A Study in Red - The Secret Journal of Jack the Ripper Read online

  As these and more disturbing thoughts and emotions filled my head I was pulled back from that dark place by the sudden, shrill, and welcome sound of the telephone ringing. Wanting it to be Sarah, I virtually leaped from the chair and sprang across the room to where the kitchen phone hung on the wall, snatching it from its cradle as though my life or at least my sanity depended upon speaking to my wife. It was Mrs. Armitage!

  "Robert, are you all right? I spoke to Sarah and she's worried about you. She thinks you're making yourself ill, so I said I'd check on you."

  My reply was terse, and perhaps a little unfair, as my neighbour had only my best interests at heart.

  "Mrs. Armitage, I'm fine, I've told Sarah that, and now I'm telling you the same. Why can't you just leave me alone? I'm very busy, now will you please just leave me in peace?"

  "Well, all right Robert, if you're sure, but there's no need to be nasty, you know. I'm only trying to help."

  "Goodbye, Mrs. Armitage!" I snapped, ungraciously, and hung up on the poor woman. I was instantly sorry if I'd offended her, and contemplated calling her back to apologize, but thought better of it. I knew she must have been horrified to hear the usually mild-mannered Doctor Cavendish speaking to her in such a harsh and perfunctory manner, but I had so wanted it to be Sarah on the phone. I thought it best to leave her to get over it, which I was sure she would do in no time.

  I picked up the phone and dialled my sister-in-law's number. If Sarah wasn't going to call me then I'd call her. Jennifer answered on the second ring, and as soon as I spoke she must have sensed that all wasn't well with her brother-in-law.

  "Robert, you sound awful! What are you doing to yourself over there in that house on your own? You sound so tired, and, well, just not yourself. Hang on, I'll get Sarah."

  That was just like Jennifer. She'd make her point, and then, without waiting for you to answer, she'd act on it. She'd simply dropped the phone and gone to get her sister, my wife, and she didn't take long. In just a few seconds, Sarah came on the line. It took me ten minutes to convince my wife that I was okay, and to stop her jumping in the car there and then and heading home to be with me. As much as I missed her and needed her I didn't want Sarah anywhere near the house until I'd completed my terrible journey through the Ripper's journal. I just felt that, somehow, it wouldn't be safe for her to be with me until I could re-seal the package and place the journal out of sight of the world once again.

  She relented in the end, but said that she'd definitely be home the next evening, which left me with just over twenty four hours to finish the journal, and my great-grandfathers notes along with it. We swapped 'I love yous', and I replaced the phone on the wall, made yet another cup of coffee, and with a sense of grim determination, and a desire to try to finish the thing by the next morning if I could, I made my way back to the study.

  It was there, right where I'd left it. The journal, the thing that had taken my mind over almost completely in the space of one and a bit days. It was waiting for me, waiting to tell me its secrets, and I was drawn to the desk as never before, knowing that my Great Uncle was waiting to tell me the rest of his story. I couldn't get away from that fact. He was my Great Uncle, despite his illegitimacy, he had been the son of my great-grandfather, and something of him must therefore exist in me.

  That's what was frightening me so much, the fact that the bloodline of my great-grandfather ran as much in the Ripper's veins as it did in mine. Granted, his mother and my great-grandmother were different people, but we still had the common factor of my great-grandfather joining us together, and we were joined, somehow, in a way I didn't understand. The journal was the link, the thing that had brought us together, and now held us trapped in a strange nether-world, not quite of his time, or mine. Somehow I had to break free, escape the journal's hold and place myself firmly back in the reality of the twentieth century, and I knew that I had to do it before Sarah came home. The journal could not be left exposed when she returned, something told me that; a voice in the back of my mind, a warning, and now that I had that deadline to work with, the need to complete my reading of the journal became greater with each passing second.

