There wasn’t much in that first report; a few cursory lines notable only for their sparsity and violence. For some stupid reason I thought of Thomas and his scratches, but he was not the type to loiter in Whitechapel. Twenty-four stab wounds…
A few days later, more pages were given to the murder. One paper stated that the woman had been stabbed thirty or forty times, not twenty-four. Some poor tenant had come down the stairs of his block and stumbled over her body. He wasn’t the first to pass by her either; another man had stepped over what he thought was a sleeping vagrant and continued to his bed at three thirty. By quarter to five the next man to pass could see the woman was lying in a swamp of her own clotting blood and ran to find a policeman.
There were reports of two soldiers from the Tower being arrested; then the soldiers were released without charge.
I found myself thinking about the story throughout the days that followed. Finding a dead body on the streets of Whitechapel or on a landing in a Nichol terrace was not that unusual, and there were murders over mundane things such as tobacco or soap, but this woman had suffered stab wounds all over her chest and to the rest of her body. As a nurse I had tended to many such injuries, inflicted with all manner of sharp objects and sometimes more than once, but the effort and time it would have taken to stab that poor woman some thirty times, over and over again, shocked me. It was dispiritingly common for men to beat their wives to death in a frenzy of rage or passion, using whatever came to hand, either stabbing or strangling them, but this was mutilation for the sport. For a person to have expended such energy and at so much risk, he must have anticipated deriving a huge amount of pleasure from it.
Everything else about this woman was unremarkable: she was of average height, aged between thirty and forty, dressed in dark, dirty and torn clothes and carrying no discernible possessions. Someone who would likely not be missed. The only remarkable thing the poor cow achieved was to have been found on a stairwell, punctured like a sieve, and to have died silently, because none of the seventeen lodgers in that building heard a thing.
I was in the habit of saving news stories and so I saved each one I found on this murder. I had kept stories and articles of memorable events since the day we were wed, hoping to build a scrapbook, moments in time that would document our marriage. A stupid idea, a pathetic attempt at romanticism on my part. I wasn’t very good at it, finding myself drawn to the more macabre articles. Thomas found my morbid fascination hilarious, an indication of my naivete, and he would laugh and pat me on the head like a child. Had he learned of my true knowledge of such matters, I doubt he would have found it so amusing. What kind of romantic reflection would my habit inspire twenty years hence, I wondered. Oh look, do you remember this murder, darling? Wasn’t it gruesome! In truth, my interest came in part from my desperate desire to find something to do. The boredom was torturous and I missed having a purpose, now that I wasn’t nursing and had to keep myself occupied. I was intrigued by those stories that were at once familiar and thankfully distant.
Mrs Wiggs attempted to throw my clippings away when she saw them scattered over the table in the dining room. ‘The macabre recordings of depravity covered in the fingerprints of a thousand filthy men, and who knows where their hands have been,’ she said as I gathered them up.
I filed them away in a sideboard in the back dining room, a space largely forgotten. We were a small household and we could easily accommodate ourselves in the front part of the room, closing off the rear section behind folding wooden doors. The back room had remained cold and dark, its fire and lamps unlit, until I claimed it as my own space.
‘Mrs Lancaster, I only ask that you think of the germs on those dirty newspapers, which are now contaminating the house,’ Mrs Wiggs would say at regular intervals.
‘It is only so I might discuss current affairs with Dr Lancaster, Mrs Wiggs. I must work to keep his attention, for he is so very clever, as you well know.’
*
Mrs Wiggs was the only servant who lived with us. Cook, and Sarah, the scullery maid, came every day. Cook may have sometimes slept in the kitchen, although I never had the need to go out there, and after the last debacle I never wanted to. She could have had her entire family living there for all I knew. Sarah was a frail and thin-lipped girl with wispy hair and sharp features who always appeared to be glowering. I think she found my newspaper collection odd, and I’m sure she had hoped for a real lady once her master married, one who would throw dinner parties and fill the house with ribbons and bonnets – things I had been taught were wasteful and frivolous. I confused her. I confused myself.
Wherever I retreated to in the house, Mrs Wiggs did her best to seek me out, chasing me from room to room, forever dragging Sarah behind her, making statements for my benefit. ‘The home is a battleground, Sarah. We feeble women can never rest or declare the enemies of cleanliness conquered.’ She would strut about like an officer inspecting the aftermath of a land war, giving Sarah seven tasks to complete at once.
Mrs Wiggs had convinced herself she was dying because of
