Another one dead, and papers had given the murderer a name, but no one was using it yet. The police still called him “The Whitechapel killer,” and the people on the streets called him just “the killer.” Nothing more was needed.
Almost everyone found time on their walking commute that morning (some leaving home to get to morning shifts, some going back home from night shifts to sleep through the morning) to peer at what neighborhood rumor held to be the bloody patch of Whitechapel Road where the body was found. Rose and a few others pointed out that the real crime scene was behind a house on Hanbury Street, but that didn’t seem to matter to everyone else. Women fretted and men puffed their pipes and everyone stared at the blood (or whatever it was) and talked. “T’ain’t for the likes of us to judge her now,” one woman said.
“That’s right,” said her friend. “No matter what she done, it was an awful turn.”
“They’re saying it’s a gang of robbers doing the killings,” one man said, refilling his pipe. Another shook his head. “That’s a got-up yarn. I rather wish it was true Bet your money this ain’t been done that way.” There was muttered agreement all around. The people of Whitechapel Road were rarely challenged in their expertise in the field of what wasn’t so. The average East Ender would admit that she might not know much but insisted she had a good enough head on her shoulders to at least never be fooled. It was an important distinction.
“Thank God I needn’t be out after dark,” another woman said. “But my two girls have got to come home late and I’m all of a fidget.” At that the crowd began to drift away, as if afraid they’d be preternaturally stuck to the spot until dangerous nightfall. They exchanged a few “Good mornings,” and “Best of lucks” as they went. Rose stayed behind, using a neglected cart on the corner as a stool. She was now almost completely certain she was going to die.
“Don’t talk like that,” Mary said, although Rose had not actually been talking at all. Maybe the other woman was particularly talented at reading her face, or maybe Rose had simply said the same thing enough times in the past. Mary was buying hatpins from a woman at the mouth of the alley and seemed quite pleased with herself when she showed them to Rose. Her smile was as bright and clean as a spring morning, and her dress and apron were immaculate. Even when she spent all night on the street Mary still kept her aprons perfectly white. It was almost annoying.
“You’re not going to die,” Mary said, sitting down next to Rose and watching a new gang of morning gawkers. “I mean, you are going to die. But not now. Not soon.”
“The woman the other night didn’t think she was going to die. None of the other murdered women did either. What makes us so special?”
“You’ve had too much news is all,” Mary said. “Come on: Good food and a good song is all you need. No more being glum.”
“I’m not glum,” Rose said, standing. “I just know the way things are. No one cares what happens to us, and now there’s this killer.”
“Lots of people care. I’d bet that more kind words have been spent on this street the last four weeks than in the whole last year put together.”
What Rose didn’t say as they trudged through the people, smells, the mud, and the smoke, was that she was fairly certain Mary was not going to die. Young, pretty, Irish, and always smiling or singing, Mary was the sort of woman the world liked. Mary would be all right even if a hundred murderers were on the loose. Rose was another story: no longer so young, no longer so pretty, with not a penny to her name as of that morning and few options for earning any except Whitechapel Road after sundown. She’d been working no more than a few streets from the latest murder, and only a few hours before.
Rose’s parents were long dead; her only brother was in prison; she’d never married (and never would be, she’d vowed). There was no one to miss her much. As a girl she’d run along these same streets and pursued bloody gossip on this new crime or that. That she would eventually end up fodder for a neighborhood tale herself only made sense. She was not glum about this; it was just the way things were. She had sense enough to be afraid, but also enough not to hope for much better.
They passed a newsvendor. He was selling out faster than he could restock. Those who couldn’t read clustered around those who could, and any man or woman willing to read aloud from the early morning edition soon gathered quite a fan club. A shop boy recited the front page in tremulous tones: “September 8, 1888: London lies under the spell of a great terror. A nameless reprobate, half beast, half man, is at large, gratifying his murderous instincts. Hideous malice, deadly cunning, insatiable thirst for blood: All these are the marks of the mad homicide. The ghoul-like creature who stalks the streets of London is simply drunk with blood!”
The killing of women was hardly a new affair, but something was different about this one. Rumor (which always flew a little bit faster than news) said this latest victim had been chopped to pieces, the body taken apart with surgical precision, in the dark and in a hurry, no less. How could a man commit such a bloody deed and then scamper away from the scene without any witnesses, no matter how dark the night?
“He’s a butcher, or a slaughterhouse man, I bet,” said one of the girls in the lodging house kitchen on Dean Street. Rose warmed her feet by the stove while nine or ten other women clustered around the table and held a fireside inquest on the latest killing. Mary served slices of the bread and butter they’d bought, singing under her breath as if the topic were nothing less cheerful than hop-picking (though this might have been due to the fact that she was also having her first drink of the morning. Even Mary’s best friends admitted she loved her drink).
“No one pays attention to a butcher with blood on his hands,” the expert witness continued. “Just a man coming home late from work, they figure, and Hanbury Street isn’t far from the meathouses.”
“A slaughtering man couldn’t do it this way, though,” another woman said. “Got to be someone used to cutting up people surgical-like, not just goring pigs. One of them fellas who works in the morgue, I bet.” Everyone had a theory: A butcher, a tanner, a policeman, a cannibal. “Maybe it‘s some man‘s wife, keen to stop him man from sneaking out visit all of us, one way or another,” a woman said, and they all laughed except for Rose.
They were split on the subject of what to do come nightfall. None of them had doss money for their night’s bed yet (except Mary, who did not sleep here anyway, who in fact rented an entire room all to herself on Miller’s Court), but the idea of going out to earn it past sundown gave everyone the chills. Not tonight. “Maybe,” one of the women ventured (in tones suggesting she knew already that it was a doomed enterprise), “Mother Morris will let us sleep on credit tonight, if we promise to pay double next time.” But everyone shook their heads. Mother Morris would turn the Virgin Mary trembling with child out onto the streets if one o’clock came without doss money in hand. They even joked that she’d evict herself is she was ever without four pence. She’d throw them straight onto the killer’s knife without a flinch.
