The Ripper's Wife(54)
16
The papers were full of the most ghastly murder in London, in Whitechapel no less. It made me shudder to think of it occurring in the same spot where Alfred and I had had our first tryst. Some poor woman of the streets had been ripped open and gutted like a fish. I read every word, even though I knew I was courting bad dreams and a queasy stomach. I could not stop thinking about that poor soul. Who was she and why had she fallen so low down in life that she could never claw her way back up again?
What manner of man had done this awful thing? Did he know her and bear her some personal grievance or did she merely have the misfortune to cross paths with a madman with a lust for blood coursing through his soul? Were the horrors he inflicted upon her body truly meant for her, or was he merely acting out his anger on the first unfortunate woman who crossed his path at an opportune moment?
“I don’t suppose we’ll ever know unless the monster is caught,” I said to Jim on one of those rare mornings when we found ourselves facing each other across the breakfast table, me with dark-circled eyes after another restless night and the toast turning to ashes in my mouth as I put the latest edition of the Liverpool Daily Post aside.
“I don’t suppose so.” Jim looked up at me and smiled as he spooned white arsenic into his tea. He raised his teacup to me as though it were a champagne toast. “Longevity and fair complexion, my dear!” he said, and drained it to the dregs. He stood up, readying to leave for his office, and bent down and kissed me. The moment he was gone I bolted from my chair and vomited into the nearest flowerpot. I just could not bear for him to touch me!
17
THE DIARY
It felt so good, I did it again! Another drab in black and brown. The only thing scarlet about these women is their morals . . . and their blood.
The charcoal-colored morning was cold and wet—I hope I did not catch a chill! I feared I had left it too long—the hour was perilously close to daybreak—but I have always been a gambler. . . .
“Will you?” I asked.
The slurred-tongued slut said, “Yes,” and took my arm.
I let her lead me to her death. She chose the spot; the sacrificial slut led me to the altar where she would die. A quiet backyard of a house on Hanbury Street. The residents worked all hours, so they left the doors unlocked, she said. A long passage led from the front door to the back and out into a fenced yard, if you could call that pitted patchwork of earth and cracked and crumbled paving stones a yard.
There’s a cat’s meat shop on the ground floor that sells cubed horsemeat; a cat’s a necessity for every house in these rat-infested parts. I wanted to cut this whore into bloody cubes and leave her with a note written in blood on the table for the old woman who runs the shop to sell for her customer’s cats. But my knife wasn’t sharp and fast enough for that, and I must be on my way before sunrise. But wouldn’t I have loved to spend the hours! Dicing Dark Annie into cubes, cubes for cats, harlot’s flesh instead of horseflesh; wouldn’t that be a rare treat for the pussies? Ha ha!
This woman was ill, I could tell. Befuddled by drink and dying of consumption, but she was no Camille. A pudding-faced hag, her features like bits of fruit floating in its cushy custardy blandness, this weary whore was short and stout, with a wobbly, waddly chin, her curly dark hair cut short as a lad’s and her front teeth knocked out. How can a whore be both fat and starving? I still haven’t figured that out; I only know I saw hunger and yearning in her big moon-blue eyes.
“Dark Annie,” she said they called her on account of her dark, brooding moods. She wanted pity. A dollop of kindness for a dying trollop. She went on about the cruelty and unkindness of men, displaying two highly polished farthings another gent had passed off on her as sovereigns. Money is money to a whore like you, so why are you complaining? I bit my tongue to keep from saying. She was the worse from a fight with another whore a few days past, over a sliver of soap no less, that had left Annie with a black eye. She opened her bodice and showed me the bruises on her chest where the other whore had kicked her, and her just only out of the infirmary, she said; it was most unkind.
She had two pills; she gripped them like treasures, wadded in a scrap of paper. Afterward, I took them and left her two of my own, piled with the rest of her meager possessions at her feet. Whatever will the police make of it? Shall they waste hours wondering why and if this gesture is one of particular, or peculiar, significance? Don’t the fools know it was only for jolly? I don’t know what the pills were, but since they have done me no ill, they must have done me good; she certainly did. I left the scrap of paper; there was, of all the splendid ironies, an elegant M written on one side. I was giving them a clue if the fools could but see it; I felt as though I were leaving behind my calling card.
“Poor thing,” I said. I peeled off my gloves and let my overcoat fall. The poor, weak bitch didn’t have the time or strength to squeal. I twisted the scarf—her own, knotted tight, to keep out the chill of the night—savagely around her neck, like a noose, and silently laughed as her eyes and tongue bulged out. She bit it in her dying throes.
Death came silently and swiftly. It was a mercy considering what I did next.
She lay dead at my feet, tongue lolling out by my boots as though she wanted to lick them. I stood over her and licked the white powder from my palm and felt such power, like lightning coursing through me; I felt the strength swimming in my veins; I almost fancied I could hear it humming. I cut her throat. Her hot harlot’s blood warmed my ice-cold hands. The numbness vanished; I could feel again! Hallelujah! I wanted to raise my bloody hands to Heaven and shout like one of those American fools at their tent revivals. But I knew better; already I was playing the ultimate game of chance—Murder!—risking my own life by taking another’s. If I were caught now—red-handed, ha ha!—nothing could save me from the gallows!