“And the victims?”

“What about them?” Sirk asked, seeming lost for the first time.

“You said they weren’t young or pretty.”

“Oh, quite right. Well, by all accounts Mary Kelly had been pretty enough before Jack’s knife did its work. The others, however, had lived on the street for years, overindulging in drink and debauchery, contracting a variety of diseases, suffering from malnutrition, receiving no medical or dental care. None of them would be, let us say, cover model material for Modern Bride. Their average age was about forty-five—and this in a district of London where life expectancy was only twenty-nine.”

His dismissive tone of voice rankled her. “They were people, though,” Jennifer said. “Their lives mattered.”

“Did they? Perhaps to themselves they mattered. Or perhaps not. It’s doubtful that their continued existence was an issue of poignant concern to anyone else. One might say Jack did those hags a favor. Their names would have been long forgotten had it not been for his kindly dispensations. He made them immortal.”

“I’m beginning to think you’re not a very nice person, Mr. Sirk.”

“Has it taken you this long? I had imagined you would be quicker on the uptake.”

Jennifer was tired of this man. He was sybaritic, odious, amoral. He reminded her of those Roman patricians who would vomit up each course of a banquet before starting on the next. She wanted to be done with him.

“What else can you tell me about Jack the Ripper?” she asked evenly.

“Oh dear, what can’t I tell you? Were I to relate the complete history, we should be here long into the night—and somehow I doubt you fancy the prospect of spending the night with me. So let me summarize.”

He steepled his hands.

“Between August and November of 1888, a serial killer targeted prostitutes in the poorest part of London, the East End, home to nine hundred thousand souls, many of them immigrants, ten percent of them homeless, all of them indigent. Many were children, known colorfully as street Arabs. More than half the children born in the East End died before age five. The rest found work in sweatshops and factories or learned to shift for themselves, shoplifting and pick-pocketing. It was all very Oliver Twist.

“Despite multiplicitous conspiracy theories, most of the evidence suggests that Jack, like Oswald, acted alone. Prior to being immortalized as the Ripper, he was variously known as the Whitechapel Murderer, the Whitechapel Demon, the Whitechapel Fiend, and Leather Apron, this last appellation inspired by the discovery of a butcher’s apron near one of the bodies. The apron in question, however, was owned by a local tradesmen and was not connected with the crime. The killings took place within an area of only one square mile, yet managed to overlap two police jurisdictions—that of Scotland Yard, known officially as the Metropolitan Police, and that of the City of London. Cooperation between the two departments was strained. The victims were killed on weekends and holidays, perhaps indicating that the killer held down a regular job.”

Like a schoolteacher, Jennifer thought.

“Although there was little sympathy for the victims while they lived, the rash of mutilated bodies did catch the public’s attention. Every inquest ended with the same maddening refrain: ‘willful murder by some person or persons unknown.’ The sheer fact that the killer kept getting away with it drove the populace into a frenzy. None of the foregoing is of great interest, though.”

“Isn’t it?” She had found it interesting enough.

“What is of interest,” he said with a languid wave, “are the oddities of the case that make for clever conversation. For instance”—his hand came to rest on the sofa, occupying the space between them, uncomfortably close to her bare leg—“there’s Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. He was living at the Royal London Hospital in the East End, at the very time when Jack the Ripper was on the prowl. Some people even thought he was Jack. Of course, poor Merrick was in no condition to mount violent attacks on women, nor was he likely to blend into the crowd.” His hand twitched nearer. “Then there’s the business of the sneakers.”

“Sneakers?” She tried not to look at his pale, fleshy fingers.

“The first sneakers were improvised by the police in an effort to apprehend the Ripper. Their leather boots announced their approach, so they cut up bicycle tires and nailed the rubber strips to the soles of their boots. The case inspired innovations of other sorts. There were amateurish attempts at psychological profiling. One theory was that Jack had been inspired by a play about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde which had recently opened in London.”

“Mr. Mansfield’s play,” Jennifer said, hardly realizing she’d spoken aloud.

Sirk gave her a quizzical look. “Now, how is it that you would happen to have that obscure item of information at your disposal?”

She hadn’t meant to quote the diary. “It’s just something that came up.”

“Did it?” He watched her for a long moment. “You’re aptly named, Miss Silence. You do like to keep mum. Well, you’re right. The actor Richard Mansfield brought a dramatization of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story to the Lyceum Theatre. Many people ventured the opinion that the play had warped the killer’s mind. The stage manager of the Lyceum, by the way, was an Irishman named Bram Stoker, who later wrote Dracula. Was Stoker inspired by Jack the Ripper’s deeds? Perhaps he was Jack the Ripper himself.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“It’s no more far-fetched then some of the other candidates. Lewis Carroll, Arthur Conan Doyle, the royal physician Sir William Gull, the Duke of Clarence, the seer Madame Blavatsky, a mad midwife, a Russian eunuch, and an escaped orangutan reenacting Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ have been among the suspects proposed.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“In my opinion, Jack the Ripper was a mere nobody, some disappointingly run-of-the-mill psychopath who would be altogether forgotten had it not been for his nickname—a nickname that quite possibly was the invention of a letter-writing hoaxer. Really, as multiple murderers go, he is quite routine.”

His hand was now up against her leg. She glanced down at it, then caught him watching her. His expression was hard to read, some mixture of amusement and need.

“Well,” she said briskly, rising from the sofa, “you’ve certainly brought him to life for me. Thanks for your time. I’d better be going now.”

Disappointment crossed Sirk’s face. “So soon?”

It couldn’t be soon enough. “Afraid so.”

He rose. “Please call if you need further assistance. Or if you choose to unburden yourself of your secrets.”

“I will.”

He smiled suddenly. “You won’t solve it, you know.”

“What?”

“The Ripper case. It’s a set of Russian dolls. Those peculiar dolls that nest, one inside the other. The whole matter seems so simple when you first look at it, but as you take it apart, you find another doll, and another. Yet there is an irresistible compulsion to keep working on it. To pull one more thread, if I may mix my metaphors, in the hope that the entire mystery will magically unravel.”

“Maybe someday it will.”

“I very much doubt it.” His gaze was far away. “Some years ago there was a series of novelty books called Whatever Became Of. They would tell you what had happened to the actor who played Sam in Casablanca or the gypsy woman in The Wolf Man. Which was all very interesting, but it was never the question I wished to have answered.”

He looked at her and smiled again, almost fondly.

“Whatever became of Jack the Ripper? Now there’s a mystery worth solving. Whatever became of dear old Jack?”

1896