Some suggested they should find a bed at one of the other rooming houses, where the landlord might be feeling charitable on account of the murders. Others said they should go out and work but take their chances doing it elsewhere, some neighborhood west of here where dead women weren’t regularly part of the morning cleaning detail. They agreed it was a good idea, but Rose knew almost none of them would actually do it. They would all be exactly where they usually were come nightfall and taking their chances. After all, at worst only one of them could be murdered. The rest would come home to a warm (enough) bed and another day’s living.
No one else seemed to feel the fear as sharply as Rose come sundown. Perhaps, she thought, this was another omen. Come 10 o’clock she was on her usual point on Brick Lane. It was a cold night and still looked of rain. She had two pense in pocket already and with just two more she could go in and pay for her bed, which would bring relief not just from the weather but the bloodied ghosts that seemed to walk the street So many women had died here, even before these new killings. She wondered if there was any spot on the Whitechapel Road that hadn’t seen a murder.
A man was trying to get her eye. He was drunk; probably a sailor. If he was game, she needn’t stay out here any longer. Normally she’d hold out for one more after this and have a few coins for breakfast, but not tonight. She smiled at him and it seemed to be all the encouragement he needed. Leaning in, he said, “Will you?” And she nodded and said, “Yes,” then took him by the hand. The streets were still wet and muddy, but a wall and some privacy was good enough. There was a courtyard nearby where she sometimes took customers, with a low wall that provided a little cover…but it was a courtyard just like that the latest woman had been murdered in. Right here in the alley would do. This one was too deep in his drink to complain.
She turned her back, leaned into the wall, hiked her skirts up and presented her backside to his rough hands. It was a very cold night indeed; gooseflesh was the instant result. The sailor fumbled with his breeches and allowed a stream of drunken Liverpool curses when they caught on something, but eventually he managed it. Rose felt something press against her cheeks as he gave it a few encouraging strokes. She parted her legs more. She worried at first that he might be too corned to find the right spot, but after a second he slid in, eliciting a squeak of surprise that she managed to turn into an appropriately encouraging half-moan. The rough face of the wall scoured her palms as he pushed into her, hips thrusting so hard that he all but bounced off her backside.
Rose knew every kind of man–every kind who came to the East End, anyway, and she wasn’t convinced that the ones anywhere else were much different. The sailor was what she’d call a showoff, but one interested only in impressing himself, which lucky for him wasn’t a difficult feat. He wasn’t bad, all told, but it wouldn’t have made a difference to her if he had been. What mattered wasn’t which men were good and which were bad but which were easy and which were difficult. The sailor was easy, enamored as he was with his own thrusting cock, swollen up to press against the confines of Rose’s easily accessible notch. She winced now and then; he was short but wide and coming at an odd angle, making it seem like he was filling her to the point of stretching.
She gasped and grunted and swore in the right places (keeping her voice down more than usual tonight) and when he finished she felt it immediately, a spreading wetness accompanied by a quivering pulse in his tackle, and that was it. She righted herself and let out the sigh of relief she realized she’d been saving up all night. It was over. She could pay for her bed and get off the street. She didn’t have to die yet. She felt like laughing but was afraid it might sound mad, and the sailor was still with her. He was busy hitching his pants back up.
“By the way, love,” he said when he was done. He reached into his coat…
Here it comes, she thought. She wondered what the knife would look like when he pulled it out? What would it feel like? She imagined the blade sinking into her windpipe and the sound she would make trying to suck a breath around six inches of metal before the blood choked her. She realized now why no one ever reported screams; she couldn’t have screamed if the queen herself had commanded it, even though it was the only thing in the world she wanted to do. All she could do was watch, with eyes wide. This was it…
But when the sailor’s hand reappeared all it held was an extra coin. He put it in her palm. “I hear the news. It’s not safe out here for women. You take that and get home.”
Rose looked at the penny as if she didn’t know what it was. She said “Thank you,” automatically, without thinking about it, and then again a second time, more firmly. The sailor looked quite pleased with himself, even taking off his cap and making what he probably imagined to be a very respectful gesture as he escorted her back to the street. Half an hour later Rose lay in bed, doss paid with enough leftover for a meal in the morning. She was tired enough to sleep even in spite of the mutterings and unrest of the women in the other beds and the noises of those out on the street who hadn’t earned their night yet, but she didn’t let herself go to sleep right away. She was busy thinking.
In that second when the sailor reached into his pocket, Rose’s notions about her own death crystallized. In a way, it was like it had really happened. When the time comes, she thought, it will be no worse than this, because I’ve been through it already. There was no bottom after this. This heartened her. It was a strange brand of courage, but it was the only one she could afford.
***
No one died that night, or the next, or for some weeks, but no one stopped talking about the murders either. The police made reassuring noises about their investigation, but no one (the girls on the street least of all) believed they really had any clue who they were looking for. The papers soon confirmed the worst of the neighborhood gossip: Not only had the latest dead woman been dissected right there where she died, it seemed the killer had even taken some of the choice parts with him.
“The whole operation was performed to enable the perpetrator to obtain these parts of these body,” the doctor said at the inquest. “I myself could not have performed all the injuries I saw on that woman in under a quarter of an hour.” Now the talk of butchers and slaughterhouse men died off, replaced by suspicious whispers about medical students, body snatchers, army surgeons, even barbers and dentists. Surely they’d catch him soon now? How many madman doctors could there be?
It was terrible for business. At night, the East End became a ghost town. When the shops closed it marked the beginnings of a virtual footrace home, leaving vast blocks of the city empty except for the patrolling policemen, some in uniform and others inadequately disguised in evening clothes, their height and broad shoulders fooling no one. “If only they’d buy we’d have ourselves a whole new game here,” one of the girls joked. Rose worked anyway, and come Sunday she finally had enough extra scraped together to take a trip down to Commercial Street.
