Whitechapel

Another one dead, and papers had given the murderer a name, but no one was using it yet. The police still called him "The Whitechapel killer," and the people on the streets called him just "the killer." Nothing more was needed.

Almost everyone found time on their walking commute that morning (some leaving home to get to morning shifts, some going back home from night shifts to sleep through the morning) to peer at what neighborhood rumor held to be the bloody patch of Whitechapel Road where the body was found. Rose and a few others pointed out that the real crime scene was behind a house on Hanbury Street, but that didn't seem to matter to everyone else. Women fretted and men puffed their pipes and everyone stared at the blood (or whatever it was) and talked. "T'ain't for the likes of us to judge her now," one woman said.

"That's right," said her friend. "No matter what she done, it was an awful turn."

"They're saying it's a gang of robbers doing the killings," one man said, refilling his pipe. Another shook his head. "That's a got-up yarn. I rather wish it was true Bet your money this ain't been done that way." There was muttered agreement all around. The people of Whitechapel Road were rarely challenged in their expertise in the field of what wasn't so. The average East Ender would admit that she might not know much but insisted she had a good enough head on her shoulders to at least never be fooled. It was an important distinction.

"Thank God I needn't be out after dark," another woman said. "But my two girls have got to come home late and I'm all of a fidget." At that the crowd began to drift away, as if afraid they'd be preternaturally stuck to the spot until dangerous nightfall. They exchanged a few "Good mornings," and "Best of lucks" as they went. Rose stayed behind, using a neglected cart on the corner as a stool. She was now almost completely certain she was going to die.

"Don't talk like that," Mary said, although Rose had not actually been talking at all. Maybe the other woman was particularly talented at reading her face, or maybe Rose had simply said the same thing enough times in the past. Mary was buying hatpins from a woman at the mouth of the alley and seemed quite pleased with herself when she showed them to Rose. Her smile was as bright and clean as a spring morning, and her dress and apron were immaculate. Even when she spent all night on the street Mary still kept her aprons perfectly white. It was almost annoying.

"You're not going to die," Mary said, sitting down next to Rose and watching a new gang of morning gawkers. "I mean, you are going to die. But not now. Not soon."

"The woman the other night didn't think she was going to die. None of the other murdered women did either. What makes us so special?"

"You've had too much news is all," Mary said. "Come on: Good food and a good song is all you need. No more being glum."

"I'm not glum," Rose said, standing. "I just know the way things are. No one cares what happens to us, and now there's this killer."

"Lots of people care. I'd bet that more kind words have been spent on this street the last four weeks than in the whole last year put together."

What Rose didn't say as they trudged through the people, smells, the mud, and the smoke, was that she was fairly certain Mary was not going to die. Young, pretty, Irish, and always smiling or singing, Mary was the sort of woman the world liked. Mary would be all right even if a hundred murderers were on the loose. Rose was another story: no longer so young, no longer so pretty, with not a penny to her name as of that morning and few options for earning any except Whitechapel Road after sundown. She'd been working no more than a few streets from the latest murder, and only a few hours before.

Rose's parents were long dead; her only brother was in prison; she'd never married (and never would be, she'd vowed). There was no one to miss her much. As a girl she'd run along these same streets and pursued bloody gossip on this new crime or that. That she would eventually end up fodder for a neighborhood tale herself only made sense. She was not glum about this; it was just the way things were. She had sense enough to be afraid, but also enough not to hope for much better.

They passed a newsvendor. He was selling out faster than he could restock. Those who couldn't read clustered around those who could, and any man or woman willing to read aloud from the early morning edition soon gathered quite a fan club. A shop boy recited the front page in tremulous tones: "September 8, 1888: London lies under the spell of a great terror. A nameless reprobate, half beast, half man, is at large, gratifying his murderous instincts. Hideous malice, deadly cunning, insatiable thirst for blood: All these are the marks of the mad homicide. The ghoul-like creature who stalks the streets of London is simply drunk with blood!"

