A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper (25 page)

The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, & on the floor beneath was a pool of blood covering about two feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed & in line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in a number of separate splashes.

Postmortem examination.

The face was gashed in all directions the nose, cheeks, eyebrows and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.

The neck was cut through the skin & other tissues right down to the vertebrae the 5
^th
& 6
^th
being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck showed distinct ecchymosis.

The air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.

Both breasts were removed by more or less circular incisions, the muscles down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the 4
^th
, 5
^th
& 6
^th
ribs were cut through & the contents of the thorax visible through the openings.

The skin & tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation and part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin, fascia and muscles as far as the knee.

The left calf showed a long gash through skin & tissues to the deep muscles & reaching from the knee to 5 inches above the ankle.

Both arms & forearms had extensive and jagged wounds.

The right thumb showed a small superficial incision about 1 inch long, with extravasation of blood in the skin & there were several abrasions on the back of the hand moreover showing the same condition.

On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung was broken and torn away.

The left lung was intact: it was adherent at the apex & there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substances of the lung were several nodules of consolidation.

The pericardium was open below & the Heart absent.

In the abdominal cavity was some partly digested food of fish & potatoes & similar food was found in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines.

So Mary Kelly was not just murdered, she was slaughtered! The poor woman was killed, and then systematically butchered by the Ripper. Though this is the first time in my tale that I have related the full extent of one of the victim's injuries, I have done so in order to establish beyond doubt the extreme depravity of the perpetrator of the horrific series of murders. Also, for the first time in any of the murders, the doctor had identified defensive wounds on the poor girl's hands. Faced with the most vicious killer ever recorded up to that time in London, the Ripper's last known victim had fought to defend herself; she had fought for her life. What had been her last thoughts, I wondered, as she tried in vain to fight off her attacker? She must have been filled with the most appalling dread and fear, and contrary to the previous murders, this had been no quick kill, no slash of the throat to end the victim's agony swiftly and surely. A further search through my notes revealed that no sign of Kelly's heart had been found. What had the Ripper done with it? Had it become some gruesome trophy, to be displayed in the privacy of his home, to gloat over as a grim reminder of his greatest moment? I shook, both with fear and an anger so strong that I might have been there at the time, witness to those appalling cruelties, and the utter brutality of the mutilations. It took me a few minutes to regain a little composure and to think rationally again.

I was appalled by the callousness and the barbarity of the slaughter perpetrated on poor Mary Kelly. The desecration of her body was beyond belief, and must have taken the Ripper some considerable time. Of course, on this occasion he had had the time, it was his first indoor murder, and he had the opportunity to indulge himself, to provide the world with the perfect example of the extent to which his 'work' could evolve.

No wonder nothing more was heard of Ripper after this appalling crime; I just couldn't conceive of him being able to maintain a grip on the smallest grain of sanity after having committed such an act; and, as though it were intended all along that that was the way I should do it, without thinking I laid down my notes and automatically picked up the journal, turning the page to reveal the next instalment in this infernal tale of one man's damnation.

The next words that came up to greet me from within the journal were not, however, those of the Ripper. Tucked tightly between the pages written by the hand that had perpetrated such horrific and savage mutilations I saw once again that my great-grandfather had been at work. There was another note there, waiting for me, perhaps to explain in more detail his involvement with the Ripper.

With trembling hands, and with my heart growing heavier with sadness, I began to read…

A Confession

I swear in the name of God Almighty that I knew nothing of this dire journal during the time leading up to the murders in Whitechapel, nor indeed until after the murder of Mary Kelly. I place this note here as it seems appropriate in view of what he has written on the following page. At the time I saw him, in his home, he was more or less lucid, though it was evident that all was not well with the man. His fantasies, as I believed them to be at the time, were growing darker and more violent, but I swear I thought them nothing more than the product of his fevered mind. I simply thought him incapable of being the beast that has haunted the streets of our capital for so many weeks. Perhaps my judgement was impaired by my knowledge of his mother, his family, and my own sorry conduct in his story.

You, my son, reading this after my demise, will be shocked to learn of these things, but I must give my conscience free reign before my maker, and throw my memory upon your mercy.

It was back in the summer of '56 that I was invited down to the country by a friend and colleague. There I was invited to the home of a local physician who kept a house on the outskirts of that beautiful country town. He had a wife, a beauty by any man's standards, and I, being not yet married to your mother, felt strangely drawn to her. She was as beautiful a woman as I had ever set eyes upon, with her long dark hair, a slim waist, and eyes that seemed to burn with a hidden fire, a passion for life that seemed in need of re-awakening, as though she were in a trance of sorts. There was something of the gipsy about her looks, a wild, fiery, hidden passion about her character. Their marriage was not a happy one, so I was led to believe, though on the surface they seemed devoted to one another. She was quite taken however, by the attention I paid to her, in little matters such as bringing her a flower picked from the garden, or jesting lightly with her as we walked in the ample gardens of her home, always of course while her husband was absent. I felt some guilt in those days, as her husband was a fine man, and an outstanding local physician, and he had made me welcome in his home on numerous occasions.