She didn’t want to go. She would almost rather be killed twice over than make one trip to a certain counting house at the edge of the neighborhood. But she went anyway. The office, when she came to it, was shockingly clean and tidy. Whenever she was here she looked around for a man who must be paid to mop the floor and wipe every window seconds after anyone came in or out. She didn’t see him, but she was still confident such a person must exist.
A fidgety clerk answered her and when she told him why she was here he seemed to swallow his tongue. Rose tensed. She knew what was coming even before the clerk opened his mouth to say, “Mr. Rees wants to speak with you.” Rose must have glowered because the clerk flinched “I can’t say why,” he added, with the tone of an apology. “But he made very certain I knew that if you came in I was to send you straight to him. I’m very sorry…”
And he was, Rose knew. So rather than vent her anger she let him show her up the stairs to the office she was already too familiar with, where Rees had, for all she knew, been waiting for her all day. He was a man hovering in that unidentifiable range of not yet being old but no longer being young. He was well dressed but gave Rose the impression, as always, of a knot that had been drawn entirely too tight. She thought that he might be looking a little better than the last time she’d seen him, a little less tired and a little more healthy. This annoyed her. She wanted him to look a complete wreck, if he could manage it. It would be the decent thing.
He closed the door and Rose sat. She was holding her bag in her lap but realized it made her look nervous and small, so she put it on the floor, then made a point of holding her head up. Rees offered her tea. “No thank you. I’m here for business. I’d like if in the future your people could handle me, like any other customer.”
“You’re not any other customer.“ He sat not at his desk but in the chair beside hers. Even as he said it he nodded at her purse and held out his hand like a petty landlord. She produced a handful of coins tied in a handkerchief. It was a miserably small sum, she knew, but she refused to blush when handing it over. Rees counted it into his palm and then deposited them in a till under his desk. Rose looked at him expectantly. “I would feel better if you at least recorded the sum.”
“I record every payment on every debt owed me by any person in the entire city, except you,” Rees said. “Yours I always remember. Would you like to know it? I can recite it to the last digit.” He smoothed his trousers with his hands. “I’d like to apologize for last time.”
“I’m sure you would, but I’m only here to make a payment. I’ll show myself–“
“I was thinking,” Rees said, and here he loosened his necktie, with his left hand even though he was right-handed, a gesture she knew so well she could have replicated it perfectly if she ever wore such a thing herself. “You were right what you said. I didn’t take enough care. Maybe you’d be more inclined to the bargain I suggested if we got married first.”
He looked at her with a perfectly level, unflinching gaze, one she suspected he’d practiced in a mirror. Many different responses warred for prominence in Rose’s mind, among them walking straight out of this building and then out of London entirely, possibly not stopping until an ocean was reached. What she did instead was laugh, right in his face.
“That’s absurd.”
“Why?”
“I can’t marry you. I hate you.”
“That’s never stopped a lot of people.”
“Fine then: I can’t marry you because it’s blackmail.”
“It certainly is not!” He actually bristled.
“If I were to say yes, you’d have Thomas released?”
“He’d be family at that point, my brother in law. There are no debts between family. But I don’t want you to marry me for his sake. I want you to marry me because you still love me.”
She laughed at him again, but even in her ears there was a tinny sound to it, like an empty can bouncing off a stone.
“If you let yourself think about it without pride in the way you’ll realize it’s a smart proposal,” Rees said. “You’re never going to earn enough to pay Thomas’ debt. And how many other men are going to be willing to give you the kind of security I can?” Her face must have darkened at his “willing” because he jumped to save face. “I only mean that none of us are as young as we used to be. We’ve both got to think realistically. We used to talk about it. We said that we’d wait until I was a success. Well, I am now. This might look like a shabby enterprise to you, but it brings money. What are we waiting for?”
“We were both very different people when we had those talks. You in particular. How could I look my brother in the face knowing I married the man who put him in prison?”
“He’s in prison because he took a loan he knew he couldn’t pay back.”
“But you offered the money knowing he couldn’t pay and knowing perfectly well he trusted you more than he should have.” She stood. “I have nothing else to say. I’ll be back in two weeks, and I’m leaving the money downstairs if I have to throw it at you.”
“Wait.” He all but threw his body in front of the door. Rose held her breath and counted to five, but when she was done the urge to slap the nose off his face hadn’t gone away. If anything it was stronger. “Women are dying,” he said. “You don’t trust me and you don’t think I deserve a second chance; fine. But is it worth throwing your life away? Can you really look me in the eye and tell me that the next time you’re out in a dark alley, not sure if the killer is looking over your shoulder, that you won’t wish this conversation had gone differently?”
Rose chose her words very carefully. “If you really care about me, then tell me you’ll call off the debt without making me agree to anything first. If you do that, I promise I will never step foot outdoors after dark until they put a noose around the killer’s neck.”
They looked each other eye-to-eye. The clock ticked off ten seconds. Rees blinked first, then sagged. Rose pushed by him. “Good day, Mr. Rees.”
She expected to be venomously angry when she left, but instead she felt a kind of dull, dreadful calm. She slipped into the crowd on the street and let it carry her off. Crowds in this neighborhood always felt like swimming in a river of tar. Rees thought of himself as a class apart now that he had money and a house elsewhere, but his business was still here, and the East End was a mark you couldn’t wash off that easily. It was the same for everybody: the butchers, the builders, the sewing girls. Whitechapel Road was in their skin and blood, Rose’s most of all. The killer, too, whoever he was. Maybe he lived somewhere else, but he kept coming back to this place because he belonged here. They all belonged…
Suddenly the crowd all changed direction, turning and going at once, like a flock of birds. Someone was calling out, and then everybody was calling out. Rose tried to go the opposite way but the wave of humanity threatened to crush her. Out of necessity more than desire she ran with them. All at once they had ceased, she realized, to be a crowd and become a mob. She‘d lived here long enough to taste the difference in the air, although what everyone was worked up about she didn‘t know until they approached the corner of Flower and Dean Street and she saw that they were chasing a group of policemen. No, she corrected herself: the police were chasing someone and the mob (herself included now) were on his tail as well. A voice shouted: “It’s the killer! They’re on him, they’re on him!”
