Ghost of Whitechapel Read online

  About the Book

  When fiery Bridget Cummings advertised for a lodger, she did not expect a policeman to apply for the room. She wasn’t fond of the coppers, believing them to be traitors to the poor of Whitechapel, but her younger brother and sister moved PC Fred Billings in the moment Bridget’s back was turned, and she seemed to have little say in the matter. Still, she had to admit that she was glad of Fred’s company in the walk back from her late-night washing-up job, particularly when a young girl was found in a nearby street with her throat cut.

  The discovery of the body of Maureen Flanagan who was, the neighbours believed, a respectable woman, naturally stirred memories of Jack the Ripper. His horrific crimes had shocked the neighbourhood only twelve years before, but Chief Inspector Dobbs of the City of London Police was convinced, like most other police officers, that the Ripper was dead. But when a second body was discovered, and Bridget noticed a strange man following her, the neighbourhood was alert to the possibility that the terror had returned…

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  Also by Mary Jane Staples

  Copyright

  THE GHOST OF

  WHITECHAPEL

  Mary Jane Staples

  To Jill, Judith, Carol and

  with happy memories of Howard

  Prologue

  It was in 1888 that Jack the Ripper stalked the dingy streets of Whitechapel, and left behind him not only the corpses of gruesomely murdered women, but also the mystery of his identity.

  There had been many guesses, many theories and many conclusions, but none led to his capture and conviction. He remained a dark and elusive spectre, an intangible figure in the eyes of the police and a frightening one in the imagination of the people of Whitechapel.

  By 1900, however, after twelve years had elapsed, there was a general assumption that he was as dead as his victims, that the devil had claimed him for his own.

  The assumption, of course, could have been born of wishful thinking.

  Chapter One

  IT WAS THE last thing she was expecting, the one thing he had in mind. From behind, his left arm whipped around her and his hand clapped itself hard over her mouth. Her head was jerked back, and his right hand, wielding a razor-sharp knife, came swiftly round to effect the act of execution. The blade sliced her throat deeply from ear to ear. She fell forward, dying, her blood gushing.

  Damn the scarlet river, he thought.

  But at least he himself had escaped the flood and he knew what to do next.

  ‘Murder! ’Orrible murder in Tooley Street!’ So shouted London newsboys and street-corner newsvendors on both sides of the river. It was a day in November, 1900, the last November of the nineteenth century, and first thing that morning an unfortunate woman had been found with her throat gashed in Tooley Street, close to the south side of London Bridge. The early editions of evening newspapers carried reports of the shocking murder.

  The day was misty, the mist an aftermath of the thick fog that had blanketed London last night.

  Fog had its own ways of behaving. It could creep, skulk, creep again and take its time to slowly smother living beings and inert buildings. It could also arrive with malicious speed and put traffic into hopeless confusion and people into doubt as to where a kerb was. A clear night could precede a thick yellow morning, and the thick yellow could make the whole day a torment for those who suffered from asthma or bronchitis. And to people of a nervous or imaginative disposition, the eerie pall of a night fog was apt to pervade London’s darker alleys in a manner fearful and menacing, muffling the footsteps of warped creatures who dealt in all forms of villainy and deeds most foul.

  Such a deed had been committed last night, and Scotland Yard was investigating. The dead woman’s identity had been established immediately on discovery of her body. She was Maureen Flanagan, an Irishwoman of thirty, who worked in the calender room of Guy’s Hospital laundry, where sheets and towels were dried and pressed. The woman who found her, just as the fog was lifting, knew her because she too worked in the laundry and was on her way there. The time was ten minutes to eight. The examining police surgeon diagnosed she had been dead for about ten hours, which meant the murder had been committed at approximately ten last night, when the fog had been at its densest. The police surgeon, however, pointed out that the woollen scarf wrapped around her neck had absorbed only a relatively small amount of blood, nothing like all she would have shed. It indicated that the murder could not have been committed at the spot where she was found. It was his opinion that she had been carried there sometime after the monstrous deed had been done. The thick fog would have provided a very helpful cloak for the murderer.

