Legacy of the Ripper (5 page)

"Sarah, what you're saying makes sense and at the same time it doesn't. It seems to me that you're trying to say that the package may have had something to do with his Jack the Ripper delusions, but if they were just that, delusions I mean, then why on earth would his father's solicitor have had them in his possession and why would he hide them away for years and then leave them to my son?"

"That's jut it, Tom. I have no idea at all. I don't even know if I should be telling you all this. It doesn't mean a thing really, does it? Like you, I can't see what connection any of Robert's dreams or delusions or fears may have with Jack's current mental state."

"You say Robert had 'fears'. What exactly do you mean by that? He never mentioned any fears to me in the time between his coma and his eventual death."

"Listen, Tom, Robert told me that his greatest fear was that he would end up being cast into a purgatory type of existence, such as that he believed the Ripper's victims had been consigned to. He said that they visited him in his worst nightmares and that he could never shake their names or their faces from his mind. He spoke as if he knew them personally, Tom; Mary Kelly, Martha Tabram, Annie Chapman, Catharine Eddowes, Liz Stride and Mary Ann Nicholls. You see, I even know all their names. His later life became haunted by them, and when he lay dying, his last words, which I've never told to any living soul were,
and "They're here."
He was convinced that they'd come for him Tom, I'm sure of it. He couldn't find any peace at all, not even in his last moments."

Tom looked at Sarah, and he realised all of a sudden that this woman, his cousin's widow, had carried this great burden within her for so long that the weight of her own husband's tortured mind had preyed on her until she was close to cracking. She was so obviously riddled with guilt that she'd been unable to offer him the peace and solace he'd sought so desperately in his last days, even if it hadn't been her fault. Robert's mind had created his own demons, but Sarah had been forced to live with those demons every day since his death. Tears streamed down Sarah's face and Tom Reid rose from his place on the sofa and moved across to the armchair. Sitting on the arm of the chair he placed his arm comfortingly around her shoulder, and said quietly,

"Thank you, Sarah. I don't know if it helps me with Jack, but I know it's been hard for you to tell me these things. Why on earth you never confided in me before I don't know, but I'm sure you had your reasons."

"Robert begged me never to tell anyone," she sniffed, "But after what you just told me I thought it only fair to tell you. Jack is family after all."

"Look, Sarah, I think that now you've got it out in the open, you should maybe come and stay with me and Jen for a while, just like you did in the old days. What do you say to coming for an extended visit?"

"Thanks, Tom, I appreciate your offer, but I can't, really. I don't get out much these days and I feel much more comfortable here in my own home, where I have my memories of Robert, than I do anywhere else."

"Are you sure, Sarah? It might do you good you know. We'd be more than happy to have you over. You know that."

"I know. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be ungrateful, but please understand what I mean when I say I feel closer to Robert here. I loved him very much you know, and I still do, even though he's gone forever. I'm closer to him here."

"I won't press you, Sarah," said Tom, resignedly. "But please remember that the invitation stands for as long as it needs to. You can come and visit and stay with us anytime you want, for as long as need to. Jen would love to have you with us."

"Thank you, Tom. I appreciate it, really," said Sarah as she wiped the tears away with a tissue from a box she kept beside her chair. Tom suspected that she probably cried a lot of tears in her lonely life in Robert's old house, alone with nothing but her memories of the husband she'd loved and lost to the reaper of death and the ghosts of his nightmares of long ago.

Five minutes later, after saying a difficult and tender goodbye and reiterating once again his invitation to Sarah to come stay with him and Jennifer, Tom Reid eased his car out of the driveway of her home, and as he looked in his rear view mirror, he swore he saw a dark heavy shadow hanging over the house he'd just left, despite the brightness of the sunshine that bathed the rest of the street and the cloudless blue sky above. Could it have been his imagination? Maybe the passage of time and the events that followed provided the answer to Tom's question. For that answer, I shall relate those events as they happened, and leave aside for a moment the trials and tribulations of Tom and Jennifer Reid, and the troubled mind of Sarah Cavendish.

