Murder (2 page)

Chief Inspector Henry Moore’s report to Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten.
18 Oct 1896

I beg to report having carefully perused all the old ‘Jack the Ripper’ letters and fail to find any similarity of handwriting in any of them, with the exception of the two well remembered communications which were sent to the ‘Central News’ office; one a letter, dated 25
^th
September 1888, and the other a postcard, bearing the postmark 1st October 1888 …

On comparing the handwriting of the present letter with handwriting of that document, I find many similarities in the formation of letters. For instance the y’s, t’s and w’s are very much the same. Then there are several words which appear in both documents; viz:- Dear Boss; ha ha (although in the present letter the capital H is used instead of the small one); and in speaking of the murders he describes them as his ‘work’ or the last ‘job’; and if I get a (or the) chance; then there are the words ‘yours truly’ and -the Ripper (the latter on postcard) that are very much alike. Besides there are the finger smears.

Considering the lapse of time, it would be interesting to know how the present writer was able to use the words ‘The Jewes are people that are blamed for nothing’; as it will be remembered that they are practically the same words that were written in chalk, undoubtably by the murderer, on the wall at Goulston Str., Whitechapel, on the night of 30
^th
September 1888, after the murders of Mrs Stride and Mrs Eddows [Eddowes]; and the word Jews was spelt on that occasion precisely as it is now.

Although these similarities strangely exist between the documents, I am of the opinion that the present writer is not the original correspondent who prepared the letters to the Central News; as if it had been I should have thought he would have again addressed it to the same Press Agency; and not to Commercial Street Police Station.

In conclusion I beg to observe that I do not attach any importance to this communication.

By the time the brandy arrived, I was feeling pleasantly full. The warmth of the restaurant was a far cry from the bitter cold outside, and as Andrews passed the cigars around the room had quietened; it was late in the evening and many of the tables that had been full on our arrival were now being cleared away by brisk waiters.

‘And so the letter was nothing?’ I said. It was not unusual for Andrews and me to dine out together, but tonight Henry Moore had brought the three of us together and I knew it was not just for the pleasure of our company.

‘Just another to add to the hundreds of others,’ he said behind a small haze of smoke. ‘They’re all worthless. Whoever our man was, he’s either dead or fled.’

He looked well. Unlike Andrews, who had retired from the police force a year or so after that bloody summer, Henry Moore had gone from strength to strength, being promoted to the rank of Chief Inspector after taking over the ‘Ripper’ case from Inspector Abberline. He retained his sense of earthy hardiness, and although he must surely feel the same frustration that plagued Andrews that their man had never been caught, he was a pragmatist. He would be disappointed, but he would not suffer as Andrews did.

‘These are fine cigars.’ The smoke was sweet and strong. ‘Are we celebrating something?’

‘Celebration might be too strong a word,’ Moore said, ‘but it’s certainly the end of an era. We are no longer actively investigating the Ripper case. We’ve done all we can. We’re not going to catch the bastard now. It’s time to move on.’

His words came as no real surprise to me, and in my heart I was glad of the news. It was the final door closing on a chapter of history I had done my best to make peace with and forget. Perhaps now that the decision was made, Andrews too would be able to let it go. He had become a close friend since his retirement from the police force. He was thinner than I, and although nearly ten years younger, he looked far older than a man yet in his forties should. He still mused on Jack’s handiwork over our games of chess or backgammon, as if hoping one day to remember some small snippet of information that would lead to an arrest.

‘Perhaps it is,’ Andrews said before sniffing his brandy. ‘But I wish to God we had got him.’

‘It’s a wide world,’ I said. ‘It’s possible that some policeman somewhere caught him.’

‘Then I shall imagine it’s so. For my own peace.’

We sat in comfortable silence for a moment as we sipped our drinks and smoked our cigars and reflected on those deeds that seemed at once a while ago and yesterday, as memories often did.

‘It’s not as if there isn’t enough crime in London to keep me busy,’ Moore said after a moment, his eyes twinkling. ‘There are days I envy you, Walter, in your decision to change professions. Look at you now: the gentleman investigator, Sherlock Holmes himself.’

