Whitechapel (9 page)

Looking the street up and down again and then he made off west along Bucks Row to return to the west of town and his luxurious accommodation at the Ritz. Polly Nicholls was left on the pavement a butchered mess so ending her pitiful life of vice. Her final client simply melted into the night and away from the squalid East End.

Meanwhile Druitt had long since finished being serviced by Cathy Eddowes and knowing what the Doctor was like for somewhat dragging out the nights’ debauched events from last time decided to simply return home. He had paid Eddowes her money and despite her typical filthy East End condition had actually received a quite good sexual experience from her and thought about recommending her services to the doctor the next time they forayed into the East End together. He flagged down a hansom cab whilst passing through Whitechapel High Street to take him home to his quarters at Mr Valentine’s School, Blackheath where he worked part as a schoolmaster whilst also practising law. He would be cautious about arriving back late as Mr Valentine did not approve of late nights, so he would stop short in the cab and walk into the grounds so as not disturb anyone.

He looked out upon the streets of London wondering what his friend’s debauched evening had consisted of. As he did so he began to feel great shame and disgust on himself for his own sexual foray. As they approached the Victorian construction project of the new river crossing to be called ‘Tower Bridge’ he called to the driver. “Stop the cab!” He did so with Druitt briskly alighting and throwing the fare at the driver whose horse trotted off at his command as Druitt strolled off in the direction of Wapping. He reached the shore side after a brisk walk and stared aimlessly out to the river on the gas lit Thames embankment wondering if he as yet had the courage to end his life so full of failure and immorality. He leant against the embankment wall and looked vertically down to the dark swirling water; he would need to make it quick when he did it, weight his own coat down to sink more deeply and guarantee no escape. He looked around him but there was nothing to use. Tonight wasn’t the night after all. If he reduced his time in Whitechapel perhaps that might boost his self esteem. He stood up straight and looked west along the river. London by night was a beautiful city and he felt it was not yet his time to give it up.

As he did so a passing constable on the Wapping beat saw him; having seen the police intelligence regarding such activity he spoke to the well dressed gent on the shore side.

“You all right, sir?”

There was a pause from Druitt before he broke his glazed stare out across the river and spoke “Yes, fine officer, just gathering my thoughts.”

“Nothing for me to worry about then, sir, you have been seen here before.”

“We all have our little places we like to retreat to, constable, and this is mine.”

“No problem, sir, see you again.” Druitt was unaware of the officer passing on as he was again staring glassy eyed across the river.

***

Three a.m. Michael Ostrog came shuffling along Bucks Row and spotted what he perceived was a flat out drunken tom laying by the gates to what was Franklin’s wood yard and thought his luck maybe up. Thinking he could perhaps indulge in a quiet freebie if she was unconsciously drunk and satisfy one of his typically sickening sexual urges he approached her and lifted her skirt in the dark, poorly lit Bucks Row. He bent down about to kneel between her legs when he, aghast, noticed her terrible wounds. The extent of the mutilations shocked even him and fearing he would be held guilty of this attack he disappeared into the shadows and out of the area. His survival instincts kicked in heavily fearing discovery and possible blame he ran as fast as his legs could take him away from the scene and deeper into the East End’s warren of slums. This left Nicholls lying with her skirt hitched up as she was discovered just over half an hour later by a couple of local men; Charles Cross and Robert Paul passing through on their way home.

Utterly shocked by their discovery they shouted “Murder, murder!” at the top of their voices disturbing the local residents who looked out of their windows. They were joined in minutes by Constable Thain and then Constable Neil, both of whom were local offciers and knew each other well. They had been walking on separate but adjacent ‘beats’ which allowed them to arrive within minutes of each other. Thain shone his oil lamp into the prostrate woman’s face and looked up at Neil saying in a distressed manner, only having seen her hours earlier “Bloody ‘ell John, it’s Polly Nicholls!”

It was 3.45.a.m.

