“Well, by God, sir, you’ve provided civilization with a long ton and a half more than I have. Here, porter, the bottle. This man drinks to his fill on my tab!”
The bartender scurried over, made a bottle ready with ceremony, and Mr. Hoyt, for such was the name, and I had a merry time together. He was quite a decent man and laughed at my bad jokes and puns, never grew intemperate even though the company had jettisoned him at sixty-five without so much as a farthing or a fare-thee-well. We both wept a tear for his wife, and agreed that liquor eased the pain.
“And you, sir? If you do not wish to speak, I understand. But somehow the burden is less when you share it, even for a bit, even with a stranger.”
“There was a woman, I lost her. There was a friend, I lost him. I hate them for the pain they caused, I miss them for the love they provided. It’s a banal story. Commonplace, pitiful. I try not to get all weepy, because in other respects, I was so lucky.”
“But it’s love that’s most important, now, isn’t it. When all is said and done, love is what lasts, or the pain of it missing, that lasts as well.”
“It’s surely so,” I said, turning to more bubbly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Jeb’s Memoir
Suddenly, it was November 6, which was just in advance of the high-water mark of the quarter-moon and the run of days most likely for Jack to express himself once again. We had to make a choice on which man to follow if indeed he went one of those nights.
“Tell me,” Dare said, “which of our three boys we should pick for our game, given that either he’s cleverly disguised his intentions or none of the three has a thing to do with this.”
“I would say we could abandon Major MacNeese. With his job’s long hours, his children underfoot, his wife’s love and engagement, he’s the least likely candidate. Leaving out of it how his brain works, the chap is too busy for Jack’s kind of all-night action.”
“I had hoped you would reach that conclusion. So of the others, Major Pullham and the heroic Colonel Woodruff, VC, which do you prefer?”
“The case for Woodruff is strongest.” I said. “He is alone all nights or in an opium den. His life is Spartan, dedicated to a duty that, it seems to me, is of dubious usage to the world, and therefore has more discipline for controlling himself for as long as he can. He comes and goes and reports to nobody. He does not drink with friends or hang about with other old soldiers. It’s as if he’s in mourning. So he, of the three, has by far the most ample opportunity, and given his battle experience and his long service s/ID, the most exposure to the sort of violence and carnage of which Jack is so happily author. He would be by far the most auspicious choice.”
“I have reached the same conclusion,” he said.
“As for the adventurous rake Major Pullham, he is clearly a kind of sex maniac, but not our kind of sex maniac. He lives to have intercourse.”
“He does indeed.”
“So he engineers such a thing at each opportunity, plus keeping up a busy professional life and being a willing partner in Lady Meachum’s ambitious social plans, which means he must be all ritzied up for suppers, brunches, weekends in the country, even the odd ball or masquerade, as those of that class are so idiotically inclined to do. So the question must be asked: How would he have time? He’d have to plan like a genius, and though he’s clearly a gallant sport, there’s no indication he’s a genius.”
“It would not seem so.”
“However . . .” I said.
“Yes.”
“The rings. We are forgetting that Jack took Annie’s wedding rings.”
“Your point?”
“Rings are treasure. Goods. Material things. Clearly, Major Pullham needs to prosper. Though he is not primarily a thief, he could not help but snatch something there that he thought had value. For Woodruff, there seems to be little of the material world in his mind. He does not have, he does not acquire, he has no interest in things. They insult him. His acts are pure.”
Dare considered. “The point is well constructed. I would not have thought of it.”
“So. Does hunger for treasure trump abundance of opportunity?”
“A believer in capital—that is, treasure—would argue that it did.”
“It is indeed human motive, well verified in history, literature, myth, and folklore since ancient times.”
“I must say, I do agree.”
“We are in accord?”
“Indeed. To Major Pullham, then, boulevardier, dasher, swordsman, cavalryman, ace salesman of horsey gimcracks and gewgaws, and Jack the Ripper,” said the professor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Diary
November 6, 1888
It is almost over. I have but once more piece of butcher’s theater to provide the horrified, titillated busybodies of London. And the great city demands that it be a corker. I have to surpass all previous efforts and stamp my legend on the face of the town as permanently as Big Ben or St. Paul’s Cathedral or the stone intricacy fronting the Houses of Parliament. Those three plus Jack: London, linked in memory forever.
What does one need for a masterpiece? Clearly, I needed time and space and privacy. The street had done well in the early going, if somewhat insecure. Moving to sealed-off squares and yards was an improvement. But none had light, room, and security, and I’d had too many by-the-whiskers escapes with blue bottles just missing me or me just missing them, with cart drivers and night watchmen and all the riffraff that coagulates in the rotting East End good nights and bad, fair and foul, morning, noon, or night.
Thus I took my most monstrous risk today. I tried to make it as safe as possible, minimize the play of fate, discipline myself severely for the part I need play, not give in to temptation to show off my wit or learning or eloquence, but keep hard and steady on course, wheel locked or tied in.
I chose my wardrobe with some patience, acquiring a dingy, stained frock and a bowler that looked as if it had been dragged behind the omnibus, escaping none of the shit the team of beasts normally left on our city streets. White shirt, though tending toward gray, frayed at the collar; black four-in-hand, utterly unremarkable; my dingiest boots, no spats, no knife hidden away in belt beneath frock.
Garbed several levels below my station, I got to the Ten Bells at the busy hour of eleven P.M. It’s not a big place, with the bar in a square island at the center eating up more floor space, so it was crowded, smoke hung in the air, gambling games were in full drama, yells and shouts and curses filled the air, most of the inhabitants being men either preparing for a night’s friction in the alleyways all ’round or recovering from same, and so it was a diverse group united only by sex impulse: bankers, stock traders, beer wagon teamsters, sailors, soldiers perhaps, hod carriers, maybe a construction laborer or two. Many looked like something out of Mr. Dickens’s sugar-glazed ingot of Christmas treacle, perhaps the low clerk Bob Cratchit, drinking to oblivion after whoring away the money that should have been saved against Tiny Tim’s operation, ha ha.
Exactly as I desired. I sat at the bar, sipping stout, enjoying it, I smoked a cigar, I laughed and seemed as animated as any of them, and after I felt comfortable and had assured myself that none of Abberline’s plainclothesmen lurked about, I enjoyed the rhapsody of Jack. You heard it everywhere.