Stephen Hunter - I, Ripper

“I will,” I said.

“Then let us turn this hellhound.”

“May I record in Pitman’s? This may be historic.”

“I doubt that. I hope only that it’s coherent.”

For the record, then, here is Professor Thomas Dare’s interpretation of the phenomenon of Jack the Ripper, as recorded with sublime accuracy by me on that date at that time, October’s third week, 1888, in his study at 26 Wimpole Street, London, England, via the Pitman method of shorthand. I have the papers before me as I translate them to English in my study, also London, England, in the year of someone else’s Lord 1912. Let me add, I did not bother to record my interruptions, which in any case were few and stupid.

“I begin with the conclusion and will then support it,” he began. “Here’s my somewhat radical final sum, new, I think, to the field. Our man is military. More, he is army; that is, a soldier.”

He paused, reading the look on my face, which was not stunned surprise but at least a minor bit of being taken aback, for this possibility had not been postulated previously. “Now I will track my argument through a series of subarguments, the first being attributes, the second being character, the third being physical, and the final being spiritual.”

He cleared his throat, rose, and began to pace back and forth while I sat, scribbling away in the Pitman notation.

“I say ‘soldier,’ but I mean not merely a soldier; rather, a certain kind of soldier, a type so rare that there are but few of them in London, much less the army as a whole. He is not an artilleryman, he is not a lancer, he is not an infantry lad. He is no engineer; he certainly has nothing to do with quartermastering or the medical ends of the profession of arms.

“His sort of soldiering is so rare it has no name, at least not a proper noun in the folk vocabulary common to newspapers and barroom chatter. Perhaps, as I believe this sort of thing is to become more, not less, utilized in the future, someone will christen him. But for now the closest I can come is ‘scout,’ or perhaps ‘agent,’ or perhaps ‘raider.’

“I will go with ‘raider,’ as it’s easiest off the tongue. Let’s define the attributes. The raider is used to operating alone. He is very well schooled in certain skills: He must be an officer, since he is literate, despite his dyslexia, and in these days few rankers are. Furthermore, like an officer, he plans well, scouts thoroughly, and memorizes routes in and out. He is not averse to killing, obviously, having done and seen much of that work. But for him, killing is not the point; it is part of the job. He’s always driven by task, not mere infliction of damage. He has purpose, design, agenda as his Beneath.

“This one, in particular, clearly served in Afghanistan, because the wounds he leaves on the bodies are typical of the sorts of mutilations that the Pathans commit against British troops, alive or dead, quite routinely. The women torture our wounded. They cut them open and pull their guts out while the boys are quite alive, but no one except the mountains can hear the screams. The guts are flung, the point being to attract buzzards, the further point being that relief columns will see the buzzards, find the bodies, and suffer the dislocating shock of the carnage, which must have a terrifying influence on morale. Jack has seen enough of it not to be agitated, either by seeing it or by doing it, but for him, it’s part of doing business in a certain methodology. It is restricted, I should add, to the mountains of the Hindu Kush, where so many have died so horribly. The Negroes of Africa are savages, but not so committed to dogma in their desecrations. The Pathan go more toward beheading and dismembering, as part of their primitive faith insists that by disassembling the body of the enemy, it follows that he will not bother you in the afterlife. From their point of view, it makes very good sense, if it is a little monstrous by our standards. We feel that a bundle of bullets out of Gatling, traveling faster than the speed of sound – yes, sound has a measurable speed – so that it shatters bone and shreds muscle is far more civilized.

“Then, our Jack is highly organized, as the neat setting out of Annie Chapman’s goods next to her desecrated body indicates; he seems to think tidiness counts. In fact, his sites are all notable for their concision, economy, succinctness, even. They’re very small, never orgiastic or out of control in suggestion. Contained, I suppose, would be the word. It’s like a kind of sex fetish, this need he has to do his damage in very small compass, and I can ascribe that only to years in the military trade, which demand of a man few possessions arranged by rigid convention for inspection, until such habits, which pay their premium on campaign for months if not years, are ingrained.

“And the final attribute, which deserves some additional commentary. That is, like all raiders, he is quite bold, almost nerveless. Perhaps he became a raider to harness that which he already knew was within him, the courage for heroic action in extremely mortal, frenzied circumstances. Now, many think of courage as moral, even noble. Not so at all; it is instead neutral and may be applied equally in the service of good or evil. It offends to say of a murderer, an assassin, a spy, an exploder, an agitator that he is courageous; but he is, for he risks life and tests arcane skill, whatever the purpose. Whether it’s Jack mincing a tart on Buck’s Row or Color Sergeant Archie Cunningham skewering six Fuzzies on his bayonet to inspire his men to stand firm, it’s courage nonetheless, in that it features bold action at moral risk in service to some sort of larger idea.

“Jack has courage, undisputedly. It may be twisted savagely by madness, but in the end it’s the same stuff that rode the charge of the Light Brigade to the Russian guns at Balaclava or stood up to the Zulu Impis at Rorke’s Drift. He’s not a man to panic and flee: He gets his mission accomplished.”

Dare paused as if to check on my progress and, satisfied, awarded himself another nugget of tobacco, plugged it into his pipe, put it aflame with a large wooden match, sucked, enjoyed satisfaction, exhaled, filled the air with the architecture of castles in clouds, and then set back to task.

“We may also infer certain physical attributes: He is slight. Some say he’s strong. I say not necessarily. Despite the purported ‘strength’ evinced by the savage wounds inflicted, an experienced fellow using a sharp blade and the knowledge of anatomy – as a man who’d been in battles with bladed instruments and field hospitals where such wounds were crudely treated would have – could supply the same result. So he does not have to be a big fellow at all. More important: Jack had to take advantage of those narrow passageways and warrens that afforded him access to and escape from the murder sites. A full-bodied man could not, at least not without some effort.

“Consider, for example, his escape from Dutfield’s Yard. It seems to have been forgotten that the pony cart was lodged in the gate, which itself was only nine feet wide. There was little room around, and the cart was low, so little room under. Yet somehow, there being no other way, he slides through. Consider again the pony. We know that it’s skittish from Mr. Diemschutz’s testimony at the inquest, where he stated, ‘My pony is frisky and apt to shy.’ He noted also the pony’s ‘odd, continued reluctance to coming into the yard.’ After all, its skittishness has informed Diemschutz of Jack’s presence. Now, when Jack rises from the darkness to slip out in the man’s rush to the front door of the International Working Men’s Educational Club, he must confront the nervous horse. But the horse does not react, does not rise, buck, neigh, whinny, jostle, jingle, shudder, panic and flee, whatever. That is because the horse, while no genius, knows certain things and is able to recognize certain things. It knows, for example, that a large man will beat it, while a small one would be a child and will not. Thus the horse does not frighten or comment upon the sudden appearance of the dark figure; it knows instantly, by reading the size, that the figure is no threat.