Mayhem (2 page)

ON SATURDAY the coroner for South Essex, Mr. C. C. Lewis, opened an enquiry at the Phoenix Hotel, Rainham, into the circumstances attending the death of a woman, a portion of whose body was discovered in the Thames off Rainham on Wednesday last, wrapped in a piece of coarse sacking.

Essex Times
– South Essex, London June 8, 1887

RAINHAM,
THE RAINHAM MYSTERY

On Sunday morning great excitement was caused on the Victoria Embankment on its being made known that a portion of the mutilated remains of a female had been picked up near the Temple Pier. The Thames Police were immediately communicated with, and on their rowing out to the pier a portion of a human leg was handed over into their possession. It appears that at ten o’clock on Sunday morning the attention of J. Morris, pierman at the Temple, was drawn to a large parcel that was floating near the lower side of the pier. On opening it Morris discovered the thigh of a human person wrapped in a piece of canvas and secured with a piece of cord …

The
Times
of London June 13, 1887

THE RAINHAM MYSTERY

… careful examination of the remains (those of a woman), and was satisfied beyond doubt that they formed part of the body to which the pelvis, recently found on the Essex shore, belonged. His (Dr. Galloway) theory that the dissection was performed by a man well versed in medical science was more than strengthened. The sacking in which the trunk was enclosed was exactly similar to that found at Rainham and off the Thames Embankment.

The
Times
of London July 21, 1887

THE RAINHAM MYSTERY

The various human remains, which have been found from time to time at Rainham, Essex, in the Thames off Waterloo Pier, on the foreshore of the river off Battersea pier, and in the Regent’s canal, Kentish Town, the remains comprising the arms (divided), the lower part of the thorax, the pelvis, both thighs, and the legs and feet, in fact the entire body excepting the head and upper part of the chest, are now in the possession of the police authorities.

3

London. October, 1888

Dr Bond

‘How much further?’ The shafts of bright sunlight filling the building site above were finally petering out and leaving us in a cool, grey darkness that felt clammy against my skin.

‘A little way, Dr Bond,’ Hawkins said. The detective was grim. ‘It’s in the vault.’ He held his lamp up higher. ‘We’re lucky it was found at all.’

Huddled over like the rest of the small group of men, I made my way under the dark arches and down stairways from one sub-level to the next. We fell into a silence that was marked only by the clatter of heels moving urgently downwards. I’m sure it wasn’t just I who found the gloom to be claustrophobic – especially given what we knew to be waiting for us in the bowels of this building – and I’m sure part of our haste was simply so we could face what we must and get back to the fresh air as quickly as possible.

The workmen above had downed their tools, adding to the eerie quiet. We were a long way down, and with the walls damp and rough beside me, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in a tomb rather than the
unfinished basement of what was to be the new Police Headquarters. But perhaps I was – an unintentional tomb, of course, but a resting place of the dead all the same. I shivered. There had been enough death of late, even for someone like me, who was trained in all its ways. Recently I had begun to think that soon this city would be forever stained in cold, dead blood.

Finally, we made our way down the last few steps and arrived at the vault. It was time to work.

‘They moved it over here before they opened it,’ Hawkins said, standing over a lumpen object nearby, ‘where there was better light to see it.’ The foreman and the poor carpenter who had found and unwrapped the parcel were keeping their distance, shuffling their feet as they stayed well clear of what lay at the detective’s feet. As I looked down, I found I did not blame them.

‘Dear Lord,’ I muttered. After the slayings of recent weeks I had thought we must all be immune to sudden shock, but this proved that was not the case. My stomach twisted greasily and I fought a slight tremble in my hands. More gruesome murder in London. Had we not seen enough? The parcel the workmen had found was approximately two and a half feet long. It had been wrapped in newspaper and tied with cheap twine, the ends now hanging loose where they had been cut open to reveal the horrific secret inside.

‘We’ve not touched it since,’ the foreman, a Mr Brown, said nervously. ‘Fetched the constable straight
away, we did, an’ he stayed with it while we fetched the detective. We ’aven’t touched it.’

