A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper (5 page)

25
^th
August 1888

Visited The Alma again tonight. Whores everywhere! What a vile house of ill-repute that is. Smelled of stale beer, cheap tobacco, and whores! Cracked music from a cracked piano. Such false jollity, and voices, voices everywhere. Singing, shouting, making merry as though there were no tomorrow, and there won't be soon for some of them whores. No tomorrows at all. I'll see to that! So loud in there, I could hardly hear my voices when they spoke to me. They made me retreat, it's not time yet, not the time to start the work, but, it won't be long, I've seen them, watched them, I know where they are, where to find the pestilence, where to go to rid the world of their smell, their sickness.

My headache got so bad I had to leave, why won't it go away?

So, the next bloody rampage was getting closer, and the headache was getting worse. I found it strange that my great-grandfather hadn't added any notes to the journal so far, the first inserted page of notes was still quite some pages further into the journal. Then I realized, at this time, he obviously hadn't met the writer! His own notes, when they came, would evidently appear after some form of meeting or communication between them. In other words, he didn't know the writer before the murders began or, if he did, he had no inkling of his illness, and this I couldn't believe. My great-grandfather was a physician after all, and though not equipped with the knowledge and science of today, I'm sure he would have recognized the delusional state of the writer had he been a personal acquaintance of the man. His notes, stuffed into the later pages of the journal, were therefore of importance in respect of the aftermath of the killings, I would wait and bide my time. They were arranged in that way for a purpose, and I decided to stick with the original plan, and read every page chronologically.

A look at the printed texts I'd obtained showed me the writer was now only six days away from the next murder, that of Mary Ann Nichols. The last entry I'd read showed his anger was indeed increasing with each passing day, his headaches were getting no better, and the voices were speaking to him at what appeared to be ever decreasing intervals. As his anger continued to build I knew the pain in his head and the delusions in his brain would increase exponentially until something gave way. The next few entries would be crucial in helping to determine his state of mind at the time immediately before the night of the ghastly slaughter of the poor unfortunate Mary Ann.

A Last Semblance of Calm

I was growing quite stiff and weary. I'd been sitting in my office chair for so long, apart from the breaks for coffee, and become so engrossed in the journal, that I hadn't realized I'd been holding myself almost in a state of suspended animation, you know what I mean, when you're so tense and intense that every muscle in your body tightens, and you seem incapable of fluid movement. I had to get up and move around for a few minutes, I needed to relax a little.

I rose from my chair, stretching to relieve the stiffness in my neck and back; I felt so taut, every sinew ached. My stomach growled, realizing I hadn't eaten for hours. Mrs. Armitage would have been horrified! It was now quite dark outside, and, though the day had been quite fine and warm for the time of year, quite a strong breeze was blowing. The branches of the tree outside the study were beginning to sway in the breeze, casting the shadows of eerie fingers across the darkened glass of the window. I shivered again, stupid really, but I felt as though I wasn't alone in the room.

Shaking such childish thoughts from my mind I made my way to the kitchen once more. I removed a large microwave meal for two from the freezer, and set the microwave to work preparing it. With the machine whirring in the background I sat at the kitchen table with a glass of water, and flicked through the research documents I'd brought with me from the study. Almost everything about the Jack the Ripper murders was shrouded in mystery and a distinct lack of credible information or facts. Over the years, so many suspects had been suggested that it seemed as if almost the entire population of London could have had a case built against them if one worked hard enough at compiling a circumstantial case! There were doctors, lawyers, butchers, peers of the realm, even a member of the Royal family, yet none of them had ever been proven to have had any direct connection with the murders. Inquests on the victims had been perfunctory at best, information withheld on occasions, for no apparent good reason, and the police seemed to have approached the whole series of killings without any real sense of leadership or direction. While those 'on the ground', the officers most directly involved with the individual murders appeared to have done their level best, they appeared to have been hampered by the attitudes and lack of foresight displayed by their commanders. Evidence which may have been helpful was either suppressed or, in the case of a section of graffiti left on a wall supposedly in the Ripper's hand, the senior officer in charge had actually ordered the words to be removed, so as not to offend certain sections of the community!

I was appalled and astounded at some of the things I was reading. Despite the lack of forensic or technical assistance, it seemed there were clues available at the time, but the police were either unable or unwilling to investigate them fully. Perhaps the low station in life of the victims played a part in this, for surely, had the victims been high born ladies of society, the public outcry and the need for justice would have galvanized the police into a flurry of activity and the case would have been investigated far more vigorously, with the killer more likely to have been apprehended.

The microwave pinged, dinner was ready! As I sat at the table eating the extremely large lasagne, (made for two remember), I tried to think my way through what I'd read so far.

The opening pages of the journal were terrifying. If indeed this was the journal of the Ripper, then what I was reading was tantamount to a signed confession. That is of course if at some point the name of the perpetrator of the murders appeared within its pages, or my great-grandfather's notes. It had to be there somewhere. I wanted to know the identity of the man who'd brought such terror to the streets of London!

Though I knew I could find some quick answers by turning to the back of the journal and reading my great-grandfathers final notes, I felt compelled to take one page at a time, in the order in which they were written. It was as if the journal had a life of its own, as if it was intent on not revealing its darkest secrets until it was ready to do so.

There I went again, being foolish. How could a collection of papers over one hundred years old have such power? They had no hold over me whatsoever; I knew that, I was a rational man, so why didn't I just turn to the end? I don't know. I just knew that I had to go on with my strange quest for the truth, and felt the journal would lead me to the answers if I was patient and thorough. I needed to understand more, and the only way was to read each and every page, to study every word.