We all laughed at that. Andrews had indeed moved into private investigations since leaving the Force, but the reality of
the job was a far more mundane affair that that presented in fiction, and it involved very little working alongside the police.

‘Who knows,’ Moore continued, smiling, ‘perhaps it will soon be time for me to move on too. I’m starting to feel like the old dog trying to herd eager pups.’

‘Retirement?’ Andrews said. ‘I’m certainly contemplating it – but you don’t strike me as the sort.’

‘You see me dying on the job? Driven to an early grave by paperwork, maybe.’ He let out a gruff laugh. ‘I’ll see a few more years on the Force, I’m sure, but then – who knows? I imagine – and in many ways I hope, because I’m too tired to chase another bloody lunatic like that one – I’ve already worked on the case I shall be defined by. We all have.’

It was unlike Moore to be so reflective, but he had a point. London hadn’t seen six weeks like Jack’s before, and it was unlikely to again. We had played our parts in that, even if the man himself had never been brought to justice.

‘Jack, and the torso man,’ Andrews said. ‘I hope we were wrong and they were one and the same – that way we failed to catch only one man.’

My grip tightened on my brandy glass. We rarely talked of the torso murders. For Andrews they had always been secondary to Jack’s, and I was glad of that. For the first few years after those terrible events my sleep had suffered. I kept the memories locked away in my soul and I weaned myself from the laudanum, but often my days were wrecked with tiredness. I had not seen either the priest or Aaron Kosminski since that fateful night in Harrington’s warehouse. I had slowly managed to convince myself that the drugs had induced a kind of madness in us, but still I felt an awful sense of dread when walking the streets of London.

But for the past eighteen months or so that too had lifted and the whole affair had begun to feel like a terrible dream. I had no doubt that Harrington was the killer, and so I felt no overwhelming guilt over his death, but neither did I like any reminder of those events for fear that once again my anxieties and insomnia would return.

‘It’s possible,’ Moore agreed, but I sensed more for Andrews’ benefit than because he truly thought so.

‘We should dwell less on the past,’ I said. ‘If the case is no longer active, then perhaps we too should let it rest. And ourselves as well.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Moore said and signalled the waiter for more brandy.

*

It was late when I returned home to Westminster, but I had the pleasant buzz of having spent an evening with friends and before bed I went to my study to write a few more notes on my paper on the nature and treatment of hunting injuries. I wanted to push any dregs of thoughts of Jack and the torso killer to one side with practical work and I found it was not too difficult in the comfort of my own home. The sense of being haunted had truly left me, and although I had moments of fear that it would return, with every day that passed I relaxed a little more and allowed myself to feel content in my life. There would be no more opium. There would be no more madness. The priest and Kosminski were merely figures from a dream. They were not tangible, and as such, they could no longer affect me. Justice was done – even if it had been a crude version that I could never share with Andrews and Moore – and I refused to feel guilt for my part in it. It was far kinder for Juliana than any trial would have
been, and I had no doubt whatsoever the outcome would have been the same.

Finally, I turned out the lamps and climbed the stairs to the bed I no longer dreaded.
Yes
, I thought as I slipped into an easy sleep,
life was good at last
.

Medical Report on Admission:

He goes about the streets and picks up bits of bread from the gutter and eats them. He drinks water from a standpipe and refuses food at the hands of others, he is very dirty and will not be washed
.

Patient believes he is guided and controlled by an instinct that informs his mind
.

I stayed at Juliana’s on Christmas Eve, and after little James had been put to bed I helped her with the last of the present-wrapping and then we filled the stocking that hung from the edge of the mantelpiece before sipping sherry and allowing the enjoyment of the festive season to seep into us.

‘The calm before the storm.’ She smiled, raising her glass to me. ‘Merry Christmas, Thomas.’

‘And a Merry Christmas to you too, Juliana.’