  I walked across the study, my eyes never leaving the journal for a second as I did so, and I sat once more in my comfortable leather office chair, and reached out to the pages, feeling the strange warmth of the worn and weathered paper as my trembling hands closed over them, and I began the final stages of my extraordinary journey through that other time and place, accompanied by the words, the thoughts, and the deeds of Jack the Ripper.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  A Motive for the Ripper?

  Time was running out; for me, the Ripper, and for Mary Jane Kelly. It was strange that I felt like that. After all, the Ripper and his victim had both been dead for many years, and there was no reason why I should be thinking about them in real time, as though it were all happening in the present. Something about the journal, however, had enveloped my senses to the degree that it was impossible to think of what I was reading as a pure historical document. It was definitely having the effect of drawing me into its own macabre world of insanity and violent death.

  If I'd been able to view my own situation from the outside, as a doctor viewing a patient, I would have been seriously concerned about the state of mind of that patient. As it was, of course, I couldn't see what was happening to me, though I was aware of some change taking place in my normal rational way of thinking. All I knew was that Mary Kelly had less than a week of life left to her, and that there was nothing I could do to alter that fact. My great-grandfather had known the Ripper, been witness to his confession of sorts, and had failed to believe him to be the murderer. Something had happened to change his mind, but whatever that was hadn't yet been revealed. I now felt as if I, too, knew the killer, almost as well as my own ancestor. His name had become an irrelevance, I had a shrewd idea who he was from comparing my great-grandfather's story with the known facts about the suspects in my notes, but it didn't matter any more. There were those who would have given almost anything to learn that name, to solve once and for all the mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity, but the more I became pulled into the strange vortex of hypnotic words created in the pages of the journal, the more I realised why my father and grandfather had continued to keep the secret. I'd begun to realise that this was a private family matter, and that there was more to come, which I felt would confirm their decisions to keep silent as being the correct one to make.

  I mentally steeled myself for the next instalment of the Ripper's story, and, as the light outside my window began to fade with the onset of dusk, I began to read once more.

  5th November 1888

  The pain in my head grows worse by the hour. I am damned by this suffering. The voices scream so loud, but I dare not yet venture out, my eyes are clouded, there is darkness everywhere. The world can wait a little longer, the whore shall die when I am ready, let her think herself safe, clever little whore!

  6th November 1888

  The newspapers are still full of Jack. They see me everywhere and nowhere. How many arrests have the coppers made so far? So many letters they receive, but they are not mine. They will know soon enough who is real and who is not. The police are next to useless, they speak of strange things concerning me, of messages that I have left, when I have been silent for so long. Are they so desperate that they invent things about me? Or are they stupid? Yes they are.

  They cannot lay a hand on me

  I'm Jack the Ripper, I'm still running free. Hehehe

  The page ended there, and I could see nothing but a further degeneration in the mind of the writer. He was slipping into a world removed from reality, and his words were less lucid, more staccato, as though he were losing the ability to form full sentences. His recent use of short rhymes, always in mocking tones, suggested to me that he was arriving at a point in his illness where certain brain functions were deteriorating, and he was losing his ability to communicate coherently. The 'screaming v
oices' in his head were beginning to take over completely, and he would soon be nothing more than a tool of his own insanity.

  The headaches were worse; he was now suffering from what may have been quite intolerable pain. Laudanum would have been of little use to him now, at least not as a means of deadening the pain. All it would do was fuel his hallucinatory state, and cause him to sweat and shake, and make the headaches worse.

  I turned to the next page, my hands trembling more than ever. I knew that time was short, not just for me, if I wanted to complete my strange literary odyssey before Sarah's return, but also for the Ripper, who was now just a couple of days away from committing his most gruesome and 'memorable' act of violence. How strange to think that, at the time, I felt that the events in the journal were actually happening as I read them, and I was a traveller in time, on a journey over which I had no control. Only by reaching the end could I hope to step off the grim treadmill of death and mutilation perpetrated by my own ancestor, and to which he was giving me, (so I thought), a bizarre and surreal guided tour.