CHAPTER FIVE
 

Inspector Frederick Abberline stirred on hearing the sound of his large copper mechanical alarm clock begin to strike at around 6.30.a.m. He rolled over from the cuddled sleeping position he found himself in with his wife Emma and turned it off. He sat up on the side of his bed in the three bedroom terraced house in the leafy east of London suburb of East Ham and rubbed his eyes. He stood up and began shuffling across the bedroom to head out to the bathroom mindful of not stepping on the tail or anything else of his wife’s beloved Norwich terrier ‘George’ sleeping on the landing. He walked into the bathroom and lent on the washbasin and faced into the mirror above it.

Fred Abberline was born in Blandford, Dorset the son of Edward and Hannah and moved to London in 1863 to join the Metropolitan Police. He had worked extensively in the East End during his twenty-five year service spending fourteen of them as an inspector in the area and therefore had an intimate knowledge of the geography and society of that side of London. This would be a profound factor in his selection, as yet unknown to him, in heading the immediate investigation of the two prostitute murders in Whitechapel at ‘street level’. He currently worked directly out of the detective department or C.I.D at Scotland Yard and little did he know that the second murder of a local prostitute was about to have a profound effect on the rest of his police career and life.

Staring into the mirror he saw looking back at him a rather greying and becoming marginally paunchy forty-five year old in dire need of a shave. A decade of alcohol abuse during the 1870s the period during which he spent so much time in the East End had taken its toll on him. The stress of being at the inspector level in both uniform and the C.I.D in the area drove most to the solace of a drink after hours, and sometimes even during it, to relieve the tension that dealing with countless rapes, assaults, robberies and occasional murders all with extreme violence created. His face was somewhat lined a little beyond his years hence his propensity for maintaining either a beard or mutton chop moustache to try to break up the weathered look of his skin. He washed his face and ran a comb through his short hair and decided that was enough grooming for this morning, the bonus of currently sporting the beard was the lack of necessity to endure Victorian poor quality razors and the razor burns they inflicted. He dressed in a fairly typical Victorian gentleman type way with a smart three piece single breasted suit, rounded collar white shirt and tie, black brogue shoes and eventually a trilby type hat. He had in fact now been off of the ‘demon drink’ for the best part of a year since working in the more civilised surroundings of Scotland Yard, little did he know that was to all too imminently to change.

He kissed Emma as she lay slumbering still and then headed off downstairs with George in tow. Opening the back door the dog ran out into the fresh August morning air and came to dead stop in the middle of the garden with his nose held high in the air sniffing the atmosphere intently. He then looked around at Abberline and came running back in doors barking as he came now wanting some breakfast as his master would be preparing his own. Abberline bent down and gave him a good rub on his head and then grabbed a couple of biscuits from a tin marked ‘George’ and fed them to the little terrier who ate them briskly and enthusiastically and then ran back outside for his own inevitable ablutions.

“Stupid mutt,” said Abberline under his breath but smiling and began making himself some tea and toast.

Usually leaving for work around 7.15 and catching the omnibus service along the Romford and the Bow and Whitechapel Roads into central London, he was disturbed when the door knocker sounded around ten past the hour. He strode to the door with the dog barking and strutting along behind him and opened the front door to be greeted by a former colleague beyond whom he could see a hansom cab waiting in the road. It was George Godley a detective sergeant with whom he had worked in the Whitechapel area and who he knew was still posted there.

Godley was a man of a total of eleven years service with the Metropolitan force and aged thirty. He was born and bred in East Grinstead, Sussex so like Abberline not a native of the area and also like Abberline he had immersed himself during his career in the East End and was all too familiar with the nature of its society. He was a strikingly handsome man with short, smart dark hair and a well kept moustache and dressed this morning not dissimilarly to Abberline, almost the standard detective dress of the department.

“Morning, Fred. How are you?” he said in a casual but friendly manner to his old friend and colleague, extending his hand to shake Abberline’s.

“I’m bloody well, George, actually old fellow, but what the bloody hell are you doing here at this time of the morning, and on a Thursday to boot?” he took Godley’s hand and shook it firmly as they smiled at each other.