  Chief Inspector Charlie Dobbs was in charge of the investigation. He had a reputation for being a relentless tracker of criminals devious or bloodthirsty. His most recent success concerned the breaking of what had seemed a husband’s perfect alibi in respect of the murder of his wife by poison. The Dalston police had hoped for his assistance in finding a different kind of murderer, a man who had battered a young woman to death late one night in Queensbridge Road. But because of Dobb’s commitment to the former case, Scotland Yard sent another senior CID officer to investigate the Dalston crime. That investigation was still going on.

  Despite being hardened by experience, Chief Inspector Dobbs was sick with disgust as he regarded the body of the murdered woman in Tooley Street. He could understand the reasons behind some crimes: he could never bring himself to rationalize about vicious murder. He addressed the police surgeon in respect of the conclusion made, that the victim had been dumped in Tooley Street after being murdered elsewhere, her coat thrown over her.

  ‘Carried here, you believe?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. Otherwise, the unfortunate woman would have been soaked in her own blood, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I can’t argue with that,’ said Dobbs. ‘Not that he’d have risked a long haul.’

  ‘Long haul?’ said the medical man.

  ‘Say from Soho and all the way over the bridge to Tooley Street, not even in last night’s fog. Far too long for that kind of carrying job.’

  ‘Why Soho?’

  ‘You’ve seen her clothes?’ said the Chief Inspector.

  ‘Decent coat and hat, fairly stylish maroon skirt and white blouse.’

  ‘The skirt’s short, so’s the petticoat,’ said Dobbs. ‘Tarty. Lace-up boots, black stockings, tarty French garters. And no underpinnings, even on a cold damp night.’

  ‘So I noticed,’ said the surgeon.

  ‘Not uncommon with some of the women who stand in doorways around Soho,’ said Dobbs. ‘Unless the cut-throat took hers as a kind of pervert’s souvenir.’

  ‘That’s your problem, Chief Inspector,’ said the surgeon.

  Chief Inspector Dobbs mused in the misty air of the sealed-off street. Five-feet-ten, forty-two, with broad shoulders and a solid chest, he looked the epitome of a Scotland Yard man in his curly-brimmed brown bowler, unbuttoned overcoat and t
hick-soled polished black boots. His features were pleasantly rugged, his blue eyes clear and keen, his dark brown moustache military in style. He had a cheerful look normally, on or off duty. On duty, it was sometimes deceptive. At the moment, it lacked all cheer. His assistant, Detective-Sergeant Robert Ross, twenty-seven and a fairly handsome man, made himself heard.

  ‘Have you thought, guv,’ he said, ‘that as she had a job, she didn’t need to stand in Soho doorways?’

  ‘Good question, my lad,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Have you got the answer as well?’

  ‘Not yet, guv,’ said Sergeant Ross.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Dobbs. ‘But cheer up, sunshine, the tarty factor could give us what you might call a helpful lead. Now, if she was on the game, where was her pitch, this side of the water or the north side?’

  ‘Well, we know she lived this side, in lodgings in Tanner Street, off Tower Bridge Road,’ said Sergeant Ross.

  ‘Not much custom around Tanner Street,’ said Dobbs. ‘A lot more in the West End.’

  ‘Listen, guv, she had this job, in the laundry at Guy’s, she didn’t need to be on the game.’

  ‘Didn’t you just say that?’

  ‘Worth repeating, I thought,’ said Ross.

  ‘Next time, give me the answer as well,’ said Dobbs. ‘Anyway, I dare say when her neck was all in one piece, you’d have called her attractive, and I dare say further that laundry wages don’t amount to much. And there’s no telling what some women’ll get up to to put extras in their petticoat pockets. Safe there, y’know, my son, you can’t pick a petticoat pocket.’

  ‘Hers was empty,’ said Sergeant Ross.

  ‘Hadn’t been paid at the time the sod did for her, that’s my opinion,’ said Dobbs. ‘There’s no handbag, by the way, is there?’

  ‘He’s got that, of course, the bloke who did for her,’ said Ross.

  ‘Has he? I suppose so,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘except I ask myself, did he need to cut her throat for it? If he did, all we need now is a sight of this presently unknown bloke walking around London with a lady’s handbag.’