Rose’s heart leapt into her throat.
That was how they all ended up surrounding the old house on Flower Street while the constables lurked in the doorway, apparently torn between their desire to go in and capture their quarry and keeping the mob at bay. Every third voice was a shout of “Bring him out!” and “Get a rope, a rope!” Tools were wielded as clubs. Those without any found stones or sticks. A few people even brandished their own shoes. The policemen shrank further back into the doorway, trying to get the frame between themselves and the mob. Pulse racing, Rose looked at the woman standing nearest her, an old thing with a grey bun of hair, and said, “Is it really the killer?”
The woman set her jaw and nodded. “Saw ‘im myself. Took one look at those police and scarpered. It’s him, all right.” And then, with an arm thinned by age but not much weakened, she raised a stone and let it fly. It bounced off the side of the house. Soon the air was filled with clanging, clashing, battering missiles, pelting the walls like the volley of a siege. Then came the rope, tied into a hasty hangman’s knot and passed from person to person like a holy relic, until it reached the front line and the tallest man in the crowd raised it up to chants of, “Bring him out, bring him out!”
Rose was surprised to find her voice joining in. The words built up in her gradually, like a long piss she could hold only so long before the guttural cry pushed its way up and out of her and into the morning air: “Bring him out! Bring him out!” Her hands found a stone. Its weight reassured her. The crowd surged forward and the police fell back, and somewhere in that house the killer was waiting–frightened? Defiant? They’d soon find out.
Except they wouldn’t. New policemen arrived, more than Rose had ever seen in one place, and, with pushing and prodding and shouts and threats, they forged a path. It looked like the Red Sea parting, and even then the warnings of the constables weren’t enough to stop most people from letting whatever weapons they had let fly in a clattering rain when the suspect was finally, finally brought out and whisked away. Rose saw him as they paraded him by: shaking, wide-eyed, pale. He looked like an animal in the bottom of a pit, waiting for the hunter to come. He was close enough that she could have cracked his skull with the rock in her hand. Her fingers clinched, but she stopped herself from taking the shot.
Barely.
***
He wasn’t the killer, of course. The arrested man just a neighborhood drunk, wanted on charges of (accidentally) hitting a child with a brick during a brawl. He’d finally poked his head out of hiding and when the police recognized him and gave chase the sight of a fleeing criminal whipped the neighborhood into a frenzy. Or maybe the frenzy had been there all along.
Common opinion around Whitechapel Road was now that no Englishman could be the killer. Probably the murders were being committed by an immigrant–maybe one of the Polish Jews. Rose overheard two morning men discussing it: “Put them all on a ship back, I say. Never should have let them in in the first place.” His partner, though, objected. “Jews have an absolute horror of blood. They soak their butcher’s meat in water before they will prepare it. I’ve seen a Jew shrink from anything with as much blood in it as a beef steak. It couldn’t be one of them.” But the other didn’t seem convinced, and neither did the neighborhood.
There was other talk. There were even arrests, but none that came to anything: A bricklayer confessed to the murders, but he shortly proved a liar and the police threw him out. Then they brought in a barber who had once been a surgeon’s assistant, a madman with a habit of brandishing knives in the middle of arguments. No one doubted he was a menace, but the police were eventually forced to admit he wasn’t the killer. There was a butcher too, and a Jewish shoemaker (the neighborhood’s favorite suspect) who was always in the habit of carrying his leather-cutting knife and who sometimes harassed the girls at night. They were all arrested with much fanfare and all released a day or two later, quietly.
Some of the girls took to carrying knives themselves. Rose was one of them. She knew that the killer would most likely take her from behind with her skirts raised, leaving her no opportunity to defend herself, but she still liked having it. Times like these called for knives. The day she bought it she ended up out on Brick Lane again, shivering and waiting in vain for anyone to buy. She’d made no money and in a few more hours the last beds at the lodging house would all be rented. She’d be on this corner until sunrise…
Two women passed–or what appeared at first to be two women. They looked unusually strapping girls, with wide shoulders and strong chins. Rose bit her hand to keep from laughing. It was almost worth the cold and the danger to see two policemen on a beat in dresses and ladies’ hats. They might not catch the killer, but they’d catch more than their share of double-takes.
The opposite way came two men, walking almost abreast, one a young man in a cap, the other an older fellow in striped trousers and a long coat and beard. She thought at first they were together but soon realized they were simply walking the same direction. Taking a breath, Rose stepped out and smiled at them. It was so dark and fog-cursed that they didn’t see her until they were only a few feet away. The older man slowed and lingered, the younger passing but then stopping too when he saw that he’d lost his de facto company. Rose smiled wider and was about to say something when the bearded man beat her to it, asking “Did I frighten you, Miss?”
It was an odd question–frighten her how? With what? She opened her mouth to deny it but her voice caught. There had been an eagerness to the man’s words, and now that he was close she saw that his eyes were very wide, the whites reflecting the yellow lamplight. His lips parted, showing the edges of glittering teeth. He was all twisted up, like a man caught in an orgasm…or perhaps a thrill of a more sadistic kind. He took a step closer and seemed to be reaching for something…
“Hey you!” It was the young man in the cap. Rose heard his footfalls and felt a presence at her back, and now it was the bearded man who froze. After a second of dithering he turned and half-sprinted into the fog. The impression of his black silhouette didn’t fade for some time. Rose stood like a woman in a dream until the young man snapped his fingers to get her attention and she started to breathe again. “Are you all right, Miss?”
“I’m fine. What was that all about?”
“He had a knife.” Rose started. The young man nodded. “He was hiding it in his sleeve. I thought…well, anyway, he’s gone now.”
“Yes,” Rose said, with a hint of doubt. “Do you think he was…?”
