Stephen Hunter - I, Ripper

Two majors and a lieutenant colonel. The names meant nothing to me, nor the regiments from which they had sprung, though one fellow, a major, was a double outlier, as he was seconded initially from his “real” regiment to something all woggy called the 3rd Queen’s Own Bombay Cavalry. It was in the Bombay Cavalry that he had survived the ruinous defeat at Maiwand, in 1880, as had the other two in their respective regiments or whatever they were (I’ll never get the military system of regiment and battalion and brigade straight!). All were shortly thereafter “s/ID”ed, if such a term existed, at which point the archivists of the British army lost track of them, and at intervals of, respectively, eighteen months, two years, and, my God!, five years, they were “r/RHq,” meaning “Returned to Regimental Headquarters,” which is a way of saying home safe. Who knows how many of the s/ID boys never made it back to r/RHq and had their guts pulled out on some dry knob in the Hindu Kush? Such is the price of empire.

Major R. F. Pullham (Ret.), 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars, (KCB) (DCM)

Major P. M. MacNeese (Ret.), E Battery/B Brigade, Royal Horse Artillery (DSO) (DCM) (CGM)

Lieutenant Colonel H. P. Woodruff (Ret.), 66th Berkshire Regiment of Foot (KCB) (VC)

The fuel of empire is bravery. Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, whatever the mechanics of the thing, these fellows had it, as the bland display of initials compressed between parens behind their “(Ret.)” designation made clear. Knowing full well I was a congenital coward, I could never understand what makes a man brave. Is it strength, stubbornness, intelligence, instinct, possibly even fear of something worse than what awaits him in the ordeal immediately ahead, whether it’s a valley with guns to left and right, or the cunning pleasure of a tribal torturer? As I say, one can doubt the wisdom of it, the ethics of it, the sheer criminality of it on the global scale, but one cannot doubt the courage.

At the same time, I took to this development rather wholeheartedly. It provided something to Jack that heretofore was absent, and that absence – a clear frame of reference and possibility – had occluded, I believed, our attempts to understand and thereby locate him.

Clearly, the only men with answers were the listed three, all Afghan vets of great valor, all recently retired, all s/ID at length, all well under six feet. Like a Tantric prayer, I committed the rhythms to memory: MacNeese, Pullham, and Woodruff. One, it seemed, would have a spelling impairment and two purloined wedding bands and that, as they say, would be that!

Penny’s knowledgeable colonel had even provided addresses, so that cut one difficulty out of the process. Dare and I charted them on a map of London and learned that Major MacNeese lived on one of the better streets in Whitechapel, while both Major Pullham and the Welsh colonel (H stood for Huw, Welsh spelling) Woodruff were farther out, though all were within an hour’s walk of the murder sites, and all were close to public transportation – the Underground or horse-tram lines – that could get them there and back without a bit of trouble.

We agreed to start with MacNeese, on the grounds that the closer he was, the more likely his candidacy seemed. We were aware, too, that time was passing. We had gotten by the quarter-moon phase of late October without a death, for no reason anyone understood. If Professor Dare’s theory of quarter-moon-as-optimum-mission time held true, that meant that November 6 or 7 would bring Jack and his knife to the street again. We felt it best to make quick surveys of each man and determine if any was more promising than the others. If one stood out with a special vividness of possibility, he would be the one we focused on exclusively, and when we developed evidence, we would take it to Inspector Abberline. It seemed sound then. It still does, even when I know how it all turned out.

It was about now that the two genius detectives, Mr. Jeb of the Star and Professor Dare of the University of London, made an interesting discovery. They hadn’t the slightest idea what to do next! The actual detecting part of detective work was utterly beyond them!

We looked at each other, almost daft with disbelief. Did we follow the suspects? Did we hire professional investigators? Did we attempt to burglarize their home quarters? Did we interview their neighbors? Did we hire thugees to knock them down and rifle through their wallets and any other personal papers while they were unconscious? Did we research them at the British Museum? Did we … At that point, we more or less ran out of possibilities.

“You’re the practical one,” said Professor Dare – the site was his study, we were drinking some foul tea his Scots maid had assembled for us from terrier piss, he was smoking, and I was not.

“Sherlock Holmes would hire boys to watch each man,” I said. “He is a great believer in the skill of urchins as opposed to coppers in matters of observation.”

“That name again! Who the devil is he? Must find out.”

“You would find it interesting, as in so many ways you resemble him. As for this here and now, I do believe the more people we involve, the more difficult the thing will be to manage, much less keep secret. For that reason, I would also avoid private inquiry specialists. One cannot control whom others speak to and what gets known generally.”

“Well-made point,” allowed the professor.

“All right, I would say as follows. In the morning, you station yourself at the MacNeese house, and when he leaves for work, you follow him at a discreet distance. Perhaps you could address your wardrobe accordingly, as such fine tweed so well tailored is rather conspicuous.”

“I’m rather a dandy,” he said. “I hate to give up on it. Dressing well is its own deep pleasure. But if you insist.”

“I shall never insist, only suggest.”

“Excellent policy,” he said.

“You stay with him, determine what kind of employment he’s found, and if it’s open to the public, enter and discreetly observe. In the meantime, I shall go to the Hall of Records, find a clerk to run his name through various municipal filings, see what can be learned of his financial situation – I would infer that from taxes paid – and make other determinations, such as police records, birth records, marriage certificates, and so on, all traces of him recorded by the government. Then I shall go home and nap for several hours. You, meanwhile, stay with him through his return home.”

“Seems amenable,” he said.

“I will rendezvous with you at a spot outside his place at nine P.M. You will then be off and, well rested, I will remain on station until, say, two A.M., following him anywhere he goes.”

“Yes, I have it. I will work one long day at the detective’s trade; you will work two half long days with a break in between.”

“On the following day,” I said, “we’ll exchange schedules.”

“No, no,” he said. “Since you’re so damned good at fetching records, you might as well return to the municipal seats and do similar searches on the other two. At a certain point, say three days hence, we’ll meet and consider next moves. Does that feel efficient? And if Major MacNeese proves uninteresting, we’ll quickly move on to Major Pullham, time being an element in our urgency.”

“Very good. If there’s any ‘promising’ behavior, we’ll mark it and make a determination then.”

“Yes, remember that Jack, by my theory, is a scout first and foremost. If he has a plot running, he’ll reconnoiter first. That should be behavior easy to recognize and give us ample preparation time. He never improvises; he’s got it all well thought out in advance.”

Excellent plan. However, in practice it was not nearly so neat. What we hadn’t figured on was the utter boredom of detective work, and for highly cognitive men with playful imaginations always on the lookout for spontaneous wit, unusual images, irrational occurrences of moment, the odd cloud formation, a beautiful face, a well-cut suit, a particular shade of color on the hubcap of a cabriolet, a tone in the air that reminded one of a particularly thrilling passage in Wagner, all the little irrelevancies that life regularly throws up to the overbusy of mind, the ordeal was degrading, exhausting, and excruciating. Detectives we might be playing at, but detectives we were not. We were either too intelligent or too silly.