Ripper (16 page)

Holmes was hanged at Philadelphia's Moyamensing Prison on May 7, 1896.

The castle, he wrote in his memoirs, was designed "for the pleasure of killing my fellow beings, to hear their cries for mercy and pleas to be allowed even sufficient time to pray 
. . .
"

I am a graduate student at the University of Oregon. My psychology masters thesis is on H.H. Holmes. Holmes was convinced one side of his face showed signs of "degeneracy, " explaining why he killed. A common nineteenth-century theory was each side of the face reflects a different personality. The left side is "natural," the right "acquired." If you place a mirror down the center of your nose, your two left sides and two right sides form different people. Holmes wrote of "the malevolent distortion of one side of my face and of one eye—so marked and terrible that. . . Hall Caine .. . described that side of my face as marked by a deep line of crime and being that of a devil . . ."

Would you be interested in a true crime book about America's first Jekyll and Hyde?

Yours truly,

Alexis Hunt 

423 Madrona Way 

Cannon Beach, Oregon 97110 

November 17, 1992 

Wiseman & Long, Publishers 

500 Fifth Avenue 

New York, N.Y. 10110 

Attention: Chris Wiseman 

Dear Chris:

Re:
ROOM OF DEATH: THE CASE OF DR. MARCEL PETIOT

Dr. Marcel Petiot was a Paris physician. He joined the French Resistance during World War II. In March of 1944, attention was drawn to his surgery at 21 Rue Lesueur by foul-smelling smoke belching from the chimney. Searching the house, police found the offending stove in the cellar surrounded by the remains of twenty-seven hacked-up corpses. Other body parts smoldered in the furnace. The doctor fled, but was arrested nine months later. He confessed to killing sixty-three people.

Twenty-one Rue Lesueur was a deathtrap. Petiot told wealthy Jews he could smuggle them out of Nazi-occupied France. At night, desperate fugitives arrived at his surgery with their savings and precious possessions. The doctor gave each a shot "against malaria," which he said was prevalent where they were going. The Jews were then led to a small triangular room with rough cement walls and asked to wait. Each inoculation was actually poison. As the poison took hold, Petiot watched his prisoners die through a peephole in the wall.

The doctor was tried at Seine Assize Court. Among the exhibits were forty-seven suitcases filled with 1500 articles of clothing. Having earned, a fortune from his crimes, $75,000 from one family alone, Petiot was convicted and sentenced to death.

Approaching the guillotine on May 26, 1946, he asked permission to relieve himself. Request denied, his last words were, "When one sets out on a voyage, one takes all one's luggage 
. . .
"

Encouraged by the modest success of
House of Horrors, I
plan to write a series called
Trapdoor Spiders. Room of Death: The Case of Dr. Marcel Petiot
will be Book II. Do you want it?

Yours sincerely,

Wiseman & Long, Publishers 

500 Fifth Avenue 

New York, N.Y. 10110 

November 27, 1992 

Alexis Hunt 

423 Madrona Way 

Cannon Beach, Oregon 

97110 

Dear Alex:

Americans like to read about Americans. A Frenchman fifty years ago won't do. Besides, we've got plenty of "trapdoor spiders" here. Write a book on Ed Gein, the Plainfield Ghoul. He inspired
Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
and
The Silence of the Lambs.
Or one on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal. Either subject, and you've got a contract. Same terms as the last.

Best,

She dropped the rejection letter onto her desk and frowned. Three months of research wasted, cut off at the knees. Time she might have spent with her ailing father instead. Her loving father who'd died of brain cancer here last week. Here in the house of horrors. There in the room of death.

goers hearts swooned for
Rose Marie.
We were all Jeanette MacDonald in Nelson Eddy's arms, wrapped in scarlet with "Indian Love Call" crooned in our ears. A pleasure your generation missed, so here's your chance, dear. The Mountie coming is handsome, and more important—single. What if he's the love of your life and you pass the weekend by?"

"Enough," Alex capitulated. "What time does the floatplane leave? You're right, a carefree weekend is
exactly
what I need."

Ghostwriter

Approaching New York City 

3:59
P.M.

