Mike Resnick: The Other Teddy Roosevelts

I may not send this letter to you at all, because I do not want the details to cause you dismay, but I need to clarify my thinking by putting things down on paper.

I begin with the question: what do we know about Jack the Ripper?

It’s true that there is an eyewitness account that makes him a head taller than myself, and thoroughly emaciated, but it was made by an hysterical woman whose veracity cannot be relied upon. Still, it’s all the police have to go on, and that is the man they are searching for.

But that is all we know empirically. The rest comes from logic — or the science of deduction, to borrow from Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective who has made such an impact here in the past year.

And what can I deduce?

First, he has at least a rudimentary knowledge of anatomy. The nature of the mutilations implies that he takes pleasure in removing certain internal organs — and he was able to tell a kidney from other organs in near-total darkness on the night of September 30.

Second, he is trying to delude us into thinking he is illiterate. That letter of his is a masterpiece of misdirection — for if he is a doctor, or if he has even studied medicine for a year, how could his spelling, diction and penmanship be so indicative of a barely literate man?

Third, he must possess an intimate knowledge of White-chapel. The only time he was seen he eluded his pursuers, and being unseen the other times also implies familiarity with his surroundings.

Fourth, these murders must be planned in advance — a theory I have not shared with the police, because none of them would accept such a notion. But damn it, he had to know when and where he would kill each of his victims! Because if he didn’t, then how did he get fresh clothing, and without fresh clothing, how did this man, who must have been soaked in the blood of his victims, escape detection as he walked through the streets of Whitechapel on his way back to wherever he goes when his foul work is done? He must have had a clean set of clothes hidden within yards of his victim, and that implies premeditation.

Fifth, and this is the one that I cannot begin to answer: even though they have been alerted, even though they know the Ripper is lurking in the darkness, he is nonetheless able to approach his victims with complete impunity. Do they know him? Does he appear so wealthy that they feel it is worth the risk? What leads otherwise cautious women to allow this fiend to approach them? There has been no sign of a struggle at any of the murder scenes. No victim has tried to run from him.

Why?

Roosevelt pulled out his timepiece and opened it. It was 3:40 AM, and he realized that he had fallen asleep.

He looked at the letter, read it over, frowned, and began writing again.

Why? Why? Why?

Suddenly there was a pounding on his door.

“Theodore, wake up!” shouted Hughes. “He’s struck again! It’s the worst yet!”

Room #13, 26 Dorset Street, was a scene straight out of hell.

Marie Jeanette Kelly — or what remained of her — lay on a blood-soaked bed. Her throat has been slashed. Her abdomen was sliced open. Both her breasts were cut off. Her liver and entrails had been ripped out and placed between her feet. Flesh from her thighs and her breasts had been put on a nearby table. Her right hand was stuck in her belly.

“My God!” exclaimed Hughes, covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief.

“He was crazy to begin with, but this is past all imagining,” said another officer. “He didn’t cut her organs out, like the others. He reached in and pulled them out with his hands!”

“He had to be drenched in blood,” said Roosevelt. “Surely someone saw him, if not here, then walking the street, or trying to hide until he could change into a clean outfit.”

“Nobody saw a thing, sir,” said the officer.

“They had to!” exclaimed Roosevelt. “They couldn’t have missed him.” He frowned and muttered: “But why didn’t it register?”

Roosevelt paused, motionless — and then, slowly, a grin crossed the American’s face. The officer stared at him as if he might soon start running amuck.

The American turned and walked to the door.

“Where are you going, Theodore?” asked Hughes.

“Back to my room,” answered Roosevelt. “There’s nothing more to see here.”

“I’ll be seeing it in my nightmares for the next thirty years,” said Hughes grimly.

Roosevelt went to his desk, opened a drawer, pulled out his pistol, filled it with cartridges, and put it in the pocket of his buckskin coat.

Then he took his pen out, and added a few lines to the letter he had been writing to Edith. I curse my own blindness! I could have prevented this latest atrocity. I knew everything I had to know more than a month ago, but I didn’t put it together until tonight.

I am going out now, to make sure this fiend never kills again.

Roosevelt sat in the dark, his pistol on his lap, waiting.

Finally the knob turned, and a short, burly figure entered the room.

“Hello, Jack,” said Roosevelt, pointing his pistol at the figure.

“Jack? Who’s Jack?”

“We both know what I’m talking about,” said Roosevelt calmly.

“I just come back from helping poor Liza Willoughby!”

“No,” said Roosevelt, shaking his head. “You just got back from murdering Marie Jeanette Kelly.”

“You’re daft!”

“And you’re Jack the Ripper.”

“You’ve done lost your bloody mind!” yelled Irma the midwife, finally stepping out of the shadows.

“The Ripper had to live in Whitechapel,” said Roosevelt, never lowering the pistol. “He had to know the area intimately. Who knows it better than a woman who lives and works here and makes dozens of house calls every week?”

He watched her reaction, then continued.

“The Ripper had to have some knowledge of anatomy. Not much — but enough to know one organ from another. Your letter fooled me for awhile. I thought it was the misdirection, but I was wrong: you need no formal schooling for your work.” He paused. “Are you following me so far?”

She glared at him silently.

“There were two things that bothered me,” continued Roosevelt. “Why would these women let the Ripper approach them when they knew he was killing prostitutes in Whitechapel? They’d been warned repeatedly to watch out for strange men. But then I realized that you’re a trusted, even a necessary, member of the community. They were all looking for Jack, not Jane.

“The other thing I couldn’t figure out,” he said, “was how the Ripper could walk around in blood-spattered clothing without drawing everyone’s attention. I made the false assumption that the killer had picked the spots for his murders and hidden fresh clothing nearby.” Roosevelt grimaced. “I was wrong. Those murders were so deranged I should have known there couldn’t be anything premeditated about them. Then, when I was at Marie Kelly’s apartment tonight, I saw how you ripped out her intestines with your hands and I knew how much blood you had to have splashed on yourself, it occurred to me that I’ve never seen you when you weren’t wearing blood-stained clothes. After all, you do nothing all day but deliver babies and perform abortions; there’s nothing unusual about a midwife’s clothing being bloody.”

“So maybe a midwife killed all them women!” yelled Irma. “Do you know how many midwives there are in Whitechapel? Why pick on me?”

“That’s what’s been haunting me for six weeks,” answered Roosevelt. “I knew everything I had to know right after you killed Catherine Eddowes, and yet I couldn’t piece it together until I realized that a midwife was the likely killer. You made a major blunder, and it took me until tonight to realize what it was.”