The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(19)

He had not misheard. “Jack the Ripper Caught!” the headline declared. Reading the article proved a slow and frustrating task due to his drunken state, but with patience and much blinking of his eyes he managed to decipher what was written. The article began by declaring that Jack the Ripper had committed his last ever crime the previous night. His victim was a prostitute of Welsh origin called Marie Jeannette Kelly, discovered in the room she rented in Miller’s Court, at number 26 Dorset Street.

Andrew skipped the following paragraph listing in gory detail the gruesome mutilations the murderer had perpetrated on her and went straight to the description of his capture. The newspaper stated that less than an hour after committing the heinous crime, the murderer who had terrorized the East End for four months had been caught by George Lusk and his men. Apparently, a witness who preferred to remain anonymous had heard Marie Kelly’s screams and alerted the Vigilance Committee. Unhappily, they reached Miller’s Court too late, but had managed to corner the Ripper as he fled down Middlesex Street. At first, the murderer tried to deny his guilt but soon gave up after he was searched and the still warm heart of his victim was found in one of his pockets. The man’s name was Bryan Reese, and he worked as a cook on a merchant vessel, the Slip, which had docked at the Port of London from Barbados the previous July and would be setting sail again for the Caribbean the following week. During his interrogation by Frederick Abberline, the detective in charge of the investigation, Reese had confessed to the five murders of which he was accused, and had even shown his satisfaction at having been able to execute his final bloody act in the privacy of a room with a nice warm fire. He was tired of always having to kill in the street. “I knew I was going to follow that whore the moment I saw her,” the murderer had gloated, before going on to claim he had murdered his own mother, a prostitute like his victims, as soon as he was old enough to wield a knife, although this detail, which might have explained his behavior, had yet to be confirmed. Accompanying the article was a photogravure of the murderer, so that Andrew could finally see the face of the man he had bumped into in the gloom of Hanbury Street. His appearance was disappointing. He was an ordinary looking fellow, rather heavily built, with curly sideburns and a bushy moustache that drooped over his top lip. Despite his rather sinister smirk, which probably owed more to the conditions in which he had been photographed than anything else, Andrew had to admit this man might just as well be an honest baker as a ruthless killer. He certainly had none of the gruesome features Londoners” imaginations had ascribed to him. The following pages gave other related news items, such as the resignation of Sir Charles Warren following his acknowledgment of police incompetence in the case, or statements from Reese’s astonished fellow seamen on the cargo vessel, but Andrew already knew everything he wanted to know, and so he went back to the front page. From what he could work out, he had entered Marie Kelly’s little room moments after the murderer left and shortly before Lusk’s mob arrived, as if they were all keeping to a series of dance steps. He hated to think what would have happened had he delayed fleeing any longer and been discovered standing over Marie Kelly’s body by the Vigilance Committee. He had been lucky, he told himself. He tore out the first page, folded it and put it in his jacket pocket, then ordered another bottle to celebrate the fact that, despite his heart having been irreparably broken, at least he had escaped being beaten to a pulp by an angry mob.

Eight years later, Andrew took that same cutting from his pocket. Like him, it was yellowed with age. How often had he reread it, recalling Marie Kelly’s horrific mutilations like a self-imposed penance? He had almost no other memories of the intervening years than this. What had he done during that time? It was difficult to say. He vaguely remembered Harold taking him home after scouring the various pubs and taverns in the vicinity and finding him passed out in that den. He had spent several days in bed with a fever, mostly ranting and suffering from nightmares in which Marie Kelly’s corpse lay stretched out on her bed, her insides strewn about the room in some indecipherable pattern, or in which he was slitting her open with a huge knife while Reese looked on approvingly. In one of the brief moments of clarity during his feverish haze, he was able to make out his father sitting stiffly on the edge of his bed, begging forgiveness for his behavior. But it was easy to apologize now that there was nothing to accept, now all he had to do was join in the theatrical display of grief the family, even Harold, had decided to put on for him as a mark of respect. Andrew waved his father away with an impatient gesture, which to his annoyance the proud William Harrington instantly took to be absolution, judging from the smile of satisfaction on his face as he left the room, as though he had just sealed a successful business deal.

William Harrington had wanted to clear his conscience and that was what he had done, whether his son liked it or not. Now he could forget the whole matter and get back to business. Andrew did not really care in the end: he and his father had never seen eye to eye and were not likely to do so now.

He recovered from his fever too late to attend Marie Kelly’s funeral, but not her killer’s execution. The Ripper was hanged at Wandsworth Prison, despite the objections of several doctors, who maintained Reese’s brain was a precious jewel worthy of scientific study, for in its bumps and folds the crimes he was predestined to commit since birth must of necessity be recorded. Andrew attended almost in spite of himself, and watched as the executioner snuffed out Reese’s life without this bringing back Marie Kelly’s or those of her fellow whores. Things did not work like that; the Creator knew nothing of bartering, only of retribution. At most, a child might have been born at the very moment when the rope snapped the Ripper’s neck, but bringing back the dead to life was another matter. Perhaps that explained why so many had begun to doubt His power and even to question whether it was really He who had created the world. That same afternoon, a spark from a lamp set alight the portrait of Marie Kelly hanging in the Winslow’s library. This at least was what his cousin said, who arrived just in time to put out the fire.