My meal finished, I put my solitary plate, knife and fork in the dishwasher. As I wandered from the kitchen, down the hall, and back to the study, I heard the sound of the wind outside. It had gathered in strength and sound whilst I'd been eating, and had become almost a gale. I was glad to be indoors. As I opened the door to the study, I could have sworn I saw a fleeting shadow dart across the room, from left to right, disappearing behind the bookcase to my left. Once again, I chided myself for my own childish stupidity. It must have been the shadow caused by the door opening into the room, and cutting across the light, nothing more. Nevertheless, I couldn't resist a quick peek behind the bookcase before sitting down in the chair once more. There was nothing there, of course.

I decided one more whisky wouldn't impair my thought processes unduly. On returning to the journal, I noticed that two days had been omitted by the writer, his next entry being three days after the previous one.

28
^th
August 1888

Feeling fine, just waiting. Soon, the time to begin will arrive, and the world will hear my voice, see my work, and the whores will tremble. Earned some money, have to keep body and soul intact. Evening at the club. A gentleman is a gentleman after all. Shared a meal and a bottle of fine port with Cavendish. He's a head doctor, haha!

At last! Cavendish! My great-grandfather. So he did meet him before the murders, well, before the majority of them took place anyway. Many contemporary scholars dismissed Martha Tabram's murder as not being the work of the Ripper. The journal, however, places that death alongside the others, so as far as my story is concerned, Tabram was the first. He mentions the club, obviously some all-male preserve, many of which existed in those days. He must have been a member of my great-grandfather's club, or at least been a guest there, I understand they were very snobbish, quite exclusive places, where non-members would have been decidedly unwelcome, and he must also have been a gentleman, or at least purported to be one; and there's yet another clue. He mentions earning money, doing what? What kind of job did he do, this strange and deadly 'gentleman'? Was he a doctor himself, or a lawyer, a solicitor perhaps? In one short paragraph, the journal had taken me so much deeper into the strange happenings of so long ago. I was beginning to feel even more drawn into the web surrounding my great-grandfather and the mysterious writer of the aged, crumpled pages of yellowed foolscap.

The journal continued….

He was most sympathetic when I told him about my headaches. Just the headaches of course, nothing more. He wouldn't understand the voices, not yet. They wouldn't speak to him anyway. He suggested a small daily dose of laudanum. Thought it might help the headaches and calm my nerves. He thinks I've been overworking! Poor Cavendish, poor fools, all of them, they just can't see, they just don't know, only the voices know, they're with me all the time, even when they're quiet, they're still there, sleeping, resting. I've got the laudanum, from the grocers shop on the corner, enough to last a while, just in case it doesn't work straight away. Must admit, the headaches weren't so bad last night. Good old Cavendish. Got that one right. Still hurts a bit though, my forehead throbs. So tired tonight. No little trips to take. Sleep, sleep, sleep.

Laudanum! My great-grandfather had suggested he take laudanum. Popular as a cure-all in Victorian times, laudanum was an opium derivative that could, and frequently did become highly addictive. It would certainly have had the effect of calming the writer down to some extent, but its hallucinogenic properties would probably have served to further inflame his delusions and perhaps to amplify the severity of the voices in his head. It seemed to me that my great-grandfather may have unwittingly helped to pour fuel onto the already smouldering fire that was about to explode into life from within the tortured mind of the writer of the journal. The journal moved on to the next day.

29
^th
August 1888

The laudanum is working. The more I take, the better I feel. Hearing the voices much clearer now, less clutter, less babble. Headache still there, but bearable. Another visit to the taverns, the cess-pits of iniquity, foul beer in dirty tankards. Too many whores to count. I shan't forget the whore who lay with me, and caused my suffering, the dirty, filthy, diseased bitch whore! I hope she died in agony, I haven't seen her, she must be gone by now, but the others will do, the wretched whores, they're all the same, foul pestilence upon the world.

I was almost breathless with the task of reading the page before me. It was now like a roller-coaster ride. He was getting closer to the moment when his illness would push him over the edge, when the voices would give the word, and he'd lose his final tenuous hold on reality, and plunge into the pit of damnation from which he would never escape. His reference to his dalliance with a whore that led to 'his suffering' led me to believe without a shadow of a doubt that, this man was infected with syphilis, and that he was quite likely in the later or Tertiary stages of the disease, when the body itself can start to exhibit lesions known as gummas, which slowly eat away at the skin, bones and soft tissues. The most awful part of this phase of the disease is the progressive brain damage which takes place, once known as general paralysis of the insane. Though antibiotics and effective testing have all but eradicated the disease from the developed countries of the modern world, in my great-grandfather's time syphilis was rampant, and our unfortunate writer would have been described by the physicians of the time as being 'sexually deranged'. So, I now felt the writer of the journal was infected with syphilis, suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, either as a result of his syphilis or in tandem with it, and I now knew, deep down inside that this was indeed the journal of the man known to history as Jack the Ripper!

30
^th
August 1888

All the preparations are in place. Maps, clothes, the tools, most importantly, the tools. I've never felt so good, so calm, no pain, the headaches have gone, the voices singing quietly to me, soothing me, telling me where to go, what to do, to be invisible. I'll always be invisible. The dark streets will be my home; my heart will beat in time to the rhythm of the night. It's a warm night, so quiet outside, so calm, and I also am calm, and at rest. Yes, I must rest tonight. Tomorrow my work begins!

I must admit that, on reading that entry in the journal, I could feel my heart rate increase. Although the writer may have been calm, I was anything but; I was physically and visibly shaking as I put the page down on the desk. Although I was reading about events that took place over a century ago, I confess I was afraid, afraid of what I was going to see in the following pages. Poor Martha Tabram had been a trial run. Now the conflagration of fear and death that went by the name of Jack the Ripper was about to be fully unleashed!

The Real Work Begins