I, Ripper

“My dear Jeb,” it began. “How pleasant to chat with you at Charlie’s soiree. You may recall the subject of he who is now called ‘The Ripper’ came up. Saucy Jacky, what a fellow. He sells your newspapers, he keeps my mind aflutter.

“But nothing has so moved me as this business of ‘J-U-W-E-S.’ It’s on my foredeck. It’s language. It’s communication. It has a Beneath. Thus I have spent a good part of the last week trying possibilities against the archetype, in hopes of cracking the code.

“I have reached certain conclusions. Being civic-minded when it’s not too much trouble, I went to Scotland Yard and waited three hours to reach an inspector, who listened politely, nodded, then said, ‘Well and good, sir, noted, now if you don’t mind, I’ve other duties,’ and showed me the door. That uninterest I put to Warren, who after all is no policeman, certainly no detective, not even a soldier, but really a kind of engineer. When brick and mortar have to be calculated against the requirements of budget, transport, estimated time of use, repair costs, all for a bridge to be built in Mesopotamia, I suppose he’s the fellow you want, but that’s how he sees the world, nuance-free, unburdened by a Beneath, ultimately quantifiable and measurable. Such silliness won’t catch a devil like Jack.

“In any event, I believe I know what ‘J-U-W-E-S’ is. I’m the only man in London who does, unless I tell you. Would you be interested?

“Yours, Thomas.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Diary

October 15, 1888

had to see it, of course. It had been a darkened, even a dream, landscape, in a part of the city I hardly knew. I acted on instinct, boldness, without hesitation, and thus, like Cardigan at Balaclava, my headlong, crazed charge through the enemy phalanxes enabled me to survive for another day’s fight.

I waited, I waited, I waited. Today was long enough after, the air was coolish, the sun bright, and it seemed as good a time as any. I wandered out, seeming merely to take a stroll as might any Londoner, and meandered casually this way and that, though trending toward Mitre Square. Being no fool, I would now and then double around to make certain no one was following, though that felt impossible. Indeed, no one was on to me, I was just another citizen, strolling haphazardly block by block, perhaps on the way to an appointment, a meal, an assignation. Nothing about me was remarkable.

Now and then I passed an apothecary’s, a tobacconist’s, or an out-and-out newstand, where this afternoon’s leader boards blazed away with the latest revelations. It was all old milk, reheated ever so slightly for misleading sale. Jack, Jack, Jack. Jack everywhere, Jack nowhere, Jack spotted in the Thames Tunnel, Jack observed in Hyde Park. Who Jack, where Jack, how Jack, why Jack? When they imagined Jack, I had to laugh. Their Jack was a skulker, a creeper, a lurker who slithered through the fog in a giant topper, with some kind of curving Oriental blade clenched in his fist, held close to his face, which was shielded by the cape he drew tight around his neck with his other hand. His posture was feline, for he moved by cat law, silky, silent, gliding on only toes to ground. Ha and ha again. I was as normal a bloke as you could imagine, nobody but the thrushes saw the blade, which in any case was a straight piece of Sheffield steel, as found in every kitchen in Great Britain. I walked through crowds, shoulders back, head erect, my garb not at all theatricalized along West End variations on cunning evil, and never in my adventures had I glimpsed so much as a wisp of fog. I had a fair, somewhat blocky face, hair of modest attainment, and wouldn’t be caught dead in a top hat. Was I going to a ball after my dates with murder, is that what they thought? Perhaps to Buckingham for tea with the queen? Newspapers: What’s the point of existing if you’re always going to get everything so wrong?