  8th November 1888

  Yesterday was useless. No food, little sleep, and so much pain. I must strike soon, and this time they will have known nothing like it before. They shall have no excuse to forget my work. As for Cavendish, this time he must believe me, I shall write to him in advance of the deed, and he must, he will believe me, and know that I have succeeded in the quest I have been set.

  Today is better, I have my thoughts together again, and the voices are clear as to my course. It will not be long now; I know I am ready to go back to the streets, to set free the river of blood that must flow, to strike terror into the hearts of every damned whore who dares to pollute the streets of London with their filth.

  Mary, Mary, little Mary, how red your blood will run

  Mary, Mary, filthy whore Mary, your time has nearly come.

  I shall visit little Mary this very night, though I have no leather aprons left, no matter, I shall not need one, for my plans are set, and I shall work undisturbed in peace this night. Mr. Bazalgette's highway shall lead me there, and lead me home, and no-one shall be the wiser of my comings and my goings. Now, a letter to Cavendish, then sleep, for I shall need my energies when darkness falls.

  So, the time had come, the 7th November had been dismissed in a few words, the man was ill, too ill to eat or sleep. It was doubtful if he'd ventured out that day, he didn't mention it, and I would have been amazed if he'd dared to show himself in public in such a state as he was in. No, he'd lain low, gathering his strength for this night to come, when he would make a mark so strong on history that his crime would resound not just around London, but, due to the ferocity and severity of the assault on Mary Kelly, around the entire civilized world.

  The Ripper had lost none of his cunning and guile, however, of that I was sure. That was evidenced by his desire to write to my great-grandfather, his father, and inform him of what he was intending. Of course, by sending it on the day before the killing he gave Burton Cavendish no time to prevent him carrying out the murder, but he seemed to have a strange twisted need for his father to perhaps feel a sense of 'pride' or admiration in his 'work'. After all, he thought he was doing the right thing, he saw no crime in what he was doing, for he was on a mission!

  I wondered for a moment if my great-grandfather had placed the letter from the Ripper somewhere within the pages of the journal, as he had his own notes. I would soon find out, there weren't many pages left, and I was growing more and more impatient to reach the end of this strange and terrifying journey into the past. It was imperative that I finish it before my wife came home; I had to remove all traces of the infernal yellowed musty pages, infused as they were with the soul of the murderer, and dripping with the horrors of his deeds, before Sarah walked through the door.

  I took a quick break from the task, just long enough to visit the bathroom, where a look in the mirror told me that Sarah would not be pleased to see me in such a state, followed by a visit to the kitchen to prepare a pot of coffee which I took with me as I returned to the study.

  As I sat down once again at my desk, I realised there had been a change in the atmosphere of the room. The afternoon had drawn towards its close, and it was growing darker. Not only that, but I sensed that the sounds of the occasional cars that passed the end of my driveway were muffled, as though their wheels had been fitted with padding of some sort. I looked through the window and saw that a dense bank of fog had descended, bringing that strange, other-worldly stillness to the world outside my house. Everything was still, there were no sounds of birds in the garden, the branches of the trees were dripping with the precipitation caused by the damp air, and in my increasingly fanciful state of mind, I imagined they were sweating with the dread anticipation of the horrors to come that very night. I knew it, I was doing it again, thinking in terms of the journal being set in real time, I was reading history, not participating in it, and yet…

  Having already studied the facts of the Mary Kelly case I felt that I was now prepared as much as I could be for the Ripper's own version of events. I picked up the journal and began where I'd left off.

  9th November 1888.