  ‘I presume that’s not a serious observation?’ said the surgeon.

  ‘Just a comment in passing,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Had she had intercourse?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Lost a point there, have we, guv?’ asked Ross.

  ‘Not necessarily, not if the bugger decided it would give him more satisfaction to cut her throat.’

  ‘Of course, you know what some people in the East End are going to say, don’t you?’ said Ross.

  ‘Do I know?’ asked the Chief Inspector.

  ‘I think you do,’ said Sergeant Ross, ‘they’re going to say the Ripper’s come back.’

  ‘That’s it, cheer me up, I’d like some of what me forebears in the Yard had to put up with twelve years ago, wouldn’t I?’ said Dobbs. ‘But you’re off the mark. This isn’t Jack’s handiwork. It’s a clean staightforward slash with a sharp knife. No disembowelling or suchlike. Nothing nasty.’

  ‘Don’t know about that, guv. Nasty enough for her, poor cow.’

  ‘Don’t answer me back, sunshine,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘or I’ll have your Scotch grandparents looked into.’

  ‘Scottish, guv, Scottish.’

  ‘Same thing. Now, before we interview some of her workmates, let’s take a look at Flanagan’s lodgings. By the way, bring the scarf along.’

  At the house in Tanner Street, close to Tower Bridge, the landlady, Mrs Pritchard, opened the door to them. A beefy woman with a red face, due to a liking for a frequent drop of port, she had an acquired aversion to representatives of the law on account of their busybody noses. But because they had a lot more legal clout than she did, she let the Scotland Yard men in. Her weighty figure nearly hit the floor of her dingy passage when she learned that one of her lodgers, Maureen Flanagan, had been done to death.

  ‘Oh, me gawd, where’s me port?’ she gasped, staggering through to her kitchen. The bottle was on the dresser, conveniently to hand, and she drew the cork and swigged. ‘Lord ’elp us, that’s a bit better,’ she said. ‘You gents like a drop?’

  ‘Thanks, no,’ said Sergeant Ross.

  ‘Well, o’ course, you ain’t a friend to Flanagan like I was,’ said Mrs Pritchard. ‘You sure it’s ’er?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ross.

  ‘Gawd ’elp us,’ said the suffering landlady, and took another swig before replacing the bottle. ‘Poor woman, who’d of thought she’d ’ave got ’erself done in so cruel? It don’t ’ardly bear thinkin’ about. No wonder she didn’t come back ’ere last night. I thought she might of been stayin’ with one of ’er laundry friends.’

  ‘A man friend?’ asked Sergeant Ross.

  ‘Oh, yer bleeder,’ breathed the landlady, ‘’ow can yer talk like that of a poor victimized woman that was as respectable as I am?’

  ‘Sorry, missus,’ said Sergeant Ross.

  ‘So yer should be,’ said Mrs Pritchard.

  ‘Did she stay out all night sometimes?’ asked Dobbs, bowler hat in his right hand. His dark brown hair had a widow’s peak.

  ‘Not as I know of,’ said Mrs Pritchard. ‘I thought it was a bit unusual, ’er not bein’ ’ere this morning, but like I just said, I thought she might of put up at a friend’s ’ouse. Well, the fog was an ’orrible pea-souper last night. Oh, me palpitations, done in, poor woman.’

  ‘What sort of a lodger was she?’ asked the Chief Inspector.

  ‘Oh, cheerful, yer know, cheerful. Irish, she was. Liked ’er job at the laundry, and liked goin’ out a bit of an evening.’

  ‘Attractive woman,’ said Ross.

  ‘Oh, she ’ad nice looks,’ said Mrs Pritchard, taking the weight off her feet by sitting down at her fireside. Her range fire was alight, the coals slowly smouldering, and she leaned, took up the poker and stirred them into life. She pulled out the damper to let the air get at the coals. They glowed.

  ‘She wasn’t married,’ said the Chief Inspector.

  ‘No, but she ’ad a bloke, she said. Went out a bit to meet ’im sometimes, and brought ’im ’ere once. Good chest, he ’ad, and decent looks. Liked a drop of beer. Well, we ’ad a couple of bottles in the house and we all ’ad a glass or two in me parlour, me old man as well.’

