A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper (4 page)

My grandfather had died many years ago when I was just a young boy, so that meant Dad had kept this to himself virtually all my life. Why couldn't he have told me? He'd never dropped the slightest hint of the journal's existence. Whatever it had yet to reveal, it was obvious it was of such profound importance, and at the same time, connected with some dark family involvement in the terrible events to which it related, that he'd kept his own counsel on the subject for all these years, as, quite obviously, had his father before him.

Ten minutes later, armed with a pot of steaming freshly percolated coffee and a mug, I returned to the study. Daylight was growing weaker, and as I settled myself back into my chair, I reached across the desk and switched on my desk lamp. The sudden illumination cast an eerie glow across the slightly faded, yellowed manuscript of the journal, and I shivered involuntarily. Was I being foolish? Was I becoming spooked by the whole thing? Somehow, I felt as if the day itself was closing in around me, I felt a sense of oppression in the air, a malevolence, as though the spirit of evil that had given birth to the words on the paper before me could somehow transcend the years, crossing the vast ocean of time to reach out and touch me, the reader, with the sheer force of its power. "Come on Robert," I spoke aloud to myself, "Don't be so bloody stupid. Get a grip! It's just words on paper, nothing more."

I took a large gulp from my coffee cup, and instantly topped it up from the cafetierre, black, no sugar, just as I like it, though Sarah could never understand how I could take it like that. That settled my nerves a little, and I turned back to the journal.

"Hellfire!" I exclaimed, as the telephone rang. I admit I nearly jumped out of my chair, and for a moment could do no more than stare at the irritatingly ringing piece of plastic on my desk. The jangling tone of the ringer seemed fit to burst my eardrums; I'd never before realized how loud the damned thing was. Should I answer it? I realized that if I didn't, whoever was calling would probably keep trying until I did pick up, and I wished I'd brought the cordless phone from the lounge into the study with me, that way I'd have been able to see who was calling via the caller id system. I'd insisted on having an old-fashioned corded phone on my desk because I thought it matched the room's ambience better!

"Hello?" I almost shouted down the line.

"Robert darling, what's wrong? You sound angry."

It was Sarah.

"Oh hello darling, no, sorry, I'm not angry with you, it's just that I'm in the middle of reading through some very important papers, and to be honest, I was miles away when you rang. The phone ringing just sort of took me by surprise, that's all."

"Oh Robert, I'm so sorry to disturb you, darling. I've just called to see if you're ok, I hope you're missing me."

"Of course I'm missing you, you gorgeous lady," I replied, "How're Jennifer and the baby, and Tom of course?"

"Everyone's fine Robert, Jennifer and Tom have picked a name for the baby. Do you want to try and guess?"

"Aw come on, my love, there must only be about ten thousand possibilities when it comes to boys names. Just tell me."

"You're a spoilsport, Robert, you really are. Well, OK then. I must admit I was a bit surprised at their choice, but he's their baby. They're going to call him Jack!"

I was stunned. I must have gone deathly quiet, and didn't reply to Sarah for a few seconds.

"Robert, are you there darling? Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes, of course, Sarah. Sorry, I was just mulling it over in my mind, you know, how it sounds, that sort of thing. Jack Reid. Yes, sure, sounds ok to me, my love. I'm glad he's well. I'm sorry if I sound a bit distant. Don't worry about me; I'm fine, just a bit preoccupied with these papers, that's all."

"Yes, I know, I'm sorry I've disturbed you. Listen, I'll get off and give you a ring later, when you're not so busy. Is Mrs. Armitage calling to check on you from time to time?"

"Yes darling, she is, silly old busybody."

"Now don't be cruel, Robert. You know she only means well."

"Yes, I know, bit I'm sure she thinks I'm a little boy who's been left home alone and needs constantly looking after."

"Don't worry, darling, it won't be long until I'm home. You just look after yourself. I'll ring back later."

"Give my love to Jennifer and Tom, and to little Jack of course."

"Right then, I'll say 'bye my darling, take care, I love you."

"Love you too, Bye, Sarah."

