I, Ripper: A Novel

“Capital thinking,” said the professor. “It existed theoretically, now it exists actually. By God, this is a wonderful discovery.”

“Shall we see where it leads?”

“We have a moral obligation to do so.”

I went first. It was not a long descent, perhaps ten feet, and it led to no vast underground chamber but into what appeared to be a kind of abandoned sewage containment, though of ample height and width for a man to nearly stand. One would expect a lantern at the base of the ladder to assist the escapees, and there it was, a primitive candle-powered implement whose contribution to illumination would be more helpful to morale than practicality. As the professor eased his way down, I found matches carefully wrapped against moisture, unwrapped them, ignited one, wincing at the flare, set the wick aflame, then closed the glass front of the piece, which magnified its vividness somewhat. Lifting it in my left hand, I exposed the gap in the ancient terra cotta through which the anarchists had battered their way to gain access; sweeping the lantern about, we saw that the length of space ran about ninety feet or so. At the same time, the miasma of abomination rose to our noses, for at one time this was a privy, to Romans, to medieval Londoners, who knew? Perhaps it contained Samuel Pepys’s shit or Messrs. Johnson and Boswell’s. It was said London was undergirded by abandoned tu

I pointed to the end of the vault. “It’s a big crapper,” I said. “Romans and Normans must have shat here. I’m guessing that comes out in some abandoned building in Fairclough Street.”

“Yes, yes,” said the Professor, who had fully entered the place. “The colonel dips in the side door while the pony cart driver runs for aid on the street, and first a few, then a lot of, anarchists spill from the main door. He’s vanished in seconds, makes his way to the exit, and is out unseen very quickly. From here it’s but a ten-minute walk to Mitre Square, where he has ample time to track and do his horrors to Kate Eddowes. Yes, this is a brilliant discovery, Jeb, and it will do well to enhance the accuracy and drama of your piece.”

“Yes,” I said, “but here is my problem. This is the only secret passage in any of the murder sites. I have examined them exhaustively. Neither Buck’s Row nor Hanbury Street, certainly not Mitre Square with its several passageways out, and nothing in Miller’s Court could be construed as a secret passage. Only here. What is interesting is that, as you and I have just proved, there is no limiting provision for size in achieving passage. Full-grown men fit quite nicely. So the most elementary and the only empirical point of your profile—Jack’s slightness—is thereby disproved. That, furthermore, is the only empirical index to his identity. All the rest are cognitive, based upon inference of what he knew, what he learned, what his skills would be. But the whole theorem rests upon the conviction that his size was essential to the commission of the crimes. Yes, he was slight, but it had nothing to do with anything. A man my size or even yours could have escaped after killing all five without difficulty.”

“Possibly, then, I was wrong. I seem to have been right in all other interpretations, if I recall correctly.”

“Indeed. It comes to nothing, does it? Oh, unless one knew that the colonel was slight, and inserted that condition into the profile as a means of specifying him among the others.”

“I must say, this seems an odd direction.”

“I have learned some things since last we spoke, which will perhaps explain the oddness of my tangent. I have learned, for example, that under your commanding personality and capability to light up a room, you are an angry man. You have been exiled from the polite society of academics and intellectuals on account of unsavory rumors concerning your behavior. They now shun you and pay you no attention.”

“I bear them no animosity, I assure you. Our ideas diverged. They’re too reformist, and they find me too cynical. It was always an uneasy fit.”

“Not as I hear it. The precipitating event of your exile was a bizarre ‘experiment’ that you undertook several years back, rumor of which left many uneasy. You invited a London street girl—a whore, certainly, like A

“So he has,” said the professor.

“So, too, has the girl. Did she flee to the country, go to America, commit suicide? No one knows, but it seems like the old Greek tale of Pygmalion, where the sculptor fell in love with his sculpture. Except in your version, you had much congress with the poor child.”

“This is begi

“Another question might well be: Who was your colleague? I believe it was Colonel Woodruff, who had come to you upon mustering out from mutual fascination with the mechanisms of language. He lived with you while you were working with Elizabeth. When he saw how you were abusing Elizabeth, he objected, and under his advice—and I’m betting with his money—she fled.”

“I loved them both. They betrayed me. That is all. Not much of a tale.”

“It never occurred to you that she might fear you rather than love you. It never occurred to you that Colonel Woodruff would—selflessly, as was his style—send her away because he feared what you might do to her. That is why you attacked him at the university.”

“So dear Jeb isn’t as simple as I thought. Not simple but slow, too slow.”

“You see how it follows. You devise a ‘profile’ for the crimes that indicates no one but Woodruff, down as far as the two rings he carried with him since 1857. So detailed were your plans that you approached me even before you had unleashed the J-U-W-E-S clue, which you used to snag me. And how snaggable I was. But in order for the proof to hold, there must be murders. What good is the profile without the murders? It follows that the murders were informed by the profile, not the other way around. That being the case, there can be only one killer.”

He said nothing.

“Dr. Ripper, I presume,” I said.

“At your service,” he said.

“Your madness and your brilliance are in perfect syncopation. Your madness kills to express your rage at her betrayal, and your brilliance finds use for it by constructing a ‘Ripper’ who terrifies the city and whom you track and vanquish. You get everything. You take everything from the weakest of all women on earth, the most powerless and degraded. You have your revenge on the colonel, who besides being murdered is then to be eternally damned in history. You want credit as the man who discovered and killed the Ripper, and it is my job to hand it to you. You get everything in return and make yourself in a society that has exiled you.”

“It’s too bad you’re so late to understanding,” said the professor. “Elizabeth was, too. She never quite apprehended me. My score isn’t five, it’s six. She was the first. She will not step out of the shadows to reveal my friendship with Colonel Woodruff. Nor will you. A few others got in the way. The colonel, of course, a bully here, a bartender there. All done in a good cause, I assure you.”