He didn’t need to repeat himself to convince me. Regardless of the sickly stench of rot that now filled the air, who would choose to touch this? The woman’s torso was lacking arms, legs and a head, and across its surface and tumbling from the severed edges was a sea of maggots that writhed and squirmed over each other as they dug into the dead flesh. In the quiet of the vault we could hear the slick, wet sound made by the seething maggots. Here and there they dropped free to the black ground below.

I fought a shiver of repulsion. Whoever this woman was – and despite the physical trauma it was clear this was the torso of a woman – her death was no recent event.

I crouched lower to examine the damaged body more closely, and held the light close as I bent down to the floor in order to peer into the largest cavity. What was left of her insides was a mess: whoever had done this had not been content with just amputating her limbs. Much of her bowel and her female internal organs had also been removed. This killer had taken his time.

Beyond my obvious disgust, I tried to muster some other emotion, empathy of some kind for this poor creature’s fate, but I could not. It was the madness of it all that haunted me, not the deeds themselves. Further to that, this woman no longer had a face
with which to plague my sleepless nights – unless that was somewhere else in this dark pit, lying as yet undiscovered. But I doubted that someone would go to the lengths of removing the most personal item of the body if they intended to simply leave them close by. From beyond the vault came the sound of vomiting. One of the younger constables, no doubt. I felt a slightly weary envy at that: oh, to still be so easily affected by the macabre acts of others.

‘You’re the man who found the parcel?’ I looked up at the carpenter.

‘Yes, sir. Windborne’s the name, sir.’ The gentleman in question shuffled from foot to foot, nervously picking at his cap. Even in the unnatural light, his face looked pale. He was in his thirties, perhaps more, and had the hands of a man who had worked hard and honestly for the better part of his life. ‘We thought it were just a bit of old bacon. I should maybe ’ave said something yesterday, but I thought nothing really of it. I didn’t even notice the smell – ’ard to believe that now.’

‘If it were wrapped tightly, the smell would have been less, and if you were focused on your work …’ I shrugged. ‘Show me where you found it, if you would.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The carpenter gestured towards the dark space behind us that yawned like pitch-black night. ‘You’ll need some light.’

‘What in God’s name brought you down here?’ Hawkins asked.

‘It’s where I ’ide me tools. I don’t trust a lot o’ the new men up there, sir,’ Windborne said. ‘I’ve been in me trade a long time; they ’aven’t. I can’t afford to ’ave me tools stolen. I know the way, but it’d be a puzzle to anyone who didn’t know the place, so me tools are safe ’ere.’ He stopped several feet away from where the torso now lay. ‘I use that nook, behind a plank of wood. The parcel was stuffed in beside it.’

Hawkins raised the lamp, and his arm immediately wavered slightly. ‘Dear Lord, look at that.’

The wall at the back of the alcove was black where the rotting flesh had soaked through its wrapping, and maggots teemed across it almost as thickly as they did across the torso itself. ‘Well, that answers one question,’ I said, almost to myself.

‘Which is?’ the detective asked.

‘Our victim has been here much longer than good Mr Windborne knew her to be.’ It was cool in the vault, but I was sweating slightly. The damp air and consuming darkness beyond the small pools of light was becoming oppressive and I suddenly feared that if I stayed down here much longer I would not be able to breathe. I stepped back. My heart was starting to race unpleasantly and an anxious tingle prickled at my skin. It was a sensation that had become all too familiar over recent months.

‘I think I have seen all I need to see here,’ I said. ‘If you would be kind enough to arrange for the body and its wrapping to be sent to the mortuary, I will clean her
up tonight.’ I was glad of the poor lighting as I turned back towards the stairs, sure that my face would no doubt look unhealthily pallid, were someone to study it. I quietly drew in a deep breath and silently counted each of the rough steps as we climbed until my racing heart had calmed.