The young man shook his head. “Nah. If he really was, he’d never have done it with me standing here. There’s all sorts of rampers about who think it’s funny to scare the women now. My mate took to waiting on corners like this and jumping at the girls as they came around. Last week one of them did down on him with her bag. She was keeping a brick in it.”
“Even so, you were very brave to help me like that,” Rose said, remembering herself. She touched his arm. “Would you like to go somewhere?”
His eyes got very wide. “I’m not…that is to say, I’ve no money, Miss. I’m out of work. I’d gone to meet a man tonight who said he had a job for me, but it wasn’t true. I’ve nothing in the world to pay you with.” He looked at his feet and crushed his cap in his hand. She made him look up again and, not quite realizing what she was saying, told him:
“That’s all right. We’ll just call it a thank you.”
“Huh?” he said, but she didn’t answer. If she thought about it long enough to say anything she’d change her mind and she didn’t want to change her mind. She took him by the hand and dragged him along, stunned look and all.
She took him to where someone had left an empty cart in their hurry to evacuate the neighborhood before sundown. It was dry and provided a little cover, and the fog even more. The boy (and he was a boy, 18 years old, he said) looked by turns startled, disbelieving, terrified, and clumsily eager. He was a freckled thing with unruly hair and trousers that had been mended too many times, the sort of East End boy you could find on streets like this since the days the first brick was laid on the road. She went to pull her skirts up and get straight to business like usual, but then changed her mind. Instead she kissed him–and when was the last time she had kissed anyone? He the tasted like strawberries, and the bare whisper of a light beard tickled her. She teased him by taking his cap off and holding it away, telling him he wasn’t going to get it back until she said so. Then she pushed a hand into his trousers. He squirmed.
“Don’t be shy,” she said. “I’ve seen all kinds.”
“It’s not that. It’s just…that is, I never–“
“Ah. Never you worry. I’ll be gentle.”
When she discovered his half-swollen cock (“a lobcock” the neighborhood girls called it when it was like that) she stroked it with her finger and thumb in a circle, from the base all the way down to the end, and with each stroke it grew, like a stage performer’s trick. Soon she had quite a steed on her hands, and she tested it by squeezing just below the head. It was swollen up so much that anymore would hurt, and the boy let out a kind of pained mewling. Taking her cue, she raised her skirts and drew the boy down with her, tangling him up in her arms and whispering: “Enjoy yourself, but be quick. There might be people about.”
It was like a little light went on in some part of his brain that had never been used before. She pictured a factory machine churning to life, slow at first but picking up speed until it was finally humming along. The cart was not entirely stable and threatened to tip over and deposit them both onto the street, but Rose held on as tight as she could without risking splinters, letting the boy hammer away until he was worked right up into a frenzy. She nudged him along by throwing her arms around his shoulders and making cooing noises in his ear. He was awkward but ardent. She liked it. Her nipples turned up and her loins clenched tight and wonderful wet sensation spread below. She soon had her legs up (in such a way that no one who happened by could have any misconception about what was going on) with her heels clicking together every time he went in again. She kissed him and licked his neck, tasting the hot sweat cooled by the autumn fog. He was a hot young morsel and she felt likely he would burn her.
When it was done he went off with what felt like the pop of a champagne cork inside her. A feeling like a giddy hiccup fluttered up, as if she were drunk. In the panting aftermath he looked unsure what to do, so she unspooled herself from him, kissed him underneath the ear and, after a few seconds to catch her own panting breath, said: “Put your pants on. Run home. And look after yourself.”
When he was gone Rose straightened herself up. She did not know why she’d done that, except that at the time she’d wanted to. It was not because he’d “saved” her from anything, although there was a certain charm to his stammering heroism. She had just felt the desire–fleeting but pronounced–and acted on it. It left her bemused now, but she reminded herself that it was a natural thing. And anyway, it’s not as if she was going to do any real business tonight. In the end, she felt pleased. The man with the beard had not been the killer. It had been weeks since the body in Hanbury Street and, though the neighborhood had been a roiling cauldron ever since, nothing had really happened. The sun would come up soon and Rose was still alive. Maybe it was time to–
And then she heard it: A hysterical voice crying in the dark. It said: “Murder! Murder! Murder!”
***
Two in one night this time. The first had her throat slit on Berner Street. The second was cut apart in Mitre Square, and again the killer had apparently taken some pieces with him. Every square foot of the East End had been crawling with policemen, but as usual no one had seen a thing. A ghost might as well have been doing the murders.
The buzz around the neighborhood became a rumble. People grabbed up newspapers so fast they almost took the newsman’s arm off. The killer–or someone claiming to be the killer–was writing the news agencies letters now, even little poetry that every man and woman and child soon knew by heart. Sales in locks, knives, and clubs went through the roof. Men of the neighborhood, as angry with the police as the killer, took to wandering in semi-organized mobs, armed and prepared to set on anyone who looked halfway like someone they thought was behind it all. Sometimes they found someone. Sometimes more than one in a night.
The vigilance committees offered a reward of 1,200 pounds (Rose‘s jaw dropped when she heard the sum) for any information leading to an arrest. The police offered a full pardon for any accomplice willing to turn the killer in. No one came forward. Things got worse. A butcher’s apprentice in the neighborhood cut his own throat, explaining in a letter that he was afraid the police or the mobs were “after him for the murders.” A housewife only a few blocks away hanged herself in despair. Her griefstricken husband said that she’d been able think about nothing but the murders since news got around, and these latest were too much for her. Some were quick off the mark: A man who owned a waxwork nearby took a bucket of red paint to a few of his figures and passed them off as reproductions of the crime scenes. People complained, but they still paid to see it.
When they held a funeral for one of the new victims, the footways were crowded five deep to see her elmwood coffin (a gift from the funeral home) make its trip to London Cemetery. Some of the women carried infants in one arm and strewed flowers on the grave with the other. Even the roughest looking men doffed their caps as she rode by. Weeks passed without another murder, but no one relaxed. This wasn’t the end yet. It couldn’t be.