“Well to answer your first question, Fred, I am very well and as part of the answer to your second question, I am looking forward to working with you again.” Finishing his reply he thrust the morning’s edition of ‘The Star’ newspaper to Abberline with a bold headline.

‘SECOND UNFORTUNATE SLAIN IN WHITECHAPEL.’

“Bloody hell, George, what’s all this about then? Doesn’t normally make the headlines,” Abberline said somewhat surprised at the news headline.

“The papers have got hold of it and they think that there’s a pattern emerging. The Commissioner is also very unpopular and there is the hype that no one cares for the lower classes.”

“All right, George, that doesn’t completely tell me what you’re doing here,” Abberline said with nagging and obvious awareness for Godley’s visit.

“Superintendent Arnold is being put in charge of a priority investigation of these murders, and this is all since just after four this morning when the news broke at The Yard that the second woman had been murdered.”

“Well with a mind to the fact it’s only quarter past seven, they wasted no bleeding time getting on to you and then getting you round here.”

“Are you going to ask me in for a cup of tea as because of rushing here first I haven’t had one yet, or am I going to keep briefing you getting as dry as leather makers crotch on your bloody doorstep!”

“Sorry, mate, come on in there is more in the pot,” he gestured Godley past him to the kitchen where the other George was now jumping up at the back door and barking to be let out. “Shut up you little bleeder,” yelled Abberline opening up the door at the same time. Godley ignored this intent on pouring himself a cup of tea from the pot on the gas cooker.

He had been up since 5.a.m when a local inspector, a measure of the importance of the matter, had called at his modest house in Stratford just a few miles further in towards London from Abberline’s. The inspector was passing on the orders from Superintendent Arnold to get Abberline immediately and bring him to The Yard for a briefing, and telling Godley that they were both assigned to the case until it was resolved.

“Sorry about the doorstep, George, I was just a little bit stunned to see you. It’s been a few years as you know. Bit of a shock to think I’m getting thrown back into the fray of the East End.”

“Don’t worry, it’s good to see you, and I haven’t seen you looking so well for ages.”

“I’m off the sauce, George, for good.”

“That’s good to know, I’ll keep you to that, come on we’d better go.” They climbed aboard the cab and the set off to meet Superintendent Arnold at Scotland Yard. On route Godley briefed in Abberline on the two cases so far.

“Okay, George, so the second one has been butchered somewhat, but the murders of prostitutes especially are not uncommon in Whitechapel, so why all the fuss and why me?”

“Fred, even you must accept that two in just under a month is quite unusual, and you are almost universally known in the East End so the powers that be feel that your presence will help calm the area.”

“Well I shall bloody well tell Mr Arnold that he’s not transferring me back as a public satisfaction exercise, and that I will run the investigation my way,” Abberline spoke with the obvious annoyance over his appointment in his voice.

“Okay, Fred, I’m only the messenger,” Godley replied placing his hands in the air in a comic gesture of surrender with a smile. It broke the tension that had began to develop between them, although a tension of only professional minds beginning to focus on the case; they stared out of the carriage windows with the East End flashing by as they continued on their journey to The Yard.

Arriving, they dismounted from the cab and were saluted by a constable posted on the front desk who knew very well who Inspector Abberline was. Godley knew exactly where Superintendent Arnold’s office was from the orders he had been given earlier in the day. They knocked on the door and a deep baritone voice called for them to enter.

Sat behind a grand oak and leather desk in a heavily leather padded captains chair was the fifty-three year old superintendent. A good working colleague of Abberline’s, he had spent most of his career working in the East End too so Thomas Arnold knew its layout and geography well. Balding and bearded, he wore the traditional high necked senior officer’s tunic sporting campaign medals from his spell in the Crimean war, an interlude in his life that divided his police service into two parts. From his vast experience of London’s East End and his knowledge of Abberline’s crime detecting reputation he knew that he was choosing the right man for the investigation on the street.