Chapter Thirty-One
We arrived back from our Scottish research trip to a London in the grip of panic. Every newspaper carried the same story; from Charing Cross to Victoria Street Station, headlines were shouted to appalled and curious crowds.
Woman Brutally Murdered!
Blood and Horror!
Death Haunts the Streets!
According to the Pall Mall Gazette, which Bram purchased the moment we stepped off the train, the mutilated body of a prostitute, Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols, was found in Whitechapel. Her throat had been so ferociously slashed, her spine was exposed.
I felt sick as Bram read the report aloud; sick and very frightened.
As soon as we got home, I read the article for myself.
The London newspapers were always filled with terrible stories of murder, yet there’d been nothing like this before.
To think a man could enact such violence upon a woman; tear her apart with a knife like a butcher an animal carcass.
Did he know her? Had he followed her? Had he been watching before he decided to pounce?
Did she do something to make him behave so violently towards her?
Or was it because of her profession she was killed?
I began to imagine the terror she must have felt when she saw the knife; understood what was intended. Her helplessness … and yet, she’d fought for her life. The poor, poor woman.
Mary Ann Nichols. Her name was on everyone’s lips, known in death, though she’d been judged and disregarded in life.
She was still being judged.
Just over a week after Miss Nichols was murdered, the body of another woman, Annie Chapman, was found in the same parish, killed in a similar manner.
It was all anyone could talk about. As if speaking about the horrific details helped us to understand the crime. But there was no understanding it.
Bram ordered that no actress was to leave the theatre unaccompanied. After performances, Henry paid for cabs and broughams for those who lived further afield.
By early November, three other women were added to the tragic toll.
I determined to remember their names: Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly.
Younger than the rest, Miss Kelly was described by the Daily Telegraph as having a ‘fair complexion, with light hair, and possessing rather attractive features’.
I thought of Ellen, and of the actresses who worked at the Lyceum, the Adelphi, and the many other theatres and music halls springing up around the city.
Women who were often regarded as common streetwalkers and, once they left the stage door, were vulnerable and usually alone.
For the first time, I thought kindly of Henry, his generosity in ensuring the safety of his actresses.
I thought, too, of my own safety. There wasn’t a woman I knew who didn’t.
What if this man, the one they first called ‘Leather Apron’ but now referred to as ‘Jack the Ripper’, as if he were an adventurous rogue rather than a cold-blooded murderer, tired of killing prostitutes and sought to find richer game over in the west?
In Chelsea.
I paused my salons; it was not the time for gatherings.
My spectral tormentor began to appear more frequently, disrupting not just my sleep, but my quietude.
I started to leave the lamp on at night; darkness no longer offered succour for the weary but became a terrifying state where nightmares came to life.
My mind filled with blood-soaked notions.
Dear God. What if the phantom posed a greater danger to me than I believed?
What if he wasn’t a demonic imagining but flesh and blood?
After all, he’d manifested at the train station, in the steamship, and since then, had begun to infest my waking moments too.
While he’d posed no real threat on those occasions, what if that changed?
What if he was the Ripper?
When I finally expressed my fears about the killer to Bram, he gathered me in his arms and held me tight.
‘Do you think he’ll be caught soon?’ I asked, my cheek resting against his broad chest. The last time he embraced me like this was in France, after Noel and I survived the shipwreck. I could hear the steady beat of his heart, feel the comforting strength of his arms.
‘With the whole constabulary searching for him,’ he began, ‘of course.’ Bram didn’t understand my qualms, which were echoed by Ellen and other women. How could any man? ‘He must be.’
Newspapers were snatched up as fast as they were printed as each new edition carried more lurid stories, many with illustrations and graphic photographs.
It became an itch I couldn’t scratch. Connections were made to earlier deaths, to bodies that had been found in the river, in tenements, in the streets.
Descriptions of the areas where the women were found abounded.
I was appalled to read about the living conditions in the east of London. It was a different world.
Winter arrived with blasts of snow and bitter cold, yet still no-one was caught.
Rumours circulated that the killer (or killers – some felt whoever it was must have accomplices) was either a butcher or a surgeon.
Women were afraid to step out alone, or to be abroad when night fell, no matter where they lived.
During the day, I paced the house, staring out every window and searching the faces of the figures who walked past. Bram insisted I ensure either George or Gilbert accompanied me on any outing.
I lost sleep, started at the slightest noise.
Exhausted, I tried to maintain an outward calm, a serenity I didn’t feel, all while my imagination was like a wildfire, scorching rational thought.
Noel would look at me peculiarly when I jumped if a visitor came to the door, or when floorboards creaked.
Fear took up residence in my very bones.
When Macbeth finally opened on 29 December, there’d not been another murder for weeks.
The make-believe of the theatre was such a welcome relief from all the horror-snatching headlines, even Macbeth, with its bloody themes.
