‘It’s your turn now,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘I cannot do it. I was a nurse not a surgeon.’
‘Take the knife. I wish to change instruments, I need you to assist me,’ he said.
‘Why am I to do it? If it’s Mary who’s escaping, why not let her assist you?’
Mary tutted, turned her face to the fire again, and whispered, ‘I told you, she will get us all killed.’
‘Mary is not of the profession,’ said Dr Shivershev. ‘I said I would let you go in exchange for assistance. Well, this is the assistance I need. I need to know I can trust you and for that you must be more than complicit. We must be in this together. Do not play the defenceless little maid, Susannah. I’m afraid the part doesn’t suit you. Now, take the knife,’ he said, ‘and, Mary, keep singing.’
I looked at the knife. I thought of all the things I could do, other than take it: scream, flee, even dive through the window and run down the passageway of broken glass. It was a simple thing, was it not, to take a knife from someone’s grasp? Mrs Wiggs was not the first to die by my hand. Perhaps that was why I was able to do what I did. My grandmother was right: there was a badness in me, the vermin in the yeast, the tar in the blood.
I stared at Dr Shivershev’s wet hands, slick with the blood and matter from the open carcass that had once been Mrs Wiggs. I took a cloth from his bag and, holding it across my open palms, let him place the knife on top, then I cleaned it of Mrs Wiggs’ blood.
He pointed at the knife he wanted to swap it for and I passed it to him. I moved to stand beside him as he discussed what should be done next, and between us we agreed that it would be prudent to cut away Mrs Wiggs’ nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears. He sliced the lips with incisions down to the chin and I suggested he make some nicks like the ones found on Catherine Eddowes and written about in the newspapers.
I had always thought of myself as an inherently good person, but I assumed now that this was how all monsters felt. I watched as my physician cut into the woman who had brushed my hair and fussed about my not having any calling cards, and knew I could not be good. I was a different kind. There was something innately bad inside me, because I was willing to do absolutely anything to save my own skin. Whether it was to remain silent under a bed, poison an old woman, or stab another and allow them to be mutilated after death. I did not feel the weight of this yet, and I wondered when and if the gravity of the things I had done would touch me.
I accepted this and then we agreed that Dr Shivershev should reduce the right thigh down to the bone. He also stripped the left thigh of the skin and the muscles as far as the knee. There was an age difference of what we guessed might be some twenty years; we needed her body to be so damaged that it would be indistinguishable from that of a twenty-seven-year-old. Dr Shivershev finished by hacking and slashing indiscriminately at any uncut flesh. Together, we made a very good Ripper.
When we had finished, he removed her heart and handed it to Mary, who, with shaking hands, wrapped it in a cloth and made a package covered in newspaper.
‘It is for Mary’s appointment, by request,’ Dr Shivershev said. ‘Someone wants the heart of a young virgin. I’m afraid Mrs Wiggs will have to do.’
By the time we’d finished, what was left of Mrs Wiggs looked to have been torn through a machine. We stepped away, blood on the both of us, but since she was dead when we began cutting, the majority had pooled and collected in a congealed swamp under the bed.
‘Wait,’ I said, and rearranged her legs to fit with what I assumed to be a natural position for a prostitute to be found in. I splayed them wide apart at an angle befitting a whore of the lowest order. I did not mean to offend anyone or upset them, I certainly didn’t wish to slight any more of Mrs Wiggs’ dignity, I was merely posing her in what I thought would make the scene impressive, in the most dramatic sense. To make up for this slur against her remains, I arranged her arms the way my mother’s had been in death: left arm bent at an angle and lying across her body, right arm on the mattress; delicate, peaceful. Restful.
I was told to strip down to my chemise so Mary could cut my dress into pieces and burn it in the fire. I had brought a frock of my own, as instructed. He must have known all along how this would play out, from the moment I offered him my idea in the attic. Mary chattered as I undressed. Her vocabulary was wide and varied, she was fragile, soft, and had none of the hardness the other Ripper women appeared to have, from what I’d read. She told me she had lived in Paris and spoke a little French but didn’t like the world there and had returned and struggled to find her footing.
We washed our hands as best we could with a little water, the rest of which Dr Shivershev poured over the body. It leaked through to form a pool below. Then he took a bottle, the same kind used for my medicine, and