We sat back, enjoying the silence in that particular way that two people who had grown used to each other’s company could do. I was glad to see her looking healthier and more content. Her happiness made me happy, and even with the secret that I kept buried, I still dared to hope that one day she might consider me more than just a friend. Although I was now a man in my fifties and she not quite reached thirty, still I wanted to look after her. Even without my impossible feelings of love for her, I knew I owed her that.

She had stopped wearing widow’s weeds – reluctantly, but with a pragmatism that I was beginning to see was a part of her core – a few years earlier, but her grief still clung to her, almost as corporeal as the monster my madness had convinced me was attached to Harrington’s back. Nothing in that time had been easy for her: her husband’s bloated body had been dragged from the river a few days after his death and
she, insisting on seeing him even though both her father and I strongly advised against it, had been heart-broken at the sight. Her pregnancy continued to make her sick, and her labour had been long and difficult – for a while, though we never told her, there were times when we feared we would lose both her and the child. And after that, she never regained the full bloom of health: though her red hair was still beautiful, it had lost its lustre, and her face had thinned. Much as I tried to encourage her back out into the fresh air, even suggesting she join me at the hunt as she had been used to, she always declined, and for the first year or so of little James’ life, she was little more than a ghost of her former self. Once she left her sickbed she moved and talked and walked, but her heart had gone in the river with her dead husband, and I rather felt that if her sickly child were to die too, it would be only a matter of days before she threw herself into the water as well.

But little James did not die, and Juliana slowly came back to us – perhaps not with the joie de vivre that had been so much a part of her before, but she was still a young woman and I hoped that Time, Mother Nature’s healer, would rectify that. The young were resilient, and Juliana was an exceptional woman. I knew I was right in my decision: that it would be better she had to bear only the grief of a husband robbed and murdered rather than the truth of what James Harrington had become: a brutal murderer of women and the killer of his own unborn child.

Juliana remained in the Chelsea house only until both she and the boy had recovered enough from the trauma of his birth, then her parents and I encouraged her to sell the property and move, though I confess it was not difficult – she needed no persuasion from us, for that house held few happy
memories for her. Selfishly, I too was happy that I would no longer have to visit that street, for not only had Harrington’s parents died so horribly there, but the ghost of Elizabeth Jackson lingered too, every time my gaze fell on the nearby house where she had been employed.

When Juliana moved into the new house in Barnes, the dark clouds I had carried with me everywhere began to lift. And as Juliana recovered, so did I.

Now, as the fire died down, her pale face was beautiful, lit by the glowing embers. When she had married James Harrington she had been a girl, but now she had grown into a woman and her face bore the marks of her suffering. I found that made her more perfect, if that were even possible.

‘I think I shall go to bed,’ she said at last, rising. ‘Thank you for coming tonight, Thomas. It’s been good to have some time alone before our guests arrive tomorrow.’ She leaned over my chair and kissed me softly on my cheek. ‘You are always so very kind to me. Sometimes I wonder what I would do without you.’

‘You will never have to do without me,’ I answered, ‘that I can promise you.’

She smiled again, a wistful expression that made me hope one day to see her eyes twinkle with good humour as they had before. And although I dared not think it too often, perhaps she would one day start to love me as I loved her …

‘I think I might read for a while,’ I said. ‘Sleep well. And Merry Christmas.’

As I watched her leave the room, her skirts swishing as she walked, I thought I had never known such a woman, and never would again. I didn’t read, but instead lost myself in the remains of the fire until it had burnt down to a pale glow. As
the air turned chilly, I too retired to my bedroom, seeking a good night’s sleep before the Christmas festivities. Thankfully, that was no longer an idle wish.

*

The mood in the morning was as fine as in any house in London, and once Charles Hebbert, Juliana’s father, had arrived we left the cook preparing our feast and went to church before strolling back along the riverside to Juliana’s house on The Terrace. It had been a mild month, and for all the slight crispness to the air it could as easily have been a March day as a December one. Juliana relaxed her normal over-protectiveness a little and she let James run ahead of us slightly, although she watched carefully as he peered over the bank to the river a few feet below us.