A Study in Crimson, page 5
‘And?’ Holmes prompted.
‘They couldn’t find him. Moved on to pastures new, he had. But you know how it is with this sort of woman – often as not they come to a sticky end at the hands of a nasty client or a pimp who thinks she’s holding out on him.’
‘Was she then in the employ of such a man?’ I asked.
‘No, she was what you might call an independent operator. But that doesn’t mean some local villain wasn’t trying to force her into his employ. Some of them are happy to slap the working girls around to mark out their patch.’
‘According to this file,’ said Holmes, tapping it with his finger, ‘the case was closed quite quickly.’
‘It wasn’t the sort of thing we could spend much time on,’ Lestrade responded, ‘not with the resources we’ve got.’
‘But surely everyone has the same right to justice under the law,’ I said.
‘That’s a very pretty sentiment, doctor,’ said Lestrade, ‘but that’s not how it works, see – specially not now. We’re stretched pretty thin since the military nabbed some of our best. Jenkins – you remember him? A promising young chap – he’s in the RAF now. And Polingshaw, him as helped break up the Broad Street Gang, he’s joined the Navy along with his brother.’
‘Yes, I understand the impulse to be on the front line,’ said Holmes, ‘no matter what important work there is to be done on the home front.’
‘And on top of that, there’s the lads we lost in the bombing,’ Lestrade added. ‘So here we are with our numbers down, carrying a heavier load than ever.’
‘You mean the extra duties required by the war?’ I suggested.
‘I mean, doctor,’ said Lestrade ruefully, ‘that these are booming times for crime. Oh, I know the public face of things is that we’re all pulling together, everybody doing their bit for Britain. And right enough, I’ve seen plenty of that spirit – folks lending a hand to them that’s been bombed out of their homes, or volunteering to help out in the kitchens and the hospitals. But there’s another side.’
‘Yes, the shortages and deprivation lead to a thriving black market in all manner of goods,’ said Holmes, ‘and with the blackout criminals can move virtually unseen.’
‘Added to that there’s the jackals that move in to loot bombed-out buildings before anybody can stop them.’ Lestrade rubbed his lantern jaw unhappily. ‘Crooks aren’t scared off by bombs and blackouts, and it takes more than a few patriotic speeches to keep their hands out of their neighbours’ pockets.’
‘If your notion of this man imitating the historic Ripper is correct, Holmes,’ I said, ‘then he will be preying exclusively on prostitutes. And yet that girl this morning didn’t look like one to me.’
‘They come in all shapes and sizes these days, doctor,’ Lestrade informed me in a wearied tone. ‘There’s plenty of married women out there looking for business. With their husbands away at war, they’re left to fend for themselves, sometimes without even a proper job. So some of them take to the streets for a spot of passion with some money on the side.’
‘Do we have any information on this second victim?’ asked Holmes.
‘We got a name and address from her papers,’ Lestrade answered, flipping open his notebook. ‘Clara Bentley, 31 Clerkenwell Gardens. I have Froggat looking into her background now. We should have more by this afternoon.’
‘And the medical examination?’ I inquired.
‘Old Len King is on that. I’ve sent word that we’ll be round to see him at two.’
* * *
We were provided with a driver to take us back to Baker Street, this being WPC Laurel Summers. Catching sight of her chestnut hair and bright hazel eyes as she opened the rear door of the Morris saloon for us, I could not help but be reminded of a more innocent age and a happier England, both of which might now be lost for ever.
‘I’ve been put at your complete disposal, sir,’ she informed Holmes with a smile when we disembarked at our destination. ‘Just let me know when you’ll require me.’
‘In that case, Constable Summers,’ my friend instructed, we’ll need you to collect us for a meeting at Bow Street mortuary at two.’
‘Right you are, sir,’ the pretty young woman responded.
As she drove off, I could not help but wonder if she had been forced to gaze upon horrors such as that we had witnessed this morning. Given the many awful deaths at the height of the Blitz, I could not doubt that this was the case. And yet she retained the sunny, hopeful air of youth.