DeClercq kept in touch with Special X by Airfone from the plane. Finding Chloe and Zoe's hanged bodies confirmed his belief
Jolly Roger
was the blueprint for this case. The gutting and organ-hooking reflected murders in the novel, as did carving the torso of the "altar-woman." The only difference was Chloe's body was marked with a pentagram, while victim three in the book was scratched with "three overlapping triangles." If only
Jolly Roger
had contained a diagram. DeClercq recalled what he read last night about Crowley's incantation:

In 1909 Crowley experienced possession. He and Victor Neuberg performed the ritual in the North African desert. Crowley wanted Choronzon, a demon mentioned in sorcerers'
grimoires,
to occupy his body temporarily. While Neuberg sat protected by a circle, Crowley sacrificed three pigeons in a triangle. As the invocation to Choronzon was recited, Neuberg swore he saw phantoms swirling about his master.

Triangle?
DeClercq thought.
What sort of triangle?
He juxtaposed what he knew about Crowley's thoughts on the Ripper:

Crowley published his
Confessions
in 1929. This work contains the passage quoted in
Jolly Roger.
He later expanded the story about Vittoria Cremers and the trunk in his essay "Jack the Ripper." It mentions five ties, not the original seven, and identifies the trunk's owner as Robert Donston Stephenson, a London physician. The doctor wrote contemporary columns on Jack the Ripper for
Pall Mall Gazette.
His work for
Lucifer,
an occult journal, was published under the pen name Tautriadelta.

Tau
is a Hebrew/Greek letter written as a cross or T.
 

Tria
is the Greek number three.
Delta—
Greek for
D
—
is triangle-shaped. 

Tautriadelta. Cross-three-triangles

DeClercq unhooked the meal tray from the seat in front of him. Pen in hand, he used the air sickness bag for paper. As the plane descended into New York, he doodled triangles. His occult sense at work, he ended up with this:

Three triangles. Combining to form a big one. Surrounding an upside down fourth.
Symbols,
he thought.

LaGuardia Airport 

4:41
P.M.

Waiting for his luggage to appear on the carousel, DeClercq placed calls from the baggage area. The first was to Fly-By-Night Press on 29th Street. Again the phone was answered by that damn machine: "I'm out of town till Friday. Leave a message at the tone." The second was to Marsh's editor at one of the major houses. She was delayed

in Fort Lauderdale by a Florida hurricane, and wouldn't return from a sales conference until tomorrow at noon. The message conveyed was she'd meet him at the Russian Tea Room for lunch. The NYPD had sent their latest report to Chan.

New York City.

A night loose on the town.

Midtown Manhattan 

6:05
P.M.

The Big Apple.

Worms and all.

From his hotel on 54th Street, DeClercq walked east to Fifth Avenue and turned right, heading downtown. Wind blew up the canyon from the Atlantic Ocean south, driving snow flurries before it like an army in retreat. The stream of traffic, going his way, was full of yellow fish, impatient cabbies honking their horns at every imagined slight. On the sidewalk, the name of the game was survival of the fittest, those still on their feet surging by the crippled and walking-wounded. Against the wall of St. Thomas Church—"Our Lady of Fifth Avenue"—a man sat, head bowed, with arms around his knees. A Styrofoam begging cup lay crushed by his shoeless feet, his sign

HOMELES

HIV POZITIV

PLEASE HELP

tromped with mud. Mick Jagger's lips—a hundredfold—blew kisses through the window of B. Dalton Books. Down the street, halter-necked with white accordion pleats, the most famous dress in the world billowed about the hips of a Marilyn Monroe mannequin. Passersby paused for a flash of her panties, then moved on. Weaving and darting like Gretzky going for a goal, DeClercq took advantage of every break in the throng. By Rockefeller Center, the sidewalk was blocked.

Here, a sign at the curb read

No Parking

Not 5 Minutes

Not 30 Seconds

NOT AT ALL!

Beneath it a black Santa Claus rang a clanging bell, while the Salvation Army—
Sharing is Caring, Need has no Season—
sang Christmas carols through a tinny amp. A crowd about a thousand strong filled the concourse to his right, awed by a mammoth Christmas tree ablaze with countless lights, above which zoomed the phallic needle of a gray skyscraper.

On every second corner between 57th and 34th stood an NYPD cop. To the blues of Midtown North, these were "holiday posts." An NYPD uniform never goes out of style, so the cop at 47th wore his grandfather's reefer coat. On the steps of the Public Library at 42nd Street, a rapper played hectic drums fashioned from a set of plastic pails. Near the Empire State Building at 34th, a heavy Brooklyn accent blared from an open-front store, calling New Yorkers one and all in to clean out the stock. "We are going out of business we are selling selling selling we are going out of business after twenty-five years! We are going out of business we are selling selling selling . . ."