Missing Susan

contained God knows what, these days), the boat needed repairs, or else Rowan might find himself sharing a locker with Davy Jones. And Sebastian’s school fees were to be raised by ten percent beginning next term.

These debts looming on his personal horizon were of such magnitude that they didn’t bear contemplation. It was useless to think that giving up the odd pack of cigarettes or setting aside his pub money would stem the tide of insolvency. Before the summer was out, Rowan Rover stood in actual danger of having to go out and secure a real job. Or at the very least, a teaching position. This prospect so profoundly depressed him that he resolved not to dwell on his financial situation if he could possibly help it. He had purchased a book called Do It Yourself Boat Repair, but its illegible technicality had only increased his despair. Life, he told himself, had been simpler in the Ripper’s time, what with no income tax, and drinks to be had for a penny. Doubtless the Ripper would have agreed with him. In 1888 there had been no fingerprinting or DNA testing. Why, in those halcyon days a man could get away with murder.

The tour began at the Whitechapel tube station, thus allowing tourists from all over the city a convenient means of transport to the starting point. It was also ideally situated for introducing a note of delicious dread at the onset of the tour. A few yards from the entrance to the Underground was a narrow alley leading to Durward Street; it had been called Bucks Row a century ago, when Polly Nicholls’ mutilated body had been discovered there with her throat cut. The Whitechapel residents had petitioned to change the street’s name a few weeks after the murder of Nicholls, the first of the Ripper’s victims.

Rowan Rover made his introductory remarks where the group convened on Whitechapel Road, giving a general overview of the Ripper tale for those tourists who had only a vague idea of the case.

“Isn’t it a bit anachronistic to have us arrive by subway?” asked a Canadian professor.

Rowan Rover attempted to disguise his sneer as a cheery smile. “Actually, the Metropolitan Line of the Underground was completed in 1884,” he said with the briskness of one to whom the question has become a commonplace. “That’s four years before the murders occurred. Jack himself might have used the tube you just arrived on.” Unless you’re daft enough to think he was the Duke of Clarence, he finished silently.

Having thus intimidated the self-styled experts in the party, Rowan continued his spiel. “In the autumn of 1888, a killer who was to become known as Jack the Ripper killed five prostitutes. No, not seven”-he added with a nod to the waving hand at the back of the group-“we’ll go into that later. That left approximately 79,995 common prostitutes still alive and busy in the East End of London at that time. It was a dreadful time and a dreadful place. Let me give you an idea of what it was like.” He proceeded to paraphrase a few shocking anecdotes from Jack London’s Children of the Abyss, touching on the thirty thousand homeless, the workhouses, and the living conditions of the nineteenth-century poor. Rowan took pride in imparting social awareness in addition to the prurient thrills of the tour.

“There are those who contend that the Ripper was a social reformer,” he told them. “At the time, George Bernard Shaw wrote a letter to the Star stating just that. Certainly the Ripper did more to focus attention on the East End than all the do-gooders in all the charities combined. The murders forced the authorities to pay attention to the appalling conditions in the slums, and some aspects of East End life actually improved as a result of the Ripper’s work.”

The staring crowd digested this thought in silence. Finally a woman said hesitantly, “Do you think…”

“That the Ripper was a zealot with a social conscience?” asked Rowan Rover. “No. That’s complete rubbish. Move along now, please.”

After discouraging more of the usual anticipatory questions about the identity of the Ripper, he led the group to the alley where the evening’s sightseeing-and the murders-began.

“It was here that Jack the Ripper met his first victim: Mary Ann Nicholls. Polly, as she was known. She was nobody’s idea of a beauty. Fortyish. Looked sixty. Sallow complexion, mouse-brown hair. Five teeth missing from a brawl with another prostitute. He led her away from the busy Whitechapel Road, and through this alley to Bucks Row.” Rowan Rover shepherded the group through the narrow passage.

He liked to linger in the squalid confinement of the brick-lined alley, urging his charges to get the feel of the East End as it once was, in all its unsavory glory. The ammonia stench from the encrusted walls usually warned the tourists to keep their distance, but in case they were too preoccupied to notice, he was always careful to admonish his flock not to touch the walls as they passed through. Less respectable pedestrians than themselves visited that alleyway for reasons that wouldn’t bear thinking about, he told them, nodding toward another wino. After his warning, they proceeded single file, making narky comments about the local citizenry.

