‘At Itchy Park – I mean, Christ Church, in Spitalfields. The great white church down from the hospital. I was walking past this week and I saw you in the yard, with all the… the people who sleep there. Are you a Methodist, or a Salvationist? My grandparents were Methodists before they converted to Salvationists. I… wasn’t spying, Dr Shivershev. I was only walking past and saw you quite by chance.’
‘What were you doing in Whitechapel, Mrs Lancaster? I can’t imagine Chelsea housewives have much need to visit Spitalfields.’
‘I went to see the murder spots,’ I said, as if it were obvious. It sounded terrible, made worse by my excitable tone. Made so much worse by his uninterested silence. Still, I felt obligated to fill this by further uninvited explanation.
‘You know – the Whitechapel unfortunates, the women stabbed and mutilated. You must have heard. The whole city has heard of the murders. Are you to tell me you haven’t read of them at all?’
‘I don’t read the newspapers, Mrs Lancaster. I find them hysterical at the best of times. I find it impossible to read one without the feeling that someone is trying to make me angry at someone or something, when before the paper I felt ambivalent at best.’
‘They think they know the man now anyway. They say he is a Polish Jew, or Russian. Polish or Russian, I can’t remember – neither have the reputation of being trustworthy, do they? Anyway, they call him Leather Apron, a monster’s name, I think. He is so very vicious that even the other Jews have rejected him.’
‘The Russian ones or the Polish ones?’
‘I’m not sure. Do they not all mix together?’
‘I suppose it depends if the Russians trust the Poles or the Poles trust the Russians. Who knows? Maybe neither are to be trusted.’
‘Perhaps.’ I suspected he was making fun of me, but I was so taken with my own train of thought, I continued. ‘The police have torn apart two hundred houses looking for him. Do you remember Emma Smith?’
He shook his head, eyes down, and continued his polishing.
‘I’m sure you will. She had horrific injuries – beneath her skirts. They think she was a victim of this Leather Apron but that she was too frightened to speak the truth, even as she lay bleeding to death. She must have known she was dying… Or perhaps not.’
‘Tell me something, Mrs Lancaster. Why be so taken by these murders? It is a subject I have heard other doctors express confusion about, that their wives are also fascinated by these crimes. It seems… perverse.’
‘How so?’
‘Such gruesome crimes. Why would ladies especially be so enthralled by the macabre? It seems a misguided romanticism.’
‘Please, Dr Shivershev! I can think of a million reasons for being interested in the murders, yet it is so typical of men to assume a woman’s interest can only be of a romantic nature; about men, in essence. As if in between our busy day of daydreaming of children and wedding dresses we must now make time to swoon over a murderer. For goodness’ sakes! What of curiosity? The will to survive? Strategy and intrigue? These are not the sole domain of men.’
It was precisely these concerns that compelled me to keep my scrapbook on the murders, my personal study; it might not make much sense now but maybe at some point it would, wasn’t this how all scientific discoveries were made? I did not share with the doctor that I had taken up his suggestion of writing in a journal, but I was not done with making my point yet.
‘We are told when we are young to stay indoors, to never venture out at night, and we are raised on fairy tales in which we are in danger of being devoured by beasts at every turn, and yet a woman who dares to think and find ways to defend herself by learning about the very monster who hunts her is somehow an abomination. What do men expect a woman to be, Doctor? I’m sure I don’t know.’
‘Have you finished, Mrs Lancaster?’ he said.
‘Have you heard, Dr Shivershev?’
‘You were an excellent nurse, by the way.’
‘Was I? You never said.’
‘It was implied by its omission, like “thank you” in Spanish.’
‘How so?’
‘I always asked for you.’
‘Did you? I was not aware you even knew my name.’
‘I didn’t. I asked for the tall one.’
‘Is that why I was always given the worst shifts, at night?’
‘Yes. I like to keep my days free for my private patients, and the nights can throw up the real spectrum of the human condition.’
‘Yes, the nights could be especially creative in their variety. Well, it all makes sense now. I thought only that Matron wanted to punish me.’
‘I’m Jewish,’ he said, looking up, peering through the spectacles and checking how clean they were against the light.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You asked if I was a Methodist or a Salvationist. I’m Jewish. My mother was Jewish, my father Russian Orthodox, but it was my mother who made such decisions in the house and it was what she knew. Remove that hat, please.’ He put the spectacles back down on his desk and waved a nonchalant hand at my bonnet.
‘Oh,’ I said. Inside, I had withered, curled in on myself like a burned leaf. I took my bonnet off and set it down on the edge of his desk. I shuddered when I felt his hands at the back of my head. With his thumbs on the corners of my jaw, his fingers searched for something along my neck.
‘Any back or neck pain? Have you received any blows or fallen?’ he asked.
‘No.’
His fingers located the scab hiding in my hair.
‘Then how did you get this?’
‘I fell against the sideboard and cracked my head on the mirror above it. How stupid of me – I forgot it was there.’
‘Were you dizzy when this happened?’
‘Oh no, only clumsy.’ I laughed.
He walked back to his desk and sat down.