The killing of women was hardly a new affair, but something was different about this one. Rumor (which always flew a little bit faster than news) said this latest victim had been chopped to pieces, the body taken apart with surgical precision, in the dark and in a hurry, no less. How could a man commit such a bloody deed and then scamper away from the scene without any witnesses, no matter how dark the night?

"He's a butcher, or a slaughterhouse man, I bet," said one of the girls in the lodging house kitchen on Dean Street. Rose warmed her feet by the stove while nine or ten other women clustered around the table and held a fireside inquest on the latest killing. Mary served slices of the bread and butter they'd bought, singing under her breath as if the topic were nothing less cheerful than hop-picking (though this might have been due to the fact that she was also having her first drink of the morning. Even Mary's best friends admitted she loved her drink).

"No one pays attention to a butcher with blood on his hands," the expert witness continued. "Just a man coming home late from work, they figure, and Hanbury Street isn't far from the meathouses."

"A slaughtering man couldn't do it this way, though," another woman said. "Got to be someone used to cutting up people surgical-like, not just goring pigs. One of them fellas who works in the morgue, I bet." Everyone had a theory: A butcher, a tanner, a policeman, a cannibal. "Maybe it's some man's wife, keen to stop him man from sneaking out visit all of us, one way or another," a woman said, and they all laughed except for Rose.

They were split on the subject of what to do come nightfall. None of them had doss money for their night's bed yet (except Mary, who did not sleep here anyway, who in fact rented an entire room all to herself on Miller's Court), but the idea of going out to earn it past sundown gave everyone the chills. Not tonight. "Maybe," one of the women ventured (in tones suggesting she knew already that it was a doomed enterprise), "Mother Morris will let us sleep on credit tonight, if we promise to pay double next time." But everyone shook their heads. Mother Morris would turn the Virgin Mary trembling with child out onto the streets if one o'clock came without doss money in hand. They even joked that she'd evict herself is she was ever without four pence. She'd throw them straight onto the killer's knife without a flinch.

Some suggested they should find a bed at one of the other rooming houses, where the landlord might be feeling charitable on account of the murders. Others said they should go out and work but take their chances doing it elsewhere, some neighborhood west of here where dead women weren't regularly part of the morning cleaning detail. They agreed it was a good idea, but Rose knew almost none of them would actually do it. They would all be exactly where they usually were come nightfall and taking their chances. After all, at worst only one of them could be murdered. The rest would come home to a warm (enough) bed and another day's living.

No one else seemed to feel the fear as sharply as Rose come sundown. Perhaps, she thought, this was another omen. Come 10 o'clock she was on her usual point on Brick Lane. It was a cold night and still looked of rain. She had two pense in pocket already and with just two more she could go in and pay for her bed, which would bring relief not just from the weather but the bloodied ghosts that seemed to walk the street So many women had died here, even before these new killings. She wondered if there was any spot on the Whitechapel Road that hadn't seen a murder.

A man was trying to get her eye. He was drunk; probably a sailor. If he was game, she needn't stay out here any longer. Normally she'd hold out for one more after this and have a few coins for breakfast, but not tonight. She smiled at him and it seemed to be all the encouragement he needed. Leaning in, he said, "Will you?" And she nodded and said, "Yes," then took him by the hand. The streets were still wet and muddy, but a wall and some privacy was good enough. There was a courtyard nearby where she sometimes took customers, with a low wall that provided a little cover...but it was a courtyard just like that the latest woman had been murdered in. Right here in the alley would do. This one was too deep in his drink to complain.

She turned her back, leaned into the wall, hiked her skirts up and presented her backside to his rough hands. It was a very cold night indeed; gooseflesh was the instant result. The sailor fumbled with his breeches and allowed a stream of drunken Liverpool curses when they caught on something, but eventually he managed it. Rose felt something press against her cheeks as he gave it a few encouraging strokes. She parted her legs more. She worried at first that he might be too corned to find the right spot, but after a second he slid in, eliciting a squeak of surprise that she managed to turn into an appropriately encouraging half-moan. The rough face of the wall scoured her palms as he pushed into her, hips thrusting so hard that he all but bounced off her backside.