Once Mrs Hudson had served us our luncheon of Dover sole and boiled potatoes I waited until she returned to her own rooms downstairs before broaching the subject of our current case.
‘If my memory serves me correctly, the Ripper claimed five victims, did he not?’
Holmes nodded as he swallowed a small morsel of fish. ‘Over a period from August the thirty-first to November the ninth, 1888. All of their throats were cut and each of the bodies subjected to varying degrees of mutilation.’
It did not surprise me that my friend was well acquainted with the details of Jack the Ripper’s victims. The history of crime was not merely a hobby with him but a vital element of his method. Many was the time he cracked a mystery by recognising parallels with an earlier case, often an obscure incident in some far-off country. There was nothing obscure, of course, about the Ripper killings. His was the most notorious series of murders in the annals of crime, and that all too apt name was as famous as his true identity was unknown.
‘If our new killer holds to the pattern of his predecessor,’ Holmes continued, ‘then we have only three weeks to track him down before he strikes again on September the thirtieth.’
I shuddered at so ghastly a prospect. ‘It’s dreadful, Holmes, to think that a sentence of death is already hanging over some unsuspecting woman.’
‘It is worse even than that,’ said Holmes grimly. ‘On September the thirtieth the Ripper claimed two victims in a single night, excelling even his earlier brutality.’
I set down my cutlery and wiped my napkin across my lips. In an instant my appetite had quite disappeared.
‘We must find him before then, Holmes. We must.’
7 KING OF THE DEAD
We arrived at the Bow Street mortuary promptly at two and found Lestrade waiting for us in company with the lavishly mustachioed Sergeant Arthur Froggat. We entered the examination room with its metal tables, sinks, instrument cases and bottles of disinfectant, the walls decorated with anatomical charts and posters exhorting the utmost cleanliness. Here we found chief pathologist Dr Leonard King writing up a few last notes. Behind him on a raised table lay the body of Clara Bentley, respectfully shrouded over now that King had completed his work.
He looked up at us, his round, grey face imbued with an expression of utter sadness, which could hardly have been more extreme if the girl were his own daughter. Like myself, he had been a medical officer in the Great War, so I knew he had seen more than his fair share of disfigured bodies even before taking up his current position.
Many in his line of work – detectives, police surgeons, medical examiners – who were faced with such horrors armoured themselves by using gallows humour that would sound distasteful to an outsider, but was merely a defence against nightmares. Others cultivated a studied indifference that made them appear cold and dispassionate, when in fact they were simply suppressing their finer feelings in order to carry on with their job.
Leonard King not only had to confront the ugliest crimes of man, but had to perform his own surgical intrusion into the bodies of victims one might in all decency judge to have been sufficiently violated already. Unlike so many others, he appeared to have no defence. He merely absorbed the pain and the sadness into himself, stifling it as best he could, but I could see in his eyes a deep melancholy that only increased with every gruesome autopsy.
‘What have you got for us, Len?’ Lestrade inquired.
‘Nothing good, George,’ the pathologist responded solemnly. ‘But then it never is, is it?’
He half turned back to the body and made his report from memory. ‘The victim is a woman of twenty-five who appears to have enjoyed good health. The obvious wounds were not the cause of death. The girl was strangled first and was quite dead before a sharp blade, possibly a medical instrument, was brought to bear.’
Holmes gave a barely perceptible nod as his own observations were confirmed by this closer examination.
‘The throat was cut in one stroke with an upward slant to the right indicating that the killer was right-handed. A deep cut was then made to the abdomen in order to open it up so that the small intestine could be removed.’
He gestured towards a steel bowl in which the severed innards had been placed. ‘The incisions were made post mortem, so there would no blood spurt to stain the killer’s clothing. Those cuts also indicate that the knife was held in the right hand.
