“Well,” someone said, “one thing’s for certain, the only man who could solve this one is Sherlock Holmes.”

Laughter, but not from me. Now, that was a damned fine idea. I had read Mr. Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet” the previous year in a magazine where it was published, though I understand it has since come out in book form. Sherlock was exactly what we needed: a calm, dispassionate intellect with a gift for deduction, who could master a complex set of clues and make appropriate inferences, and through the swamp of this and that track a steady course that led inevitably to but one culprit. It was to be done, moreover, stylishly, with dry wit, wry observation, and despite a sort of academic diffidence, a true grasp as to how the world actually worked.

Where could we find such a man? Where was our Sherlock Holmes? I was ready to be his Watson.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Diary

October 4, 1888

I have been named.

It had to happen. If I am the demon incarnate, sooner or later some fellow will pin a moniker on me, first, to simplify communication of my charisma, and second, in some way, to diminish me by cramming all my nuances, improvisations, heroic acts of sheer will, bravery, and long-term shrewdness into one banal package that at first holds those attributes in high regard but eventually erodes until the name—and I—become commonplace.

25 Sept. 1888

Dear Boss, I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they wont fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now. I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha ha. The next job I do I shall clip the ladys ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldnt you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good luck

Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

Don’t mind me giving the trade name.

wasn’t good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now ha ha

However, I rather like it. Whoever coined it is not without a certain low genius. Jack the Ripper. I, Jack. I, Ripper. It’s both violent and short, it combines two commonalities in an unexpected way, it uses the verb “to rip” in an equally unexpected way, as very little of what I’ve done involves ripping. But Jack the Cutter would not work, because cutting is a term, though accurately employed here, that more usually finds its place in discussions of tailoring. So Jack the Ripper it shall be.

I suspect it’s the business of the ear that drove it home. Whichever pusillanimous journo coined “Jack the Ripper” had no way of knowing that in my frenzy in Mitre Square involving what was left of Mrs. Eddowes, I indeed loosed an ear from its mooring on the side of the skull. I had no memory of doing so; that was a period of blur, although rereading my last entry, I see I retained enough recollection to record it immediately postcoitus, if ever so swiftly it vanished under the tidal swell of sleep that overwhelmed me.

But that freak of circumstance gave Jack the Ripper’s missive, with its lurid silliness about using blood as ink, a certain kind of instant celebrity. You need a vivid detail to nail something hard and permanent into the public consciousness, and whosoever my benefactor was, he provided that. He should be writing adverts!

Meanwhile, the “double event,” as the papers are calling it, seems to be seen as evidence of a particularly malignant higher genius. How I wish it were so! Were I that genius, I might not have had to improvise so desperately and to depend on luck so totally. But nobody seems to have cottoned to the fact that the second event existed purely because the first was so unsatisfactory, just as no one has an inkling as to why JEWS is spelled JUWES in my graffito, or why that sentence seems to make no sense, grammatically or otherwise. I have to laugh at how incompetent are our supposedly great minds. It appears that nobody has the gift of putting these things into their proper pattern and inferring where this campaign is ultimately going. That pleases me no end.

In fact, I am at this time more happy than I have ever been in my life. Those who smote me so deeply and took from me that which I had created and loved, they will meet the knife—of one sort or another—soon. Those who criticized me, those who disdained my work, those who found me shallow and overambitious, I am in the process of proving them all wrong, in thunder. “Ha ha,” as Jack has written, and whoever he is, the anonymous scribe got exactly the joy I feel in confounding the world. Sir Charles, the boys of the press, all the mobs who cannot help themselves but for prattling and dreaming of Jack, all of them are miles from the truth, and the only crime is that if I succeed, as I surely feel I will, no one will be wise enough to put it all together.

I have a little left to do. I must be on with it.

October 24, 1888

Dear Mum,

Well, I know you heard the news. He done two up, one real bad. They even have a name for him these days, the newspapers do, they call him “Jack the Ripper” on account of some letter he’s said to have written, although if you ask me, it’s all a bunch of horseradish, as a fellow who could do what he done to the last one wouldn’t make no sense when it comes to writing letters on account of his being all crazy and everything. He’s like an orang or something, in human form, some kind of crazy ape with a knife, maybe a Russky or a Pole or a Chinaman, but no Englishman, that I’ll tell you.

That’s what us girls think. No Englishman could do such horrors and so we still feel safe with our own kind, which seems to be how we’re doing things these days.

And we are not alone. You’d think the city might sit back and enjoy this foul brute chopping on unfortunates but it’s like everybody is behind us! It’s something! Why, just a few weeks back, before the double event, two constables spotted a local hooligan and gave chase to him. People thought it was Jack himself, and they got in on the game, and soon a mob was on this chap’s tail, they right near strung him up. Well, he weren’t no angel, but he weren’t Jack, either. It was a fellow called Squibby, a low common bully. The coppers got there in time to save him a jig under the gallows tree. They even went to the police station and tried to get him for the rope, sure it was Jack, but the coppers held firm.

I know all this scares you and Da, Mum. But don’t let it. See, I’m not like those other girls. They all works the street and their jobs take them into alleys. All Jack done, he done in alleys and squares or other dark nooks. Myself, it’s all different for me. I’m safe and snug as a bug in a rug in my own little room. My fellow and I are sort of on the outs now, but I see him every day and I know he’ll be back soon. Having Joe around is one thing, as he won’t let nobody hurt me. Oh, and on top of that, there’s a watch dog. Well ha ha ha, there I go again, making jokes. It’s not a dog, it’s a cat. The lady upstairs, Elizabeth, she keeps a kitten she calls Diddles, but Diddles ain’t no ordinary cat. Diddles knows when somebody’s about who shouldn’t be, and you can be sure Diddles will let out a racket if anyone shows up here who don’t belong.