The room felt deathly quiet after I'd hung up the phone. Jack! What on earth had inspired my sister-in-law and her husband, my cousin, to name their new-born Jack? It was almost too much of a coincidence, and why had Sarah chosen this very moment to telephone me and inform me of it? It was almost too spooky for words.

I needed more coffee. As I made the refill, I reflected on my conversation with Sarah. I'd not been entirely truthful with my wife, though not through any intentional desire to lie to her. I didn't even know the truth of it yet anyway, or how it would end, so I thought it best to keep the journal to myself for now. As for Jennifer, it might not be the best time to reveal that I was reading the purported journal of Jack the Ripper, and that my family might have been involved in the affair just when she'd just decided to call her first son Jack!

It was almost dark outside by the time I returned to the study. The desk lamp still cast its eerie glow over the desk, but I needed more light, so switched on the wall lights. Their warm glow seemed to take some of the gloom and chill from the air, and I felt a little more relaxed as I sat down once again. My wife's telephone call, inconvenient as it might have seemed at the time, helped to release some of the tension building up inside me, and I felt lovingly grateful to her for that.

I looked down at the journal, and the words on the paper seemed to virtually rise upwards from the page to meet my eyes as I refocused my attention on those long ago dark days of the year 1888.

Countdown to Mayhem

23
^rd
August 1888

I've felt quite well for the last few days. Even the voices have been silent, they've been resting I think, as have I. Only a couple of jobs, nothing taxing, and no-one suspects a thing. I'm ready now, I could start the job tomorrow if they call, but they're silent. Never mind, the blades are sharp, my mind is clear, and everything's in place ready to begin. So call me, call me, talk to me, my friends, my voices, lead me on the path of destruction, and I'll eradicate the whores, the filth, the harlots of the filthy streets, I'll put them all to sleep, for ever.

It's so quiet tonight, tried reading for a while, but my eyes grew heavy, so tired, I need sleep, the one thing that evades me, a fair night of slumber. Why do the headaches come so hard at night? I wish the headaches would go away. Perhaps they will when I've done for the whores!

He was calm now, or so I thought; calmer than in some of the previous entries in the journal. He seemed to be almost at peace with himself, as if he were adrift in the eye of a hurricane, alone and in the midst of calm, but with the threat of a violent raging storm waiting just around the corner. In light of my own experiences with certain disturbed patients over the years, I could sense this man was a highly strung individual, almost driven to breaking point by the incessant clamour of the 'voices' in his head, and yet, there again, was the plea for the pain to stop, for the headaches to go away. Within the darkest recesses of his mind there remained a small, tenuous link with reality, a spark of humanity remained within him, but, as was proved by the events to follow, that spark was soon to be extinguished.

24
^th
August 1888

Results of the inquest on Whore Tabram. As expected, 'Murder by person or persons unknown'. A long report made by an Inspector Reid, who knows nothing at all. Ha! Stupid, bungling fools. They'll never know, never find me, never find US! I was invisible at the back of the room, unseen and unnoticed by anyone. I'll be even more invisible when I go back to work, to do the job. Oh, the sport that awaits, better than all the trophies in the cabinet. I'll be top of the league, best in show, holder of the blue riband. They'll know my work if not my name, and I'll wash the streets clean with the blood of harlots. The darkness shall be my friend, the night my close companion, the sewers my safe refuge from prying eyes. Let them all be damned, let them weep and cry for their own bloody souls, while I cut the whores in droves.

In referring to my printed reference notes, I found that an Inspector Reid did in fact submit a report on that very date to Scotland Yard detailing the results of the Tabram inquest, though how our man came to glean such knowledge so quickly I couldn't fathom. Of course, until the Ripper struck again, the police had no idea who or what they were dealing with. Martha Tabram was consigned to history at this point as one of the many unsolved and unsolvable murders which were all too frequent in the great city in those murky, far away days. Things were soon to change however; tragedy was lurking in the dark, dank, mist enshrouded streets of Whitechapel.