Laura Kane

In the early hours of the morning on 7th August 1888, the body of prostitute Martha Tabram, sometimes known as Martha or Emma Turner, was discovered in a pool of blood on a first floor landing at an address given as George Yard Building, Whitechapel, in the East End of London. The previous day had been a bank holiday and Martha, in tandem with a friend, Mary Ann Connolly, aka
Pearly Poll,
had spent the evening plying her trade around the pubs on the mean streets of Whitechapel. Pearly Poll later reported that the last time she'd seen Martha had been when her friend had gone with a soldier into George Yard for the purpose of a sexual liaison. Martha was never seen alive again.

When later examined by Doctor Timothy Killeen, her body was revealed as having received 39 stab wounds variously to the lungs, the heart, the liver, the spleen and the stomach. The apparently frenzied attack had concentrated on her breasts, belly and genital area.

In the light of what followed during the reign of terror in the coming weeks, it may seem odd that after the killings in the East End progressed many commentators at the time, and indeed well into the twentieth century, dismissed the murder of Martha Tabram as being unconnected with those of the subsequent victims. Today however, it is accepted by many of those who have studied the crimes committed during the time known as The Autumn of Terror that Martha Tabram was indeed the first victim of the man who came to be known in the coming weeks and months as
Jack the Ripper!

It may be significant that Inspector Frederick Abberline, one of the officers charged with the hunt for the Ripper was almost certainly convinced that Martha was a victim of the hideous and unknown perpetrator of the heinous crimes that wrought terror in the hearts and minds of the people of the East End in particular, and London and the whole of England in general during that terrifying autumn.

Could it therefore have been mere coincidence therefore, that on the night of 6th/7th August in the year that now concerns us, a woman by the name of Laura Kane was viciously murdered and her body left to be found, in a pool of blood on the first floor landing of a block of flats on the outskirts of Brighton, the seaside resort on the South Coast so favoured by many Londoners.

The murdered woman's body was discovered by a milk delivery roundsman, Dave Fowler, at approximately four a.m. as he made his deliveries to the flats. He immediately used his mobile phone to summon the police and emergency services, but Laura, though still warm to the touch, was beyond any medical help that the paramedics who attended the scene could possibly provide. The coroner later concluded that Laura has probably been dead for less than half an hour when Fowler came upon her body, a fact which shocked and dismayed the milk man who realised that the killer could still have been close by when he found Laura's remains, and that he himself may have had a lucky escape.

The Regent Estate where the block of flats was located was a remnant of the town planning nightmares that marred so many English towns during the Nineteen-sixties and the whole area had recently been earmarked for demotion and redevelopment by the town council. At the time of Laura's murder the estate remained a haven for drug dealers, prostitutes and petty criminals, who found the rabbit-warren like system of streets and alleyways the perfect location for their nefarious goings-on. Laura Kane was herself a prostitute and it was thought that her killer was in all likelihood a 'client' with a predilection for the macabre, and that her killing was a one-off, though on what evidence such a theory was based little is known. Later events would prove it to be a nonsense, of course, but at the time it fitted with the police's scant clues and lack of forensic evidence at the scene and with the Council's desire to underplay the whole episode so as not to deter visitors from coming to the seaside resort, which depended so much on both long-term and day tripper tourism. The largest manhunt that Brighton had witnessed in many a year was thus launched by the police, though at first they maintained a low profile approach so as not to detract from the pleasures of Brighton's less gruesome attractions. Perhaps the fact that Laura was a prostitute led to there being less than is usual in terms of press and media publicity.

