Whitechapel (14 page)

“Right, George, Martha Tabrum, last seen with another prostitute called Mary Ann ‘Pearly Poll’ Connolly just before midnight with two guardsmen. They split up taking one each and disappeared to make their money. 2.a.m and PC Barrett sees one guardsman waiting in Wentworth Street allegedly ‘for a chum’ and that is it. Identity parades with the guards have failed to come up with anyone. So, right now, dead end. What about what’s on Nichols so far?”

“Well, seen at various times from 11.30.p.m on Thursday the 30th, right through to 2.30.a.m when she was last seen, drunk, by Ellen Holland but on her own having blown her doss money and looking for another punter. No descriptions of anyone. Fred, desperate as it is, we’ve got to wait for a local copper to come across a murder about to take place or having already happened. We’ve got nothing to go on.”

Abberline got to his feet rubbing his face and approached the suspect’s information board. He disliked having so little information available to him regarding the suspect. Usually there was a positive description from someone, or at least consistency in a scant one. “I know, George, I know.” In his mind Abberline addressed the empty suspect board. ‘Who are you, you bastard, who the hell are you?’

***

Friday 6th September 10.30.a.m and Mary Kelly was busy packing her belongings at Millers Court. Since the fabulous boat trip with the new man in her life, a new reason for living and cleaning up, she had decided over the last few days to leave the well meaning Joe Barnett. She had been back to Millers Court since Saturday but only to change her clothes. She had tried to stay with friends or in doss houses to avoid seeing Joe while she made up her mind and plucked up her courage to confront him.

She possessed a very battered leather suit case which she had laid on the bed and was busily packing. As a matter of priority she had placed the case of precious stones in the suitcase first and was neatly folding her clothes on top of it so if Joe came in he would not see it. It would be her and Robert’s money to escape London for a new life together. She was mentally preparing herself for the event of Joe arriving home this morning, but when she heard the foot steps in the cobbled passage outside her expected forthright stand she would make to him began to waiver.

Joe barged the door open and stood in the doorway looking in at her. For what seemed like an eternity he stood there staring at her as she had turned and now engaged his eye contact with her piercing greenish blue eyes. In a low and calm controlled voice Joe spoke.

“Mary, what are you doing, girl?”

“I’m leaving you, Joe, I can’t’ live like this anymore or around here either.”

“Have I ever wronged you, Mary?”

“No, Joe, you haven’t. It’s just I don’t love you. I never have and never will. This was an arrangement of convenience among two friends. We don’t have a future, Joe.” Barnett paused and considered his next line carefully. His eyes he could feel were welling slightly and a lump was beginning to form in his throat. He didn’t want to have difficulty expressing himself as a result of emotion so he spoke carefully and slowly.

“Mary, I love you, I’ve only ever wanted what was right for you. Why do you think I want you off of the streets? Why do you think I have never raised a hand to you when you’re drunk unlike other men? Mary, don’t go, marry me and I’ll make you happy. You’ll never have to work again. I’ve always earned money; we can start a new life somewhere else.” Mary felt herself beginning to cry as a result of his impassioned speech. Tears began to roll down her own cheeks as she replied to him, her voice strained with emotion.

“It’s too late, Joe, I’ve made up my mind. I don’t see my future with you. I’m sorry.” She turned away and carried on packing. Barnett now had to compose himself to accept a situation that broke his heart.

“Mary, leave your things. I’ll wait to you’re out later and I’ll come and clear out. This is your place, always was, I can’t stay here with that memory in mind.”

She had her back to him as he delivered his last sentence with tears streaming down her face. “Oh, Joe!” she cried and turned to run to him at the door to hug him for one last time, but when she turned he was gone. She ran to the doorway calling, “Joe, Joe!” and looked up and down the passageway but could not see him. She ran through from Millers Court to Whites Row and could still not see him and when she finally made it into Commercial Street she was confronted with the masses of the East End going about their everyday work. He was gone.