My thoughts turned for a moment to the days on which our man had made no journal entries. What was he doing? Where was he? Was he still sufficiently sane and lucid that he was holding down a good job, or some job at least, and that no-one of his acquaintance had noticed anything unusual in his recent behaviour. Was he so in control of himself in public that he could appear totally normal in every respect? The writer of this journal was indeed a phenomenon; I suspected he may have been so disturbed that the man who wrote the journal would have been unrecognizable, (even to himself) from the man who went about his daily business in the most normal and orderly fashion. This would explain the gaps in the journal. The writer would see no anomalies in the missing dates. Those days belonged to someone else, someone apparently sane. For him, they simply hadn't existed! I had to admit that, as a case study, most psychiatrists would give their eye teeth for a chance to work with such a patient, to study at close quarters the gradual decline from sanity into the abyss of the psychosis about to envelope the tortured soul of the hapless victim. Yes, it's true I used the word victim, for to be afflicted with such an illness, and an illness it most surely is, must be one the most frightening and disorientating experiences for the human mind to endure. The writer of the journal, if indeed he was Jack the Ripper, was himself a severely tortured individual, as much a casualty as those poor wretched women who were to achieve lasting and tragic fame as his victims. Added to that, the diagnosis of such a psychosis would have been almost impossible in those early days of psychiatric science, and any treatment, if attempted at all, would have been arbitrarily punitive and painful: the administration of electric shocks and the use of water hoses the probable and wholly unsatisfactory methods of approach. We have to remember that there were no specific drugs available to those physicians who did their best to help the mentally ill in the nineteenth century. There were no anti-depressants, no tranquilizers, and no comforting specialist nurses trained to help the afflicted. The asylums of Victorian England were little more than places of unhappy incarceration for those interned in them, hell holes by modern standards, where the sick and infirm of mind could be locked away out of the sight and mind of the public conscience, where they could do no harm, and be 'protected' from self harm; in other words, detained in chains and kept confined in solitary confinement. Such was the civilized treatment of our mentally ill in the age of Victoria.

I wasn't prepared to criticize my great-grandfather at that point of course, he could only work within the confines of his profession at the time, and I'm sure he always thought he was doing his best for his patients, as did all doctors of the time. No-one was deliberately cruel or unfeeling. They were simply ignorant of things which we in these enlightened times are only too aware. I was relatively sure that the journal was the work of someone suffering from a form of paranoid schizophrenia, though that would have meant little to the physicians of my great-grandfather's day.

Schizophrenia, an awful illness, perhaps needs a little explaining at this point. At certain times in history, sufferers of this dreadful ailment were thought to be possessed by demons, and many unfortunates were locked away in terrible institutions, tormented, often exiled, reviled and at times, hunted down and killed like wild animals. Even today, despite tremendous advances in our understanding of the disease, and many effective treatments being available, the public conception of it is still clouded by fear and suspicion.

The sufferer will in general appear outwardly 'normal' to most people he or she encounters in daily life. Should the disease take a firm hold however, the individual may begin to display unusual behaviour caused by their radically altered thought processes. They may suffer from hallucinations and become delusional. Many hear imagined voices, normally as a precursor to some form of self-harm, or in some case leading to highly intense false beliefs, (delusions). Violence is not always a by-product of schizophrenia, and, when it is evident, it is usually self-directed by the individual into attempts to end his or her own life. Only in exceptional cases, (one of which I felt I was examining in the journal), will the violence be directed outwards towards strangers or groups of individuals as in this case. In our enlightened modern society the sufferer, once diagnosed, has the options of psychotherapy, group therapy, and drug therapy at his disposal in the search for a means to control and alleviate his suffering. A combination of antipsychotic, antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications can go a long way towards relieving many of the day to day symptoms of the illness. The disorganized speech pattern displayed in the wording of the journal also provided me with a clue, this, together with the equally disorganized thought processes revealed in the writing being a classic symptom of the disease.

The writer of the journal however, was denied these miracles of modern medicine! Understanding and compassion were not the bywords of the Victoria era when dealing with the mentally ill, but I think I've already made that point!