The Alchemy of Murder (8 page)

*   *   *

E
VEN THOUGH
J
OSEPHINE
’
S
body was missing, Miss Maynard and I didn’t want her to be forgotten like so many tarnished women are, so we had a tombstone made with an inscription that I bastardized from Shakespeare:
“Life is but a walking shadow … one day it disappears, but your beautiful smile and kind and generous heart will never be forgotten.”

On the anniversary of her first year gone, we planted the tombstone under a weeping willow—it just seemed fitting.

Then the London slashings began.

8

In the fall of 1888, a series of ghastly crimes, five in all, put London in a panic. The Whitechapel murderer who called himself “Jack” killed women of the streets, mutilating them horribly and extracting body parts with such precision that the police suspected he might be a doctor with an expertise in surgery.

My blood rose. Dr. Blum was no longer a fleeing ghost. He was alive.

I was convinced this “Jack” and my Dr. Blum were one and the same and was compelled to London to investigate. Mr. Pulitzer did not share my enthusiasm. But when I suggested I walk the streets of London’s notorious—and dangerous—Whitechapel district dressed as a prostitute to lure the Ripper, he agreed. No doubt he believed that if I was murdered, I would be canonized as a saint of newspaper
men
—and he would sell many papers.

My mother, on the other hand, had a completely different reaction. The poor dear became so upset when I told her what I was going to do, a doctor had to come and administer a sedative.

She was right. The whole idea was ludicrous, especially the notion that I could fend off the Ripper’s knife in London or anywhere else. What she couldn’t comprehend was something else of singular importance overpowered my fears—the guilt I felt for Josephine’s death. He had to be captured so he could never mutilate another woman.

*   *   *

W
ITH A POLICE
whistle in hand and my mother’s long hat pin she insisted I wear at all times to use as a weapon, I left for London. Never would I admit to anyone how scared I was—especially to myself.

Upon arriving I met with Inspector Abberline, of Scotland Yard, the officer in charge of the Ripper investigation. At first he told me he wouldn’t allow a woman to make herself bait to a mad-killer. It was, as he put it, “Plain out loony!” But once I told him my story and that I didn’t cross the ocean to be stopped, he reluctantly agreed.

He took me to the Whitechapel district, helped me find a place to stay and introduced me to the policemen on the beat so they wouldn’t arrest me for prostitution. Just before parting we set up times to meet and he gave a police whistle, noting mine was a toy. If any man aroused my suspicion, I was to blow hard.

I thanked him and told him not to fear, I would blow like Joshua.

After I had a couple of stressful nights walking the streets, Inspector Abberline told me about a doctor that had come to their attention. He was of foreign descent, possibly German, Russian, or other Eastern European lineage, and had a laboratory in a cheap tenement right in the heart of the Whitechapel district. My enthusiasm roused the inspector into action and he allowed me to accompany him to the premises to see if I could identify the man as Dr. Blum.

Emotions ran high for everyone as we raced to the location. An electrical charge was in the air as the carriage drivers cracked their whips to speed their horses along. Inside the police wagon the inspector kept drumming his fingers on his knees. I couldn’t believe it. I was on my way to identify the man who brutally murdered Josephine and tried to kill me.

The inspector planned our arrival during the early afternoon, based on an anonymous tip that the doctor would be working in his lab. A block before the building the police wagon slowed down, so not to give warning of our arrival.

We had no sooner stepped down from the wagon when an explosion rocked the building and a fire erupted. I can’t say if my eyes were tearing from the smoke and powder fumes or from frustration and anger that all evidence was going up in smoke, as with the pier shack.

Defeated, I returned to New York depressed and without a killer or story.

Mr. Pulitzer made it clear to me that my investigation of Dr. Blum was closed. “Against my better judgment I let you go to London to catch the Ripper.
You failed
.”

I hated to admit it, but he was right.

*   *   *

M
ATTERS MIGHT HAVE
stayed at a standstill but for a chance remark from G. Steven Jones, the
World
’s recently returned Paris correspondent. Hearing of my attempt to snare the Ripper in London, he thought I’d be interested in mutilation killings in Paris.

“Mutilation killings in Paris? Are you sure? Mister Pulitzer just returned from the World’s Fair. He never mentioned anything of the sort.”

“That’s because he doesn’t want you running off to Paris. Besides, the French government is keeping a tight lid on the slashings to avoid panic. Think about it. Can you imagine what would happen to the World’s Fair if news got out that a man is mutilating women?”

“Is there any particular area where the killings are taking place? In London, he targeted prostitutes in the Whitechapel district.”

“Montmartre—it’s the city’s bohemian district and known for the scandalous behavior of the residents, many of whom are artists and writers. Not to mention it’s overflowing with prostitutes.”

“You’re sure a man has been killing women in the same fashion as the Ripper?”

“Yes, but I must warn you, if you plan on going, don’t let the boss know I spilled the beans, and don’t contact the Paris police and tell them you’re hunting a mad killer.”

“Why?”

“Paris is already being racked by problems. Terrorism was born in Paris a hundred years ago during the Reign of Terror. Now it’s come back. Anarchists, who cast their votes with guns and bombs, are fermenting revolution at a time when the French economy is as black as Newcastle coal. The World’s Fair is pulling in millions of francs and the government isn’t going to permit a scandal that threatens the revenue. That’s why the police have put a lid on the story. If you go to them with your theory that a killer is on the streets stalking women, you’ll be arrested.”

