I, Ripper

That left Colonel Woodruff. His flaw was hardly a flaw. The man worked relentlessly and seemed completely isolated from society in his mad urge to decipher Pashto grammar and verb tense. Perhaps it kept the devils of memory and regret at bay. Equally, he did not mix with old military colleagues and recount the good old days; possibly, to him, they were not so much good as merely old, and he was content to leave them lie. In fact, he would go weeks without speaking to another soul. He was a priest, not only a priest but a damned Black Jesuit, of sublime discipline and isolation and absolutism. But once every ten days or so, he would allow himself a night off and indulge his solitary vice.

So odd. It must have been a habit picked up in the east, and one wondered what it did for him, except perhaps still the voices he must have heard, the visions he must have seen. Whatever the case, he left his rooms and walked – a great walker he was, his short little figure never slowing, his progress much more severe and less patient than that of other walkers and went to the dock area, and then went to one of three dens, unmarked on the outside, and spent the night.

At first we had no idea what the places were, and thought they might be brothels, but he stayed way too long for a brothel visit. Professor Dare volunteered to wait him out while I went back home to catch up on sleep.

The next day the professor reported that after the colonel had left, he himself entered to ascertain the nature of the vice and discovered it to be an opium den, where men of all races paid to lie on divans and a Chinaman would bring them long-stemmed clay pipes; they would imbibe (is that the term?) and pass into a trancelike stage, not quite sleep but more a tranquil semiconsciousness with their eyes locked on infinity, their bodies still, their breathing imperceptible, their minds voyaging to wherever. Since the drug was more of the sort that stilled the body than animated it, it would never act as an enabler of the kind of vigorous action that Jack demonstrated.

As the end of the first week of November approached, we had nothing except a load of information on three heroic officers guilty of only the petty sins of human yearning for various denominations of comfort. But if Professor Dare had lost faith in the veracity of his thesis, he never admitted it to me. Quite the opposite, he was adamant that it had to be one of these three, and as he pressed his case, perhaps I saw a hint of the violent zealotry of the kind that Harry Dam had reported. I do not mean there was threat in his behavior, just dogma. He knew, he knew, he knew. He could not be wrong. That was the bedrock of his conviction.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE The Diary

November 3, 1888

write this one quite drunk, ha ha. I felt I needed to real relacks relax. The pressure is building, I am crushed between lives, I am so close, but yet there is much to do. I will allow myself some diversion.

One place, ha ha ha, I knew to be safe was the Tailor’s Thimble, in Marylebone, far from the slough of despond called Whitechapel. It is uncharacteristic of me to let go, as I subject myself from long habit, long, long, long habit, to the utmost of disi discipline and letting go is is not a thing I do easily.

But the Thimble, in the afternoon, is largely empty, and so I sat and had three glasses, then a fourth, of champagne.

“Celebrating then, are we, sir?” a feller asks.

“Indubitably, friend. Feeling generous. Care for a glass?”

“Wouldn’t mind if I did, and thanking the gentleman kindly.”

So he scootched up on a stool and I nodded to the barkeep and soon enough my new friend was having a quaff of bubbly as well.

“Never had it before,” he said. “It tickles the nose.”

“It tickles more than that after time,” I said.

“What business is yours, sir?” he asked.

“I handle rearrangements,” I said. “Business is good. There’s a lot of rearranging to do. And you, sir, what would yours be?”

“I was a rigger. That is, sir, I rigged the ropework on the construction cranes we used in the digging of the tunnels of the Underground. Not just tunnels, sir, but buildings, too, bridges, anything requiring heavy weights moved and placed. Raised in the trade, trained by my father, who was trained by his before him. People take it for granted, but it’s a tricky business and, done wrong, can spell all sorts of mischief.”

“So when I sail blithely from the City to Marylebone or cross over a river wide and deep enough to drown a battalion, you’re the lad who made it happen?”

“A tiny part of it’s my work, sir. It was good work. I raised three kiddies and now all are in trade or honest labor.”

“Well, by God, sir, you’ve provided civilization with a long ton and a half more than I have. Here, porter, the bottle. This man drinks to his fill on my tab!”