These strange moments had come upon me more frequently in recent weeks, and as much as I blamed my cursed inability to sleep, I knew too that the wash of blood that was flooding London’s streets this summer was equally responsible. I had suffered as a child with these fleeting moments of surreal anxiety during which I was sure my heart was about to be crushed in my chest, but as I grew into adulthood, they began to fade into a memory almost forgotten. Even during my time on the battlefields with the Prussian Army they had not returned – not until this past summer. They filled me with a terrible dread, and I was left tired and drained when the spell had passed. Of course, this did nothing to help my insomnia, and I knew that on some level the two had to be linked. I prayed that sleep would soon return, and with that these strange fits would be dispelled.

I took the stairs with vigour, and by the time we reached the street the combination of my brisk pace and concentrated breathing had cleared my head and I was once again myself. I lit my pipe, and Detective Hawkins did likewise. Evening was falling, and London was sinking into the gloom that existed between day
and night before the streetlights flickered into life. There was a chill in the air, and as we both shivered and smoked, I felt certain that the young detective was as glad as I that we were free of the vault.

‘You don’t think it’s
him
, do you?’ The detective spoke quietly. I didn’t need to ask for clarification: there was only one
him
being spoken of across London, and he even had a name now, after the letter of five days ago.
Jack the Ripper
. It had a ring to it, I had to admit. Whitechapel’s fear now had an identity.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’ It was barely fortyeight hours since the deaths of the last two women, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, and in homes across London, and in Whitechapel in particular, the bubble of hysterical chatter that was becoming a vocal demand for the killer to be caught would become hard for the men of H Division to control, should those residents decide to take matters into their own hands. ‘And you would do well to perhaps be loud in those assumptions yourself, Detective. There is enough fear on these streets, and Jack is getting enough publicity without our help.’

‘Yes,’ Hawkins said, ‘but it won’t be me talking to them. I’ll be passing this case on.’ He sounded relieved. ‘They’ve sent two inspectors over from Scotland Yard – Moore and Andrews – to help catch this Ripper. Experienced detectives, they are. CID. I’ll give this to them, just in case.’

Behind us two men emerged from the building site,
carefully carrying the pitiful remnants of the body and the newspaper in which it had been wrapped, both now swaddled in sacking. One of them was the reserve officer, Constable Barnes, who had been called in to help mind the new building site; he had been the first among them to see the contents of the gruesome package earlier that afternoon. He had certainly got more than he had bargained for on this assignment.

We watched silently as they climbed into the waiting cab.

‘How the hell did it get down there?’ Hawkins asked. ‘And unnoticed?’

‘That, my friend,’ I said as I dampened my pipe and stared into the darkening street, ‘is for your inspectors to fathom. My part of the puzzle will meet me at the mortuary.’

*

I had fully intended to go home when my initial work with the remains was done, for I would need to be back in the morning to start the post mortem examination, and had already sent a message to Dr Hebbert to meet me no later than half-past seven in order to get the procedure underway. I myself would be there well before that, but Charles didn’t suffer with my sleep affliction, and I felt no call to drag him out too early simply because my own bed was my enemy.

Alone in the quiet mortuary, I had cleaned the torso and placed it in alcohol, both to preserve it and to kill off the teeming maggots. There was no urgency for
an accurate time of death – and no way of giving one, other than death clearly occurred weeks before – so there had been no cause for me to work through the night, not when a fresh mind in the morning would work better.

A fresh head had been my hope, at any rate, so I had been determined to go home to a light supper, and then take myself straight to bed with a book, in the hope of getting at least six hours’ sleep, though I would happily have settled for four or five. I had felt exhausted as I had prepared to leave, but yet again I found myself waking up, as I had done most evenings during this past three months. The exhaustion had sunk too far into my bones to disappear, but still my grainy eyes widened and my brain refused to quieten.

Without making any real conscious decision, instead of reaching for my overcoat, I rummaged behind the medicines cabinet for the clothes that I kept hidden there: a less expensive coat and a rough hat, the kind that would disguise my normal gentlemanly appearance and allow me to blend in more anonymously at my chosen destination. I pulled them on, and once outside the mortuary, I dirtied my face a little. It would do. People tended not to pay attention to others in the dens, but I would rather not take the risk of bringing disrepute to my name.