‘No organs were removed other than those found beside the body. She had not recently had intercourse and there is no evidence that she was sexually assaulted either pre or post mortem. Stomach contents show that she had not eaten in the five hours preceding her death, which I place at somewhere between eleven p.m. and twelve thirty a.m.’
He concluded with a sigh and laid down his written report. ‘It’s all in here. Hope you catch the bastard.’
‘Let’s hear what you’ve come up with, Froggat,’ Lestrade instructed.
The police sergeant flipped open his notebook and cleared his throat. ‘Clara Bentley was twenty-five years old, having celebrated her most recent birthday only last week. She lived at 31 Clerkenwell Gardens with her aunt and uncle, Beryl and Charles Bentley. The uncle works as a foreman in a broom factory.
‘After leaving Queen Anne High School, Miss Bentley studied at Whittingley Secretarial College while supporting herself with a part-time job as an usherette at the Rialto cinema on Theobald’s Road. She so impressed her employers that she was taken on as an assistant manageress. On the night in question the film being shown was Fingers at the Window starring Mr Basil Radford as a mesmerist who masterminds a series of murders in Chicago.’
The sergeant looked up from his notes. ‘Sort of ironic, don’t you think?’
‘Never mind the irony, Froggat,’ Lestrade remonstrated sternly. ‘Stick to the facts.’
‘Sorry, sir.’ Froggat cleared his throat again and continued. ‘She was last seen alive by the projectionist Rupert Jameson when they locked the place up for the night. They went off in separate directions and he recalls that she was headed east up the road. As far as he knew she was headed directly home for a good night’s sleep.’
Holmes touched a finger to his chin and I knew he was consulting the detailed map of the city which was stored in his memory. ‘And yet, the spot where the body was discovered lies in the opposite direction to her address,’ he remarked. ‘In fact, she appeared to be headed towards Covent Garden and Leicester Square, perhaps in search of a late supper.’
‘At any rate,’ said Lestrade, ‘there’s nothing to indicate she was out to pick up a man.’
‘Dr King, might I take a final look at the girl?’ Holmes requested.
‘Help yourself, Mr Holmes,’ King answered. ‘She won’t object.’
While Holmes walked over to the shrouded body, Lestrade drew Sergeant Froggat aside to discuss further lines of inquiry. I followed Leonard King to a steel sink where he was pouring himself a glass of water. I could not help but note the brittle look of his sparse grey hair and the parchment-like pallor of his dry skin. Forty-odd years among the dead had not been kind to the man and the death of his son in France in 1940 had aged him even further. It wasn’t hard to see why some of his colleagues referred to him with morbid humour as King of the Dead.
‘That’s another one shuffled off to the undiscovered country,’ he lamented. ‘I wonder if there’s anything out there?’ He sucked in his sallow cheeks and shrugged. ‘I doubt it. If there was, we’d have heard something by now.’
‘Some people claim they have,’ I said, attempting to inject some sort of hope into his tragic world-view.
‘Loonies most of them,’ King said dolefully. ‘The rest are just wishful thinkers. Can’t say as I blame them. Who wouldn’t hope for something better than this?’
His eyes drifted back to the corpse, as though its wounds symbolised the ruined state of a fallen world. He popped a pill into his mouth and washed it down with a swallow of water that made his Adam’s apple bob beneath the wrinkled skin of his neck.
‘Ulcers,’ he explained. ‘Inevitable really.’
‘Perhaps you need a rest,’ I suggested. ‘A few days in the country, a spot of fishing.’
He shook his head and replaced the glass precisely on the edge of the sink. ‘With all the bodies that pass through here these days, they’d pile up into a crowd if I wasn’t here.’
‘Surely, though,’ I pressed him, ‘you’ve already done as much as can be asked of you, no matter how dedicated you are.’
‘I do this business because somebody must in the interests of justice.’ Now his voice dropped so that the police officers would not overhear, and his tone became that of a confession. ‘But after a while a certain morbidity of the soul sets in. It’s almost as if every corpse I examine drains away some of my own life. One day, I’ll have nothing left and I’ll be laid out on the slab myself.’