That being said, Detective Inspector Mike Holland applied himself tirelessly to the case, aided by his assistant Detective Sergeant Carl Wright, and neither man could be faulted for their efforts in attempting to track down the vicious killer. Forty-eight year old Holland, was tall, lean and athletically built. Divorced for ten years he'd served many years on the force, while Wright was five years younger, had never married, and was no less athletic and who possessed a shock of blond hair that always seemed to be in need of a good comb. They made a good team, but found their current case one of increasing frustration and blind alleys.

The forensic officers had been baffled by the lack of trace evidence at the scene of the murder. There was no sign of defensive wounds on the girl's hands or arms and no valuable residue of the killers DNA could be extracted from beneath her finger nails. There simply wasn't anything there to extract. She hadn't been sexually assaulted and the murder weapon had been carried away by her assailant, and either disposed of or kept on his or her person. At that early stage the police refused to discount the possibility that the killer was female, though they were fairly sure that such a frenzied and protracted assault could only have been carried out by a male. For the time being Holland and Wright maintained open minds in the light of lack of evidence either way.

Checks on twenty-eight year old Laura's background proved singularly unhelpful. Orphaned at the age of three, she'd been brought up in an orphanage in the town of Lyme Regis in Dorset, another coastal town which might have helped explain why she decided to make her life in Brighton when she was old enough to leave the home. Perhaps she'd developed a love of the sea and wished to remain close to it. With no family to question, Holland tried to find Laura's friends but again found a distinct lack of persons to question. It appeared that the young woman had kept herself very much to herself and had formed no friendships either within or without the local community of 'working girls'. Local hostility towards the police on the estate also made extracting information from local residents difficult and Holland and Wright felt as though they were hitting their heads against the proverbial brick wall in their search for Laura's killer. Despite their best efforts no-one confessed to having seen or heard anything on the night of Laura's death and, equally frustrating to the police, no-one was either able or willing to provide them with any background information about the life of the murdered woman. Had Laura Kane been the only victim of the crazed killer who'd struck that night the case may well have been added to the 'unsolved' list that haunts those charged with hunting down those who kill their fellow human beings. Holland and Wright weren't to know at the time, of course, but Laura was to be only the first in a series of murders that would baffle and confound the police force. Thought they didn't know it, they were about to be plunged into a nightmare of blood, gore and terror hitherto unknown in the beautiful seaside town.

There were clues present, but those clues were so vague and so linked with the past that neither Holland or Wright or anyone connected to the investigation could possibly have been expected to make any connection to the murder of a Whitechapel prostitute over a century earlier. If they had, they might have found it chillingly coincidental that Laura Kane's murderer had inflicted exactly 39 stab wounds upon her body, concentrating the attack on her breasts, belly and genital area.

The Photograph

By the twentieth of August, it was becoming painfully clear to both Holland and Wright that the investigation into the death of Laura Kane was going nowhere fast. Apart from the medical examiner having established the cause of death as being from severe blood loss as a result of multiple stab wounds, one of which had lacerated the girl's throat almost entirely from left to right, they were really no further forward than from the day her body had been discovered. The M.E. had pointed out that he considered the throat wound to have been administered from behind, and that it would have been sufficient to immobilise the girl through shock and would also have prevented her from crying out. He guessed that she would perhaps have been alive when the remaining stab wounds began to be inflicted, a prospect that appalled Holland and Wright and all of those connected with the case.

Unfortunately, the lack of co-operation from local residents, either through fear or apathy or downright opposition to the police combined with the lack of forensic evidence, meant that the investigators had almost nothing to go on, no leads, no clues and no ideas. They had conducted a house-to-house in the locality of the murder, with no success.

As he and Wright sat in his office trying their best to think of a way to move the case forward, Holland reflected on the sad state of the world in which he lived.

"Here we are, in the supposedly enlightened twenty-first bloody century, sergeant and a girl can be brutally murdered, cut to shreds on the landing of a tower block without anyone hearing or seeing a damn thing. It almost beggars belief that no-one on that bloody estate saw or heard anything, or that they don't know who might be involved. Surely, someone, somewhere must know something!"