The Ripper's Wife(48)
The whores were out en masse, drumming up trade, and the pickpockets were at their nimble best. No one noticed me. They were all too busy watching the fire. I was just another gentleman slummer.
I was so bloody clever, so brilliantly clever, this time! Everything went exactly as planned! How often can one say that in life? Everything went exactly as planned!
Her name was Polly. I met her in the Frying Pan Tavern. A short, stinking little strumpet dressed in shit-brown linsey with brass buttons the size of saucers on her raggedy old coat. She was going gray at the temples, streaks as wide as though someone had slapped her on each side of her greasy brown head with a paintbrush. The old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be, many long years ago!—Ha ha!
She was an old whore, and whores don’t live to be old in Whitechapel if they aren’t canny. I couldn’t risk her screaming, some instinct of the gut tugging at her, shouting DANGER! I bought her gin though she was already the worse for it. To breed trust, I gave her a bonnet.
“Wot a jolly bonnet! I’ll never lack for me doss money now, not when I’m wearin’ this!” The dowdy drab preened like a peacock as she tied the bow beneath her chin and peered blearily into the bit of broken mirror she kept in her pocket.
Black straw with a band of beaded black velvet trimmed with a red velvet rose. I nipped it off a sleeping tart when I was changing trains. It was one of those sweet, opportune moments. It reminded me of the black hat blooming with red poppies my wife-whore had worn when I saw her in Whitechapel with that bastard Brierley. I thrust the bonnet under my overcoat as I passed. I was gone, boarding another train, before she even noticed her hat was. I was so bloody clever! A woman like that would never report the theft; her ilk usually dread the police like the pox. No one will ever know how Polly got her jolly bonnet.
I arranged a rendezvous with Polly. I didn’t want to be seen leaving the pub with her. Someone might notice a toff in a shiny black silk topper with a diamond horseshoe in his cravat, and a long black overcoat trimmed with astrakhan, toting a black Gladstone bag, talking to this slum-vermin bawd. Later, before our tryst, I would doff my topper and don a deerstalker. My hunting clothes. I would be dressed to kill.
“Don’t you forget now,” I warned, waggling a finger at her. She was so drunk her eyes couldn’t even focus on it.
“Right you are, Old Cock,” she slurred, and slapped my chest, nearly felling me with gin fumes. “Don’tcha worry, sir; your Polly will be there,” she promised, and staggered off, weaving and reeling, waving her arms like a windmill.
I worried that I had given her too much gin and that she would fall down senseless in the street somewhere and sleep right through our tryst. But mistakes are meant to be learned from, and a stolen bonnet and a few pennies’ worth of gin are not as grave mistakes as a scream that leads to capture, a whore’s spilt blood that stains my children forever, and myself swinging from the gallows. If this whore failed to show, there would always be another, I assured myself. London was full of easy pickings and they were all mine for the taking.
I took more of my medicine. I lapped the white powder from my palm. I felt its power coursing through my blood, flooding me with power. People take less than I do and die, yet I’ve never felt more alive!
When I have my medicine, I can do anything; no one can stop me! I’m not afraid of the police, those bumbling bobbies bungling around in their big, noisy boots. I can hear them coming a mile away, ha ha!
She met me in Buck’s Row by the stable-yard gates. It was a quiet, dark street with only one lamp at the far end. I heard a horse neigh. Was it a mare? Was she old and gray too, just like Polly?
I watched poor jolly Polly slowly weaving her way toward me, waving her arms, and singing:
“ ‘Wot cheer!’ all the neighbors cried,
‘Who’re yer goin’ to meet, Bill?
Have yer bought the street, Bill?’
Laugh! I thought I should ’ave died,
Knock’d ’em in the Old Kent Road!”
I smiled and took her hand. “The one time you are true, it will cost you dearly, my dear.”
“Eh, wot’s that, Bill?” she croaked as she grabbed hold of my coat to keep from falling flat on her nose. Some stitches on my shoulder popped. Clumsy, stupid slut! I should drown her in a barrel of rum, I thought, only that would be a truly heavenly exit for the likes of her!
I seized her throat and beneath her “jolly new bonnet” her eyes bulged with fright. I ached with desire as I laid her down and flung her skirts up to her nose. I like to think she died smelling the horse manure staining her hems. I stood staring down at her as I took off my overcoat and gloves. My knife slashed. My hands were cold; then they were warm, warmer than they had ever been before.
Eyes open wide, she was staring at me over her stinking, frayed hems. The scream she would have uttered came out in a weak, whistling gurgle—a new kind of music I almost wished I could share with Michael. Did I only imagine she tried to say, “God help me?” As if He would!
I blooded my knife like a knight does his sword in his first battle. I bloodied my hands, in a baptism of blood, but there were no sacred words to say, only profane ones and lust grunts. I felt the blade graze bone. The scrape sent a shiver down my spine. I spent in my trousers. Oh, the indescribable thrill! Ragged, jagged cuts and wet, red heat! When I bathed my hands in her blood I felt purified, exorcised, purged of my rage. I could go home to my darling Bunny and the children without fear that I would hurt them. I stabbed her flaccid, worn-out old whore’s cunt and let my knife stand proxy for my prick. Her dead eyes stared up at me as I pulled on my gloves, to cover my bloody hands, and resumed my overcoat’s warm embrace. I waved a hand before those blind dead eyes. Not a flicker of life. How could there be? I could see the guts like a teeming mass of snakes inside her. Not such a hot little whore now; the dead so soon grow cold. I bent and, with the tip of my bloody knife, cut one of the big vulgar brass buttons from her coat. A souvenir to take home with me. I laughed, tossed it in the air like a lucky coin, caught it, and tucked it safely inside my pocket. My new lucky charm; I shall carry it with me next time I go to the races! Ha ha!