Yet, I could not help myself, and I soon grew enamoured of the lady. Though she tried hard to avoid the obvious, and endeavoured to stick hard to her marriage vows, there came one day when we could no longer control the hidden passions that burned within both our fragile bodies, and we succumbed to the carnal desires of the flesh. Afterwards, shocked by her weakness, and fearful of her husbands fury should he discover her infidelity, she forbade me to visit her again, and entreated upon me to return to London at my earliest opportunity. I had no choice but to leave the county, and returned as she wished to my home and practice in the city.

Some time later, I received a letter from her to say that she was with child, and begging me never to visit that town again. I never did, and it was not until recently that the man I now visit, the man who is the writer of these infernal pages, came to my home one day, armed with a letter of introduction from his mother. The letter had been written some years ago, and he had carried it with him until such times as he wished to announce his presence to me. His mother, he told me, had fallen into a deep malaise, and had been confined in an asylum, her mind totally unhinged, until her death. The doctor, who he had always thought of as his father, was dead, and he was alone in the world. He bore me no ill-will so he said, and wished only to make my acquaintance, as it was obvious to him that his mother had cared for me greatly, and I for her.

I tell you now; just one look at his eyes identified him to me. They were the eyes of his mother, she who I had loved and lost before your poor mother came into my life. I did my best. I introduced him at my club, gave him whatever social assistance I could, and I have fought to keep him on the straight and narrow despite his recent problems. I ask of you, how could I have believed that the son of such a woman, and I am ashamed to say, of mine, could be the monster known throughout the land as Jack the Ripper?

I tell you these things that you may understand the frailty and the folly that have blighted my life, and led to such misery and death for others. Though I dare not ask your forgiveness, now that my bones lie bleaching in the earth, I do ask that you try to understand why I have acted as I have, and to try to forgive me for the things I have done in order to keep secret the truth of what has transpired. If you can understand, and can forgive, then I beg you to keep forever this secret between you and my memory, and if you need to confess it, as I have needed to do, then do so only in the manner of this communication. I beg you my son to reveal this dreadful secret only upon death, and even then only to your closest kin, and so to entreat them that they hold this secret in the same way, for all time, for there is nothing that can now be gained from further revelation.

Now, as you read what is to come, I hope that you will grant me that understanding, and I can at least find some semblance of peace in that knowledge, though my tortured soul shall burn forever, of that I sure.

As I said, on this occasion when I visited him, he was quite lucid, hardly deranged at all, and I thought he was improving, that the drugs I had prescribed for him were helping in some way. I hoped that he might have desisted in his use of laudanum, but he said that his headaches had been getting worse, and that the laudanum was the only thing that helped. I knew then that he was addicted to the stuff, and would probably be over using the opiate. Nevertheless, he conversed quite well for a few minutes, and his education and breeding were quite evident in his whole manner and bearing. I could not help but look at his eyes, those eyes that were so like his mother's, and I expressed my sadness that she had ended in such a way, dying as she had in that place apart from those who cared for her. As I spoke of her, however, his demeanour changed, and his eyes seemed to flare with a baleful and malevolent gaze. I thought he was perhaps in the throes of another brain seizure, and was convinced of such when he suddenly announced that Jack the Ripper wasn't finished yet, that he would strike again soon, and that everyone would soon know of his greatest crime to date. I felt that he was being over dramatic and sensationalist, and dismissed this rant as another example of his fevered state, as though he were fixating all his pent up hatred for his sorry state upon the Ripper, identifying with him in his madness, still never for one minute believing that he was indeed that very man. How wrong I was, how very wrong. Would that I could live my life again, and do things differently, but I cannot, and you now know the truth, or, most of it, I am not yet ready to reveal the end to this sorry tale. Perhaps when you have read the rest of his confessional you will understand my torment, and why I did what I did, and why the silence must be total, for all time.

Your father

Burton Cleveland Cavendish

The note was undated, though I knew it must have been written some time after my great-grandfather had read the entire journal, and now I knew, at last! Jack the Ripper
was
a distant relative of mine. He was the illegitimate son of my own great-grandfather, the result of a one-time liaison with a woman whom my ancestor was so obviously infatuated with in his younger days. In fact, from my great-grandfather's words, and from what I'd read in the information provided by the Casebook, I now had a pretty good idea of the identity of the Ripper, though somehow, his name had suddenly become an irrelevance to me. I tried to work it out; if he was the son of my great-grandfather, then he would have been my great uncle, I thought. He must have been, as he would have been my grandfather's half-brother, though grandfather obviously knew nothing of his existence until he'd received this note with the journal so many years ago. I could only imagine his shock and horror at making such a discovery. How, I wondered, had he taken the news that he was so closely related to the killer? More to the point, how had he managed to keep it quiet for so long, only revealing the truth in the form of the journal, left to my father after his death, as it had been bequeathed to me? The answer was straightforward of course. It was there in my great-grandfather's own hand, a plea from the grave, requesting that the secret be kept within the family for all time. Having read his sad and revealing confession to his son, my grandfather, I could understand why.

There was more of course, there had to be. There was something my great-grandfather wasn't revealing, not yet at any rate. I knew it was something terrible, worse perhaps than the revelation of the Ripper's identity, and his involvement with the family. It was a feeling that was growing stronger inside me, a feeling that the final horror of my ancestor's association with Jack the Ripper wasn't quite concluded. I had to go on, complete the journal, and hope to find the truth along the way.

I had been away from the words of The Ripper for too long, it was time to turn another page, to draw ever closer to the night of the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, the night when Jack the Ripper's reign of terror reached its final, bloody crescendo.