This was about the time Rose came to stay with Mary. Mary lived in a room on Miller’s Court, a place with just two windows (one of them broken), a table, a bed, and a fireplace. It wasn’t much, but warmer than a corner. And, more importantly, it had a door that locked. Mary’s young man had walked out because of her drinking and her going out to work, so she took Rose in. “I feel safer with someone else here,” she explained. “And you’re not like the other girls who work.” Which meant that Rose did not drink, unlike Mary. Two drinkers should not live together, but one was fine if the other person allowed for it, which Rose did. It would be winter soon, after all.
There was another reason too: The rent was four sterling a week, and Rose could work for it. Customers came knocking (Mary didn’t go out at nights anymore–no one did if there was anything else they could do–but her men knew they could come find her) more often if there was more than one girl to choose from and they wouldn’t have to wait until the last fellow was done. Most of the men came for Mary, of course, as she was the young one and the pretty one, but there was enough for both. More than Rose had seen even before the killings, truth be known. And here, behind four walls and a door, they felt safe. The killer always did his work out on the street.
Tonight’s final customer had a particular request. Rose was unsure about it but Mary was game, and anyway he was paying extra. He sat in a chair by the fire (which was burning low despite the cold night) while the two women sat on the bed half-dressed and, tentatively at first, kissed. Rose wasn’t sure what she’d expected it to be like, but in the end it was little different from kissing a man. Mary’s body (shortly pressed against her own, drawing an approving hum from the customer) was soft and lithe, true, but Rose had been with men whose bodies felt little different in that regard. Hard ones, soft ones, fat ones, short or tall, young and old ones: she knew it all.
What was different were the curves. Whenever she put her hands someplace expecting to feel one thing she instead felt something a little bit different. It was strange, but not unpleasant. She’d thought at first that she would simply close her eyes and imagine she was kissing a man, but that turned out to be harder than it sounded (particularly since, when the time came, she could think of no man she wanted to kiss). Instead she let herself think about Mary. Mary, who was the prettiest girl on Whitechapel Road anyway, and whose hair was always full of curl and whose smile charmed men right in off the streets. There were plenty of men who would relish the thought of being in Mary’s bed. Rose could enjoy it too, for whatever it was worth.
She glanced over and saw their paying customer stroking himself with furious motions. This was meant to be a little show to get him going before one (or both) of them would help him finish, but it didn’t look like he was going to make it that far. Intrigued, Rose tried an experiment: She put a hand on the spot where Mary’s cleavage gathered and squeezed. This produced a not-unpleasant thrill for her and an almost spasmodic performance from the man in the chair. When Mary did the same thing to her he looked like he might faint. The two women continued to fondle each other this way, and Rose leaned in to kiss Mary underneath the chin and along the neck. The younger woman let out a perfumed sigh and reclined a bit, offering easier access to her body. Rose bit her lip. How far were they willing to take this, she wondered?
Mary answered by pulling her dress half off, exposing her breasts. Crooking a finger, she beckoned Rose in. They were strangely cool against her lips, to match their milky complexion. Mary ran her fingers through Rose’s hair and cooed a little. Rose paused, uncertain quite what to do; after all, they only had to make it look good for the customer. No need to buy the whole bag. Still, why not? She licked one nipple and Mary feigned surprise. “Oh, you naughty thing,” she said, but then reclined, pushing them forward. Rose closed her mouth completely over one and nibbled before sucking. She had never quite understood men’s fixation on breasts and was actually relieved that street customers were interested in only one thing and didn’t bother with the rest, but she admitted now that there was something base and appealing about it. The wet sound her lips made, the theatrical gasp that Mary supplied, and the flush that spread over her white Irish skin were tawdry but gratifying.
Mary put her hands on Rose, ALL over Rose, ending by cupping her bum in both hands and squeezing. At first she was confused as to how to react, but then she noticed the looks Mary was giving the customer. Rose saw the man was rapt, to the point that he’d even almost stopped masturbating himself. Taking her cue, Rose winked at him and even blew him a small kiss. He almost looked embarrassed. Rose felt a small rush. She’d thought since she wasn’t as pretty as Mary that she couldn’t do things like that and get what she wanted, but it worked. I’m in charge of this, she realized. I thought he was because he’s paying the money, but really it’s me–it’s us. She turned her attention back to Mary, hiking up her skirts so that the customer could see Mary’s fingers splayed across her backside. Rose pulled her own dress down and drew Mary’s face in. Mary pretended to resist and Rose pushed her harder. The other woman’s lips on her naked skin felt odd and ticklish, but her blood was racing and she felt giddy with power.
She dragged the remainder of her clothes down her body, wanting to feel as much of Mary’s naked skin against hers as she could. Every touch and kiss and nibble Mary did made Rose gasp and squeal and flirt more, which made the customer more and more vulnerable. It seemed like a small miracle, how a tiny thing done over here could incite such a profound reaction over there. Rose didn’t know it, but she felt the way a born musician does the first time she picks up an instrument. She had Mary pressed against the headboard, squeezing the Irish girl’s naked breasts with one hand and putting two fingers of the other into Mary’s mouth. Mary’s wet pink tongue tickled her. Rose felt wetness blossoming between her legs and, distinctly, smelled the same between Mary’s. She bit her own lip as her eyes strayed down there. Should she? Did she dare? What would happen if…”
The question was rendered moot when the man in the chair finished himself off. He breath caught in his throat and held until he released with a painful sounding grunt. He dribbled all over himself (and, Rose noted with annoyance, a little on the floor) and immediately looked embarrassed. He ended up paying even more than promised, seemingly for the privilege of getting himself out of the room, leaving only with a gasped “Thank you!” and half of a good night. Mary locked the door. Both women looked at each other, unsure what to do–and then they broke into almost hysterical laughter.