I willingly agreed to attend opening night, and the Beefsteak Room supper afterwards.
The play was a resounding success with its magnificent backdrops and rich costumes (Ellen’s alone had been stitched with beetle wings and gilded thread, and the crowns she and Henry wore were made of real gold).
The number of people invited to celebrate afterwards meant the supper had to be moved to the stage again.
There, beneath white canopies adorned with floral arrangements and sparkling candelabras and against backdrops featuring Scottish castles and blackened heaths, we dined.
Bram had invited George and his wife Agnes.
Tables were laid with sumptuous food, glasses brimmed with ruby wine, laughter and chatter filled the auditorium as Henry, Ellen and the entire cast were congratulated.
I caught Bram’s eye briefly as he stood to one side, watching everyone with a smile on his face.
As we found our seats, George whispered in my ear, ‘I can’t help but notice that no-one offers my brother commendations or thanks.’
‘No,’ I said, softly. ‘As usual his contribution is overlooked.’
‘And I note Henry does naught to alter that.’
Our eyes travelled to Henry, sitting like a contented cat lapping up the praise.
I asked Bram once, after Faust was first performed and everyone rushed to honour Henry, how he felt.
He brushed it off. ‘Proud,’ was all he said.
But now I’d seen firsthand how the Americans recognised the essential role he played in making the productions a success, all the stories about him in their press, was it easy for him to slip back into the shadows?
Or did he wish just a smidgen of limelight would shine on him? I most certainly did.
I’d hugged and congratulated Ellen (who’d been completely magnificent, despite Henry’s efforts to minimise her character’s importance), made sure to tell Henry how fine he was, and greeted Oscar, who much to my delight was there that evening too, though his wife was not.
I was seated between George and Hall Caine.
Conversation and laughter flittered around us, and the backs of our chairs were regularly bumped as people pushed past, eager to reach Henry and Ellen.
I’d scarce seen Hall since our return from Scotland as he’d been preoccupied with an American doctor he’d befriended, a man Bram disparaged as a quack. I think Bram was hurt that Hall had all but disregarded him in favour of this new associate.
Hall and I caught up on our news, carefully skirting one subject until it inevitably arose – the Ripper murders.
‘Where’s your friend, the good doctor?’ I asked, accepting a refilled glass of wine from a waiter. ‘Francis, isn’t it?’
‘Dr Francis J Tumblety,’ he said with strange emphasis, gulping his drink. He lowered his voice. ‘You didn’t hear? Bram didn’t tell you?’
Another tidbit Bram had kept, protecting my sensibilities; perhaps my inner turmoil was more evident than I believed. ‘Hear what?’
I could see Hall hesitating.
‘Hall …’ I said sternly. ‘If you don’t tell me, I’ll ask Mr Gladstone.’ The prime minister had just joined the table, amid much back-slapping and congratulations for Henry.
Hall sighed. ‘Turns out, Bram was right about Francis.’
I raised my brows.
‘The man was a mountebank. He was not only arrested on charges of gross indecency but —’ Hall paused.
‘What?’ I urged.
Hall flashed a look around the room and then placed his lips near my ear. ‘He was also suspected of the murders in Whitechapel.’ He withdrew slightly, giving me a meaningful look, then threw back his wine.
A chill washed over me; a low keening filled my ears, growing in intensity. ‘Your friend, he was Jack the Ripper?’ My voice sounded strange, small. Dread engulfed my body, turning it to lead. I’d met this man, dined with him. He’d been to our house.
‘I … I don’t know.’ Hall’s cheeks flooded with colour.
‘Before they could prove it one way or another, he fled the country.’ He paused, then went on, ‘Strange, don’t you think, that the killings ceased after he left?
But, if he is the Ripper, he’s still at large. Only now he’s haunting other shores.’
I swayed in my seat, tried to grasp hold of the edge of the table, but the cloth made it impossible.
Good Lord. I shut my eyes briefly. Faces paraded in my mind’s eye, like the kings before Macbeth: Henry as the Thane, his face streaked with a king’s blood; Jack the Ripper, poised over the maimed bodies of those doomed women; Dr Tumblety, with his huge moustache and piercing eyes, loomed large, eyes which began to transform into glowing red coals …
I opened my own. There, in the gloom of the wings, lurked a familiar figure.
I raised a trembling finger. He smiled, lips pulling back to expose those long, gleaming teeth. Only now they were sharp and pointed, a row of miniature daggers. I gasped and his vermillion eyes fixed onto mine.
‘Florence. Florence.’ Hall’s voice came from far away.
‘Florrie, are you alright?’ It was George.
Everything around me went black, all except those fiery eyes, burrowing into my very soul …
‘Bram!’ someone cried.
The floor rushed towards me. There were screams, shouts, then I knew no more.