been torn to pieces in her bed.

Her pretty face—now no face at all. In the dance of the fireglow from the hearth I obliterated her. She did scream once. ‘
Murder’
she cried. I feared someone would come. But this was Miller’s-court. The inhabitants are animals. They cowered in their dens.

What he’d said about the victim was accurate. Her face had been eradicated.

Two days have passed.

I partake of food again. I shun the bottle.

My frenzy has passed like a summer storm and I am whole and healed. No longer do I explore the nocturnal streets.

The last one has left me sated though not forever. I am like unto a man who has downed a great feast and imagines he will never know hunger again. But the pangs will come. When they do, I will answer them.

The savage strokes of his pen, mimicking the strokes of his knife, had given way to the meticulous copperplate of the early entries. But when he wrote again, much time must have passed. Some of the old unsteadiness was back, the forward slant, the heavy underlining.

I fear the city has forgotten me. To-night they will have a reminder.

I did kill one but there was no satisfaction in it. She was a haggard thing with a tobacco stench and a raucous laugh. Foul. To kill her was a mercy but it was not the same.

Alice McKenzie, “Clay Pipe” Alice, was killed on July 17, 1889. The murder wasn’t generally attributed to the Ripper, because there was only superficial mutilation of the abdomen. But the relative absence of postmortem violence could have reflected the killer’s lack of commitment.

Possibly I have lost the taste for it. I forbear to think so. I would not want my best days to lie behind me.

The last two passages were written listlessly, the words lightly rendered,
t
’s left uncrossed and
i
’s undotted. The next entry was neat and controlled.

It has been so long. I hardly think I will prowl again. I have settled into a comfortable schedule. I am fit and self-possessed. I look back on the autumn of ’88 and that one other night and I think it was a spell of madness. Yet I regret none of it. On those nights I breathed fire. I outstared the basilisk. I
lived
.

Not again, perhaps. Never again.

I am thinking I shall burn this book.

It is a new year and I feel something growing in me. The old familiar urge. I had thought it was gone for good. But there may be life in me yet. Life for me, death for others.

Last night I again walked the streets of the East End. Little has changed. Little ever changes there.

I saw few policemen.

Many whores
.

From the transition to shorter sentences and more jagged script, she knew what would come next.

Under the railway arch I took her—glorious—I was wrong to think I ever had lost my spirit—the knife felt so
right
in my hand, a part of me—the first incision like a lover’s kiss—the hot stink of her, the charnel-house reek—

But I left it uncompleted. Left her dead but mostly intact. Sheer bad luck, a constable coming by. I heard the clop of his boots and ran. He found her moments later. It was a near thing.

But
glorious
.

This had to be Frances Coles, dead on February 13, 1891. The day before Valentine’s Day.

Some say too much time has passed. They say this is the work of some other fiend.

Let them prattle. The next one will bear my signature.

I see now that I can never return to what I was. One spark animates me. One engine moves me. I can not deny my deepest nature. I must do what I am called to do. I am a sleepwalker otherwise. I am awake only on nights like these. To desist is to die.