Authors: Sharon Bolton

Now You See Me (38 page)

BOOK: Now You See Me

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Also by S. J. Bolton

Blood Harvest
Awakening
Sacrifice

Author's Note

Jack the Ripper: Man or Myth? (or Miss!)

Eleven decades of fascination with the sadistic serial killer whom the police never caught have given rise to endless ideas, stories and beliefs about his crimes and his identity. As Lacey says, âJack was a real man, but he's become a myth.' Here are some of my favourite daft Jack theories.

1. Jack was a prince of the realm. Any mention of Jack the Ripper will invariably be met with: âWasn't he a member of the royal family?' The royal in question was Prince Albert Victor, grandson to Queen Victoria and in direct line to the throne, who allegedly contracted syphilis after an assignation with a prostitute. His subsequent murderous rampage was hushed up by the authorities (who possibly had Masonic connections) to protect the queen from scandal. It's a lovely idea, but the prince's whereabouts on any given date are a matter of public record and he was, sadly, nowhere near Whitechapel when the murders took place. We all love a royal conspiracy, but this one simply doesn't stack up.

2. Jack was a surgeon who collected internal organs. Annie Chapman and Catharine Eddowes were both partially disembowelled and are believed to have been missing organs. This gave rise to the theory that the Ripper himself took the organs and must have been surgically trained in order to locate and remove them.
Equally likely, though, is that the organs were taken some time after death by unsupervised and unscrupulous mortuary assistants, who knew their value on the black market. Jack may well have had nothing more than the most basic knowledge of anatomy.

3. The Ripper was a smartly dressed gentleman who carried a Gladstone bag. Countless depictions of the Ripper portray him as a Victorian âtoff', an elegant gentleman who easily lured women to their deaths. In fact, the relatively few eye-witness accounts differ so much in terms of age, appearance, dress, nationality, that it is impossible to form any reliable idea of what Jack looked like. Certainly, there are as many accounts of his being roughly dressed as there are of his being respectable. The Gladstone bag arises from two eye-witness accounts of passers-by carrying âshiny black bags'. Although nothing concrete connects either bag-owner with the crimes, these reports gave rise to a dozen or more black-bag stories, to the point where mere ownership of such an article became a cause for suspicion.

4. The Ripper was the subject of a massive police and Masonic cover-up. A barely literate chalk-written message near the site of Catharine Eddowes' murder, referring to âJuwes', along with similarities between the murder and a certain Masonic legend, gave rise to the theory that the Ripper killings were part of a Masonic conspiracy. In reality, the graffiti may have been completely unconnected with the murder, whilst the link between the word âJuwes' and three Masonic murderers, Jubela, Jubelo, Jubelum (the Juwes â are you keeping up?) is pure speculation. As far as the police are concerned, they faced massive public, press and government pressure to identify the killer, not to conceal his identity, and it is hard to believe that over a hundred years later, hard evidence of a cover-up would not have emerged.

5. The Ripper taunted the police with letters and postcards. During the months of the murders and for several years afterwards, the police, the press and even prominent members of the public received letters supposedly from the killer. Many of them were signed âJack the Ripper'; one was accompanied by a human kidney.
The letters have been subjected to endless investigations by police and independent experts of various kinds and are generally believed to be fake. In recent years, the crime writer Patricia Cornwell built a very convincing case that the artist Walter Sickert was the author of many of the letters. She fell short, in my view at least, of proving that Sickert was also the killer.

And finally â¦

6. Jack was a woman. Inspector Abbeline, the officer in charge of the original investigation, took seriously the theory that the killer could have been female, and so we should too. If, as was argued at the time, the Ripper was a midwife, she would have been able to leave her house and wander the streets in the small hours without attracting undue attention, her bloodstained clothing would not have been remarked upon, she would have been able to approach women without alarming them and would have had the medical knowledge a) to subdue her victims and b) to locate and remove reproductive organs. True, there is no direct evidence to suggest a woman committed these crimes, but until the worldwide jury agrees on one prime male suspect, I think Jill the Ripper has to stay in the mix.

Acknowledgements

Writing a police procedural proved seriously challenging and I'm grateful, once again, to Adrian Summons, not just for his patience and good humour at school pick-up, but also for introducing me to some very useful mates and former colleagues. The ones I'm allowed to name and thank are Detective Inspector Brian Cleobury and Inspector Harvey Martin of the Metropolitan Police's Southwark Borough Command, and Chief Inspector Derek Caterer of the Marine Policing Unit. As for the one I'm not allowed to name, I thank him too.

I'm indebted to Mike Katesmark for checking the medical and pathological detail and for his contribution to the text and characterization. Thanks, also, to Denise Stott and Jacqui Socrates, who never seem to mind my pestering them with daft questions; to Gareth Cooper for some eagle-eyed proofreading; and to Edward Teggin, who knows stuff his parents probably wouldn't approve of.

Any remaining mistakes are mine.

The Camden scenes, both above and below ground, owe their accuracy to Peter Darley of the Camden Railway Heritage Trust, and their inaccuracies to my over-heated imagination. I have to point out that any attempt to retrace Lacey's final journey through the catacombs would be illegal, highly dangerous and, thanks to several demolished basements and tunnels, quite impossible. I would like to thank Peter for being so generous with his time and his local knowledge; and also the Trust for
the work they do in conserving this fascinating part of London.

Reference books I relied on include:
Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery
by Patricia Weaver Francisco,
After Silence
by Nancy Venable Raine,
Recoveringfrom Rape
by Linda Ledray,
The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
by Philip Sugden,
Jack the Ripper
by Andrew Cook,
Jack the Ripper: The Twenty-First Century Investigation
by Trevor Marriot,
Portrait of a Killer
by Patricia Cornwell and
Jack the Ripper: The Casebook
by Richard Jones.

Transworld continue to be the best publishers in the world, with St Martins Minotaur in the US coming a very close second. My especial thanks to Sarah Adams, Lynsey Dalladay, Nick Robinson, Kate Samano and Jess Thomas on this side of the Atlantic and to Kelley Ragland and Matthew Martz on the other.

Anne Marie Doulton, Peter Buckman, Rosie Buckman and Jessica Buckman remain wise, supportive and diligent. My thanks and love to them once more.

S. J. Bolton
was born in Lancashire. She is the author of three previous critically acclaimed novels,
Sacrifice
,
Awakening
and
Blood Harvest
, all available in paperback.

Sacrifice
was nominated for the International Thriller Writers Award for Best First Novel, and for the prestigious Prix Polar SNCF Award.
Awakening
won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for Thriller of the Year in the US.

In 2010
Blood Harvest
was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Crime Novel of the Year.

S. J. Bolton lives near Oxford with her husband and young son. For more information about the author and her books, or to check out her popular blog, visit
www.sjbolton.com

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

www.minotaurbooks.com

First published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers, a Random House Group Company

eISBN 9781429969840

First eBook Edition : April 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bolton, S. J.

Now you see me / S. J. Bolton.â1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-60052-5

1. Women detectivesâEnglandâLondonâFiction. 2. WomenâCrimes againstâFiction. 3. Serial murder investigationâFiction. 4. Jack, the RipperâInfluenceâFiction. I. Title.

PR6102.O49N68 2011

823'. 92âdc22

2011008751

First U.S. Edition: June 2011

BOOK: Now You See Me

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