***

Saturday 7th September, 11.30.p.m. Annie Chapman staggered into the kitchen at Crossingham’s doss house, 35 Dorset Street with a black eye and clutching her chest as if in pain. She was a five feet tall, stout with a thick nose prominently adorning her face giving it a somewhat masculine look. Her dark brown wavy hair was a mess and her blue eyes were glazed from alcohol abuse. Timothy Donovan the deputy manager of the doss house spoke to her.

“Annie, what’s wrong with you now?” Clutching her chest she replied with heavy in takes of breath and the stench of alcohol on her words.

“That fucking bitch Eliza Cooper she done this to me. If I wasn’t so fucking pissed I would have fighted back and then we’d see.”

“Annie, why was she fighting you?”

“’Cos I told Harry the Hawker about how she had fiddled him see. Fucking Eliza nicked a florin out of his pocket and replaced it with a ha’penny. I saw her do it so I told him. She’s been going on at me alarming the last week and tonight early she fucking done me, ain’t she?”

William Stevens a regular at the doss house walked in on them and frowned at Donovan as if to ask what was going on. Donovan looked back at him rolling his eyes and shaking his head in disbelief. Donovan then spoke to Annie again.

“Look, Annie, you know the rules, no money, no bed. You’ll have to go or come back later.”

“Oh, that’s fucking nice; throw an injured woman out on her arse.” As she uttered these words she began getting to her feet, unsteadily, and as she stood up she swung a punch at Donovan which was never going to connect and in the process dropped a box of pills she had in her hand that smashed on the floor. She fell to her knees to start to collect them up, then putting them in some scrap paper. She looked up at the two men watching her.

“Bastards, all bastards,” she murmured.

“What are they for, Annie?” Donovan asked her.

“They’re for me ribs and eye, from the bloody infirmary to ease the pain.” She got to her feet and twisted the piece of paper to hold all the pills together.

“Don’t you think you should take some?” asked Donovan as she was about to leave the building.

“Oh, fuck off,” she slurred as she exited into the East End darkness a little after midnight.

Meanwhile Severin Klosowski had found himself in the East End following an eventful journey from Dover to London. The area suited him as it was a district where a man could melt into the background with complete obscurity amongst a population who in the main were only concerned in their own self interest; survival. He had been drinking lightly in the pubs around Spitalfields to acquaint himself with the area by engaging local men in conversation and all the time observing the general population around him, especially the unfortunates who would make easy targets for brute sexual lust or worse. He walked around sporting a deerstalker hat on many occasions, an untidy but presentable suit and he was distinctive from his piercing eyes and his very dark and thick moustache. It was now around 5.a.m and his appetite for sexual fulfilment was growing after so much time out in the crowds.

Annie Chapman had been back to Crossinghams once already without any doss money and had been ejected by Timothy Donovan when he had discovered her eating a baked potato she had taken from the kitchen.

“Don’t let the bed, I’ll be back soon,” she said staggering off along Dorset Street in the direction of Commercial Street and a prospective client. She made her way past The Ten Bells public house and continued north towards the next junction which was Hanbury Street. In the distance stood on the corner of the two roads was Klosowski directly under a gas street lamp creating the obvious silhouette, even to the drunken Chapman, of a man and therefore prospective doss money.

Walking on the other side of the road was Elizabeth Stride, who sober and with a place to live had decided in the end to not solicit herself that night and was making her way to Commercial Street Police Station for her cleaning job. She saw Chapman on the opposite pavement and decided to cross to speak with her briefly.

On seeing her face closer to she exclaimed to Chapman “Annie, whatever has happened to your face?”

Chapman was too drunk to recognise her friend from the local pubs “Who the fuck are you and what do you care?”

“It’s me, ‘Long Liz,’ who did this to you?”

“Liz?” she paused as her drunken mind began to match the name to the voice in front of her “Oh, Liz! That cow Eliza Cooper, look don’t worry love, I’m all right I need some doss money, you got any?”

“I’m sorry, Annie, I got nothing to spare that’s why I’m off to work now at the nick.”

“At the nick? Bloody coppers, bastards the lot of ‘em. If you ain’t got nothing, get out of my way, I need him,” she drooled then staggering towards the figure under the street light.

