Stephen Hunter - I, Ripper

“The rings,” I said with excitement. “Suppose we can ascertain that indeed he has recently acquired two wedding bands, or perhaps those bands might be located in his kit or jewelry drawer.”

“Yes, yes, that’s it,” said Dare. “Suppose we learn, for example, that Mr. X, a dyslexic barrister, was seen to return to his dwelling very early morning on all the days there were murders. Somehow – I’m not a detail type of fellow – but somehow we penetrate his rooms and there locate his rings. That’s a clumsy example, but it’s the idea. We might locate the fellow who has left other clues, but since no one was looking for them, he went unobserved. We are identifying a pattern. That is my real idea.”

I caught fire with it. “Perhaps I should obtain a revolver for the arrest.”

“Arrest? Confrontation? Gad, no, I will have nothing of heroism. That is for the lunkheads who stood with Chard against the Zulu at Rorke’s Drift intead of sensibly running like flaming bats. They didn’t realize that Chard’s awesome stupidity was his armor. They, being more fully evolved humans, were so much meat for the blackie spear points. I’m far too intelligent to be brave, thank you very much.”

“No confrontations, then. No revolver. But we take our findings to the Yard and let the blue bottles on to it from there. The story and the glory are ours but the danger theirs. I think I could grow friendly with that.”

“It’s police business, indeed. For me, Jack’s transit to hell aboard HMS Noose on the Newgate gallows is reward enough.”

“Without ignoring the moral implications of such a coup,” I said, “do not think ill of me, sir, for admiring the professional implications! Why, man, we’d be glory on two legs.”

“Glory’s overrated,” he said. “You’ll see that when you advance in years somewhat.”

“You misunderstand. Not glory in and of itself, as a shallow end, but as part of a process. With glory comes influence, and with influence, perhaps the chance to change things. That’s the legacy I’m conjuring with. Although as to the shallower glory, I suppose I could use a little of that, too.”

“Your idealism will get you killed or, worse, knighted, and you’ll spend the rest of your days among fools and MPs. As for me, the chance to refuse an audience with the queen would be exquisite.”

Iwanted a pretty. The others had not been pretty, though Liz had gotten near; but this one would be. She would be lean of face, not doughy, like a muffin or a crumpet. Her skin should be smooth, her hair smooth, the color of corn silk. She must be clean, not just in from picking hops or awakened from a night in doss or the gutter; she must be delicate, with elegant fingers, long, thin legs whose coltlike grace would be evident even under the crinoline; an alabaster neck. If the eyes be blue, so much the better, although a lass with blond hair and brown eyes has a fetching quality, whereas the blues tend toward a frostiness that I do not find appealing. She must be young, fresh, innocent to serve as the vessel of my desecration.

It seemed hard to believe that such a creature, more out of a fairy tale or a myth or even a Rossetti painting, would be working the streets of Whitechapel. Whitechapel is the grinder of the flesh; it sustains its girls but at a price almost too steep to pay, for it erodes them swiftly, it takes their singularity, their character, what wit they have, what memories, what hopes, what dreams, and swiftly makes them a crude composite, rimmed with grime, surly and cynical, untouched by melody in carriage or voice, vacant of eye, loose and slack of mouth. Black or broken of teeth. It’s the trade, it’s the gin, it’s the spunk, it’s the nightly ritual of finding a posture in which to be penetrated easily, it’s the disease, it’s the closing of horizons, it’s the crush of destiny, it’s the immense indifference of society, of civilization, even.

In short, I wanted what I couldn’t have.

I went far afield. I perambulated in my slow, easeful way down the Whitechapel High Street, beyond the intersection with Commercial, that hub of the flesh and sperm trade, passing as I went such lesser applicants to Sodom and Gomorrah as the Black Horse, the Black Bull, the Blue Boar, as if any such animals had been seen in the wild here in a thousand years. It was softer beyond Commercial, and the coster-squatters had relented, so no stalls had been spread about like obstacles against normal pedestrianism, and I hoped to find a softer woman. I walked, I walked, I walked. I cut down Angel Alley, I walked the Wicked Quarter Mile, I looked into Itchy Park at Christchurch and thence to the coagulation of flesh outside, within and around the Ten Bells. It was not as late as I prefer, but the quarter-moon stood guard, providing enough but not too much light, and now and then a gaslight flung its bit of glow off a corner, just enough to suggest safety without actually providing it.

I saw several. One, too old by far, turned out not to be in the life, and when I approached, she skittered away with a haughty tut-tut to her carriage to inform me that I had made a mistake, that she was not up for trade, and to chastise me for my impertinence with the suggestion that I return to busier thoroughfares. Another, alas, was too swift; I never caught up with her and lost her in a crowd on one of my peregrinations.

In time, I wore out and found a seat at the bar of the public house called the Three Nuns – not many of them about, either, I’ll tell you! In that rowdy place, among the many and anonymous, I refreshed with an ale, then another. Eventually I arose and escaped the clamor, then found that the beer had slowed and dulled me and moved my mood toward the sourly comic, in which everything was amusing and nothing meaningful. I knew I had no patience for the kind of careful stalk I had planned; the evening was well shot. Accepting defeat is sometimes the best way to assure victory, for as I began my desultory walk homeward, I saw her.

I dubbed her, in my mind, Juliet, after Shakespeare’s most tragic young lover. She was no thruppence Judy, that was for sure, and you saw them sometimes, for among the twelve hundred who plied their trade to stay alive down here in hell’s maw and Jack’s feeding ground, now and again a lass of some exquisiteness might appear. She’d be quickly bought up by a rich man for mistress or recruited by a house for the room of highest ceiling and reddest silk, but in this way she got her start and advanced in her trade and, who knew, ultimately made it to the arm of someone already chosen by society as a lucky fellow. The lucky get luckier, that’s the rub.

She was tall and thin and painfully young, as if untouched, even virgo intacticus , with a doll’s delicate translucent face and tendrils of curled blond hair framing it. Her hat was pert, her bodice tight, gathered in satin posies about her swan’s neck to emphasize an impossibly adorable bosom, the amenities contained within not heavy to flesh and droop, but all perfect in pouty haughtiness. She would do perfectly for the blasphemy I intended, and by the luck of He Who Does Not Exist, she was exactly where she had to be when she had to be there.

The quality of her clothing gave her away, I saw in a second. She was of a subspecies in the trade called a “dress lodger,” meaning, poor girl, that she was employed by a house, lent finer clothes than she could afford on her own and, in return for them, split the fee with the madam who ran the place and was further obligated to steer her client its way when all was done. It was a form of advertising, if you will, in the brothel industry. Whatever, I knew then she was no innocent. Oddly, that inflamed me even more.