I, Ripper

“They’re all waiting for Commissioner Warren to arrive. He will have bloodhounds with him, and that’s thought to be the latest in scientific detection.”

“Good Christ,” I said. These idiots didn’t know Warren was gone.

At that moment, Abberline’s frosty gaze struck me, and he came over. “Mr. Jeb, is it not? Here to find more avenues of criticism for our hardworking policemen, are you, and to make the apprehension of this brute more difficult?”

“Inspector, love me or not, allow me to give you some helpful information. I’m told you’re waiting on Sir Charles. I’ve just arrived and have not been sealed up here for two hours, so I know what you do not: That is, Sir Charles will never show up. At least not in official capacity, because he has no official capacity. He resigned late last night.”

If Abberline had a reaction, he kept it to himself, though I thought I saw a shade of gray pass across or beneath his otherwise grimly controlled face.

I watched as he went to Arnold, the two conferred, and an order was given. McCarthy was called up and, armed with an ax handle, began to pummel the door heroically. It yielded to his thunder, the door was sprung, and the official party entered. In seconds McCarthy emerged, went to his knees, and vomited.

“Oh, my,” I said.

Abberline came out, face blank as per normal, and signaled a fellow with some photographic equipment to enter. More science. For the first time the crime scene would be recorded by means other than memory. Then he came to me. “All right, Jeb,” he said, “you have helped, now I will help you. Constable, let the man pass, and we’ll show him what Jack has brought to London today.”

To the jeers and catcalls of the other press boys, I was led in. It soon became evident that this was no favor; Abberline meant to get me puking in the yard, too, so all the fellows could enjoy a good hard laugh at my destruction.

My first reaction was not horror so much as confusion. What I saw fit no pattern. “Dissonant” was a term that came to mind: It had no melody, structure, harmony, undertone, contrapuntal melody; it was just a random pile of notes, lines, and staffs. As my eyes adjusted to the darker palette of the room, I forgot musicality and moved next to the idea of a butcher shop in which the anarchists had detonated a small bomb, for heaps and piles of meat seemed to be laying about, and the walls had been spattered crimson.

I looked upon it – it was no she but only an it – as it lay at bed’s edge, and in a few seconds my mind was nimble enough to pick out the form that lay beneath the desecration.

“Holy Jesus,” I said.

“Not Jesus at all,” said the sanguine Abberline, “but Jack.”

Had she been a pretty girl? Had she a bonnie smile, a sparkle to the eye, a pert button nose, lips of cushion and comfort? I hope memory had the answer, because as of now, no one would ever know. It was not a face at all but a kind of mask of red death, after Poe’s helpful presentation of the apt phrase, all grisly and chopped, with chasms where features had been, all the more hideous for the fact that the more you looked at it, the less abstract it became, until it resolved itself into something precise and quite beyond metaphor, beyond literature, beyond even the great Poe. It took one’s breath and breakfast away, but fortunately, owing to Mother’s war on me, I had no breakfast to contribute to a festival of vomit; however, if nothing in my stomach raised itself up, I felt a shudder down to my knees and had a moment of wooze as I rocked back and forth. The cold of November, especially as admitted by the open window and now shattered door, kept well in control the odors that would have been choking, and that was a great aid in control of intestinal reactions, but I broke out in sweat and felt it roll down inside my suit.

“Who was she?” I uttered.

“Neighbors say a tart named Mary Jane Kelly, among other aliases. A nice enough girl, they say, no need whatsoever to do her up like this.”

“Can she be identified in such condition?”

“We’re looking for a Joe Barnett, paramour, who knew her best. He’ll have to make the identification official. That is, if he’s not the fellow himself.”

“I thought it was a Jack job.”

“Certainly seems as much, but the death cuts are on the right, not the left. Perhaps that’s how he found her and cut her lying down, finding it the easiest way.”

There was a sudden pop! and flare of illumination, as the photographer had finally gotten his kit assembled and in action. The flash device admitted the vapor of burned chemicals, whatever they were, strong enough to make me wince. He set about to take more pictures, snapping plates in and out of the box, adding flash powder to his device and the like.

I bent close and looked into the one undestroyed aspect of her visage, her eyes.

“If you’re looking for the image of her killer, save your effort,” said Abberline rather snippily. “Old wives’ tale. Seen a hundred in my time, no image on any of ’em.”