Paula Cohen - What Alice Knew - A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper

“And you ?” William asked in amused wonder. “What will you do?”

“Me?” She leveled her intelligent gaze at her brothers. “I will review what you gather…and solve the case.”

The morning after his arrival, William rose early, washed, dressed, and took his own breakfast in the small kitchen of Henry’s flat. He had agreed to stay with his brother for fear of giving offense, and Henry had insisted that he stay for the same reason. Both would have secretly been happier had he stayed somewhere else.

Outside in the gray London morning, he waved down a hansom cab and asked the driver to take him to Whitechapel. It was still too early for his appointment at Scotland Yard, and he thought it might be profitable to use the time to visit the scene of the murders.

“Doing a little sightseein’, sir?” asked the driver as they pulled up to the corner of Whitechapel High and Commercial Streets at the heart of the district. William did not answer. It rankled to be mistaken in his motives, perhaps because he suspected those motives himself. Yet he was always suspecting his own motives, wasn’t he? It was how his mind worked; it was what lay behind his best accomplishments: the drive to prove that he was not the dubious sort of person he secretly imagined himself to be.

As he stepped out of the carriage and began to walk, he was struck by the contrast of this part of the city to the area from which he had come. Kensington was sedate and extremely quiet. Whitechapel was full of chaotic life and noise, its streets teeming with fish peddlers and flower girls, organ grinders and men with placards advertising the latest music hall attractions. It occurred to William that some of the people hurrying around him might have known the murdered women, given them a farthing out of pity or shared a drink, or even consorted with them for pleasure. Perhaps the murderer himself was brushing past at this very moment or standing in the shadow of a building, seeking his next victim.

He proceeded briskly for another block down Whitechapel High Street. Away from the main thoroughfares, he could see more clearly the squalor and human misery that pervaded the area: the dark, airless alleys where men and women were leaning against walls or lying on the ground, their senses dulled by drink or opium. Soot and horse offal were piled in the courts between the tenements, whose doors were open to provide a bit of air. Inside, the dim interiors were like rabbit warrens, crammed with people lying on sacks or piles of straw. Even passing quickly, William was repelled by the odors that wafted out—damp and mildew mixing with the reek of excrement from unemptied chamber pots and stopped-up privies.

He turned into a narrow alley marked Mitre Square. The map Warren had sent indicated that Catherine Eddowes, the last Ripper victim, had been killed and mutilated here. As he approached the end of the alley, he saw that a pail was positioned near the curb with a ragged sign propped in front, on which was scrawled “On this spot Katie Eddowes was merdrd. Arms for her chilren.”

“Arms for her children.” William felt a welling of sadness. Newspaper accounts had reported that all the victims had once been married, though abandoned by their husbands because of drink and dissipation. Had there been children too? In the areas through which he had passed, he had seen many children, filthy and neglected, holding hats or with cupped palms, begging a few farthings from passersby. His throat tightened at the memory of his own child, his little Hermie, who had died of whooping cough before his first birthday. Then, with the rapidity of morbid association to which he was prone, he was seized by guilt for having left his other children, as he so often did, to pursue his work, and also, he acknowledged to himself, to escape the suffocating intimacy of family life. He shook himself, as if determined to throw off the weight of debilitating thought, and then dug into his pocket and dropped a coin into the pail for the Eddowes family.

There was a hollow ring as it struck the metal. If there had been other coins there before, they were gone now, as this would be too, within the hour, he thought. Was he being unjust in assuming this fact? His sister would say that poor people were not more dishonest than other people; they were simply poorer and therefore obliged to steal.

Walking back to Whitechapel High Street, he turned onto Mansell Street, where shops with Hebrew letters on the windows lined the road. Groups of men in long coats and skullcaps stood mumbling in corners, and women in head scarves hurried by, holding the wrists of children who had ringlets covering their ears. He walked briskly through the area and paused only near a collection of bookstalls that had been set up in one corner of the street. A scattering of fashionable young men were looking through the volumes, hoping to find that rare edition of Milton’s sonnets or Dryden’s plays that had escaped the professional estate brokers. William was tempted to join them in browsing, but it was approaching the time for his appointment at Scotland Yard. Instead, he motioned to a hansom cab that had parked across the street, as if waiting for him to decide to leave the area. How often, he wondered, did men like himself visit here to indulge some secret vice and then motion to a cab to whisk them away?

The administrative headquarters for the London police was situated among other unimposing gray buildings surrounding a barren courtyard. The one exception to the drab scene was a large, well-appointed barouche parked in front, the letters CW carved in gilt on its door. William assumed the barouche belonged to Sir Charles Warren, the London police commissioner.

As William entered the foyer of the building, he noted that the paint was peeling from the walls, and the gas fixture on the ceiling was crooked and emitted very little light. The general air of shoddiness surprised him. In America, the police headquarters for a major city, no less the country’s capital, would be immaculately maintained, a signal to the citizenry of a zealous and energetic attitude toward the eradication of crime.

“I’m here to see Commissioner Warren,” he explained to the officer seated behind a battered desk.

“Sir Charles is in conference,” the officer responded curtly, barely glancing up from his paperwork.

William took a step forward and cleared his throat. “I am Professor James of Harvard College with an appointment to meet with Sir Charles Warren. I have just made the crossing from America at his request.”

The response was immediate. “Terribly sorry, sir!” The officer pushed his papers aside and spoke obsequiously. “I’ll inform Sir Charles at once.” He scampered off, supporting William’s hypothesis that, for the English, the propensity to be supercilious was equaled by the propensity to grovel, and that both behaviors emanated from the same place.

The man returned quickly and ushered William into a room very different in its appearance from the shabby outer area. Two men were seated at a polished mahogany table. There were gilt-framed portraits on the walls and a green and gold damask drape on the window. The table had been set out with a silver tray, on which was placed a bottle of whiskey and an assortment of sandwiches.

The man at one end of the table had a red face, a large, overly waxed mustache, and a well-tailored uniform with a profusion of ribbons and medals. He was seated comfortably in an upholstered chair, pouring himself a glass of whiskey as though he was in his club or at home in his drawing room. William was reminded of the pictures he’d seen of British officers camping out in style in the African bush.