James was the only one who understood. Dear James, so much more than a tutor, so much more than a friend. It was he who helped him find a new life with the artists and free spirits who shared his feelings and his tastes. James was the one who’d made it possible for him to slip away for a night on the town, taught him to dress discreetly — dark clothing, a fore-and-aft cap like the ones so many chaps wore nowadays. Discretion, that was the ticket, not to attract attention like a swell on the randy.
What jolly times they’d had together! Oh, once or twice there’d been a bit of a near thing — that raid on the house in Cleveland Street, for example. One of the lads had blabbed but they managed to hush it up nicely. If only poor James hadn’t suffered that dreadful accident two years ago! Brain injury, they said; laid him up for months.
It was then that he’d started going out on his own, quite alone. It was then that he’d really discovered the East End with all its delicious diversions, its perils and pitfalls, trollops and tarts.
Those damned whores were the worse. Taunting him, baiting him, because somehow they seemed to know what he was after. “Not good enough for the likes of you, eh, dearie? You’re the sort who prefers a touch of backgammon.”
Backgammon. A filthy term from a filthy mouth. What right did scum like these have, mocking him? No wonder he suffered seizures; it was enough to enrage anyone.
But now, after all that had happened, it was time to lay doggo, at least for a while. Presently he might go again, might have to go, just to put matters to the test for his own satisfaction. But he must be awfully, awfully careful lest someone — Mama, Papa, or even Grandmother — found him out.
And that would never do. Not for Albert Victor Christian Edward, Duke of Clarence, son of the Prince of Wales and grandson of Queen Victoria…
“God Save the Queen!” That’s how George Lusk opened the meeting and that’s how he ended it.
He wanted to make it perfectly clear; forming the Vigilance Committee was a patriotic duty. And by the morning of September 10th it had actually become a necessity. This panic in the district, the patrols searching everywhere, the wild accusations and arrests following Annie Chapman’s death, all added up to one thing — the Jews were in danger.
So he summoned them, a group of loyal, innocent people like himself and the local vestrymen, and presented his proposal.
It was the only way, the only sensible way, to combat vicious prejudice. Form a committee of responsible residents, offer full cooperation to the police, make recommendations to the authorities for protection and precautions, arrange for decent private citizens to conduct inquiries on their own and report any and all evidence of suspicious behavior.
As a builder and a respectable member of the community he was willing to chair the Committee; that was a step in the right direction. And they agreed to a further proposal, the posting of a sizeable reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer.
All in all it had been a good day’s work, and George Lusk was satisfied. It was probably too much to hope for that the Committee would actually bring the killer to justice, but at least its formation might achieve his primary purpose and quiet this hysteria about the Jews.
Unless, of course, one of their own proved guilty of the crimes.
Lusk hadn’t mentioned this last possibility to his associates nor did he dare tell anyone. But the hideous hypothesis haunted him; the more he read and heard, the more he wondered if the murderer could be the man whom the newspapers were accusing, a Jew nicknamed “Leather Apron.”
It was to laugh, this “Leather Apron” business. But John Pizer wasn’t laughing.
Ever since they’d found that leather apron in the backyard where the nafke had been killed, there’d been a tsimis going on. At first they thought it belonged to a slaughterman, and then some troublemaker began telling tales, giving those journalists his name.
And for what?
Everyone knew he wasn’t a slaughterman. He was a boot-finisher, that was a fact. Everyone in the trade wore such an apron, so why shouldn’t he have one too? Just because he sometimes wore it on the street the momsers called him “Leather Apron”—but did this prove he was guilty?
They said he hated women, said he had cursed and threatened to attack them. As if that was any of their business what he felt about these corvars or what he did to them. And this they couldn’t prove either.
But he’d guessed what they were thinking and his brother and sister were ready to swear he stayed inside the house with them. From Thursday night until Monday morning he stayed, and then the police came and arrested him.
Sergeant Thicke, he was the one who took him in. A good name for that shmuck—thick in the body, thick in the head. He searched the house and found five knives. Nu, so the knives were long, their blades were sharp; they had to be, for his line of work. Again this proved nothing.
At the Leman Street police station they made him stand in line with others they’d arrested. Then they brought in the stupid women who’d spread gossip about seeing the killer and his victim together and asked them to identify him. None of them could say for sure that he was the man they saw. A man, some crazy foreigner, told about seeing him quarrel with a woman in Hanbury Street before the murder, but even the police admitted he was meshugga.
At the inquest they found out about the leather apron lying in the backyard on the scene of the crime. It belonged to one of the lodgers, John Richardson his name was, and his mother had washed it and left it there.
After that they let him go. And now maybe the worst was over. Maybe he could even sue the newspapers for printing those stories about him. That would put a stop to all this “Leather Apron” foolishness. John Pizer always hated that part the worst. If he had to have a nickname, why couldn’t they just call him “Jack”?
~ SIXTEEN ~
Hungary, A.D. 1514. György Dózsa, leader of a revolt against the nobles, was captured and starved for two weeks, together with his accomplices. Then his captors tied him down on a red-hot throne, clapped a red-hot crown on his head, and thrust a red-hot scepter into his hand. As he roasted, he was eaten alive by his famished followers.
Inspector Abberline wasn’t sure.
Waiting in the anteroom of Sir Charles Warren’s office he tried to find an answer. Could it be that meal at the Gravesend Inn, topped off by gooseberry fool? Maybe this was making his stomach growl.
The meal had been a mistake and the whole trip to Gravesend was a fiasco. They’d held a suspect for him there, and nothing would do but for him to jar his digestion with a long train ride to pick the man up. William Piggott was his name, and he’d been seen by the landlady of the Prince of Wales public house on the morning after Annie Chapman’s murder, disheveled and with blood on his clothing.
The accused fitted the description, admitting he’d been in Whitechapel that morning and quarreled with a woman who bit his finger. Other than this he refused to speak on the journey back to London and seemed to be in a state bordering on delirium tremens. It all added up until they learned he’d slept in a lodging house straight through the time of the murder. The blood on his clothing probably came from the finger bitten during the quarrel after he awoke. And when Piggott was brought in neither the landlady nor any of the public house patrons could positively identify him. To top it off, the divisional surgeon who examined the man certified he was quite insane.