Rose flopped down on the bed and laughed herself silly. It took even longer for Mary to quiet down. A cozy feeling permeated the little room. They ought to have been embarrassed to look at each other but as they dressed again they were all smiles–not lusting looks, but one redolent with the smug satisfaction of having gotten away with something and that only they two would ever know about. The comfort of it was almost enough to lull Rose to sleep, but Mary roused her back to the world of the waking with an unexpected question:
“Do you ever think about leaving London?”
Rose had several answers, first that she couldn’t leave when Thomas needed her (even if he didn’t want her help, even if he refused to take her visits), second that women like them talked about leaving but never did, third that there was nowhere else in the world she could think to go and that she imagined life outside the East End the way a fish imagines dry land. But she knew better than to say any of that.
“Did I ever tell you about France?” Mary went on. “I was there when I was 21. This man fell so in love with me he paid to bring me along. Like he could just pack up a mistress in his valise for a trip. This is when I worked out in the west, in a proper house instead of on the street like we do now.”
Rose cocked her head. “No, you never did tell me.” Most of the time she’d have assumed such a story was a lie, but Mary was one of the most stupidly honest people Rose had ever met. The Irish girl started brushing out her hair. “I came back after two weeks, though.”
“Why?”
“The man. But I wanted to go back, once I had the money. What would you say to the two of us going together? I always imagined I’d run off there with another man, someone I really loved, but…” She paused. “A man makes things harder. I think the two of us would have it better. There are enough men in Paris for us anyway. Rich and handsome men.”
“Frenchmen wouldn’t be interested in the likes of me.”
“You don’t do so bad for yourself. And I’d be there to help you. It really is as beautiful there as everyone tells you. And it’s away from all this. We could both start over.”
Rose had never imagined such a thing. Places like that might as well be fairy tales for as real as they were to someone like her. Even Knightsbridge was too far and too unreal for her to believe in unless she was looking right at it. But for Mary places like that could be real. Mary, for as hard as Rose knew her life was, had always seemed charmed. Of course Mary could go to work in a West End brothel and end up spirited away to France by a rich man when she was 21–and of course she could walk away from all of it like it was nothing. That was exactly the sort of thing that happened to a woman like her. Those things could never happen to Rose or any other normal person. …but maybe it would be different if someone like Mary was with her? Rose bit her lip. “Where would we ever get that kind of money anyway?”
In reply Mary put down her brush, went to the fireplace and, as Rose looked in wonder, pulled out a stone. Behind it was a lockbox (though the lock was broken), and inside that was a wad of banknotes so thick Rose would have had trouble getting her fingers around it. She gaped. “Oh my God…where did…you can’t keep that kind of money just lying around. People steal.”
“That’s why I hid it. I’ve saved for years. I should have more, but you know how I get. Still, it’s a lot. Not enough for a trip for two yet, but maybe soon, if we both work and I don’t slip up too much…in the spring. We could go in the spring. How about it?”
“I…need air.” Seeing Mary’s furrowed brow, Rose said, “I’m all right, really. I just had no idea. I’ve never left London. I barely every leave Whitechapel Road. I need to think.”
Marry nodded and touched her arm. “Of course. I’m sorry to surprise you. Go for a walk. But don’t be gone so long it gets dark, all right?”
But Rose was gone until dark, and long after. She actually went back and rented a bed from Mother Morris, something she hadn’t done in weeks. She didn’t dare go back to the room on Miller’s Court, not with the thoughts she was thinking. In the creaky old bed in the drafty lodging house, Rose stayed awake and fretted. She thought about all that money in the old box behind the fireplace. Money that no one knew was there…
She could go with Mary. They could work through the winter and leave in the spring and never have to come back to the East End, with its cold nights and coal dust and dead women cut up in alleys. Rose could hold onto the hem of Mary’s dress as she flew both of them off into some wild fairy tale life where they’d become a different people entirely. That was something she could do.
Or she could just take it. There was enough money there to get Thomas out of jail with enough left over for Rose to go somewhere else and get a new start. Not as far as Paris, God knew, but she didn’t need Paris. Just somewhere safe. Rees would interrogate her about where the money came from, but he wouldn’t say no to it. Nobody would ever know. Except for Mary, who in all odds would never forgive Rose…but what would it matter? What good was all that money to a silly drunk? She’d fritter it away eventually. Probably she had more than once already. To Mary money was a toy, but to Rose it was two people’s lives. It would be the right thing to do in the end, wouldn’t it?
She rolled over, cross with guilt. Could she really do something like that to a woman who might well have saved her life? A friend who even right now was probably sick to death with worry that Rose was out on the street or dead in a courtyard with her throat cut. What kind of person was she? Mary would be beside herself. She might even–
Rose sat up in bed. She might even come looking for her. Mary was big-hearted and not always the smartest. She just might go out, alone, at night, onto the East End streets where the killer was still waiting, for Rose’s sake. On any other night Rose would have stayed in anyway (no sense both of them being in danger), but now, with the serpent of guilt crawling through her gut…
She got dressed. It was another rainy night, and before she’d walked half a block she was longing for the fireplace in the Miller’s Court room. Indeed, the warm orange glow was visible on the windowpanes even as she crossed the square. Rose’s heart lifted; Mary was in. From the looks of things, she was awake. Rose hurried the last few steps and, finding the door locked, knocked a little too fast and a little too loud. There was no answer, and none the second time either. Rose peered through the window but couldn’t see anything except a blaze so intense that all of their fuel at once probably couldn’t have produced it. Frowning, she reached through the broken window and, with some effort, unlocked the door. It creaked open. A pungent sizzling smell wafted out, making Rose’s eyes water. It was a moment before her vision cleared…and she saw what was on the bed.
In the hellish glow of the fireplace the blood looked black. It was so much blood that it must have soaked the thin mattress completely through. The bed’s very frame would be stained. The shape that lay on the mattress only just looked like a human body. It was somehow…less. It made Rose think of a sand castle half-eaten away by the tide. There were indistinguishable shapes strewn over the sheets and the bedside table, but still perhaps not enough to account for the mass missing from the body’s frame. Half-delirious already, rose wondered where the rest could possibly have gone. Then Rose recognized the sickly smell coming off the firepit:
Burning meat.
