released to the public,’ he said.
‘They haven’t, Turner.’
Jpeg 004 showed the inside of the warehouse on West India Quay. The next was a close-up of the roller; 006 was a shot of the metal punch.
‘Are these trophies?’ Turner said, his voice icy.
Pendragon pulled himself upright and stood up, arms folded, staring at the screen. ‘No,’ he said as Turner spun round in the chair. ‘They’re something entirely different, Sergeant. And I don’t want a word breathed about this until I’m ready. You got that?’
‘Got it, guv.’
Chapter 40
To Mrs Sonia Thomson
16 October 1888
And so, an interlude. I had, I thought, done exceedingly well. There were certainly a few precarious moments, especially on the night of the double murder. I had seen the whites of the policeman’s eyes before I jumped, and for a fleeting moment I half-believed I had reached the end of the road, with my skull crushed against the tunnel wall or my body shattered under the steel wheels of the underground train. But that was not to be. The worst I suffered was a sprained ankle and a few lacerations and bruises.
But I needed rest. And, to be honest, I wanted to observe at my leisure the repercussions from my adventures. For this was all part of the creative process. As I started work on the painting, building upon my experiences and my almost perfect recall, I sniffed the air, so to speak. I sensed and relished the rising panic and animal fear of the dumb herd around me.
The newspapers were full of it, of course, and I too played my part, offering Archibald suitably sanitised renditions of the slashed bodies. I read with great amusement the inaccuracies and downright fictions concerning what had been dubbed ‘the Whitechapel murders’. There was even a copy-cat murder. A whore named Ann Chapman was dispatched by a rank amateur. I was irritated when I first heard of this, but after a moment’s pause, I realised the truth of the adage that imitation is the highest form of flattery. Then, of course, some of the falsehoods had been initiated by Yours Truly. I was particularly proud of the graffiti I had daubed on the wall close to the body of Elizabeth Stride, and the removal of the kidney, which I had already dug up and used in the preparation of my paints. The message had conveyed a subtle suggestion that the Freemasons might be involved because of the vaguely ritualistic aspect to the murder. It had been another amusing little decoy, just to confuse the Old Bill, as the local ovine community call the noble guardians of the law.
Suspects were rounded up. One unfortunate fellow, a worker in a local abattoir, had the misfortune of being spotted close to the scene of Catherine’s sad demise. He was given the nickname ‘Leather Apron’ because of the garment he wore at work. He was pulled in for questioning and held in the cells for a few days. But he was eventually released because the police had no real evidence with which to present a case.
The police were, by and large, completely ineffectual, I’m pleased to say. I had chosen my theatre well, had I not, Sonia? After all, who gives a damn about a few repulsive, drunken whores? My work was conducted in a part of London which was, in the eyes of most people, beyond the pale. Wealthy gentlemen may have enjoyed visiting the Stew, dipping their toe into Hell and dipping their wicks into very rough receptacles, but that was merely the natural order of things. My victims were those who had fallen over the edge. If London had been portrayed by Hieronymus Bosch, Whitechapel would have been the lowest level of Hell, a place filled with barrels of pitch and fire and brimstone, the bodies of the useless tossed in at will to melt into the universal pit of nothingness. Why should a judge or a police commissioner, a university don or a bishop, care the slightest what happened there?
Inspector Frederick Abberline was the man at the centre of the investigation. And never a more plodding plodder have I encountered — again, I’m thankful, dear lady, if a little peeved, that I did not have a more interesting and challenging adversary. The police never really had a clue about me, and during the two weeks I spent lying low and painting, they called in for questioning literally dozens of nobodies.
It was at this point that I decided to become a little more playful. I started to write letters to the newspapers and the police. It was in the first of these, written in red ink — yes, I do confess this was a little melodramatic — that I introduced the nickname that will forever be associated with my work: ‘Jack the Ripper’.
I can say in all honesty that I have no idea where the name came from. It just arrived on the page as I signed the letter to the Central News Agency. It was wonderful fun. I deliberately obfuscated the text, writing in the voice of a rather common, uneducated fellow, but nevertheless a man with a sense of humour. Here and there, I sprinkled the letters with tiny clues, egging on the police, trying to stir up a little fight in them. But to no real avail. The plodders continued to plod.
I spent a lot of time with your good husband during my fortnight’s sabbatical. He was a curious fellow. The better I grew to know him, the more puzzling he became. Most striking was the fact that he was a man of both high and ridiculously low tastes. Now, you may say that many men are thus, but with dear old Archibald, it seemed this dichotomy was rather extreme. On the one hand, he delighted in frequenting the Reform Club and other such bastions of pretension and grandeur. He had high ideals, artistic integrity even. He wanted to make statements, to make his mark, to do something noble and worthy. In short, he had a great desire to encourage people to think; which is a quality I admire. But the corollary of all this well-intentioned public behaviour was the man’s insatiable private lust for the low life. He had a seemingly limitless fascination with the seediest brothels, the worst pubs and drinking clubs. He took me to some of the most dangerous opium dens in London, places few people even knew existed, run by Chinese gangs — filthy, stinking rat holes close to the docks, where the air was so rank with opium fumes one barely needed to partake of the pipe to become intoxicated.
Together, during a three-night run of the dens in Limehouse, we witnessed two murders. One was a stabbing involving two Chinese dealers who dispatched a man who’d threatened to give them up to the police. The other involved the shooting of a young drugs runner. It was most entertaining. Although, I have to say, the high point of my nocturnal adventures with Archibald was the night he took me to the Mansion of Wonders, a fabulous misnomer if ever I heard one, because the venue was certainly no ‘mansion’ and the exhibits were some way short of ‘wonders’.
The Mansion of Wonders was actually a couple of rooms to the rear of a shop at number 259 Whitechapel Road. Archibald informed me that until just two years before a famous grotesque, Joseph Merrick the Elephant Man, was on display there, and that the freak had been forced to sit in the shop window to attract the crowds. He is now in the London Hospital, of course. I’m sure, like most of the genteel classes in England, you have followed the strange man’s story in
In the next room sat the Siamese twins, a couple of elderly gentlemen joined by a six-inch strip of thick pink flesh along their sides. They had apparently been in the freak-show business for almost forty years. After we had enjoyed a good chuckle at the twins, they were taken away and Agatha, the world’s hairiest woman, was brought in. For me, she was the oddest of the collection, because, if one were to ignore the fact that she was covered from head to foot with thick black hair, she was otherwise a normal human being.
Archibald was moved by the sight, I could tell. And I know why. It was the woman’s eyes. They were perfectly shaped, large and dark brown, quite beautiful really. But the thing that must have stirred his emotions was the way those eyes peered out from that horrible globe of hair. They possessed an imploring stillness, an almost noble resignation. Archibald was deeply saddened by the experience whereas I felt a wonderful thrill. The woman’s expression was so similar to that of Fred, the boy I had let drown so many years ago. Looking at Agatha, I felt something close to ecstasy. I wanted to laugh uproariously. It was only a sense of decorum that stopped me. I did not care about the sensibilities of those around me, but I did not want to draw attention to myself. At least not there and then.
