Sharyn McCrumb - Missing Susan

Yours sincerely,

Kenneth O’Connor

At twenty minutes past seven that evening, Rowan Rover was slouched in the doorway of a news agent’s shop near the Whitechapel tube station, smoking his fifth cigarette. Any moment now the mystery tour members-what was left of them-would emerge from the tube station, jovial and ready for an evening of nostalgic mayhem.

“I am following in the footsteps of a man who killed five women and was never caught,” he muttered. “Surely I can manage one!”

It was the perfect setting: a series of dark, somewhat dangerous streets in an area that he knew perfectly well, while none of the others had ever been there. Every advantage was his. Except for the fact that his heart was pounding like a ten-shilling pocket watch and his skin crawled with cold sweat. For the first time he wondered what it had felt like to be Jack the Ripper. He had always imagined the mad killer bristling with excitement, breathing heavily at the prospect of his evening’s sport, sliding through the dark streets of Whitechapel with a song in his throat. Somehow Rowan had neglected to think of the victims in any way at all except as costumed clay pigeons, necessary to the game. Suddenly he was forced to picture them as real people, with personalities and families, and with a pathetic innocence of the evil that stalked them, denying their humanity. Perhaps the Ripper’s indifference toward his victims came from the fact that they were strangers. Susan Cohen, as irritating as she was, had become all too real to her intended assassin. He even knew the names of her cats, for God’s sake! He should have killed her early on, he thought, when she was just a face in the crowd. He fingered the metal cosh in his pocket, a gift from an old burglar acquaintance. Now he would probably need months of counseling or gallons of good Scotch to recover from the horrors of this evening’s ordeal. Fortunately, he reflected, he would be able to afford them.

When the first members of the group emerged from the tube station, chattering and laughing, as unaware as lambs to the slaughter, he went to meet them with a heavy heart and a plaster smile.

“Good evening, ladies and Charles. Welcome to the Jack the Ripper tour. Shall we proceed?”

Alice MacKenzie was wearing her new wool shawl from Wales. Frances Coles was sticking to her side as if Alice could protect her from any spectral Ripper who might descend on them. Maud Marsh and Kate Conway looked brightly inquisitive about the evening walk, not quite belying their boredom with historical crime. The Warrens were fiddling with camera attachments and Elizabeth MacPherson was looking about her with narrowed eyes as if she thought there was a chance of catching the killer this evening. Susan Cohen, in her blasted navy coat, made her way to the front of the group, nattering about some bookshop she’d found in Bloomsbury. No one was listening. He wondered whether to keep her near him at the front of the group or let her fall back in order to divert suspicion when the accident occurred.

As he led them into the fetid alley where Bucks Row had once been, he issued his usual warning to refrain from touching the walls, but he felt a flicker of satisfaction when he saw Susan run her forefinger along the brickwork.

“Winos pee there!” he belatedly explained.

Her scowl held him personally responsible. “Not in Minneapolis they don’t!”

When they emerged from the alley, where progress had been single file, Elizabeth MacPherson appeared at his side. “So this was Bucks Row,” she remarked. “Polly Nicholls, right?”

Rowan gave her a fishy stare. He’d be damned if he was going through the Ripper walk with a Greek chorus, even if she did know her facts. With the barest of nods, he recited his piece about the discovery of Polly Nicholls’ body, verbally sketching in the geography of the site at the time of her death.

“It doesn’t look too scary now,” said Susan Cohen, yawning.

“Thank the Luftwaffe,” snapped Rowan. “A lot of London geography changed during the Blitz. Some of it for the better. They got Crippen’s house up in Islington, too, by the way.”

He led them down Durward Street, across Vallance Road, and along Hanbury, toward the site of the Annie Chapman murder. Susan, whose interest in Jack the Ripper seemed confined to his influence on crime fiction, was nattering on about The Lodger and The Threepenny Opera , with complete disregard for Rowan’s scheduled lecture. “Actually,” she was saying, “I thought the guy in Psycho was a lot scarier than Jack the Ripper. And has anybody read Silence of-” They were about to cross Brick Lane at this point and Susan, with her usual self-absorption, was not paying attention to the guide or to her surroundings. Blithely wittering about her reading list, she stepped off the curb and into the path of an approaching car.

Rowan Rover was not sure what prompted his spontaneous reaction. Perhaps it was instinctive, or perhaps some part of him made an inevitable decision in that split second. He was never sure. He only knew that as the silly woman blundered out into the street, looking as usual in the wrong direction for English traffic, he lunged forward in an attempt to drag her back out of the path of the oncoming car. His fingers actually touched her coat. He nearly got a grip on it when he felt himself being shoved out of the way, back toward the curb, nearly falling with the force of the blow.

The speeding black car, which seemed to come in slow motion, looming ever larger in their path, like a locomotive in a Saturday matinee film, missed the guide and the rest of the party by inches, but Susan, who had stood squarely in its path while she looked the wrong way, was struck with a chilling thud. She went down in mid-sentence without so much as a whimper.

As he struggled to regain his balance, Rowan looked around to see who had prevented him from saving Susan Cohen. Standing nearest to him was Elizabeth MacPherson, regarding him with a frown of lofty disapproval. Her expression explained it all: she had been watching him, expecting an attempt on Susan’s life, and she had-she thought-prevented him from pushing her in front of the car. The silly girl! Another second and he would have saved her! (So much for his aptitude as a murderer.)

By the time they reached Susan’s crumpled body, some yards away near the other curb of Brick Lane, the driver had stopped his car and had joined the throng hovering over the victim. “I never meant to!” the man kept saying. “She walked straight in my path, she did!”

Charles Warren had run to the nearby pub to telephone for an ambulance. Kate Conway was kneeling over Susan, examining the body with medical precision. After a few minutes she looked up at the group of tourists and shook her head.

Rowan fumbled for his cigarettes, feeling at once appalled and frightened but also relieved that her death was not on his conscience. He had not done it. He gave a deep sigh of relief and uttered a silent prayer of thanks to whatever saint looks out for criminals. He was standing a few feet away from the group, watching the scene with a detachment born of shock.

A few moments later Elizabeth MacPherson appeared at his side. “I couldn’t save her,” she murmured.

No, you bloody fool, and you kept me from doing so as well , thought Rowan, but his numbness prevented him from venting his exasperation.

“By the time I figured out what was going on, it was too late to speak to you privately, but I thought that if I could just protect her tonight, you wouldn’t get another chance.” Elizabeth sighed. “Why did you do it, Rowan?”

“I didn’t!” said the guide with perfect sincerity. Even to himself it sounded hollow.