  ‘Did her bloke go up to her room with her?’ asked Ross.

  ‘No, we ’ad a sociable evening in me parlour. Bit of a joker, ’e was, about forty, but couldn’t of been a marrying man or ’e’d ’ave churched Miss Flanagan, which might of pleased ’er. Well, she acted very nice to him.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives?’ asked the Chief Inspector.

  ‘No, course I don’t. ’E didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. ’Ave you gents got chilblains? Mine are killin’ me like they always do once winter starts gettin’ cold and damp, and the shock ain’t doin’ them much good, either.’

  ‘Do you know the man’s name?’ asked Ross.

  ‘I can’t remember if I was told ’is full name, but Miss Flanagan called ’im Godfrey.’

  ‘Godfrey?’ said the Chief Inspector.

  ‘Fancy name all right,’ said Mrs Pritchard, and breathed heavily. ‘Oh, that poor woman.’

  ‘Would you say he was an educated man?’ asked Ross.

  ‘’Ow do I know what school ’e went to? Mind, he spoke quite nice, but I wouldn’t say ’e was posh. A lot of laughs, that was ’im, like Miss Flanagan was. You still sure it’s ’er that’s ’ad ’er throat cut?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Ross. ‘One of the laundresses identified her on the spot.’

  Mrs Pritchard quivered and put a hand to her agitated bosom.

  ‘Oh, me gawd, I just thought,’ she gasped. ‘’E ain’t back, is ’e?’

  ‘Who?’ asked Dobbs.

  ‘Him, o’course, bleedin’ Jack the Ripper.’

  Chief Inspector Dobbs growled under his breath. Any mention of the Ripper pained his soul and put his ru
ggedly cheerful front under strain.

  ‘Be an obliging lady, Mrs Pritchard, and put him out of your mind,’ he said.

  ‘But was Flanagan all cut up ’orrible?’ asked Mrs Pritchard. ‘If she was, I ain’t expected to put that out of me mind, am I?’

  ‘She wasn’t,’ said Dobbs. ‘And Jack the Ripper’s in his grave.’

  ‘Is ’e?’ Mrs Pritchard looked dubious. ‘Nobody’s told me.’

  ‘The man Miss Flanagan called Godfrey,’ said the Chief Inspector, ‘I’d be glad if you’d fully describe him.’

  ‘As I remember— ’ere, wait a bit, it wasn’t ’im that done ’er in, was it?’

  ‘We don’t know who did it yet,’ said Ross, ‘we’re making enquiries and we need all the information we can get about the people Miss Flanagan knew. It helps to eliminate the innocent, Mrs Pritchard.’

  ‘Never ’eard of it,’ said Mrs Pritchard, ‘except we’re all innocent round ’ere, includin’ me old man that ain’t let a drop of the ’ard stuff pass ’is lips since ’e got a job as a lamp-lighter. The Gas Company ain’t partial to lamplighters that can’t see for lookin’. They sacked one bloke for not seein’ where ’e was doin’ a Jimmy. Up against one of their lampposts, it was, and ’e got reported by someone as ought to of known better. As for Flanagan’s bloke, ’e was about your ’ight and build,’ she said to the Chief Inspector. ‘Yes, and he ’ad dark ’air and a moustache which he kept out of ’is glass of beer very tidy, like. Mind, I only saw ’im that once, which must of been all of four months ago.’

  ‘But you can say Miss Flanagan still went out to see him some evenings?’ said Dobbs.

  ‘Well, now and again when I saw ’er on ’er way out, she’d say she was goin’ to meet Godfrey.’

  ‘How did she dress on those occasions?’ asked Ross.

  ‘’Ow did she what?’

  ‘Dress.’

  ‘Like she usually did, in her ’at and coat,’ said Mrs Pritchard.

  ‘In a coat summer and winter?’

  ‘A thin coat in the summer.’

  ‘What time did she usually get back?’ asked the Chief Inspector, deciding that the coats were worn to hide short tarty skirts.