Money over the lives of people? What kind of world did I live in?

“And besides all the other problems, there’s been an outbreak of Black Fever.”

“What’s that?”

“A deadly influenza. They believe it’s caused by miasma from sewer flumes because it putrefies a body until it decomposes and becomes foul smelling.”

Ten days in a madhouse was beginning to sound safer than a visit to the City of Light.

*   *   *

I
WALKED THE
streets of Manhattan digesting what Mr. Jones had told me. Doctor Blum had resurfaced in Paris. The Paris slashings were the work of the same man who had wet his knife in New York and London. I was certain—again. And I was going. Now all I had to do was convince Mr. Pulitzer to assign me to Paris.

With my failure in London and the expense it incurred, I knew he wasn’t going to be receptive to my request. Worse, the only clever approach I could come up with was the truth: I was operating off of pure intuition.

*   *   *

“N
ELLIE
,
HOW MANY
times do I have to tell you you’re a good reporter?” Mr. Pulitzer tapped his pencil on his desk. “But you’ve fallen off the log on this one. Need I remind you that Paris is in a foreign country and you don’t even speak the language?”

“My French is adequate.”
*

“It’s too dangerous.”

“The French have a saying:
Qui craint le danger ne doit pas aller en mer,
” I said, showing off. “One who fears danger shouldn’t go to sea.”

“I don’t care what the frogs say.”

“Then how about the Bard of Avon. ‘I must go and meet with danger there, or it will seek me in another place, and find me worse provided.’”

“Young woman, Shakespeare doesn’t sell newspapers. And neither do wild goose chases to Paris. There’ve been no reports of a Parisian slasher.”

“The police are keeping it under a tight lid. If news got out that the Ripper is there killing women, it would ruin the fair and destroy the economy of Paris.”

“Nonsense!”

“Regardless of what’s going on over there, I have to go.”

“This conversation is concluded.” He pointed at the door.

*   *   *

T
O EASE
P
ULITZER
’
S
anger, before getting on the boat in New York I sent him a box of his favorite Cuban cigars with a note boldly boasting I would not only return soon, but with a story that would top my madhouse exposé.

With regard to my mother, I told her I was going to Paris to cover the World’s Fair. It would have been brutally cruel to put her through that terrible fear again and as selfish as this sounds, I needed a clear head, not one worrying about my mother’s health because she’s worrying over me.

Once again I was crossing the ocean to hunt a madman who willingly takes a knife and slashes the essence from women. Only this time I had to avoid the police and an invisible killer from the sewers.

At first it seemed quite a well-behaved epidemic.

Dr. Brouardel, deputed to investigate it by the public authority, reported that the disorder was trifling and that a few days at home by the fire was all the treatment it required.

This was complacently published in the newspapers and became a standing joke. “Have you got it?” “Not yet?” “Well, you will, because we’ve all got to have it.”

In the cabarets they were singing: Everybody’s got the influe-en-za-ah!

But they soon began to find out that it was not a joke. The death toll began to mount alarmingly and the people got into a state of panic. It was useless for the Press to publish reassuring statements; their own obituary columns gave them the lie. Public services became disorganized, theatres closed, fêtes were put off, and law sittings suspended. Under this cloud of panic and depression the year 1889 passed out. And the winter following was not calculated to reassure anyone.

—J
ULES
B
ERTAUT
,
Paris

9

Tomas Roth, Paris, October 25, 1889

“We’ve come to find a murderer.”

The remark was so unlike Dr. Pasteur, it gave Roth pause as they gently rocked back and forth in the carriage. It was after eleven on a gloomy Saturday night as the three of them—Dr. Louis Pasteur, a sewer worker named Michel, and Tomas Roth, Pasteur’s assistant—made their way to the dark river beneath the city’s boulevards.

Michel—who was to be their guide into this strange world beneath the city’s streets—looked askance at the great scientist sitting across from him. Pasteur, caught up with his own thoughts, didn’t notice the concern.

“A killer who creeps in dark places and strikes without warning, or mercy.”

Pasteur was not talking to his companions, but to the night outside the carriage window.

Just hours ago the Minister of the Interior, the man entrusted with the safety of the nation, had personally come to the institute to implore Dr. Pasteur to leave the security and comfort of his laboratory and make a secret examination of the sewer system.

“No work you’re doing for mankind is as important to France as discovering the source of this contagion. If you do not find and destroy this disease there will be no Paris and perhaps no France.”

A compassionate man, the terrible burden placed on Pasteur weighed heavily.

The examination had to be under the cover of darkness and cloaked with secrecy.

“We must not fuel the panic that is already spreading as fast as the contagion.” The statesman’s voice cracked from the strain as he pleaded with Dr. Pasteur for his help in fighting a microbe so small, it couldn’t be seen by the naked eye.

*   *   *

M
IST LINGERED IN
the night air, creating wet penumbras in the glow of the gas lamps they passed. The cold hand of winterkill was already hard upon the land, stripping trees into skeletons and wilting plants.

When they picked up Michel several blocks back he knew nothing of the reason for the mission, only that he was needed to take them into the sewers.

In the carriage behind them was Dr. Brouardel—the Director of Health—and his assistant. Separate carriages reflected the different stances that the health department and the Institut Pasteur had taken about the contagion.