She barged past Stride making a direct line on her unsteady feet for Klosowski stood under the light. Stride walked off crossing the road to make her way to The Street looking across at the figure of Klosowski who looked back her with violent eyes. Stride hurried on as a result of his evil stare passing a woman who she knew also as Liz greeting each other as they did so. The other Liz, Elizabeth Darrell, crossed the road and saw the figures of Klosowski and Chapman stood under the street lamp and as she approached they turned and began walking arm in arm along Hanbury Street the very direction that she was intending to head. As they passed number 29 the couple who were still walking slightly ahead of her stopped and as she passed them Darrell heard some lines of their conversation. She could tell that the man had a distinctly foreign accent as he spoke but did not lift his gaze as she passed, his face therefore shielded by his hat so only his slightly bearded chin was visible; Klowsoski had not shaved for several days. He was slightly taller than herself and she heard him ask of the woman, whom she did not know, “Will you?” to which the drunken looking woman replied “Yes.” Knowing exactly what was going on she hurried embarrassedly past them. She had not heard the full conversation between Klosowski and Chapman.

“Will you let me fuck you for a shilling?” he asked in his foreign tones.

“For three shillings, I’ll let you use all three holes if you want lover.”

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

There was a passageway which led to the back of the terrace of houses that they were stood outside of that Klosowski took her along to find some privacy. He had little intention for paying for anything, just using her to settle his lusts and if she got violent he always had one of surgeons knifes sheathed within his suit jacket to deal with trouble, it was a little memento he had brought with him from Paris and ready to be used on British soil. They stopped at the end of the passageway just short of the yard at the rear so they maximised their privacy from the main road.

She slide down the wall unsteadily until she was crouching and her head matching the height of his waistband; he looked down on her with a sense of absolute domination. She was much older and uglier than he would have preferred but she would do for tonight he thought as she began to unbutton his trousers. He could feel himself becoming erect as she did so and within seconds his stiffening was pulled free by her and she began to masturbate him. It felt good to him and he began to groan with approval which made her do it a little faster. Looking down he saw her begin to guide him towards her mouth. He shut his eyes in readiness to feel the sweet sensation of her tongue and lips working rhythmically around him, but within seconds he received a great shock. She had entered his penis into her mouth in quite an accomplished manner but in her drunken condition had failed to keep her mouth open sufficiently and on the first stroke of coming back out of her mouth had dragged him against the closing jagged teeth she possessed. It caused a massive sense of pain to Klosowski and drawing blood from a cut as a result.

Now rapidly softening he was not quite free from her mouth and he had to pull it out clenching her jaw open with his hands as he did so to minimise damage. She was almost too drunk to realise what she had done as he slapped her once it was free sobering her up a little. She screamed out and stood up unsteadily against the wall. He grabbed her by the throat with his left hand to stifle her cries and drew the knife from in his jacket, but she reacted quickly used to rough treatment on occasions by her East End clients and she punched down hard on his left arm against the elbow joint forcing him to loosen his grip. It caused a sharp pain in his elbow and at the same time she kicked him in the right shin with her left leg. Unfortunately she was too late to see the knife coming as he slashed it swiftly across her throat cutting deeply and severing her vocal chords among many injuries. She staggered about clutching her neck as he pushed her into the yard at the back of 29 Hanbury Street where she fell to the floor writhing in agony seconds from death.

As she lay there dying very silently, Klosowski looked down at his blood covered penis. It hurt him a great deal as he wrapped it in a handkerchief and placed it back inside his trousers doing them up as he turned, now even more rage filled having examined himself, upon Chapman. Her dying glance looked up at him as he began shaking and curled his lips back to attack her almost lifeless body with the growing pool of blood around her head and shoulders. He dropped to his knees along side of her and stabbed into her neck with a deep deliberate cut which he drew across her throat feeling a slight bit of resistance as the knife passed over the vertebrae of her spin. The blood flow from the neck didn’t massively increase as he had already managed to sever the main arteries. Looking at her face he saw the life ebb out of her leaving him to take revenge on her pitiful ravaged body.