Rose expected to scream. She expected to faint. She even expected to die on the spot. That she did none of these things was disappointing. Instead she just…left. Her mind floated right out of her body and left her on her own. She stared dumbly at the scene in front of her and let the continuous drip-drip-drip noise of still-warm blood lull her even further. It was a while before the panicky voice of self-preservation reminded her that she was in danger too: The killer might not have gone far. It was possible, even, that he was still concealed in this room, small though it was. The first thing Rose had to do was get far away.
After that, should she find a policeman? No; if she did she would have to come back here, and then spend time telling them what happened. She wouldn’t tell anyone. People could find out on their own about this. She would just run away. It was the best plan her exhausted mind could manage. She took a stumbling step back toward the door, reaching out to steady herself on it and then–
She looked at the fireplace. The one stone was still a little loose, although not so much that you would notice if you didn’t already know it was there. She thought again of that battered tin and what its contents could mean. But getting to it would mean walking by the bed…
Rose swallowed and closed her eyes, then opened them again immediately, afraid of running into something–or someone. Her body wanted to do this slowly but she knew that she would have to hurry. Rose did not know the word “mantra,” but she composed one during her expedition to the fireplace, consisting only of: “Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.” Under no circumstances would she look at the thing on the bed. The thing on the bed did not exist. She fumbled with the hiding stone (sweat broke on her face; the room was ungodly hot) before setting it on the floorboards. For a moment she feared it might somehow be empty, but when she opened the top the notes were all there.
She stuffed them down her dress in handfuls. Never mind counting it or even securing it. Time enough for that later. Now there was time only to run. To run and run and never come back, and to never, ever think about what had happened here while she was gone, or what might have happened if she had stayed, or–
Rose had not yet turned around when she heard it. Even over the crackle of flames and the galloping of rain on the roof, the noise just behind her it was still distinct enough to send a spiky thrill up her spine, even as her stomach dropped like a stone in cold, deep water:
A man cleared his throat.
***
The inspector looked too young for a man of his station. He filled a pipe and lit it with a flaring match, then leaned back in his chair in what seemed to Rees a practiced gesture. Rees had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping. He had never been in a police station before and everything about the setting seemed tailored to annoy him. It had taken the entire morning just to get a few minutes with anyone, and now that the man he wanted was here Rees found him of less than helpful character. It was his newly informed opinion that the metropolitan police’s most dedicated and contributive members must be its horses.
Eventually the inspector gave him what amounted to his full attention and said, “Seems to me if she was dead we would know it.”
“But she’s missing. I’ve made inquiries to every person she knows and every place that she stays and no one has seen her since the night of the murder.”
“Pardon my saying so, but a woman in her, hem, position probably knows a lot more people and stays a lot more places than you know. And what if she is gone? She might have just run off. People do.”
“Rose wouldn’t. And if she did she apparently left everything she owns behind. Do people do that when they run off’?”
“Sometimes they do, yes. And if she was dead we’d have found her. The killer always leaves his victims where we’ll find them.”
“There’s more than one man in this city who might kill a woman!” Rees felt his face flush the blotchy color associated with his more sincere rages. The inspector actually shushed him.
“I don’t mean to give the idea we’re not concerned. We’ll term her a missing person. But you can’t make this a murder investigation just because you want it so. We don’t have the resources.”
“What about this then?” Rees brought out a crumpled pile of fabric. It was a woman‘s blouse. “It’s Rose’s. I found it for sale at a pawnbrokers not three doors from my office, and he said a street sweeper had found it and sold it. Look at this spot on the collar: That’s blood. Tell me that’s not blood.”
The inspector examined the garment without touching it or leaning in too close, as if it were a dead rat. “It may be. But that doesn’t prove anything either.”
Rees gritted his teeth. “If you’re all so damned busy that you can’t take this seriously then when are these murders going to stop, tell me that? What are you all doing if not catching a killer? Now you can’t even be bothered to find the victims either. I suppose it’s lucky for us you bother to show up to work in the morning at all!”
He intended to storm out, but the stationhouse was too crowded to allow for the rapid egress that storming required. Instead he had to push his way through mobs (many people, he gathered, here to give “tips” about the killings in hopes of collecting a rumored reward), holding a handkerchief to his nose to stifle the smell of unwashed bodies. Outside, even Commercial Street’s usual stench was a relief. He spent several minutes standing on the corner, gulping in cold morning air and exhaling through his nose until the bile stopped churning. When he was done he realized he was still holding Rose’s shirt. He recognized it because was the one she’d worn last time she’d come to see him, a conversation he’d relived over and over again with almost pathological consistency ever since.
Although it didn’t relieve him of the desire to punch the young inspector right in his smug, smiling face, Rees had to admit that he was right. He didn’t know for sure that Rose was dead–only that she’d apparently gone, and taken nothing with her. Even the bloodstain didn’t necessarily mean anything. Just because he couldn’t imagine a series of events that would lead her to run away in the middle of the night didn’t mean that there wasn’t one.
But no. Rose would never leave as long as Thomas still needed help. Stubbornness alone would have stopped her even if nothing else did. If she was gone, it was because something had forced her. But what that was seemed poised to become a mystery as harsh and inscrutable as any other written in the mud of the East End streets. An older fellow sat on a bench nearby, reading a newspaper. In jocular but distracted tones he said, “Awful this latest one.“ He indicated the front page. “Do you think we’ll ever find out who this killer is?”
Rees answered in the faraway voice of a man who has received a mortal injury, and knows it. “I know exactly who the killer is.”
The man with the newspaper looked up, surprised. Rees shook his head.
“It’s all of us.”
***
“I’m not a butcher, I’m not a Yid, nor yet a foreign skipper.
But I’m your own light-hearted friend, yours truly:
-Jack the Ripper.”
Contents of a letter mailed to Scotland Yard, autmun of 1889. Author unknown.