Rose knew every kind of man--every kind who came to the East End, anyway, and she wasn't convinced that the ones anywhere else were much different. The sailor was what she'd call a showoff, but one interested only in impressing himself, which lucky for him wasn't a difficult feat. He wasn't bad, all told, but it wouldn't have made a difference to her if he had been. What mattered wasn't which men were good and which were bad but which were easy and which were difficult. The sailor was easy, enamored as he was with his own thrusting cock, swollen up to press against the confines of Rose's easily accessible notch. She winced now and then; he was short but wide and coming at an odd angle, making it seem like he was filling her to the point of stretching.

She gasped and grunted and swore in the right places (keeping her voice down more than usual tonight) and when he finished she felt it immediately, a spreading wetness accompanied by a quivering pulse in his tackle, and that was it. She righted herself and let out the sigh of relief she realized she'd been saving up all night. It was over. She could pay for her bed and get off the street. She didn't have to die yet. She felt like laughing but was afraid it might sound mad, and the sailor was still with her. He was busy hitching his pants back up.

"By the way, love," he said when he was done. He reached into his coat...

Here it comes, she thought. She wondered what the knife would look like when he pulled it out? What would it feel like? She imagined the blade sinking into her windpipe and the sound she would make trying to suck a breath around six inches of metal before the blood choked her. She realized now why no one ever reported screams; she couldn't have screamed if the queen herself had commanded it, even though it was the only thing in the world she wanted to do. All she could do was watch, with eyes wide. This was it...

But when the sailor's hand reappeared all it held was an extra coin. He put it in her palm. "I hear the news. It's not safe out here for women. You take that and get home."

Rose looked at the penny as if she didn't know what it was. She said "Thank you," automatically, without thinking about it, and then again a second time, more firmly. The sailor looked quite pleased with himself, even taking off his cap and making what he probably imagined to be a very respectful gesture as he escorted her back to the street. Half an hour later Rose lay in bed, doss paid with enough leftover for a meal in the morning. She was tired enough to sleep even in spite of the mutterings and unrest of the women in the other beds and the noises of those out on the street who hadn't earned their night yet, but she didn't let herself go to sleep right away. She was busy thinking.

In that second when the sailor reached into his pocket, Rose's notions about her own death crystallized. In a way, it was like it had really happened. When the time comes, she thought, it will be no worse than this, because I've been through it already. There was no bottom after this. This heartened her. It was a strange brand of courage, but it was the only one she could afford.

***

No one died that night, or the next, or for some weeks, but no one stopped talking about the murders either. The police made reassuring noises about their investigation, but no one (the girls on the street least of all) believed they really had any clue who they were looking for. The papers soon confirmed the worst of the neighborhood gossip: Not only had the latest dead woman been dissected right there where she died, it seemed the killer had even taken some of the choice parts with him.

"The whole operation was performed to enable the perpetrator to obtain these parts of these body," the doctor said at the inquest. "I myself could not have performed all the injuries I saw on that woman in under a quarter of an hour." Now the talk of butchers and slaughterhouse men died off, replaced by suspicious whispers about medical students, body snatchers, army surgeons, even barbers and dentists. Surely they'd catch him soon now? How many madman doctors could there be?

It was terrible for business. At night, the East End became a ghost town. When the shops closed it marked the beginnings of a virtual footrace home, leaving vast blocks of the city empty except for the patrolling policemen, some in uniform and others inadequately disguised in evening clothes, their height and broad shoulders fooling no one. "If only they'd buy we'd have ourselves a whole new game here," one of the girls joked. Rose worked anyway, and come Sunday she finally had enough extra scraped together to take a trip down to Commercial Street.

