The Ripper's Wife(109)
I don’t know how I did it, but I did, and without the false courage of gin. Wearing the blue-gray suit that had replaced my old trusty black, and a new violet-blue silk shirtwaist that paid the perfect compliment to my eyes, a gray hat adorned with silk violets, and my pearls—I never needed that ladylike reassurance more!—with my hair freshly gilded, I found myself standing in my son’s office at the Le Roi Gold Mine. He’d apparently just been called away. His lunch—a sandwich, a piece of cherry pie, and a bottle of milk open as though he’d been about to pour it into the glass sitting beside it when the telephone rang—was laid out on the paper-and book-piled table that doubled as his desk and laboratory. There was a microscope and some glass slides and bottles of chemicals nearby, too near for my liking. I shuddered, seeing the skulls and crossbones and the word POISON! screaming from all the labels. He’d also left his watch behind.
My heart stood still. My blood froze. A knife stabbed and ripped my heart wide open. It was his father’s watch. I picked it up with the same trepidation as I would have handled a live rattlesnake. I opened the back and squinted down at the secret scratches etching a terrible confession into the gleaming gold—I am Jack the Ripper! James Maybrick, ringed by five sets of initials: PN, AC, ES, CE, MJK.
“What are you doing? Who are you? What are you doing here?” a voice behind me demanded. I whirled around and found myself face-to-face with my son. I wanted to grab his face and kiss him and feel those glorious long black lashes fluttering like butterflies against my face. “That’s my watch!” He snatched it from my hand. “A thief—I should call the police—”
“Please don’t do that, Bobo,” I said softly. “I was just looking at it, remembering. . . .”
He gasped and recoiled from me as though I were a leper. The watch fell from his hand onto the floor. “No one has called me that since I was a child!” His eyes widened and I knew he recognized me.
“Get out of here!” He pointed at the door. “I have nothing to say to you!”
“Bobo, please, I’ve come a long way, it’s been such a long time, please . . . hear me out. . . .” I dared to cross the distance he had put between us and lay my hand, and with it my heart, on his sleeve. “Just this once . . . If I never see you again, please, let me tell you the truth. . . .”
He jerked away from me. “Your version of the truth, you mean! Well, whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it; go tell it to your lover, the man you killed my father for!”
“Alfred Brierley was one of the great mistakes of my life,” I said, and knew it was the God’s honest truth. “I haven’t seen him since 1889, and I didn’t kill your father, for him or anyone else. You must believe me! I loved Jim!”
“A judge and jury of twelve men, my uncles, Mrs. Briggs, Nanny Yapp, the servants, the police, who are accustomed to investigating these matters—you were not the first woman to attempt to use poison to rid herself of an inconvenient husband—and all the doctors and chemists”—Bobo ticked them off on his fingers—“they were all wrong?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “They had their reasons, and science is not equipped to answer every question yet, but, yes, they were wrong. Some of them lied outright, some of them just didn’t know the truth, or knew the right answers and couldn’t admit it. There are certain men who can never say ‘I don’t know,’ and I’m sure that’s quite an embarrassing admission for men who are called experts to make, especially when the eyes of the world are upon them. There was much that was not told, many lies covered truths, and my sins, my carnal sins, blinded and distracted many, but if all had been revealed, perhaps . . . the outcome would have been different.”
Bobo snorted and shook his head. “That was all years ago.” He shrugged. “I have my own life now, and you will never be a part of it. I’m not your son anymore. None of this has any bearing. My heart declared you dead when I learned what you did, or were accused of doing,” he quickly mollified when I took another step toward him, “and I will permit no resurrection now. There’s nothing you can say that will change that. I’m going to be married soon, and I’ve no desire to revisit the past, or to have my future wife and in-laws troubled by old scandals being dredged up after I’ve worked so hard to lay them to rest. Now please go. Leave me in peace and never trouble me again.”
All the things I’d meant to say, all the questions I was longing to ask, died upon my lips. What was the use? I felt crushed, defeated; I suddenly wanted a drink more than I ever had in my life. Gin drowns more than cowardice; it also numbs sorrow.
“All right, Bobo.” I nodded. It was then that I noticed the watch still lying on the floor and bent to retrieve it. Just this once, in innocently returning it, placing it in his hand, I could touch my son for what I knew, with complete and utter certainty now, would be the last time.
“Thank you,” he said. I was halfway to the door when he cried out, “Wait!”
My heart lurched and leapt with renewed hope. Had some miracle occurred? Had God sent an angel to whisper in his ear and change his mind?
“What are these scratches?” Bobo demanded. “What did you do to it?”
My heart sank like a stone. “Nothing; they’ve been there all along.”