As we departed, I was left with the macabre image of the ageing pathologist lying here in the very place where he had for so long carried on his lugubrious trade, just one more body among the many. Would he even then be at rest, I wondered.
Holmes and I returned to Baker Street with copies of the files and photographs Lestrade had compiled on both murders. Holmes settled himself into his favourite chair surrounded by this information as well as his own reference books and back issues of recent newspapers. He perused the Scotland Yard documents once more before leaning back and puffing on his cherrywood pipe.
‘Do you see any light in this?’ I asked.
‘I see points of interest to which we must give deep consideration,’ he replied. ‘For a start, the differences between the two murders.’
‘The first a prostitute, the second a perfectly respectable young woman,’ I recalled. ‘Is it possible that the murderer, in spite of her appearance, took her for a street-walker also?’
Holmes shook his head. ‘If he wished to kill another prostitute, there are more than enough of those to be found, as Lestrade pointed out. No, this second victim was singled out for some other reason.’
‘Might she not have been chosen at random? A mere chance encounter that led to murder?’
‘Both were killed in the shadows of an obscure back street,’ said Holmes, ‘which is just where the first victim might expect to carry on her trade. The second girl set out along a major road on her way home, but for some reason she turned round and was murdered in a dark alley in an area no woman with a grain of sense would enter at night unless accompanied by someone she trusted.’
‘By someone known to her?’ I suggested.
Holmes jabbed the air with a finger to emphasise his conclusion. ‘Either that or someone who would be instinctively trusted, such as a man in uniform.’
‘Well, there are plenty of those around,’ I said, ‘not just British, but also Canadians and Americans.’
‘Note also that, although she turned back and headed for Covent Garden after setting out for home, she was not dressed for a night out, nor was she made up for any sort of date. There was therefore no assignation made beforehand.’
Holmes paused to take a puff on his pipe before continuing. ‘I suggest that shortly after leaving the cinema she encountered someone who suggested a late supper in that part of town, then deliberately led her into an obscure and narrow street. If by this time her suspicions were aroused, it was already too late.’
‘You are suggesting that the killer was lying in wait within view of the cinema, ready to approach Clara Bentley as soon as she was alone.’
‘Everything points to that,’ said Holmes. ‘And if she was targeted deliberately, then his first victim, Margaret Hopkin, was deliberately targeted too.’
‘But Holmes, what connection could there be between the two?’ I asked, spreading my palms out before me. ‘They would not have moved in the same circles and they lived and worked in different parts of the city.’
‘Yes, the choice of victims marks a striking divergence from the original Ripper, on whom we believe our own killer models himself.’ He removed the pipe from his mouth and waved the stem slowly back and forth, as his thoughts moved between the original Ripper and his imitator.
‘We can also note that, gruesome as these two crimes are, they were carried out in a coldly clinical fashion. The victims were strangled, so they had no chance to cry out. The throat and stomach were then cut post mortem to minimise the amount of blood spilled. The organs removed were those most easily accessible.’
‘But surely, whatever the cool efficiency with which he carries out his crimes,’ I said, ‘this man is motivated by a hatred of women.’
‘It is true that hatred can often be a cold thing,’ Holmes agreed. ‘A twisted passion is not necessarily accompanied by reckless savagery. It is clear to me from the way he strikes quickly and then departs, this man is making every effort to ensure that he is not caught.’
‘In that case why sign his name in the vicinity?’
‘To make clear his identification with Jack the Ripper. And yet, it is in the telling differences that our best hope for exposing him is to be found.’
* * *
After such a day it was small wonder that thoughts of death haunted me as I prepared for bed that night. Before turning out the light, I paused to stare at the photograph of my dear Mary that stood upon my bedside table, a carefree smile upon her lips, her eyes bright with the joy of summer. I had taken it one day when we were picnicking in the New Forest, our happiness unclouded by any premonition that in only a few months’ time she would be caught in the fatal grip of tuberculosis.