She didn't want to go. She would almost rather be killed twice over than make one trip to a certain counting house at the edge of the neighborhood. But she went anyway. The office, when she came to it, was shockingly clean and tidy. Whenever she was here she looked around for a man who must be paid to mop the floor and wipe every window seconds after anyone came in or out. She didn't see him, but she was still confident such a person must exist.

A fidgety clerk answered her and when she told him why she was here he seemed to swallow his tongue. Rose tensed. She knew what was coming even before the clerk opened his mouth to say, "Mr. Rees wants to speak with you." Rose must have glowered because the clerk flinched "I can't say why," he added, with the tone of an apology. "But he made very certain I knew that if you came in I was to send you straight to him. I'm very sorry..."

And he was, Rose knew. So rather than vent her anger she let him show her up the stairs to the office she was already too familiar with, where Rees had, for all she knew, been waiting for her all day. He was a man hovering in that unidentifiable range of not yet being old but no longer being young. He was well dressed but gave Rose the impression, as always, of a knot that had been drawn entirely too tight. She thought that he might be looking a little better than the last time she'd seen him, a little less tired and a little more healthy. This annoyed her. She wanted him to look a complete wreck, if he could manage it. It would be the decent thing.

He closed the door and Rose sat. She was holding her bag in her lap but realized it made her look nervous and small, so she put it on the floor, then made a point of holding her head up. Rees offered her tea. "No thank you. I'm here for business. I'd like if in the future your people could handle me, like any other customer."

"You're not any other customer." He sat not at his desk but in the chair beside hers. Even as he said it he nodded at her purse and held out his hand like a petty landlord. She produced a handful of coins tied in a handkerchief. It was a miserably small sum, she knew, but she refused to blush when handing it over. Rees counted it into his palm and then deposited them in a till under his desk. Rose looked at him expectantly. "I would feel better if you at least recorded the sum."

"I record every payment on every debt owed me by any person in the entire city, except you," Rees said. "Yours I always remember. Would you like to know it? I can recite it to the last digit." He smoothed his trousers with his hands. "I'd like to apologize for last time."

"I'm sure you would, but I'm only here to make a payment. I'll show myself--"

"I was thinking," Rees said, and here he loosened his necktie, with his left hand even though he was right-handed, a gesture she knew so well she could have replicated it perfectly if she ever wore such a thing herself. "You were right what you said. I didn't take enough care. Maybe you'd be more inclined to the bargain I suggested if we got married first."

He looked at her with a perfectly level, unflinching gaze, one she suspected he'd practiced in a mirror. Many different responses warred for prominence in Rose's mind, among them walking straight out of this building and then out of London entirely, possibly not stopping until an ocean was reached. What she did instead was laugh, right in his face.

"That's absurd."

"Why?"

"I can't marry you. I hate you."

"That's never stopped a lot of people."

"Fine then: I can't marry you because it's blackmail."

"It certainly is not!" He actually bristled.

"If I were to say yes, you'd have Thomas released?"

"He'd be family at that point, my brother in law. There are no debts between family. But I don't want you to marry me for his sake. I want you to marry me because you still love me."

She laughed at him again, but even in her ears there was a tinny sound to it, like an empty can bouncing off a stone.

"If you let yourself think about it without pride in the way you'll realize it's a smart proposal," Rees said. "You're never going to earn enough to pay Thomas' debt. And how many other men are going to be willing to give you the kind of security I can?" Her face must have darkened at his "willing" because he jumped to save face. "I only mean that none of us are as young as we used to be. We've both got to think realistically. We used to talk about it. We said that we'd wait until I was a success. Well, I am now. This might look like a shabby enterprise to you, but it brings money. What are we waiting for?"

"We were both very different people when we had those talks. You in particular. How could I look my brother in the face knowing I married the man who put him in prison?"

"He's in prison because he took a loan he knew he couldn't pay back."

"But you offered the money knowing he couldn't pay and knowing perfectly well he trusted you more than he should have." She stood. "I have nothing else to say. I'll be back in two weeks, and I'm leaving the money downstairs if I have to throw it at you."