I reached the doorway, took a quick peek out, and saw nothing to impede my progress. Only a single man was there, and he was kneeling over what I knew to be the body, to my immediate left at the foot of the steps, next to the fence, though in the still-dim light, from my angle, I could make no sense of the corpse: It appeared to be some kind of spilled, opened suitcase, as I saw mostly disheveled clothes and could make out no identifiable features. I did what no other would do; I stepped into the yard.

The man looked up, his face grave and his demeanor stilled by trauma. “Dr. Phillips— Say, you’re not the surgeon.”

“No, Inspector,” I said. “Jeb, of the Star.”

“Bloke, Old Man Warren doesn’t like you press fellows mucking about.”

“I’m fine with that, but since I’m here first, I’m a responsible writer and not a screaming lying hack, and I can get your name in the largest newspaper in the kingdom, you won’t mind if I peek about a bit, will you then, Inspector . . . ?”

“Chandler.”

“First name, rank?” How quickly I made him a conspirator!

“Inspector Joseph Chandler.”

“Thank you.”

“All right, but don’t dawdle, and I’ll show you the particulars.”

That’s how I met the lady who turned out—by eleven-thirty that morning, another Jeb scoop—to be Annie Chapman. I met her; she did not meet me. All she did was lie there, her guts spread to the sun, moon, and stars.

“God,” I said.

“Ever seen an animal gutted?”

I lied. “Many a time, hunting red Irish stag.”

“Don’t know if our boy is a hunter, but he does like the knife.”

I immediately noted, as I bent over her, the difference between her and her sister in martyrdom, Polly Nichols, and that was her tongue. It was bloated like a hideous sausage, so wide an impediment that her lips were distended about it.

“Seen anything like that, Inspector Chandler?”

“Unfortunately. It happens as a consequence of strangulation. He crushed her throat before—”

He pointed. As before, the two deep eviscerations in the left quarter of the throat, leading around to the front before petering out. As before, clear of blood, as it had all slobbered out, sinking into her clothes and the ground and leaving spatters on the fence, where she had been cut. The dawn rendered it more as to coloration but not as to truth; in the pale light it was a kind of purple or lavender. I had yet to see the mythic red.

“Look here,” said Chandler, “this, too, is extraordinary.” He pointed to her possessions, which had been neatly arrayed, as if for an inspection, next to her roughly shod feet, between them and the base of the fence. I wrote down what I saw: a few combs broken and whole, another piece of raw muslin that I thought the ladies secured as a handkerchief for wiping up the fluids generated by their profession. A crumpled envelope lay next to her head.

“Quite tidy,” I said.

“Maybe he’s something of a perfectionist.”

“He certainly did the perfect job on her middle parts.”

“Aye, that he did.”

Yes, no doubt. I will here spare the reader and myself another recitation (vide, the diary, previous chapter) of the destruction.

“Quite nasty,” I said. “Obviously mad as a hatter.”

“You wouldn’t want to meet him in the dark. Not without a Webley, that is.”

Suddenly a third man joined us.

“Dr. Phillips, sir?” asked Chandler.

“Yes, yes. Oh, God, look at that.” He was brought back by the carnage inflicted, as would all men be.

George Bagster Phillips, the surgeon of the Met’s Whitechapel H Division, which would take over the murder cases, slid by me, drinking in the detail. He seemed to assume I was another plainclothes copper, and Chandler was so nonplussed by the arrival of the higher rank that he never introduced me. Meanwhile, other cops were drifting in, taking a look at the body. They stomped about in their heavy black shoes, flattening all upon which they trod, trying to be efficient but, as per expectation, doing damage to the scene far more than uncovering any clues. They were like penned hogs fighting to get to the trough. A supervisor was trying to impose some semblance of order. “Now, now, fellows, let’s be thorough, let’s be organized, let’s not rush through the scene. We need clues.”

“Here’s a dandy,” said Chandler. He had bent and turned the envelope, which said “Sussex Regiment” on it. That seemed to be the first break! And I was there to witness it.

“Good work, Chandler,” the supervisor said. “Now you others, you do the same.”

Well, I knew that it took no great genius to notice an envelope on the ground, but Chandler seemed so pleased with the nod, he again forgot to explain who I was and what I was doing there.

At about this time, Dr. Phillips arose from the body, scribbling notes to himself on a notepad.

“Sir,” I said, “have we a time of death?”

“She’s cold except where her body was in contact with the ground, and so I’d put time of death at about four-thirty A.M. Rigor is beginning to set in.”

“Any interesting tidbits?”

“I noted bruises on one finger. It wasn’t broken, but all blotchy blue, as if roughly treated. I saw the indentations of rings, so he clearly helped himself to her jewelry. It can’t have been much, given her circumstances, but I do wonder why.”

“Did the killer remove any parts of her?” She seemed not merely destroyed but looted as well.

“I’ll know when I get her back to the mortuary. It’s quite a shambles in there now.”

“Any man stains on her, indicating an attack of a salubrious nature?”

He turned and looked me full in the face. “I say, who are you?”

Well, the jig was up. Two constables quickly escorted me to the street. My time in the yard at 29 Hanbury was finished.

It was about now that genius of O’Connor came into full play. I did not race back to Fleet Street by hansom, eating up the minutes in traffic, stuck behind horse trams and delivery wagons and other hansoms. No indeed. Instead I went to the Aldgate East Underground station, which had just opened at seven, and found a telephone cabinet. I picked up the instrument, waited until one of the girls at the Telephone Exchange came on the line, and in five seconds, I was talking with Henry Bright.

“Woman in backyard, 29 Hanbury, Whitechapel. Tongue swollen as if strangled, two deep cuts to neck, as at Buck’s Row. Henry, this next part is nauseating.”

“Spit it out, young fellow.”

“He pulled out her guts and flung them over her shoulder. They quite unraveled. It looked like spaghetti, purpled spaghetti.”

“Superb,” said Henry. “Oh, excellent.”

I went on with details, putting Dr. Phillips there, confirmed the lack of identity of the victim, and told him I’d be headed next to the mortuary.

“Splendid, lad. Bang-on splendid.”

So the Star was again first with the worst. I don’t know how they did it, but Henry Bright turned my notes into serviceable prose, as abutted by official responses garnered by someone at Scotland Yard, mostly piffle, and the story was on the street by eleven A.M., beating all the other afternoon boys by a good thirty minutes. In O’Connor’s world, that was a mighty triumph.

But the true depth of Henry’s greatness was expressed on the front page. It bore one word:

FIEND!

Who in passing could not pick that up for a shilling and lose him- or herself inside, where “ ‘Jeb’ on the scene at Whitechapel, and Henry Bright at the Star” had all the nasty details?

FURTHER MUTILATIONS

INTESTINES TOSSED

POLICE FIND CLUE

WARREN: NO COMMENT

And now on to my greatest triumph. It was so simple I hesitate to give it away. But it made me a legend, it earned me a ten-pound cash bonus, it went to six replates, and it impressed even Harry Dam, though I had yet to meet him. I went on a certain day back to Whitechapel, looking for a gal who knew Annie. I found her on station, as it were, in a slow patrol down Wentworth, looking haggard and ill used, which was clear indication that she was haggard and ill used.