I, Ripper

I followed him to a roped-off area in the center, where I learned that I was the first of the real reporters on-site – the others were penny-a-liners – and took a few seconds to look about. The square was quite small, particularly in scale to the larger industrial buildings enclosing it, mainly vast, mute warehouses of sheer brick, two owned by Kearley and Tongue, one by Horner and Sons. Beyond, over the hulk of Horner’s building, I saw an even larger behemoth that I knew to be the back wall of the Great Synagogue where the Jews gathered each Saturday for their worship. I thought that made it less likely, rather than more, that a Jew was involved, for a Jew would be careful to absolve his own heritage group by distance if nothing else.

All the activity was centered in the southeast corner of the space, where a wooden fence seemed to mark off a yard behind it; another house was hard by it, maybe a few feet away. Certainly someone in that house had heard something! Meantime, a doctor—he was in a white medical coat – stood by, not doing much (I was later to learn he was a local, the earliest to the scene, who had pronounced the poor girl dead, and he had not touched the body save to determine how warm it was, and infer from that a time of death. She was too much in disarray for him to get any closer.) The others were detectives or detective constables, some of them sketching, some of them looking at goods on the ground that must have been the victim’s, perhaps to make a catalog.

I kept waiting for the others to show up – where was Cavanagh of the Times or Renssalaer of the Daily Mail or any of the boys I’d run into at these damnable sites? No sign. I guessed they were still tethered to the Berner situation, looking at Jack’s last crime, and couldn’t get over here, though it was under a mile. The Star was lucky again, as was I; having a chap in the building when the call came got him to the place first and fastest, while the other rags had to round up a late-night second-stringer, their fancier boys having been sent to Berner.

In time, a large fellow with a walrus moustache, a derby, and an overcoat that could have concealed an army rifle came over to our little crowd, looked at us, and singled me out with his inspector-intense vision. “You’re Jeb of the Star, is that it?”

“That I am,” I said.

“You other fellows, I’m taking Mr. Jeb for a look-see on the poor gal. You’ll have to hold here because I can’t have you all mucking up the crime scene. He’ll tell you what he sees, won’t you, sir?”

“I will, they can be sure of it,” I said.

If there was discontent, the large officer didn’t care, and his bulk and seriousness of mien stood firm enough to close out any objections. I dipped beneath the rope and made to accompany him step by step to the body.

We made it to her but halted a few feet out, so the details were not exact yet. I could see general derangement, mussed clothes, implications of disorder, but it was somehow so abstract at this distance, I could make little sense of it.

He said, “By the way, I’m Collard. My first name is ‘Inspector.’ Dr. Brown, our surgeon, will be along in a bit, as will, I’m sure, Commissioner Smith.” Smith was the high sheriff of the City of London Police, the rough equivalent of the Yard’s Sir George Warren.

“Yes, sir.”

“Jeb? First name or last?”

“Last. My first is ‘Reporter.’ ”

“Very good, then. Some spirit. I like that. As for the particulars, we have called in all our officers and are mounting one of the biggest dragnets, if not the biggest, the City of London has ever seen. We have detectives everywhere, canvassing for witnesses. If anything’s to be found, if this mad brute left anything behind, we’ll find it, I assure you.”

I took this down in Pitman while answering, “As a reporter and citizen, I am grateful.”

“Now, as to the body, I must warn you to steel yourself.”

“I have seen all the other bodies, except for the concurrent one on Berner Street.”

“I hear it’s not too bad.”

“I hear that as well.”

“Well, this one is very bad. From your accounts, I suspect it’s the worse by several degrees. As I say, time to be all manly and stiff-upper-lip, all that brave-Englishman rubbish you journos preach.”

“I will try and buck up and play the game.”

“So has said many a rookie to murder, only to end up vomiting fish and chips in the gutter. You have been warned.” He led me to her.

Must I describe this? I suppose I must. I will not censor, but I will go hazy on the details, for myself as well as readers.

She lay on her back, her palms outward and up, one leg bent over the other. Her dress and petticoats had been scrunched up to her shoulders, with no concession to Victorian modesty. She lay bare from collarbone to pubis, showing things that are never seen, much less acknowledged, though I cannot conceive a fellow getting an illicit masturbatory thrill off the spectacle. If so, he’d be as guilty as Jack.