  The afternoon is drawing late, darkness falls, and I am tired. I have achieved near perfection. The whore Kelly was fool enough to invite me to her 'home', that hovel. I charmed her so well she suspected nothing, though she struggled to begin with. I was forced to strangle the dirty bitch before I could cut her. She screamed once, I thought she may have been heard and the game was up but screams are so common amongst her class no-one came near. I stripped myself and sliced the whore into so many pieces, the blood was everywhere, it was such a sight. I took her filthy body apart, took out her entrails and sliced her dirty little whore's breasts off completely. I spread her out and flensed her well; she looked a pretty picture I should say. Then walls ran red with so much blood, oh what a time I had, and the voices screamed and cheered me on as though I were a thoroughbred approaching the finishing line in the Derby. The press have done me proud, I have every headline in London, my, but they found her quick. Now Cavendish will believe me, and know who and what I am!

  No more Mary, how contrary, you've lost your whoring heart

  Mary's dead, where's her heart? Gone in the knacker man's cart.

  That was it; all there was to describe the most gruesome murder perpetrated by the Ripper. He had made no attempt to gloat or elaborate in detail on the mutilations he'd inflicted upon the poor girl's body, Compared with the references he'd made to some of the earlier murders this was quite tame, as though the actual act of murder had ceased to excite him as it may have done in the beginning.

  Poor Mary Jane Kelly had been enticed by his charm to take her killer back to her own lodgings, where he'd stripped himself to avoid getting too much blood on his clothes before embarking on the appalling mutilations that were to stun and horrify even the most hardened police officers who visited the scene of her murder upon the discovery of her body. Such was the effect of the crime upon them that, in the belief that a victim's eyes might record the last thing they saw, Sir Charles Warren ordered that the girl's eyes be photographed with a special lens in the hope that the image of her killer may have been recorded there. Of course, there was no such image to be found.

  As I sat there at my desk, with the darkness of the day closed in around the house, and the fog swirling ever closer to the window, a sudden, chilling thought struck me. Maybe, just maybe, I had stumbled upon the Ripper's motive for the killings. I had already made reference to the possibility that he was seeking some sort of recognition from Burton Cavendish. What if it were as simple as that? In his sick and twisted mind, having only recently discovered the truth of his heritage, and with his own mother dead and buried after being declared insane, could he actually have believed that he must perform this strange and escalating series of bloody murders in order to gain his father's respect and ensure that he was aware of his illegitimate son's prowess in his chosen 'professi
on'? In my humble professional opinion, I had to think to myself that it was possible. The whole series of the Jack the Ripper killings could have been nothing more than a cry for attention by an illegitimate child, seeking recognition from his father. In his sick and tormented mind, that could easily have been the case, and his desire to be noticed by his father, to be seen as a person who wielded considerable power and expertise (as my great-grandfather did in his own profession) really could have led him to commit the murders. After all, had he not constantly 'confessed' to my great-grandfather, only to be disbelieved and dismissed as a fantasist, someone trying to attach himself to the Ripper's coattails in a desire for attention? Equally, after every rejection of his confessions, the severity of his crimes, the degree of mutilation of the victims grew and grew until his fury exploded like an erupting volcano with the hideous destruction of the person of Mary Jane Kelly. It made sense to me at that point. If my great-grandfather wouldn't believe him, he would go out and do something even more revolting and repugnant in an attempt to shock, or to make 'Cavendish' take notice of him. Eventually he had written a letter, though I had no idea at that time what it contained, informing my great-grandfather of his intentions. I felt that it was all there, in the last line before the silly rhyme, 'Now Cavendish will believe me' That was what he'd wanted all along, his father's recognition!

  As for the rhyme, it was true that Kelly's heart was missing when her body was examined. That mystery was now also explained. There had been many theories at the time; The Ripper had eaten it, or, he'd taken it home and kept it as a trophy…the list went on and on. Instead, he'd cut it out, and at some time during the day I suspected, as opposed to on his way home as there wouldn't be any horses and carts in the sewers, he'd simply thrown it into a passing knacker-mans cart, along with the remains of any number of dead horses on their way to be burned no doubt. Yes, to me that made sense, he would see it as a fitting end for the heart of a whore, to be burned, so that her heart and soul would be forever engulfed in the flames of Hell.