Michael White - The Art of Murder

Inspector Frederick Abberline was the man at the centre of the investigation. And never a more plodding plodder have I encountered — again, I’m thankful, dear lady, if a little peeved, that I did not have a more interesting and challenging adversary. The police never really had a clue about me, and during the two weeks I spent lying low and painting, they called in for questioning literally dozens of nobodies.

It was at this point that I decided to become a little more playful. I started to write letters to the newspapers and the police. It was in the first of these, written in red ink — yes, I do confess this was a little melodramatic — that I introduced the nickname that will forever be associated with my work: ‘Jack the Ripper’.

I can say in all honesty that I have no idea where the name came from. It just arrived on the page as I signed the letter to the Central News Agency. It was wonderful fun. I deliberately obfuscated the text, writing in the voice of a rather common, uneducated fellow, but nevertheless a man with a sense of humour. Here and there, I sprinkled the letters with tiny clues, egging on the police, trying to stir up a little fight in them. But to no real avail. The plodders continued to plod.

I spent a lot of time with your good husband during my fortnight’s sabbatical. He was a curious fellow. The better I grew to know him, the more puzzling he became. Most striking was the fact that he was a man of both high and ridiculously low tastes. Now, you may say that many men are thus, but with dear old Archibald, it seemed this dichotomy was rather extreme. On the one hand, he delighted in frequenting the Reform Club and other such bastions of pretension and grandeur. He had high ideals, artistic integrity even. He wanted to make statements, to make his mark, to do something noble and worthy. In short, he had a great desire to encourage people to think; which is a quality I admire. But the corollary of all this well-intentioned public behaviour was the man’s insatiable private lust for the low life. He had a seemingly limitless fascination with the seediest brothels, the worst pubs and drinking clubs. He took me to some of the most dangerous opium dens in London, places few people even knew existed, run by Chinese gangs — filthy, stinking rat holes close to the docks, where the air was so rank with opium fumes one barely needed to partake of the pipe to become intoxicated.

Together, during a three-night run of the dens in Limehouse, we witnessed two murders. One was a stabbing involving two Chinese dealers who dispatched a man who’d threatened to give them up to the police. The other involved the shooting of a young drugs runner. It was most entertaining. Although, I have to say, the high point of my nocturnal adventures with Archibald was the night he took me to the Mansion of Wonders, a fabulous misnomer if ever I heard one, because the venue was certainly no ‘mansion’ and the exhibits were some way short of ‘wonders’.

The Mansion of Wonders was actually a couple of rooms to the rear of a shop at number 259 Whitechapel Road. Archibald informed me that until just two years before a famous grotesque, Joseph Merrick the Elephant Man, was on display there, and that the freak had been forced to sit in the shop window to attract the crowds. He is now in the London Hospital, of course. I’m sure, like most of the genteel classes in England, you have followed the strange man’s story in The Times . But even with Merrick gone, there still remained plenty of interesting things to see at the freak show, although they were perhaps not in the same league. On the evening Archibald took me to the Mansion, we saw the Giantess of the Mountains, a woman no less than eight foot tall. She was more or less in proportion, though everything about her was laughably expanded. Her head was almost twice the size of mine.

In the next room sat the Siamese twins, a couple of elderly gentlemen joined by a six-inch strip of thick pink flesh along their sides. They had apparently been in the freak-show business for almost forty years. After we had enjoyed a good chuckle at the twins, they were taken away and Agatha, the world’s hairiest woman, was brought in. For me, she was the oddest of the collection, because, if one were to ignore the fact that she was covered from head to foot with thick black hair, she was otherwise a normal human being.

Archibald was moved by the sight, I could tell. And I know why. It was the woman’s eyes. They were perfectly shaped, large and dark brown, quite beautiful really. But the thing that must have stirred his emotions was the way those eyes peered out from that horrible globe of hair. They possessed an imploring stillness, an almost noble resignation. Archibald was deeply saddened by the experience whereas I felt a wonderful thrill. The woman’s expression was so similar to that of Fred, the boy I had let drown so many years ago. Looking at Agatha, I felt something close to ecstasy. I wanted to laugh uproariously. It was only a sense of decorum that stopped me. I did not care about the sensibilities of those around me, but I did not want to draw attention to myself. At least not there and then.

After a while, I grew weary of Archibald’s company and felt I was neglecting my work. I started to stay in my room most evenings as well as throughout the day, venturing out only to post letters from a variety of locations and to buy painting materials. I still went out with Archibald occasionally, and continued to supply him with drawings for the Clarion , but my heart was not really in it. I found I was becoming increasingly obsessed with my painting. Then, one evening at the beginning of this month, I suddenly knew it was the right time to move on, to claim my last victim and pass on to the final stage of my work.

It had grown chilly during the past few weeks, and I felt the cold even more because I had recently been closeted indoors for much of the time. I knew exactly where I was headed and who my victim was to be. It took me no more than ten minutes walking at a brisk pace to reach Dorset Street close to Commercial Road. Turning into the street, I checked my watch. It was 2 a.m. and there was not a soul around. Halfway along Dorset Street, I found the archway that leads through to a claustrophobic, cobbled courtyard surrounded by hovels. Mary Kelly, my last chosen victim, I knew to be staying in number thirteen.

It was very dark, the half-moon shrouded by thick cloud. Two narrow windows looked out from number thirteen on to the courtyard, and I could just make out a faint light behind them. From far off came an assortment of sounds. Close to, I could see that two of the panes of glass in the right-hand window were broken. It was obvious Mary had a man in there, so I kept to the shadows and waited.

The time passed slowly. I could not move around freely for fear of making too much noise, and the cold was creeping through my clothes. Eventually I heard the door to number thirteen creak open and a figure emerged into the freezing early morning. I caught a brief glimpse of him before he shuffled away into the alley leading back to Dorset Street. Approaching the door, I tapped quietly. When there was no response I tapped again. The door opened a crack and the face of a young woman appeared. She was tall, just a couple of inches shorter than me, and had a pretty if careworn face and long, blonde hair.

‘I’ve finished work, love,’ she said.

I looked down as though in resignation to distract her. Then, with a single shove, the door flew inwards and I grabbed Mary about the mouth. Dragging her across the room, I removed two pieces of rag from my pocket and tied one of them across her mouth as a gag. The other I used to bind her wrists. Guiding Mary to the bed, I pushed her so that she fell backwards. She writhed and tried to scream through the gag. Taking a length of rope from my bag, I tied her feet to the metal rail at the end of the bed. Pulling her bound wrists up over her head, I looped a length of rope over the rag binding and tied the other end to the head of the bed.