Still, he was glad for a bit of sordidness at the beginning of the tour, because the fact was that the dreadful slum of the Ripper era had almost completely disappeared. In place of the grimy clusters of tenements that had once harbored the East End poor, there were now newly erected brick office buildings, and wide well-lit streets, much to Rowan’s regret. It didn’t make his job any easier. After a couple of double Scotches at the Ten Bells, Rowan Rover had been heard to remark that if the Whitechapel district had any interest in preserving the unique character of their infamous tourist attraction, they should tear down all those characterless modern office buildings and put up rotten, reeking tenements. That’s what tourists wanted to see when they came to Whitechapel! Failing civic cooperation of such magnitude, Rowan had to darken the tour as best he could with dramatic descriptions of the bygone squalor, and by reciting, with BBC solemnity, graphic accounts of the Ripper’s handiwork. He set the tone of the murder walk in the longish trek from Bucks Row to Hanbury Street, where the body of Annie Chapman had been discovered in the backyard of Number 29, one week after the Nicholls murder. The death site is now occupied by Truman’s Brewery, just opposite a nice tandoori restaurant.

By now Rowan Rover was beginning to size up his audience. There was the usual assortment of Americans, crime buffs, adventurous Londoners, and earnest Japanese tourists. He had recited the particulars of the Ripper tour so often that he could conduct it almost entirely on automatic pilot, so that while the group was hearing him say, “Annie Chapman’s face was bruised and the tongue protruded from her mouth. She had also been disemboweled…” he was actually thinking: Three more minutes until we reach the Ten Bells. Must take care not to sit with that beefy woman who wants to talk about her sodding Duke of Clarence theory. The Welsh chap looks like he might stand me a drink, but what about the lovely blonde in the Burberry? She’s been dogging my heels since we started. I could ask her back to the boat on the pretext of discussing…

A hand touched Rowan Rover’s arm, startling him to full consciousness. He turned to see a tall, well-dressed American regarding him with an expression of quiet urgency. Rowan had mentally tagged him The Businessman, and wondered what had possessed him to come on a Ripper tour. He wasn’t the usual type; at least, not without a teenager or a few tipsy colleagues in tow.

“Mr. Rover, I wonder if we could have a talk before the evening is over,” the man said, in a voice one degree above a whisper.

Various scenarios flashed through Rowan’s mind: the man was a publisher, soliciting a Ripper book; he was a journalist doing a Ripper article and wanted a contemporary slant; he had a boat of his own and his taste in companions differed markedly from Rowan’s. A closer look at this solemn middle-aged gentleman convinced him that none of these theories was correct. What the hell did he want? Rowan summoned a polite smile. “Why, certainly,” he said. “The tour will conclude at a pub in Aldgate, and perhaps you’d care to stay on after that and chat.” He regretted having to part with the idea of trying his luck with the blonde, but his curiosity had got the better of him. As long as the proposed conference was confined to the Aldgate pub, and the businessman provided the drinks.

The man smiled back. “That will be fine,” he said. “I’ll talk to you then.”

After the Chapman death site, the tour took a half-hour intermission so that the freezing tourists could rest their feet and thaw out. The scene of the rest stop was the Ten Bells Pub in Spitalfields, where Ripper victim Elizabeth (Long Liz) Stride was seen drinking on the night that she later turned up murdered in Berners Street. Rowan ushered his charges inside, explaining in a voice of careful neutrality that while the pub had been called the Ten Bells at the time of the Ripper murders, its name had subsequently been changed, and it had until recently been called the Jack the Ripper Pub. A group of protesters had succeeded in forcing the resurrection of the original name on the grounds that a pub named after the Ripper encouraged violence against women.

“Too bad,” said an American college boy. “It would have been awesome to get a picture of the pub sign. Maybe a T-shirt.”

A British matron in tweeds gave him an icy glare. “How would you Yanks like a fast food restaurant named after Ted Bundy?” she demanded.